Previous Chapter:

SINISTER

4.

When my parents were together, we moved around a lot. I remember the smell of fresh paint on moving day and watching my father’s friends carry our couch through an unfamiliar doorway during a snow storm. For the past eight years my mom and I lived in a two story townhouse. Our street was somewhere between the mansions the wealthy people owned and a neighborhood of run-down, single-story houses. Although some of my classmates lived in those gigantic houses, I’d found no friends among the rich. My peers, the people I connected with, scraped by in the dilapidated houses that never grew lawns.

I parked on the street behind my mom’s Honda and headed towards my front door. Then I remembered Garren’s guitar. A promise is a promise, especially to one’s weirdo best friend. The book had moved around during the drive, ending up in the trunk’s far left corner. I bowed and reached for it and, as I grabbed it, I saw that the case’s latches weren’t gone after all. The silver latches were in place, locked and keeping the case’s lid shut.

For a second I wondered why CJ had carried it in both arms and why I’d thought the latches were missing when I’d seen it on the floor. I knew I’d seen the frayed edges in the material where the hinges used to be. Then I realized I was shuddering and backed away from the car. I raised my shoulders up and down, ridding myself of the cold shakes. The book was in my left hand. I raised it and peeled open the cover:

Music Notes and Practice Journal !!

The words were handwritten in black pencil and underlined two times. The title had no date. The letters had faded some, but they stood out enough on the yellowed pages to be read. I flipped forward:

Decay – two types;

1. Impulsive

2. Sustained

His penmanship was terrible; each word a wide looping scrawl of letters that didn’t connect where they were supposed to. My senior English teacher had called my handwriting, “…That of a resentful twelve year old.” I wondered if all musicians made wretched letters.

Intervals – Harmonic and Melodic

Beware the Diabolus in Musica!!!

A third of the journal contained notes on music terminology and theory, all things I knew. The writing was no doubt a boy’s and after his notes he’d practiced making bass and treble clefs, quarter notes and eighth notes. His musical writing was, like my own, sharper than his cursive. I thumbed to the end of the book. The last several pages were missing. The margin was shredded, like someone had torn the pages out fast. I flipped backwards one page.

I am he

He is me

We are we

Must have been the start of a bad song, I thought. I closed the book and stepped back to the guitar, half-expecting the latches to be gone again. They were still in place, two shining pieces of unscratched chrome on the left and right sides. They were new. Garren had put the guitar in the case and carried it out of the store in both arms, handling it just like CJ had done. He’d done that because the latches had been gone. Or maybe we’d both been mistaken? I grabbed the case by its handle and jerked it out of my trunk, not really caring if it fell open and let the guitar drop to the pavement.

* * *

“I’m home,” I said, heading through the living room to the stairs.

“Did you find a guitar for Garren?”

“Sort of,” I yelled.

My mom leaned around the corner. “Is that it?” I had an excellent mother. Her brown face and dark eyes were the biggest force of my upbringing. Unlike most kids, I knew what a great parent I had. She looked at the case in my hand.

“Yeah,” I said and took the stairs to my room.

I set the thing on my bed and looked at the latches again. They were definitely new. My eyes were playing tricks on me. It must have been the stress of finals and graduation. My adult life began in days. I was already accepted to the University of Colorado, slated to be a business major. My mom had cried when I showed her the letter. She didn’t know that the last thing I wanted to do was study business at CU. I had to come clean and I had to get it done quick because time was running out.

“So let’s see.”

My mom stood in my doorway. She was wearing clothes for an event, chic black dress and heels. I’d towered over her since junior high school and the heels didn’t make any difference.

“It’s a long story.” I pressed the latches with my thumbs. They clicked and I raised the lid. Then a red wasp drifted upward from the guitar case. It hovered a foot or so above the guitar, then rose into the air as if evacuating.

I cried out and back-stepped away from the guitar.

“Oh, Anthony.”

The red wasp landed on my wall and crawled in a semi-circle, wings fluttering, turning around to size us up.

“Six feet tall and still afraid of bugs,” my mom said.

“It’s a wasp.”

“Are you going to kill it?”

I didn’t answer. She moved into my room, grabbed one of my shoes from the floor and slapped the wall with it, turning the insect into a smudge.

“Be sure you clean that up with tissue paper.”

“I will.”

I hated all bugs. If it crawled and wore its skeleton on the outside, I loathed it. Wasps, on the other hand, I feared.

“Why such an old one, you couldn’t find him anything newer? How much was that?”

“He wanted it,” I said. “It didn’t cost anything. The guy felt sorry for him and let him have it.”

“I’m glad he didn’t spend money. A guitar like that can’t be worth very much.”

“You’re going somewhere tonight?”

“Benefit dinner with David,” she said, “for the school.”

My mom’s official title was Assistant to the Headmaster. David was one of the school’s founders and, wouldn’t you know it, the Headmaster. Because of my mom’s job, Saint Michael’s reduced my tuition. It was probably no coincidence that my tuition was reduced to the exact dollar amount my dad paid in monthly child support.

“I made you pork chops. Warm them up when you’re ready.”

“Okay.”

My mom always had something to do for the school; a fund raiser, a church service, organizing parent teacher night. Before she was with David, it had been tasks like supervising the carpet cleaners or the exterminators. When I was little, I’d sometimes gone with her and spent my evenings doing homework in the teacher’s lounge. I’d felt privileged back then, just a boy and already granted access to a place of grown-ups, one of the sanctuaries they guarded and locked all other kids out of. As I got older, it just felt nerd-ish and pathetic. I never told her. She picked up on it by herself and began leaving me at home, unsupervised, for longer and longer periods of time.

She didn’t have anything to worry about, really. Manitou had kept it’s small town feel even as Colorado Springs became more like Denver and I was an obedient boy, at least as far as my mom knew.

“I’ll probably stay at David’s.”

“Probably or will.”

“Probably always means will.”

She’d been accompanying David to school functions since I was a sophomore. When I was a junior, he’d started coming to dinner. Now he was a regular fixture in my house. She spent the night with him quite a lot. It was weird sometimes, thinking of my mom as part of a couple that dated and laughed together and did all kinds of naughtiness. It was funny, too, that they both worked for an organization that mandated abstinence without marriage. But whatever… Mom had crept David into my life through small steady steps and he’d become a fixture before I’d realized it. So I didn’t really mind.

“Have fun.”

“One more thing,” she said. “Your dad called again. He’s still waiting for you to call him back.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ll try to get a hold of him tonight.”

“He’s coming for your graduation.”

“That’s good.”

“By himself,” she added.

“That’s even better.”

She reached out to kiss me and I leaned down to let her.

“Call him tonight,” she said, “and always call him when you say you’re going to. It shows respect.”

“I know.”

“And take a shower, sweetie, you smell like Garren’s cigarettes.”

Next Chapter: