My dad is listening to a funny-sounding woman singing on the radio when he picks me up in fifth grade. I want to tell him about how I think I found a haunted house next to the playground, but he holds a hand up for quiet. He moves his fingers along the bottom of the steering wheel, as if pretending to play electric guitar with the lady. After the song is over, he tells me the lady’s name is Neil Young. Neil Young is a genius, he says, still tapping his steering wheel. I watch him for a little while and decide that I want to be a genius too. More than that, I want to be a “real rocker” like my dad calls Neil.

I’ve had ideas like this before, but this time I know it’ll be different. This won’t be like the time I wanted to be an archaeologist because Indiana Jones lied and there were no nazis to punch. This won’t be like when I brought a science textbook to school every day for two weeks because I thought being a nerd would turn me into Spiderman. This wouldn’t even be like the time I lied and told my classmates I was adopted because that’s how I thought you knew if you were a mermaid. No, this time was different because this time I had a real plan. I saw posters around the school for guitar lessons a couple days after the car ride. Now I only needed one thing.

My dad’s playing his guitar when I ask him if I can have my own. He smiles and looks me up and down. Tells me to wait while he goes out into the garage. My dad’s guitar is shiny and wooden and nice, but still isn’t what I need. A real rocker needs an electric guitar. Something that sounds and looks like the cars the guys with the leather jackets drive in the movies. I strum my dad’s guitar, keeping my eyes on the door for when he comes back. It sounds like when the rain hits the metal on the side of our house and makes a hundred different noises. My dad tells me those noises are called notes.

When he returns from the garage there’s no electric guitar. Instead, he’s holding what looks like could be the oldest guitar ever made. He tells me it was his as a kid. He says it’s from the seventies. It’s a yellowish brown with a darker brown teardrop shape underneath the hole where the strings go. On the back, there’s a clear sticker with black letters. Derek and the Dominoes. He laughs when I show him. Says something about a long time ago.

“All the real rockers start out on something like that, Rhino. I mean look how they treated Dylan when he went electric.”

I don’t know who Dylan is. I just know this guitar doesn’t sound like rain or cars. Lying flat on my back, on the floor of my room I strum. It sounds like rubber bands and the little squiggly piece of metal I flick sometimes on the bottom of the bathroom door. I close my eyes, strumming some more and try to imagine all the guitars in the world. Or at least all the guitars that’ll be at the lesson. Even in my imagination, they are all better than mine.

After a few days of playing it I ask my dad if I can go to the guitar lessons after school. He turns down the radio on top of the fridge and leans against the counter.

“Just one lesson, Dad. That’s all I need.”

He crosses his arms and I see a small smile across his face. One lesson then, he says, and we’ll go from there.

After the last bell rings, I make my way from my classroom to the cafeteria. The posters said that the lesson would be in the cafeteria after school. I hold my guitar, strumming it along in the hallways. I had seen a couple kids with black leather cases in the shape of a guitar during the day, but I had none. My dad said it was better that way, more authentic. But I just feel naked.

When I peek through the windows on the cafeteria doors I see all the long tables have been put away. In the middle of the empty room is a small circle of plastic chairs. Some kids are already sitting in the circle. Some I recognise, some I don’t.

One of the kids I recognise is a girl with short blonde hair. Her name is Jessie. We’re in the same fifth grade class, but we’re not friends. I open the door and they all turn to look. I try my best to hide my naked guitar behind me, but it’s hard to hide something the same size as you. I sit down and pretend to twist the knobs at the end of my guitar. The way my dad does sometimes. Maybe they’ll think I’m a serious guitar player. Maybe they won’t even notice my naked guitar.

“How come you don’t have a case?” Jessie asks, smiling, the mean way.

I shrug and keep turning the knobs. I see her case and it’s skinny, skinnier than all the others. I want to ask her why her case looks like that. See how she feels when somebody asks her a question. But I take another look at her case and realise why it is the way it is.

Jessie unzips it, as if she knew I wanted to ask, and inside is the most beautiful electric guitar I have ever seen. Red and white and shiny, with light brown wood along the metal. It looks just like the cars from the movies. She smiles and I say nothing. Just keep fussing with my guitar, waiting for the teacher.

Our teacher is a bald man with muscles like a superhero. He reminds me of Mr. Clean. He smiles at each of us and rests his guitar on his leg. Everyone takes theirs out and copies him. Jessie is the only one in the class with an electric guitar and she makes sure our teacher notices.

After going over the strings, notes, and something our teacher calls chords, I begin to wonder when we’ll start to learn about being “real rockers”. I think to ask this, but don’t. Instead, I do what I always do when bored in class. I raise my hand to go to the bathroom.

Of course, I don’t go to the bathroom. I go everywhere else. Walk through the hallways, peek into empty classrooms and look out the window at some kids going down the slide on the playground.

When I get back to the cafeteria, I stop at the doors and look through the glass to see what’s going on. Everyone is standing around the circle playing their guitar. For a moment, I think that they’ve waited until I went to the bathroom to go over the “real rocker” stuff without me. But then I see the way the teacher is smiling and rocking back and forth, and it is clear that it is still just as boring as ever. I look at Jessie standing, swinging her guitar just in front of her chair and I think I know what will make the lesson a little more exciting.

I open the door and no one turns around. They’re singing a song. Something that sounds like kindergarten and nothing like my dad’s radio. I walk slow, making my way towards Jessie’s chair. It’ll be funny, I think. I had seen the prank on TV. Everyone’ll laugh and maybe Jessie will even let me play her guitar after. I wait until the teacher has his back turned and grab Jessie’s chair. I lift it, careful not to make any noise dragging it on the floor, and set it down a full step behind her. Then, I walk to my chair, pick up my guitar and wait for the laughter.

When Jessie goes to sit down in her chair and instead falls flat on her back, no one laughs like on TV. In fact, no one says anything for a while. Everyone stands around shocked and Jessie begins to cry, her red and white electric guitar on top of her. The teacher doesn’t smile anymore and gets serious, like a regular teacher. He looks around the circle, as if looking for the criminal. Some kids help him out by pointing their fingers. They’re pointing at me.

The teacher takes me out into the hallway, telling me to “grab my stuff”. I look back at Jessie and see the whole class surrounding her, helping her into the chair. Her red and white electric guitar still beautiful, still perfect. I look down at mine, while the teacher yells at me. I mumble something about “real rockers” in the hope that he’ll understand. He doesn’t.

I wait for my dad on the stairs in front of the school, strumming my guitar. I pretend I’m like the people on the corners in the city, who play with open guitar cases for people to put money. But the school and the sidewalk are empty, except for the cafeteria, and no one in there would give me anything. I watch the cars drive by and try to imagine them as electric guitars, wondering what they would sound like.

When my dad picks me up, I set my guitar in the backseat. He asks me how it went and I shrug. He nods and grabs a cassette tape from the box where he keeps his coins. It’s a Neil Young tape. He puts it in and it sounds different than the song from before.

“Hear that? It’s acoustic, like yours.”

I listen, and Neil’s guitar sounds just like my dad’s. I know my dad doesn’t like talking during his music, so I whisper.

“Sounds like rain.”

He turns to me smiling, the way he did when I first asked him for the guitar, and surprises me.

“It does, doesn’t it?”

About Ryan Jones

Ryan Jones is a writer, student and educator living in Oakland, California. He has been writing his whole life, but only recently discovered creative nonfiction and loved the opportunities the genre provided. He has been published in Alchemy Magazine, in addition to Litro. He is currently attending Saint Mary’s MFA program.

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