Guitar Notes (23 page)

The voice washes over her. She has sunk to the bottom of the lake, too deep for the voice to reach her.

“The doctor said the swelling is gone. The medicine is out of your system. All you have to do is open your eyes.…” His voice chokes. “Sweetie, please …”

 NOVEMBER 27. THURSDAY.

The drive to Aunt Gertrude’s is long and quiet. It’s Thanksgiving. Tripp thinks about Lyla, and Ruby, and Romeo, and Annie, and even Benjamin Fink, but mostly he thinks about Lyla and how much he misses her. He imagines her in the hospital, and his body aches. Over and over, he says her name in his mind. His mom had said nobody was to blame for the accident and maybe that’s true. But Lyla’s life might have been better if she hadn’t met him, and this is the thought that makes him the saddest. She would not have been on that road, and the deer would not have crossed her path, and she and Annie wouldn’t have gotten into such a big fight, and she
would have aced the Coles audition and would live happily ever after. He should’ve stayed away. That was the trick. To stay separate from people. Keep a block of ice around his soul. Don’t dream. Don’t sing. Don’t thrum.

“You can turn on the radio if you want,” his mother says from the driver’s seat.

He shakes his head, leans against the window, and closes his eyes.

Lucky, lucky me
. He hates the fact that they were singing that in the boat right before the accident. He isn’t lucky at all. He is cursed, and he brought that to Lyla. Just when he feels he won’t be able to breathe, his mom turns to him.

“Tripp,” she says gently. “If you want, I can try calling Tina Chan later today to see if I can get an update.”

He takes in a small silent breath of gratitude and nods his head, and she seems to know that he can’t say or do anything more than this.

Just after dinner, Tripp’s mom steps into Aunt Gertrude’s foyer to make the call. Tripp follows her and waits until she is done.

“She is off the ventilator, which means she is breathing on her own. She’s also swallowing, which is good,” she
says. “And she’s getting really great care. The best doctors are on it.” She has chosen her words carefully and she tries to smile.

Tripp knows she’s trying to make him feel better, but he can see through it. If Lyla were improving, she wouldn’t need the best doctors.

 NOVEMBER 30. SUNDAY.

Tripp is in the back workroom. He is supposed to be tossing the old samples into the Dumpster in the alley, but he is pacing. Since Thursday, every report about Lyla has been the same: no change. She isn’t waking up.

His mom has been more sympathetic, but she doesn’t really know who Lyla is or what their friendship was like. She has made it clear that she thinks the way to handle the tension is to keep on track with work. Neither of them has mentioned Crenshaw or the guitar. He can’t talk about anything. He can’t escape from the feeling that he brought nothing but trouble to Lyla.
Lucky, lucky me
.
As he passes the closet where his guitar is hidden, he bangs the padlock angrily.

After a few laps, he goes to the computer and checks his e-mail. He isn’t expecting anything, and so it is a shock to see something in his in-box after all.

Tripp clicks on the video and it begins to play. Framed in the small video window are Ruby and Romeo sitting side by side on the stage, beaming, in the crazy elegance of the barn; and then the camera shifts and focuses on Lyla and him with the guitar. He can see the nervousness that he was trying to hide, and then Lyla smiles at him, and he feels that rush of warmth again, as if she is smiling at him right now. They start to play and their voices rise together; and, as he watches, an intense ripple of joy dances across his heart. The song pulses through him and lifts him, and
he can’t move until it’s over. He plays it again and again.

When he finally turns it off, the silence seems to draw the walls of the workroom closer toward one another. He flashes back to the night his dad died in the hospital, to that feeling of helplessness he felt when he was sitting at home. He can’t just sit here and do nothing. He opens the back door, looking out at the alley as if he’ll see Lyla there in her Bonnie beret, blowing fake smoke through her lips. Puddles gleam on the black asphalt. A cat pokes through the empty boxes next to the Dumpster.

Lost, he closes the door, pulls Lyla’s digital recorder and earbuds out of his backpack, and listens again to them singing in the boat, while he paces between the carpet remnants, the tool bench, and the trash bins.
Lucky, lucky me
. This time, instead of hearing the words as a taunt, he hears the joy in their voices as an undeniable truth. They were lucky to find each other. Nobody could take that away.

Grabbing a piece of paper out of the recycling bin, he starts working on the new song. He starts to pace again, singing it to himself, jotting down the lyrics as they come, reading the song over and over and adding more. When he’s done, he stuffs it into his back pocket and walks into the showroom. His mom is behind the sales counter, thumbing through a stack of bills.

“Mom.” He takes a breath. “Please open the closet. I’m going to get my guitar and I’m going to the hospital.”

Her shoulders sag. “Tripp.”

“I’m asking nicely.”

“Tripp, I’m sure your intentions—” The bell on the front door jingles, and two women walk in. Tripp’s mom looks at him with pity, but he can tell she isn’t going to give. “You can’t barge in on a family at a time like this. We need to give it more time. We’ll talk about it in a few minutes,” she whispers, and turns to greet the customers.

