(NOT fan fiction!) Kurt Cobain and Tally Fisk

Chapter Twenty-Five

Sometime after the Fourth of July, Tally's parents decide she's served her time and she's officially allowed to leave the block.

She doesn't bother to tell me that though. I noticed Kyle pick her up a few times. Add that to the fact that the Invisible Woodsmen went two weeks without a meeting and it's not hard to realize she's been sprung from the pen and I'm nothing but a blip in the past.

I haven't talked to John or Mavis either.

Maybe Kurt was right. Maybe I ruined everything. How can one forgetful moment kill a friendship?

At least Chris Belston keeps asking me to hang with the other guys on the team. Last Saturday he and the guys even came and harassed me at work. I was about twenty-five percent afraid I was going to get fired and seventy-five percent elated that I am now a person with a job who also has friends come into his workplace.

Now I'm walking down to Amelia's for a mid-afternoon taco. Or five.

The heat is unbearable but this nagging feeling in the back of my head tells me I deserve the discomfort. I need to pay a penance for something.

I've spent the last couple of weeks ignoring that feeling by forcing myself to learn a song a day and write at least two songs a week. If I can't get Tally from my mind, at least I can make some art. Teen angst pays off.

My cousin Jasper was over at the house a few days ago and we jammed the whole time.

He said we should start a band.

I looked at him for a minute and said nothing, just went back to playing.

"If it's too much too soon, you could ditch your popular friends," Kurt said from the corner of my room.

"Let's do it," I said to Jasper. But I'm not totally convinced.

Jasper grinned and shifted through the torn-out notebook pages on my bed.

"I like this one. Manic Pixie Night Demon. Let's work on this one."

As I get closer to Amelia's, I think about that. Why wouldn't I want to start a band? I never wanted to be that guy at the party. The one who always plays the guitar. Eventually people would start to be annoyed by me being that guy. Being in a band is way cooler than being that guy.

But maybe I simply didn't want to ditch the guys from the team. I had tasted droplets from the popularity fountain and I wanted the chance to guzzle from it. I don't want to turn my back on it and sit with Jasper and his drummer friend in some garage all the time.

The smell of tacos hits me in the face and I shake my hair from my eyes. It's almost long enough now that the act isn't just a habit from the past.

I stop dead in my tracks when I see John and Mavis sitting at the table, waiting on an order.

Resentment bubbles up in my chest. Why haven't they called me? Or stopped by?

They could say the same thing to me. I haven't exactly reached out.

I'm frozen in indecision when Mavis notices me.

"Come on in. The water's fine."

She combs her dark waves back with her fingers and wraps a hair tie around and around until her hair is in a knot on top of her head.

Without words, or breath, I lower myself onto the picnic table's bench.

"Playing lots of basketball lately?" John straightens his shirt and doesn't look up at me.

"A little," I admit.

I'd heard of abstract things being palpable but I've never experienced tangible awkwardness like this. It's suspended in the air, holding its breath, waiting to crash down on us and divide us for good.