Scar Girl (The Scar Boys #2)(33)

“You mean, make us slick.” It was Johnny again. I don’t know if he didn’t trust Jeff or if he was just still pissed at Chey and acting all cranky because of it.

“No, no. Not slick. But the EQ on the snare drum isn’t crisp enough. The whole mix has too much treble. And while I love the stereo tambourine”—I saw Johnny look at Harry and smile at that one—“your records can’t live on whimsy alone.”

“So how does this work?” Johnny asked.

“Simple. You sign a contract with me, and I work to promote you, to get you better gigs, and to get you a record deal. No money up front, but I keep fifteen percent of whatever you earn.”

He said it was simple, but that’s one thing I’ve learned about life: nothing, not one freaking thing, is ever simple.





CHEYENNE BELLE


The next day, we were sitting in a diner in Yonkers. It was a weird place because the building next door was . . . wait for it . . . a diner!

Two diners right next door to each other. I mean, really, what’s the point? They were owned by two brothers who supposedly hated each other. After the first guy opened the Olympic Diner, his brother, just to spite him, opened the Five Star Diner thirty yards away. No one knows why they hated each other so much, but I’ll bet one of them slept with the other one’s wife.

Want to know the weirdest thing of all? Both diners thrived. The parking lots were always jammed, and the booths were always packed. Go figure. I guess people in Yonkers like their diners.

Anyway, we were sitting at a booth in the Five Star, all of us staring at Jeff’s card, which Johnny had dropped in the middle of the table.

Johnny hadn’t apologized for bitching me out, and I hadn’t apologized for playing the gig drunk, but when Harry picked us both up, we seemed to settle into a kind of truce. Jeff’s card, and everything it stood for, seemed to be more important than all of that other stuff. Harry said it was like the “one ring to rule them all.” He was always geeking out that way.

“What do you guys think?” Johnny said, nodding at the business card. He was always the first to talk. Even after everything that’d happened on the road, even after his accident, even as he was retreating deeper and deeper into his shell and Harry started coming out of his own, Johnny was still the leader of the Scar Boys. At the end of the day, we were going to think whatever he wanted us to think. It’s just how we were wired. I’m not saying it was right or wrong; it was just the truth.

“Tell me again what he wants us to do?” I asked. After I had stomped off to the bathroom and then stomped back out, I saw Jeff talking to the band. I walked over in the middle of his spiel, just in time to hear him refer to me as Scar Girl. I liked that, a lot.

Johnny went through the whole thing again, laying out all the pros and cons. I asked a few questions but was barely listening. This was a no-brainer to me. Why wouldn’t we say yes? Wasn’t this everything we’d been working for? I could tell that Richie was thinking the same as me, but Johnny, and especially Harry, seemed, I don’t know, hesitant. I didn’t get it.





HARBINGER JONES


I looked out the window of the diner and watched the traffic snake along Central Avenue, the main drag that runs through Yonkers and the southern part of Westchester County. The road was like an artery clogged with fat, slowing the entire city down, waiting for it to have a heart attack and die.

I watched all those people in all those cars, wondering where they were going, wondering what they were thinking. It’s overwhelming, sometimes, to think about all the people in the world living their lives. What are they feeling? What skeletons are in their closets? Are they leading happy, normal, well-adjusted lives? Or are they drowning in swirling cesspools of drama, just like the rest of us?

I was torn apart looking at Jeff’s card. I had more or less made up my mind to leave the band and was just biding my time until the moment was right. But this, this was everything we’d been working toward.

My brain instinctively reached for one of its lists, but it just wasn’t there.

I looked at each of my bandmates while Johnny spoke.

Richie, like always, was relaxed, his long and lanky arm up on the back of the booth, like he had it draped across the shoulders of an invisible girlfriend, his free hand holding a Cherry Coke. He was listening to Johnny intently.

Johnny was lost in his own soliloquy. I was only catching every few words—“don’t really know this guy”—and “could be the opportunity of a lifetime”—and “I don’t know about you guys, but I kind of need this.” That last one caught my ear. Johnny never needed anything. Wait, strike that. Johnny never admitted to needing anything. His eyes were glassy, and there was a note of desperation in his voice. He was slowly becoming someone different. It’s almost like he was becoming me.

Chey had her full attention on the cup of coffee, now turning cold, on the table in front of her. I could tell she was listening to Johnny because she was asking questions and nodding at appropriate moments, but there was something underneath.

I was pretty surprised that Chey had gotten drunk at the Bitter End—not that she was a total prude—but like it is for me, music is Cheyenne’s everything, and I’d never seen her do anything to put that in jeopardy. Johnny was kind of a dick the way he treated her about playing drunk, but he wasn’t entirely wrong.