He didn’t shake this time. His voice still cracked on the high parts, the way twelve year old voices do. But he sang it all the way through, and they sang with him, every single word, even the line about the dog named Pickles, which made everyone laugh because nobody had ever known what it meant.
When he finished, Ray clapped him on the back so hard he nearly fell off the cooler.
“That’s your dad’s,” Ray said, pointing at the guitar. “You know that, right? Not that one. I mean the song. It’s yours now. You keep it going.”
“I will,” Caleb said.
I believed him.
That fall, Caleb’s teacher called me again.
I picked up the phone with my stomach already sinking, waiting for the word withdrawn.
“I just wanted to let you know,” she said, “that Caleb volunteered to play guitar for our class presentation on Friday. In front of everybody. He’s never volunteered for anything. I thought you’d want to know.”
