Scar Girl (22 page)

We left Johnny's parents and went to the back of the room. I tried hard to regain some, any, sense of equilibrium.

Everyone was there. My parents, Richie's dad. Most of Chey's sisters and her parents, so many of the kids from school—the good ones and the sadistic dickheads alike—had all turned out to say good-bye to Johnny McKenna.

The three of us stayed in the back, sticking close to one another, trying to fend off the endless stream of mourners who wanted to offer us condolences. We had almost as many well-wishers as Johnny's parents.

It was then that Richie looked over at me and said, “So what happens now?”

I had no idea.

CHEYENNE BELLE

It was a guitar pick. I dropped a guitar pick in Johnny's casket.

I had used a Sharpie to write
I love you
on one side and
4ever
on the other. I know. It's corny. But he used to call me Pick, and I needed to do something. For all I know, someone at the funeral home took it out and pocketed it. I thought about leaving him with the gold pick he'd given me at Christmas, but I couldn't. I still wear it around my neck.

Anyway, I had a pretty strong buzz on for the wake, but not strong enough to stop me from feeling every last horrible thing.

The biggest shock was Mrs. McKenna. We all knew that she hated us and hated that Johnny hung out with us, so I couldn't figure out why she acted the way she did. Maybe it was grief. Or maybe she blamed herself for Johnny's death and was, in a kind of way, apologizing. I don't know.

When I couldn't take any more, when I didn't think I could handle one more idiot from Johnny's high school coming up to us and telling us how sorry they were, Jeff walked in. He scanned the room, nodded in our direction, and then went forward to pay his respects. I nudged Harry.

“Please, let's just go, okay?”

Harry saw where I was looking and nodded. He and Richie each took one of my arms, and we left.

When we stepped outside, the night air was cool. It was still March, and spring hadn't really sprung. It was cloudy, and the air was heavy. Johnny's brother, Russell, was leaning against a post, a cigarette in one hand and a book in the other.

Russell had the same curly locks as Johnny, though brown, not blond, and he kept them cut short. He also had the same eyes. They were hard to look at that night.

“Hey, guys,” he said, his voice soft. Johnny loved Russell and looked up to him, and Russell loved Johnny back. He was six years older and lived in New York City with his girlfriend. He came to a lot of our gigs, and we got to know him a little bit. We all thought he was pretty cool.

We mumbled hellos and told him how sorry we were, and he told us the same.

Then he held out the book in his hand. It was the little black book Johnny had been writing in for the past few months. The book none of us were allowed to go near, the book none of us, as far as I knew, had ever seen the inside of.

“Here,” he said. “My parents gave this to me.”

“We can't take this,” Harry said.

“I'm not giving it to you,” Russell offered with a halfhearted smile, “but I am loaning it to you.”

“Loaning it to us?” I asked.

“Don't you guys know what's in here?”

We all shook our heads. Russell fanned the pages so we could see.

“Lyrics. Lots and lots of lyrics. Sometimes with chords written out and sometimes not.” I was blown away. “I figure this can be Johnny's final gift to the Scar Boys.”

Hearing Russell mention the band was like a slap in the face. I figured that the Scar Boys died with Johnny and didn't give it another thought, you know?

But here was Johnny's brother, telling us something different. I mean, the band was the only thing left holding us together. But how could we go on without Johnny? Wouldn't it be like getting married two days after your husband died?

Like he could read our minds, Russell said, “I think it's what Johnny would've wanted. When you get to the last song in the book, you'll see what I mean.”

He handed the book to Harry, hugged each of us in turn, stubbed out his cigarette, and went back inside.

“Diner?” Harry asked, holding up the book.

“Yeah,” Richie said, and we piled into Harry's car.

HARBINGER JONES

We probably shouldn't have, but because of what Russell said, we skipped straight to the last page of Johnny's lyrics journal, or at least the last page that had anything written on it. And there it was. The song that would, nine months later, become the Scar Boys' first single:

Everybody said he was such a nice boy,

Always did everything right,

So no one could understand

When the police found Johnny hanging in

the attic that night.

