Better Than This

by Tia Souders

  The smell of pizza and french fries filled the cafeteria. Students made their way over the scarred linoleum floors to the lunch lines. A pair of girls paused on their way, stopping to gawk at us. They tilted their heads to the side and covered their mouths to further veil hushed whispers. I slunk down in my seat, my body shielded by the wide expanse of the lunch table, and lifted the hood on my black sweatshirt as their eyes darted my way.

  I glanced back at Derek, and his brown eyes brightened. He wore a Pink Floyd t-shirt I recognized as one he bought at the mall a month ago, along with worn jeans, faded a washed out blue.

  “Everyone’s talking about your hand,” he said, not bothering to whisper. “Everyone’s seen you play. So, this is big news because they know how awesome you are. If we can capitalize on this, we’ll be huge. Before, we were just any old band. Sure, we were good, but now we have a story. We have the hot guitarist that lost her finger.” He leaned back in his seat. “It’s like on all those talent shows on TV. The ones with the biggest sob story always get the most airtime.”

  Ron laughed and slapped him on the back. “Dude, you’re brilliant! That is awesome.” He leaned forward, laughing like a hyena.

  Finding nothing about the situation amusing, I glanced at Lauren and Faith who wore opposite expressions. Scowling, Lauren flicked a lock of blond hair out of her face and said, “Or they’ll just think we’re freaks.”

  “Lauren!” Faith’s mouth hung open below wide eyes. Her shock was almost comical. I certainly wasn’t surprised. Lauren never coped well when the spotlight was on someone else, even if it was on the account of my four fingers.

  I didn’t say anything though. Instead, I just shrunk back further into my hoodie, watching droves of students collect their lunches and let them plan my future.

  “Dude, this is how I see it. We’ll get her ready and then have this big reveal. Everyone will be anticipating it. Will she play again? Will she be as good? And then, bam! She’ll be out there, choppin’ it like Jerry Garcia and The Grateful Dead. She can even come up with some kind of salute.” Derek smirked. “She can sign us off after every performance.”

  “Dang, you’re good!” Ron smacked the table with his palm.

  “Whatever.” With a roll of the eyes, Lauren got up and stalked off.

  “What crawled up her perfectly round behind?” Ron asked, turning to watch her walk away.

  Derek shrugged and looked at me. “So, when do you think you’ll be ready?”

  I shook my head. My gaze zoned in on a group of freshman girls huddled over the latest teen magazine, pretending to find interest in their actions. “For what?”

  “To play.”

  I glanced to Faith. Dark blond hair streaked with purple highlights set off her almost violet eyes. She stared down at the table. A small buckle creased her forehead.

  When I didn’t answer, Derek persisted. “Well? When will you be able to play again?”

  The atmosphere thickened, the air heavy in my lungs. The last thing I wanted to do was discuss my ability to play with them. Especially with Derek and Ron staring at me like my freakish hand was their key to notoriety. And especially after my horrific playing session with Mr. Neely. How would they feel if I told them I could still play a mean “Amazing Grace,” but my abilities stopped there?

  “I don’t know,” I answered.

  “Come on. You’ve gotta have some idea. The reveal will be huge! We’ve gotta start planning now.” Ron picked up his phone and started texting someone with his thumbs. I wondered whether he was already telling them about my “big debut.”

  “We don’t need an exact date. Just a time frame,” Derek said.

  A burst of laughter came from the table across from us. I glanced up at the students with their bowed heads over the magazine. They whispered to each other amidst a bubble of giggling. Paranoid, my eyes scanned the other tables as well, looking for the stares of others. When I found none, my gaze returned to Derek. He stared at me, still waiting for my answer. Except I had no answer to give him. After today, what little hope Tad had given me had vanished. I wasn’t convinced I would ever play again, let alone play well enough to perform like I once did, but I wanted him off my back more than I wanted to admit the truth, so I gave him the best guess I could muster. A ridiculously impossible time frame. I gave him an answer next to impossible to achieve.

