Scar Girl (11 page)

“No, why, didn't you?”

“She called to tell me she had the flu, but that was it.” My suspicions were confirmed.

“I think she was pretty sick,” I offered. “She puked all over my car.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I'm sure that's it. How about you?”

“Huh?”

“Everything okay with you?”

“I think so,” I said. “Why?”

“I know you, Harry. You're not all here today. And as far as jamming is concerned, you're always all here.”

Nothing was a done deal yet. I was still in the middle of writing my college application opus and was still wavering about what to do with my life. But for the first time, when I looked into my future, instead of seeing Johnny, Chey, and Richie, I was seeing a dorm room where I could hang my Ramones poster, a quad where I could sit quietly and play an acoustic guitar under a tree, and a girl who would want to be with me just to be with me.

I know, it's stupid.

It was too soon to share all that with anyone else, so I decided that the status quo would be best.

“No,” I told Johnny. “I'm all here, just like always.”

“Good,” he said. “Because right now this band is the world to me.” There was a note of urgency and sincerity, or maybe it was desperation, that underlined every word.

We went back inside to pick up the rehearsal again.

“Harry,” Johnny said, “let's do that new song you played for us last week.”

He meant “Pleasant Sounds.” It made me feel awkward as hell, but what was I supposed to do? Johnny had been working on the keyboard part—a gentle line to counterbalance and punctuate the guitar riff—which, when added to the mix, made the song much more interesting.

When we were running through it for the third time and while I was playing the chorus, which has a couple of major seventh chords, Johnny stopped us and looked at Chey.

“That bass line isn't working.”

“Sorry?”

“The bass line,” he repeated, a note of exasperation in his voice, “isn't working. The notes are clashing with the chords Harry's playing. You should be landing on the root note.”

Chey, who never liked being told what to do and who seemed out of sorts to begin with, folded her arms and rested them on her bass. “And now you're an expert on bass guitars?”

“No,” Johnny snapped. “I'm an expert on what sounds good and on the crap that doesn't.”

Whoa. While this was definitely a flash of the old Johnny, even the old Johnny would never have told Cheyenne she sounded like crap.

“Sorry,” he said, and hung his head. I could see the tension in his jaw. “But do me a favor and try it with a simpler line that focuses on the root notes.”

Chey was clearly pissed, but she nodded, said, “Fine,” and tried it Johnny's way.

Of course, he was right. The tweak in the bass made the song a thousand times better. But that wasn't the point.

Something was going on with Johnny, and it wasn't good.

“Pleasant Sounds” turned out to be one of our best songs. It was quintessential Scar Boys. But at what cost?

“I talked to Carol at CB's,” Johnny said matter-of-factly when we took our next break, “and they can fit us in the second Friday or second Saturday in December.”

“Better make it the Saturday,” Chey said.

We all looked at her, waiting for more.

“I got a job.” She waited for us to react, but honestly, I think we were too stunned. “I'm working Friday nights from now on.”

The times, they were a-changin'.

CHEYENNE BELLE

I think I was the first one of the Scar Boys to ever do an honest day's work. But I was motivated. I felt like I had to take control of the few things that were actually in my control, you know? And paying Theresa and Agnes back became a priority. It was also something for me to focus on other than all the horrible stuff I was feeling.

Both girls were home when I was getting ready to go to the mall to look for a job, both of them watching my every move as I got dressed.

“What the hell are you doing?” Theresa asked.

It was only a few days after the D & C, and besides what I was feeling emotionally, I was still hurting physically, so I'd taken my meds. The painkillers the doctor had given me—Vicodin—were making
everything
numb, not just my belly. My feet felt numb, my arms felt numb, my tongue felt numb. Best of all, my brain felt numb. I'd taken one half an hour before I'd started trying on clothes, and I was feeling pretty good.

“I'm going out to look for work,” I answered Theresa, my voice something between tired and singsongy, “to pay you guys back. I want to look the part.” I was tossing each piece of clothing I owned onto a pile on my bed. Nothing seemed right.

