Rock God By Jason Gabriel Kondrath Copyright 2024 by Jason Gabriel Kondrath 1. Jayra 2. A House Divided (Roman) Chapter 1: Jayra Jayra Jenkins was a hard case. Even as a child. He always seemed to be in trouble. But life was cruel, and it wasn’t always his fault. Yes, he had a chip on his shoulder, but he didn’t look for trouble — it just found him like a heat - seeking missile. Bad luck, plain and simple. It was in the third grade that Cheryle Lee, the prettiest girl in Forest Trail Elementary, passed him a note. All the other boys had already told her how pretty she was and how they wanted her to be their girlfriend. But Jayra was the one boy who never seemed to pay her any mind. It was his best friend, Leo, who would clamor for her attention instead. Leo was cute too. In the first grade, Leo offered to eat a crayon for her if she kissed him. She said she would if he ate the entire crayon, but he spit it out before he was even halfway finished. She only made the bet to teach him a lesson, she knew he couldn’t do it. The face he made had her laughing, but she never would have kissed him. She just wasn’t interested in him. It was Jayra, his best friend, she liked. He had dark hair like hers, and he was aloof. That cool façade he wore drove her crazy, even in the first grade. Jayra never offered to eat a crayon for her though. When he turned to see why she was nudging him, she passed him the note. She wasn’t even looking at him as she did it — pretending instead to be absorbed in the teacher’s lesson at the chalkboard. He took it. The teacher had her back turned, so Jayra unfolded the note immediately. He wondered for a moment if she meant for him to pass the note along to Leo, who was always showing off for her. Maybe he should have asked. When Cheryle Lee saw Jayra unraveling the note, she cringed. No — don’t read it now, you idiot! You’re going to get caught and get us in trouble. She meant for him to read it after class. He was going to attract the teacher’s attention by unfolding it now. Then he read the paper: Jayra, do you like me? Check Yes or No. Do you have a girlfriend? Check Yes or No. Would you like to sit with me during lunch? Check Yes or No. Jayra immediately slid the paper under his books. Then he looked for his pencil to answer the questions. He leaned forward and checked off his answers carefully. It was No, No, and Yes. But if he sat with her at lunch, he’d have to bring Leo too. He didn’t know Cheryle Lee all that well, but she seemed pretty snotty. Her father was the sheriff, so — coming from that background — she might have felt privileged. She certainly seemed bossy. And she was weird; whenever he caught her looking at him, she’d turn away laughing. He felt like she was laughing at him, like she knew a joke he didn’t. Probably some dumb story Leo had told her. She was pretty. She always had the best photo during class pictures. But despite her beauty, Jayra figured she was nothing but trouble. So, he steered clear. Pretty girls were either trouble — or trouble followed them. Jayra had finished answering the note and was about to hand it back when the teacher asked him to bring it up front. How did Ms. Woe catch him? He was very sneaky. “What note?” Jayra repeated, trying to play it off like he had no idea what she was talking about. “The note you were checking off,” Ms. Woe said. Cheryle Lee had been caught several times before, but never with Jayra. Ms. Woe must have eyes in the back of her head ! Now caught, she figured Jayra was sure to blame her. She wouldn’t have ratted him out! It didn’t matter, she would forgive him anything, even if he never offered to eat a crayon for her! When Jayra turned to Cheryle Lee, she was beet red. He saw her wiping a tear. Cheryle Lee had quite the reputation for being little Ms. Note - Passer. The teacher threatened to call her parents the next time it happened. If Jayra brought the note up, Ms. Woe might read it in front of the entire class. She was known for embarrassing students that way. Cheryle Lee would’ve died if she did. She’d rather go to the principal’s office, even if it meant her father punishing her. She almost started bawling right there on the spot. “No, she didn’t pass a note,” Jayra said. “I was taking notes.” “I don’t believe you,” Ms. Woe said. “Well, it’s true,” he said casually. “Bring it up, Jayra,” Ms. Woe said. Then she snapped her fingers for him to be quick about it. Suddenly, Jayra tore the note into little pieces. Nobody could believe he’d defy a teacher — especially Ms. Woe — by doing that. She ran her class like a prison warden. “Now you can bring me the pieces,” she said. Immediately, he shoved some of the larger ones into his mouth. “You little pig,” she called him. “You