Only the Good Die Young

Chapter 25.2

Kyle and I wander the streets of Vancouver. It's amazing how even in the midst of my personal Armageddon the city goes on like nothing has happened. Sparks fly from wires above trolley busses, dogs lead their owners, people race from Starbucks to their cars, their lattés insulated in recycled paper sleeves.

"How are you feeling?" says Kyle, after ten minutes of silence.

Wonderful, I feel like saying. Jesse might go to prison, Mr. McKinnon might lose his job, I was practically raped by a doctor, I've lied to the police and I'm the most famous student in school. Alex also dumped Jesse, but that's not so bad.

I don't reply but just gaze at Kyle. He looks back at me with such tenderness, with such fondness, even if he doesn't know the first thing about talking to a girl. I can't tell him the truth. He'd lose all respect for me.

He extends his arm like he's trying to decide if he wants to put it around my shoulder, but eventually just gives up and lets it fall by his side. As we walk away I start to cry again and tip my head against his shoulder. I think he's shocked and doesn't know what to do.

"Where do you want to go?" he says.

"I don't know. Out of the rain."

"My place?" he says.

God. Alone in another room with another guy. Mom would kill me. I laugh.

"What's so funny?" he says.

"Nothing," I sniffle. "It's not like anything worse can happen."

"I'll make you some Nestlé Quik. It's the only thing I know."

* * *

"We're here," says Kyle. We step off the elevator in an apartment building and he leads me through a dimly lit corridor with an unsightly brown carpet and cheap lime wallpaper. He puts his key into the lock of one of the many doors.

The door opens and the smell of stale smoke floods over me like a wave crashing on the beach. The apartment is tiny, about half the size the one my mom and I live in. The entrance has ugly red-brown tile, but the rest of the floor is covered with a thick beige wall-to-wall carpet. A frayed black-and-white checkered sofa that's at least twenty years old sits in front of a tiny television on the floor. On the television is a VCR, and on the VCR is a pair of rabbit ears.

Kyle leads me down the hall. "This is my room," says Kyle, indicating a door plastered with a giant poster. Under the words Led Zeppelin are four guys in spacesuits. If only they were wearing helmets they'd hide their terrible seventies hair.

The door opens to reveal a small bed with a white duvet over a white sheet, a desk with a computer, a digital piano and a small wooden chair. A pair of headphones rest on the desk, ones that belong in a recording studio. On the computer is a screensaver of tropical fish swimming endlessly back and forth.

Wow, Kyle has a record player. I've never seen one before, except in movies and on television. Next to the stereo is a pair of speakers and at the foot of the bed is a stack of Guitar World magazines. The magazine on top of the pile has a black-and-white close-up of some long-haired hippie with a chin puff goatee and a moustache you'd see on a walrus. The headline reads Frank Zappa: How To Solo Like a Legend.

I assumed there would be tattered posters of rock stars everywhere and those glass tubes people smoke marijuana in, but the only thing strange are the walls. They're covered with some weird form of wallpaper that –

Then I gape.

Lining the room is the single largest music collection I have ever seen. Each wall holds thousands of vinyl records packed in filing boxes stacked on top of one another, from floor to ceiling. There's even a stool in a corner to stand on.