by Rob Harrell
Jerry isn’t there for his treatment again, and Frank and Callie haven’t heard anything new.
Frank has yet another new mix, and we figure out that I’m a fan of the Pixies, the National, Parquet Courts, and the Ramones—a punk band from the ’70s and ’80s, he tells me.
“You never cease to surprise me, young Ross.”
I throw my backpack over my shoulder as I head out. “You and me, both. See you in an hour.”
Jimmy and I barely speak that night, but we play a lot. Mostly just jamming, but Frank leads us into trying a couple of songs too. A relatively simple Neil Young song. An Eagles song, even though Denny turns his nose up at the idea. It all feels really good.
Sounds halfway decent too. Kinda almost.
At one point, Denny gets a call from his now ex-girlfriend and heads upstairs to take it. Frank stands up too.
“All right. This is risky, but I have to take a leak. Can I go upstairs without you two murdering each other?”
We both nod, but it gets super weird the second Frank leaves. That kind of awkward where you keep sniffing and looking around at the corners of the room.
Then Jimmy says, “What happened with you and your girlfriend?”
I look up. “Girlfriend?”
“The weird one. Abby. With the clothes and the hair.”
I swallow a burst of anger. In his defense, she does dress weird. “She’s not my girlfriend.”
Jimmy looks genuinely surprised. “Seriously? You guys’re always together.”
I shake my head. “Just friends.”
Jimmy taps a cymbal a few times, lightly. “I figured she caught you checkin’ out Sarah Kennedy.”
My head jerks up.
“What?”
Jimmy laughs like I’m an idiot. “Well, you go gooey every time Sarah comes in a room.”
I straighten my back, defiant. “I do not.”
“Riiiiiight.” He tightens a couple of turny things on his kit. “I don’t get it, but it’s really obvious.”
I feel my face getting red. “What don’t you get?”
“The big deal about Sarah Kennedy. She’s . . . super fake. She’s only nice to the ‘right people.’ Trust me, I know.”
“Really? How?”
Jimmy taps the snare drum a couple of times. “Her locker is right next to me. She and her stupid friends hang out there.” He uses his pedal to hit the bass drum. “They don’t hold back in front of me. I might as well be a lump of mud, as far as they care. So I hear all kindsa stuff.”
I stare at him. “Yeah, well, I didn’t ask you. And how are you gonna judge people on niceness? You, of all people.”
He snort-laughs as we hear Frank’s feet coming down the stairs. “I’m nice enough.” He puts a hand on his chest and looks exaggeratedly sincere. “I’m just misunderstood.”
Frank comes into the room with a CD player like my dad’s. He picks up a bright blue electric guitar that looks a lot like the one Denny drove over with his van, but this one isn’t broken. He holds it out to me.
“You guys ready to rock?” Then he looks over at Jimmy.
“Jimmy? Have you ever listened to the Ramones?”
Thirty minutes later, my fingers are screaming in pain and Jimmy is wiping sweat off the back of his neck. I’ve never felt better in my life.
We’d listened to a song several times while Frank wrote out the chords for me—only three! Perfect! Then we got started. We crashed and burned a few times, but eventually we found our groove. And Holy Batpig, was it fun.
It felt loud and dangerous and gritty and totally 100 percent right, all at the same time. At one point, Jimmy and I both started laughing—just at the sheer volume of it—as Denny cranked my amp up to ten and told Jimmy to play harder.
I should be clear: We sounded pretty terrible. It was loose and sloppy, and we kept screwing up, but none of that mattered. We just kept going.
It felt . . . sort of like going outside and screaming at the top of my lungs—but in the best way possible. At one point I started singing part of the chorus. I wasn’t even embarrassed. It just felt like . . . letting go. Frank turned a microphone on and stuck it in my face, and I just yelled the words I remembered. I made some up too.
“Rabbit! Rabbit! YO, Artichoke RAAAAAH!!!”
We’ve been on break for a couple of minutes, with Jimmy trying to catch his breath, when he looks over and gives me a nod. “Let’s do it again.”
