Turnings (Southern Vampire Mysteries)

Chapter 16 - River Flows

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"Whoa!" Peter, one of Sarah's twin sons, stood up from the kitchen table as Rick flew down the back staircase. He stepped in front of Rick, bodily blocking the boy's head-long rush toward the dining room. Rick came up short and lifted his hand to hide his mouth, but Peter had already seen enough. Sarah's son stepped forward and pulled the Rick's hand away. "Wow, Chub!" he whistled softly, "Are those real?"

Peter and his brother, Seth, had known Rick since the day he arrived in Chester with his mother. It was the twins who nicknamed Rick 'Chub,' because as a baby Rick had been so big. No one really called Rick that name anymore, but just hearing it made Rick feel better somehow. Of everyone he knew, Seth and Peter were as close to brothers as Rick had. As soon as he was able to toddle after them, Rick had made a habit of haunting the twins' footsteps. He ran after them into the woods, crying out for them to wait up. When the twins got older, Rick spied on them, making noise and interrupting their first dates.

Most of that changed when the twins transferred to Morris for high school. Seth was the athletic one and his crowd didn't have much tolerance for a persistent, pesky adolescent. It was Peter who remained Rick's more regular companion. Part of the reason they remained as close as they did was their mutual love of music.

Both Peter and Rick had an almost uncanny natural musical ability. They could coax tunes from any number of instruments, most without needing any instruction on how to play. When you listened to them, it was clear that Rick was the more technical musician. Sookie's son was precise and the music he preferred had clean, logical progressions. Peter's style was something else; a cross between bluegrass, fusion, and jazz.

In the years before the twins left for college, Rick spent hours either playing with Peter or listening to Peter play with others. When Peter and Seth did leave, Rick told his mother that Peter's absence was a gaping hole in the town bands and it made Rick sad.

That had been two years ago.

Seth traveled to New York City for college and majored in architecture. His mother told Sookie that she figured that child was lost to them forever. Seth assimilated into city life as if he'd been born to it. Although only a sophomore, he was already interning for an architectural design firm. Just getting him to agree to come back to Chester for holidays was a chore. 'Captured by the Big City,' Sarah sighed.

Peter went a different route. Peter was accepted to a prestigious school in Boston on full scholarship, but after a year and a half, he dropped out. The way he explained it to Rick over hand-rolled cigarettes and home-brewed ale was that the instruction on musical composition and teaching techniques was too confining. Peter had thrown up his hands in frustration as teacher after teacher tried to push him to capture what he heard in his head on to neatly drawn bar scales. What flowed from Peter's quick mind was something so organic that even he himself couldn't remember or repeat it once it was done. After less than one semester, Peter decided to shift his major from attending school to majoring in the city's musical scene. He had no problem finding venues that welcomed his sitting in to standing gigs or playing solo. While it fed his soul, the scholarship wasn't so forgiving of dropped classes and failing grades. The grant was revoked, and Peter returned to where he told everyone he belonged.

When his Mother's friends asked, he explained he was more interested in living a simple life than getting a piece of paper to prove something he already knew: he could make music. Peter was perfectly happy living in Chester, leading the town Morris line and playing for the weekly dances in the basement of the town hall. Peter moved into the space above his Mother's garage and he once more became part of Rick's circle.