  I bit my lip, then spoke. “Five months.” Just under the amount of time I had until Juilliard auditions.

  * * *

  I returned home from school and shut myself in my room, grateful to be alone. Leaning against the closed door, I sunk to the floor. My guitar case fell off my shoulder and slithered down my body next to me where I sat with my arms wrapped around knees drawn firmly to my chest.

  I stared at the scuffed, black case at my side and apprehension gripped my chest with scorching fingers. Slowly, I reached out and opened it. The natural vintage surface gleamed. My guitar looked up at me, beseeching me to pick it up.

  I lowered my legs and lifted the Gibson out of the case, liberating it from the darkness, exactly what my guitar had done for me ten years earlier. I held it, feeling the weight, heavy in my arms like a long-lost friend, a patchwork of happy memories. I moved to the edge of my bed and got into position. My left hand curled around the board. My fingers moved onto the strings and I launched into the first piece that popped into my head—“I’ll See You In My Dreams” by Django Rheinhardt.

  I played for several minutes. Crappily. Mangling most of the song, my playing was stilted and unsure. The sounds emanating were those of an amateur. For most of the first half, I had trouble stretching my pinky to compensate for my ring finger on the chords. As a result, I ended up lifting my hand too far off the fretboard to create a consistent sound. Not long after I began, the tears fell. A sob wracked my body as I missed several notes. I bit my lip until it bled, trying my best to focus on the music and not on my blistering heart. But the song was too upbeat, too happy and discordant from my own frame of mind for me to play well. My vision blurred and my body shook until I could play no more. I struggled to catch my breath, inhaling in big heaping sobs.

  I swiped my face with my right hand, trying to calm myself. I breathed in and out, concentrating on the simple task until my chest stopped heaving. “You can do this, Sam. You need this.”

  I needed to play. I needed just one song. A song to get me through the rest of the day. A song to get through tomorrow and the week.

  I picked something I liked, something I could play before with my eyes closed. I grit my teeth and started in on an alternative rock song I knew well. I launched into it, curling my middle finger in place of my ring finger on the fifth fret, A string. I slid my finger up two frets to E. I did well with the first few chords, but when I got to the G power chord, I had to bar the whole third fret with my pointer finger and utilize the rest of them for the chord. I wrecked it. I started over, playing again and trying to find a way around the chord, a way to create the same sound with one less finger, but I couldn’t. I started a third time, then a fourth. I played the same few chords over and over until I finally went on with the song. But I mutilated the rest of it too.

  Stopping, I shoved the guitar off me onto the bed. I ran a hand through my hair and paced my room. I tried to focus on the steady cadence of my sneakers moving over the floor, but nothing about the sound soothed me. A thousand visions passed through my mind. Ones of me playing at events past—playing with Mr. Neely for hours before and after school, playing at the talent show, at the county fair, at The Clover, the Celtic festival, the Greek festival, the jazz festival, gigs in Richmond. Playing everywhere and anywhere I’d ever been able to. I played with all my fingers. They moved skillfully over the fretboard, needing nothing more than talent and muscle memory to drive them. The sounds that escaped those fingers? Perfection.

  And now…

  I walked back and forth in front of my bed, my steps heavier, faster than before. Reaching up into my hair, my hands clenched
automatically, gripping my raven locks by the roots. I pulled and screamed, letting the searing pain in my scalp and the sound of my screaming soothe my ragged nerves. Only it fueled them instead.

  I darted across the room to the picture of Derek and me at a jazz festival last year, my guitar strung over my back. I ripped it from the wall. I looked down at my desk, and in one smooth motion, I shoved all its contents onto the floor and upturned it. My heart smashed into my ribs as I turned and strode over to my bed where my gaze zoned onto my guitar.

  What good was it to me anymore? What good was a guitar I couldn’t play?

  I snatched it up—my prized possession—and raised it above my head. I started to bring my arms down, the guitar with it, but I paused. Tears sprung to my eyes. The beating of my heart resounded in my ears. I raised the guitar again and pressed my face into my shoulder, steeling myself for the blow, my muscles coiled. But I hesitated. I stood, arms and guitar suspended in the air, my eyes squeezed shut.

