Scar Girl (The Scar Boys #2)(45)
It was a severed leg with a lightning bolt on it. That girl has bravado. You have to love that. The rest of the time, she sat on her amp and plucked the bass, only looking up when the next song started.
The moments without music were like those first moments all these years ago between decreasing doses of methadone as Dr. Kenny weaned me off. But when the music started, man, oh, man, it worked. It just worked.
RICHIE MCGILL
That was the weirdest rehearsal ever.
I mean, Scar Boys rehearsals always went the same way: we would sit and wait for Johnny to tell us what to do. Maybe every so often, one of us would get a bug up our ass to play a certain song and just launch into it, but most of the time Johnny led the way. And if Johnny wasn’t all there, like right after the thing with his leg, Harry would step in.
At that rehearsal, the first one after Jeff bawled us out, the other guys just sat there, looking at me. I’m thinking, like, What the fuck did I do? And they’re still just looking at me. Then I figured it out. They were all so caught up in their own stupid shit that they were waiting for me to take over. I’m the drummer, for chrissakes. I mean, yeah, Don Henley and Phil Collins do that shit, but I’m more of a Keith Moon–Tommy Ramone kind of dude. Leading wasn’t my thing.
Harry was twitchy, looking like he wanted to say something but couldn’t or wouldn’t; Chey kept her head down, turning around every so often so we could see her new tattoo; and Johnny kept writing in this little black book. It was the kind of book that Fonzie used to keep girls’ phone numbers in. It was the first time I ever noticed it, but I don’t think I ever saw him without it after that. Every time there was a break in the music, Johnny opened the book and started scribbling stuff down. It was like he was getting lost in the words or something. When I looked more closely, I could see that the book wasn’t new. He had it opened to the middle, and it was kind of bent and worn. He caught me looking and covered it up like it was some big secret.
I didn’t think anything of it at the time.
Cheyenne’s tattoo, by the way, was maybe the coolest thing I’d ever seen. It was so badass. I went out two days later and got my own. It’s in a place that only a special few have gotten to see.
HARBINGER JONES
No matter what Jeff said, no matter what kind of nonsense was going on between the four of us—well, really, the three of us, because Richie was immune to all of it—these people were my friends. They were practically my family.
You know how I could tell? The music. Total strangers or business partners, or whatever it was we were supposed to be, can’t make music like that. They just can’t.
What we had was special.
I’d been struggling to find an ending to my fifty-thousand-word college essay, and it was then, while playing music at the first rehearsal after the New Year’s debacle, that I figured it out.
I couldn’t go to college. Of course I couldn’t go to college. I wasn’t craving some sort of conventional experience that prepared for me an even more conventional existence. The world told me a long time ago that it would not let me conform to its established norms, so why should I start now?
Maybe I was a coward. And maybe my face was a mangled piece of meat that scared children and small animals. And maybe I had a rougher go of it than seemed fair, but I had something else, too. Even with all the shit that was swirling around the Scar Boys, I had friends and I had purpose.
Johnny, Chey, and I had worked through stuff before, and we would work through stuff again. It might take time, but we would get back to a better place. I could feel it in my bones. I would just bide my time while it all sorted itself out.
Until then I would find joy and peace in the music, just like Johnny and I did that first day we played together after Georgia. That moment—the two of us in his bedroom, me playing guitar and him singing, with no structure, no rules, no bullshit, all the baggage left at the door—is one of the happiest moments of my life. If the University of Scranton, or anyone else, wanted to really understand me, they needed to understand that. I had my ending.
I finished the essay that night and mailed the package the following day. Even though I’d decided not to go to college, I submitted the application to Scranton anyway. I figured I owed my parents that much. And, hey, it never hurts to keep your options open.
PART EIGHT,
JANUARY TO MARCH 1987
It was a job, and I was just doing my job.
—Johnny Ramone
What’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever done?
CHEYENNE BELLE
Duh, getting knocked up.
HARBINGER JONES
Letting a bunch of older kids tie me to a tree during a thunderstorm. I mean, I didn’t even put up a fight. I’m not sure it would have turned out different if I had fought back. Who knows, maybe I would’ve been beaten up and then tied to a tree and almost struck by lightning anyway, but at least I would’ve tried to do something about it.
RICHIE MCGILL
This interview.
Nah, I’m just kidding. The dumbest thing I ever did was not tell my mom I loved her when I had the chance. She died of cancer when I was a little kid. By the time the end came, she looked so skinny and so sick that I was afraid of her. Think about how fucked up that is, a little kid being scared of his own mom.