Solomon Grimm and the Well of Souls

Chapter 2

Sitting on the edge of his unmade bed, Solomon calmed himself by playing along to a Kasabian track on his well-strummed electric guitar. The riff coming from his Marshall 10 watt practice amp was just loud enough to drown out any and all sound from outside his bedroom door. Not that it mattered. He knew that Ros was knocking, hoping to come in and talk.

“It’s open,” said Solomon, silencing the strings with his palm.

Ros let herself in and surveyed the room. She’d fostered nearly thirty different children of varying ages over the years, but none had been quite as disorganized as Solomon. There were clothes on the floor, torn school books on the bed and window sill, and music magazines absolutely everywhere. She was about to make a comment on this when something caught her eye.

“Solomon!” she said, leaning in close to him. “Your nose is bleeding.”

Solomon was made aware of this as a droplet of blood fell upon the pick guard of his scuffed white guitar.

“As if this thing couldn’t get any grubbier,” he mumbled, resigned to his fate of owning the saddest electric guitar in all of England. He’d had it since he was twelve, having bought it out of a catalogue with birthday money. The only thing worse would be no guitar at all.

“You know,” said Ros as she sat on the bed next to him. “I truly believe that you’re a creative person, not a destructive one. You’re happiest when you’re playing your music.”

“Yeah,” her foster son replied, still not looking at her. “I know. That’s why I lost it when that kid rubbished my playing. The band means everything to me. Well, my guitar playing does. It’s all about the feeling I get when I play, you know? It’s the only time when I feel... alive.”

Taking a packet of tissues from her cardigan pocket, Ros pulled one free and dabbed at Solomon’s nose. To her surprise, he let her.

“You’ve been through a lot, Solomon, I know,” she said in a comforting tone. “Losing your father. Finding out you have diabetes. Then your mother’s depression. And I know that moving in with my family has its own stresses and strains.”

“No, Ros,” he countered, finally looking at her. “You’ve been great. I’ve been a real pillock, though.”

She smiled. “You’ve been a normal teenager going through normal teenage problems. Plus a little bit more. If you didn’t let off a little steam now and then I would be worried.”

“I’ll pay for the stuff I smashed at the supermarket, Ros, I promise.”

“And that would be a very sweet gesture. I appreciate it. So, you’re thinking, maybe... you might get a job? Easter break is coming up. You could help some of the neighbors out. Something like that?” This, she knew, was a touchy subject. The word ‘job’ was enough to make Solomon wince as though Ros has jabbed him with a sharp stick. It wasn’t that he was lazy. It wasn’t that he was afraid of hard work. In fact, he loved helping Ros around the house. Only the weekend before the whole family had ventured into the dark continent known as the attic to clear out several years of orphaned keepsakes and forgotten gems. He’d enjoyed that, and had worked up a good sweat. The dreaded ‘j’ word, however, hurled his mind right back to those awful days after his mother had entered into her depression. She couldn’t work, and nagged constantly at her son to ‘go out and start making some money’. He had become—very reluctantly—the man of the house.

And he didn’t want to be a man. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.

“But,” said Ros enigmatically, “I think I know exactly what you need to patch those tattered spirits of yours...”

Solomon’s eyebrows rose in curiosity. “You do? What?”

Ros grinned. “That, Solomon, is a surprise.”