Struts & Frets Read Online Free PDF Page A

behavior,” Jen5 said with a shrug. “They thought it would bring me out of my shell. But as the case with Miss Vampirella illustrates, a year of merit badges, cookie sales, car washes, and memorized slogans may have made me more social, but it didn’t do much good for the ‘anti’ part.”
    â€œSo what happened?” said Rick. “Did you slap her or something? Pull her hair out?”
    â€œGrow up,” she said.
    â€œNever!”
    â€œAnyway, we were supposed to sell cookies together, and I was trying to talk to her like she was a normal human being and not some brainless Kewpie doll until finally she turned to me and said: ‘Uh, hey, Jen. My friend’s mom just pulledinto the parking lot, so if you could just, like, not talk to me until she’s inside the store and can’t see us anymore, I’d really appreciate it.’”
    â€œYou are lying,” I told Jen5.
    â€œYou wish,” she said.
    â€œYou know what I heard about love?” TJ asked suddenly.
    We all stared at him.
    â€œUh, no,” I said, wondering where this came from. “What did you hear?”
    â€œThat everyone has an image in their mind of the perfect girl or guy. And whenever someone fits eighty percent of that image, we block out the rest. We just don’t even see it. And we continue to block it out until we get to know them so well that we’re comfortable with them. Then we finally see the other twenty percent and it could be the worst thing in the world and we just never noticed before.”
    â€œWell, by all means, then,” said Jen5. “Let us hasten this connection between Laurie and Sammy so that he might see the idiocy of his desire more quickly! Hopefully he won’t get crabs in the process!”
    â€œJesus, why do you have to be like that?” I said. “TJ’s trying to talk about something serious and you can’t even . . .”
    She was just sitting there smirking at me. Maybe she was one of my best friends, but she also pissed me off a lot.
    â€œYou know what?” I said. “Just forget it.” And I got up, grabbed my bag, and left the table.
    As I walked away, I heard her call to me, “Come on now! Sammy! Don’t be such a spaz! I was only kidding!”
    But I knew she wasn’t. Jen5 only smiled when she was dead serious.
    After school, I pulled the Boat up in front of my grandfather’s apartment building. He lived on the first floor of a place just outside German Village, so it didn’t have to keep that old-building look. I cut the ignition and waited while the Boat’s engine settled, listening to the groaning tick of the radiator slow down to silence. I was stalling. I didn’t really want to see him. I mean, I did. I loved my grandfather, maybe more than anyone else, but . . . well . . . he was getting a little crazy in his old age. I was tempted to skip it completely and tell Mom he was asleep or something. But I knew I wouldn’t do that. It’d make me miserable all night thinking about it. So after another five minutes of staring at my dashboard, I decided to face the music.
    Literally.
    When I stepped through the front door, noise hit me like a brick in the face. The lights were dim, and as I waited for my eyes to adjust, I tried to figure out what was in the noise. TheOscar Peterson Trio. Billie Holiday. And something else more modern, probably Wynton Marsalis. Three totally different jazz artists being blasted from three different stereos at the same time. And there was something else that I couldn’t figure out. It wasn’t until my eyes finally adjusted to the gloom that I saw it was my grandfather playing the piano. That gave me a little hope, because these days he usually only played when he was in a good mood.
    I walked through the living room and over to the piano, then stopped and watched him play for a minute.
    He was mostly bald, and the little bit of white hair he