Scar Girl (21 page)

“Gone?”

The word was a sucker punch to my gut. All of a sudden I couldn't breathe.

I tried to will the universe into having Johnny just be gone from this house, gone from Yonkers, gone from the Scar Boys, even gone from my life, but not gone from the world. Johnny couldn't be gone like that. He was one of the things that made the world real, like air. Johnny was air for me, oxygen. Even though we hadn't really talked in months, he'd still been there. Johnny was gone and I couldn't breathe. There was no air.

RICHIE MCGILL

“How?” I asked. I mean, shit. I knew the answer. We all knew the fucking answer. But the whole scene was kind of like a car wreck. I couldn't stop looking and couldn't help myself from asking how.

CHEYENNE BELLE

I'd already forgotten Richie was in the room. I'd forgotten anyone was in the room except for me and Harry's mom. I craned my head to look at Richie, and his eyes were wet. I looked back to Mrs. Jones, waiting for her to say what I already knew.

HARBINGER JONES

Everything came crashing to the fore like a tidal wave—that lost look Johnny had in his eyes all the time, that little black book he'd started carrying around, the way he was letting himself go. All the clues were there for anyone who bothered to look.

My mom sighed. It was almost a moan. “I'm so, so sorry. Johnny took his own life.” Her voice croaked, and she started crying again.

CHEYENNE BELLE

All I could think about was my phone call with Johnny the night before. I could have stopped this. Oh, my fucking God, I could have stopped it.

The room started spinning, and without realizing how or why, I was on the ground.

RICHIE MCGILL

Chey fell to the floor. It was like the weight of it made her sit down hard on her ass. She landed with a thud. Everything was happening in slow motion.

HARBINGER JONES

A million thoughts about Johnny tried to push their way through to the surface: My confusion at how he could do such a thing. My morbid curiosity about how he did it. Was it pills? A gun? A rope? My wondering if he'd left a note, because that's what people who commit suicide are supposed to do. My anger at him for leaving without talking to me first. My anger at myself for not trying harder to talk to him. My heart breaking for his older brother, Russell, who loved Johnny so much. My own thoughts about suicide and how many times over the years, when I was younger and things were really bad for me, I wondered what it would be like and if it would make everything better. My wondering if it made things better for Johnny and then my hating myself for thinking that.

My endless lists of useless facts tried to come crashing in, too. Presidents and Oscar winners and SAT vocabulary words getting jumbled together and trying to drown out the screaming noise of the universe. All of the signal being replaced by noise, nothing but noise.

CHEYENNE BELLE

I screamed.

A bomb had been shoved down my throat and had exploded all of my insides. It made me break into a thousand pieces, all of them sharp and jagged. I was Humpty Dumpty and I was made of glass.

I could see a kind of swirling vortex opening up in front of me. It was black and gray, with flashes of lightning. It was filled with pain and misery, and it was where I wanted to be. All I wanted to do right then was follow Johnny and our baby into oblivion.

Every inch of me hurt, inside and out. From the soles of my feet to the hair on my head, I was a pulsing knot of hurt. I'd never known such pain. This was the miscarriage times a million. Times infinity.

HARBINGER JONES

Cheyenne's scream ripped a hole in me. It ripped a hole in the world.

I turned away from my mom, went to Chey, and knelt down beside her.

“Chey,” I said, but I don't think she heard me.

“Chey.” A little louder, still nothing. I touched her gently on the shoulder.

CHEYENNE BELLE

I looked up, and Harry was standing next to me. I never saw him cross the room, but somehow his hand was on my shoulder. That black vortex of death was trying to suck me in and pull me away from all of this, and that was what I wanted. I wanted it so bad.

The alternative, to keep going, to face what had happened, to live knowing that Johnny's suicide was all my fault, was more terrifying than oblivion. I was more afraid of living than of dying. Way more afraid. If I could just fall into the black hole, everything would be okay.

But I couldn't. Harry's hand was holding me firm to the earth. Firm to the floor of his basement.

When I looked at him, Harry's eyes were floating in a sea of saltwater, and they were filled with worry and dread. Whether that was for Johnny, me, or all three of us, I didn't know. But Harry's eyes were real, they were something for me to hold on to. I grabbed hold and wouldn't let go.

RICHIE MCGILL

Harry's mom was on the ground, too. I didn't see her go down, but there she was, on the floor, crying like the rest of us. After everything that had happened to Harry, Mrs. J. must've worried about him doing something like this. Johnny had to be a knife in her fucking heart.

The whole scene was starting to freak me out big-time. I needed to do something.

HARBINGER JONES

Richie got up from behind the drums, walked over, and put a hand on my back. When I looked up, his face was streaked with tears and his cheeks were flush. He mouthed, “Are you okay? Should I go?” I nodded and silently thanked the God I didn't believe in for a friend like Richie McGill.

CHEYENNE BELLE

I buried my face in Harry's chest and screamed and cried. He just kept saying he was sorry and that it was going to be okay, over and over and over again. It was a lie, and we both knew it. Nothing was going to be okay, ever again.

RICHIE MCGILL

I helped Harry's mom up off the floor, partly to help her out of the room so Harry and Chey could have some space, and partly to get the fuck out of there myself. I felt like I was gonna puke or explode or something if I stayed in that basement one more minute.

Mrs. J. walked me to the entryway by the front door and gave me a long hug. She sniffled a few times but was starting to pull her shit together.

“Do you want to stay? Do you want me to call your father?”

“No, I'll be okay.” I started to leave but then turned around. “Wait, do you want me to stay with you for a bit?”

She paused for a minute and then kind of hung her head and nodded. I swear to God she looked like a little kid.

