Page 8 of Your Rhythm
3My Body || Young the Giant
MATT
I shouldn’t answerthe phone.
I’m late enough as it is, and I’m sure whatever Kyle has to say can wait, but I hit the ‘Accept call’ button and flop down on the spongy second-hand couch in the living room anyways.
JP, my band mate and co-resident of our two bedroom apartment, left his latest restoration project sitting on one of the cushions and I almost knock it over. I grab the edges of the plastic sheet spread underneath the metal odds and ends and shift them over to the coffee table. From the looks of things, he’s trying to solder an antique pencil sharpener to a piece of copper pipe. Our whole apartment is full of half-finished shit like this.
“Sup, LB?” I ask, as Kyle comes on the line.
“Not much, BB.”
LB and BB. Our parents used to make us wear shirts with those letters printed across the chests. They gave me mine the day they brought Kyle home from the hospital, red and screaming and wrapped up in so many blankets you could barely find his wrinkled face in all the fabric.
“BB stands for big brother,” my mom had explained. She showed me Kyle’s LB shirt. “He’ll grow into this one day and then you can wear them together!”
And wear them together we did. At every fucking family gathering and photo shoot and summer trip to Florida, we were the dipshits in the matching shirts. I was ten when Kyle was born, so by the time he was old enough to fit in his t-shirt I was well aware that all our cousins were laughing at us, but I still grudgingly pulled the thing on every time my mom tossed it at me and got her camera out.
Deep down I kind of liked wearing them. Something in me woke up the first time Kyle wrapped his tiny baby fingers around my thumb. He needed me, and I swore I’d always be there for him. Even if it meant giving up on things I wanted, or forgiving things I didn’t want to forgive. I’d always pick him up when he fell. I’d always answer the phone when he called. I’d wear a stupid t-shirt all day at Disneyland if it showed him how much he meant to me.
That’s what being a brother is.
I do draw the line at my mom’s request that we haul the shirts out again and recreate some old photos. They’d be crop tops on us now, and I’m not standing outside the fucking park and holding Kyle’s hand with both our midriffs showing. I keep telling my mom I’m a rock star now and can’t handle something like that getting splashed across the band’s Facebook page.
“Just calling for the sake of it?” I ask Kyle.
“I need some advice,” he tells me. “We’re doing a project in music class where we have to talk about a musician that has changed our lives.”
“That’s cool. Why didn’t I get to do cool things like that in music class? All I ever did was learn Christmas carols on the trombone.”
“They had trombones when you were in school?” He pretends to be shocked. “That was so long ago I thought you were all still sitting around in caves, banging sticks on rocks around a fire.”
I chuckle. “When did you get so savage, Kyle? High school is making you lose respect for your elders.”
“You just can’t keep up, old man.”
“Old man? Watch it, or I’ll kick your ass next time I’m back in Sudbury.”
“When will that be?” His tough guy act slips and I hear the yearning in his voice. “Are you coming for my March break? Maybe I could come see you in Montreal instead. I have enough saved up to take the bus.”
My heart jumps into my throat. I haven’t seen him since Christmas. I start mentally flipping through all our upcoming shows and press junkets, trying to find somewhere to squeeze in a last minute trip up north.
“I’ll be home for Easter,” I offer with a heavy exhale, after realizing that’s the best I can do, “and you know what I told you. As soon as you turn eighteen you can come spend a whole summer out here with me.”
I glance over at our windowsill, which houses an extensive liquor collection and the dragon-shaped bong JP brought home one day. I might not party as hard as the other guys, but there’s still no way my Montreal life is the kind of environment a ninth grader should be hanging around.
“That’s years away,” Kyle complains. “Maybe Iwon’tdo my project on you.”
I blink.
“Huh?”
“I was going to do my project on either you or Dave Grohl. I was calling to see if maybe I could ask you some questions for research, but now that you’re being such a cock blocker I guess I won’t give you the honour.”
I almost choke on the sudden surge of emotion. My little brother just lumped me into the same category asDave Grohl. My brother, who used to sit on my lap and mess around with my drum kit before he could even walk, has to write about a life changing musician and he thought ofme.
Someone could walk into the apartment right now to tell me Sherbrooke Station just went triple platinum and I wouldn’t feel the same mix of swelling pride and the clanking weight of responsibility that I do right now.
