So, it seems possible I might catch him in a generous mood that evening as he stands on the back deck having a cocktail and warming up the grill. Before long, he’ll slap steaks down onto the fire. I saunter out onto the deck, walk past him and stand gazing out as if my sole purpose is to contemplate the sunset. What parent wouldn’t ask what was on your mind?
“What’s on your mind, Jack?”
Still, I pretend to be lost in thought.
He tries again. “Everything okay? You’ve been kind of quiet lately.”
My father has his moments. Every so often, he really does try. The problem being, we still always fail to connect. But this isn’t the time to worry about it.
“Sure, everything’s fine,” I say, then turn my attention back to the trees rimming our backyard. “I mean, I guess.”
I do my best to sound despondent without overdoing it. My father walks over and stands at the deck rail next to me. We look out at the sunset together.
“Ready for summer?” he says. “You must be psyched that school’s almost out. And I really do think you’ll end up enjoying camp this year.”
Actually, I’ve been trying not to think about that. In two weeks, I’ll once again find myself in the Teen Extreme! program at Camp Explorer. This will be my second year as a “Leader in Training” since, at seventeen, I’m now too old to just ship off to camp and too young to be a full-on counselor. Despite the fact that, technically, I didn’t volunteer for this, my parents insist the volunteer hours will look great on my college applications. I’m not exactly looking forward to the hiking, paddling, horseback riding, archery and soccer, all enjoyed in the Extreme Heat!
Meanwhile, Caitlin will be participating in the Morgan Lake Camp for the Arts dance program. She’ll sleep in an air conditioned cabin and spend her days leaping about on gleaming wood floors. While I return each year with my skin peeling, plastered with islands of Caladryl and feeling like insects laid eggs under my skin, typically Caitlin comes home only slightly more tan than when she left, due to occasional nature walks and swims.
I’d almost managed complete denial, but now feel myself sinking. I don’t say anything since I’ve already objected to this plan several times. I know the result will be the same if I object again.
“You’ll be glad you did it,” my father says, evidently not noticing my total lack of response. “Experiences like that make for a well-rounded person. Anyway, what’s on your mind?”
I do my best to focus on getting the Telecaster. How to sell this deal? It’s not like I don’t already have a guitar. An amazing guitar, actually—a Gibson Les Paul with a tan to black starburst finish. A Christmas miracle two years back when my parents kept insisting what I really needed was a graphing calculator and a new wardrobe (as well as new interests and new friends). In the end, they shelled out for the Les Paul thanks to the spirit of the season. Now, I can only hope two years will seem like a long time.
“Actually, I’ve been kind of thinking about this guitar I found.”
My father sighs. A few seconds pass before he says, “There I was thinking you might have a girl on your mind. You seemed so preoccupied before.”
This seems like a card I can play. “Well, there’s that too. I kind of met someone. And she agrees that I should get the guitar.”
He nods but I can tell he’s already tuning out. Now, his eyes alone are on the trees surrounding our yard. “Sounds complicated.”
“Yeah, it sort of is.”
He sighs again and for one moment I hope he might just go for it. Instead, he says, “As far as I can see, you have two options. Save to buy it or wait until your next birthday. Maybe we can talk about it again then.”
There it is. I know my father well enough to be certain the verdict is final.
~~~
When I show up at Edmonds Music, Gary stands behind the counter killing time by checking out YouTube videos on his iPad. I’m glad to see he’s alone in the store since, after all, I’m about to do something idiotic. I’m not sure I’d be able to follow through if anyone else was around. If Justin and Doug were there, no way. Besides, they’d talk me out of it in a heartbeat.
I tell Gary my plan and he stares at me hard for a few seconds, presumably to be sure I’m not joking. When I convince him that I’m serious, he examines the Les Paul he sold to my parents not long ago. He checks it front and back to see that the finish remains nearly as perfect as when it left his shop. He tests the tuning pegs, as well as the volume and tone knobs, to be sure they’re still tight. He sets the guitar back inside the plush red lining of its case and casts a glance toward the wall where the old guitars collect dust. He looks at me again.