Suzy picked up the newspaper that day.

Headline said, “Local Boy Dies.”

She knew her Johnny was gone.

So she took a razor blade and slit

out her own eyes.

Johnny's dead,

Johnny's dead.

Did you see what the newspaper said?

It said, Johnny's dead.

Everyone went to his wake,

Saw him lying there with his guitar.

They all said he tried too hard

To be a rock-and-roll star.

Johnny's dead,

Johnny's dead.

His mother's confined to a bed

Because Johnny's dead.

Now all the parents in the neighborhood

Are acting like they really care,

Just so their little Johnnies

Won't go leaping off the kitchen chair.

Johnny's dead,

Johnny's dead.

Did you see what the newspaper said?

It said, Johnny's dead.

Johnny, that crazy, controlling son of a bitch, had written his own funeral dirge. I read once that Winston Churchill had planned his own funeral—the route the procession was to take through the streets of London, who would speak and who would not, the whole damn thing orchestrated to the last detail from the grave. Johnny's song reminded me of that.

The chords he had written over the words were mostly minor chords, and knowing Johnny, I think he intended us to play it slow, plodding. It took us about five seconds to reject that idea and to give it, to give Johnny, the edge and attitude that both he and the song deserved.

RICHIE MCGILL

It was a fucked-up time when Johnny died. That was the only time I really thought the band was over. I figured we were just cursed.

But Johnny saved us. I mean, he saved the band.

Shit, I don't know. He saved us,
and
he saved the band.

The first thing we did after leaving the diner the night of Johnny's wake was fire Jeff. Harry did it. He called the guy's answering machine from a pay phone and said it pure and simple: “Jeff, it's Harry from the Scar Boys. You're fired.”

The dude tried calling us, showing up at Harry's house, coming to gigs, but we always just chased him away. Turns out he really did have some A & R guys at that Irving Plaza gig, and it led to a record deal. Once we started to get successful, Jeff sued us, the freaking wanker. The case is still going on.

Truth is, and no disrespect to the dead, I always thought we were a better band without Johnny, even as far back as that first night in Athens. Everyone thought Johnny was the center of the band, but from where I sat, he was the odd man out. Part of me wonders if he thought that, too, and that's why he, well, you know, did what he did.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Johnny's book is the proof.

The record advance was enough that Cheyenne quit her job, and Harry and I got an apartment in New York City. Chey still lives at home, technically, but she doesn't sleep there a lot. She's living the rock-and-roll life. Harry still worries about her, though. Even when he doesn't tell me he's worried, which is, like, all the fucking time, I can see it. But from where I sit, we gotta let Chey be who she's gonna be.

One of the biggest changes is that Harry has a girlfriend, Thea. She's got something wrong with her face, too. I don't mean that to sound bad; she's actually totally hot, but her chin and the side of her face are all discolored. She says it's a giant birthmark, something called a port-wine stain. I don't know anything about that stuff, but I actually think it makes her look kind of cool. It's like one of Mother Nature's tattoos.

When we started to get popular, we got a lot of people whose faces were fucked up in some way or other turning up at gigs. I mean, they saw Harry as a kind of hero.

Harry, the jerk, was pissed off all the time when he started dating Thea. Some bullshit about how disfigured people should date normal people to prove some point or something. Harry always saw his scars worse than the rest of the world did. Well, worse than I did anyway. Luckily, he got over it, because she's awesome. She's kind of become our unofficial road manager.

As for me, I try not to worry about things. Hell, I'm just happy I get to play the drums every day. I mean, people are paying me to beat on shit. How cool is that?

HARBINGER JONES

I found myself back on Dr. Kenny's couch a week after the wake. I was feeling so messed up that I thought I might explode. Kenny had lost a patient to suicide a couple of years earlier, and I figured he might be able to offer me some perspective.

