Always Crashing in the Same Car
I was always looking left and right
Oh, but I'm always crashing
in the same car
"What the Hell—"
David had taken two steps into the room before he realized that something wrong. Or, rather, that the wrong thing was wrong. The gym teacher and "Ronson" were sitting across from each other at a desk, a sheet of paper between them. It showed a diagram of a rugby field, with some arrows criss-crossing over it.
"What are you doing?" the professor asked gruffly. Ronson was looking at David, bewildered.
"I—" David swallowed. "Wrong room." He turned quickly and stepped back out. He closed the door behind him. "Now you got to make sure the other team doesn't get a guy past these defenses," the coach was saying. David could feel his ears turning red hot. He turned the corner of the hall, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration. He felt ready to melt of embarrassment. What had he been thinking? Since when was he mister hero of the small, anyway? It wasn't who he had been, before.
David climbed the stairs back to the first floor. The halls were empty, as everyone was in class. He leaned beside the water fountain, carefully pulling a cigarette out of his pocket and lighting it. He had just taken a long drag when two boys came out of a room down the hall. When they saw David, they stopped and stared.
It was them. The kids who David had fought a few short days before. Without thinking, he snuffed the cigarette on the wall and tucked it back into his pocket. He took a few steps toward the boys. After the embarrassment of a moment before, David could feel his resentment bubbling over. He had to show someone a lesson, and why not someone who deserved it?
"Hey, don't try anything, Jonesy," the larger boy, presumably the leader, said, cracking his knuckles one by one. "Wouldn't want you to get hurt."
"I think you'll find it's Bowie," said David, dropping his jacket to the floor and pushing his sleeves up.
"Yeah, that's what I said, Jonesy boy." The boy handed his own jacket to the slim one. David took another step forward, putting his fists up. The boy followed suit.
For a moment, the two stood face to face, each waiting for the other to move.
The boy lunged forward, one giant fist crashing into David's chest. David turned with the blow, dropping his fists and wrapping his arm around the boy's neck. Surprised, he tried to pull out of David's grip, but David moved with him, pushing him so that he crashed forward into a locker.
Before the boy could move again, David grabbed the hair on the back of his head, yanking the boy's head backwards. Suddenly, the slim kid was on him from behind, pulling David off his the larger one. David jerked one elbow backwards, grunting as it crunched into the kid's nose. Turning, David shoved him in the chest, so that he fell back. Before the kid could stand again, David kicked him in the groin, smiling as he cried out.
This felt good. If he'd been fighting this good at his old school, he'd still have two matching eyes. Adrenaline rushed through his veins, and David's good eye good eye dilated to match the other.
In the meantime, the other boy had been edging away down the hall. David turned to face him cooly. The boy started to stumble away more quickly, but David grabbed him, pulling him forward. The boy grabbed David's face between his hands, and the two fell to the floor. For a moment, they struggled, but then David was on top, his knee pinning the boy to the floor. Grabbing the boy's hair, he pulled his head up, then whacked it on the floor, hard. The boy cried out, tearing at David's shirt to no avail. David smashed his head again. And, even though the boy was now clawing at his face, he smashed the kid's once more.
"BOYS!" a wiry, grey-haired man was quickly walking toward them, a furious scowl on his face. He glared at David.
"Mr. Jones! Release Mr. Astor at once!" David looked up, his adrenaline still pumping, sweat beading down his brow. He was vaguely aware of the sensation of blood trickling down his cheek.
"What do you think you were doing?"
The boy, Astor, broke into tears. "He—he attacked me."
David tried to focus on the man's face, opening his mouth, but nothing came out. His eyes were glued behind the professor. There stood a cluster of students, some horrified, some excited. And in the midst of them, Mick. The look his deep blue eyes were giving David turned his stomach. For a moment longer, they stared at him, before Mick turned swiftly away.
There was only one word for it: Disappointment.
—
In the end, David got off surprisingly easy for the fight. He had one day of suspension (for which Marc played hooky. The two spent the day on the town, replenishing their cheap cigarettes and browsing records), and detentions for two more days.
Detentions weren't so bad—an hour with the deportment teacher, balancing books on his head while cleaning the classroom. He might have skipped them, but there was a specter haunting him now. Every time he thought of anything out of line (well, not anything...) a crystal clear image of Mick flashed into his mind. Mick with his shaggy locks of chocolate hair. Mick with his eyes, two deep blue wells through which David felt like he could see eternity. Mick disappointed in David.