“Are you sure about this?”
For Gary, this trade is a no brainer. If we weren’t friends, I’m sure I’d already be out the door with a receipt in my pocket.
Across the room, the scarred, old Telecaster no longer catches sunlight. No, I’m not the least bit sure. “Maybe I should try playing it again.”
Gary flips a pick into the air and I catch it. I cross the store, pull the Telecaster down, plug in and sit on an amp with my back turned to Gary. I wait but nothing unusual happens. I’m just sitting there holding an old guitar while Gary rustles stuff around in the background. I run a few riffs, testing the action. The Telecaster plays better than expected, the action pretty fast actually with that thin neck and low frets. I form a few chords and strum softly. I close my eyes, strumming more chords, and that’s when the flash comes. A mild flash this time, not overwhelming like the first one. I see her again, a phone pressed to her ear while tears stream down her face. I watch as she reacts to something being said, nodding, her face strained, her eyes closed. The image fades.
“Jack, what’s up?”
I shake my head, the fog lifting. I turn to see Gary watching me, understandably confused. I’ve stopped playing and am now just sitting there staring into space. I consider putting the Telecaster back on its mount, packing up my Les Paul and leaving again. Gary would be fine with it, I’m sure.
But then another image comes to mind. I picture Lauren smirking when I tell her I can’t handle what’s happening. I see her shaking her head, just briefly, the message clear all the same. Yeah, that’s what I figured. For a few minutes, I almost thought you were like me. She turns and walks away.
So, okay. Telecaster today, CAT scan tomorrow.
I carry the guitar to where Gary stands waiting behind the counter. “Thought you might have changed your mind,” he says.
“No. Let’s do this.” I try to smile but I’m not sure I quite pull it off.
“Okay, then.” Gary does his best not to grin but, after all, he’s just made an unbelievable trade. He closes the case on my Les Paul and seals the clasps with a click that, to me, sounds profoundly final.
Gary goes out back and comes back a minute later carrying a case I know at a glance belongs to the Telecaster. A worn, black rectangle, stripped bare in spots, torn in others where tiny threads dangle like loose sutures. Gary sets the case on the counter next to my Gibson’s and opens it to reveal a flattened tan interior, any cushion long beaten down. He takes the Telecaster from me, lowers it into its case and snaps it closed. I lift that case off the counter and take on the burden.
I’m just about to leave when I turn to face Gary again “Where did it come from?”
“Just a trade-in, why?”
I understand. Why would it matter as long as I like it? From his perspective, obviously I do—enough, in fact, to trade an amazing Les Paul for a worn out piece of crap.
“Just curious who might have owned it before. Does she live around here?”
“She?”
Right, Gary can’t possibly know what I’ve experienced. “I don’t know,” I say. “I just thought it might have been a woman for some reason.”
“Nope. Just some guy.”
“You sure?”
Gary stares at me blankly.
“Never mind. What was his name?”
He shr
ugs. “Okay, whatever.” Gary reaches over the counter, opens a drawer and withdraws a spiral notebook. He thumbs through a few pages. “Angelo Delvechio.”
Actually, the name rings a bell but I don’t know why.
“He said he was the janitor at the elementary school. Something like that.”
That’s why I know the name. Even back then, I couldn’t help feel bad for Old Anthony. If there’s a hell, it probably involves cleaning up after a bunch of kids too young to anticipate when they might barf or pee their pants. Lots of ugly messes in those first years of elementary school. Still, Old Anthony was a musician? Never would have guessed that one. Either way, what could he possibly have to do with the woman from the flash?
I remain silent long enough that Gary says, “Look, I understand. It’s fine if you want to change your mind. We can just forget about it.”
The Gibson’s case still rests on Gary’s counter, within it my beautiful Les Paul. The frayed handle of the case I now hold digs into my palm. In my mind, I see the woman playing with her band, her on the phone crying, the glowing guy who could not possibly have been standing in my room.
