She was looking at me like I was a laboratory specimen, one of those bugs with the pins through it. Her eyes were huge and dark. “Why does she call you ugly?”
Other people could make pretty much any situation seem normal just by saying the right words. But I wasn’t like that. I stared hard at the backs of my hands and waited for Emma to ride in and take over the conversation.
Emma, the master liar. Queen of my-brother-is-normal, my-brother-is-shy. My brother is sickly, has allergies, mono, food poisoning, the flu, the biggest, messiest lie of all: My brother.
Reliably, she came up behind me and leaned her chin on the top of my head. Her hair was fine and limp. Stray pieces had come loose from the rubber band and hung down so they tickled my face. “When he was a baby, he was the ugliest thing you ever saw in your life. All yellow and wrinkly. And he had these teeth.” She let me go and turned in the direction of the office. “A full set—right, Mom?”
“Just like Richard the Third,” my mom called back.
Janice was still looking at me, crouched at the table like she was hungry. “Well, he’s not ugly now.”
“I’m going upstairs,” I said, and pushed my chair back.
In my room, I lay on the bed but couldn’t get comfortable. I felt restless, like little bugs were crawling around under my skin. The man on the bridge had been waiting for me—me, and not some random kid cutting across the bridge. He’d stared right into my face like he was looking for something. I was still cold and shaky from the blood, worse than I’d felt in a while and worse than I used to feel, ever.
Finally, I got up and went over to my closet. I got out my bass and my amp and plugged in the headphones.
The bass was strung with Black Beauties, and I’d pulled off the metal frets. If the song was fast, I used a pick, and when I didn’t, the lacquer coating on the strings kept the steel from burning my fingers. But even if I had to play with bare strings, I’d probably do it anyway, just to get that low, humming sound, that feeling. Sometimes it’s the only thing that helps. Anything that scares or worries you is suddenly a hundred miles away.
I played the lines to songs I knew and to songs I made up. I played progressions full of high, clear notes that hung forever and heavy tones that thumped and doubled back on themselves again and again and again.
After a long time, I started to get a strange feeling. Like someone was listening. Not the feeling of the house or even of Emma standing out in the hall. It was more like the warm, anxious rush of playing for a stranger. When I took the headphones off and went to the window, though, the backyard was empty. More time had passed than I’d realized and it was starting to get dark. I stared out at the lawn and the bushes, but it was ridiculous to think that someone had been listening. Completely ludicrous, when I was sitting there with the sound filtering through my headphones.
