In My Eyes, You're Beautiful

We’re at breakfast, all four of us, sitting at one of the tables that are against the far wall and staring at the list of activities that Judy gave us with the instruction to pick which ones we are going to participate in today. Jack and Rian are both adamant about going down to the lake and getting their swimming passes so that they can swim whenever they want in the future, but I’m not so sure about that idea. Zack isn’t really paying any attention, leaning against the wall with his useless hand in his lap and his other wrapped around a plastic spoon filled with milk and fruit loops. I nudge him with my shoulder, and he jumps the slightest bit before looking at me with a tiny smile.
“The two of them want to go get their swimming passes. Do you want to?” Zack doesn’t even think about it before shaking his head and looking down at the plastic table below him. I can practically see the way his mind is working. Swimming means wearing a swimsuit. Swimsuits mean bare skin for anyone to see. Bare skin means burns.
“Oh come on Zack!” Jack reaches over and shakes his shoulder. “It’ll be so much fun! You know how to swim, right?”
“Yeah. Well, sort of. I haven’t been swimming in a long time.” Zack doesn’t look at any of us and takes a bite of cereal.
“Well this is a perfect opportunity to start swimming again!” Jack looks at me. “You’re coming, right Alex?”
I shrug. “I think I’m going to stick with Zack on this one.” I’m not ready to show my burns to anyone yet, no matter if they care or not. I don’t think Zack is either. “We’ll just go…” I trail off and look down at the piece of paper, trying to find an activity for the two of us to do that doesn’t involve the use of both hands. “We’ll go to the music center.”
“Alex, I um, I can’t really play any instruments.” Zack’s cheeks tinge pink, but I smile big at him.
“I’m sure we can figure something out. I can teach you how to play guitar.” Zack just shrugs, but I can see his smile as he looks down at his lap.

“Zack, come here. Sit next to me.” I sit down on one of the benches that line the walls of the music room. There are a few kids in here, but it seems like most are down at the lake swimming. Zack is standing in the middle of the room looking a little lost. It’s cute, the way his hands are shoved in the pockets of his sweatshirt and the way one of his shoes is untied. If you look at him from his left side, it doesn’t look like he has any burns.
He slowly makes his way over to me, eying the guitar that I’m holding in my lap. It’s old and a little beat up, but it’ll work. He sits to the right of me on the edge of his seat, gripping onto the bottom of the bench with his right hand and holding his left one in his lap. I focus on tuning the guitar so that I won’t have to look at the way he’s tapping his feet aimlessly against the ground, making him seem younger than he really is. More like a little kid and less like a teenager. I don’t want him to ask me why I’m smiling at something so unimportant.
Once I’ve tuned the guitar as well as I can by ear, I slide down the bench so that I’m sitting directly behind the neck of the guitar. “Zack, slide down” He jumps and pulls his eyes away from the middle of the room. He spaces out a lot. It’s cute. He scoots over so that the body of the guitar is in his lap and our thighs are touching and looks at me. Well, more looks at my shoulder.
“Okay, what do you want to learn how to play?” I watch him gently wrap his right arm around the instrument, strumming the strings absentmindedly with his thumb.
He shrugs, looking down. “Anything.” But then he pauses for a minute, and his eyes go somewhere else, somewhere not in this room, for a split second. “Actually, do you know Wonderwall?”
“Yeah, of course.” He’s smiling the slightest bit, but not at me.
“When I was little my cousin lived with us. He was a lot older than me, and he had this guitar that his dad bought for him. I thought it was the coolest thing ever, and I would always try to sneak into his room so I could touch it. He would always catch me and throw me out, then go screaming to my mom about how annoying I was.” Zack bites his lip and looks down at the strings. “But one time, he came home in the middle of the night really drunk and really happy. He said ‘Come here Zacky, I’m gonna teach how to play a song.’ And I was so excited, and I went into his room and I sat on his bed and he showed me how to play Wonderwall.” Zack is smiling. I can tell that this is an important memory. “He moved out a month later and gave the guitar to me. He told me to keep it safe.”
“Do you still have it?”
Zack shakes his head. “A week after he moved out my mom took it away from me because I wasn’t being good. I don’t know what she did with it. I never saw it again.” Zack takes a deep breath.
We’re both silent for a few moments. I don’t really know what to say. It’s not exactly a sad memory, but the way Zack tells it makes me feel like thinking about it makes him sad. “Was your cousin mad that your mom took it away?”
That makes Zack laugh a bit. “I never saw him again. He’s a heroin addict.” Zack looks down at the floor and lets his hair cover his face. I really don’t know what to say now. So I just reach around and put my hand on top of Zack’s and guide him to strum the strings the right way.
“Okay, so for the first part you only strum the first four strings, not the highest one.” I make the shape of the chord with my left hand and watch as Zack strums the stings with a shaking hand. “Yeah. Like that.” I move my fingers to the next chord and put Zacks hand back in the right position. “For the next chord, you strum all the strings.” I guide Zack’s hand down and he smiles as he hears the chord.
“Like that?”
“Yeah, perfect.” I can feel his left hand, the bad one, resting half on his own leg, half on mine. I wonder what it’s like, to only have one hand to use. It must make life so much harder.
I guide him through the whole song, enjoying the feeling of his body pressed up against mine. If we weren’t both wearing sweatshirts our burns would be pressed together. When we finish, we play it again and again until Zack has it perfect.