Scar Girl (The Scar Boys #2)(29)

“Vicodin. I just need them for a little while, to feel better, that’s all.”

She snorted. “No, Cheyenne. I can’t help you get prescription meds. Why don’t you just drink, like a normal person?” she said, and she put her headphones back on.

And that’s just what I did.





PART FIVE,

EARLY DECEMBER 1986

We’re the Oakland A’s of rock and roll. On the field, we can’t be beat, but in the clubhouse, well, that’s another story.

—Glenn Frey



Of all the places you’ve played over the years, what’s your favorite venue?





HARBINGER JONES


Without a doubt, it’s CBGB’s.





RICHIE MCGILL


CB’s.





CHEYENNE BELLE


It’s not actually a nightclub or an arena. It’s the basement in Harry’s parents’ house. That’s where we jammed in the early days of the band. His mom would always have a snack and drinks for us, and we just had fun. It was all about the music and about friendship. It will never get any better than that.





HARBINGER JONES


My dad was home from Albany for all of December. The legislature wasn’t in session, and politics tended to quiet down at the holidays. Even though he and I had managed to make a kind of weird peace, the level of stress in my life always grew by leaps and bounds when my dad was in the house. I was about to change all of that.

“I think I want to apply to college.” My parents both looked up from their morning newspapers—my dad, the Times; my mom, the Herald Statesman—like someone’d sat down at the kitchen table and started speaking Chinese. “You know, for real, this time,” I added.

A smile stretched from one of my mom’s ears to the other, but my father looked suspicious. The whole pretending-to-apply-and-get-accepted-to-college was a dick move on my part, and I didn’t blame my dad for harboring some resentment.

“Why?” my father asked. He folded his hands on the table and tried to bore a hole through my face with his eyes.

“I don’t know, just feels like it’s time.”

“And the Scar Boys?”

“Maybe it’s time to move on, that’s all.” Note that I said “maybe.” I was still hedging my bets.

He was back to staring me down, trying to find the source of some new lie. He wasn’t going to find it, because it wasn’t there.

“What do you want to study?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet. My understanding is that you don’t need to pick a major until your junior year. Maybe something with math or science?” I hadn’t really thought about math and science, but it was the one part of high school where I’d shown some aptitude, and he knew that. I was playing to my audience.

“Mm-hmm.” He was trying to be tough, but I could see he was buying in. My dad has a tell when you’re winning him over: he finally shuts up.

He and I had a strained relationship from the word go, but it changed after I came back from Athens. It took me a while to figure out, but at some deep and secret level, I think my father actually respected me for going on the road with the band. Outwardly, he hated the Scar Boys, hated the music, hated the image, hated how much I’d lied to him, and hated that the band had steered me off the straight and narrow. But he had spent so many years viewing me as this helpless little gimp that when I stood up and did something on my own, I think maybe he was kind of proud.

Since coming back from Georgia, everything about the way my dad treated me was, I don’t know, more gentle. Like this one Saturday, when he was home from Albany—his work as a legislative liaison for the governor had him out of the house four nights a week—he came into my room and said, “C’mon, let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“Just grab a jacket. It’ll be fun.”

Fun? Fun was not a word I associated with my dad, but it was three hours until rehearsal, so I grabbed my jacket and went. After everything I’d put my parents through, I figured I owed them the little things.

Ten minutes later we stepped out of my dad’s Chevy Nova and onto a strip mall parking lot on Tuckahoe Road. He nodded to the store in front of us and smiled.

“Anthony’s Billiards Club,” I read aloud. “We’re going to shoot pool?”

And that’s just what we did. We spent the next two hours playing eight ball and nine ball, and just shooting the shit. At first, I was so taken off my game that I didn’t know how to react. I finally asked the question I had to ask.

“Dad, what are we doing here? What’s this about?”

He paused a beat before answering. “Look, Harry, I just . . . you and I . . . maybe it would be nice if we spent a little more time together.”

I had no idea where this was coming from, and I trusted it the way a hen trusts a fox, but what else could I do other than go with the flow?

My dad turned out to be a really good pool player—I had only played once or twice—and while he did give me some great pointers, I think he also enjoyed kicking my ass. He’s just that competitive. He reminded me of what Johnny was like before the accident. Weird.