Just bail on this mistake, I tell myself. This is stupid. I think of the old song, Reverse This Curse. Even more ironically, by Escape the Fate. Fitting, definitely. Still, something tells me that all these experiences suddenly stacking up aren’t random—that they’re pointing toward something I need to know. Something that runs way deeper than any of my flashes in the past. Whatever that is, I can’t ignore it.
“I guess I’m good,” I tell Gary. “Thanks.”
I leave a few minutes later carrying a guitar full of stories, wondering what those stories have to do with me.
5
The Demon and the Compass
I take the demon guitar out of its case in Doug’s garage, bracing myself to see if it attacks my brain again. Even though that last flash was pretty tame, I’ve still avoided playing the Telecaster since taking it home the day before. Partly because I don’t want my parents to find out about the trade (that promises to be unpleasant, to say the least) and partly because I won’t be seeing Lauren until tonight. It just seemed to make sense taking a break from wondering who that woman could be, not to mention the guy who visited my bedroom in the middle of the night. Now, I have no choice but to see if it happens again.
Thankfully, the guitar must be in a good mood since I’m not assaulted by any visions. Meanwhile, Doug and Justin stare, wondering what’s going on.
“Please explain,” Justin says. “Did the Gibson break down or something?”
“Oh, cool, got it,” Doug says. “That’s a loaner. You had me sort of freaked out there for a minute.”
“Nope, this is me now.” I plug the Telecaster into my tuner.
Silence follows but I don’t look up as I continue to watch the needle swing between swing between sharp and flat. I know Justin and Doug well enough to sense them shooting WTF glances at each other. Once I’m done tuning, I walk over to my amp, plug in there and click it on. I have serious doubts but I do my best to sound confident when I suggest we test run the Telecaster on one of our originals.
“How about ‘Don’t See Me?’” I say.
While we play mostly covers, we’ve also been writing some songs of our own. “How You (Don’t) See Me” is about being judged for what you look like rather than who you are. The way adults peg you for being a total loser if you don’t look like you just strolled out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. If you dress in black or do anything suggesting “goth” everyone assumes you’re mainlining heroin while bent on suicide. It doesn’t ever occur to them that maybe it’s the football team and cheerleaders sucking back beers, smoking weed and hooking up while the “freaky” kids are home on Friday night reading a book or checking out stuff on Tumblr.
“Sure, let’s give it a shot,” Doug says, kicking his bass drum a few times.
Justin runs a few riffs on his bass, adjusts the volume, then nods.
We rip into the song’s intro and at first it feels strange to have this new guitar in my hands. I’m used to the Gibson and now my fingers have to find their way around this unfamiliar neck. I keep adjusting the tone knobs and toggling between pickups, trying to get things right. But once I approach the microphone and start singing, the Telecaster becomes part of me. It fits my body perfectly, hanging at my hip, a solid workhorse. I’m not once concerned with scratching the finish as I slam at it. Definitely not an issue. And while the Les Paul always delivered a chunky sound I thought worked for me, the Telecaster sounds raw and tough. It has a voice of its own, and my voice—not always the best, unfortunately—rises to the moment, connecting with both the energy and lyrics like never before.
Dress in black, you tune me out
Must be a loser, down and out
You see what you want to
And this is how you don’t see me!
We must have shit grades, drink, do drugs
While you smile at well-dressed shiny thugs
Fooling you so perfectly
And this is how you don’t see me!
We finish in a squeal of feedback, crashing cymbals and bass flourishes. We check in on each other, sweating, eyes wide. Something just happened there that’s never happened before.
Doug keeps kicking at his bass drum so hard I think he might punch through it. “Holy shit, that was awesome!”
Justin nods like fifteen times, hair swinging over his face, then says, “Keep the loaner, dude.”
