The Scar Boys (19 page)

“And that brings us to the here and now, Dr. K,” I said near the end of my third visit.

Dr. Kenny had stayed on the edge of his chair through my whole narrative, only interrupting when he needed to ask a question or clarify a point. He looked at me for a long moment when I finished, then sat back, took off his glasses, cleaned them, put them back on, and then looked at me some more. I knew this trick. He was trying to get me to say the one thing I wasn’t saying. It almost always worked. But not this time. I really didn’t know what the one thing was.

Then Dr. Kenny surprised me. Strike that. He blew me right out of the god damn water.

“You know, Harry,” he said, “sometimes you can be such a schmuck.”

The only time Dr. Kenny had ever said anything remotely like this to me was when I was twelve years old. For something like our fifth straight session I was coming in with schoolyard bruises to show him, visible reminders that socially I was lower than a pariah and only barely higher than a corpse. In fact, that’s exactly what I told Dr. Kenny.

“Socially I’m lower than a pariah and only barely higher than a corpse.”

I was kind of pleased with that line. I’d thought of it earlier in the week and had been waiting for my session with Dr. Kenny to use it. Apparently, it didn’t play very well.

“Dammit, Harry,” he’d said. Dr. Kenny never swore with me. “Don’t you ever stand up for yourself?”

I was stunned into complete silence. Dr. Kenny ran his hands through the shaggy mop on his head and immediately apologized. I’m not sure what prompted him to go so far off his script. Was he stressed over stuff in his personal life? Problems with another patient? Had he just had enough of me? Whatever it was, it hurt. It took another two sessions to coax me back out of my shell.

But calling me a “schmuck” was different. I could tell Dr. Kenny was using the expression the same way he might use it with his own friends. I could also tell there would be no apology.

“Seriously,” he continued, “just listen to yourself.”

“What?” I wanted to sound indignant, but I don’t think I pulled it off.

“You’ve been playing guitar in a rock band, you have friends, you kissed a girl, you’ve been traveling, you put out your own record. Most kids would give their big toe to live the life you’re living.”

“They can have it,” I said almost reflexively.

Dr. Kenny rolled his eyes in exasperation. I’m not sure why I wasn’t hearing Dr. Kenny. Whether it was a choice or not, I really couldn’t say. He shook his head and decided to change tactics.

“How long have you been home now?” he asked.

“I dunno, about a month, I guess.”

“And you haven’t tried to talk to Johnny or Cheyenne?”

“No,” I said to my shoes. “They hate me.”

“How do you know that?”

“Haven’t you been listening? Because the last time I saw Johnny we got in a fight and I hit him in the face.” I’d told Kenny about my last encounter with Johnny, but hadn’t used the word “slapped.” I was still too embarrassed. “And now he only has one leg. And because I’m sure Cheyenne knows all about it, too. And because they both think it’s my fault.”

“How can you possibly know that?” I shrugged my shoulders. “Have you even talked to Richie?”

“No.”

“Why?”

I shrugged again.

“And you’re not playing your guitar?”

I shook my head.

“Don’t you see?” There was such anguish in his voice that I looked up. “You’re shutting yourself off from all the things—maybe the only things—that can help you move past this. You need to talk to Johnny and Cheyenne, Harry. And for fuck’s sake, pick up your god damn guitar.”

I started to protest, but Dr. Kenny waved me away in disgust. “Time’s up.”

Stunned into disbelief, I shuffled out of his office.

When I got home that afternoon, I opened my guitar case and stared at my Strat. It was a sleek guitar with an all-black body, a black pick guard, and a maple neck and fret board. I’d covered the beast with stickers acquired at various gigs—a skull and crossbones, Scooby-Doo, The Clash—which were already starting to peel and flake. There was a deep gouge next to the volume pot, the injury a reminder of smashing the guitar into Richie’s ride cymbal on stage at the Bitter End. The mark was a badge of honor.

I wanted to pick the guitar up, but something was stopping me. It was like touching it would rip a hole in the fabric of space and time and catapult me backward to a place I didn’t want to be. I closed the case and used my foot to nudge the whole thing under my bed. Like it was diseased.

Even though I couldn’t bring myself to play the guitar,
I knew Dr. Kenny was right. I was being a real dick. Everything I’d wanted had been laid at my feet, and all I’d ever done was complain and feel sorry for myself. Maybe that’s the way I was wired and I couldn’t do anything else. But maybe I could.

I decided to call Richie.

“Dude!” he answered when he heard my voice. “Where the fuck you been?”

“Just kind of hanging around,” I said. “How’re you doing?”

Richie spent the next ten minutes describing every last detail of his new skateboard—its length, the kind of wheels it had, the paisley pattern on its underside—as well as the time he’d spent hanging out with the local skate punks and riding an improvised pipe in Valhalla. Turns out he’d been bit by the skateboarding bug when we were in Athens and couldn’t shake it.

“You playing drums?” I asked, when he finished.

‘Yeah, of course. That and killing time until school starts.”

“I’m kind of jealous you get to go back to high school.”

Richie laughed. “You hated that place.”

“Yeah, well, the devil you know.”

We made a plan to get together that coming weekend and were about to hang up when Richie asked, “So have you been to see Johnny yet?”

“No,” I said, “I’m pretty sure he won’t want to see me.”

“I don’t know, Harry,” he answered. “The dude’s in pretty bad shape. He wound up not going up to Syracuse. He’s talking like he’s never gonna go.”

I wasn’t surprised to hear that. Trauma is great at changing plans.

“A visit might do him good,” Richie added.

Not knowing what else to say, I muttered, “Okay,” and we said good-bye.

I knew that the growing chorus—Richie’s voice now added to Dr. Kenny’s and to my parents’—was right, that I really did need to go see Johnny. Problem is, I didn’t want to. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that I was scared, that I felt responsible for everything that’d happened. But I wasn’t a genius (and even though I know admitting this won’t help me get into your college, I can tell you that I’m still not a genius), and I can be thick as molasses when I want to. So if you had asked me back then, I would’ve told you that I didn’t want to see Johnny because I didn’t care about him.
Not
because I was afraid.

Cheyenne was a different story. I was definitely afraid of seeing her. I didn’t want to let the universe taint the memory of our kiss or of the gig at the fund-raiser. They were the only things holding me together since we’d left Athens, and I was wrapping them in a protective cocoon. But the universe, as I seem destined to learn again and again, has a funny way of changing the story.

The day after talking to Richie I decided to go for a walk. A long walk. A walk like the one I took that night in Athens.

I moved with the energy of an over-wound toy and did everything I could to think about nothing. I tried counting states and listing presidents. I went through the periodic table and Triple Crown winners (baseball
and
horse racing). I calculated that with sixty-two years left (if I made my life expectancy), I had a mere fifteen presidential elections, Olympics, or World Cups left to enjoy; only seven hundred and fifty full moons to admire; just over three thousand two hundred
New York Times
Sunday crossword puzzles to attempt; less than twenty-three thousand mornings to open my eyes; and fewer than two billion beats left in my heart, a large but horrifyingly finite number. I was starting to freak myself out, so I shifted gears and listed every Academy Award Best Picture nominee in reverse chronological order. (The fact that
Chariots of Fire
beat out
Raiders of the Lost Ark
is still one of the great crimes of the twentieth century.) By the time I got to
Mutiny on the Bounty
(1935) I’d reached a small lake on the Yonkers-Bronxville border and I had started to calm down.

The lake was a three-quarter-mile long oval ringed by a dirt path, and it was one of my favorite places to go and think. The north end was marked by a grass field that butted up against a residential street, the south end by a footbridge that crossed from one side to the other at the narrowest point. That’s where I stumbled on Cheyenne.

She was standing on the footbridge, staring into the small waterfall that tumbled out of the lake and into a narrow stream. The white foam of water was quickly calming itself for the journey into the heart of Bronxville.

I had my head down, mumbling the names of long-forgotten movies, when I rounded a corner and stepped onto the bridge. I looked up and saw Cheyenne, but she didn’t see me.

