Scar Girl

by Len Vlahos

  But I didn’t. I wasn’t wired to ask those questions. Besides, I knew the answers. People act like that to make themselves feel superior. People suck.

  “So,” the woman continued, “he wants you to have this.” It was a signed copy of the disc jockey’s book. She smiled as she handed it to me. I took it, and she walked away without another word. Part of me wanted to forgive the guy and to embrace and cherish that book. That’s what I always did. I made excuses for people, found reasons for their behavior. But this was different; it was a kind of turning point for me. It’s the moment where I think I finally got smart enough to be jaded.

  I’ll bet any amount of money that the priest-disc-jockey douche bag had no idea that woman had given me the signed book. She was doing damage control. I moved a few books on the shelf in front of me and shoved the signed copy all the way to the back. It’s probably still sitting there today.

  CHEYENNE BELLE

  I wasn’t the biggest reader in the world, but I did like books. I went through a phase when I was fourteen when I read everything I could by V. C. Andrews. It was horror-romance stuff. You can eat it like candy.

  Since then the only things I’d read were the books assigned in my high school English classes and maybe one or two more books during the summer.

  Anyway, the bookstore had been at the mall for a long time, and I’d been there before, but I never really paid attention.

  Once I started working there, I fell in love with the place—well, parts of it anyway. The corporation that ran the store treated books and employees like hammers and nails. Just like everything else in the grown-up world, businesspeople had found a way to suck the life out of something fun. I mean, how the hell do you suck the life out of books?

  But maybe some of that was on me, too. I was in a really crappy place after the miscarriage, and everything in the world seemed a bit off. The hardest part was how completely alone I felt. I used to pride myself on that, on my ability to be alone. For years, I’d been projecting this whole tough-chick image onto the world, and now it was breaking down.

  If I had just talked to Johnny or Harry, or even talked more to Richie, maybe I would’ve felt better. Instead, I kept my secrets locked up inside, and they were eating me alive. But what was I supposed to do? It’s not like my bandmates were rallying around me. Even something as stupid and small as me getting the job at the bookstore caused all this tension—Johnny looked hurt, Harry looked like he didn’t care, and Richie just took it in stride. Where were the high-fives? Where were the whoops and hollers and “Way to go, Chey”?

  I needed someone or something to hold on to, only there was no one and nothing there.

  The pain meds helped when I took them, but they would wear off and the bad feelings would start again. So I started taking them more often.

  Dr. McCartney at Planned Parenthood had filled a second prescription of Vicodin a week after the miscarriage. When I asked for a third, she told me I had to come in and see her in person.

  This time I made the trip alone. It was a weekday, so the protestors were mostly gone. Only one woman with an oak tag sign that said, Pray for the souls of the unborn, stood across the street. She was nice looking, with a plain white blouse and a gray skirt. But she looked angry and confused.

  Unlike the phonies and lunatics who had been there on the weekend, I could tell that this lady had lost a baby or had an abortion, and it had messed with her mind. It’s like she needed to do something but couldn’t figure out what. I guess holding a sign on the side of the road was the best she could think of. I felt sorry for her.

  “Cheyenne.” Dr. McCartney had half a smile and half a frown when she came into the examination room. “You’re still having pain?”

  Idiot that I am, I didn’t realize that I couldn’t get a prescription for pain meds until the end of time just because I wanted one. The pain from the miscarriage was gone. I wanted the meds for everything else. The Vicodin had become the one and only thing that was filling the hole in my life. I don’t think I’d really understood that until I was sitting back in the examination room.

  I probably waited a whole five seconds before lying.

  “Yeah, I am still having pain. Can you give me something?”

  “We need to take a look and see what’s going on in there,” she said, very gently tapping her finger on my belly.

  I was nervous. I wanted to run, but I went through with it.

  The doctor didn’t say a word as she did the ultrasound and did the cervical exam. When she was done, she had me get dressed and meet her in her office. When I sat down she was writing on a pad, and for a second I was pretty psyched. I was going to get the pain meds after all. Only, when she handed me the paper, it wasn’t a prescription.