I like to think that my style is my utter lack of style. Most days, I throw on whatever pair of shorts or pants happens to be lying around, and grab whichever T-shirt—washed or not—is within arm's reach. The only time I ever bother to think about my appearance is at gigs. And even then, my approach to fashion is
casual
with a capital
C
.

For a job, I figured it was different.

Problem was, I didn't own any interview clothes. I mean, I had some old Easter outfits that might still fit, but I didn't think that a frilly white dress with white tights and Mary Janes were going to score me a gig at Sam Goody's.

Luckily, Agnes is petite, too, and she came to the rescue. Sort of.

“Try these.”

“Really?”

It was a magenta skirt and a cream-colored blouse, with a turquoise blazer that had massive shoulder pads. “Yes, really.”

I tried them on. “I look like Jo from
Facts of Life
.”

“Better that than looking like a scary punk rock girl.”

“I am a scary punk rock girl.”

“One, you're not scary, and two, the stores in the mall don't hire scary punk rock girls.”

“Not even the record store?”

“It's the mall, Cheyenne.”

“What do you think?” I asked Theresa. She had been quiet, and even though I don't think she knew any more about this stuff than I did, I figured a second opinion wouldn't hurt.

“I think Mrs. Garrett is going to love it.”

Agnes laughed and I groaned. I don't know why I bothered.

Anyway, I didn't see any other options. I put on the most sensible pair of shoes I owned (the Easter dress Mary Janes), took my bag, checked to make sure I had a pen—someone once told me to always have a pen when you're applying for jobs—and left.

The Cross County Shopping Center isn't really a mall in the way a mall is a mall. For one thing, it's outdoors. There's no enclosed building, no food court, none of the things more modern malls—like the Galleria in White Plains—have. It's just a few intersecting walkways lined with scrubby trees and tacky stores.

It was late afternoon, so all of the high school girls were out shopping. I swear to God, not one of them was taller than five feet, but with their shoes each one was closer to six, especially when you factored in the tower of hair. At least the weather had turned colder, so they were wearing jackets and I didn't have to look at their belly buttons. Between May first and September thirtieth, not one girl in Yonkers ever wore a shirt that covered her belly button. It's like it was a local law or something. I think it was true on Long Island and in New Jersey, too. I don't know why, but belly buttons kind of freak me out. They're weird, you know?

Anyway, my first stop was Sam Goody's. I'd been buying records there for years, so I recognized a lot of the sales staff. Most of them listened to different kinds of music than me—they were more of an arena rock crowd, Journey, Kansas, Starship—but they were usually nice.

I had seen the guy behind the counter a bunch of times. He was tall and thin, with pale skin and hair so blond it was almost white. He looked like a Q-tip.

“Hi,” I said.

“Can I help you?”

“I was wondering if you're hiring?”

“Oh, sweetie,” the Q-tip said, almost laughing. “This place isn't for you.”

“Huh?”

Then, I swear to God, the guy looked me up and down from my head to my toes, taking in the whole package. I felt naked.

And do you know what he said?

“
Facts of Life
doesn't really fit in around here.”

I could've killed Agnes.

“Try the bookstore,” the Q-tip told me.

So I did.

HARBINGER JONES

Cheyenne's announcement at rehearsal that she had a job caught us off guard. I was too stunned to speak, and Johnny just looked dejected. Wait, strike that. He looked rejected. Like Chey getting a job without his knowledge was a personal affront. Only Richie spoke.

“Fucking A, short stuff. What're you gonna be doing?”

She explained that she was going to be working at the bookstore in Cross County Shopping Center.

I knew that store well.

When I was younger and going through the long and tortured recovery from the lightning strike, books became some of my best friends.

I remember this one day, I was sitting in the science-fiction section reading a Robert Heinlein book, when all of a sudden there was a big commotion coming from the other side of the stacks. I must've been twelve and had convinced my mom it was okay to leave me there while she went shopping at Gimbels.