Something about her had changed. It was like all the muscles in her face had lost their tension, giving her a pronounced droop.

I froze. My first instinct was to turn and run, and I almost did. But something made me stay. I watched her for a minute and then cleared my throat.

Chey didn’t turn her head, but her face got that look people’s faces get when they’re really annoyed. Like when you’re in a bad mood because you just know that your English teacher is going to give you a surprise quiz on the book you didn’t read, and then he walks into the room and announces that there will indeed be a test. That’s the look Cheyenne had, that “god damn it, I knew it,” look.

“Hi Chey.” I took a tentative stop forward.

“Not now, Harry. Just leave me alone.”

“I just—”

Cheyenne turned and walked off the other side of the footbridge and onto the dirt path. I was stymied. I’d been
pretty sure she was mad at me, but this was more than I’d expected. I was going to turn and leave the way I came, but I kept hearing Dr. Kenny’s voice in my head saying, “You are such a schmuck, Harry,” and Johnny’s voice saying, “You are such a pussy.” I had no choice but to press on.

I followed a few paces behind until Chey sat down on a park bench. I sat, too. I expected her to get up, but she didn’t. She tucked her knees up to her chest and made herself as small as she possibly could. I didn’t know if she was trying to hide from me or from the whole world.

I slid down the bench a bit and put my hand on her shoulder, like I had done on the stoop in Athens. I didn’t think she could tense up anymore, but she did. At least she didn’t flinch.

I didn’t know what to say, but I was feeling an indescribable pressure to say something, so I started in the obvious place.

“Chey, I love you.”

Yeah, I know, what the hell was I thinking? Somehow I thought saying it would make everything okay.

It didn’t.

She threw up on my shoes.

When she was done retching, Cheyenne wiped her arm on her sleeve and started to get up. I pulled her gently back down.

“Wait,” I said, “please, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

“No, Harry, I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry? For what?”

“For kissing you.” She started to cry, and this time she didn’t tense up or pull away. She buried her head in my shoulder.

Cheyenne cried hard, covering my shirt with snot and tears. In between sobs and gasps she told me how dumb she was, how she should have listened to Johnny, how she should have left with him, how she could have stopped the whole thing, how he lost his leg and it was all her fault.

“He won’t even see me, Harry,” she said, starting to calm down.

“What?” I was not expecting
that
.

“He won’t talk to me on the phone, either. And you know his parents. They never liked me or you or the band, so they’re not telling me anything. Has he said anything to you?”

“I haven’t been to see him yet.”

She looked at me with a blank expression and then nodded. I had no idea what she was thinking. We were both quiet for a few minutes.

“What should I do?” Her question was so tortured that it made my heart hurt. It felt terrible and I blurted out something I probably shouldn’t have. “I’ll talk to him,” I promised.

Chey smiled. It wasn’t a broad smile, or a smile filled
with light and joy. It wasn’t even really a happy smile. But it was a smile.

And written in that smile was the knowledge that she and I could never be more than friends. Cheyenne and Johnny were bound to each other, and even if the bond between them was to break, it was a fixed barrier between us, for then and for all time. I’m not going to lie and tell you that knowing this made everything feel any better. It didn’t. But one thing I’ve learned, you can’t hide from the truth, and there’s no point in trying. I didn’t say anything then, but I think I probably let out a whopping big sigh.

“Walk me home?” she said.

I nodded.

We didn’t talk much on the way back, but the silence didn’t bother me. Right then, all I wanted in the world was company.

When we got to Chey’s door I mumbled good-bye and started to walk away. She grabbed my arm and hugged me. “I’m sorry, Harry. About everything. Let’s try to start over, okay?”

And you know what? It
was
okay. I hugged her back and headed home.

It was late the following afternoon when I mustered the courage to visit Johnny. The promise I’d made to Chey was the final push I needed.

I wasn’t scared about seeing Johnny’s amputated leg. When I was younger and going through all kinds of rehabilitation, I spent lots of time in waiting rooms with amputees.

There was this one kid, about my age, who decided to introduce himself to me.