  “This is the name of a psychiatrist friend of mine. He can help you with what you’re feeling and can help you stop wanting or needing to take the Vicodin.”

  “I don’t need—”

  She held up a hand for me to stop. “Cheyenne, I’ve seen a lot of girls come in here, and I understand what you’re going through. But there’s nothing physically wrong with you that would require Vicodin.”

  I slunk out of there with my tail between my legs. I didn’t even look at the piece of paper she’d handed me until I was on the bus. I was too embarrassed. When I finally did look, I laughed out loud. It was the phone number for Dr. Kenneth Hirschorn, Harry’s shrink, Dr. Kenny. I crumpled it up and shoved it in my pocket. No way was Dr. Kenny the answer to my problems. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, least of all Harry’s shrink. No, I would just have to find another way.

  There was only one person in my life who knew enough creepy people to help me get meds without a prescription, and that was Theresa.

  Theresa and I have one thing in common. We’re both fearless. I don’t mean that we’re not afraid of things. We are. It turns out I’m terrified of God and Theresa is scared of spiders. But we’re both willing to put ourselves out there, to take chances. Like when I tried out for the Scar Boys or went on the road with the band. Or like the people Theresa chooses to hang out with.

  Her group of friends is pretty loose with drugs and sex and stuff; they’re not the kinds of kids you’d bring home to meet Mom and Dad. I think my sister hangs out with them to get attention because she has a self-image problem. She’s a really pretty girl, and she’s pretty smart; if she would just realize that, maybe she would pick better friends.

  Anyway, I thought maybe she could help me get the pain meds. I was wrong. (I’m wrong a lot.)

  “You want me to get you what?” It was later that same night, and we were alone in our room.

  “Vicodin. I just need them for a little while, to feel better, that’s all.”

  She snorted. “No, Cheyenne. I can’t help you get prescription meds. Why don’t you just drink, like a normal person?” she said, and she put her headphones back on.

  And that’s just what I did.

  PART FIVE,

  EARLY DECEMBER 1986

  We’re the Oakland A’s of rock and roll. On the field, we can’t be beat, but in the clubhouse, well, that’s another story.

  —Glenn Frey

  Of all the places you’ve played over the years, what’s your favorite venue?

  HARBINGER JONES

  Without a doubt, it’s CBGB’s.

  RICHIE MCGILL

  CB’s.

  CHEYENNE BELLE

  It’s not actually a nightclub or an arena. It’s the basement in Harry’s parents’ house. That’s where we jammed in the early days of the band. His mom would always have a snack and drinks for us, and we just had fun. It was all about the music and about friendship. It will never get any better than that.

  HARBINGER JONES

  My dad was home from Albany for all of December. The legislature wasn’t in session, and politics tended to quiet down at the holidays. Even though he and I had managed to make a kind of weird peace, the level of stress in my life always grew by leaps and bounds when my dad w
as in the house. I was about to change all of that.

  “I think I want to apply to college.” My parents both looked up from their morning newspapers—my dad, the Times; my mom, the Herald Statesman—like someone’d sat down at the kitchen table and started speaking Chinese. “You know, for real, this time,” I added.

  A smile stretched from one of my mom’s ears to the other, but my father looked suspicious. The whole pretending-to-apply-and-get-accepted-to-college was a dick move on my part, and I didn’t blame my dad for harboring some resentment.

  “Why?” my father asked. He folded his hands on the table and tried to bore a hole through my face with his eyes.

  “I don’t know, just feels like it’s time.”

  “And the Scar Boys?”

  “Maybe it’s time to move on, that’s all.” Note that I said “maybe.” I was still hedging my bets.

  He was back to staring me down, trying to find the source of some new lie. He wasn’t going to find it, because it wasn’t there.

  “What do you want to study?”