The bookstore was usually a quiet place, library quiet, so the noise was startling. My first reaction was to shrink and hide, to make myself disappear. The more raucous something was, the more I wanted to avoid being seen. Commotions almost never ended well for me.

But this was a happy noise; I ignored my inner voice and peered around the corner.

A man in priest's clothes stood in the center of a small entourage as the store manager—a guy named Guy—was setting up a table for a book signing. I'd only ever seen a signing here once before, and almost no one came. Already, seven or eight people were on line for this priest.

Only, he wasn't a priest. He was some kind of radio disc jockey who had written an autobiography and was dressing as a priest as a kind of gimmick. I must've stepped all the way out of the science-fiction section without realizing it, because the disc jockey looked straight at me and we locked eyes. For a minute I didn't know which way this was going to go.

“I'd hate to see the other guy,” he said. Then his gang—and to me, they'd gone from being an entourage to a gang—turned and looked at me. Their audible gasps were drowned out by their laughter at their boss's incredible wit. I turned on my heel and went back to the books, none of which seemed to want to judge me. I'd been through enough episodes like that in my life to let it wash over me. I picked up the Heinlein book—I think it was
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
—and started reading again.

A few minutes later, as more and more fans arrived for the signing and the noise from the other side of the bookcases grew, a woman, one of the DJ's gang, poked her head around the corner and found me.

“Hey, kid,” she said. I looked up, waiting for the punch line. “He didn't mean anything by it. That kind of humor is just part of his act.”

That kind of humor?
I wanted to ask her why people thought it was funny to cut someone else down. Why they thought it was okay to put someone in a situation where they had to defend themselves when there was no possible way of actually doing so. Why cruelty was so fucking hilarious.

But I didn't. I wasn't wired to ask those questions. Besides, I knew the answers. People act like that to make themselves feel superior. People suck.

“So,” the woman continued, “he wants you to have this.” It was a signed copy of the disc jockey's book. She smiled as she handed it to me. I took it, and she walked away without another word. Part of me wanted to forgive the guy and to embrace and cherish that book. That's what I always did. I made excuses for people, found reasons for their behavior. But this was different; it was a kind of turning point for me. It's the moment where I think I finally got smart enough to be jaded.

I'll bet any amount of money that the priest-disc-jockey douche bag had no idea that woman had given me the signed book. She was doing damage control. I moved a few books on the shelf in front of me and shoved the signed copy all the way to the back. It's probably still sitting there today.

CHEYENNE BELLE

I wasn't the biggest reader in the world, but I did like books. I went through a phase when I was fourteen when I read everything I could by V. C. Andrews. It was horror-romance stuff. You can eat it like candy.

Since then the only things I'd read were the books assigned in my high school English classes and maybe one or two more books during the summer.

Anyway, the bookstore had been at the mall for a long time, and I'd been there before, but I never really paid attention.

Once I started working there, I fell in love with the place—well, parts of it anyway. The corporation that ran the store treated books and employees like hammers and nails. Just like everything else in the grown-up world, businesspeople had found a way to suck the life out of something fun. I mean, how the hell do you suck the life out of books?

But maybe some of that was on me, too. I was in a really crappy place after the miscarriage, and everything in the world seemed a bit off. The hardest part was how completely alone I felt. I used to pride myself on that, on my ability to be alone. For years, I'd been projecting this whole tough-chick image onto the world, and now it was breaking down.

If I had just talked to Johnny or Harry, or even talked more to Richie, maybe I would've felt better. Instead, I kept my secrets locked up inside, and they were eating me alive. But what was I supposed to do? It's not like my bandmates were rallying around me. Even something as stupid and small as me getting the job at the bookstore caused all this tension—Johnny looked hurt, Harry looked like he didn't care, and Richie just took it in stride. Where were the high-fives? Where were the whoops and hollers and “Way to go, Chey”?