Kyle could feel the humid air between his lips as he stared at the spot where Starlee had just been standing. He replayed the confrontation in his head, trying to figure out what he’d done. He’d been threatened and scolded in the space of two minutes and, so far as Kyle could tell, standing in his own yard had been his only offense.
He retreated to the den and lay down on the couch. Every chord he’d strummed to show Starlee how he’d changed sawed at his insides like a jagged blade. Maybe she would forget everything he’d done when school started, but Kyle knew he never would.
After a few minutes, Kyle rolled onto his feet. He wrapped his hands around the neck of the guitar and picked it up. Then he swung it slowly in front of his waist like a batter waiting for a pitcher to get a sign he liked. He imagined how it would feel to bring the body down on the arm of the couch, driving through until whatever was left in his hands had hit the floor. He wondered how many swings it would take to shatter the body like an eggshell.
Kyle sat down on the couch and rested the guitar’s curve on his right thigh. He strummed an F chord, then a B flat major. Then he started to play “Song Against Sex” at full speed, without any accompaniment. He sang, too, filling lines he couldn’t recall with words from other verses. He had to try like hell to remember the lyrics and keep the rhythm and make the right shapes with his hand, but through it all, Kyle realized that playing the guitar felt different than it had the day before. He was playing—at least in part—because of what had just happened with Starlee. But he wasn’t playing for her. He wasn’t playing for anyone else, either. He was just playing. Playing was just what he did. The realization buoyed Kyle somehow, and the buoyancy came through in his playing. He stomped his left foot on the carpet with each beat and strummed as hard as he could without losing all control. Even his head swiveled with the rhythm. And as he sang the melody of the trombone solo over the jangle of his messy chords, Kyle thought, This is what it feels like to have a thing. This must be.
Around noon, Kyle sat down at his father’s computer, determined to learn at least part of another song before school started the next day. He maxed out the speakers’ volume to drown out Starlee’s music and listened to the Neutral Milk Hotel album two times through with the guitar by his side, waiting for something to hit him the way “Song Against Sex” had. Nothing did. So Kyle picked a song that sounded simple. By Kyle’s count, the slow, plaintive, “Someone is Waiting” had only three chords. A tablature site confirmed the number of chords and named them: F, B flat major, and C. Kyle couldn’t believe his luck. Though he likely could play dozens of chords, the guitarist for Neutral Milk Hotel was partial, it seemed, to the two Kyle knew already.
The song’s tablature included diagrams for open C and barred C, which was just B flat major played two frets further up the fingerboard. But from the moment he realized that a C chord could be played without flattening a finger against a fret and bending his wrist around the guitar neck, Kyle focused only on open C. Following the diagram, he placed the tips of his index, middle and ring fingers on the strings. The shape felt natural, almost ergonomic. Kyle’s choice was rewarded again when he dragged the pick across the strings. The open C rang out in a way that even a perfectly executed barred chord, with so much flesh on the strings, could not. Kyle hadn’t known his guitar could sound that good. He played open C after open C. With each strum, the strings wobbled wildly, settled into a tight blur, and came to rest as the chord faded into Starlee’s music.
When he had the C down, Kyle played an F, a B flat major, and an open C in succession. Getting his fingers in the right places and sounding each chord once took almost half a minute. “Someone is Waiting” was a slow song, but not nearly slow enough for Kyle to play it—not today, anyway.
As Kyle sat in the rolling chair, struggling with the chord progression, a melody from Starlee’s house pierced his concentration. Starlee was listening to “Someone is Waiting.” Had she heard him listening to the song? Had she heard him butchering Fs and Cs and B flat majors? Was she sending him some kind of message? An apology, maybe?
Kyle stood up and traced the music’s path with his eyes through a dirty steel screen that made everything inside Starlee’s living room look pixilated and gray, like images read from a pirated videotape. Kyle saw those two guys kneeling on the carpeted floor, facing each other with their jeans bunched around their calves. Starlee was on her hands and knees, moving—or being moved—back and forth between them. The guys were smiling at each other, as if Starlee weren’t even there.
It took Kyle a few seconds to understand what he was seeing. Then he turned and stood with his back to the window, feeling his heartbeat in his ears. Even with his back turned, his parents’ bedroom seemed too close to it all. He closed the window, keeping his eyes on his bare feet. Then he walked to the den, sat on the couch, and gripped the sweaty hair above his temples.
But sitting in the den didn’t reduce Kyle’s sense of alarm. I should be doing something, Kyle thought. But what? Ringing her doorbell? Making a ruckus? Starting a fire? It occurred to Kyle that what he should be doing—what other guys he knew would be doing—was watching through the window, imagining themselves in place of one of those guys, or both of them. But Kyle didn’t want to. It occurred to Kyle that not wanting to watch might make him queer, but he didn’t see that there was anything he could do about that right now.
Eventually the Camaro rumbled away, and Kyle knew it was over. But he stayed in the den until it was time for dinner, ate with his back to Starlee’s house, and went straight to bed. He didn’t want to see Starlee on her back step, confirming with her calm, smoky exhalations that what had happened today—or something like it—had happened many times before.
Kyle lay awake, helplessly generating more questions. Did Starlee like doing what he’d seen her doing? Did she love one of those guys, or both of them? Did everyone at school know about this? If they didn’t, Kyle figured they would by tomorrow afternoon. Those guys wouldn’t see any reason to keep their mouths shut and, if high school was anything like junior high, word would spread in a hurry. Part of Kyle couldn’t even blame those guys for blabbing. If he had done what they’d done today, wouldn’t he have felt compelled to tell someone? But the thought that this was what kids at school would think of when they saw Starlee—that this was, in effect, her thing—made Kyle roll over on his side and groan.
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