Invisible Instruments

By the time Sam rang the doorbell of 3121 Columbus Avenue for the fifth time, she started to wonder if anybody inside could even hear her over the sound of instrumental heavy metal blaring on the second floor, true shred guitars and drums like cannon fire in a civil war battlefield that, while dampened by the walls of the house, still almost seemed to shake the foundation with their volume. It was the kind of music that she felt as much as she heard, with the soundwaves causing faint vibrations in the porch under her feet, which tapped to the rhythm halfway out of enjoyment and halfway out of anxiousness. She adjusted the strap of her guitar case that was looped around her shoulder, checked her watch to see that it was now 5:06pm, and sighed.

Had everything been moving according to schedule, she and Tabby would just now have been finishing with their hand stretching exercises and moving onto the meat of the guitar lesson.

Admittedly, it did do her heart at least some good to hear a sign of healthy youthful rebellion in the middle of the otherwise banal suburb that she found herself in. Looking down the street, with it's perfectly manicured lawns and identical houses that were all large and beautiful but soulless, Sam had the inkling that this was the type of place where the only music most people heard all day was the natural cacophony of the neighborhood; the only shredding being from lawnmowers cutting grass, the only drumming from children bouncing basketballs in their driveways, chirping crickets in the dead of night providing the closest thing to lush orchestration…

On the other hand, she would much have preferred it if, when she walked up to the house, she heard the simple strums of Tabby's cheap Walmart acoustic guitar coming from within rather than the overproduced song she was listening to now; any sort of sign that her student was practicing between lessons.

The music ended abruptly, with a wailing tangle of feedback distortion, and Sam knew that she only had about a three second window before the next track burst violently to life. She pressed the doorbell for a final time and prayed that somebody was on their way as a frontman with a voice like a chainsaw started singing a charming song about the putrid stench of burning flesh. Mercifully, the door creaked open by the time the chorus hit, and Sam was greeted by the bored face of Tabby's babysitter, Rachel, a girl of sixteen dressed plainly in a black shirt and jeans and with perennial bags under her eyes. Behind her, Sam made out the lyrics, 'blood boils over, warping veins, burnt skull collapses into melting brains.'

"Sam," she said without emotion. It was the closest she ever got to saying 'hello.'

"Yo, 'sup Rachel!" Sam greeted back, trying to sound upbeat and not doing a very good job of it. She lifted her hand and vaguely pointed towards the direction of Tabby's window, still threatening to shatter from the noise. "How's the little rockstar doing? You know if she's been practicing?"

"Dunno," she answered indifferently. "I'm pretty much just here to make her some mac and cheese for dinner, tell her to do her homework, and keep her from burning down the house."

"Ah yes," Sam said, nodding sagely. "Talking Heads, Speaking in Tongues, 1983. You a fan?"

Not a single spark of recognition flared up in Rachel's eyes. "…What?"

"Come on, everybody know's that one! Three hun-dred six-ty five de-grees," she sang in her best imitation of David Byrne's distinctive cadence, rocking her head with each syllable and dancing in step to the tune. "Burning down the house!"

When she saw Rachel's face, devoid of any understanding, Sam suddenly remembered that not everybody was like Luna and peppered song lyrics into their normal conversations. Now embarrassed and blushing deeply, Sam stopped dancing and nervously rubbed the back of her head. "Never mind. I'll just, um, be upstairs then…"


Had anybody else tried walking down the upstairs hallway to Tabby's bedroom on that day, they might've felt as though they were being disintegrated by a blast from a wave-motion gun, as the music only grew in volume the closer Sam moved towards it, to the point where it began to rattle her bones.

For Sam Sharp, however? It barely measured up to the average jam session at Luna's house. She may as well have been on a lazy afternoon stroll as she passed by photographs on the wall, each of them depicting a version of Tabby that no longer existed. Within the frames lived a little girl with shoulder length black hair tied into pigtails, who wore drab clothes as though she was afraid to draw attention to herself, and who didn't listen to any music that couldn't be found on the bland top forty station that the morning bus' radio seemed eternally tuned to.

