“Thank you for being such good friends,” she was saying over and over again. Mr. McKenna gently put a hand on his wife’s shoulder, and she pulled back.
I was too choked up to speak, and as soon as I tried, I lost it. So did Chey. And so did Richie. The raw emotion of it was too much to handle. I wanted to tell Mrs. McKenna, I wanted to scream at her that we weren’t the friends she thought we were. That we, along with everyone else, had let her son down. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
We left Johnny’s parents and went to the back of the room. I tried hard to regain some, any, sense of equilibrium.
Everyone was there. My parents, Richie’s dad. Most of Chey’s sisters and her parents, so many of the kids from school—the good ones and the sadistic dickheads alike—had all turned out to say good-bye to Johnny McKenna.
The three of us stayed in the back, sticking close to one another, trying to fend off the endless stream of mourners who wanted to offer us condolences. We had almost as many well-wishers as Johnny’s parents.
It was then that Richie looked over at me and said, “So what happens now?”
I had no idea.
CHEYENNE BELLE
It was a guitar pick. I dropped a guitar pick in Johnny’s casket.
I had used a Sharpie to write I love you on one side and 4ever on the other. I know. It’s corny. But he used to call me Pick, and I needed to do something. For all I know, someone at the funeral home took it out and pocketed it. I thought about leaving him with the gold pick he’d given me at Christmas, but I couldn’t. I still wear it around my neck.
Anyway, I had a pretty strong buzz on for the wake, but not strong enough to stop me from feeling every last horrible thing.
The biggest shock was Mrs. McKenna. We all knew that she hated us and hated that Johnny hung out with us, so I couldn’t figure out why she acted the way she did. Maybe it was grief. Or maybe she blamed herself for Johnny’s death and was, in a kind of way, apologizing. I don’t know.
When I couldn’t take any more, when I didn’t think I could handle one more idiot from Johnny’s high school coming up to us and telling us how sorry they were, Jeff walked in. He scanned the room, nodded in our direction, and then went forward to pay his respects. I nudged Harry.
“Please, let’s just go, okay?”
Harry saw where I was looking and nodded. He and Richie each took one of my arms, and we left.
When we stepped outside, the night air was cool. It was still March, and spring hadn’t really sprung. It was cloudy, and the air was heavy. Johnny’s brother, Russell, was leaning against a post, a cigarette in one hand and a book in the other.
Russell had the same curly locks as Johnny, though brown, not blond, and he kept them cut short. He also had the same eyes. They were hard to look at that night.
“Hey, guys,” he said, his voice soft. Johnny loved Russell and looked up to him, and Russell loved Johnny back. He was six years older and lived in New York City with his girlfriend. He came to a lot of our gigs, and we got to know him a little bit. We all thought he was pretty cool.
We mumbled hellos and told him how sorry we were, and he told us the same.
Then he held out the book in his hand. It was the little black book Johnny had been writing in for the past few months. The book none of us were allowed to go near, the book none of us, as far as I knew, had ever seen the inside of.
“Here,” he said. “My parents gave this to me.”
“We can’t take this,” Harry said.
“I’m not giving it to you,” Russell offered with a halfhearted smile, “but I am loaning it to you.”
“Loaning it to us?” I asked.
“Don’t you guys know what’s in here?”
We all shook our heads. Russell fanned the pages so we could see.
“Lyrics. Lots and lots of lyrics. Sometimes with chords written out and sometimes not.” I was blown away. “I figure this can be Johnny’s final gift to the Scar Boys.”
Hearing Russell mention the band was like a slap in the face. I figured that the Scar Boys died with Johnny and didn’t give it another thought, you know?
But here was Johnny’s brother, telling us something different. I mean, the band was the only thing left holding us together. But how could we go on without Johnny? Wouldn’t it be like getting married two days after your husband died?
Like he could read our minds, Russell said, “I think it’s what Johnny would’ve wanted. When you get to the last song in the book, you’ll see what I mean.”
He handed the book to Harry, hugged each of us in turn, stubbed out his cigarette, and went back inside.
“Diner?” Harry asked, holding up the book.
“Yeah,” Richie said, and we piled into Harry’s car.
HARBINGER JONES
We probably shouldn’t have, but because of what Russell said, we skipped straight to the last page of Johnny’s lyrics journal, or at least the last page that had anything written on it. And there it was. The song that would, nine months later, become the Scar Boys’ first single:
Everybody said he was such a nice boy,
Always did everything right,