get to the principal’s office this instant.” Reluctantly, Jayra got up, collected his notebooks, and slung his bag over his shoulder. Right before he exited, he belched loudly — a dramatic, deliberate belch, like a final insult. Everybody laughed as she slammed the door behind him. Leo, his best friend, was stunned. Jayra had done a lot of crazy things, but this topped them all. And after Leo finished bragging on him, Jayra would be a legend. Chapter 2: A House Divided When Jayra got home his mother was frantic, he figured it was because the school had called and told her what happened, but it had nothing to do with that. “Jayra,” she said, “grab your clothes and everything else you can and pack, we're leaving.” “Leaving?” he said, “Leaving where?” She didn’t want to scare him. “Honey, we’re not safe here, it has to do with some people from your father’s work. I’ll explain later, right now we must go.” Jayra hated his father. He was creepy and always seemed to look menacing. Jayra never felt comfortable around him. When he got home, Jayra usually left for his room. “What do you mean , go ?” he asked. “I don’t have time to explain.” Her voice cracked. “Just trust me. We are not safe here.” He followed her into the hallway, still dazed. “Is it Jacob ?” Jayra never called his father “Dad” or “Father,” he always referred to him by his first name. She didn’t answer immediately. Her lips pressed together like she’d just tasted something rotten. “It has to do with your father’s work. With some people... from his past. Bad people. Dangerous people.” Jayra’s stomach clenched. He’d always hated his father. The man had a permanent shadow in his eyes and a silence that wasn’t quiet — it was menacing. His mother insisted they eat dinner together like a real family, but they never were — especially not with him there, watching everything like a hawk. A reptile. “Mom,” Jayra asked, lowering his voice as he pulled his duffel bag out from the closet. “What happened?” She hesitated. “Your father worked for some bad people — people who did things that were illegal.” “Like what?” he asked. “I don’t know,” she said. “ If they’re after him, why do we have to leave?” H e hadn’t been home in weeks. “He’s missing.” Jayra looked up sharply. “Dead?” She looked at him. It sounded like he didn’t care if his father was alive or not. “I don’t know,” she said. “No one knows where he is. Not the police. Not the FBI. Not even his contact.” “So now they think... what? That we know something?” “Or that they might show up here waiting for him,” she said grimly. “Now pack.” Jayra moved faster. Suddenly, the doorbell rang. Both of them froze mid - motion. His mother grabbed his arm, her breath sharp in her chest. She peeked through the peephole. Her shoulders sagged in visible relief. “It’s the police,” she whispered. “They’re early.” She threw the door open, revealing two officers in plain clothes — badges flashing under jackets. One of them was already scanning the street behind them. “Mrs. Jenkins ?” the taller one asked. “We need to go. Now.” Within minutes, they were ushered into a waiting police van, the windows blacked out. As they pulled away from the curb, Jayra looked back at the house he’d grown up in — gray brick, peeling paint, the basketball hoop still hanging over the garage. “Where are we going?” he asked. “It’s called a safe - house, son,” the taller officer said. “ Do you have any further information?” she asked. The shorter officer nodded. “We’ll debrief you there. Your husband’s disappearance has put a lot of things in motion. Right now, it’s safer if we assume they’ll come looking for you.” Jayra stared ahead, jaw clenched. His father had worked with criminals. Hidden their money. Cleaned their records. Paid off judges. And now, after years of silence, he’d flipped. And vanished. “You should know,” the officer added after a beat, “the people your dad betrayed... they’re not the kind who just let things go. The FBI already found two other witnesses...” “Please, not in front of my son,” she begged. His mother looked like she was about to cry but didn’t. Jayra leaned back in the seat, heart pounding. A bitter taste rose in his throat. So, this was it. His life, erased. All because his father finally decided to do one thing right — too late. Actually, he never intended to do the right thing, he was trapped and didn’t have anyone else to turn to. The van sped up, city lights fading behind them. Jayra didn’t say it out loud, but he thought it. He hoped they never found his father. Not because he wanted him safe. But because he wanted him gone. Jayra would be finishing third grade at East Lansing Elementary Now, nearly fifteen hundred miles from their old life, the snow - blanketed streets