Guitar Notes (17 page)

Authors: Mary Amato

BOOK: Guitar Notes

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“I smuggled it out,” she says. “I put it in my cello case and left my cello in the practice room. Mr. Jacoby never goes in those rooms. I figured if he did, I’d tell him that I forgot to put it away.”

“You stole the school guitar!”

“No,” she protests. “Just borrowing until you get your guitar back. I’m merely putting it to good use.”

“This is huge. This is monumental. I can’t believe you did it.”

“It’s a crime for a musical instrument to go unplayed. I put the empty guitar case back in the storage closet. Mr. Jacoby won’t even know the guitar is gone.”

“You’re like Robin Hood,” Tripp says. “The musical version. You take guitars from the rich and give them to the poor.”

Lyla laughs. “Bring it up!”

Tripp slings the guitar around his back and climbs up through the opening in the floor of the tree house.

The candle, which Lyla has set on the only piece of furniture—a small wooden stool—fills the room with a warm, golden glow. The three walls not facing the trunk have windows, complete with wooden shutters. Lyla has opened them all. The floor is lined with thick, striped blankets. The room smells of cedar and wool.

“Wow,” Tripp says.

“I used to know Mrs. Victor, the woman who lived here—”

“—in the tree house?”

Lyla smiles. “In the house house. But she died and her kids are all grown up and they can’t decide whether to sell it or keep it. They send a gardener once a month, but the house is empty. My secret hideaway.” She takes the guitar and strums a chord. “Nobody knows about it.”

The sound of the guitar fills the tree house. The moon is framed like a picture in one of the windows. It feels to Tripp as if they have traveled back in time. “I think Mrs. Victor would like that we’re here,” he says. “It’s a crime for a tree house to be uninhabited.”

Lyla smiles.

“My idea is to leave the guitar here so that either one of us can come anytime and play. We’ll cover it with these blankets to keep it warm at night.”

“But that means you won’t have it to play at school.”

“I know.” She shrugs. “But you can’t come to the practice room at all, and you really need it.”

“You need it, too.”

“We both need it, and I figured we could both play it here.”

Tripp nods. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Okay. Let’s work on our waltz,” Lyla says, and pulls her notebook out. “I wrote the rest of the lyrics. Oh, and guess what else I brought?”

“I can’t imagine.”

She reaches in her other pocket and pulls out a small digital recorder. “My dad got this for me to record my lessons with Dr. Prevski. We can record our songs up here and post them all on our website.”

“You’re a genius,” he says, and she nods.

They work on the song, and after a few minutes, Lyla’s cell phone rings.

“I’m not answering,” she says.

They practice different harmonies until they get the song into shape.

“Ready to record it?” Lyla asks.

Tripp nods, and she pushes the button.

He plays the introduction and then they sing:

I like the sound of your name in my ear
,

I like to hear what you have to say
,

I’d like to pay attention to you
—
instead of doing

What I have to do. Oh …

Something inside me is ready
,

Something in me’s ready
—
oh
,

Here I go …

I like the way that our time intertwines
.

I want to design each day so we can meet
,

Each word a seed that’s hoping to grow
—
no need to hurry
,

Let’s take it slow. Oh …

Something inside me is ready
,

Something in me’s ready
—
oh
,

Here I go …

I like the shape of the thoughts in your mind
.

You’ve got the kind of edge that I seem to need
,

And if you feel the world doesn’t care
—
I’ll send a message
,

You’ll know I’m here. Oh …

They sing the chorus one final time and when they get to the last note, they look at each other and smile.

“Not bad!” Tripp says.

“Oooh, that break you did gave me an idea for something new to try. Maybe for another song,” Lyla exclaims and takes the guitar. “Let me try it with your pick.”

He hesitates.

“Just for a minute,” she says.

He hands it to her. She strums, but she isn’t holding on tightly enough and the pick flies out of her hand. “I’m sorry,” she says, her voice bright with embarrassment. She kneels forward, looking for it. “If we can’t find it, I’ll get you another one.”

