Finding Lost Dog Tags

Chapter 6

"Tyler!" I yelled his name to the point where my throat hurt. "What did you do?" I was absolutely livid. I probably looked like one of those cartoon characters with the red faces and steam coming out of their ears.

It was almost a week after the Veteran's event, and Nate still hadn't called me. I thought we got along really well, but I was only half of the equation. I decided to let this whole thing go, there was nothing I could do. If he wasn't interested, he wasn't interested.

I finally accepted this fact and decided to play away on the piano all the feelings I had about him and the situation.

Only, my baby grand wasn't working. There was absolutely no sound coming from the piano. I didn't freak out at first because, on rare occasions, I needed to tweak the parts inside the piano to get it going again.

But when I opened up the piano, the frame and soundboard were gone. Just an empty piano stood before me. Was it even possible to move the parts like that?

I felt like throwing up. This was my father's piano, and I was supposed to take care of it.

"Tyler, can you please explain to me why the inside of my piano looks like its been gutted out." I barley got out the words before my throat closed up and the tears started to pour out.

"Oh. Yeah, about that Sis. You're going to laugh when I tell you this. I mean seriously lau-" I cut him off before he could continue.

"What the heck did you do? This was dad's piano!" I paced around the room trying to calm down a little.

"Okay. So the truth is, that's not even dad's piano." I starred at my little brother like he grew two heads. Obviously it was dad's piano.

"What do you mean by that Tyler? Please explain it to me because you are making zero sense." My voice was tight and hoarse, I pronounced every word carefully and completely like I was speaking to a baby. Put simply, I sounded like my mother.

"Well, I wanted to do something nice for you since you've been through so much and helped me escape that dreadful home. I asked your friends to help me with a little project and they were more than willing. You see, dad's piano was well overdue for some repairs and you know that. A local repair shop said they could fix it up and so it's there right now. This piano is some old one the repair shop was going to scrap, but we brought it here so you wouldn't get suspicious. I didn't think you would ever attempt to play it since you haven't played in a while. Dad's is almost finished. It will be done in about a week or so."

I didn't even know how to process this information.

"You are fixing dad's piano for me? Where did you even get the money?" I talked calmly, trying not to cry. I wasn't mad at all anymore but actually touched he went through all that trouble to surprise me.

"Well, the man saw our piano and gave us an estimate, but when we gave him our name, he said we didn't need to pay anymore."

I thought to myself for a while. What kind of man fixes a piano like that for free? That was kind of shady.

"Tyler, I'm going to visit this man today just to make sure he's taking good care of the piano. What's the business name?"

"Piano Buddies." Tyler giggled when he said the name. I stared at my brother for a minute before laughing myself. What kind of name was Piano Buddies?

~

I parked my motorcycle in front of Piano Buddies. The building must have been built a while ago because it seemed to be falling apart. The front door was squeaky, and a little bell dinged when I entered.