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he’d make his guitar feed back, throw his hands in theair, repeatedly yell, “Thank you” to the assembled children, and then get ready for the next song. No one applauded. No one did anything.
    One by one, the kids quietly left the basement and went upstairs. By the end of the album side, it was down to just Terry and me, plus Brian.
    Terry and I were not deterred; we were hell-bent on rocking, ferociously.
    A few days later, Terry observed that while we had played Kiss music, we lacked any Kiss-related costumes or makeup. Since painting our faces would be a lot easier than finding seven-inch leather boots with skulls on them (especially in a size four), we decided to invest in some cheap Halloween makeup. We found our opportunity one evening while Terry’s family had gone out to a movie.
    We were about halfway finished with Kiss-inspired makeup when we heard his family pull in the driveway. We panicked. Terry started to run water in the bathtub and told me to scrub my face. Of course, the cheap greasepaint wouldn’t come off and our efforts to clean it off just spread it further over our faces.
    Eventually, we were discovered.
    “What are you two doing in there?” Terry’s mother asked.
    “We’re taking a bath,” Terry quickly offered.
    “Together?” she asked.
    “Yeah, we’re almost finished,” Terry said, hoping that it would placate his mother long enough for him to clean off the makeup.
    As soon as we stepped out of the bathroom, Terry’s parents called us downstairs. We sat nonchalantly on the couch with a look of confused-yet-politely-inquisitive wonder on our faces, as if we were worried what possibly could be wrong.
    “What were you doing taking a bath together?” Terry’s mother asked.
    “When no one else is home,” his father added.
    In the middle of Terry’s rambling answer, Terry’s father looked at me and squinted.
    “What’s that around your eyes?” he asked.
    I paused for a moment, then answered: “Makeup.”
    Terry placed his head in his hands and sighed.
    I could see Terry’s father starting to boil.
    “Are you guys gay?” he asked, containing his obvious anger and trying to maintain an air of sincere concern.
    I was sent home and Terry was grounded.
    The incident drove a permanent wedge in Kiss Junior—the band broke up the next day.
    Afterward, Terry and I grew apart, as young kids do. Terry was two years older than me, which started to make a difference as we became teens. I lost track of him after high school, though I knew he was playing in a heavy-metal band and was pretty serious about it (and, obviously, he had finally learned to play his guitar).
    One evening last year, I was lazily scrolling through Facebook when I saw a link an old classmate had shared. It was an article about a guitarist who had been killed by a punch from one of his own bandmates. The dead guitarist was Terry.
    Terry had gone on to live a pretty extraordinary life. He played in a number of metal bands, cut two albums, and started a business focused on bringing rock bands to play for overseas troops. With his own band, he played USO shows in more than thirty countries. He even taught guitar to troops stationed in Korea for a few years.
    Following a gig in his adopted hometown of Colorado Springs, two of his bandmates got into a fight over carrying equipment out of the club. Terry stepped in to break it up and took a punch to the back of the head. He spent twelve days in a coma, then died.
    He left behind a young daughter.
    Kiss Junior was not listed on his resume.
    “Eric?”
    “What?”
    “Spider.”
    Giggling.
    I’m not sure how that spider joke started. I’m not even sure it counts as a joke. It was just one of those things between brothers that’s kind of funny the first time it happens. It was probably a practical joke—saying “spider” to someone (implying that there’s a spider on or near him), then watching him go into a freak-out spasm, brushing and swatting to get rid of the