  “I haven’t figured that out yet. My understanding is that you don’t need to pick a major until your junior year. Maybe something with math or science?” I hadn’t really thought about math and science, but it was the one part of high school where I’d shown some aptitude, and he knew that. I was playing to my audience.

  “Mm-hmm.” He was trying to be tough, but I could see he was buying in. My dad has a tell when you’re winning him over: he finally shuts up.

  He and I had a strained relationship from the word go, but it changed after I came back from Athens. It took me a while to figure out, but at some deep and secret level, I think my father actually respected me for going on the road with the band. Outwardly, he hated the Scar Boys, hated the music, hated the image, hated how much I’d lied to him, and hated that the band had steered me off the straight and narrow. But he had spent so many years viewing me as this helpless little gimp that when I stood up and did something on my own, I think maybe he was kind of proud.

  Since coming back from Georgia, everything about the way my dad treated me was, I don’t know, more gentle. Like this one Saturday, when he was home from Albany—his work as a legislative liaison for the governor had him out of the house four nights a week—he came into my room and said, “C’mon, let’s go.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Just grab a jacket. It’ll be fun.”

  Fun? Fun was not a word I associated with my dad, but it was three hours until rehearsal, so I grabbed my jacket and went. After everything I’d put my parents through, I figured I owed them the little things.

  Ten minutes later we stepped out of my dad’s Chevy Nova and onto a strip mall parking lot on Tuckahoe Road. He nodded to the store in front of us and smiled.

  “Anthony’s Billiards Club,” I read aloud. “We’re going to shoot pool?”

  And that’s just what we did. We spent the next two hours playing eight ball and nine ball, and just shooting the shit. At first, I was so taken off my game that I didn’t know how to react. I finally asked the question I had to ask.

  “Dad, what are we doing here? What’s this about?”

  He paused a beat before answering. “Look, Harry, I just . . . you and I . . . maybe it would be nice if we spent a little more time together.”

  I had no idea where this was coming from, and I trusted it the way a hen trusts a fox, but what else could I do other than go with the flow?

  My dad turned out to be a really good pool player—I had only played once or twice—and while he did give me some great pointers, I think he also enjoyed kicking my ass. He’s just that competitive. He reminded me of what Johnny was like before the accident. Weird.

  When we got home, we went our separate ways. Scenes from that afternoon were swirling in my head as I watched him react to my news about wanting to apply for college.

  “I think it’s wonderful, Harry,” my mom said. “And we’ll support you in any way we can. Isn’t that right, Ben?”

  My father gave my mom a long look before nodding and turning his attention back to me. “Of course, son,” he said, while trying to hold back a smile. “Of course.”

  We spent the next few minutes talking about the application process—I didn’t tell them about my epic application essay—and then we were done.

  It felt both really good and really bad that I’d told them. Good that it was off my chest and that I had their support, bad that, all of a sudden, it was real. It was my first moment of buyer’s remorse.

  But nothing was written in stone. Not yet.

  CHEYENNE BELLE

  We played a nightclub called the Bitter End.

  The place had a very different vibe from CBGB’s. Where CB’s was in the Bowery, the Bitter End was in the Village. Where CB’s was a crap hole, the Bitter End was nice. Where CB’s history was all punk—and, yes, I do love punk—the Bitter End had more to it. It made its name as a venue for folk artists like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, before they were famous. Isn’t that cool?

  Anyway, by this time the band was really humming, and our following was growing. This was the first show where we were the headline act on a weekend in New York City. That was a big deal.

  We were blown away when more than a hundred people turned out. Something magical was starting to happen with the Scar Boys.

  It was also the first time I played a gig drunk.

  I felt like I was being chased. Not by a person, but by all the things I’d done wrong and all the secrets I was keeping—my pregnancy and my miscarriage, for sure, but even before that, my kiss with Harry in Georgia, and before that, my whole relationship with Johnny. So many secrets, and I felt like I needed to outrun them all. And like I said, I’m not so good at asking for help. While being high or drunk didn’t really fix things, it made me care less, made my problems seem further away. Farther away? I can never keep those words straight. Grammar kind of sucks.

