Scar Girl (The Scar Boys #2)(23)

I don’t know if my sister heard or saw me crying—I tried to be quiet, and I figured that she had put the headphones back on—but I refused to open my eyes to find out. I fell back asleep.

When I finally got up, after my family got back from church, my mother scolded me for sleeping so late. “When the Lord made Sunday a day of rest, he didn’t make it for you.” I was actually happy to hear it. It meant she didn’t know anything about what had happened the day before.

I told her that I was sick and was going back to bed. She just snorted at me. I called Johnny and told him the same thing.

“I’m sorry about the other day,” he said. His voice sounded far away and sad, like that donkey from Winnie-the-Pooh.

I was confused and paranoid for a minute, and thought maybe he’d found out about Planned Parenthood and was apologizing for not being there.

“Yeah, you know, in my bedroom.”

Then it hit me. He was talking about falling on top of me on his bed. Did that happen only Friday? I was disoriented and freaked out. I told him not to worry about it, but that I really wasn’t feeling well and that I needed to sleep.

“Okay, Pick,” he said. “Let me know if I can bring you anything.”

“Thanks,” I answered.

“I love you.” We’d been saying that to each other since the summer, and it had become our standard way of saying good-bye. When you say something over and over, it starts to lose its meaning. It doesn’t carry any more weight than adios, ciao, or see you later. It becomes a noise, a kind of emotional grunt, you know?

But this time it had all the meaning in the world, and I choked up. I pretended to cough, said, “I love you,” back, and hung up the phone, burying my face in my pillow when I did.

I knew then that I could never tell Johnny that I’d carried and lost his baby, our baby. He just wouldn’t understand why I’d kept it from him in the first place. If I could go back in time and do one thing over, it would be that phone call. I would just tell Johnny everything.

“Smooth,” Theresa said from the doorway. That was the thing about my house. You never could get any privacy.

I gave her the finger and laid my head gently down on the pillow.





RICHIE MCGILL


Yeah, the band went on a minibreak when Chey “got the flu.” I knew she was pregnant, and I was worried something was going on. I kind of wanted to call and ask how she was doing, but that’s not how we rolled.

I wound up spending a lot of that week just hanging around at home after school. The weather got way colder, and I wasn’t really in the mood to take my board out, so I watched TV, drank iced tea and ate party pretzels, and practiced drumming on my pads.

And then Johnny called.

Johnny never called me. None of the guys in the band ever really called me. It’s something about being a drummer. Guitar players and singers and bass players all think we’re some sort of spare part: like we’re spark plugs, easy to replace. That’s why there are so many drummer jokes.

What happened when the bass player locked his keys in the car? It took him half an hour to get the drummer out. There’s, like, a million of them, and they all pretty much make drummers out to be idiots. It doesn’t really bug me, though. I mean, I notice, but I figure it’s someone else’s hang-up, not mine.

So anyways, Johnny calls and says that since the band isn’t jamming, he wants to hang out, and can I come pick him up?

“Sure,” I say.

“Great,” he says, sounding really relieved or something. “Bring your skateboard.”

My board? I think to myself, but I don’t question it. Johnny’d seemed a bit, I don’t know, out of tune, and I figured I should try to help him.

So fifteen minutes later I’m at his house, his mother showing me to his bedroom. I’d been before, but not that often, so I could feel his mom kind of checking me out. I don’t mean checking me out ’cause she wanted to see my hot ass, I mean sizing me up. We all knew she hated Harry and Cheyenne—even Johnny said that was true—but she didn’t really know me. I was pretty sure she didn’t like me any better, because, you know, I was in the band.

When I walked into Johnny’s room, he was downing a pill of some sort with a glass of water.

“What’s that, for your leg?”

He looked at me for a long moment, embarrassed, I think, that I’d caught him taking meds.

“Antidepressant,” he said, and then added, “Don’t tell Chey or Harry, okay? It’s not a big deal, and I know both of them would make it a big deal.”

He was right about that; they would. So I agreed.

“How long you supposed to take them for?”

“I don’t know. Until I’m not depressed, I guess.”

“Why are you depressed?” He looked at me, looked at his leg, and held out his arms as if to say, “Why the fuck do you think I’m depressed, numb nuts?”

“Yeah, okay,” I said. “I get it. But, John, when you think about it, things could be a lot worse.”

He just rolled his eyes and asked, “Did you bring your board?”

“Yeah, it’s in the car.”

“Good.”

“Why?”

“I want you to teach me to ride.”