He doesn’t have to ask twice.
We run through it four or five more times, and Frank and Denny kick back watching—big stupid grins on their faces.
We finish and sloppily come to a stop as Frank gets up. He walks between Jimmy and me and holds up his hands. Starts talking in a big, loud preacher voice.
“Gentlemen! I want it on the record that glorious sounds were made here tonight. We have cast aside our demons and been filled with the spirit of the beat! Rock and roll was in! The! Room! I want you both to stand, face each other, and shake hands to acknowledge the power of this thing called music.”
I go over as Jimmy gets up and leans over his drums. I shake his big sweaty hand. My body is still buzzing from the music as Jimmy laughs, out of breath.
“That was %#@$* awesome.”
Later, as we’re leaving, Denny pats me on the back. “Dude, that was so much fun to watch. You guys officially rocked it.” I smile, and he goes on. “And listen. I know you were just kinda playing around in there . . . but you can sing.”
That stops me. “Me?”
Denny’s eyebrows go up. “Yeah! No joke! You guys don’t need to find a singer. You can do it.”
My throat goes dry at the thought of singing on stage, but I’d be lying if part of me didn’t get kind of excited at the idea. I think about it while I put in some eye drops. “Huh.”
“Now we just gotta find you a bass player, and you guys’ll be set.”
“Yeah.” I stop, looking out into the nighttime neighborhood. “A bass player.”
I had one person in mind. She’s a pretty good musician too.
It’s funny how everything always comes back to Abby.
28
BACK TO THE PAST
Getting back to my Summer Medical Follies, after seeing Dr.Throckton, we canceled one (awful) surgery and got the new one scheduled almost immediately. Like, two days later—which is nothing, and it flew by. My head was in serious danger of spinning off my head as we got ready, this was all happening so fast.
My dad and Linda invited Abby and her parents over the night before for Linda’s rosemary chicken lasagna—one of my favorites. I had to stop eating at ten p.m. so my stomach would be empty enough for the surgery, so they were giving me a treat.
It was kind of an awkward dinner, and all the adults asked me how I was doing about seventy times. I don’t think they even knew they were doing it.
After Mrs. Peterson’s cherry pie with ice cream, Abby and I sat out on the back porch. It was perfect out, and we propped our feet up on the railing, watching a handful of fireflies doing their thing.
“Ross. I have a serious question to ask. Can I make fun of you and draw on you and stuff when you’re all groggy on painkillers?” Abby was wearing green leggings and a pink Vampire Weekend tour shirt. She was playing the album Modern Vampires of the City quietly on her phone.
“If you must. It’s not like I’ll remember it.” I felt like my stomach was gonna pop like a zit. I ate waaay too much.
We were quiet for a minute, listening to Vampire Weekend and a bunch of surprisingly loud crickets.
“Are you nervous?”
“A little. Not exactly. Not like you’d think.” I tipped my chair back on its back legs, no parents here to tell me not to. “I’m just not thinking too much about what they’ll do tomorrow. I don’t really wanna know.”
“Yeah. I guess the scarier thing would be NOT having the surgery at this point.”
I nodded. Rocked back and forth. “Yep. I just want the bad stuff out of me.”<
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Abby reached over and flicked my ear. “I’ll be there all day tomorrow. My dad has a thing, but my mom said she’ll stay with me in the waiting room.”
“Eeesh. Boring. Make sure you take your phone charger. And headphones. I’ve got some new games I can recommend.”
Abby tipped back as well. “Yeah, I’ll bring a book. Some people read, Ross.”
“M’kay. You have fun with that.”
“Yeah.” Abby’s tone shifted. “Just so you know, I don’t like this, Ross. Not at all. But, it’s gonna go fine. Seriously. Like, no question. Okay?”
I nodded. Then we sat there, quiet. The moment stretched out for a while, all serious and heavy and kind of uncomfortable.
I said the only thing I could think of.
“Did you fart?” I knew she hadn’t, but it got a laugh out of her.
The surgery was crazy early. It was pitch-black out as I put on my clothes. I wore loose shorts and a loose T-shirt like they said to, so they could get me back in them easily when I was all goofy and floppy from the drugs. Plus, it was the end of July and hotter than Hades—my dad’s words—even at six a.m.
I was somehow really tired and wide awake at the same time.
A nurse in bright blue Crocs came in and wrote with a marker above each of my eyes. YES above the right and NO above the left. She showed me in a little handheld mirror.
“This is so no one makes a mistake. We don’t like mistakes here.”
I wasn’t sure if that made me feel better or worse.
They got me all set up in a hospital bed and stuck an IV in the crook of my arm. It didn’t hurt too bad going in, but the tape holding it in place kept pulling at my skin and pinching me. Then my dad and Linda and I sat there for half an hour making awkward small talk.
“How are those shorts? Comfy?” Linda had cut the legs off of some Avengers pajama pants to make them.
“Yep. Real comfy.”
Eventually, after we’d talked about pajamas and the Avengers as much as I could take, the nurses came and rolled me down the hall to a surgery room—Linda waving with one hand over her mouth, my dad with watery eyes, giving me two thumbs-ups.
Then I was in the surgery room, and it was full of people and equipment. Something was beeping behind me. The anesthesiologist talked to me all softly and gently and then put some fluid in my IV line and told me to count backward from one hundred.
I got to ninety-six.
I don’t remember much for a while. Out of the next ten days or so, I only remember moments, and even those are hazy.
• Getting up to pee in the hospital bathroom in the middle of the night, and blood pouring into the toilet from the bandage above my eye.
• Being wheeled out of the hospital, gorked out of my mind. Feeling my head bob around. A couple of long strings were taped from my forehead to my cheek—maybe to hold my eyelid closed?
• Linda and my dad helping me into bed. Abby helping me get my earbuds in and putting on some quiet music. (Guess which band.)
• The ceiling. Lots of staring at the ceiling. Finding faces in the texture there.
• An arrangement someone dropped off with heart-shaped cookies on sticks in a little basket. Abby unable to stop eating them.
• Linda kissing me on the forehead and asking if I needed anything about twenty times a day.
• My dad and Abby running to Dagwood’s and then cutting my sub up into little manageable bits I could eat lying down. My dad singing the Dagwood’s jingle as they delivered it to me.
• Feeling around with my hands—afraid to move my head—trying to find the remote to the TV my dad had brought into my room. Wanting the remote because there was a soap opera on it. Not finding it and half dreaming about the overly dramatic soap problems of Stefano and Marlena.
• My dad lying on the bed beside me watching the St. Louis Cardinals (his team forever, since he’s from there), trying to cheer and react without jostling the bed. Whispering, “Sorry! Sorry!” after a three-run homer.
• Raging, splitting headaches and pain around my eye when the pills would start to wear off. Aching from lying there all day.
• Abby in a chair by my bed. Watching TV. Reading. Talking to me when I felt up to it. Abby bringing me ice packs. Abby reading me a bunch of Bob’s Burgers comics she brought. Abby reading me articles out of her dad’s old copies of Famous Monsters magazine.
Always Abby.
29
HAT IN HAND
Back in the Abby-and-I-still-aren’t-speaking present, I have my dad drop me at her house after Jimmy’s and my practice. It’s a little late for a drop-by, but I need to talk to her. I can’t believe we’ve gone this long without having a real talk, and I feel like a world-class tool.
Her mom answers the door and gives me a sad smile.
“Hi, Ross. It’s really good to see you.” Then she yells over her shoulder, “Abby! Visitor!”
Abby appears at the end of the hall. If she’s surprised to see me, she doesn’t show it. She just nods, tips her head for me to follow her. In her room, she drops into her chair.
I stop inside the door. “Abby. I’m sorry. I was a jerk. And I’ve continued to be a jerk.”
She nods. “Yeah, you were. You have been.” She sets down her glass of water. “But I was too.”
“Can we just erase the past week? Let bygones be bygones and all that?”
She looks at me for a minute, then puts a hand up in the air, and relief floods my body. I go over and high-five it.
