Tabbs

Chapter 16

Tabbs reached her front door and, unable to summon the strength to pull out her key from her pocket, knocked on the door lightly with her forehead. There was a pause, a shuffling behind the door, then it creaked open, revealing Valentina in an oversized tee.

"Tabbs? What-"

Tabbs greeted her with a half-baked smile and gently pushed past her through the threshold.

"Are you okay?" Valentina asked as Tabbs gently set down her lunch box and backpack on the kitchen table. She heard Valentina slam the lock home behind her. "I'll make you some tea." Valentina laid a gentle hand on her shoulder in passing as she headed for the tiny kitchen and filled an electric kettle.

Tabbs' heavy eyes drifted from the other girl to the electric keyboard set up in the corner. "If I bring out my guitar and amp, would you mind playing some with me?"

"Playing?" Valentina glanced over her shoulder. "Tabbs, you look like you've been to hell and back. I'm going to make you some soup and tea, then you're headed to bed."

Tabbs leaned on the table for support and looked at the other girl though half-lidded eyes. "Valentina, please. I need this right now."

Valentina paused from her browsing of their now ample tea supply and plucked Tabbs' dangling hand from her side, clasping it in her soft, warm grasp. "You have bandages all over these and they're freezing to the touch." She cursed something in Spanish as she turned the other girl's hands in hers. "What did he do to you?"

"Please Val, it won't be long. I promise."

Valentina's eyes met hers and she gave Tabbs' hand a reassuring squeeze. "Okay. But you go sit down and I'll grab your gear. I know where it is," she said, guiding Tabbs to the couch and easing her into one of the recently replaced, mismatched cushions. She then rushed off to Tabbs' bedroom and came back, totting with some effort, the guitar in its hard case and her fender amp. To her credit, and Tabbs' surprise, she knew how to plug it in and set everything up, then eased the nylon strap over Tabbs' sagging shoulders.

"Need a pick?" she asked while turning the keyboard around the face Tabbs.

"Nah, a good guitarist always has one." Tabbs snaked out her wallet, produced a pick from its zippered compartment, then ran a few scales on the guitar. Her fingers protested with every movement, but her soul elated at the humming of the fresh strings and the fatty rattle of her drop D tuning.

Immediately Valentina poised over her keyboard, then mimicked the same scales on her keys. Tabbs watched the other girl's olive fingers tickling the ivory colored keys with such precision that she was convinced those same fingers could land on a specific spot on the moon if given the opportunity.

Tabbs punctuated her warm up with a final open strum. "Ready?"

Valentina replied with a ringing sweep of the keys that ended on a striking chord that sounded like a punch to the gut. "Take the lead."

Tabbs felt her cracked lips stretch into a smile as she let her fingers do the talking. Starting with the guitar lead overture to Unihorn's name sake album, with a few liberties taken for Tabbs' own personal style, she led into a spacey-sounding guitar solo layered on a heavy bed of distortion. Much to her surprise, Valentina was able to keep in line with ease. She had even pressed a few buttons on her keyboard to alter its sound to sound like an organ playing from some unseen depths of a far away galaxy.

Tabbs allowed herself to get lost in the sounds of her own music. She heard herself produce a pitter-patter of pentatonic minor scale notes, which was weighed further down by a filter on her amp that made the acoustics sound like she was playing in some lonely back alley. It wasn't a direction Tabbs had been planning to go, but she could never lie to the guitar about what was really on her heart. Valentina filled in with a rhythm of her own slow-moving notes with the occasional swift punch from the lower octaves that vibrated the tiny speakers in her keyboard.