Free Forever by Maggie Stiefvater Page B

He strummed the same chord. “Gets stuck in your head, did you notice? I’d love to spend a summer with my lovely summer girl but I’m never man enough for my ugly summer squirrel ….”
    I watched a plane crawl across the sky, lights flashing. I still remembered writing that song, the summer before I met Grace for real. It was one of those that came out in a hurry, everything at once, me curled over my guitar on the end of my bed, trying to fit chords to the lyrics before the melody was gone. Singing it in the shower to lodge it firmly in my memory. Humming it while I folded laundry downstairs, because I didn’t want Beck to hear me singing about a girl. All the while wanting the impossible, wanting what we all wanted: to outlast the summer.
    Cole broke off his idle singing and said, “Of course, I like that one with the minor chord better, but I couldn’t work it out.” He made an attempt at a different chord. The guitar buzzed at him.
    â€œThe guitar,” I said, “will only obey its master.”
    â€œYeah,” Cole agreed, “but Grace isn’t here.” He grinned at me slyly. He strummed the same D chord. “That’s the only one I can play. Look at that. Ten years of piano lessons, Ringo, and you put a guitar in my hand and I’m a drooling baby.”
    Even though I’d heard him play the piano on the NARKOTIKA album, it was surprisingly difficult to imagine Cole taking pianolessons. To learn a musical instrument, you had to have a certain tolerance for tedium and failure. An ability to sit still helped, too.
    I watched lightning jump from cloud to cloud; the air was getting the heavy feeling that comes before a storm. “You’re putting your fingers too close to the fret. That’s why you’re buzzing. Move them farther behind the fret and press harder. Just your fingertips, too, not the pad.”
    I didn’t think I’d described it very well, but Cole moved his fingers and played a chord perfectly, no buzzing or dead strings.
    Looking dreamily up at the sky, Cole sang, “Just a good-lookin’ guy, sitting on a stump …” He looked back to me. “You’re supposed to sing the next line.”
    It was a game that Paul and I had used to play, too. I considered if I was too annoyed at Cole for making fun of my music to play along. After a slightly too long pause, I added, mostly the same note, halfhearted, “Watching all the satellites.”
    â€œNice touch, emo-boy,” Cole said. Thunder rumbled distantly. He played yet another D chord. He sang, “I’ve got a one-way ticket to the county dump …”
    I sat up on my elbows. Cole strummed for me and I sang, “’Cause I turn into a dog each night.”
    Then I said, “Are you going to play that same chord for every single line?”
    â€œProbably. It’s my best one. I’m a one-hit wonder.”
    I reached for the guitar, and felt like a coward for doing it. To play this game with him felt like I was condoning the events of the night before; what he did to the house each week, what he did to himself every minute of every day. But as I took the guitar from him and strummed the strings lightly to see if it was in tune, it felt like a far more familiar language than any I would use to hold a serious conversation with Cole.
    I played an F major.
    â€œNow we’re cooking with gas,” Cole said. But he didn’t sing another line. Instead, now that I was sitting with the guitar, he took my place, lying down on the stump and staring at the sky. Handsome and put together, he looked as if he had been posed there by an enterprising photographer, like last night’s seizure hadn’t even fazed him. “Play the minor chord one.”
    â€œWhich —?”
    â€œThe good-bye one.”
    I looked at the black woods and played an A minor. For a moment, there was no sound except for some sort of insect crying