by Teddy Wayne
“It’s awesome to be here with you guys,” I said.
I sang “You Hurt Me,” which sounds good a cappella. It was going fine until I got to the chorus:
Oh, yeah, girl, you hurt me
You always make me cry
Oh, yeah, girl, you hurt me
You make me wanna die
As I was singing the last line I was like, This is a bad choice for kids who might actually die. The PR rep stiffened, and I wondered if she knew I was supposed to sing the chorus like six times in a row at the end. And this fucked-up part of me wanted to sing it, and get super-falsetto on the word die, and sing it in the PR rep’s face.
Jane was still staring at the kid with the skull. Every other part of him was all shriveled up but his eyes seemed huge. When I got to the chorus again I replaced die with cry, even if rhyming with the same word is a hack move. I bet the kids didn’t notice, though.
I signed some autographs and posed for photos with them and Jane, and we moved to another wing. This time, I thought I heard the PR rep say, “Now, Jonny, this is the playroom for the bird unit. Do you feel comfortable going in?”
I didn’t see why she’d think I’d be uncomfortable around birds, as long as they were in cages, or why there’d even be birds at a children’s hospital, so I said, “Totally.”
I realized my mistake the second we walked in and saw a few kids who had parts of skin like the leftover cheese mixed with tomato sauce that gets stuck to the top of a pizza box. The PR rep explained that they were kids who had recovered enough from their burns to play, but a bunch of them still had to wear gloves and masks. I stared at my red Nikes, but I couldn’t help turning my head to look, like I was checking where Tyler Beats was on the charts. She whispered, “Sure you’re okay?” and I knew I couldn’t back out of it, so I mumbled yes and went on with her.
A nurse brought us over to one blond girl around my age who wasn’t burned that much, at least her face wasn’t at all, but you could see a big bandage like a tank top on her chest before it got covered by her blue hospital shirt.
She got excited and said she owned everything of mine and listened to it all the time. I thanked her and told her I needed the love of my true fans like her and sang “U R Kewt,” but as I was singing I had another fucked-up thought, which was that when she grew up she might have a beautiful face but if a guy ever got her shirt off he’d lose his boner, so she’d dream of meeting a guy who loved her even though her breasts were all burned, but she’d always try to hide it until she found that person, and the more she hid it the more she’d be embarrassed by it, until her being embarrassed by it would be worse than the actual burns, so after a while if she finally found someone who did love her still, she’d think something was wrong with them for loving her and wouldn’t want them anymore, and everyone in this unit and in the whole hospital was like a character whose body was damaged bad in Zenon and couldn’t hardly walk anymore and what didn’t kill them did not make them stronger.
When I finished the song I told her to always follow her dreams, and that if you’re following your dreams no one can ever take anything away from you, which is even more of a crap idea for someone like her. I whispered to the PR rep that I had to use the bathroom, and she got the hint because she said we could move on somewhere else. Before I could go, though, the girl said, “You know why I love your songs?”
I said no. She said, “Your songs are always nice to listen to.” That was the most broad-spectrum compliment I ever heard, but I said thanks and walked away. “Most of the time they’re pretty,” the girl added, and I stopped. “But once in a while they’re not. That’s my favorite thing.”
“You mean the lyrics?” I asked.
“No, the words are,” she said. “But the way you sing them isn’t always. Even when the song is about having fun, sometimes it sounds like you aren’t having any at all. It’s like the song is happy, but you’re not. Like when someone’s smiling in a picture, but their eyes are sad. It’s really beautiful.”
I couldn’t believe a tween girl had this response to my song. This was the sort of thing a critic would write about a Latchkeys song, or even Vanessa would say to Zack about one of their songs. Or how someone might feel about an MJ song. It was way better than the usual stuff I heard from fans, about how they listened to me nonstop and followed all the news about me and I was their favorite singer. They only listened to me nonstop because we courted the radio stations, and they followed the news about me because our publicists fed material to the media each week, and I was their favorite because the label had marketed me to them. If none of that happened, they wouldn’t actually care about the music. This girl did. I wanted to ask her if she meant I sounded punk, but she wouldn’t know what punk was and Jane would wonder why I was asking that and she was signaling with her eyebrows for me to hurry up, so I said, “Thank you.”
I found the bathroom down the hall and locked myself in a stall and tried to pee, but nothing came out. While I was pushing like crazy but nothing was happening, I wondered if I could get hard now if I tried, after everything I’d seen, like if it would still work properly. At first I couldn’t, even when I pictured Lisa Pinto and Vanessa’s legs and the time I walked in on one of my dancers changing in Houston.
I opened my eyes and looked down. A tiny black hair poked out of the skin around all the peach fuzz. I pulled on it and it didn’t come out. Then I got hard, and I even had to wait a little for it to go down before I left, since I didn’t want to be walking around dying kids with a super-hard boner and a grin on my face after finding my first pube.
I was going to turn left to join up with everyone outside the burn unit, but to my right there was a glass window with golden light coming from inside. All these rows of babies were inside, hooked up with wires inside clear rectangles. “What’s here?” I called to the PR rep, who was talking with the photographers and Jane.
