Scar Girl (3 page)

They called my mom down to the school. She didn't appreciate it either.

Anyway, I told the priest a friend of mine was pregnant. (No way was I going to tell him the truth).

He said exactly what you'd expect a priest to say. “This is very serious. Has your friend told her parents?”

“No,” I answered. “She doesn't have parents.”

“Everyone has parents, my child.” I never liked that, priests saying things like
my child
. I can't possibly be his child because he can't possibly have children, right? Though I suppose if I really believed that I wouldn't have been calling him Father, which I was.

“I mean, they're dead, Father.”

“I see. Does she go to school here?”

“I'd rather not say.”

“I understand that you want to protect your friend, but she needs help. She needs counseling.”

I was quiet for a moment. I knew what I wanted to say but was having trouble working up the nerve. I have to give the man credit because he broke the silence with the question I needed to ask.

“Is this friend of yours considering having an abortion?”

“Yes, Father.” I whispered my answer and wasn't even sure if he'd heard me.

“Abortion seems like an easy way out,” he said, “but in life there are no easy ways out, my child.”

I was surprised at how gentle he was being. I went in expecting him to shove a photo of a fetus or something through that little hole, but instead he was sort of comforting.

“But isn't she too young to have children?” I asked.

There was a long pause before he answered. I don't know if I was lucky or cursed to get the most thoughtful priest in the whole tristate area.

“Yes, yes, she is.”

“Then shouldn't she end her pregnancy?”

“I think you know that abortion is a sin.”

“Why?”

I could almost hear him wringing his hands. I felt sorry for the guy. He showed up at work expecting to hear the inane gossip of little girls and instead wound up with a real whopper of a problem dumped in his lap.

“It's murder.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I do.”

“But I know girls who've had abortions, and they didn't burst into flames or anything. They seemed happier.”

“A short-term reward in this life is no reward in the next.” Priests were always saying stuff like that, and that's usually where they lost me.

“So my friend will go to hell, is that what you're saying?”

“This is not a sin that a few Hail Marys and Our Fathers will simply erase. It will haunt her for the rest of her days.”

I don't remember the rest of the conversation, but I know I left pretty soon after his line about being haunted for the rest of my days. I was more confused than ever.

I tried to put it out of my mind, like a homework assignment I knew I was blowing off—I'm pretty good at keeping things in my life separate when I need to—and did the only thing I could think to do. I threw myself back into the band. Back into Johnny.

HARBINGER JONES

Because we were playing music again, all that other crap—my relationship with Johnny, my feelings for Chey—was pushed into the background, like hum, scratches, and static on a record. It's there, but soft enough that the music drowns it out. You still hear it between tracks, but only for a second.

Have you ever heard of something called signal-to-noise ratio? It's a term used by audiophiles. The wires that go from your turntable and your stereo to your speakers carry a signal that your speakers convert into sound. But the same wires are also loaded with extra noise generated by all those electrical components working at what they do. Your stereo and speakers filter most of it out. The more noise, the worse the signal and the worse the sound. Your goal in audio electronics is a lot of signal and very little noise.

The signal-to-noise ratio in my life at the end of that summer was really pretty good. The noise was still there, but having made peace with Johnny and having found a way to deal with my own feelings about Cheyenne, it was overwhelmed by signal.

Like I said, we were playing music again, and, really, that was all that mattered.

RICHIE MCGILL

I knew about the whole Harry, Johnny, Cheyenne love-triangle thing. I stayed away from that shit like it was the bubonic plague. I was just glad the band was back together. It was pretty much the only thing I had going for me.

I mean, skateboarding was fun, but it wasn't the same. The rush I get playing on stage is the reason I've never done drugs. From the first time Johnny got us together, way back in the seventh grade, and we played a few holiday parties, I was hooked. Playing music, when it works, is like sex. Just without all the mess. I knew nothing else could ever feel that good, so why bother?

CHEYENNE BELLE

I was able to keep the pregnancy a secret. Other than my nonexistent boobs, which had suddenly started to exist, I wasn't really showing. I got good at hiding the sickness, too, like I was bulimic or anorexic or something. It's kind of ironic that I was following in my sister's footsteps. Hiding a pregnancy, I mean.