“That was quite a memorial service,” he said. I didn't even realize he'd been there. That was pretty much it for the small talk.

“Harry,” Dr. Kenny began, lowering his voice until it was in tune with the Force, making sure I had no choice but to listen. “This is not your fault.” He paused. “Do you understand?”

I nodded, but it was a reflex. Of course this was my fault. It was everyone's fault. Johnny needed us, and we'd abandoned him. I could've blamed Jeff and his bullshit “no friendships” rule, and part of me did, but if I was being honest, I knew I was the culprit, I was the bad guy. Johnny told me that first day I'd visited him after we came back from Georgia that he needed me, and I didn't deliver. I was the worst friend in the entire history of friendships.

I'm not sure what Dr. Kenny thought as he watched me go through those mental calisthenics, but he knew I needed help. He was good like that.

“Harry,” he said again, “it's not your fault.” He looked me in the eye and did some kind of Svengali thing that stopped me from looking away. I started to cry.

“How can you know that?” I asked. “How can you possibly know that?”

“Because,” he answered, his voice weaker than I would have hoped, “at the end of the day, suicide is a choice that is made by someone who is sick, mentally ill, and doesn't have the capacity to choose between life and death. It's an incredible tragedy in part because the victim isn't of sound mind.”

“Johnny seemed like a lot of things, Doc, but he didn't seem crazy.”

“Depression doesn't mean crazy, Harry. You know that.”

“I just don't understand.”

“I know, son,” he said. He'd never, ever called me son before. It gave me comfort, but in a weird way crossed a line, too. “That's the hardest part. Knowing that you will never understand. Knowing that what you really want, more than anything, is a chance to ask Johnny why, and knowing that you will never get that chance. But sometimes, there isn't a why.”

“I can't believe that,” I said, wiping the snot on the back of my sleeve. “There has to be a reason.”

“Look, there are a thousand reasons Johnny could have been driven to this, but most of the literature, in a case like Johnny's—”

“A case like Johnny's?”

“A suicide that follows a debilitating injury, particularly an amputation.”

“Oh.” It never occurred to me that there might be precedent for this.

“The literature suggests that Johnny was at greater risk than the average person because of who he was.”

Dr. Kenny paused, looking for the right words. I just waited.

“Harry, Johnny was a narcissist. Do you know what that is?”

I nodded. I didn't know the clinical definition at the time, but I looked it up later, and my working understanding—a person with a big ego whose world is defined by himself—was close enough.

“He had such a strong sense of self, of power, of control, that losing it was very hard for him to reconcile. If Johnny had been shy and retiring—”

“Like me.”

“Yes, Harry, like you.” I always admired Dr. Kenny's honesty. “If Johnny had been a different person, he might have adapted better. But everything about the amputation assaulted Johnny's sense of self. From his surface image to his sexuality to every relationship he'd ever had.”

I wasn't really sure I wanted to hear about Johnny's sexuality. It made me think about Cheyenne; it made me wonder how she was feeling.

“Johnny was no longer who he believed himself to be, and he was unable to find any sort of anchor that tethered him to the world. He was literally adrift, unable to hold on to his own identity. In all likelihood, Johnny ended his life because he no longer saw himself as the Johnny McKenna he wanted to be, that he believed himself to be, and that was too much to reconcile.”

“But couldn't we have all helped him through that?”

Here, Dr. Kenny paused. A pause with more than enough time for me to fill in the answer to my own question. “A professional could have helped him through it, Harry.” He left it at that. He chose not to say what I was thinking, that the people around him, me, Chey, his parents, might have seen the warning signs and pushed him to get help.

The truth is, I have no idea what the truth is, and like Dr. Kenny said, I never really will. But what he said did make a kind of sense. Johnny was the center of his own universe. He had this gravitational pull that seemed to bring everyone else into orbit around him. Not just me and Chey, but everyone. His parents, his teachers, the other kids at school. When he lost his leg, he didn't just lose a physical ability; he lost his gravity. Johnny lost Johnny.