The Tenth Night

The back of the guitar was icy cold against Nathan Chance’s bare chest. His new challenge for the month was to learn to play whilst lying on his back and as a result, the twenty-six year old deadbeat had spent the past three hours lying in his room attempting to make the sound progress from pinched and shrieking strings to his usual slapdash style of playing.

He strummed the same four strings a few times, mouthing a curse as the metallic groan of a string bursting sounded throughout the room. In three days, he had gone through five packets of brand-new strings, strings that he really didn’t have the money to be buying. Several plans to score money from his older sister flitted through his mind in record-breaking time, but Nathan couldn’t bring himself to move from his bed to the living room of the house that they shared.

Letting the string hang loose around his legs, Nathan continued to strum louder and louder until the sound of the guitar seemed to throb around his ears. It sounded warped, the loose string grating off of the others as they reverberated. He scowled, bringing the volume down to a slow simmer. The strings would definitely need changing and he couldn’t imagine anything less than pitiful grovelling would get him the few dollars he needed for a new set.

As he was contemplating the best way to squirrel hard-earned cash – not his own, of course – for his precious guitar, his bedroom door swung open. He rearranged his features into a grin and looked up at his sister. Robyn Chance was standing in what he liked to call the ‘domineering bitch’ stance – one hand firmly on her waist and the other pinching the bridge of her nose in the exact spot where her glasses usually lay.

“Nate, for the love of God, can you please stop the ridiculous noise. I’m trying to write lesson plans,” she said, voice weary. Nathan’s grin grew wider still and he pulled his plectrum through the remaining strings, letting out a short laugh as he did so.

“That sound, Robyn? I’m afraid I can’t, I’m too busy prac--”

“Practising for your future career as Herman Li? No offense, Nathan, but you’re not exactly sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, are you?” Robyn interjected, crossing her arms firmly. “In ten years, all you’ve managed to gain is a nicotine addiction.”

“You smoke too,” Nathan pointed out, sitting up slowly. A storm was brewing in the Chance household and he knew it. Confrontation was his thing and over the years, most sibling arguments ended with him gaining the advantage. From skirmishes at funerals to cooking altercations, Nathan almost always managed to glean a positive from every yelling match the pair had.

“Not the point,” Robyn groaned, throwing herself onto Nathan’s bed and staring at the ceiling, “Nate, I’m getting married in four months. You need to find somewhere else to stay, you need to find a steady job and more importantly, you need to grow the fuck up. You’re still acting like you’re sixteen and on a man turning 27 in the fall, that’s not endearing at all.”

“Peter Pan managed alright,” Nathan said with a shrug, standing up and stretching his arms skyward, “Why can’t I pretend to be young forever?”

“Peter Pan was a character in a book, you idiot!” Robyn snapped, “You aren’t! You can’t spend the rest of your life mooching off of me. Pretty soon, I’ll have a family of my own to support and I’m not going to have the time or the money to keep bailing you out when you call me from the precinct at three in the morning because the cops have lifted you for being drunk and disorderly again!”

“Do you speak to the elementary school kids like that?” Nathan asked mockingly, seemingly unperturbed by his sister’s out-of-character outburst. She groaned once again and stood up, crossing the room to the door in two long strides.

“I give up,” she sighed, “and I give up on you. I teach kids that are more mature than you. You’ve got a month to find somewhere else to stay. Until then, shut up and don’t disturb me.”

Nathan stuck his middle finger in the air as Robyn closed the door. She had threatened him on occasion with kicking him out but this time it seemed different. She hadn’t shouted, she hadn’t screamed and she hadn’t tried to hit him. There was no alcohol involved and her face had dropped as she said it. Maybe she was telling the truth, maybe she wasn’t. The only thing that Nathan was sure of was that Robyn’s fiancé probably had something to do with the decision. Right from day dot, the pair hadn’t gotten along at all and just a week previously, Nathan had managed to break the snobbish lawyer’s nose.

After a few minutes of replaying the sickening crunch of shattering bones back in his head, Nathan checked his watch and cursed. Twenty-five past five. He was due to be at a meeting at six and the bus took thirty minutes to get him to the next town. He grabbed a shirt from the floor, not bothering to check whether it was clean or not. It didn’t matter anyway. It wasn’t exactly the most formal of meetings. Snatching his phone up from between the bedsheets, he exited his room quickly.

“Where are you going?” Robyn asked from the kitchen as she heard the rattle of keys from the hallways.

“Out,” Nathan called back emotionlessly, slamming the door behind him.

It was only when he was halfway across town on the number nineteen bus that he realised he had left his list of names at home.