What a difference a year could make on a person.

She didn't bother knocking when she reached the bedroom. Tabby wouldn't have heard her even if she did. Instead, Sam just turned the handle and pushed the door open, losing in the process the one remaining barrier that shielded her from the full assault of the noise. She entered into a room where the pink walls were plastered over with posters and magazine cutouts of bands from every genre, some hung up with sticky-tack and others with duct-tape.

It was a cyclone in that room, and not least of all because of the gusts of music blowing from the stereo on Tabby's dresser. Mountains beyond mountains of clothes were strewn around on the floor, along with open notebooks and textbooks from a homework session long abandoned. Apparently, Rachel's job of telling Tabby to do her homework didn't extend to actually making sure that it got done, too busy was the babysitter with laying on the couch downstairs and watching low-budget Netflix original movies on the fifty inch flatscreen in the living room.

In the center of the storm was the girl herself, jumping on her bed and leaving behind dirty footprints from her platform boots on the Hello Kitty bedsheets, a remnant from the days before she was a wannabe punk rock superstar. Eyes closed so that she could better picture herself playing in concert to thousands of adoring fans, she shredded on an air guitar, lip-syncing with a big smile on her face and her tongue sticking out in between lyrics.

For a second Sam just wanted to watch her bounce up and down without a care in the world, but much as she loved seeing her so happy, and much as her sense of fun could be infectious, it really was passed time for the lesson to begin. She went to the speakers and made a motion to turn them off, but paused when she heard a shout like a faint echo behind her, as dim as a whisper in a tornado's gale.

"SAM!" Before she knew what was happening, Sam felt herself tackled by a crushing hug around her midsection, one that Sam returned with a slight smile on her face.

"Good to see you too, Tabby-cat," she said, not caring that the girl hugging her couldn't make out a word.

They held their hug for a few seconds, and while ordinarily Tabby was a real Jack Russel Terrier of a girl in her unwillingness to let go of things once she was holding on, the eleven year old broke away on her own to stand before Sam in a power stance, point at her, and yell "AIR KEYBOARD SOLO!" despite there not even being a keyboard section in the song for Sam to mimic. Tabby returned then to playing her invisible guitar, watching and waiting for Sam to join in her imaginary band.

On any other day Sam might've humored her at least for one song, but not today. Today, enough time had already been wasted. The only key she pressed was the stop button on the stereo, creating a vacuum of silence that was quickly filled with Tabby's disappointed moan, followed by her speaking in an untraceable mishmash of an accent that she tried to pass off as British. "Blimey o'crikey," she said, "wot's the big oidear there? You gon' barmy or sumfink?"

Sam chuckled. "Yer still leanin' a bit towards Australian there, luv." It wasn't exactly a flawless Lennon impression, but it got her point across just fine.

"Dangit," Tabby muttered, switching back to her natural Michigan dialect. "I've really gotta work on that. You can't be a rock star with an Australian accent! Luna's always saying that all the best rockers are British."

"ACDC would beg to differ," Sam quipped. "So would Silverchair, Wolfmother, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds…" She walked to the bed, unslung the guitar case from over her shoulder, laid it on the comforter, and removed her acoustic from the hardshell. Sam had many guitars over the years, and while this one wasn't anything too fancy, it was still her favorite. She had bought it using money earned from giving guitar lessons, and while her sentimental side would always miss the old scratched Epiphone that had gotten her through many a gig before she pawned it off a few weeks back, whenever she pressed those strings against the silverleaf maple neck with her callused fingers or felt the cool cedar top under her strumming hand she always had to give thanks to Luna for ever convincing her to take up this part-time job in the first place. Even more thankful was she that Luna introduced her to the young girl who was now her favorite student.

She sat on the bed and started tuning the strings by ear while Tabby went to stand by her side, sporting a big excited gap-toothed grin like she had a tremendous secret that she was just dying to share. "Notice anything different about me?" she asked.

