Luckily, Cal was sure of himself in a way kids that age rarely are, and he didn’t need an invitation. He looked at all the food on the table and said, “What’s with the spread?” Then he noticed the Dr Pepper and said, “Can I have one of those?”
He grabbed the can, opened it, and waited for the foam to fizz out over his hand. Then he drank the whole thing in seconds, an achievement that culminated in a long, loud burp, for which he took a bow.
I watched him, and that’s when he began looking at me suspiciously, as if he were waiting for something—probably words—to come out of my mouth. The longer the quiet lingered between us, the more puzzled he seemed.
I swallowed hard and looked down at the table, embarrassed and now wishing he would go away.
But instead of laughing or calling me a freak or threatening to beat me up like most of the kids at school did, he leaned over and said, “You all right?”
That was a hard question to answer.
“Say something,” he prodded.
I stared at him.
“Can you say something?”
I shrugged. That was an even harder question to answer.
Cal reached over and picked up my guitar, watching me carefully, as if I were a stray dog that might bite him.
After examining the guitar, he handed it back to me and said, “Play something else.”
I looked down at the neck and started playing “Big Love” by Fleetwood Mac. It was a hard song and the one I often used to warm up because it required a lot of finger picking, plus some flamenco and classical stuff.
When I was done, I set the guitar on my lap and looked at Cal. His jaw was agape. “What are you, like, twelve? How is it possible you can play like that?”
I was small for my age, and people always thought I was younger than I was. I took out my notepad and wrote I’m 14.
“Me too,” Cal said.
Wow woulda guessed 17, I wrote. Thought u were older.
“Everyone thinks that.” He pointed to the guitar. “Seriously, though. Why are you so good?”
Practice, I wrote. I drew a smiley face next to that word, because it was such an understatement it made me laugh.
Cal gestured toward my Dr Pepper. “You gonna drink that?”
I took another sip. It was warm, and I handed it to Cal because it seemed like he wanted it more than I did. He was staring at the food and I handed him a sandwich too.
“What’s your name? I go by my last one. Callahan. You can call me Cal.” He ripped the crusts from the bread and stuffed them into his mouth. “I go to Tam High. Well, I mean, I’m starting there in September.”
Me too! I wrote with an embarrassing amount of enthusiasm. Then I scribbled my name across the page. Joseph Robert Harper.
Cal asked me why I was there by myself and I added a couple of lines about how it was my birthday and my dad had ditched me; Cal said, “That sucks” in a way that made me feel better.
“At least you have a dad. Mine left before I was born. I’ve never even met him.”
Cal grabbed the drumsticks from his back pocket and started playing a beat on the edge of the picnic table. Then he nodded toward my guitar and said, “Wanna jam?”
I wasn’t sure how to do that, but I picked up the guitar and played the chord progression from an old Doug Blackman tune. Cal continued to play drums on the table, humming a melody over what I was doing, and pretty soon we had the makings of a song. Not a good song, but a song nevertheless.
That’s when something started happening inside of me. It was as though the world was changing right in front of my eyes. I was changing. I know most of the time people describe monumental moments of their life as taking shape, but it’s the exact opposite for me. I’d spent the last two years in a sharp and silent world, playing guitar by myself, and as Cal and I played together, I felt all the jagged edges inside of me start to soften and blur into something warm and ecstatic. My life suddenly seemed more bearable than it had in a long time, and I was glad Bob had bailed on me.
Cal and I stayed in the woods and made up songs all afternoon. When it started to get cold, I put