I Am (Not) the Walrus Read Online Free PDF Page B

my fingers brush against something else. Another wallet. The first one was brown leather. This one is black, and made from a kind of nylon material. I open it, and a third wallet drops out. A red one. I shove them all to the back of the drawer, and then I notice two more wallets. Another brown leather one, and a black one with a zipper. Shawn had a thing for wallets.
    Who would have guessed?
    Funny the things you learn.
    If only he’d had a thing for screwdrivers.
    I open the drawer wider and scoop everything back until I reach the Swiss army knife. I weigh it in my hand for a moment. I pull open the blades. There is no Phillips-head screwdriver blade, but there’s a very narrow, normal screwdriver in the knife. I try it in one of the screws.
    It fits.
    I twist it.
    At first the screw is stuck fast, but then it creaks and shifts to the left so suddenly that the screwdriver slips out of the screw and scrapes across the panel, leaving a tiny scratch.
    Dammit! I can’t get anything right.
    I blow out a long, ragged breath.
    I borrow Shawn’s bass, and just to show my gratitude, I damage it.
    As it eases counterclockwise, I wonder how long the screw has been fastened. The p-bass is at least ten years old. Fenders are well made, the electrics are good, and there’s probably never been a need to undo it before now. The screw begins to turn freely, so I put down the knife and use my finger, but just as I touch the tip of my finger to the head of the screw I notice a tiny scratch, thin as a hair, and about a half-inch long, radiating out from the next screw.
    I can barely suppress a sigh of relief. Not only has the panel been opened before, but whoever opened it probably also used the wrong kind of screwdriver.
    I use the tip of my finger to finish unfastening the first screw, and then with great care so there are no more scratches, I use a combo of the knife and my fingertip to remove the other two. I balance the three screws on the top of the nightstand so I can put them back later. It turns out that I need the knife again, as the plastic panel is recessed into the wooden body. I hold my breath as I use the tip of the knife to pry it up.
    Underneath, the body is hollowed out to make room for the drum-shaped pods connected to the volume and tone controls. There’s also a little bird’s nest of wires that flip upward when I take away the lid. I lean forward and blow away some old sawdust, some of which goes in my eye.
    I wipe it away, and blink.
    The drum-shaped pods and the wiring I understand. I’ve seen the same kind of thing before when we opened the back of Zack’s guitar. But there’s something else I’m not familiar with. Under the cables is a pale-blue tube, more or less the exact size and shape of my little finger. I use the knife blade to poke the tube, and it squashes easily.
    I’m just about to prod it again when something scuttles across the floor. I freeze with the knife blade a fraction of an inch above the tube.
    A mouse?
    A moth?
    Just my imagination?
    No. That’s crazy. There really was something there.
    It’s so quiet that the loudest thing is my breathing, so I hold my breath. I can hear the faint clatter of plates downstairs as Mom makes supper. I can hear seagulls squawking outside the window. I can hear the distant rumble of traffic on the bypass. But nothing more from inside the room. Whatever it was stays put.
    I breathe out, lower the knife blade back into the wiring, and test all of the connections. Apart from one wire, which has now come completely adrift, the rest of the soldering all seems to be pretty sound. The one connection that is adrift is the one that is holding down the little tube.
    Why would Fender put a tube under a wire that would create enough pressure to break the connection?
    But even as I put the thought together in my head, I know that I’m wrong. It’s not a design fault of the guitar. The blue tube has nothing to do with