Scar Girl (The Scar Boys #2)(56)
“Like me.”
“Yes, Harry, like you.” I always admired Dr. Kenny’s honesty. “If Johnny had been a different person, he might have adapted better. But everything about the amputation assaulted Johnny’s sense of self. From his surface image to his sexuality to every relationship he’d ever had.”
I wasn’t really sure I wanted to hear about Johnny’s sexuality. It made me think about Cheyenne; it made me wonder how she was feeling.
“Johnny was no longer who he believed himself to be, and he was unable to find any sort of anchor that tethered him to the world. He was literally adrift, unable to hold on to his own identity. In all likelihood, Johnny ended his life because he no longer saw himself as the Johnny McKenna he wanted to be, that he believed himself to be, and that was too much to reconcile.”
“But couldn’t we have all helped him through that?”
Here, Dr. Kenny paused. A pause with more than enough time for me to fill in the answer to my own question. “A professional could have helped him through it, Harry.” He left it at that. He chose not to say what I was thinking, that the people around him, me, Chey, his parents, might have seen the warning signs and pushed him to get help.
The truth is, I have no idea what the truth is, and like Dr. Kenny said, I never really will. But what he said did make a kind of sense. Johnny was the center of his own universe. He had this gravitational pull that seemed to bring everyone else into orbit around him. Not just me and Chey, but everyone. His parents, his teachers, the other kids at school. When he lost his leg, he didn’t just lose a physical ability; he lost his gravity. Johnny lost Johnny.
The thought didn’t give me peace—it didn’t change the fact that I should have been there to help Johnny—but it did give me perspective. I guess that was the most I could ask for.
CHEYENNE BELLE
“Johnny’s Dead” was what caught our attention in Johnny’s little black book. The guy, such a control freak in life—mostly because his instincts were so crazy good—wrote his own epitaph. That’s the word Harry used to describe it. Pretty amazing, you know?
After seeing the lyrics to “Johnny’s Dead,” I didn’t look at the book again for a long time. I couldn’t. Harry tried to return it to Russell but was told that it was on extended loan to the band. Russell still owned it, but we would be its keepers. It stayed with us at every rehearsal, at every gig. Harry got a few good songs out of it besides “Johnny’s Dead”—“Long Winter,” “I Give Up,” “Oh So Gray.” You know, a hit parade of happy, peppy songs.
Kidding.
Anyway, three months after the wake I was sitting at a gig, waiting for our sound check, quietly nursing a beer, my second since we’d arrived at the bar. I knew I wouldn’t have another one before we played, but also knew I’d get plowed the second the set ended. Harry and Richie had gotten used to it, and instead of trying to change me, they just sort of took care of me, looking out for me to make sure I didn’t do anything stupid. Johnny’s book was there, and I started flipping through it without really looking at it, like a magazine in a doctor’s office. As I was flipping, a phrase caught my eye: To make you think, to make you drink, to make you hurt.
The song wasn’t dated, but it was the last entry before “Johnny’s Dead.” It said, “Expletive” on the top of the page, which I loved as a title. So I read it.
My heart, which has been broken over and over again, mostly by me, broke for the last time. I finally hit bottom. It was the end.
You are a ladybug
On the couch, all curled up,
And I’m like a scientist,
The way in which I insist
You unravel and give all of yourself to me.
You are a little girl,
A flag not yet unfurled,
And I’m like a little boy
With a shiny, sharp new toy,
And I will poke you, and I will prod you.
But you know and I know, I can’t make you undone.
Is it an empty phrase?
Is it a disguise?
Too long to get through this maze,
Just to say good-bye.
You are a metaphor,
Never meaning the same thing as before.
I am an expletive,
Trying to convince you that I live
Right here, right now, I’m alive.
The more you try to run away,
The harder I will push you to stay,
’Cause the closer that we get
Is one more regret
To make you think, to make you drink,
to make you hurt.
Is it an empty phrase?
Is it a disguise?
Too long to get through this maze,
Just to say good-bye.
Though it’s not very long,
It’s the end of our song,
’Cause as I look into your heart,
I can see we don’t know where to start
With each other, with another.
There’s nothing left to say.
I started crying and couldn’t stop. Richie saw me and came over, and then Harry. Without me realizing it, they canceled the gig and somehow managed to get me home. Harry’s new girlfriend, Thea, held my hand the whole way. It was all a blur.
When I woke up the next day, I was on the couch in Harry’s parents’ basement, the place where we used to jam before getting time in a real rehearsal studio. I was alone.