Tripp looks all around the opening and then heads down the ladder without saying a word. He starts to search the dark, leaf-covered ground.

“I’m sorry!” Lyla says again. “It’s not the end of the world, is it? You have other picks, right?” Her phone rings. She doesn’t answer it. “Use your cell phone like a flashlight,” she suggests.

He opens his phone and crouches down, pointing the light at the leaves around his feet.

“I’ll buy you a new pick, Tripp,” she calls down.

More silence … just the rustle of leaves as he searches through them.

“I’ll come back when it’s light and look for it tomorrow,” she offers.

He keeps looking.

“Are you mad at me?” she asks.

He doesn’t say anything.

“This is kind of ridiculous,” she says. “It’s just a pick.”

“It’s not just a pick.” Tripp kicks the leaves aside and continues to look.

“Fine,” she says.

He can hear her covering the guitar with blankets, closing the shutters. When she climbs down the ladder,
he moves aside to let her down, and she opens her cell phone to help him look. Her phone buzzes.

“My dad again.”

“That’s okay. I’ll look for it myself,” he says.

She answers. “Hi, Dad, I’m on my—” She listens. “No! … I’ll be home!” Her voice tenses and then snaps. “No! … Five minutes. Dad! I’ll be home in five minutes.” She closes her phone. “This is bad. I should’ve answered his call right away. When I didn’t pick up, he called Annie.” She starts to pace. “This is so bad. I told him I was at Annie’s, and Annie just said she had no idea where I am. So now they both know I lied.”

Tripp keeps looking at the ground, and she explodes. “I’m sorry, but just so you know, I think this whole reaction here is not very nice. Somebody once said to me, ‘Why get worked up about something that isn’t that important in the big scheme of life?’ I mean, it’s a little piece of plastic. How much did it cost, like seventy-five cents? Compare that to what it took for me to get this guitar, to get here. And now I’m in trouble.”

Tripp doesn’t say anything.

She storms off.

L
YLA’S
H
OUSE
; 8:08
P.M
.

When Lyla arrives home, her dad is waiting by the door.

“I do not appreciate your lying to me. Where were you?”

Lyla walks in and sets her case down. “Please do not make this into a big deal. I was going to go to Annie’s, but then I changed my mind because I haven’t been getting along so great with her lately. I should have called and told you. I just wasn’t thinking.”

“So where did you go?”

“I just walked around for a while.”

“With your cello?”

“I went to the park on Walnut and sat for a while,” she says.

“Sat for a while? Doing what?”

“Just thinking. Is it against the law to sit and think?”

“I don’t like this tone, Lyla.”

“I’m sorry. Really, Dad. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not like you. Why didn’t you answer my call?”

“I had the ringer off. I’m sorry, Dad. I don’t know what else to say.”

“Well, keep the ringer on, Lyla. That’s the reason you have a cell phone. So I can reach you.”

“Okay. I’m sorry.”

“Why did you bring your cello home from school anyway? Dr. Prevski told you that she wants you to practice on your mom’s.”

“I know. Mr. Jacoby made everybody bring their instruments home for the weekend because the school is cleaning out the storage rooms.”

He shakes his head. “I’m very confused by all this. And Annie sounded really upset.”

“Annie is always upset, Dad.”

The doorbell rings. Trick-or-treaters.

“I’ll get it,” Lyla says, picking up the bowl of candy. “I’m going to practice in here so I can get the door.”

The home phone rings, fortunately, and he goes to answer it.

She hands out the Halloween candy and then rushes to put the empty cello case in her bedroom and to get her mom’s cello. In the living room, she sets up a chair and her music stand and is about to start playing when her phone buzzes.

Tripp/
I found the pick.

Lyla/
I’m so happy for you.

Tripp/
I’m sorry. hard to explain.

Lyla/
yeah. Gotta go.

