The Boy Recession by Flynn Meaney Page B

chairs—he spends most of his time in this room balanced up on the railings of the bandstand, swinging his legs, or sometimes he’ll hop up onto the closed lid of the grand piano, except when Johann is around. Even though he’s younger than us, Johann makes both Hunter and me want to behave ourselves. Right now Hunter’s playing a few chords on his guitar, stopping and starting the same chords over again. It’s been less than a week since I realized that I like Hunter, and now I find him alone, looking cute. Maybe Aviva’s right, and the universe wants us to be together.
    “Hey,” I say.
    Hunter starts and drops his guitar pick. When he turns around and sees me, a slow smile comes across his face.
    “Hey!” he says. “What are you up to?”
    I grab one of Johann’s music theory textbooks off the piano before sitting down on the bandstand next to Hunter.
    “I thought I’d brush up on my dotted quarter notes and sforzandos,” I tell him. “I think Johann’s teaching my kids so much that they know more than me now.”
    “Seriously! That kid is intense. He knows so much. He explained to my kids how Beethoven wrote music when he was deaf! It blew my mind!” Hunter says with a laugh.
    “And he can play every instrument!” I add, opening my flute case on my lap and starting to twist the headpiece in.
    “You know those one-man bands, where the guy has the harmonica in his mouth and the drum kit strapped to his back? I think Johann could be one of those,” I say.
    “No way,” he says. “Not in those khakis. He’s too serious! I mean, he’s fifteen, and my kids call him ‘Mr. Johann.’ ”
    I bring the flute to my mouth, test out a note, and then lower it to pull the headpiece out, which changes the pitch.
    “Is it really that hard to make a sound on that thing?” he asks me. “All your little flute girls are always huffin’ and puffin’ over there.”
    “It’s harder than it looks,” I tell him, adding, with mock arrogance, “I’ve got mad skills.”
    “Oh, yeah?” Hunter says, tilting his head and grinning at me.
    “You think you can do it?”
    “Well, I’m no one-man band, but I think I can handle it.”
    When I give him the flute, our hands overlap for a second. Hunter puts his fingers in the wrong place, but he blows a pretty decent note.
    “Not bad, Fahrenbach,” I say. “But what can you play on that thing?”
    I’m looking at the guitar.
    “Uh, well, I can play anything, kind of,” Hunter says. “I mean, I just listen to stuff, and I play it back. Beatles, Hendrix, Clapton, whatever. Acoustic stuff, Ani DiFranco…”
    “You play Ani DiFranco songs?” I say, staring at him. “You know who Ani DiFranco
is
?”
    “Hell, yeah,” Hunter says. “I listen to everything. What, you don’t think I’m a fan of, like, bisexual feminist folk songs?”
    “You’ve got hidden depths.”
    “When you rock, you rock, Robbins,” Hunter says. “Nah, but mostly I play your basic Stoner’s Greatest Hits. Ya know, ‘Wonderwall’ by Oasis, ‘Ants Marching’ by Dave Matthews Band, ‘The General’ by Dispatch…”
    Hunter starts with “Wonderwall,” but then, as he’s playing, the melody changes and all of a sudden he’s playing “Ants Marching.” Then “Ants Marching” slows downinto the chorus of “The General.” Then it all flows into another Oasis song I can’t remember the name of. It’s amazing—Hunter’s finding the exact right notes and chords that let one song in one musical key meld into a different song in a different musical key.
    “Did you
write
that?” I ask him, so impressed.
    “That?” Hunter picks out a few notes of the last song. “That’s ‘Champagne Supernova.’ That’s Oasis.”
    “No, the whole thing. The medley. Did you write the medley?”
    “Oh!” Hunter shrugs. “I’m just playing all the songs I know, basically. They work together. You know, something like this…”
    And he starts playing and singing a song I love—“Crash