She is wrong. She was wrong about not letting him see his dad in the hospital, and she is wrong about this. He walks into the back room and picks up a crowbar. He sticks one end between the closet door and its frame and pushes. The door doesn’t budge, but a dent appears in the frame. He tries again. Then he holds it with one hand, steps back, and gives the crowbar a good hard kick. The wood of the door frame splinters, but the lock is still in place. He wedges the end of the crowbar right against the tongue of the lock and kicks it again. The door pops open.

His guitar is in the back, in its case, between a mop and a bucket. He grabs it and walks out just as his mom is heading in to see what the noise was about.

“I have to go,” he says.

“Tripp!” his mom calls out, but he keeps walking out the door, his heart pounding. The guitar case feels so right in his hand. “Tripp! Wait!”

He runs for a full block without looking back and then stops and pulls out his wallet. Luckily, he never took the wedding money out. He catches the next cab he sees.

When he arrives at the hospital, he tells the woman at
the visitor’s desk that he is Lyla Marks’s brother—just in case they only allow family—and she gives him the room number. When he gets to the third floor, he sees Mr. Marks, back toward him, talking with several people at the nurses’ station in the middle of the hallway. Room 302 is on the right. He ducks in without being seen, and there is Lyla, lying still, a row of small stuffed animals lining either side of her bed.

He can’t look at her.

The basket from school is on a table next to her bed. Above it, a bouquet of blue foil balloons kiss the ceiling, their strings tied to the basket handle. Curtains are drawn against the window. A stack of get-well cards is sitting on the chair. He walks around her bed, sets down his guitar case, and gets out his guitar. When he finally turns and wills himself to look at her, his throat burns.

Lyla’s face is so still, she doesn’t seem real. Her arms are on top of the blanket. An IV tube is attached to her right hand, which is bruised, and the other arm is bandaged. She looks so different, so fragile, like if he touched her, she might crumble.

A part of him is so scared he wants to leave, but he fights the fear and keeps his eyes on her face. He remembers the articles he read describing how people in comas can often hear, even if they can’t respond. It takes him a minute to work up the courage to say her name out loud, and when he does, it comes out in barely a whisper.

“Lyla … look …” He holds up the guitar, lifts the
strap over his head, and manages a shaky smile. “I broke the door down, Lyla.”

No response.

One at a time, he plucks each string, tuning as he goes. He strums it once and lets the sound fill the quiet of the room.

A yellow bruise still runs the entire length of the left side of her face, but the curve of her ear facing him is untouched and perfect.

He clears his throat and tries to get rid of the shakiness in his voice, to speak louder. “Lyla, it’s me, Tripp. We were in the middle of making up a new song, remember?” He thinks about how bright her eyes looked that day on the lake. “I worked on it, Lyla. So you have to wake up and listen.” He stops and pulls her digital recorder out of his pocket. “I’m going to record this. I came prepared … like a Girl Scout.” He manages a quick laugh and turns it on, gently setting it next to her arm on the bed. “I’m going to leave the recorder here so you can listen to it anytime you want, okay? All our songs are on here, too. Okay?”

Her face is still. Her eyelashes are curved and pretty, the light on the wall behind her bed throwing tiny shadows of them on her skin.

Open your eyes, Lyla. Just open your eyes
. His throat closes and his eyes fill with tears. He blinks them back and leans in closer. “I really need you to wake up, Lyla. I’m hearing a harmony on this. It doesn’t sound good with just me. It needs your voice.”

The room is silent.

“You said … in the boat … you said that you wanted the verse to be sad and then the chorus to be happy, so that’s what I tried to do.” When he starts to play, his fingers falter and he stops. He closes his eyes. Then he takes a breath and starts again.

As he sings, he imagines that he is pouring all of his energy into the air. He imagines that it is entering her ear and filling her, waking her up, molecule by molecule. He sings with everything he’s got, and when he’s done, he opens his eyes and sees his mom standing inside the doorway, tears streaming down her face. She can hardly get the words out, but Tripp understands her.

She says, “That was beautiful.”

Tripp looks at Lyla and starts to cry. Then he looks back up at his mom. “She has to wake up,” he says.

She nods through her tears.

The door opens, and Lyla’s dad walks in, speechless.

“I’m sorry.” Tripp wipes his face quickly. He fumbles to put his guitar back in the case and then he stops and slips his pick under Lyla’s hand. He looks at her one more time. Then he grabs his case and walks out, his head buzzing, his feet unable to feel the floor.

Just as the elevator door is opening, his mother arrives behind him. She doesn’t say a word, but she puts her arm around his shoulders and she holds him against her side.

After the small thump signals their arrival at the lobby and while they’re waiting for the elevator doors
to open, the words spill out. “None of it was ugly, Mom.”

Her words come back quickly. “I can see that.”

The doors open and she reaches into her pocket and takes out a tissue, which she hands to him, and then she picks up his guitar case. “Don’t worry. I’m just carrying it to the car, not stealing it.” She laughs as she wipes away her own tears and steps out.

Still in the elevator, he laughs and then he thinks of Lyla and starts to cry again, and his mom dives back in, stopping the doors with the guitar, to hug him.