Only the Good Die Young

Chapter 25.2

"Yeah, the records," says Kyle, gesturing. "I told you about them in Whistler."

"This is unreal," I say.

He shrugs. "I'll go make us some hot chocolate." He clicks the play button on iTunes, and a random song fills the air.

Kyle leaves and I study his record collection, pulling out albums at random to read the covers: Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Smiths, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Eagles, Meatloaf, The Grateful Dead, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, James Taylor, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, The Doors, The Who, Marvin Gay, Earth, Wind and Fire... The collection goes on forever.

He returns, holding a mug of steaming hot chocolate. Kyle's computer switches to plays Full of Grace by Sarah McLachlan. I'm amazed to find a song in his collection that I like. If it weren't for the fact that I'm not interested in him and Jesse could go to jail, this might be somewhat romantic.

"Can you turn that off?" I say. "I'm not in the mood."

"Sure." He closes iTunes and it's replaced by Sibelius, a music-writing program. Life would be so much simpler if I had just fallen in love with Kyle.

I glance at the screen. There's a treble clef, the lines of the staff, chord symbols like D7b5 and C#9, but there are no notes anywhere.

"What was that? Do you write music?" I say, looking at the text beneath the staff. I expect to find lyrics but instead it just reads DFF#↑GGBA↓

Kyle closes the program. "Nothing. Just a melody I wanted to write down."

"No, wait," I say. "Go back to that." I stand behind him and peer at the screen. Kyle flushes. He double-clicks the Sibelius icon on his desktop and the file loads.

"What are the arrows for?" I say, leaning over his shoulder. Why would he use letters? Why not use traditional notation?

"Octaves." He sounds defeated.

Then it hits me.

"Kyle," I say, slowly. "You can't read music, can you?"

Kyle slumps forward. "I can, sort of," he says, his head in his hands. "My doctor says I have something called Dyslexic Automatization Deficit."

"What? But you're practically a virtuoso." My mind recalls his incredible improvisation over Happy Birthday. Is this even possible?

"Sure, if I hear it," he says. "But musical notation is gibberish to me. Notes just swim around. They're on the lines, they're in the spaces, the stems flip left and right. One second I see a quarter note and the next second it's an eighth. Apparently I'd be fine if I replaced the symbols with fruits or something. Could you imagine? 'Hey, everyone, let's take it at the bunch of grapes in bar thirty.' If I hear it, I'm okay. Speaking isn't a problem, either."

"But you can read," I say. This doesn't make any sense.

Kyle shrugs and taps his skull. "Welcome to the wonder that is my brain. I can sort of manage reading and writing, but my brain goes haywire over music notation. Lots of famous musicians have the same problem. Paul McCartney can't read music. Stevie Ray Vaughan couldn't, either. Hell, Yanni even invented his own notation system." Kyle closes the program. "But he sucks."

"Have you told anyone at school? Mr. Penderton?" Suddenly Kyle's blasé attitude towards English makes perfect sense. "What about therapy?"

"We can't afford it," says Kyle. "Mom signed me up for PharmaCare, but it doesn't cover everything."

"That's a travesty," I say. "So these letters are your melodies?"

"Yeah," he says. "But it takes forever."

"What about a tape recorder?" I say. "Couldn't you just play into that?"

"I do that, too," he says. "I've looked Dyslexic Automatization Deficit up in Google and found a few places that treat it, but they're all in the States and they're all really expensive," he says. Dejected, he sits at the computer and types Cure for Kyle Foster into Google. A random list of results appear, including aspiring authors, singing teachers and toy designers.

 "I guess there's a lot of Kyle Fosters out there," I say.

"Yeah. Just Google someone and you can learn everything about them."

"I wonder if I'd find anything if I looked up myself."

Kyle blushes. "I Googled you, once, when I was bored."

Parroting Mom aside, that is so inappropriate. But curiosity goads me. "What did you find?"

"Nothing. I also tried Facebook and MySpace." Kyle clicks the mouse. He moves the pointer to the search box at the top of the screen. "I wanted to look up Alex, but haven't gotten around to it yet."

"Go ahead," I say, nudging him. "See if she has a MySpace page."

"Sure." He punches MySpace.com into his browser address, then enters Alex's name into the search field. A column of tiny photographs appear: blondes, brunettes, redheads. Smooth skin, wild tattoos, piercings, holding babies, lying on beaches, dancing at parties, each girl named Alexis Lee.

"There are so many of them," I say. Why did I have to get the bitch?

Kyle adds Vancouver into the search box to narrow the results, but I've got nothing for you. Try a new search? appears.

"Where's Jesse from?" says Kyle.

"Nelson, I think. I'm surprised you haven't looked him up already."

He shrugs. "Why would I? I don't like the guy." He types Jesse James, Nelson into the search box. God. Can Jesse drum in prison? I slump back on the bed.

"Anything?" I ask. I don't care.

The list of results displays a single girl, a curly-haired brunette. "That's funny," I say, glancing at the screen. "I suppose Jesse is also a girl's name."

"He'd be thrilled," says Kyle. He clicks her photograph. Then he spins around in his chair so suddenly he almost hits my shoulder.

"Holy shit, Rebecca," he says. "Jesse's done this before."