  And then, as if whispered to me from above, I heard of all people, Tad’s voice in my head. Speaking slowly, clearly, coolly, triumphantly. Jerry Garcia. James Doohan. Tony Iomi. Django Reinhardt…

  I lowered my guitar. With aching limbs, I retrieved the case from the floor and put it away. I stared at the closed case for what felt like hours, realizing I was in-between worlds. One in which I couldn’t play and another where I knew I had to, but having no idea how to close the gap. Having no idea if I even could, only knowing I wanted to. I needed to.

  6

  Never before had I experienced real pain. I don’t mean the physical kind. My rather barbaric run-in between a knife and my finger was proof of agony.

  No, not that kind of pain. Physical pain could be dealt with in a relatively simple manner. Grit your teeth. Suck it up—whatever you had to do, because in most cases, it would soon be over. And even if in the moment it was difficult to focus on the notion all physical pain had an end, one way or the other, that fact was indisputable. The kind of pain I’m talking about had no finish line to reach. Or at least not one you could see. It’s not resolute. You can’t reach out and touch it like a weeping wound. Instead, it’s buried inside yourself like a slumbering giant, waiting to be awakened at the slightest provocation.

  Though I was reluctant to admit it, I now had a far greater understanding of my mother than ever before. After the accident and the birth of my brother, I recalled the constant shedding of her tears. Days turned into weeks. The tears finally dried, but in their place, a quiet solitude took hold. She talked to no one; not my father or me. She lay in bed most of the day. By the time my father noticed the reliance on drink, it was too late. She was already gone to the bottle.

  I was only eighteen, not a mother and certainly not foolish enough to pretend I knew what it was like to be one, but I think in some small way I knew how she felt after she gave birth to my expiring brother. I understood the sense of loss, the emptiness. Because losing the thing you loved most in life created a universal depth of pain. I was not naive enough to think she loved me as much as him. Obviously, she didn’t. Because when she gave birth to him and realized he had left this world, had never really even been a part of it, all life left her. Her fight and her desire to move on with a life he was not a part of was nonexistent. The depth of her loss was too great. She chose grief over us. She chose grief over me.

  When I stepped into school, I had every intention of carrying the flame of hope Tad had ignited in me throughout the day. But I failed. Who was I kidding? To think Juilliard might even be a remote possibility.

  Mr. Neely’s reaction had been unexpected. Maybe he really did feel inadequate to teach me now. Whatever his reasons for his parting words to me, I got the message. I would never play the same again. It didn’t matter that Django Reinhardt played with only two undamaged fingers. The other examples Tad mentioned were of no significance either. Because I was no Tony Iomi or Jerry Garcia. I wasn’t a legend. I was Samantha Becker, Juilliard-student-wannabe, daughter to a banker and a drunk.

  My friends’ exploitation was just the rotten cherry on top of my day. In the grand scheme of things, it meant little. Sure, they wanted to use me. But hadn’t I been doing the same thing the past few years? After all, they fully believed I intended to move to New York City with them after graduation to pursue a record deal. I had never led them to believe otherwise. I let them believe I wanted the same thing they did because it was the easier alternative to the truth.

  So now, I stood in the hot water of the shower, refusing to cry again. The pang in my stomach intensified with every thought running through my head—thoughts I couldn’t control. Ones that came no matter how much I tried to block them out. My friends' conversation. My failed attempt to play minutes ago. The pity in Mr. Neely’s eyes. And the probability that my future laid in my father’s hands, which meant working for him—the one thing I wanted least in the world.

  * * *

  “I have some mail here for you,” my father said to me as he hurried in the door.

  My mother wandered into the kitchen and gave him a shaky smile. Today was one of her semi-sober days. She rarely had these, but on the occasion she did, they irritated me more than the days when she was trashed. Maybe because they never lasted. At one time, these days carried on for up to a week, maybe two, but in the past couple years, her “good” days were short-lived.

