Chapter Twenty-Eight

Parker Lowell

"You play guitar?" Taylor said as we walked back into my room, coming home from a short trip to the grocery store with Gina (we were desperately bored!) a few days after I called Theresa.

I cringed. I knew he'd eventually notice that.

The truth is, no matter how hard I try, I'm not a very musical person. I'm a member of the school choir only because it's an easy A. I try instruments, but can never get the hang of them (or never get the chance to thanks to impatient bitches of piano teachers). The acoustic guitar Taylor had only now noticed leaning somewhat unsteadily against my tall, narrow bookcase was my latest attempt and it looked like it was about to be my latest failure as well. I just never can concentrate on something like that long enough and that always embarrasses me. Especially in front of people who are musically inclined. And though I probably wouldn't have admitted to it just over a week before, Taylor Hanson was a musically inclined person.

I turned red.

"Uh...yeah," I replied, going over and sitting on my bed, hoping to High Heaven that he didn't ask anymore questions about it. The last thing I needed was someone asking me what chords I know and me having to tell them that, even though I had been playing for over three years, I was still in the Beginner's book and didn't know the names of any of the chords that I could play.

"Cool," he said, picking it up. "Do you mind if I...?"

"Not at all," I said even though he was already unzipping the case and pulling out the thing, which I saw, to my slight embarrassment, still had the capo on the second fret.

"You're a lefty?" he said, positioning the guitar so that he was holding it the way a right-handed player would hold it.

"Yeah," I said. "You know how that whole twin thing goes. One's always left-handed and the other is always right-handed."

"Oh really? I didn't know that," he said, strumming a chord. Very badly. I began to brighten.

"Yeah. You're just lucky I didn't absorb you when we were in the womb," I said with a wry grin.

"Huh?" he said, looking up at me, genuinely confused.

"It's something I saw on the Discovery Channel one time," I said, waving my hand carelessly. "They say that all left-handed people start out as twins, but some of them absorb their twins so that there's only one."

"You're kidding," he said, his nose wrinkled.

"Well, I don't consider the Discovery Channel something to swear by, but I trust them enough," I said.

He shook his head, smiling. "Uh-oh."

"What?"

"Zac is left-handed," he replied.

I laughed.

"What do you play?" he asked after a minute.

"Not much," I replied, trying to leave it at that. I didn't want to play but I was too afraid to just come out and say it.

"Okay....That's how much you play. But the question was what do you play?" he said back.

I rolled my eyes.

"The most complicated thing I can play is half of 'Something to Believe In' by Shawn Colvin," I said.

"How come only half?"

"My teacher, my best friend's mom, had to stop teaching me. She got too busy at work," I said.

"Oh," he said nodding. He leaned over and laid the guitar in my lap. I stared down at it in much the same way I had stared at the keyboards at the concert. I think I stare at most instruments that way.

"Why are you handing this to me?" I said, pushing it back.

"You're the one who knows how to play it," he said.

"Barely," I said back.

"Well, if you know half of Shawn Colvin's 'Something to Believe In,' you can't be all that bad," he said.

"Have you ever even heard that song before?" I asked skeptically.

"No," he replied. "All the more reason for you to play it for me. If you make a mistake, I won't notice."

"Oh, you'll notice all right," I said. "Trust me, when I make mistakes with this thing, I make them loud. Something like this." I played a chord in such a way that half the strings buzzed and the other half didn't sound at all. He made a face at the noise.

"Come on, just play it," he said. "I won't laugh."

"Hand me my tuner," I said defeatedly. He grinned triumphantly as he handed me my tuner. "You'll regret this."

He shrugged, not seeming to care.

"Do you know 'Blackbird' by the Beatles?" I said.

"Yeah," he replied.

"I know how to play that, too," I said.

"Do you know the whole thing?"

"I'm not sure. I know the whole thing the way it was taught to me, but I'm not sure if it's the way Paul plays it or anything," I answered.

"Then play it!" he said.

I undid the capo and re-tuned my guitar.

"Does this sound right to you?" I asked, striking a chord.

"Do it again," he said, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his eyes narrowed in concentration. I positioned my fingers and played the chord again.

"No, that's not right," I concluded myself and turned my tuner back on. "Damn tuner. I hate Sabine tuners. They're hardly ever right."

"That's what Isaac used to say," he said. "Then again, he said that about every kind of tuner he's ever had. I wonder why he hasn't learned to tune by ear yet."

I played the chord again. Satisfied, I said, "Okay, I think that's right." I got mysef into a more comfortable position.

"Do you need a pick?" he asked, pointing to the ones held to my music stand by magnet.

I shook my head. "Here goes."

I took a deep breath before beginning to play through the song, biting my lip and squinting my eyes as I usually do when I'm trying my hardest not to mess up majorly in front of someone. About half-way through the song, I heard the all too familiar roar of a car that was currently without a muffler pull up the driveway.

I stopped playing and turned my head to look out the window.

"Shit," I said, putting my guitar down as the old Plymouth sputtered up the driveway. I never did understand why Lyle drove such old-lady cars.

