Switchverse: Part III, or, I Will End You
Eliza Toro is absurdly amazing on most classical string instruments.
Jack sits in on her lessons, most days, doing homework or breathing exercises. It’s an easy system; they get picked up from school together, and Eliza plunges headfirst into her music, and then Ray gives Jack a ride home, since lives about a mile away from Ray, since the whole band eventually settled back in Jersey even though her dad, Bob, used to live in Illinois.
Jack enjoys New Jersey. What she remembers of Chicago is stained sort of brown, like someone spilled tea all over it. (Probably one of The Twins, the hyperactive little midgets.) In Jersey, the leaves disappear all in one big whirlwind and anything that’s left turns silver with frost. It’s crisp on her tongue during her morning runs.
But. The point still stands; give Eliza an instrument and five minutes and she’ll play you an arpeggio or cadence. She can shred on a guitar, because otherwise her dad would cry or something, but her real love is for the Oldies. Not, like, the nineties oldies, not like forty years, more like four hundred. The Real Oldies.
But Jack likes to listen, likes to see the bow rise and fall, like breathing, as she psyches herself up for assistant-teaching her martial arts class later.
--
Eliza gets home and is immediately set upon by rabid dogs who turn out to be her little brother and sister, Mary Jane and Christian. They are twins and they are terrifying, but Ray and Eliza refuse to say The Terrifying Twins aloud in their presence because they’re also seven years old and might take that as a challenge.
Or they might try to bully their Uncle Gee into drawing them as an evil villainous duo.
(Gerard is totally defenseless against them. He said “no” once when they were four and they got into his paints and Gerard cried and Ray grounded them for years, it was horrible.)
So mostly Ray and his eldest daughter try to keep their younger charges indoors, where they are inevitably glued to their Xbox 1080 or whatever’s out now. It has realistic squishing noises.
Which Eliza drowns out with her headphones as she prepares dinner. She’s trying to learn the solo part in the Dans Macabre by ear this week, but maybe she’ll save up her allowance to buy the actual sheet music.
Her dad has desperately tried to buy his daughter music, or strings, or maintenance fees, or the surcharge for the lessons at least, but Eliza won’t tolerate any contribution beyond a new instrument on birthdays and Christmas.
Ray sort of intensely misses his dependent little girl. He’s less nervous about letting her out into the world with Jacqueline Bryar there to protect her, of course.
--
2way is a year younger than Jack, but he’s small and Jack is tall and she towers over him mostly on accident.
He’s at her house when she gets home usually, because he follows Bob around a lot. 2way plays drums, like his namesake, and he’s shy.
Jack finds this funny, and Eliza finds it endearing. Jack maybe torments the freshman whenever her best friend’s not around.
--
Jack doesn’t talk to her father all that much.
They’re both incredibly bad in the kitchen when the recipe calls for more than ‘add water and stir’, so they don’t usually sit down for a meal. She doesn’t have the first clue about his producing and scouting work with Keep The Faith, Frank’s label, and mostly she’s at work at the dojo when her dad’s home.
But still. Sometimes she comes in with a really hilarious story from sparring, and he listens as he helps her patch up bruised knuckles. He sets his hands on either side of her cheeks and meets her eyes and smiles and says, “Hey, baby, I’m proud of you.”
Jack smiles back and say, “Love you too, Daddy.”
--
The only thing Jack has to worry about is Wentz, because he calls at oh-dark-thirty to “just talk” and shows way too much interest in the pictures of sparring tournaments on her blog. Despite current technology, Jack can’t reach through her phone and throttle him.
Bronx laughs every time she mumbles it to her pillow and says, “Respect your elders,” and then goes back into a long talk about how much college sucks and will she please come beat some guys up for him.
The little shit.
--
Eliza’s trying to finish her homework in the car on the way to school.
“Derivative of x squared minus x plus two delta x from four to seven,” she hums to herself, to the tune of Clair de Lune on her mZ.
Jack considers and peeks over her shoulder at the page as the numbers flow.
“Two x cubed minus x squared plus two x,” she reads aloud, and mentally fills the numbers in, and predicts, “Five hundred thirty-one.”
Eliza grins and skips a lot of steps to write the answer. “You’re not just the hired muscle, huh?”
--
Bob says, “Your hair’s getting long.”
It’s covering the tops of Jack’s ears - she wears it short. Jack gives him a noncommittal shrug and offers him the stick of celery she’s dug out as a midnight snack.
He takes a monster bite, way more than just for sharing, and makes Jack smile as he rubs down her neck, between her shoulders. She’s bent over her homework, nothing urgent, but. She takes time to sit quietly at the end of her days.
He says, “Don’t work too hard, baby.”
She turns off the backlight of the vidscreen, pushes out of her chair. “No, it’s okay, I’ll go to sleep.”
The skin around his eyes bunches up, another smile, and he pads off to bed.