Scar Girl (The Scar Boys #2)(5)

One time, in the tenth grade, I brought a flashlight with me and shone it through the hole so I could get a good look at the priest. He didn’t appreciate it.

They called my mom down to the school. She didn’t appreciate it either.

Anyway, I told the priest a friend of mine was pregnant. (No way was I going to tell him the truth).

He said exactly what you’d expect a priest to say. “This is very serious. Has your friend told her parents?”

“No,” I answered. “She doesn’t have parents.”

“Everyone has parents, my child.” I never liked that, priests saying things like my child. I can’t possibly be his child because he can’t possibly have children, right? Though I suppose if I really believed that I wouldn’t have been calling him Father, which I was.

“I mean, they’re dead, Father.”

“I see. Does she go to school here?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“I understand that you want to protect your friend, but she needs help. She needs counseling.”

I was quiet for a moment. I knew what I wanted to say but was having trouble working up the nerve. I have to give the man credit because he broke the silence with the question I needed to ask.

“Is this friend of yours considering having an abortion?”

“Yes, Father.” I whispered my answer and wasn’t even sure if he’d heard me.

“Abortion seems like an easy way out,” he said, “but in life there are no easy ways out, my child.”

I was surprised at how gentle he was being. I went in expecting him to shove a photo of a fetus or something through that little hole, but instead he was sort of comforting.

“But isn’t she too young to have children?” I asked.

There was a long pause before he answered. I don’t know if I was lucky or cursed to get the most thoughtful priest in the whole tristate area.

“Yes, yes, she is.”

“Then shouldn’t she end her pregnancy?”

“I think you know that abortion is a sin.”

“Why?”

I could almost hear him wringing his hands. I felt sorry for the guy. He showed up at work expecting to hear the inane gossip of little girls and instead wound up with a real whopper of a problem dumped in his lap.

“It’s murder.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I do.”

“But I know girls who’ve had abortions, and they didn’t burst into flames or anything. They seemed happier.”

“A short-term reward in this life is no reward in the next.” Priests were always saying stuff like that, and that’s usually where they lost me.

“So my friend will go to hell, is that what you’re saying?”

“This is not a sin that a few Hail Marys and Our Fathers will simply erase. It will haunt her for the rest of her days.”

I don’t remember the rest of the conversation, but I know I left pretty soon after his line about being haunted for the rest of my days. I was more confused than ever.

I tried to put it out of my mind, like a homework assignment I knew I was blowing off—I’m pretty good at keeping things in my life separate when I need to—and did the only thing I could think to do. I threw myself back into the band. Back into Johnny.





HARBINGER JONES


Because we were playing music again, all that other crap—my relationship with Johnny, my feelings for Chey—was pushed into the background, like hum, scratches, and static on a record. It’s there, but soft enough that the music drowns it out. You still hear it between tracks, but only for a second.

Have you ever heard of something called signal-to-noise ratio? It’s a term used by audiophiles. The wires that go from your turntable and your stereo to your speakers carry a signal that your speakers convert into sound. But the same wires are also loaded with extra noise generated by all those electrical components working at what they do. Your stereo and speakers filter most of it out. The more noise, the worse the signal and the worse the sound. Your goal in audio electronics is a lot of signal and very little noise.

The signal-to-noise ratio in my life at the end of that summer was really pretty good. The noise was still there, but having made peace with Johnny and having found a way to deal with my own feelings about Cheyenne, it was overwhelmed by signal.

Like I said, we were playing music again, and, really, that was all that mattered.





RICHIE MCGILL


I knew about the whole Harry, Johnny, Cheyenne love-triangle thing. I stayed away from that shit like it was the bubonic plague. I was just glad the band was back together. It was pretty much the only thing I had going for me.

I mean, skateboarding was fun, but it wasn’t the same. The rush I get playing on stage is the reason I’ve never done drugs. From the first time Johnny got us together, way back in the seventh grade, and we played a few holiday parties, I was hooked. Playing music, when it works, is like sex. Just without all the mess. I knew nothing else could ever feel that good, so why bother?





CHEYENNE BELLE


I was able to keep the pregnancy a secret. Other than my nonexistent boobs, which had suddenly started to exist, I wasn’t really showing. I got good at hiding the sickness, too, like I was bulimic or anorexic or something. It’s kind of ironic that I was following in my sister’s footsteps. Hiding a pregnancy, I mean.