of Lansing, Michigan, couldn’t have felt farther from home. The cold hit like betrayal. Jayra stood on the steps of a dingy, two - story apartment building, watching his breath fog the air. It was March, but the Midwest didn’t care. The icy wind bit through his thin hoodie. He had no coat. “This is it,” his mother said, unlocking the rusted door of their new apartment. Jayra stepped inside. The carpet was thin and musty, the walls an ugly beige. A single couch sat in the living room like it had been left behind on purpose. But there were no bloodstains, no men in dark sedans watching from the curb, no sudden knocks in the middle of the night. Not yet anyway. The days blurred. Boxes were unpacked, but the apartment never lost the musty smell of the last tenants. Days were spent indoors while his mother sorted paperwork and argued quietly on the phone. By the time the snow began to melt, Lansing already felt less like a place they were visiting and more like the place they were stuck. When fall came, he’d be starting fourth grade at East Lansing Elementary — and they still weren’t sure whether to hold him back a year. The teachers didn’t know his name — and acted like they didn’t want to. The students didn’t either. Jayra was quiet. Too quiet. Suspiciously quiet, some thought. He didn’t try to make friends. Like he didn’t trust anyone. They got her mother a job with the post office. She jumped when the phone rang. She didn’t keep pictures out anymore. Not even of Jayra as a baby. “We have to be ghosts,” she said once, whispering like the walls could listen. His father had been deep in something — deals, names, movements, things only whispered about in back rooms. Then one day, he’d turned witness. The FBI thought they could protect them. They were wrong. Jayra didn’t say much anymore. At school, he existed in the shadows — an extra desk, a hollow name on a roster. The teachers gave up trying to pull him into conversations. The students didn’t remember he was there until someone needed to copy homework or bor row a pen. But his mother noticed. “You don’t have any friends?” she asked. “It’s hard to make them, when you tell me not to talk to anybody.” She started crying right there on the spot. “I’m sorry,” she said. She was just trying to protect him. He never told her about the hallway fights, about the boys who made fun of his accent, by calling him “ghost chile,” or the counselor who spoke to him in the same cautious tone used for feral animals or war veterans. He thought he was doing a good job hiding the cracks. But his mother saw through it. One Thursday afternoon, she came home early from work with a weird kind of brightness in her voice. “I signed you up for something,” she said. Jayra blinked. “For what?” “There’s a little music shop next to the laundromat. They do lessons. Guitar, mostly. You like music, right?” He didn’t. “I don’t play guitar,” he said. “Then you’ll learn.” He stared at her. She looked exhausted, her shoulders aching from carrying a sack of mail. She remembered her old life. A life or privilege. Her parents’ passing, and her sister Pauline telling her that they were broke and all they had left was the land and a good name. But something about the way she stood made him pause. “You already paid for it?” “Six weeks. Tuesdays and Thursdays. Thirty - minute lessons. The guy’s name is Roman. A little gruff, looks like a biker. He has a beard and a bunch of tattoos — ” probably smokes weed behind the shop “ — but he seems friendly.” Jayra raised an eyebrow. “Great endorsement.” “You’re going,” she said, with finality. “You need something that isn’t... all this.” He wanted to argue but didn’t. That Tuesday, he walked next door to the music shop — Tremolo’s — and stood under the buzzing neon sign, guitarless and irritated. Inside, the place smelled like old strings, amplifier dust, and incense. Posters of Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, and Steve Vai lined the walls. A lazy ceiling fan churned the air overhead. The man behind the counter looked up. “You Jayra?” Jayra nodded. “I’m Roman. You’re late.” Jayra checked his watch. “I’m early.” Roman checked the clock. “That damn thing stopped again. I gotta change the battery.” He grinned. “Come on. Let’s get weird.” The back room was cramped but warm. Guitars hung like museum pieces — acoustic, electric, battered and shining. A stack of amps buzzed in the corner like sleeping insects. Roman handed him a guitar. It was scratched up, the wood worn at the edges. But it was light and warm in his hands. “Ever played before?” “No.” “Good. No bad habits to break.” Roman didn’t waste time with scales or theory. He showed him how to hold it, how to press without muting, how to strum from