Chapter Twenty-Eight
The house was... well, clean is the only word I can come up with for it. It was so pristine it almost didn't look lived in. "Nobody's been staying here for awhile," Brian said, as he slipped the house key back into a ceramic frog we'd pulled from under a bush out front. He rocked on his feet as we looked around the pristine room. I kicked my shoes off because I felt like it was the only real response one could have to a house like this. Brian smiled, "Even when you don't remember, you remember," he laughed.
"Huh?"
"No shoes around the house," Brian said in a tone that was obviously quoting something I'd once said, "It's like your one stickler of a rule." He smiled.
I had never once had that rule at my own apartment back in Atlanta. In fact, I usually had my sneakers on all day. I'd woken up countless times still wearing them, especially when I'd crashed on the couch and never zombie crawled back to my room at night. The floorboards were cold in the apartment and I hate that cold floor under foot feeling.
I didn't say that to Brian though.
We inched through the house, Brian watching my face eagerly for some sign that I recognized something but everything seemed foreign and unreal to me in the room. It was like I was being quizzed on material that I'd never studied in a subject that I knew nothing about, like Quantum Physics or something, and it was all in technical jargon. My heart ached because I longed to recognize the place, I wanted to remember who I was, and to be the person that the guys were expecting me to be, but some part of me just felt empty, lacking, and hollow, like one of those chocolate rabbits at Easter.
I rounded a corner leading from a dining room to a living area and found myself almost bumping into a sleek black baby grand piano. I stared at it, the curves in the wood and the smooth, perfect surface that gleamed in the light of the streaming sunrays that infiltrated through the windows behind me. I reached for the lid that was closed over the ivory keys themselves and lifted it gently. The hinge creeked from misuse and Brian's voice found my ears, a sound just above a whisper, "It hasn't been touched since you last played it," he said.
I touched one of the keys and a low, ringing note filled the room. I could almost picture the dust inside the piano's body flying off that key's strings and floating through the air, like tiny ballet dancers set into motion, spinning and dancing through the air...
I reached for the seat and pulled it out and sat awkwardly on it. Brian sat on the arm of an overstuffed chair, his eyes focused on my fingers, his nostrils flaring and settling as he breathed nervous, heavy breaths. I took a long draw of oxygen into my lungs, placed my fingers on the keys, cleared my mind... and began to play.
The notes and chords flowed out of me from somewhere deep inside, a place I couldn't remember but that had contact with my limbs just the same. I played like I had been playing everyday of my life, the notes vibrating through the air. The music climbed and dropped and spun through the air around Brian and I like it was tangible. It spoke of pain and suffering and escape, of realization and heartbreak and adulthood. The music told a story of a prodigal with ambitions and dreams, a heart that turned, and a return. My fingers found each key without even a single mistake. And when the song had come to an end - and it was a relatively good length song - I allowed the notes to fade and die away slowly. The song had ended midway through a story, leaving you hanging, perched for a conclusion that would never come.
I looked over at Brian.
"Wow," he said. "That was amazing." He paused. "What was it?"
I shook my head, "I think... I think I wrote it."
Brian's eyes registered surprise. "You... wrote...that?"
"I think so." I felt as though I could've named any concerto written by any composer at that moment - be it Beethovan, Chopin, Mozart, or whoever - and that which I had just played belong to none of them. I couldn't recall when I'd written it or how or anything else of that sort. Only the strong feeling of ownership, of being the creator who had formed the universe of that song's notes.
"It was incredible," he said.
Nothing really jogged my memory at the house, but Brian found a picture of Kristin and Mason in the bedroom that he "borrowed" from the frame and handed to me. I stared down at their picture and felt my stomach twist.
Looking at the photo, I realized that I hadn't talked to Kim yet. Kim. My pretty, happy, funny Kim, whose attention made me feel warm and whole in a way that I hadn't felt since I'd woken up in the hospital from the coma. Kim, who loved me when nobody, including myself, knew me.
"Maybe that'll help," Brian had said when he put it into my hands. All it had done though is make me feel worse - worse for not remembering them and worse for not wanting them to exist so that I could stay with Kim.
We left the house around half-past noon and headed out to get some food. We went to a crab shack on the boardwalk overlooking the ocean. It was nice. I liked the breath of sea air, and the feeling of the wind rolling off the water into my face. People gave me half-glances as they walked, several peoples eyes skimmed the length of my across-the-face scar, and looked away quickly. Los Angeles was a shallow city, there was no hiding it. Brian looked like he felt somehow guilty every time it happened, and I felt bad that he felt that way. After all, there was no reason for Brian to feel guilty. He wasn't the one judging me based on my face.
And those who were didn't know a damn thing about me.
Then again, neither did I.
That night, I snuck out the back door of the arena while the Boys were on stage and let myself onto the tour bus. (The Boys and I had spent the time between the soundcheck and the show itself moving my things into the extra bunk; they'd insisted that I "roll Backstreet style" with them.) I lowered myself onto the couch that lined the wall and pulled my cellphone out of my pocket. I took a deep breath and clicked on Kim's name in the Contact's List.
Kim answered quickly, on the first ring. "Hi," she said, her voice missing its usual exuberance.
"Hey," I said slowly, "What's the matter?"
"I had a terrible day," she replied, her voice thickening.
Not a good time to tell her about Kristin and Mason, then, I thought to myself, so I took a deep breath, and rerouted my mind. "What happened?" I asked.
"It just was..." she paused. "You know those bad days when you have a bad day because you sort of think your way into it being bad? Like maybe the day itself wasn't so terrible, but you thought so much about something that you kind of lost track of reality and ended up having a bad day as a result of that?"
Like I did today thinking about Kristin and Mason? I thought. "Yeah, I know exactly what you mean," I answered.
"It was that kind of day," Kim answered. "I dropped a whole pot of coffee, broke the stein, Joe was pissed..."
"I'm sorry."
She sighed, "It's not your fault," she replied.
But the guilt I was feeling about not telling her about Kris and Mason made me feel like it was my fault.
After Self by Pengi
