Strange Girl (12 page)

It was after midnight when we went up to my bedroom. Aja sat on the edge of my bed and I picked up my acoustic guitar and took a seat beside her and began to strum a few chords. The instrument was out of tune but I remedied that fast enough. Since I was a kid and had first picked up a guitar I’d been able to tune it automatically. It wasn’t bragging to say I could hear notes, precise notes, much clearer than your average person.

“What do you want to hear?” I asked.

“A new song,” she said.

“All my new material is rough.”

“No. Play something brand-new.”

“I don’t know . . .”

“You can do it. Just . . . let it find you.”

“Let it find me?”

She nodded. “Let your muse find it for you.”

Aja sounded so confident that I could do what she was suggesting I didn’t have the heart to tell her I didn’t think my muse was actually alive and on call. Like I often did when I was alone, I strummed a few minor chords—E, A, D, G—switching them around randomly before I began to play individual notes in the same chord structures.

For a while I just let the hypnotic flavor of the chords ease over me. I love the sound of the guitar; I love to just randomly pick at the strings. This time, however, after ten minutes or so, I began to feel a soothing heat inside. It seemed to radiate from my gut and rise up and flow through my fingers. I noticed I’d begun to play faster, my fingers flying between the frets. It was odd but I felt as if I’d touched something special and if I just reached a little farther, a little harder, I’d know what it was and I’d be able to play it.

Then I had it, a brand-new melody. I began to hum along with it, occasionally throwing in a line now and then. I was far from having a complete song but I knew I’d stumbled onto something.

I began to sing aloud. . . .

“Strange girl

Where did you come from?

Where have you been?

Strange one

You’re so full of secrets

I can’t see within

Strange girl

You move so softly

Across the stage

My eyes can’t leave you

I’m hiding backstage

You’re a closed book

I can’t read a page

I suddenly stopped, feeling embarrassed. “God, I’m not sure if that worked. The words I mean. But the melody—there’s something there. What do you think?”

“I liked the words. I liked them a lot.”

I chuckled. “That’s because you’re not a songwriter. I was just throwing out lines. That’s how I compose songs. I’ll throw out a dozen lines and if I’m lucky I keep one.”

Aja was curious. “What lines would you keep tonight?”

“Well, maybe the first handful. They might work as a chorus. Maybe a few others.”

“Maybe all of them?”

“No way.”

“Why not?” she asked.

I hesitated. I wanted to tell her that the words made me think of her too much. That she, and not my muse, had inspired them. But there was no way I was going to tell any girl something like that on a first date.

Aja appeared to sense my shyness and put her hand on my knee. “You’re worried you won’t succeed. But you will.”

The certainty in her voice, it was odd, it seemed to vibrate a chord deep inside.

“How can you be so sure?” I said.

Squeezing my knee, Aja stared at me with her big, brown eyes. “It will be okay, Fred,” she said.

“You didn’t answer my question. How can you be so sure?”

“The Big Person.”

I smiled. “He told you?”

“Yes.”

She kissed me then, or else I kissed her. I honestly don’t know who made the first move. It wasn’t a brief kiss, nor was it long; somehow it was timeless. The next thing I knew we were lying on my bed. I was stroking her hair and running my hand over her shoulder and down the side of her hip and leg. And Aja was touching my face and the feel of her fingers—there was something extraordinary about them.

Her touch was not merely loving. I felt as if her hands were actually
made
out of love. I knew that was crazy, yet it felt so real. I’d like to say that I felt as if I was falling in love with her right then but the love I felt coming from her—it seemed so much bigger than anything a normal human heart could conjure up. It was like a tidal wave of caring, of intimacy—of something so big that perhaps only a Big Person could really understand it. All I knew for sure was that I’d never met anyone even remotely like Aja.

Then my phone rang. It rang and rang and I was forced to answer it. The screen on my cell said it was Dale. He wouldn’t call this late unless it was important. I propped myself up on the bed with my elbow.

“Hello?” I mumbled.

“Fred, it’s Dale. We have a problem.”

“We do?” I said. He sounded bad.