“I see you’ve found our premature infants,” she said.
“Jonny, don’t wander off,” Jane called.
“What are they inside?” I asked the PR rep.
“Those are called incubators. They simulate the mother’s tummy for babies that are born too early, to help protect them.”
“Cool,” I said, which was stupid, but I was really thinking about how they were like the force-field spell in Zenon. “Can I see them?”
“Yes, but we have to be very quiet, and it’s best not to touch them,” she said. “They need some attention, but too much isn’t good for them.”
Jane was like, “You know, I think we’re running behind schedule.”
“I want to go in,” I said.
“We’re very late,” she said.
The PR rep said, “It’ll only take a minute.”
“Thank you, but we’re late to Jonny’s sound check,” she said, which was a lie. Sound check wasn’t until after I tutored with Nadine and we could always cut that short and make up the time later.
“I’m going in.” Jane wouldn’t stop me now.
“I’ll wait out here,” she said. Her face was icy, the most since she’d been at the hospital, even more than in the burn unit. Her body was turned sideways, and she hadn’t looked inside the window once the whole time.
It was weird. When we walked into the room, I felt like I’d already been here, right in the room with all the premature babies, like at the start of the tour or something. That drawing of Jane as a baby in the New York Times had mixed me up. But I stopped thinking about it once I saw them. They were like half the size of regular babies and were sleeping in their little boxes, with bluish skin and pinched eyes and tiny arms and legs and scraps of hair. One of the nurses asked us not to go closer than a few feet and told the photographers not to snap any photos, so we stood and watched.
I wished I could hold one of them, since I’d never held a baby before and they were still pretty cute. It’s kind of hard not to find a cute baby. And it’s just as hard to find a cute adult. Jane says that’s a reason I’ll maintain
my appeal, my naturally boyish looks. The second I develop facial hair I’ve got to learn how to shave.
The nurse talked about the challenges premature babies face, and it sounded bad, like a lot of them develop brain and vision problems, and unlike most of the other kids in the hospital who’d gotten bad luck later in life but at least they probably had some normal years first, these babies were damaged from the start all because they were born too soon. It could happen to anyone, but it happened to these babies. I could’ve been one of these babies, or the girl in the burn unit, or the kid with leukemia, or the girl in the wheelchair in St. Louis, or that fat woman Mary Ann in Schnucks, or Walter or Nadine or Rog, or the PR rep, or even Tyler Beats, which is the best of all those, but it wouldn’t be anything I chose, just something that happened to me, and maybe you choose a few things after that, but it’s mostly not up to you.
Right away I wanted to get out of the premature infants room and to leave the hospital completely, so I whispered to the PR rep that I was ready to go to my sound check, and she led us all out. Jane was typing on her phone a few feet away from the window with her back to us.
We went to the PR rep’s office, and she told me I could wait in there while her and Jane and everyone dealt with photo release forms in another room. Her computer was on, and the screen showed the hospital’s website. I didn’t wait, I just went around to her side of the desk and opened a new window and got into my email account. As I waited to sign in, I noticed a framed candid photo next to the printer of the PR rep and this bald guy with a big smile and a bulky polo shirt and dorky jean shorts and their son, hiking somewhere.
My email had tons of spam again. One message said “How to become rich and famous in 30 days!” which sounds like something only idiots would fall for, but I did do it almost that fast, if you time it from when Jane uploaded my first YouTube videos to when we signed with the label. Most successful musicians take much longer to make it, Rog always tells me, and I’m the lucky exception, and he thinks that when stories like mine get so much press, it gives young musicians the wrong idea that they can hit it big overnight, so they don’t work as hard at their craft, they just hope someone will come along and discover them on the Internet.
I searched for Albert’s name, and my stomach jumped up to my chest because there was one new email from him, written a few days after I’d sent him the photo. I opened it but it was longer than his others and I was afraid of Jane coming back and catching me reading it.
I’ve had to print Nadine’s homework instructions from hotel printers before, so I figured out how to print it. Except the printer got jammed, and I had to yank out the smeared page and reprint.
I heard different voices down the hall. The page started printing, and I signed out of email and closed the window and hoped the printer would work this time or else I was screwed.
The voices were coming closer. The page came out halfway and stopped for a second and I nearly punched the printer, because it was like it kept delivering a premature infant. But it restarted and got the rest out. I grabbed it and folded it into my pocket and sat in the guest chair and pretended to look bored while my blood drummed a hip-hop beat inside my head as Jane came in with the PR rep to get me. I couldn’t get out of that hospital soon enough, and neither could Jane. In the car service, she said, “I hope those vultures are satisfied.”
I didn’t get a chance to read the email since she took me straight to my room at the hotel and waited with me until Nadine showed up for our session. The letter was like a heat source in Zenon burning up my pocket as Nadine chattered on about word problems and why water freezes and other stuff I couldn’t focus on. Finally we took a break and I went to the bathroom and read the email.
