I look up at Oz. “You’re a talented kid, Oz. There’s maybe thirty people that can play at your caliber. No joke.”
He nods and gives me an oddly shy half smile. “Thanks, Colt.” He gestures at Kylie, who’s hugging friends and chattering excitedly. “She’s the real talent, though. She wrote all the music. Except for my electric guitar part, I mean. All the acoustic music, she wrote. All the lyrics, the arrangements, everything. It was all her. And she was the only reason I got up there at all.”
“They encored you, pal. At an open mic night. You.” I can’t help trying to emphasize this to him, trying to build him up. I see something in him, and it both scares me and makes me want to help him, the way no one did for me.
“Yeah. I might let her talk me into doing a couple more gigs. That was pretty fun. Scary as f**k, but fun.” He winces. “Sorry, shouldn’t swear, I guess.”
I laugh. “I’m not gonna bite your head off for dropping an F-bomb, Oz. Nell might, but I won’t.”
We chat for few more minutes, and then she and Oz are walking, hand in hand, toward the exit.
I have so many questions about him, about them. About whether my daughter is safe, whether her heart is safe with him, whether I should ask if they’re sleeping together. If I even want to know. What I’m supposed to do if they are. Should I try and stop them if they are? As they walk away, Oz turns and nods at me, a gesture of thanks. I nod back, and I don’t miss the fact that he scratches at his left forearm.
It’s a move eerily similar to the one Nell makes, rubbing at her scars. When she was actively cutting, she’d scratch almost manically, frantically. Even now, almost twenty years later, she’ll rub at her forearms and wrists if she’s really upset, or if something reminds her of those days, those feelings.
Seeing that gesture in Oz, in the guy my daughter is interested in? It scares the f**k out of me. What frightens me even more is the fact that I don’t know what the hell to do about it.
SEVEN: Heaven Breaks Through
Oz
“Oh, my god, Oz!” Kylie shrieks as soon as we’re outside. “That was amazing!”
I set our gear down by the trunk of the car and then pick up Kylie by the waist, spinning her around. “We totally f**king killed it, didn’t we?”
“We did. We totally did.” Kylie leans against me as I let her slide down to her feet. “I knew we would. But holy shit, does that feel good. I love performing. I want to do it all the time. We’ve got to get a gig, Oz!”
“We will, sweetness. I’ve got no doubts.”
“I did, but not anymore.” She lets out a long, happy sigh.
I open the trunk of Kylie’s car. It’s her mom’s, really, but they let Kylie drive it most of the time, unless both Colt and Nell have to go somewhere separately. As we put away our guitars—or my guitars, as Kylie keeps insisting I keep the acoustic—I ask a question that’s been nagging at me since we met. “Why don’t you have your own car, Kylie?”
She slides in behind the wheel and starts the engine, which comes to life with a smooth purr. “It was a deal my parents and I made when I turned sixteen. They said I had two choices. They’d buy me something then, when I turned sixteen, but it would be, for all intents and purposes, a piece of shit. Older, used, and cheap. And most of my allowance would go to paying for gas and insurance. Or, alternatively, I could choose to wait to have my own car when I graduate. The payoff there was I’d keep all my allowance as spending money, I’d drive my mom’s car, which is pretty f**king sweet, I have to say, and they’d help me buy a car when I graduate. The closer to a four-point-oh GPA I get, the more they’ll spend on the car, especially if I don’t get any tickets or get in any accidents. I chose the second option, obviously. I’ve been putting a third of my monthly allowance into a savings account, so I’ll have money to put toward whatever I end up buying. It’s a good deal. There’s rarely a time when I can’t take the car, and in those circumstances, either Dad’ll take me where I need to go, or someone else comes to get me.”
I’m impressed. “I don’t think most people would’ve gone for the delayed gratification.”
She just shrugs. “No, probably not, but when Mom and Dad said they’d spend at most five thousand dollars on my car, I did some online research as to what five grand can buy, and decided I’d rather wait.”
She’s taking us toward downtown Nashville, but I don’t know her exact destination. I decide to let it be a surprise.
“Five grand can buy a really nice car, Ky.” It comes out kind of judgmental.
She doesn’t miss it. “Yeah, well, maybe so. But…look. I’m privileged, okay? I know it. All my friends drive nice cars. Their parents bought them basically whatever they wanted, no conditions. That friend I told you about, the one whose house I got lost in? She drives a Mercedes-Benz. A G-class. It costs more than a lot people’s houses. And she’s already wrecked it once. My point is, yeah, I know I’m used to certain level of…luxury. It’s what I know. My parents are trying to instill a sense of values in me, and that’s a good thing. I mean, sometimes I get a little irritated, like, they could afford to buy me my own BMW if they wanted to, but it would be their car. Not mine. I haven’t earned it. They’ve worked for what they have. I guess even the fact that I understand why my parents won’t buy me a fancy car makes me weird, for a teenager.”
“I think it’s awesome,” I tell her. “For real. Most people don’t appreciate shit. Like, the house they live in, the car they drive. They don’t understand how much they have. You do, and that’s…it’s amazing.”
She glances at me. “Honestly, Oz, I didn’t really appreciate it very much until I met you.”
I laugh, and it’s not a little bitter. “Until you saw how I live, huh?” She doesn’t answer right away, and I know I’ve gotten it right. “Hey, like you said, it’s all I’ve ever known. It’s not like I went from rich to poor, like I know what I’m missing by not living like you and Ben and your pals do. I’ve always been dirt poor.”
“Are you, like, resentful?”
I have to think about that. “I don’t know. Resentful? No. Mom’s busted her ass to provide what we do have. We’ve always had to scrape to make ends meet. I’ve been working since I was fourteen to have my own money. And now I stay with her and help out with rent and whatever. It’s why I’m still living with her. She works herself ragged, Kylie. It’s a vicious cycle she’s stuck in. She never went to college that I know of, and because she had me, she couldn’t. She had to keep working to take care of me. She just kept working and couldn’t ever seem to scrape together the time or money to go to college or anything. So she’s been a cocktail waitress her whole life. For me. So am I resentful? No. I’m glad to have had what little we did. But do I wish we had more? Yeah. Do I wish for better for her and for myself? Yeah, obviously. I’ve seen how hard Mom’s worked just to keep food in the house and a roof over our heads, and I want more than just the bare necessities, more than just paycheck to paycheck.”