Scar Girl (The Scar Boys #2)(7)

Johnny McKenna decided to play the piano.





HARBINGER JONES


Johnny confided in me that standing up for two hours—that’s how long our rehearsals usually lasted—was too much for his leg.

“Imagine leaning your elbow on a table for two hours,” he told me. “Even if that elbow is on a nice soft cushion, the weight of your body will eventually wear it down. It’s like that.” The keyboard gave him a chance to sit. It, along with piano lessons, had been a present from his parents. Really, it was a kind of bribe to get him to reengage with the world.

I’d seen that kind of thing before. My parents showered me with gifts after the lightning strike. I was only eight when I spent all that time in the hospital, and I got an endless assortment of books and games and toys. I didn’t get anything as cool as an electric keyboard, though. I mean, the greatest thing about 1976 was the Pet Rock. Enough said.

When we started jamming again with the whole band, Johnny refused to plug the keyboard in, so he would just play along silently. He was something of a perfectionist. Strike that. He didn’t need things to be perfect; he needed them to be as good as they could be. There’s a difference.

But he did plug the piano in when it was just the two of us. That gave him a chance to fool around and learn how to make the keys work with another instrument. Hearing the keyboard and guitar together was like discovering an entire new universe. Like our own, it was filled with planets and stars and people. But in this universe, the laws of physics were expanded to allow for new dimensions. It was unreal.





CHEYENNE BELLE


For most of those first two months of the band jamming again, in August and September, Johnny sat behind his keyboard, trying to find the right notes. We didn’t know if he was any good or not because he wouldn’t plug the damn thing in.

“Not until I get better at this,” he would say.

We all just took it in stride. It didn’t matter. He sat on his stool and sang the songs that Harry didn’t want to sing, and it was like it was in the early days of the band. We just practiced and had fun hanging out together.

But there were undercurrents. There are always undercurrents. No matter what you’re doing in life, there is always something written between the lines. Nothing is ever exactly what it seems.

Take my father.

No, I mean, please, take my father. Ha ha. I’m mostly kidding. I love my dad, but he doesn’t really have much on the ball. Harry calls him the La-Z-Man because he never leaves his La-Z-Boy. There’s a reason the chair manufacturer named it that. My dad just sits there in front of the TV, zoning out.

He’s retired on disability. I’m not even sure what that really means. I just know he gets a check every month for not working. So I guess that’s a kind of work. In some weird way, it’s like he’s getting paid for watching TV all day. And for drinking.

And no, we don’t need to go there. I know my dad is a drunk. My sisters know my dad is a drunk. The neighbors know my dad is a drunk. My friends know my dad is a drunk. The only two people in the entire city who don’t seem to know that my dad is a drunk are my dad and my mom.

Anyway, my dad just sort of gave up on life. He and my mom had all these daughters, and I think he got overwhelmed and packed it in. But here’s the thing: sometimes, when he’s watching television, his attention wanders. His eyes focus on a spot above and behind the TV, like he sees something there. I wonder if he’s seeing his life without the rest of us, without me, my mom, and my sisters. Or maybe he’s seeing what his life would have been like if the rest of us hadn’t come along in the first place.

Undercurrents.

There were undercurrents at our rehearsals, too. At first I thought it was just my pregnancy freaking me out, but after a while I realized it was other stuff, too.

Mostly, it was Johnny and Harry. Johnny, because he was trying to figure out how to live life without his leg—I don’t mean physically, I mean emotionally—and Harry, because had a pretty big crush on me.

Harry said the crush was over. He told me he was happy that we could be friends and happy that the band was back together. But I saw the way he still looked at me. Not like he was undressing me with his eyes or anything pervy, more like he was trying to hold my hand with his eyes. Most days, it broke my heart. Not a lot, just a little. What’s that expression? Death by a thousand cuts? Like that.

Harry had figured out how to tuck his feelings away so they weren’t causing any problems in the band, but the crush was still there, underneath the surface, like a bruise under your skin. I know that must sound conceited, but it’s the truth.

Like, one time, I was walking by and gave Harry a little squeeze on the neck, and I felt his whole body go stiff. Anytime I’d done that in the past, he would sort of just melt into me, like a puppy. But now, now things were different.

“You okay?” I asked him.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” We locked eyes for a minute, and I thought he was going to cry. He wasn’t fine. I knew from that moment on that Harry was off-limits.

All that stuff was in the background, but it was there. There was a lot of baggage, and there were a lot of secrets.

Anyway, we played and played, day after day, grinding out song after song in Harry’s basement. None of us had jobs, and other than Richie going to school every day—he was still a senior in high school—and Johnny going to physical therapy, we focused on the band. It was an endless stream of rehearsals, each one the same as the one before. Even my morning sickness had settled down into something I could manage.