SO THAT'S HOW WE MET. And that's why he started telling me all about his band.
"You know how if you turn the volume all the way up till your ears almost bleed, how when it's so loud there's a quiet place inside the noise? Loud enough to shake your teeth loose but in there somewhere is a ghost voice, like silence singing."
Relly kept going, testing me. If I just walked away, shaking my head, then he'd know I was like all the rest. But I stayed there and listened, and maybe even tried to understand. "That's the sound I want to get. So loud it almost crushes your skull flat and inside the noise is a ghost, a candle flame burning inside a fiery furnace." He said he was inventing a whole new kind of music, something he called Ghost Metal. Screaming guitars, crusher bass, drums like a ten-car pileup. But inside the noise, a ghost voice, something almost silent but still you can hear it.
"You want to know something?" We were eating lunch. Or I guess by then we were poking at the wreckage of lunch. "They call me Freak Boy and they're right."
His voice was way low, like he was telling me some evil secret. "I am the Freak Boy. And that's totally OK. Freak Boy conquers the universe. Freak Boy burns like a meteor whipping through the atmosphere. Freak Boy and his band defeats the power of Uberwanks. Freak Boy gets a thousand girls and makes them scream." He was all cranked up, still whispering, but his eyes were shining and the words came out fast.
"So I don't care what they call me. Freak Boy is just fine. It means that they see me for what I am. They're afraid of what I'll do. They know that some day I'll be out of this poxhole and killing the crowd every night ten thousand at a time with my guitar."
I guess I should have been afraid of him. And maybe I was. Afraid and still I wanted to be near him. Afraid and still I wanted to hear him go on about Ghost Metal and the King Cruncher Riff, and how he'd be on top some day, all the way on the top.