Love Notes

Chapter 6

After dumping the Rice Krispies squares in the garbage, I try unsuccessfully to fight the nausea.

Once I'm done throwing up, I brush my teeth, wash my face, and grab a book.

I go straight for my favorites. Austen. Dickens.

I shut both within two chapters and go for the serious escapism.

Harry Potter.

But nothing helps. My entire body aches, and it's not from drinking. At least, I'm pretty sure it's not.

So I head for the driveway.

I haven't been on the Big Leap bus in months, but now I head up the stairs.

The front part has couches, a coffee table. Racks of guitars line one wall, and pictures hang on the other. My gaze runs over the images. Ones of my dad and his band on tour, from the kids who recorded here, of Dad and Haley. One of my dad and me and Aunt Grace, taken when I was eight or nine, with a gap in my front teeth.

There's one of Tyler and me. It's a selfie, taken right here on this bus on my birthday two years ago.

I trace the edge with a finger as the backs of my eyes burn.

Another image is a quote from one of my dad's interviews. One of the kids who came through this program had it printed, mounted and plaqued.

Music saved my life.

This morning, I could use saving.

I turn away and lift a guitar off the wall and head to the recording studio at the back, on the other side of a soundproof glass door. There's a big soundboard, a couch, a few stools, and more instruments and amps.

I take a seat on one of the stools and settle the guitar in my lap.

The strings bite into my skin when I start to play. It's been a while since I have, and I can feel it in my fingertips, hear it in the sound.

Still, I keep going.

It feels good in the same way it feels to work your muscles when you haven't in a long time.

Through the small windows at the top of the walls, the cloudless sky peeks in.

I let my fingers play over the strings, an easy chord that fills some of the space in my aching chest.

Another. This time it shifts, swells inside me.

Another.

Before I know it, I'm playing "Part of your World."

I loved The Little Mermaid movie growing up. Loved her sense of adventure and independence, the way she made her own path.

My second time through the song, I sing over top.

Movement at the front of the bus has me straightening.

I relax a bit when my dad appears at the top of the stairs, brows pulled together. "What are you doing here?"

"Messing around."

He crosses to me. "I'm looking for Tyler. We're supposed to go check out a studio."

A sound on the steps has both of us looking toward the door.

Tyler fills the frame. He's the same breadth as my dad, only taller. His face is leaner, his eyes soulful the way my dad's are fiery.

His hair's damp, and I wonder whether he showered alone.

"There you are. We gotta go." My dad turns and claps him on the shoulder.