  I didn’t drink a lot—just three beers that a creepy old guy at the bar bought me because I let him hit on me. Even though I was totally skeeved, I didn’t flinch when he put his hand on my ass. I’m not sure what a guy like that is thinking, but whatever it is, it’s messed up.

  Given my size and given that I was still a novice with alcohol, those three beers went right to my head. It didn’t help that I drank them fast, back to back to back, mostly so I could get up and get away from the creepy guy. It didn’t help that I hadn’t eaten dinner. And it definitely didn’t help that I downed them right before we went on.

  Even with all that, I did pretty good with the bass. The high of music can do a lot to counteract the low of booze. Adrenaline, meet alcohol. It wasn’t my best gig, but it wasn’t a disaster, either.

  We closed our set with “That’s Not My Leg.” The girl who caught Johnny’s peg leg leaped on stage and jumped around like she’d won a million bucks, and the whole place was going crazy.

  So of course they were all screaming for an encore. Johnny talked us into having “Pleasant Sounds” ready, in case we got called back up, which wasn’t like us. We always ended with something loud and fast, and “Pleasant Sounds” was a ballad. But it worked. Holy shit, did it work. It worked so well that, for the first time ever, we were called back for a second encore.

  The soundman and the woman handling the lights were pissed. Unless you’re playing Madison Square Garden or the Nassau Coliseum, you don’t get two encores; the crew just wanted to go home. But this audience wasn’t going to let anyone go anywhere. So the lights stayed low and the mics stayed hot.

  Problem is, we had no idea what to play. We hadn’t planned for this, and as a general rule—really, Johnny’s rule—the Scar Boys was a pretty well-scripted act.

  “What do we do?” Richie asked as we stood on the side of the stage, a thunderstorm of claps and hollers making it hard to hear one another.

  “I have something,” Johnny said. “A song I’ve been working on.”

  “Something new?” Harry so
unded freaked out. “We can’t play something new.”

  “I don’t know, seems like a pretty rock-and-roll thing to do, if you ask me.” Johnny knew Harry’s weak spot. As soon as Harry thinks he’s not being rock-and-roll enough, like there’s some giant rock meter measuring his life, he needs to find a way to fix it. Richie nodded.

  The adrenaline high of the set was fading, and the aftereffect of the beer was making me a bit loopy.

  “So how do we play along?” I asked. I think I might’ve slurred my words because Johnny looked at me funny.

  “It’s simple. It’s the same riff over and over again. The song is all about the dynamics, about how loud and soft we play the riff. Kind of like ‘Heroin’ by the Velvet Underground. Harry, give me your guitar.” Harry did, and Johnny showed him what really was a very easy riff. “It’s that, over and over again. Just follow me for how loud and soft to get. Chey, can you follow?”

  I’m guessing Johnny singled me out because he could see that I wasn’t quite right. The room was spinning a bit, and I really had no idea what he’d just played, but I nodded anyway.

  “Richie,” Johnny said, “let us get through the first verse or two, then come in big, okay?”

  “Got it.”

  The crowd had organized itself into a steady, rhythmic clap and chant of “Scar Boys, Scar Boys,” and when we walked back onstage, they erupted into a frenzy.

  There was one guy—a good-looking older guy—sitting at a table in the front row, who wasn’t clapping or chanting or even standing. I didn’t remember seeing him there before, so he must’ve snuck up front during the break between songs. He had a big smile on his face, and when he saw me catch his eye, he nodded.

  “Thank you, thank you,” Johnny said into the mic, sitting down at the piano as the crowd settled down. “We’re going to do something kind of crazy.”

  A few isolated whoops and hoots.

  “We’re going to play a song that we’ve never ever played before. Not that we’ve never played in public, but that we’ve never played as a band before. In fact, Harry, Cheyenne, and Richie have never even heard it before.” Louder whoops and hollers. “It’s a song I’ve been working on, and I thought, Let’s see what these fine people think of it. Would that be okay with you?”