"Hmmm…" Sam mumbled to herself, staring Tabby up and down and trying to place a finger on what exactly had changed about her since their last lesson. "Let's see; same white platform boots, same pink plaid skirt, same purple jacket, same cute baby-face…"

"Hey!" Tabby cried, offended. "Pop stars are supposed to be cute, not rock stars." She folded her arms with finality, as if what she had said was supposed to be common knowledge.

Sam laughed at her reaction, and that was when she noticed it. Tabby's hair, spiked and shiny from all of the product that she used to style it, ordinarily sported a ribbon of neon pink strands. Today, it bore a different color. "I've got it; you dyed the streak in your hair blue!"

"Yup, just like yours! Whaddya think?"

"Oh, Tabby," Sam said playfully, "you look absolutely adorable!"

Tabby scowled as her cheeks went as pink as her former streak, which only made her look even more precious as far as Sam was concerned. It was quite the vicious cycle, all told. "No I don't," she insisted. "I look b-badass!" She sounded anything but as her eyes darted to the door, as if to make sure her parents weren't there to catch her cursing.

"Right, sure you do," Sam said lightly as she rustled Tabby's black and blue hair, making it go from stylishly disheveled to just plain messy. "Totally punk rock…" While her student pouted and ran her fingers through her hair to fix what had been messed up, Sam went back to tuning her guitar, thinking about how cute it was that a girl who listened to death metal twenty-four seven could still stutter so when saying mild swears. That did beg a certain question though, one that Sam hoped that she could ask without coming across as rude or judgmental. "Your mom and dad cool with you listening to that sorta stuff?" she asked casually, tilting her head towards the direction of the speakers. Even silenced, the ghost of the song about charred remains still lingered in the room.

"Yeah, they don't care," Tabby answered with a shrug, sounding somewhere between bitter and indifferent. "It's not like they're even around whenever I listen to music anyway. 'Sides, it's my inspiration!"

"There's a thin line between inspiration and distraction, Tabby." Sam punctuated her remark with a final arpeggiated strum of her instrument, perfectly tuned and rich in tone. "C'mon now," she said gently, "put the air guitar away and get out the real one." The young girl seemed drained of spirit as she sighed and mimed opening an imaginary case, complete with her mouth making a creaking sound effect for its latches, and placing her invisible Flying V inside. It could've been her imagination, but Sam thought that she saw a shadow of dread cross over Tabby's face as she turned and gathered her real instrument from the corner by the overflowing closet.

It had cost her parents a mere sixty dollars, including the paper-thin plastic case and cheap electronic tuner that came with the kit. The guitar itself was of much lower quality than Sam's; to the touch, it felt rather like it was made from popsicle wood, and even when in tune it produced a lifeless sound. Useful for practice but not much else, not that it mattered. Sam already had a day-trip to Guitar Center planned out with Tabby for many months into the future, by which point Sam hoped to have successfully shepherded her into more advanced levels of play. She couldn't wait to sit with her in the store and hear her student test out guitar after guitar, playing little riffs to hear how each one handled before settling on the instrument that was best for her.

There was a long road ahead of them before that could happen, of course. "You've got your tuner?" Sam asked as Tabby pulled her guitar from it's case, cringing as the low E string snagged on the zipper. She was slightly encouraged by the fact that there were so many new decals stuck to the body; one that depicted the Nirvana smiley-face logo especially jumped out as one that Sam could've sworn wasn't there the previous week. It was a good sign, she reckoned, that Tabby was getting her guitar out for something in the intervening days between lessons, even if only to decorate it.

"Yeah, um, it's around here somewhere," Tabby answered sheepishly, looking around the room.

Sam exhaled slowly from her nostrils. "Tabby, you've really gotta start being more organized," she said tiredly. This was a lecture she had given her before. "There's a pocket in the front of your guitar case; use it."