Anyway, I thought about the baby all the time when I was alone. And I was so desperate to tell Johnny that I thought my head would explode. I just didn't know how.

I'd been teaching myself a little guitar—once you know how to play the bass, it's a lot easier to learn how to the play guitar—so I tried writing a song about it. I thought it would be cool to tell Johnny with a song. Sort of romantic, you know?

It was called “Lullaby.”

Tell me,

What's that in my belly

Beneath the cat?

I am making us a lullaby.

Tell me,

Can you feel this strange thing in my belly?

Can you feel the change?

I'm too stunned to even cry.

Does it have a name?

Is it a boy or a girl?

Will it be president?

Will it change the world?

Will it be bad

Or will it be good?

Will it be loved

Or misunderstood?

Will it be rich

Or will it be poor?

Whatever it is,

I'm gonna love it forevermore.

Because you're our little lullaby.

There's more, but you get the idea.

I wanted so badly to play it for Johnny, but it just never felt like the right time, you know? So the secret stayed with me.

HARBINGER JONES

The other thing going on at the end of that summer was figuring out how to keep my parents at bay. To be fair, they were giving me space, but I knew it wouldn't last, especially with my dad.

I was already back on Dr. Kenny's couch at my parents' insistence—Dr. Kenny had been my shrink ever since I was eight years old, since right after the lightning strike—and it was only a matter of time before they started to push on other things, too. I mean, I was eighteen, I wasn't enrolled in college, and I didn't have a job. Johnny's accident and my reaction to it bought me a little time, but sooner or later they were going to expect something more of me than eating their food, lying on their couch, watching their TV, and using their basement to play music.

But like everything else in my life, I kicked the can down the road. I figured I'd ride it as long as I could.

CHEYENNE BELLE

This was all happening at the same time the band started jamming again.

“Harry,” Johnny said at one of our first rehearsals after Georgia, “you should be singing some of our songs.”

“What? No.”

I had told Johnny about Harry's incredible night as our front man at the keg party in Athens.

“Seriously, dude, we're called the Scar Boys, not the Amputee Boys. You and I should share the mic. You sing some of the songs, I'll sing some of the songs.”

Harry fought it at first, but in the end he agreed. I could tell it made him really happy, too.

I honestly think Johnny figured getting Harry, our original “scar boy,” up front would help the band. But there was something else, too. Johnny was tired. Really tired. He was going to rehab four times a week, and it was taking a toll.

He let me come with him once and I was surprised at how simple it was. I expected to see medieval torture devices clipped to his leg while he learned how to walk. Instead, it was just a plastic leg with a foam foot that he would practice walking on for about an hour. The leg, Johnny said, was temporary.

“They don't give you your permanent leg until you're fully healed,” he told me. “They have to wait until the stump is done morphing and changing shape before they can create a mold to fit the prosthesis.”

It's weird how comfortable I got with words like
stump
and
prosthesis
. It's like they'd always been part of my vocabulary, part of my life.

Johnny had been lucky . . . well, as lucky as you can be when you have your leg chopped off. The break was clean, and his skin was intact. Apparently, what happens to your skin when you lose a limb is really important. Johnny didn't need any skin grafts, which was good. Plus, because of the way the break happened, the surgery was pretty straightforward. It was really easy for them to fit him for a new leg.

Even in the worst of times, the best things still happened to Johnny McKenna.

The day I went with him to rehab, I saw all sorts of other amputees in much worse shape than Johnny. There was one girl with a leg that was so badly scarred that I wondered what kind of accident she'd been in. It made me think of Harry.

Johnny's recovery seemed easier than I would've guessed. He was a fast learner, and after six weeks his rehab went from four to two times a week, and after three months he was pretty much done. You could barely tell he had a limp.

He'd been all set to go to Syracuse on a track-and-field scholarship before the accident, and it was really important to him to learn how to run with his new leg. Johnny probably had some secret dream that he'd be the first amputee to win a track-and-field medal at the Olympics, and I don't mean the Special Olympics.

Anyway, even though the rehab was going really well, it was still a strain for him to spend a lot of time on his fake leg. His stump would get blisters if he put pressure on it for too long, so standing in front of a microphone for two hours during rehearsals wasn't really in the cards. He never actually told me that, but I could tell.

Since he couldn't stand, do you know what Johnny did instead?

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.