Scar Girl (The Scar Boys #2)(58)

“What do you think Johnny would make of all this success?” I ask, and everyone is once again quiet, thoughtful. Richie, as is his wont, fills the void.

“Is that a trick question?”

We all look at him.

“I mean, what kind of idiot wouldn’t love this life?”

“Richie’s right,” Harry says. “Johnny would’ve loved all of this. And he would’ve made it better. He made everything better.” His voice trails off.

“I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.” Cheyenne stares at a point in space as she talks, and I wonder if she still sees that sleeping baby, or maybe Johnny. “I’m not sure he was ever wired to be happy. People with drive like he had need to feel anxious and frustrated; it’s what pushes them forward. It’s easy for us to blame Johnny’s death on him having lost his leg, or whatever, but maybe there was a ticking bomb inside Johnny all along, just waiting for a fuse.”

“I don’t buy it,” Harry says. “There were a million signs for what was coming. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know I ignored them.”

“No.” Cheyenne counters with enough force to refocus everyone’s attention. “We only see those signs now, in hindsight. Everything in the world is clearer when you already know the ending. Sometimes there just isn’t any rhyme or reason to the world. It’s what makes it so beautiful and so terrifying at the same time.”

“Do you miss him?” I ask.

Cheyenne, Harry, and Richie answer without missing a beat.

“Yes.” “Of course.” “Every day.”

After a moment, Harry adds, “Johnny was a victim of circumstance. Really, we’re all victims of whatever our own individual circumstances are. For Johnny, it was the idiocy of a drunk driver; for me, it was a group of bullies too young to understand the cruelty of their actions; for Chey, it was having to grapple with the reality of an unexpected pregnancy and miscarriage; for Richie, it was losing his mom when he was a little kid; for you, I’m sure it’s something different.” Cheyenne and Richie are silent, watching Harry, waiting for him to continue. If there was ever any doubt that he was the leader of this band, it evaporates in this moment.

“Every person on this planet is dealing with their own crap every day. Sometimes we manage it, and sometimes we don’t. The way I cope with having lost Johnny is to remember him before he lost his leg, or before losing his leg made him lose himself. It’s why I ended that crazy essay I wrote for the University of Scranton where I did, with me and Johnny playing music. I treasure my time with Johnny McKenna and always will. The dude taught me how to be happy.”

“Me, too,” Cheyenne whispers. “Me, too.”

“Is that why you’ve never replaced him?”

All three bandmates squirm at the question.

“Well, we’ve had keyboard players touring with us, but it never felt quite right to count them as actual Scar Boys, you know?” Cheyenne, her scary punk rock girl image intact, stares me down, telling me with her eyes that maybe it’s time to drop this line of questioning.

The door to the diner chimes, and Harry’s wife, Thea, pregnant with their first child, pokes her head in. “The bus is ready. Time to go, team.”

“One last question,” I say as they stand to leave. “Tell me what’s next for the Scar Boys.”

“Same as it’s always been,” Cheyenne says. “We’ll make music.”





The End





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


I first tried to write the continuation of the story told in The Scar Boys immediately after the finished draft of that book was turned into my publisher. By the time I’d reached word number 35,000 of the sequel, I knew I was sitting on something truly, truly awful. My editor at the time, Greg Ferguson, suggested I put it aside and work on something else. Anything else. Not only did I heed his advice, I fully expected that I would never return to these characters again.

But life is unpredictable.

At a Scar Boys pre-pub event at the venerable Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville, IL, one of the attendees, an eighth grade language arts teacher by the name of Wendi Whowell, asked for a quiet sidebar conversation.

“So I have to ask you,” she whispered, “at the end of the story, is Cheyenne pregnant?”

“Huh?” I responded.

“Well, she sleeps with Johnny, she throws up on Harry’s shoes . . .”

“Oh,” I said, paused a beat, and said again, “Oh!”

At that moment, the kernel of the story unfolded in my brain. People often ask writers where inspiration comes from. In this case it was an eighth grade language arts teacher from suburban Chicago, and I am forever in her debt.

Of course, having the kernel of an idea and writing the book are two different things. I tried a number of different directions before settling on the band interview format, and the manuscript I turned into my editor was . . . unpolished. (I’m being kind to myself here.) Jordan Hamessley, said editor, did a masterful job in guiding me through the process of making Scar Girl a much better book. A much, much better book. If you enjoyed this book at all, it’s as much thanks to Jordan’s editorial eye and skill as anything else. Thank you, thank you, a thousand thank-yous, Jordan.