Heart Strings by D.G. Vanian

Author:D.G. Vanian [Vanian, D.G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

March 25, 2006

“Andi? Oh my god, Andi? Have you heard?”

Debbie’s voice was breathy, panicky, even over the phone.

“What? Are you okay?”

“No, no I’m not okay. Turn on the TV, right now. Oh my god, oh my god.”

Andi put down his pencil and clicked on the small TV in his room. It was still set on Nickelodeon, but he flipped through the channels. “What is it?”

“You can’t find it?”

“What?” Andi yelled into the phone, annoyed his friend couldn’t just tell him what was going on.

“It’s Drake Hunter…oh my god.”

Puzzlement replaced anger. “What happened?”

And then he found the channel.

The news anchor, a bland blond man in an expensive but ugly suit, was commenting on the death of Drake Hunter.

He was dead.

“No, no, no…” Andi was saying, a string of denials he couldn’t stop. He dropped the phone but didn’t even notice.

Drake Hunter couldn’t be dead. He was just about to start his world tour. Andi might have just been able to convince his grandmother to let him see Drake Hunter in concert, if she went too. He was old enough now, old enough to get a seat anyway, if he couldn’t be down on the floor. That would be good enough.

But now that wouldn’t happen.

Andi pressed his hands on either side of the TV, wishing there was some way he could will Drake Hunter to be alive again. The news had to be wrong. They had to be lying. Drake Hunter couldn’t be dead.

The words filtered into his brain. “…the shockrocker Drake Hunter has been rushed to the hospital but was dead when the paramedics found him. It is unknown what his condition is now, but it is speculated that he has overdosed.”

“No, he’s been clean!” Andi raged. He had read it in Rolling Stone, in his last interview. He’d been clean ever since his divorce two years before.

Belatedly, Andi remembered he had been on the phone with Debbie and grabbed it up again. His friend was still there, sobbing into the receiver, and likely hadn’t noticed that Andi hadn’t been responding.

The tears threatened to roll down his own cheeks, but he refused to let them. He wasn’t going to cry because Drake Hunter couldn’t be dead. He just couldn’t be. If Andi didn’t cry, he couldn’t be dead. He knew that was stupid, but he had to cling to something, anything.

It wasn’t fair. Why couldn’t he have been born ten years earlier, when Drake Hunter had been new and he’d have been old enough to go to one of his concerts?

Andi listened to Debbie cry for an hour, his own throat aching from holding back his sobs. Finally his nana called him down for dinner, and he was forced to hang up with his friend.

Feeling hollow inside, Andi mechanically ate his dinner and returned to his room. He hadn’t turned his TV off, but the news had gone on to some other program. He flipped through the channels obsessively, trying to find any further news. Nana wouldn’t let him use the computer after dinner so he couldn’t even look it up just directly.

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