Scar Girl (The Scar Boys #2)(57)

“Harry?”

He walked in a minute later and smiled at me.

“Hey,” he said, “you feeling better?”

I nodded. “Thanks for getting me here.”

“Yeah, no worries.”

“What time is it?”

“Around ten, I think. You want to go out and get some breakfast? My treat.”

I nodded again. I stood up and started to walk to the bathroom, then stopped, remembering what had set me off the night before. I froze, my back still to Harry.

“Chey?”

“Harry, did you know about that song?” I asked. He didn’t answer at first. “It’s okay,” I said.

“Yeah, Richie and I both saw it. I wanted to rip it out of the book, but Richie stopped me. Something about a dying man’s last words.”

I nodded again.

I thought about what those words meant—how we all let ourselves believe there really was nothing left to say. I thought about all the secrets we’d kept from one another, the walls we’d put up between each other, the way we’d all let Johnny just fade away and die. I didn’t want that to happen to me.

I turned around.

“Harry,” I said. He looked at me, waiting patiently. Always there, always a friend. A friend to the end, you know?

“Harry,” I said again, “I think I need help.”





EPILOGUE,

SEPTEMBER 1991

Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on.

—Henry Rollins



The Scar Boys’ first album, Minus One, spread like wildfire on college radio, making them the “it band” of 1988. While the record made only one brief appearance on the Billboard charts, debuting and dying at number thirty-seven, the critical acclaim and the growing and rabid fan base positioned the band for the next big step.

Three for the Show, when it was released seven months later, was a breakout success. The band spent a year circumnavigating the globe, drawing crowds in the tens of thousands nearly everywhere they went. That tour spawned their third album, The Scar Boys: Live in the Shadow of the Heads.

“It was really just a stupid stunt,” Harry tells me when I sit down with the Scar Boys nearly two years after the initial interviews. I catch up with them on a tour stop in Los Angeles, and they are in a playful, energetic mood.

“The few thousand people who live on Easter Island,” Harry continues, “had never heard of the Scar Boys and weren’t really inclined to like our music. But we wanted to do something grandiose.”

The band held a contest, flying one thousand loyal fans to one of the remotest destinations in the world for an exclusive concert in the shadows of the Easter Island heads.

“Man,” Richie adds, “that show cost us a shitload of money.”

“Yeah,” Cheyenne agrees, “but I’d still do it again.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s what life is about, you know? You have to push the envelope, find the walls of your experience and tolerance, and see what’s on the other side.”

At the word tolerance, I engage Cheyenne about her drinking.

“Sober for eighteen months. Harry’s shrink, Dr. Kenny, hooked me up with Sheila.”

Cheyenne still likes to make you tease the facts out of her. “And Sheila is?”

“Sheila Carson. She’s my shrink. She helped me get into a program, taught me all about how my drinking problem was hereditary, and that I shouldn’t beat myself up. It took a while, but it seems to be working. She helped me work through a lot of things.”

“Like losing Johnny?”

“Yes.”

“And the baby?”

I look at Harry when I ask the question, not sure if he knew about Cheyenne’s pregnancy before this whole process began. He catches on right away.

“I’ve known about the miscarriage, and everything else, since the day Chey asked for help in my parents’ basement. We sat and talked for hours.”

“What did you think when you heard about the pregnancy? What would Johnny have thought?”

The table goes very silent, and I suspect I’ve crossed some sort of line. After a long moment, Harry answers.

“I don’t know what Johnny would’ve thought. But if you’re suggesting that he wouldn’t have taken his own life if he’d known, I don’t buy it.”

“Me, neither,” Richie chimes in. I sense that he’s protecting Chey, like a brother protects his little sister.

“As for me,” Harry adds, “If I had known at the time, I probably would’ve asked Chey to marry me.”

“Good thing you didn’t,” Cheyenne answers. We all look at her, waiting for more. “I mean, I would’ve probably just thrown up on you again.” And just like that, the mood at the table is light once more.

I can’t help but marvel at how different the bandmates are, how much they’ve grown. Gone are the innocence and na?veté. Well, maybe not from all of them.

“Check this out,” Richie says, somehow managing to stand a spoon straight up in his cup of coffee. The other two roll their eyes.

“How did you do that?” For all the money in the world, it looks like magic to me.

Richie just smiles, snatches the spoon, and takes a sip from his cup.