Kim and Jack's Band — Chapter 3 — The Guitar
Coming back from the bus after selling candy, Kim stumbles onto a guitar.
We don't have a band. Kim insists on making that clear.
One day I was walking home after selling some candy on the bus.
And I found something thrown out in the middle of the path.
At the time I didn't really know what it was. But I knew it was an instrument. It was broken — the neck loose, one side cracked. Someone had thrown it away.
I picked it up and took it home.
It didn't even cross my mind to tell Jack. I just thought: cool, I'll take this. No plan at all. I just figured maybe it could be fixed, and if it could be fixed, maybe I could sell it. Ah, my innocence.
I had no idea what a mess I was starting. I only understood after I'd already done it.
I fixed it.
Turned out it was a guitar. I bought a set of strings with the candy money — the cheapest one, and even that hurt to pay for. I watched some tutorials online on a borrowed phone, glued the neck, sanded it, adjusted what could be adjusted. It wasn't anything impossible. It was just work, and work I know how to do.
The hard part wasn't the repair. It was the next part.
Then I started trying to play — it was a guitar, damn it.
The first time a clean chord came out — just one, a tiny one — I stood there looking at my own hand like it belonged to someone else. It was a strange feeling. It wasn't pride, it wasn't joy. It was more like: this thing obeyed. I gave an order and it did it.