the wrist. Jayra was stiff. Awkward. But something in the strings vibrated straight into his chest. For the first time in months, he wasn’t thinking about the creaking apartment or the way his mother locked the door three times before bed. He was thinking about rhythm. About movement. About sound. By the end of the lesson, his fingertips were sore and raw, but he didn’t want to give it back. “Same time Thursday,” Roman said, already scribbling something on a notepad. “Oh — and don’t forget to curse in your head while you practice. It helps.” Jayra smirked. Just a little. He went back Thursday. Then again the next week. Roman gave him a beat - up starter guitar for free. Said it wasn’t worth selling and “needed a warm lap.” Jayra practiced every night. Not because he wanted to be good — he didn’t care about being good — but because it gave his hands something to do. Something to hold that didn’t disappear. At school, he started humming riffs to himself in the back row. The noise helped drown out the boredom, the tension, the creeping sense that the world was watching him breathe. A girl in English class asked what he was humming. He didn’t answer. But later that day, he caught her nodding along as he tapped out the rhythm again with his pencil. His mother noticed the change. He wasn’t fixed — nothing that simple — but he was quieter inside. More focused. Less likely to flinch at shadows. “You’re playing better,” she said one night as she scrubbed the stovetop. “You can hear that through the wall?” She smiled. “The walls here are like paper.” “I can hear you breathe.” That embarrassed him. He went back to his room and played louder, just to spite her. But he couldn’t stop. Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he imagined himself somewhere else. On a stage, maybe. In a crowd. Somewhere where being seen wasn’t dangerous. Where his hands could shape sound instead of fists. It didn’t make school easier. It didn’t erase the shadows in his mother’s eyes. But it carved out a space inside him that wasn’t empty And for now, that was enough. Roman became the only adult in Jayra’s life who didn’t look at him with pity or fear. He cursed like a pirate, played like a god, and treated Jayra like an apprentice — someone expected to show up, shut up, and try harder. “You’re late,” Roman said, even when Jayra was ten minutes early. “You holding the pick like that on purpose, or just trying to piss me off?” “Why you strum like you’re afraid of waking somebody up? You think Jimi Hendrix asked the strings for permission?” The shop was Roman’s temple. Dusty and crammed with gear, yes — but sacred in its own way. The kind of place where broken amps got more love than people, and every scratch on a guitar told a story. Roman wore the same faded Black Sabbath T - shirt most days and had a chipped tooth that made his grin crooked. His fingers were thick, callused from years of sliding strings, but they danced like they remembered something holy. And Jayra kept coming back. Twice a week became three times. Then four. Roman didn’t mind. He let him linger after lessons, taught him how to restring a neck, how to clean pickups, and how to tune by ear. Sometimes he let Jayra watch him fix customer gear in the back, mumbling to himself in chords and solder. Jayra started talking again. Not a lot. But enough. Roman learned quickly not to ask about his past. “I don’t need your story,” he said one night as they sat tuning guitars under the humming light. “I just need you to listen.” Jayra did. And he played. Not just chords but feeling. Emotion crept in through his fingers before his voice ever tried to carry it. One Thursday in early spring, Roman handed him a different guitar than usual — a smooth, walnut - colored electric with a snarl baked into the wood. “Try this one,” Roman said. “It’s moody. Like you.” Jayra plugged it in. Played three notes. Then four. Something shifted. He didn’t even look up when Roman said, “That’s it. That’s your sound.” That night, Jayra stayed until the store closed. Roman locked the doors and dimmed the front lights but let him keep playing in the back room while he smoked a joint in silence. “You ever think about writing something?” Roman asked. Jayra shrugged. “You got stuff in you, kid. Big, ugly, beautiful stuff. And the world’s not gonna give you a clean place to put it. So, you carve one. Right here.” He tapped his chest. “And then you bleed it out through your fingers.” Jayra didn’t answer. But he understood. The music began to change him. At school, he still kept to himself, but now he had rhythm in his hands. He’d tap out beats with his fingers on his desk, thrum his foot to phantom metronomes, scribble tab lines in the margins of worksheets.