I took her arm and led Mrs. J. to the kitchen. She made us both tea, we talked about Johnny, and we waited for Harry and Chey to come upstairs. We waited a long time.

CHEYENNE BELLE

I don't know how long Harry and I were on the floor, but when I looked up, Richie and Mrs. Jones were gone. I stayed there and cried until I felt like there must've been blood pouring out of my eyes. That was the last thing I remembered, thinking that there was blood pouring out of my eyes.

HARBINGER JONES

I held Chey until she fell asleep.

I stroked her hair while I thought about Johnny. I kept remembering the first day he and I met, and how he'd saved me from a bully. He'd swooped in and saved me like he was Superman. But he did more than save me from a bully.

When I met Johnny, I was a nothing, a nobody. No, wait, strike that. I was something worse. I was a pariah. At least a nobody can fade into the background. I couldn't do that because people couldn't help but notice me. Once Johnny and I found each other, all that changed.

In every way imaginable, Johnny McKenna saved my life.

But I couldn't save him.

I didn't even try.

It turns out I'm a nothing after all.

I cried until I fell asleep, too.

Chey and I stayed there like that, on the floor, in each other's arms. We were together, but we were broken, and we were, each of us, utterly and completely alone.

PART TEN,
MARCH 1987

I don't think Jimi committed suicide in the conventional way. He just decided to exit when he wanted to.
—Eric Burdon, on Jimi Hendrix

 

What do you miss most about Johnny McKenna?

HARBINGER JONES

Back when we were in middle school, we used to go running together. When we couldn't go any farther, we would flop down on some neighbor's lawn and catch our breath. Then we would just talk and laugh. We laughed a lot.

That's what I miss, his friendship.

RICHIE MCGILL

I don't know, I miss a lot of things. Mostly I miss how the guy lit up a room, or at least the way he did before he lost his leg. You can take that however you want, but the dude was a force of nature. You kind of felt proud that he'd picked you as a friend.

CHEYENNE BELLE

Everything.

HARBINGER JONES

Funeral homes are weird places. They're little factories for honoring the dead. Johnny's service was held at a place near our old high school; it was a long, low white house that, on the outside, looked inviting. One of the ways death tricks you, I suppose.

The wake was a scene. I mean, Johnny was insanely popular all throughout school, kind of like Ferris Bueller. When we went on the road and then when he lost his leg, the legend of Johnny McKenna only grew.

When I first walked into the room and saw the open casket at the far end, my stomach turned. The rest of the room seemed to blur at the edges, the whole thing collapsing into a kind of wormhole that led straight to the coffin. It took me a minute to get my bearings.

Rows of chairs had been set up like people were coming to see Johnny play one last show. There were pictures of him scattered on end tables next to the few upholstered chairs and couches. His keyboard was set up in a corner, with a pair of his old running shoes underneath. That bothered me a little. Johnny played the keyboard only because he couldn't wear those running shoes anymore. The symbolism was all screwed up.

Richie, Chey, and I had come to the wake together. Richie looked sharp in a new suit, while I stood there swimming in an ill-fitting gray two-piece with a skinny tie and pointy black boots. It was the same suit I had worn under my gown at our high school graduation. I was the only kid not smart enough to figure out that it didn't matter what you wore under your gown. Most everyone had worn shorts, and supposedly one kid, John Emmett, had been naked. Chey looked beautiful at the wake, like she always does, in her skirt and blazer. Though she did remind me of Jo from
Facts of Life
.

Like Scarecrow and the Tin Man protecting Dorothy, Richie and I each hooked one of Chey's arms and took our place in the line of mourners, waiting until it was our turn to approach the casket.

You always hear people say how dead bodies at wakes look peaceful. Johnny didn't look peaceful. He looked dead. The color in his cheeks was only there because someone had applied makeup, and his eyes were taped shut. The suit he was wearing didn't fit any better than the suit I was wearing.

I just bowed my head and told Johnny how sorry I was and that I hoped he was somewhere where he could run. As much as he loved music, Johnny's soul was connected to running the same way my soul was connected to the guitar. I didn't know what else to say or think.

Cheyenne started to cry pretty hard when we saw Johnny, and Richie and I tried to pull her away, but she stopped us. She reached into a small purse she had slung over her shoulder and gently dropped something in the casket. It fell to the side of Johnny's body, so I didn't see what it was. I never asked.

I'd love to tell you that it was more dramatic than that. That one of us made a speech or broke down or did something grandiose. We didn't. We paid our respects like everyone else, and we moved on. The moment demanded more, but there was no more to be done.

After saying our final good-byes, we followed the other mourners, like a morbid sort of conga line, to see Johnny's parents. His mother was barely holding it together as she greeted and hugged the people in front of us, an older couple, maybe some aunt and uncle of Johnny's. The four of them—the couple and Johnny's parents—talked for a moment that felt like a year, and then it was our turn.

Mrs. McKenna looked at Chey, Richie, and me with ice in her eyes. I thought for sure she was going to take a swing at me.

She did just the opposite.

Johnny's mother, the woman who had so detested us, literally fell into our arms, all six of our arms, and started wailing. She was saying something but was so upset I couldn't make it out at first.

“Thankyoubingsugofrnds” is what I heard. I could only mumble, “I'm so sorry,” as I held her. She sucked in a big breath, and then her words resolved themselves.

“Thank you for being such good friends,” she was saying over and over again. Mr. McKenna gently put a hand on his wife's shoulder, and she pulled back.

I was too choked up to speak, and as soon as I tried, I lost it. So did Chey. And so did Richie. The raw emotion of it was too much to handle. I wanted to tell Mrs. McKenna, I wanted to scream at her that we weren't the friends she thought we were. That we, along with everyone else, had let her son down. But I didn't. I couldn't.