Scar Girl (The Scar Boys #2)(14)

There was too much history between Johnny and me for it to work any other way. It’s hard to explain.

I played the song with my eyes shut the entire time. When I finished, Cheyenne just started bawling. She knew right away that the song was about her. Johnny looked confused.

I grabbed my guitar and left, feeling pretty shell-shocked. I figured Chey was crying over the guilt of her and me having kissed in Georgia and that she was going to tell Johnny everything.

Yes, we kissed. It was one time, it lasted all of five seconds, and it never happened again. It was right after Johnny had quit the tour and gone home, and we were all a bit confused. In the end, it didn’t mean anything. But I knew Johnny wouldn’t see it that way. He would see it as a betrayal, and I couldn’t blame him.

I sat in my car, waiting for them to come storming out of the house. I had this mental image of Johnny hopping over to my window and bludgeoning me with his prosthetic leg. When that didn’t happen, I thought about going back inside and confronting them, but who was I kidding? There was no way that was going to happen.

All the good stuff in my life that had started to take root was about to be wiped away, again. It was like getting your favorite cassette tape too close to a magnet, all your favorite tracks jumbled and gone.

I started on one of my lists. It’s a trick Dr. Kenny taught me when I was a kid. I memorize and recite boring lists of things; it’s supposed to help calm me down. Anything from naming all the presidents or Oscar winners to memorizing recipe ingredients or children’s books, whatever will force my mind in a different direction.

It works every time.

I was up to the forty-ninth digit of pi—five, in case you’re wondering—and it was starting to have an effect. I was settling down, and I knew it was time to leave.

I had my hand on the gearshift, getting ready to back out of Johnny’s driveway, when Chey stepped out of the front door. She had stopped crying, but she looked bewildered and more than a little bit freaked out.

“You want a ride?” I asked through the open window.

She didn’t say anything or even look at me as she opened the door and took a seat. Not knowing what else to do, I pulled out of the driveway and rolled on down the hill.

We cruised streets in Yonkers, Tuckahoe, and Eastchester for at least ten minutes in total silence. At first I was nervous as hell. I was pretty sure that whatever had happened between Johnny and Cheyenne was my fault, you know, because of the song. But after a while, with neither one of us talking, I kind of disappeared into the car radio. It was playing some New Wave crap—Culture Club, I think—I would never admit to liking in public, but in my head I was singing along.

“He asked me to leave.” Chey’s voice startled me. My nervous system was pulled right back to a state of high alert. Launch the bombers, flood the tubes, that sort of thing.

“Why?” It came out more as a croak than an actual word.

“He didn’t say. But I think it was his leg?”

“His leg?”

“Yeah, when he got up to hug me, he lost his balance and pulled us both down onto the bed.”

“Smooth move.”

“It wasn’t like that!” Chey snapped.

“Sorry,” I muttered, and kept my eyes on the road.

“That’s what he was afraid of, that I was thinking he was trying to get us to, you know. It never even crossed my mind. I could tell that he’d lost his balance and had just fallen.”

“And he asked you to leave over that?”

“I think he was embarrassed. Embarrassed that he couldn’t be there for me. He started crying, Harry. I’ve never seen Johnny cry. It was so awful.”

I’d never seen Johnny cry, either. His default reaction to adversity was anger, not despair.

We were quiet for another minute; then I decided to go out on a ledge.

“Chey, why were you crying to begin with?”





CHEYENNE BELLE


When Harry asked me why I was crying, while we were tooling all over Westchester County in his car, I thought for a minute about telling him the truth. I felt like I needed to tell someone, but that seemed wrong to me. Johnny was the father, and he needed to know first. I would just have to figure it out, so I dodged the question.

“You know what we need?” I said instead. “We need to jam.”

There is nothing in the world, not even kissing, that brings a smile to the face of Harbinger Jones like the phrase We need to jam. Of all of us, that boy’s soul is most connected with the sacrament of music. Plus, playing a bunch of older Scar Boys tunes would wash away “Pleasant Sounds.” As much as I loved that song, I needed to get it out of my brain.

Anyway, at the mention of jamming, Harry seemed to forget his question about why I’d been crying.





HARBINGER JONES


I didn’t forget about the question. Chey made such a show of changing the topic so suddenly that I just let it drop.





CHEYENNE BELLE


It was too early for Richie to be home from school, so Harry and I went to the diner for lunch. I wasn’t feeling so hot, so I didn’t eat much, but we sat there for a long time. We didn’t say a whole lot, but that was okay. One of things I love about Harry is that the silences between us are almost never awkward.