I stand there stunned. That was the best we’ve ever played and I’m thinking maybe the Telecaster might simply be just a guitar. A very cool guitar at that. Maybe I haven’t made the worst mistake of my life. Doug hits his snare and Justin slaps out a riff. Without even talking about it, we kick off another song. The rest of the session kills too and we nail all the songs we’ve been working on. Even the covers sound different, less like we’re trying to imitate and more like we’ve created something of our own.
It’s only after we’ve finished, when I’m kneeling on the floor settling the Telecaster back into its case, that it happens again. It’s not so much what I’d even call a flash this time. Nothing startling or disorienting. Just an image that I might have even attributed to my imagination if it wasn’t for the feeling that comes along with it. This time I see her staring out a window at night, her face reflected in the glass. The lights of other buildings shine back through her reflection but I can tell she’s not seeing those buildings. She sees only her own eyes, within them total solitude. She can’t see me watching her. I’m not there. Not in that moment, whenever it took place. She’s completely alone and it feels like she will be for a long time to come.
~~~
“I think I should try to find her,” I say, “try bringing the guitar back to her.”
Before this afternoon, I hadn’t been thinking that at all. I kept assuming that eventually these random images would stop coming. After all, I don’t know her, whoever she is. She can’t possibly have anything to do with me. But when I saw her eyes again, and felt her complete loneliness, something shifted for me. Even though I can’t imagine why the guitar would matter, I know she needs something. Some part of her life is incomplete. I can sense it. I can also relate to it since I’ve felt the same way for a long time.
Lauren sits across from me at the Coffee Grounds, a Starbucks alternative that somehow clings to life in Edmonds. “Seems like a good idea,” she says.
She stirs sugar into her double-espresso while I suddenly feel self-conscious for ordering a decaf iced mocha. A chocolate milk, essentially. I half-expected her to give me a hard time for ordering it but I guess she didn’t notice.
“I fully realize that doesn’t make any sense,” I say. “But there it is.”
Lauren shakes her head impatiently. “Why does everything have to make sense? If that’s the way you feel, then that’s what you should do.”
“Other than the fact that it’s insane. On top of that, I have no idea who s
he is. Provided she even exists outside my imagination.”
“We kind of covered the imagination thing, remember? You need to trust your intuition.”
“But how is any of this even possible?” I mean the guitar but I guess I’m also asking a larger question about the flashes. I can tell Lauren understands.
Her eyes meet mine. She has the most amazing eyes—a mix of colors, ranging from blue-gray to tan. Hazel, I guess. Lauren’s cheeks redden a little when I forget to break off eye contact but she doesn’t look away.
“It’s not the guitar, it’s you,” she says. “But I think you know that. I’m assuming stuff like this has happened before. It has, right?”
“A few times,” I say. Which isn’t entirely true, of course. But I’ve never spoken to anyone about the things I experience. Even with Lauren, I’m having a hard time going there.
She leans in toward me. “Maybe more than a few times?”
I hesitate, then nod. “There’s been stuff in the past. Nothing like this, though. Just, like, feelings.”
Lauren considers. “Well, that’s all this is too. Just a way stronger feeling. Let me guess—your family isn’t exactly comfortable with any of it.”
“Total denial,” I say.
“And your friends? Just guessing again, but you probably haven’t told them about your special skill either.”
My heart starts to beat faster. Finally, I’m talking to someone about this. Not just someone. Her. “I don’t know if you can call it a skill, exactly. It’s more like—I don’t know what it is. But I have no control over it, that’s for sure. I never know when, or if, it’s going to happen. Shit, it’s just freaking weird.”
Lauren laughs, excited, as if she’s just discovered something. And that something is me. “Personally, I think it’s weird that most people pretend they don’t know half as much as they do,” she says. “That’s just my way of looking at it. But you can get better at controlling it. That’s for sure. Like anything else, you just need to practice. And, of course, not pretend it doesn’t exist.”
“How do you practice?” It hasn’t occurred to me before that someone even could.
Streetlights Like Fireworks Page 3