"I know, I know…" Tabby started walking around the room, pulling up mounds of clothes in search of her tuner while Sam waited, unimpressed. The older girl inwardly made a deal with herself; if it took her student more than a minute to find the device, Sam would simply have to tune the guitar for her. Doing so would somewhat undercut the importance of personal responsibility and keeping track of her belongings that Sam was trying to teach her in the first place, but she needed to get this show on the road.

While clothes went flying through the air as Tabby tore her room apart, Sam's eyes wandered in search of something to hold her interest, eventually settling on the open spiral notebook by her feet, right next to Tabby's backpack. She knew by the simple equations and formulas scribbled in chickenscratch on the top portion of the page that it was for a math class, though all schoolwork gave way to crude doodles of skulls and dragons in the margins and between the blue lines of the paper. Classic metal iconography, the type of stuff that could land Tabby in detention if any of her teachers saw it.

Sam picked up the book and flipped through the paper, admiring the countless drawings that she found on each one. All told, Tabby had the makings of a decent artist, though raw and unfocused. Her worst habit by far was her tendency to leave each picture unfinished before moving onto the next one. In fact, only one drawing towards the back of the book was actually complete, and when Sam stumbled across it, her immediate opinion was that it was far and away Tabby's best work.

Her heart skipped a beat when she made eye contact with a version of herself that was sketched in black ink. She stood to the left of the page, fingers a blur as they danced across a keyboard, hair flying everywhere as she rocked her head back, lost in the music. On the opposite side of the paper was Luna with a bass guitar slung across her front, plucking a thumping riff that Tabby visualized by writing 'duddaduddadudda' as an onomatopoeia in tiny print near the fretboard. Sunglasses over her eyes and a stone cold expression on her face like she was too cool to even notice the concert around her, Sam thought that it was a good look for her. A logo, presumably the name of this band, hung above them, the letters so thorny and blood-dripping that it was near impossible to tell what it was supposed to say. Taranchula? Golgotha? Something to that effect.

Center stage was Tabby herself, screaming into a microphone and rocking her tiger striped Flying V that otherwise only existed in her imagination. This must have been what she saw behind her closed eyes whenever she jumped on her bed with the speakers on blast. Here on the page was her ultimate goal; what her lessons were building towards.

Sam had the resolute thought to herself that she would do all she could to make what was on the paper come true.

She was so touched staring at the picture that she didn't even notice it when Tabby sidled up beside her, tuner in her hand. "You like it?" she asked, sounding hopeful. "It's us as a band. I wanted all of my friends to be members with me."

Sam flashed her the biggest smile that she could muster. "I love it, Tabby!" There was, however, one thing that she needed clarified. "Who's this?" she asked, pointing to the background of the sketch, where a boy who looked to be around Tabby's age played the drums, freckles on his face and a bowl cut on top of his head.

Tabby blushed and glanced away. "Oh, just this boy I met…" Changing the subject, she turned the page, nearly ripping it out of the book with how forcefully she did so. "Hey, check this out, I came up with some song titles for when we record our debut album!"

Deciding not to tease her about her obvious crush on this drummer boy, Sam looked over the next page, where lines of song titles were written down, each of them fitting into the same sort of heavy metal theme that Tabby so loved. "Pretty rad stuff," Sam critiqued, reading them over. "You'll have to change a couple, though. There's already a Pixies song called 'Wave of Mutilation.'"

Tabby pouted as her heart sank. "Oh…" she muttered, discouraged. What a shame. She had been particularly proud of that one.

"But never forget; being a rock star isn't about coming up with cool song titles, putting streaks in your hair, or talking in a British accent. It's about one thing, and one thing only."

"What's that?"

Sam grinned widely, put the book down, and played a short solo on her guitar, one that was only a few seconds long but that showcased just what a few years of practice could do, her fingers running lightning-fast from fret to fret without effort. Tabby watched, awestruck, as Sam played the final note and let it ring out. "The music, of course!" she said once the tone faded away. "Now, let's get your guitar in tune, do a few hand stretches, and rock n' roll!"

At last, the lesson could begin.