Falling for Trouble by Sarah Title (5)

Joanna’s fingers itched every time she looked over at her precious ’72 Fender Telecaster Deluxe, named Rosetta, after Sister Rosetta Tharpe, who—sorry, boys—invented rock guitar. If she had to choose a best friend in the world, it would be Rosetta, no offense to Trina. Rosetta had been with her through everything, from her first real gig to that last big blowup. Joanna had scrimped and saved from the moment she’d started taking guitar lessons in sixth grade. She mowed every lawn in the neighborhood, walked every dog, weeded every garden. (Although she drew the line at babysitting, not that any of the parents in Halikarnassus would have trusted Joanna with their kids.)

She really, really wanted to play. Not just play, she wanted to rock the fuck out on her best friend in the whole world. She didn’t think Granny’s painkillers were that strong, though, and the poor woman needed to rest. Maybe if she didn’t plug it in.

She picked up Rosetta and ran her fingers down the fret before settling her body in her lap and strumming her fingers over the strings.

She played the first thing that came to her head, a nonsense melody that was basically anything not by Bunny Slippers. Joanna liked to pretend she wouldn’t be able to play Bunny Slippers music again, even if someone pointed a gun to her head. She was pretty sure that wasn’t true. No, she was definitely sure. She’d written most of it, a fact that would haunt her until her fingers could no longer play.

Instead she closed her eyes and plucked and strummed whatever she felt like, angry, choppy rhythms that reminded her of the stuff she used to play in high school. Not surprising, since she was surrounded by the vestiges of her former self—ticket stubs taped to the mirror, posters hung crookedly on the wall, CDs spilling over the wobbly nightstand that Trina made in shop class. Acoustic strumming didn’t have the same cathartic effect that making a shitload of noise had. Probably because she didn’t have an amp. It didn’t make sense to try to move it from LA, so she sold it to some creepy Bunny Slippers fanboy who wanted to take pictures of her sitting on it. In her underwear.

She declined.

Besides, even if she did have an amp, she couldn’t very well plug it in and rock out, riot-grrl-in-the-suburbs style. Gran was sleeping, and even her drug-induced mandatory rest would probably not stick once Joanna started playing.

Still, the sad, tinny noises coming from Rosetta seemed inadequate to fill her need for noise, and not fair to Rosetta. If she couldn’t rock out, Rosetta’d rather not play, Rosetta told her.

And, yes, it was totally normal to have conversations with your guitar, Joanna told herself.

“Sorry, babe,” she told her guitar, with whom it was totally normal to have a close, personal relationship. She put Rosetta back in the case, refraining from actually kissing her good night, because that would be weird.

She stood and stretched and tried to decide if she should clean up her room. It had been clean until Joanna lugged her suitcase in and knocked the precarious nightstand where someone—surely Granny—had made a neat pile of the CDs and other junk.

Granny made something tidy; Joanna destroyed it.

Yup, that sounded about right.

She picked up a random CD, the jewel case cracked, the hinge useless. The Best of Joy Division, but the wrong CD was inside. She dug around for the case that went with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and she found the mix Trina had made her for graduation, of songs by bands that were destroyed by being on the Twilight soundtrack.

Man, she missed CDs. In the interest of portability, all of her music was digital now, but she missed being surrounded by the physical manifestation of everything she loved. (Oh, great, another inappropriate emotional attachment to an inanimate object.) Whatever, Granny was the same way about books, so it wasn’t Joanna’s fault. She’d inherited the tendency.

Her phone dinged, and Joanna climbed out from under her mountain of memories, grateful for the distraction. But also a little apprehensive that it was going to be Mandy again, leaving another angry voice mail about how she’d screwed it up for them all and she was out of the band. Which was fine with Joanna. Totally fine. She would be even more fine if Mandy would quit calling.

This, though, was a text.

It was from Trina, her childhood best friend and lead singer of Halikarnassus High’s badassest all-girl punk trio, Delicious Lies. Joanna smiled in spite of herself. She and Trina had gone off in totally different directions—Trina married an insurance agent, had kids, and got much better at making furniture; she was now a sought-after designer of handmade curiosities. Joanna, well, Joanna didn’t do any of that. But there was something about the longevity of their friendship that made those differences superficial. They were each other’s favorite old sweatshirt, comforting, uncomplicated. It was nice to be reminded that she had actual human friends. Not many—Trina was probably the only one—but Joanna could use a dose of uncomplicated right now.

But then she’d have to explain about her big break and how she’d blown it.

Joanna read the next text with a hint of jealousy. Trina was the only person from Halikarnassus she still talked to (well, aside from Granny, of course), and she knew that the two of them got together sometimes, and that Granny thought of Trina’s kids as her great-grandchildren. But reading the text, that familiarity born of two people who actually spent time together, made Joanna’s heart hurt a little. Not that she thought Trina would replace her in Granny’s heart, just . . .

Dang, she had issues.

One thing at a time, Joanna, she told herself.

Joanna smiled and tossed her phone on the bed. She should unpack, but she didn’t really feel like uncovering the adolescent nightmares Granny had left for her in her dresser. Instead, she decided she would actually do what she’d told Trina she would and check on Granny. Maybe she’d be hungry, and Joanna could scrounge something up in the kitchen. Then she remembered the towers of casseroles and the cute librarian being all nice and helpful. That guy didn’t look like a librarian, let alone a library director. But whatever. It didn’t really matter what he looked like, did it?

With a last wave to Rosetta, because she was a weirdo, Joanna went to check on Granny.