“It’s Mike. When you canceled practice he got restless. He drove over to Balen. I tried to stop him but he said he had some business to take care of. I knew it could be nothing good. Turns out he went to pick up five pounds of pot at the home of some big dealer. Someone must have tipped off the cops. He was followed by the police, and when he was inside the dealer’s house, completing the deal, the cops hit the place. There was a shooting. Mike didn’t get hit with a bullet but he got hit over the head hard. I don’t know the full story, only what the cops told me. The dealer might have struck Mike, thinking he’d set him up, or else Mike might have gotten into a fight with the cops. You know how he gets when he’s cornered. They might have cracked him over the head with a baton. But his injury—it’s serious. I spoke to the emergency doctor just before Mike was wheeled into surgery. He told me there could be brain damage.” Dale started crying. “Fred, I don’t know what to do. The doctor said I have to prepare myself for the worst.”

“Are you at Balen Memorial?” I asked. Balen had a decent hospital, good doctors. I assumed they’d called in their main neurosurgeon. The guy was famous in our part of the country.

“Yeah. I’m on the third floor. Please, can you come? You’ve got to come, I don’t know if I can take this.”

“Of course I’ll come. I’ll leave now. Hang tight. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Dale was crying. “I don’t think so.”

I hung up the phone. Aja was staring at me; she didn’t ask anything. I assumed she’d heard enough to know Mike was badly hurt. I felt a pain in the center of my own chest. It felt odd after all the joy I’d felt only seconds ago. I sighed heavily.

“I should take you home,” I said.

Aja shook her head. “I’ll go with you to the hospital.”

“Are you sure? I’ll probably be there all night.”

“I’m sure.”

We drove to the hospital in silence. It was ironic that my parents were in Balen that very night. I considered calling them but what was the point? My mother would just get upset and pace miserably in the waiting room. She had known Mike since we were in kindergarten. And I couldn’t call Mike’s mother, not yet. I had my reasons.

But I considered calling Janet. I knew she could comfort Dale better than I could. I also knew she’d want me to call her. But something held me back. I told myself it was best to wait and see how serious Mike’s condition was before dragging everyone out of bed. The truth was I didn’t know what I was doing.

Balen Memorial was a five-story cube. Whoever had designed it had been lacking in imagination. Yet the building was relatively new and the hospital had a good reputation. Considering where we lived in South Dakota, Mike had ended up in probably the best facility within three hundred miles.

We found Dale on the third floor in the surgical waiting room. He was alone; he looked so frail. He burst into tears when Aja and I arrived. He hugged us both and I could feel him trembling in my arms. He kept thanking us for coming; I finally had to tell him to stop it.

“Have you heard any updates from the nurses?” I asked.

He nodded weakly. “A nurse came out. She said Mike’s skull was swelling inside and that the doctor—Dr. Rosen—had to drill a hole to relieve the pressure. But she warned me that that was just the beginning. The blow—it sent tiny fragments of bone into Mike’s brain. The nurse said that Dr. Rosen is trying to take them all out before he closes him back up.”

Doctor Albert Rosen was the famous neurosurgeon I’d heard about. That was the good news. But the rest of what Dale told us made me feel sick to my stomach. Holes in Mike’s head. Bits of his skull in his brain. It felt so unreal; like a nightmare.

Yet, ironically, none of what I heard surprised me. It was as if a part of me had waited for years to get this exact call in the middle of the night. Mike’s crazy drinking, the wild crowd he ran with when he was out of our sight, his explosive temper . . .

It had made this night all but inevitable.

Still holding on to Dale’s hand, I collapsed into a chair, with Aja on the opposite side, her head resting on my shoulder. It was a quarter till two in the morning. There was nothing to do but wait. The nurse had warned Dale the surgery could take all night, maybe longer.

Around three in the morning Aja seemed to drop off to sleep. Her breathing became soft and regular; she wasn’t snoring but she was close. Dale, too, to my surprise, blacked out, his head lying back against the wall. I was glad; he needed a few hours of peace. His pale face looked so weary. I worried if Mike died that Dale wouldn’t make it. Dale loved his friend that much; Mike was the center of his life. And Mike didn’t even know.

