Free Secret for a Song by S. K. Falls Page B

fair enough. But you’ve got to
listen to what I consider music. Then you can judge for yourself.” He reached
past me, his arm brushing my shoulder, and slid a CD out of a shelf at
eye-level with me. “Carousel Mayhem,” he said, a sort of grand flourish in his
voice. “Arguably one of the best young musicians of our time.”
    “All
right.” I walked over to his stereo and sat cross-legged in front of it. “Lay
it on me.”
    He
pushed play and sat next to me on the floor. It was a little weird, a little
too intimate, sitting there with him, listening to something that apparently gave
him so much pleasure. I watched him out of the corner of my eye while
pretending not to watch him, and also while concentrating on the music so I’d
have something more intelligent to say at the end than, “Cool.” It was
exhausting. But after a few minutes and into the second song, I felt myself
relax a little bit. The music was nice, more upbeat than I’d expected, and much
more melodious than I would’ve thought from the name.
    Drew
paused it after the second song ended. “So?”
    “It
was pretty good,” I said, nodding my head. “Not as ‘whiny white boy’ as I
expected.”
    Drew
laughed. “Well, that’s a relief.”
    I
gestured to the guitar leaning against his wall. It was one of those sweet
wooden affairs, sleek and glossy. “How long have you played?”
    “Since
I was a preteen. It was sort of my escape from the world.”
    “So
your childhood wasn’t idyllic.” I didn’t look at him when I said it, because I
wanted it to seem like a nonchalant statement. The truth was I wanted to know
all about him with an intensity that could be described as voracious, or if you
were feeling uncharitable, stalker-ish. I don’t know why—if it was the FA, or
the fact that someone with this degenerative, life-wrecking disease still had a
whole other life outside of it. When it came to me, my disease and I were one.
I had no hobbies, really, no memories, outside of it. But this man, apparently,
did.
    “You
could say that.” He went and got the guitar, then came and sat beside me again.
I watched as his fingers caressed the strings, coaxing out sounds that, in
turn, caressed me. “My parents were junkies. They stayed together only because
they wanted to get high together, and they were too stupid to use birth
control.”
    I
watched his bent neck, the soft skin on the back of it like velvet. There was
no indication of anger in his voice, in his posture. How could that be? “Wow.
That’s awful.”
    “Yep.”
He kept strumming as he talked, the soft, tinkling music at complete odds with
what he was telling me. “There were three of us, all boys. My brothers loved
it. As far back as I can remember, they walked around with the same people my
parents were, for lack of a better term, ‘friends’ with.”
    “So
you escaped.”
    “‘Escaped’
makes me sound braver than I really am. I ran away. Had enough.”
    I
put my hand on his without even thinking, temporarily stopping the strumming.
Sometimes people did things completely at odds with their personalities. That
was one of my moments; definitely one of my better ones. “I’m glad you ran
away.”
    We
stared at each other, and I felt the air around us tense up. It was a
kiss-or-not moment. Drew took a deep breath, his shoulders and chest expanding
until I felt utterly dwarfed. He touched my cheek with the tips of his fingers.
“There’s something about you, Grayson,” he said.
    When
he didn’t finish his sentence, I pulled back a little. Laughed to show I wasn’t
nervous or anything, just curious. “ What about me?”
    But
he just shook his head, a smile in his eyes. “Want to listen to some more
music?”
     We
listened to a lot more music. After about an hour, I got to my feet, a
little unsteady from having been sitting for so long. Drew stood too, and when
he saw me wobbling, reached out for me. But he didn’t have his cane. My lack of
balance caused him to lose