The first few days of being grounded were bad. After a couple more go by, I feel like I’m losing it. I play around with my guitar sometimes, watching the colors, but I can only do that for so long. I’m not that good at playing and probably never will be since I only play alone. It’s tied in with my synesthesia and that makes it feel private.
When I was little, I assumed everyone saw colors with music. But when I got older and talked about it in school, the other kids laughed or called me a liar. Even Mom was confused when I went home and told her about it. She took me to the doctor and had me checked out. When we got the diagnosis, the doctor said I had a special gift. I should simply enjoy it. I decided he was right, but I also decided to keep it to myself.
When I’ve had enough guitar, I try other things. But watching tv or playing on the computer alone is boring. I’ve never been seriously into gaming, but I played sometimes with a couple of buds from the last town. I miss them. We’re keeping in touch online, but it’s not the same as having someone hang with you. I’m lonely and getting this restless feeling in my gut. I need to move or I’ll explode. But I’m not allowed to blow off steam by going out to shoot hoops or play street hockey.
I’m almost wishing Mom hadn’t eased back on the chore thing. That’s how bad it’s getting. She stopped by the school and picked up my homework. I was so desperate for something to do, I finished it right away. By Wednesday I’m lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling and plotting my escape.
But where can I go? And who can I see? There’s nothing and no one. I pound on my pillow, then look around my room. It’s a worse mess than normal. I haven’t finished setting it up the way I’d like since we moved. I remember seeing some old shelves out in the garage, the sort you hang with brackets. Maybe I could put them up on my wall? They could hold my books and cds. Most of my music is on my mp3 player, but sometimes I prefer the sound of cds. I don’t know why, but the colors are different. Vinyl albums are different again. Live music is best.
I start sorting through the stuff on my floor, piling up clothes to make a work space. Under a pair of jeans I find the cd from the geocache. Famous. Huh. I’d forgotten about that. I decide it can’t hurt to give it a listen. I stick it into my stereo and start stacking my other cds.
Whoa! The sound filling my room is amazing. I freeze and watch indigo swirling like dark blue smoke. Incredible acoustic guitar music pours out of the speakers. It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard. It must be a twelve-string. The player knows how to work it for all it’s worth. Blue swirls and ripples of deep green flecked with brown move in.
The cds I was holding fall to the floor, and I barely notice. And then this girl starts singing. Her voice is weak at first, a faded blue. But after a few bars her voice takes off and soars above the guitar. The blue I see now is a summer sky. I drop onto my bed to watch.
At first I’m so caught up in the sound I don’t pay attention to the lyrics. But after a while I wonder what she’s singing about. Lakes. Rivers. Traveling. The melody gives me the pink and gold of sunrises as she sings about taking off into the vast unknown.
When it ends, I need to hear it again. Now. But before I can move, another song starts. This one feels different. The guitar pauses between notes, building slowly. I see muted and misty shades of green, yellow and mauve—the colors of an old bruise. When her voice arrives, it’s so uneven I can barely make out the words. I strain to catch them. The song is about loneliness. The vocals slip in and out of the guitar notes like they were supposed to be together but lost each other. It’s as if the music is saying as much as or more than the words. I catch phrases about arriving alone, leaving alone. There’s something about eternal solitude, about reaching for connection and always missing.
It’s the saddest song I’ve ever heard.
There’s an interval of static after the song ends, and I think that’s the end of the cd. I get up to replay it, but then a third song starts. This one is jarring after the flow of the first two. The guitar strings aren’t strummed and stroked. They’re getting slammed. Purple and black form a backdrop for flashes of blood red. But again, the music fits the lyrics, because this one is about being used and lied to. It’s about suspicion, about wanting to believe in someone. It’s about wanting to trust and getting mocked instead. Feeling like a fool because everybody knew—except her.
It sounds like somebody messed her up. As the last guitar note fades to scabby brown, I hear a guy mutter, “Guess who.”
I don’t know why, but that ticks me off. How could he say that to her? Was it him that hurt her?
And who is she?
I listen to the songs again. By the second listen, I think maybe she’s from Penticton because she mentions Skaha Lake.
By the third listen, I know I have to find her. This girl understands me better than I understand myself. I could never put into words what loneliness feels like, but she gets it. She knows what it feels like to be mocked. She knows what it feels like to want to go. Just go.
That last bit worries me. What if she stashed her cd in the geocache box and left? I imagine her with her guitar and a backpack at the side of the highway, thumb out for a ride. She’d be brave enough to do that. Anyone who creates music like hers, with lyrics that are so honest and so real, has got to have courage.
I want to find her. But how?
I take the cd out of the stereo and examine it. No clues there. Just that one word: Famous. I check the plastic sleeve it was in, and, again, there are no clues. I think back to when I found it in the geocache. Was there anything on the ground nearby? Not that I can recall.
What about the logbook in the cache box? Everyone is supposed to record their name there. All right. There’s no guarantee that she wrote her name, but it’s possible. Only how will I know which name is hers? Maybe it’ll be obvious. Maybe she wrote that she left a cd. Or I’ll see a name that has to be her.
I realize there’s another clue. The handwriting on the cd would match the handwriting in the logbook, right? Not bad, Zack. Not bad at all. Maybe having a cop Mom who nags about the details has advantages.
Thinking about Mom makes me check the clock. It’s too late for me to head out—she’ll be home any time now. I’m going to have to wait until tomorrow. I am going, grounded or not. All I have to do is wait until Mom leaves for work and, bam, I’ll be out the door. It only took about twenty minutes for us to drive to the cache site, including that wrong turn. I should be able to bike there in under an hour, easy.