I drop my backpack and sit down on the floor, my back against her bed. “I think I’ve been way up my own butt.”
She laughs. “Me too. I’ve kind of set up camp in there lately.”
I laugh at the image that pops into my head.
She goes on. “I guess, you know, we both have a right to be a little selfish right now. It’s just . . . a lot.”
“It is a lot.” I grab a little Godzilla figure from her bedside table. “How are you doing with the move?”
She shrugs. Sighs. “I’ve just been thinking about next semester a lot. It’s gonna be hard. I’m not great at making friends.”
This surprises me. “You’re friends with me. And Isaac. I think.”
At Isaac’s name, she rolls her eyes and wobbles her head around like she isn’t so sure of that.
“Yeah. I know. It’ll happen. It’s just gonna be weird. I kind of tend to stick out in a way not everyone is drawn to.” She uses her monster-gloved hand to gesture at her neon-green Frankenstein shirt and her pink-and-orange tights.
“Abby, you don’t stick out. You stand out. It’s different.”
She smiles at that. “Says the guy voted Most Likely to Have a Mental Breakdown if He Ever Stood Out.”
I shake my head. “Ah. No, see, I don’t think so. I think I’d be okay with standing out. Standing out, good. Sticking out, bad. In my mind, at least.”
She makes an impressed face. “Interesting. The boy evolves. Is this New and Improved Guitar God Ross talking?”
“Maybe.” I set Godzilla down on the carpet and think for a minute. “It’s weird. I think I always just assume you’re okay. You’re my rock. The tough one. I guess I just figured you’d have zero problem walking into a new school and Abby-ing it up.”
Abby shakes her head. “Nope. Wigging out over here.” She picks some lint off of her tights. “Kind of a mess.”
“Yeah. And I let you down. I’ve been really slow at realizing that. You’re always there when I need you . . . and then I blow it.”
She waves it away like a fly, and we sit quietly for a moment.
She looks up. “Can we just make a . . . y’know, a vow or a pact . . . to spend as much time hanging out as we can till I leave? Like, make the most of it?”
I smile and nod for a while. “Yeah. Absolutely. Can I help you pack?”
She looks around the room. “Definitely. Just, not tonight. I’m toast.”
And I feel like this is the moment.
&n
bsp; “Sooooo . . .” I’m unsure how to approach this. “You should know . . . I’ve been playing with Jimmy.”
She stares back for an uncomfortably long time. “Playing what? Dolls?”
“Music, dummy. He plays drums, believe it or not. And he’s actually pretty good.”
She’s not buying it at first, but I tell her all about it. About our practices. The songs we’ve learned. How good it felt tonight.
“Wow.” She looks unsure how to react. Says it again.
“Wow.”
“I know. It’s weird. If we don’t kill each other, we might . . . y’know. Talent show. World tour. Rock stardom.”
She makes a face. “But . . . it’s Jimmy. Yuck.” Her eyes dart around as she thinks. “Maybe you can work on his hygiene. He always smells like cold french fries.” She looks ill. “And the jar thing.”
“We’ll see. But, you know . . . baby steps. And I think he’s stopped the spit thing.”
I look over at her viola propped up in the corner.
“So . . . how’s band? How’s the cello playing?”
She lowers her eyelids at me. “It’s a viola, and you know it.”
I smile. I do know.
“Band is going fine. As per usual. Why?”
I look over at her sideways.
“Have you ever thought about playing bass guitar?”
30
THE PITCH
“Come again?” Abby stares at me.
“Abby. Think how cool it’d—”
“Ross, I’m moving away in two weeks. Two. And the talent show is only two weeks away.” Her eyes are all big, and she’s looking at me like I’m an idiot. Her mouth is even hanging open a little bit. “You want me to learn how to play bass in that time?”
“Yes.”
I sit, waiting.
She’s still staring, but her eyes start flicking back and forth across the carpet. I watch her until she sits back. Closes her mouth.
“How many songs are we talking about?”
I grin. “Two or three, tops. We’ll only play one, but—y’know—it’s good to have options.”