Since when had he cared what some other boy thought about him? But he couldn't get it out of his head, no matter how much he tried. So he wrote his lines and did more of his homework than usual.
Apart from the ghost of Mick, the only other thing that haunted David was what he had heard in the basement practice rooms. That soulful, transcendent music which had filled David with intense longing, that had sent him flying. As he walked out of his last detention, he resolved to try something new.
"Hey, Marc," David said, sliding onto the dining hall bench beside the elf boy. Said elf had his eyes gently closed, his pouting mouth slowly forming words that certainly weren't English. "Marc?"
Marc's eyes slowly opened, taking a moment to focus on David's face.
"David," he said, "sorry, I was contemplating the universe." David tried to keep from smiling, pressing his lips tightly together.
"Is that right?" he said.
"Yeah, I was trying to imagine it suffused in light, you know..." he rubbed his eyes and straightened up.
"You play guitar, right?" David asked, driving to the point before Marc tried to explain further.
"Sure," said Marc, smiling widely, "just your good old boogie and bop."
"Do you think you could show me a few chords or something?" David pressed.
"Of course!" Mac said brightly, pushing a wayward curl out of his eyes. "I can lend you my old guitar, if you want. It's nothing special, but it'll stay in tune."
"That'd be perfect," said David.
"I'll bring it tomorrow, then. We can skip chem and I'll show you the trick to it."
—
The guitar was old and scratched, but David could care less. The second Marc showed him how to hold it, it felt right. His fingers curled over the strings, pressing them down experimentally.
He and Marc sat in the basement practice room, not much bigger than a closet, their two chairs filling most of the space. Marc was unusually attentive and excited, barely pausing to daydream since they'd slipped out of their last class together. He pulled a piece of folded up paper out of a pocket, handing it to David.
"Here are some charts I drew showing you how to make the basic chords," he said. "The main trick is strumming a tight rhythm and being able to make the changes real smooth," he said. David looked at the chart, and moved his long, pale fingers to form a G chord. He strummed down slowly with his other hand. Like sunlight, the sound filled the room.
"Hold your thumb and first finger together," Marc said, watching David with lazy enthusiasm. David did as he was told, strumming up and down a few times. Marc clapped out a few different rhythms to strum, showed him some basic changes, and, with surprising speed, David was playing the chords to Good Golly Miss Molly.
"You're a natural," beamed Marc.
David nodded. "It just seems to make sense, you know?"
"Yeah," said Marc, "that's how it should be." They both sat for a moment, as David continued to play. Marc closed his eyes, nodding in time to the music.
The class bell rang raucously, shattering the moment. Mac sprang up, surprising David. "I need to go to this class," said Marc, "I have to speak to the professor."
"Sure," said David, "I'm staying down here." Marc gave him another sunny smile before leaving.
—
David practiced the rest of the day, until his fingers became too red and sore to keep playing. Over and over again, chord changes until he could play fluidly without pause. In his head he could hear a melody, and he tried to shape the chords to follow it. But there weren't enough on the chart for him to match it perfectly, and he gave up for the moment. It was a bit soon to write a whole song, anyway. He'd only just started playing.
It wasn't that David hadn't been interested in music before. When he was little, he was sure he would grow up to play the saxophone in Little Richard's band. He'd bought a plastic sax and taught himself to play to all of the rocker's songs. David even started to write his own little tunes, simple melodies he could play to himself.
It all had changed when he got to lower sixth, though. That's when the schoolyard fights had begun, and no tough boy played music. He lost interest in it—it didn't satisfy him anymore, and he knew there was no way he'd be able to play professionally. He just wasn't good enough.
But now, absently running his fingers over the smooth wood of the guitar, he found himself drawn again to music. He felt he had a hundred songs and melodies in his head, ready to burst out as soon as he knew how to make them real. And, this time, he was sure he could do it.
With a sigh, David slipped the guitar into its padded case and picked it up along with his satchel. He would have to forge a note of absence for tomorrow, explaining where he'd been for the last two periods. The doctor's office or a family emergency? David mused as he walked back upstairs, not noticing the student who had been standing outside his practice room door. The student who now silently turned to walk up a different set of stairs, running a hand through his messy caramel hair.
A new poll is up for the next chapter—Sorry this one took so long!