So it looks like you might really know Jonathan or maybe I am writing to Jonathan himself. Please forgive me for being suspicious. When I tried to reach out in the past I only heard from people who are pulling my leg. If you aren’t him, please pass this on to him:
You must be turning 12 pretty soon. I don’t remember much about being 12 except that was when I started thinking about girls. I’m sure you have a lot more options than I did! If I’m able to send you a birthday present, I’ll do it.
Did you know I played drums in high school? I was even in a band for a year. We called ourselves the Wrecking Balls. It was heavy metal. We were pretty bad, so I know you didn’t get your musical talent from me!
I couldn’t get in touch the last few years on account of being in Australia and I feel awful about it. Jane doesn’t want anything to do with me. It’s hard to make amends when you’re not allowed to make them. There are many things I would like to say to you but I don’t feel comfortable saying them over an email. But I do want to say one thing, better late than never. I’m sorry to you for not being there because there are some things in life you can’t replace, and one of them is a father’s love.
Al
P.S. When you have your concert in Cincinnati I might be there too.
I had a million questions. Did he mean he’d be at my concert, or he was only going to be in Cincinnati? And if I even wanted to meet him, was it against the law because of the letter in Jane’s room? And when he tried to contact me before, did he go through the label and no one believed him or Jane stopped him like he made it sound and like I bet she did with Michael Carns because his image wasn’t cool enough, or did he just put it out on the Internet and I never saw it?
I pictured me and my father taking a plane to Sydney for the music festival there I almost played in and him inviting all the friends he’d made there to come hear me. He’d introduce me to the crowd, and he’d be as famous in Sydney as me, and he’d manage my Australia/New Zealand tour because he had so many connections there. He’d be like the Australian Jane. Except he’d also play drums to back me up, and for the drum solo in “RSVP (To My Heart),” when it’s supposed to sound like my heart beating faster and faster because the girl just sent her RSVP to be my girlfriend, I’d do my trademark spin move right next to my father while he played, and you wouldn’t be able to tell who the crowd was cheering for, him or me, because they all knew him and they didn’t really know me since I didn’t have a foothold in the Australian market yet. And at night we’d hang out with his Australian friends, who were normal guys who had no idea who I was. They just liked my father.
Then I figured out where I’d heard the words better late than never before. I’d been at this boy Richard Nester’s birthday party. It was a fancy white house, with a huge lawn we played Red Rover on. All the other parents picked up their kids at the end, and after a while it was just me and Richard and Richard’s parents. They kept calling Jane at Schnucks, but she wasn’t picking up or available, and when they asked me where my father worked, I said he didn’t work at a place, my mother did, and even at that age I could tell they were a little embarrassed for me. Finally he showed up in our crap Dodge, and he didn’t even come out to get me or apologize to them, he only honked a few times from the big circular driveway they had. When I got in the car, he said, “Well, better late than never, kid.” He must say that a lot. In the car he talked on his phone to Jane and got angry, and instead of going home he drove for a long time on the highway without talking. I didn’t know where we were going and knew he didn’t have a plan, either, but there was something cool about that. We ended up at a diner on the highway and he said I could order whatever I wanted, he didn’t care, so I ate French toast for dinner, and by the time we got home it was dark. They got in one of their big fights, I remember. They must’ve broken up soon after, because that’s the last time I can remember him driving me anywhere.
Nadine called out that break was over. I folded the letter again. It would have been smarter to tear it up and flush it down the toilet, but I didn’t want to do it. I kind of liked having it inside my pocket, even though it would’ve done bad on one of Nadine’s composition tests since it didn’t use evocative language, which was actually what we did next.
I was writing the co
mposition, on Nadine’s logic question:
The police are separately questioning you and your friend about a crime, and offer you both the same deal. You can either testify against your friend (say he is guilty) or claim he is innocent. (1) If only one of you testifies against the other, then the person who testified is freed, and his partner is put in jail for 12 months. (2) If you both claim the other is innocent, you are both put in jail for 1 month. (3) If you both testify against each other, you are both put in jail for 3 months. What should you do?
I couldn’t think straight, because the last few words from my father’s email kept playing on repeat in my head, and it was like I saw them written all over the walls in a jail cell: a father’s love a father’s love a father’s love a father’s love a father’s love
I finally said, “You should say the other guy’s innocent and hope he says it, too, because then you both have just a month in jail.”
Nadine explained that you should actually say the other guy is guilty, because you can’t guarantee he’ll cooperate and say you’re innocent. So if he does say you’re innocent, you get freed, and if he says you’re guilty, it’s not as bad as if you said he was innocent, and the other guy is probably using the same strategy, so you have to plan for that. I bet Jane would’ve figured it out even if she hasn’t studied logic, because of her street smarts.
“That’s not very nice to do, if it’s your friend,” I said.
“Well, it’s the right answer for a logic problem, but I agree. In real life I’d rather hang out with someone who says his friend is innocent,” she said. “Hey, you doing okay today?”
“I’m fine.”
