Sydney holds her skirt to one side and curtsies. Then she throws her arms up in the air and her head back and yells, “Yes! Stick me!”
Some guy on the other couch tosses a glue stick at her. She catches it in the air, removes the cap, and, using the stool as a table, runs the glue back and forth across the McDonald’s
logo.
She steps off the stage and I think she’s walking toward me, but she passes our couch and stops at the wall. We all watch as she smacks what’s left of the Chicken McNuggets lid
against it. Brushing her hands together, she settles into a spot on the couch behind me and our eyes meet. She smiles at me. I smile back. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her speak until
now.
When I turn around again, the guy who let me inside is taking the stage. He perches himself on the stool and picks up the acoustic guitar that’s strapped over his shoulder.
How do I know him?
I follow the string around his neck, and picture that gold key hiding behind his guitar.
“I wrote this last weekend in my room. And, okay, I’m sayin’ it.” He pauses for dramatic effect. “This one sucks.”
He stands up, holds his hands in front of him, and lets the guitar fall slack so the strap catches it. He’s gesturing toward himself in this go-ahead-let-me-have-it kind of way, and
everyone around me starts ripping papers out of notebooks, balling them up, and chucking them at him. He laughs and keeps gesturing with his hands, silently telling them to keep it coming.
I look over at Caroline. She won’t make eye contact with me, so I lightly elbow pixie-cut girl. “Why are they doing that?” I ask, and she comes in close to my ear.
“It’s one of the rules. You can’t criticize anyone’s poetry, but especially not your own.”
He perches himself on the stool and picks up his guitar again, and the second he does, the paper stops flying. He starts plucking the strings, and this melody fills the room. He’s only
playing a few notes, but they sound so pretty together this way, over and over again. And then he starts singing.
So long, Lazy Ray.
Were you a crack you’d be tempting to look through.
Were you my coat on a cold day,
You’d lose track of the ways you were worn.
And it’s true.
I haven’t got a clue.
How to love you.
He’s not looking at any of us. He’s just staring down at the guitar, picking at the strings. He sings two more verses, and his voice rises higher, louder when he reaches the chorus.
After another verse, the tempo slows, and I can tell the song is winding down.
Like sunlight dancing on my skin,
You’ll still be in my mind.
So I’m only gonna say,
So long, Lazy Ray.
The last note lingers in the silence. Everyone remained quiet for a second or two, but now they’re on their feet, clapping and cheering and tossing more paper balls at his head as he swats
them away. Then they start pelting him with glue sticks.
He manages to catch one as it bounces off the wall behind him, and then he does that musician thing, slipping his guitar around his back in one fluid motion. He’s shaking his head as if
he’s embarrassed by the attention, and pulls a piece of paper out of the back pocket of his jeans. He unfolds it, flattens it against the stool, and rubs glue along the back before he steps
down from the stage.
He walks to the other side of the room and, still clutching the paper, bows once. Then he reaches up high on the wall, smacking his words against it.
I’m trying to figure out if everyone else is as taken aback as I am, but they don’t seem to be. Didn’t anyone else think that was amazing? Because while all of them are clearly
enjoying this moment, none of them look quite as surprised as I am, and I’m pretty sure their arms aren’t covered in goose bumps like mine are. They all look relatively unfazed.
Except Caroline.
She’s grinning ear to ear, and as we take our seats again, she threads her arm through mine and rests her chin on my shoulder. “I knew
Brian Keene, J.F. Gonzalez