I don’t know why, but for a moment, I imagine myself in one of those pricey seats, calling him the world’s greatest asshole from up close so he can hear through all the noise he and his band members make. So I head to eBay, where I discover the staggering prices the best tickets command. I find myself clicking open Internet Explorer on my phone and navigating straight to Ticketmaster. My hands tremble as I go back to the entertainment section and slowly scan for the date of the concert. Not only my Saturday, this just ruins my entire fucking year. But now, my precious Saturday-time I get our apartment to myself-has officially been ruined. I live with my mother and my cousin, and I’ve always had an appreciation for my quiet time on Saturdays, when Magnolia has ballet and my mother has errands. My hands shake as I set down the newspaper, fold it, and try to move on to another section. For a time, this song played on every radio station in the country, and it made me loathe music with a passion-hell, the mere thought of it angers me all over again. The reporter keeps going on and on about how this tour has sold out Madison Square Garden faster than Justin Bieber’s first show, and how it will be the concert of the year, if not the decade.īriefly, the band’s breakout song flits through my head. It’s just getting started turning up the schmooze. How even Obama has openly said this band is responsible for turning young kids back to the music of the masters-Mozart, Beethoven. I begin reading the article about Crack Bikini, how the band has revolutionized music. “Seriously, asshole? You had to come here?” The thought of him being in the same state makes me scowl bleakly. I thought it impossible that a single one of these butterflies had survived Mackenna Jones.

The name curls around me like smoke in my insides, and butterflies I didn’t even know I still carried crash into the walls of my belly. I squeeze my eyes shut and open them, my stomach trembling uncontrollably.įuck, I really need to stop reading that. Mackenna Jones Is Back in Town! the headline says, and just reading that feels like a punch in the gut. when the headline of the entertainment section stares back at me, mocking me.

It’s been almost a decade and I still find an incomparable little joy in the smell of this freshly printed newspaper. As was his morning rumple of my hair and his cologne-but not the smell of the paper. By the time I was seventeen, he was gone. they remind me of lazy Saturday mornings reading the paper with my dad, his cologne scent engulfing me.

I love the crackling noise when I drop into my dining room chair and slap the sucker open. It sits on my doorstep this morning, and I love the way it smells. I’m the only person in my apartment building that still gets a newspaper.

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