  “You’re home?” Mom asked him.

  “Yeah, just to grab something though, and then I have to go back to the office,” he said without even looking at her.

  A disgusted noise emerged from the back of my throat. There were only two places he went on the days he stopped home in the afternoon. Either Michael’s grave or her house. I wondered which it was today.

  My mother nodded and glanced at me. The sadness in the green of her eyes was unbearable, not to mention too familiar. I saw the same stricken expression when I looked in my own. Ignoring it was easiest.

  I put my head down. “I gotta go.”

  I stepped outside into the chilly February air and made my way to June’s house. School had been rather uneventful. I hadn’t bothered taking my guitar so Mr. Neely and I could practice. Even if he didn’t mean anything by his lack of confidence in my ability to recover, I didn’t need any more abuse. I avoided my friends too, only speaking to them when absolutely necessary. June’s house would actually be a relief. I needed to get away from the constant reminders of how I used to play. Or at least that was the plan, but when June let me in and I saw Tad standing there with a ridiculously annoying smile plastered across his face, I knew avoiding all thoughts of playing the guitar would be impossible.

  Sighing, I turned to June. “What do you want me to start with?”

  She waved me on and led me down the hallway to a huge walk-in closet in the back bedroom. Boxes spewed from the opening, while others sat in high stacks against the walls.

  “I figured we’d start in here,” June said. “I’m a bit tired, so I thought I’d have a seat while you went through them and sorted. We need to have a Goodwill pile, a throw-out pile, and then I’ll have some stuff I want to give to Tad and friends.”

  “Okay.” I sat on the floor, curling my legs underneath me, ready to dig in. Normally, I would loathe doing this kind of thing, but today busywork would be a good distraction and something to keep my thoughts away from my guitar.

  “So…” Tad said as he plunked himself down next to me. “How’s the playing going?”

  Maybe not. I opened the first box and peered down into an array of old photos. “It’s not.”

  “What do you mean it’s not?” His glasses fell down his nose, but he quickly pushed them up with his finger.

  “Do we really have to talk about this?”

  “Fine. Suit yourself.” He gazed around the room, humming and twiddling his thumbs with those thick glasses of his perched on his nose, looking like some deranged cartoon character. Unfortunately, his need for constant conversation won out. “Why wouldn’t you wan
t to talk about it?”

  “Because the playing didn’t go well, okay? I’m just not going to be able to do it, and I’m trying to get used to the idea.”

  Tad knitted his brows. “You make it sound like you thought it was going to be easy. Did you really think it would be? I mean, you lost your finger. Are you really just going to give up so easy?” He snapped his fingers.

  Like giving up was easy.

  I glared at him, knowing he was right. Part of my problem was, from the moment I picked up a guitar, playing came natural to me. It was one of the only things in my life I was good at, better at than most. Sure, I practiced. Not to sound cliché, but a lot of blood, sweat, and more recently, tears had gone into playing, which was one of the reasons, prior to losing my finger, I had little doubt about my acceptance to Juilliard. But it always felt as though there was something more behind my playing, something I never fully understood. Something beyond my control, as though I was simply meant to play.

  Tad continued to stare at me until I answered. “I don’t know. I did some hand strengthening exercises. But Mr. Neely, my mentor, didn’t seem to have much faith in me. And he had me starting off with these ridiculous, childish songs. Like the ones you find in those teach yourself books. I can’t stand it. I hate playing them.”

  Tad tilted his head down and stared at the floor with a straight face. “Maybe he just didn’t want to get your hopes up?”

  “Well, he succeeded.”

  “If you don’t like playing those songs, then don’t. Go back to playing what you were before. Learn on those. Sure, it’ll be harder, but more rewarding too.”

  I thought about what he said. It made sense. Playing something super challenging held a whole lot more appeal than “Ode To Joy.”

  “What’s the hurry to relearn, Sam?” June’s voice broke through my thoughts.

  I glanced up at her with narrowed eyes. Did she know? Could she possibly? I hadn’t told anyone about Juilliard.