Elizabeth Eulberg - Take a Bow

“Okay, I lied. I have your gift but didn’t want you to open it in front of the guys.”

Oh.

He sets down the oversize gift and already I know it’s too much. I start to tear away the wrapping, to find a cardboard box with no markings. Ethan leans over to cut the tape around the box with a knife.

I lift the tabs open and dig around the plastic wrapping and pull out a black guitar case.

“Ethan …”

I’m scared to open it. It’s a guitar. And I’m sure it isn’t from Target, like the ones I use.

I unzip the bag to find a candy apple red electric guitar. But not just any electric guitar, a 1964 Fender Stratocaster.

“I can’t …”

Ethan takes the guitar out and hands it to me.

“I know what you’re going to say. But I saw this the other day and thought that you need to have it. So consider it a Christmas, Birthday, Graduation, Kicking Ass at the showcase, and Getting into Juilliard gift.”

“It’s still too much.” The guitar is beautiful and I start to strum it. Even unplugged, it sounds wonderful.

“Okay, add putting up with me, holding my hand at the hospital, believing in me, and such.”

I shake my head. I know he won’t stop until I accept it.

“Plus,” he continues, “imagine the damage you can do on your guitar solos with it.”

I run my hands up and down the bright red polish. Holding it, I know I won’t be able to give it back. I want to plug it in and play.

“And, you know, just remember this gift when we both get into Juilliard.”

I look at him and finally get what he means. He always keeps mentioning about what happens if we both get in.

“Ethan, do you think that I wouldn’t want you to go to Juilliard?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. I sometimes think that maybe you want to go to school by yourself…. Start anew, I guess.”

“To be honest, I can’t think past the audition. I know you’re going to get in, so when I think about Juilliard, I just assume we’ll be there together. But if not, I’ll be in Boston. Look at me, like I’m just assuming that Berklee will accept me.

“I just need to take things one at a time. First the showcase, then the auditions. You know that I can’t handle too many things at once. I’ve vowed to not turn into a sobbing wreck for the rest of the semester.”

It’s getting late, so I get up to leave. Then a thought comes to me. “Hey, Ethan? If I wrote accompaniments, do you think you and the guys would join me on my song?”

“You know we’d love to.”

It doesn’t feel right to not have them up there with me for my song. Plus, I think adding guitars and a drum would make it a lot stronger. I know that I’d be sad when they left the stage, plus it is one of the last performances we’ll be doing. I want us to do as much together as possible before we all head our separate ways.

I turn around before I head to the door. “I’m going to really miss the band next year.”

“There’s always the summer,” he suggests.

But we both know that with the four of us spread across the country, it is going to be hard to pick up right where we left off. Sure, we’ll probably play together, but it won’t be the same. Nothing will be the same.

I look at Ethan and I know he’s harder on himself than anybody I’ve ever known. He’s so self-critical, and it doesn’t help that Jack teases him all the time, or that I yelled at him. But after The Incident and The Injury, he’s been a lot calmer and hasn’t exhibited his usual self-destructive behavior.

“I’m really proud of you,” I say.

He looks taken aback.

“Really. I know you’ve been through a lot, probably tortured yourself more than you should. But when I think about next year, it will make me sad if we aren’t together. You mean a lot to me. I never would’ve had the courage to do that solo if it wasn’t for you. So I guess I better practice extra hard so I get in.”

“You’re going to get in.”

And the way he says it, it’s like it’s a fact. A done deal.

But when Ethan says things like that to me, I believe him. Not because I have a bloated self-esteem, but because when he says it, I want to believe it.

I want to be that person he thinks I am.

And I thought things were bad before.

After winter break, we come back to the Showcase Stress Tsunami. The tension is palpable.

The four of us have a pact that there will be no talk about the upcoming college auditions until after the showcase. We don’t even have any gigs to distract us. It is all showcase, all the time.

I’m heading to our practice room when I see a very familiar strand of red hair poking out of a mass of two guitars, one oversize backpack, and a puffy winter coat.

“Emme!” I call out.

She turns around and accidentally drops one of her guitars. I pick it up.

“Here, give me that as well.” I take her backpack. “Are you trying to hurt yourself?”

She smiles at me … and my heart melts. Every time.

“Can it be May already?” She picks up her other guitar. “I’m not sure if the guitar should be electric or acoustic for my song…. I keep changing my mind, so I thought I’d bring both. Although maybe I should play the piano instead?”

“You’re not hiding behind the piano on this one.”

She bites her lip. “Yeah, but why do you get to?”

“Because it isn’t my moment.”

She stops walking. “Can we stop referring to the showcase as my moment? Anytime I think about it, I get sick to my stomach.”

I nod. I’d pretty much agree to anything she says. But it will be her moment.

We enter the room and start unpacking our gear. I reach in my pocket and hand her a protein bar.

She waves it away.

“You’ve got to eat something.”

Her stomach pains have gotten worse with the showcase just a week away. She’s hardly been eating and she’s thin enough as is. Not like I should talk, but when I’m nervous, I eat more. Which is probably why I’ve gained so much weight (granted, it was needed) since I’ve been at CPA. Constant nerves.

After she hooks her guitar up, I guide her to a seat.

She looks up at me like she’s waiting for a big lecture. I unwrap the bar and hand it to her. “Please eat something.”

She takes a small bite.

Jack bursts into the room with his arm around Ben. “Guess who got their early acceptance to Oberlin today?”

Emme screams. “Ben, that’s so fantastic!” She gets up and hugs him.

Jack laughs. “Just think about it. A year from now, I’ll be in sunny LA, fighting off the advances of the all-bikini-clad female students at CalArts, while the rest of you will be freezing your butts off, this one in the Midwest and you two albinos here.”

Emme takes one more bite of the protein bar. She looks at it for a couple seconds and runs over to a garbage can to spit it out.

“What, Red, are you sick to your stomach over the thought of being so far away from me? I’d say you should come to LA, but I think you’d probably spontaneously combust if you stepped into the sun.”

I ignore Jack and run over to Emme.

“Sorry, it tastes like chalk.” She hands it back to me. “I’ll be fine … once, um, the auditions are over. I hope.”

She whips out her water bottle and takes a big sip. She turns her attention to Ben. “Ben, you have to tell us everything. What did the letter say? When did you find out?”

Ben hands us a copy of the e-mail he got just a few minutes before. “I had to run to the computer lab to print it out. It seemed like a joke.”