The House of Tomorrow by Peter Bognanni

He was quiet for a moment, then scooted out his chair. “C’mon, Sebastian,” he said. “I don’t want to be infected by the PMS rays in this room.”
    “Please, just leave each other alone!” said Janice.
    For a moment, she sounded on the verge of tears. She placed a frying pan on a rack, clanging some pots together in the process. Jared was already walking out of the room.
    “Where are we going?” I asked.
    Without looking back at Meredith, I stood and followed Jared’s path out of the room. When I found him, he was already halfway up the stairs.
    “I should really go, Jared,” I said from below. “You told me to . . .”
    He wasn’t listening to me. He was mumbling something to himself. He paused and looked down the stairs at me. It looked like he wanted to tell me something.
    “Have you ever played a guitar before?” he asked.
    “No,” I said.
    “I can teach you a chord.”
    He looked at me intensely.
    “You’ll show me your guitar?” I asked.
    “Do you want to learn a chord or not?” he asked.
    “Yes,” I said. “I do.”
    We walked back into his room and this time I didn’t comment on the smell. I pretended not to notice it at all. This time Jared went to his closet and took out a hard black plastic case. He unbuckled it and pulled out a dark blue guitar shaped like an upside-down V. I had never seen anything resembling it. It gleamed. On the side of the strings were thin airbrushed lightning bolts. He set the guitar in my hands.
    “Be careful,” he said. “Don’t drop it.”
    The plastic was cold in my hands. I gripped the neck and let the V sit across my legs. He went to the closet and pulled out a small amplifier and a cord.
    “You are now holding probably the most badass ax ever,” he said.
    He plugged everything in and a small hum escaped the amplifier when he flicked it on. “It has dual-fucking-humbuckers,” he continued, “a compound-radius fingerboard, and twenty-four jumbo frets. It will, if played right, melt your face off.”
    “Do you play it at church?” I asked.
    “Hell no, I do not play it at church,” he said. “It would probably piss off God so much, he’d have to blow up the chapel or something.”
    While he spoke he arranged the fingers of my left hand on the hard metal strings. He pressed my fingers down once they were in place, and a pain shot through my hand.
    “Strum,” he said.
    “What do you mean?” I asked.
    He sighed. Without replying, he ran his thumb fast over all the strings at once and a crunchy blast erupted from the speaker. It took a few seconds for the amplifier to return to its initial low fuzz.
    “Ha!” said Jared. “Did you feel that one in your balls?”
    “I don’t know,” I said.
    He ran his thumb over them again, up and down this time, and out came another wave of music. That same push of noise and harmony. It was a powerful flush of sound.
    “That’s E!” he shouted. “It’s the best chord!”
    Again, his thumb and forefinger attacked the strings. I pressed my fingers down as hard as I could, and the sound bucked out of the speaker and into the room. I felt an odd pulse in my arms, spreading all the way to my chest. Over and over, he strummed. The sound was deafening. The strings poked into my fingertips. My ears buzzed. And when the sound reached its frenzied peak, Jared waited what felt like minutes before he calmed the strings with his flat palm. I hadn’t been watching him during the last round of noises. I had closed my eyes in deep concentration, pretending I was solely responsible for the sounds. I looked at him now, and noticed his eyes growing red.
    “Jared?” I asked.
    “What?”
    “Are you hurt?”
    “No,” he said.
    The guitar was still screeching a little in my hands. I tried to settle it, but it kept going, shrieking.
    “You were in the newspaper,” I said. “I saw it on the fridge.”
    Jared blinked. “I pissed myself, earlier,” he said.
    I nearly dropped the guitar, but I caught