"Who's that?" Taylor asked me. I jumped, having not realized that he was standing right behind me.

"Lyle. Gina's boyfriend," I said, rolling my eyes. "Asshole extraordinaire."

Taylor smirked. "Is he really that bad?"

"No. He's worse," I said, walking away from the window and over to where my guitar case was laying. I placed the guitar in the case and began zipping it up.

"Lyle! What're you doing here?" I heard Gina ask nervously as the door screeched open and the scraping of the boots that Lyle always wore on Saturdays against the floor could be heard. I cringed.

"I just wanted to see you," he said as casually as a guy like Lyle could. You always knew there was something not so casual behind his casualness. I knew he was just coming over to see if he could catch Gina with a new boyfriend. He's so paranoid it's not even funny.

"Oh," she said. "Parker! Lyle's here!" she called.

"I'm not deaf!" I yelled back because you'd have to be not to hear Lyle. I turned to Taylor whose eyebrows were raised. "I'll be back in a minute."

I disappeared out the bedroom door grudgingly to see Lyle, hands in pockets as usual, standing near the kitchen table while Gina scurried around trying to set things up for coffee.

"Hey Parky," he said, playfully punching me in the stomach. It took my all not to punch him back. Hard.

"Hey," I said, walking over to where Gina was getting out spoons. "What do you want me to do about Taylor?" I asked her a quietly as I could. It had been agreed that Taylor was to be kept a secret. The trip to the grocery store was a momentary lapse in judgment. Not to mention we had both begged Gina on our bended knees to take us out of the house. Mostly we had just spent the time playing mind games with the employees. It was the first time I heard Taylor laugh with humor since we had come home.

"There's nothing to do but bring him out," she said, looking at me apologetically. She shrugged at my shocked look and then walked back over to the table where Lyle had seated himself and was watching us warily.

"Who's Taylor?" he asked us, one eyebrow raised suspiciously.

Gina looked up at me and raised an eyebrow.

"You're not making me tell him, are you?" I said.

"Well you're the one this affects the most," she said back.

"I'm not telling him," I said, crossing my arms over my chest.

"Tell me what?" Lyle said. I couldn't tell from the tone of his voice if it was a question or a command.

I looked up as Taylor casually entered the room. He went over to the refrigerator and bent down, obviously in search of something. He surfaced a few seconds later with the carton of orange juice in hand. He turned to Gina.

"Is it okay if I take this?" he asked.

"Sure," she said.

He walked over to where we kept the glasses (how he could remember where we put them, I have no idea. I can't even keep track of where Gina puts the glasses) and got one out. He poured himself a glass of orange juice and sat down at the table before acknowledging Lyle, whose mouth hung to the floor.

"I'm Taylor," he said, reaching out his right hand with the intention of shaking.

"Lyle Jennings," Lyle said back, looking from him to me and back again before taking Taylor's hand limply in his. "Who're you?"

"I'm Parker's brother," he answered, grinning as if that should be obvious. Which, when you think about it, it should have been. Or maybe not.

"I didn't know you had a brother," Lyle said, looking at me again.

"Pretty obvious now, isn't it?" I said dryly.

"I guess so," he answered. "Wow. This is weird. You two look exactly alike."

"Not really," I said, shrugging.

After a minute of hesitance, we all started to laugh at my joke. That seemed to break the ice a little bit. Luckily for us, Lyle didn't ask any questions we didn't want to answer. He asked a few basic ones: How did you get here? (We nimbly dodged that one with "By vehicle.") Where are you from? How come I wasn't told about this whole twin thing sooner? Stuff like that. He seemed to know where the line was drawn. After the steady stream of Question and Answer, the silence seemed a bit awkward.

"So...Taylor. How do you like Good Ol'Rochester so far?" Lyle asked him, looking up from his mug of coffee.

He shrugged. "I haven't really seen any of it yet," he replied.

"We've been too busy getting settled and, um, used to the idea of all this that we haven't really gotten to show him around that much yet," Gina supplied.

"And it doesn't look like we're going to. I have to go to school on Monday and Gina has to go to work," I said, realizing this for the first time.

"Well, I could take him around a little bit," Lyle said immediately. I was instantly sorry I had said what I had said. "I mean, I have Mondays off, I could bring him to some of my favorite places," he said, smiling warmly at Taylor.

"You mean the Home Depot?" I said.

He shot me a dirty look.

"Would you really do that?" Gina said, impressed. I hate how she always falls for his bait.

"Yeah. I mean, if Taylor wants me to," Lyle said.

"Sure," he said with a shrug.

"It's probably better this way anyway," I said. "Boredom isn't a good way to go."

"A thing we know too well since we had quite the close call," Taylor said back in a fake accent.

"You don't think I'm serious? The main attraction in this dinky town is the stop light at the corner of Reilly and Buffalo Streets. I think they may even have tour buses that go through that area and people take pictures of it," I said. Gina laughed even though she knew as well as I did that it was true.

"Well, does ten sound good?" Lyle interrupted.

"Yeah," Taylor said, nodding. "Ten sounds fine."

"Good."

Two minutes. That's all it takes. Come on.
Index
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Nine