What a messed-up world, I thought.

At six in the morning a nurse came out and spoke to us. The news was all bad. Mike had
major
swelling of the brain; the fact his head was open due to the ongoing surgery was the only thing that was keeping his gray matter from pressing against his skull. Plus the doctor kept finding more fragments of bone; he’d already removed a dozen. I still didn’t know what Mike had been hit with or who had hit him. The nurse certainly didn’t know. She told us to try to be patient. When she left, Dale collapsed in his chair, sobbing.

“It’s no good! It’s no good!” he cried. “Even if he lives he’ll never be the same.”

Sitting beside him, I pulled Dale close. “You don’t know that. He’s got a brilliant surgeon working on him. And the brain is an amazing organ. Why, some people get in car wrecks and fall into comas for a year and are ten times worse off than Mike. Then, out of the blue they wake up and a few months later they’re out playing baseball. You have to keep a positive attitude.”

Dale nodded miserably. “I’m sorry, I know you’re right. I just feel . . . I just feel like it’s going to turn out bad. I don’t know why.”

There was a question I had put off asking Dale.

“Don’t you think it’s time we called his mother?” I asked.

Dale cringed. “No. Don’t, Fred, let’s wait. Please.”

On the surface Dale’s reaction might have appeared weird. But since Mike’s father had died when Mike was only five, Mrs. Garcia had never been right in the head. It was not as if she went around doing crazy stuff but she was usually disengaged from the world and seldom answered questions beyond saying yes or no. Most people in town assumed she’d had a nervous breakdown when her husband died—one she’d never recovered from. Dale believed, as I did, that the only thing that kept her alive was her son.

I’d discovered that the hospital had called Dale because they’d checked Mike’s cell and had seen Dale listed first in Mike’s saved numbers.

I patted Dale’s hand. “We’ll wait.”

But I felt I’d waited long enough when it came to Janet. I called her and told her the bad news. She swore at me for having left her in the dark so long but I could tell it was a defense mechanism. She was badly shaken. She said she’d come right away.

“Have Bo drive you,” I said.

“I’ll be fine.”

“No. Listen to me. Call Shelly. You two should drive together.”

She hesitated. “All right, we’ll see you soon.”

Time crept by. The large round clock on the wall above us reached seven o’clock. Dale stood and went off to find some coffee. Aja continued to rest with her head on my shoulder. She appeared to have gone back to sleep. It was only then that I realized she hadn’t called her aunt or Bart to let them know where she was. Knowing her unreliable history when it came to checking in, I took it upon myself to call her house.

Bart answered. “Hello?”

“Hi, Bart, this is Fred. Aja’s with me and she’s fine. We’re in Balen. A friend of mine was in a serious accident. He’s in surgery now. I tried to take Aja home but she insisted on coming to the hospital with me. I hope that’s okay.”

Bart didn’t immediately say it was fine like I thought he would. Instead, he was quiet a long time. “Is your friend in danger of dying?” he asked.

“It’s serious. He’s suffered major brain trauma. He’s been on the operating table all night.”

“Then you must listen to me. Do not let Aja anywhere near your friend. Even if it’s just to see him for a few minutes in the recovery room. Don’t take her with you if you go see him. In fact, it would be better if you took Aja home right now. She shouldn’t be at a hospital.”

Aja continued to breathe deeply on my shoulder. I spoke softly. “I don’t understand. You’re acting like my friend can hurt her.”

“He
can
hurt her. You must trust me on this. Take her home now.”

“I don’t think she’d go. She insisted on coming with me. You know how stubborn she is.”

Bart paused. “She told you she had to be there?”

“In so many words, yeah.”

He sighed. “Then let her stay. But swear to me, even if she insists, that you won’t let her get near your friend.”

“Why not?”

“I told you why not. He’ll hurt her. He might even kill her.”

“How?” I asked.

“I can’t tell you how. You have to take my word for it. You know I’ve been with Aja a long time. Just trust that I know what I’m talking about. Now swear to me you’ll do what I said.”