Flushed, Lyla puts her phone away and picks up her bow. For the next hour, she plays as a penance for her sins; she plays to reassure her dad that everything is all right; she plays to keep her mind off the worry that she has made some fatal mistake with Tripp; she plays because the house itself seems to demand the music from her.

After a while, there is another knock.

There is Tripp, out of breath, standing in the yellow
glow of their porch light. Before she can react, he puts a letter in the bowl, takes a candy bar, and leaves.

Dear Lyla
,

I was upset and maybe I am a psycho, but I want to explain about the pick. It has to do with my dad. My favorite thing to do with him was to go to our place by Little Deer Lake. It’s this piece of land in the woods with this lake behind it, and the idea was that we’d build a cabin eventually, but I wasn’t strong or big enough to do actual construction, so we did small stuff first. We dug a fire pit and put logs in a circle around it. Then we made wind chimes and hung them up in the trees. Another time, we made a mailbox, which was funny because who would send us mail there? Each time, we’d pitch a tent and light a fire. We’d kayak and take hikes during the day, and at night sit around the campfire and talk about what the cabin would look like
.

The last time we went, we found a note in the mailbox. It was a thank-you note from a guy who said he and his friends were hiking and they used our
fire pit. He said how much they liked the mailbox and wind chimes, and he left his guitar pick folded up in the note. We thought that was so cool, and I put the pick in my jacket pocket
.

It’s so strange how you never know what’s coming. We went home, and everything was normal. And then that Tuesday, I got called to the office during math class, and my mom was standing there crying. She took me into the parking lot and told me that my dad was in the hospital. He had a brain aneurysm. I wanted to go see him, but she wouldn’t let me. That night, I had to stay at home with my aunt, and I just sat there wondering what was going on. Then my mom came home the next day and said he died. I didn’t cry. It seemed completely unreal. Then all these relatives came. My dad was Jewish, and Jewish funerals happen really quickly, so the next day, I was at the cemetery, feeling numb, wearing my big jacket over my suit because it was cold. At one point, I stuck my hand in my jacket pocket and when my fingers found the pick, my skin tingled like it had an
electric current running through it. Instead of listening to the Rabbi, I kept rubbing my thumb over the pick, thinking about all the times my dad and I spent together at the lake. It gave me something good to focus on. It wasn’t until the casket was lowered into the ground that it hit me. The Rabbi handed my mom a shovel, and she started to sob, and then she got ahold of herself, and the sound of the dirt hitting the casket went straight into my chest. It was like—boom. Your dad is really dead. He’s not coming back. Ever. I felt the truth of it for the first time, and this huge sadness exploded inside me, and I didn’t know how to handle it. I started crying, and I just held on to the pick in my pocket and started talking to my dad in my head. I told him how much I loved him and how much fun we had at the lake and then out of the blue I told him that I was going to get a guitar and learn how to play. A month later, I got one
.

I never told anybody about the pick until now. When you dropped it, I thought I was going to die, but I didn’t
know how to explain all that because I knew you’d feel really badly if it was gone for good
.

Now that it’s back, safe and sound, I thought I should explain
.

Cell phone light was a good idea, Ms. Even. And we wrote a whole song tonight
.

—Mr. Odd

T
RIPP’S
H
OUSE
; 9:57
P.M
.

Lights are glowing in the windows of his house when Tripp rides up the driveway. As he puts his bike in the garage, his phone rings. He sees that it’s Lyla calling, and instead of walking in, he sits on the concrete steps to his front door and answers.

“Hi.”

“Are you eating Halloween candy?” he asks.

“No. I should. Chocolate is good. Full of antioxidants.”

“Why are you whispering?”

“My dad thinks I’m asleep.”

“Already?”

“I know. I have MYO and a recital tomorrow. My dad is a big believer in sleep.”

“Did you get in trouble?”

“It’s okay.”

“What about Annie?”

“That’s another story. She isn’t talking to me.”

“I’m sorry.” He adds, “I’m really glad you opened the door. I’m kind of afraid of your dad.”