Junk Magic and Guitar Dreams by T. James Logan

Author:T. James Logan [Logan, T. James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: young adult, music, magical realism
Publisher: Bear Paw Publishing
Published: 2020-03-09T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

HEAD OVER FEET

The next two days at the car wash passed uneventfully, with no sign of Louisa Pritt. He felt like a ground squirrel peeking out of its burrow, looking for a predator, every time he opened his front door.

He worked hard. He took his paycheck home, paid the rest of the electric bill, started on the phone bill, and bought himself another sack full of bread and ramen noodles. He splurged on a few packages of cheap hot dogs and powdered mac and cheese. He left the cardboard box alone in the middle of the living room floor.

He threw the medallion and its chain into the garbage.

And he worried for two days what he was going to say to Amber at rehearsal.

Lika tried to call him a couple of times and left a couple of voicemails that said, “We need to talk. Call me back. It’s about school.” He didn’t have time to think about school, so he decided to wait until rehearsal.

He rolled up to Toby’s garage precisely on time. Toby gave him a neutral “hey.” Lika showed up a few minutes later and thumped him on the shoulder. “Your phone quit working?”

“Sorry, I only have a few minutes left on it,” he said, “so I figured I would just wait until tonight to talk to you.”

She seemed to accept that excuse, and he wasn’t entirely lying.

When Amber’s mom dropped her off, she walked up the drive, fingers in the pockets of her denim miniskirt. “Hey, everyone.”

They gave her a collective “hey.”

Otter busied himself with his amplifier cord.

The stiffness in Lika’s face made her look sub-zero.

Amber switched on her keyboard, smoothed a piece of paper on top of it, and ran a few bars of a melody Otter didn’t recognize.

Toby said, “Nice. What is that?”

“Something I’m working on,” Amber said.

They all began to warm up, playing little riffs, limbering up fingers, checking their tuning. Otter’s hands had healed somewhat, but they were not yet one hundred percent. He oscillated between trying to catch Amber’s eye and trying to avoid it.

Their set list for the open mic would be four songs from their Black Line set. They wanted to open big and end big. They would start out with Queen’s “Under Pressure,” then jump into AC/DC’s “Back in Black,” and finish out with 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up” and Aretha Franklin’s “Respect.” Everybody had the chance to play their favorites and to shine.

They launched into Otter’s set list. He grimaced at a series of flubs in the first couple of songs, but by the third go-around the stiffness in his fingers had loosened and he’d caught his groove. Once he had it, he hit the gas. His bass lines picked up little touches and extra riffs.

Toby looked at him with appreciation. “You have been practicing.”

Otter waggled his eyebrows and hugged the groove.

The third time through their list, they were all trading looks of appreciation, that maybe this “band thing” was not all just a horrible, soon-to-be-humiliating mistake.

By then, Amber’s mom was waiting at the curb.

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