Scar Girl (The Scar Boys #2)(24)

“Say what?”

“Look, I need to do something to push myself harder. I see how much you love it, and figure it’s a good way to test the boundaries of my leg.”

“I don’t know, John. . . .”

“C’mon, I’ll be fine. It’ll be fun.”

“It’s a little cold for skateboarding.” I thought this was a bad idea, and I was trying to make any excuse to get out of it.

“We have coats. Let’s go.”

That was Johnny at his best. The case was closed, and we were going. He had this weird voodoo shit that made you go along. It’s how I joined the band in the first place.

I was in the seventh grade and had just gotten this used, piece-of-crap, three-piece drum set for my birthday. I couldn’t play for shit. Anyway, Johnny, who was a year older than me, had somehow heard about it. He found me at my locker.

I knew who Johnny was. Everyone in our school did. He was one of those dudes who seemed to be at the center of things.

“You’re Richie,” he said to me. “You play drums.”

“Yeah,” I answered, not sure what to make of the fact that Johnny McKenna had singled me out.

“I’m starting a band, and we need a drummer. You’re it. I’ll let you know when and where our first practice is.”

That was it. No invitation to join, just an order to follow. And like everyone else who dealt with Johnny, I just went along. Best thing that ever happened to me.

Anyways, back to the day he called me. A few minutes later, we were on the playground at our old elementary school and Johnny was using his good leg to push my skateboard while he stood on it with his fake leg. But here’s the thing about skateboarding that most people don’t realize: it’s as much about your feet and ankles as it is about your legs. You make a million little adjustments every second just to stay on the board. I’m not saying someone with a fake leg can’t learn to skateboard, but it would take time and maybe something better than the uneven elementary school blacktop on a cold November day.

Johnny kept falling off. Or the board would slide out from under his feet. Or it would flip up in the air and nail him in the crotch. (I laughed pretty hard when that happened.) But he kept at it. I tried to give him pointers, and at first he listened, but then he tuned me out. His face was getting redder and redder, and his muscles were getting all stiff, which is the worst thing for skateboarding.

Finally, after he’d fallen, like, twenty times, I knew I needed to pull the plug.

“John, I’m freezing my fucking ass off out here. Can we try this again in the spring?”

His face was a blank wall. He looked at me from the ground and just nodded. I went to help him up, but he batted my hand away.

I took him home, and that was that.





CHEYENNE BELLE


The experience of losing the baby—I can say those words now, but I couldn’t back then—tore me up inside, both physically and mentally. I felt like someone had taken a razor blade and made tiny cuts all over my heart and all over my gut. I couldn’t talk to anyone about it except for my sisters, and because of all the shit Theresa had said to me, I couldn’t really even talk to them.

Every time I thought of the baby, of what he would have looked like (in my mind it was a boy), of how much I would’ve loved him, every time I wondered if the baby suffered when he died, I would start to unravel. I was like a cassette where the tape pulls loose, and the more you pull on it, the harder it gets to put back together.

Not sure of where else to turn, two days after the miscarriage and a week before we jammed again, I found myself back in the confessional.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

“Confess your sins to me, my child.” I recognized the voice right away. This was the same priest I’d talked to last time.

“I gave confession a few weeks ago, Father, and told you about a friend of mine, who had gotten pregnant.”

There was a long pause before he answered. “I remember, my child. What did your friend decide to do?”

“She decided to keep the baby, Father.” It was somehow easier talking about this like it had happened to someone else. It put distance between me and the reality of what I was going through.

“That’s good, that’s good.” I could hear the relief in his voice.

“And then she had a miscarriage. In her sixteenth week of pregnancy.”

There was absolute silence on the other side of the little booth, not even breathing. That, more than anything, pissed me off.

“Really, Father? Nothing? No words of calming wisdom? No explanation for why, when this girl followed your advice, God swooped in and killed the baby in her uterus?” I used the word uterus on purpose, thinking it would make him uncomfortable.

“It is not for us to understand the ways of the Lor—”

I cut him off. “Is that really the best you’ve got? That ‘whole-mystery-of-the-Lord’ shit?” I don’t think I’d ever cursed at, in front of, or even near a priest before, but I was too far gone to care. I think I might have been crying or screaming or both. “If this God of yours is so merciful and loving, why would he kill this girl’s baby? Was it some kind of holy abortion? How do you explain this? Tell me!”

Again, he was quiet for a long moment before he whispered more than spoke, “I can’t. It’s a tragedy.”