Over the next three weeks, Phineas taught me all he knew about guitars. We spent every night together practicing and learning. I despised all the studying time I was losing. On the other hand, I loved all of the time I was able to spend with Finny, working closely underneath his watchful eyes.
Before I knew it, I was capable of playing three of our seven songs. Fairly well, in fact. Phineas believed that we were ready to have our first concert. As it turned out, Brinker had been a hack on the bass, but a whiz at playing the keyboard. Leper had wanted to faint at the idea of singing or playing on stage, and decided that he would rather be our publicist. Ollie had auditioned and played the bass perfectly.
It was one day in the late winter that I visited Finny in his garage. We had turned it into our practice room since his mom didn't care about the noise we made. She even came in and danced to our beat a couple of times.
I entered the garage through the side door and spied Finny sitting at his drums, playing an out of control rhythm. I smiled amiably at him and picked up my guitar from its stand in the corner. Finny noticed me and jumped up from the drum kit. He ran over to me, flinging his arms around my shoulders and spinning in a counterclockwise turn around my body.
I was shocked that he was up and around moving like that (and that he had thrown his arms around me in such a way). Then, I was shocked once again. This time it was because I saw that the cast on his leg had been removed.
My eyes must have sparkled because Phineas gave me the biggest grin possible.
"Went to the doctor's office after school, and the doc says I'm completely healed," he said proudly. "He sawed it off and it made this eerie sound." He pointed behind him. "I got to keep the cast and everything!"
I stared at the dirty, white cast that had received a place of honor on the back wall of his garage. It still had the signatures of Finny's guy friends, myself, and all of his fangirls from school or wherever he happened to go.
I looked back at him, unable to look at the cast any longer. "I have more good news," he announced.