Sparrow

by Sarah Moon

  “Good morning,” says Spike, pulling herself up from her pillow. Her legs are sticking out of her sheets, and I can see the plaid boxer shorts she wears for pajamas. I turn away.

  “Morning,” I say back.

  “Fancy seeing you here.”

  I don’t say anything. I start picking out my clothes for the day, pretending to consider my options very, very carefully so that I don’t have to go through the awkward dance of trying to get dressed with another person, a stranger, in the room. Spike hops out of bed, blond hair pointing in a million directions, throws a towel over her shoulders, and heads off to the bathroom in nothing but her boxers and a tank top. She doesn’t even wear shower shoes. We could be more different, I guess, but it’s hard to imagine how.

  While she’s out, I throw on my jeans and a T-shirt. I grab my hoodie. It’s July, it’s hot, but I can’t really imagine leaving the room without it. I look at myself in the mirror, clutching my worn blue hoodie in my hand. I look like a little kid with a security blanket. Close enough, I guess. I sit on the bed until Spike comes back from the bathroom. She drops her towel and throws on another pair of boxers and a sports bra. I lie on the bed and try to give her privacy, even though she obviously doesn’t want any. I could use some, though.

  “Hey, first-timer,” she says.

  “Yeah?” I ask hesitantly.

  “Time for the Hall Sing.”

  I sit up. She’s wearing black jeans and a T-shirt with a denim vest. She’s pointing to the door.

  “Yeah, right,” I say. Clearly, she’s trying to trick the new girl, but when I catch a glimpse of her face, she’s got a smile on and she’s looking at me like, Dude, I’m just trying to help you here.

  “Suit yourself.” She heads out the door, leaving it open.

  Soon I hear Ty’s voice. “Good morning, Nina!”

  “GOOD MORNING!” everyone shouts back. I get out of bed. I go to the doorway, and see everyone sitting outside their rooms on the floor, looking at Ty. I try to sit down without anyone noticing, but Ty sees me and shoots me a wink. “Welcome, everyone”—was there an emphasis on everyone?—“let’s get this day started. What do you say?”

  “YEAH!!!!” There’s a lot of screaming at tops of lungs for 7:00 a.m.

  “All right, let’s go. I want to hear y’all!”

  Simple piano starts. The girls around me are snapping their fingers in time. They all know this song. I look around nervously, but then there’s that voice again. The song is happy, but there’s a sadness in her voice that settles right on top of me. I’ve got you, she seems to say. I close my eyes. My head bobs back and forth. The girls around me are singing louder and louder; they don’t care how good or bad they sound.

  “EVERYONE!” Ty shouts over the music. Everyone.

  “And I’d sing ’cause I’d know how it feels to be free!” The music dies down and I open my eyes.

  “Let’s have a good day, guys. Eat ’em up!” Ty says, holding the hall door open for us to file out.

  “YEAH!” They all shout, high-fiving Ty as they leave. When I get to the door, he grabs my hand for a second and whispers, “That wasn’t so bad, now, was it?”

  At breakfast, there’s more music. A different band gets to DJ every morning. Today they’re playing Bikini Kill. I let “Rebel Girl” distract me from my general hatred of cafeterias and my particular dread about sitting with the band. I get cereal and a cup of tea and head to my table.

  “Hey, Sparrow!” says Lara, who’s there early with a doughnut and a bagel. She seems kind of happy to see me. Her face is wide and open, her blue eyes blinking at me.

  Spike sits down next, eggs and toast with a cup of coffee. Something about Spike always seems just a little more grown than everyone else, even her breakfast seems confident. It’s annoying.

  “Hey, roomie. Hey, Lara.”

  “Hi,” we both say. I look down.

  “Lara, how’s drums?”

  “It’s good, we started yesterday with the kit. I have these awesome sticks from home that … ” I’m not tuning out, just relieved that they’re going to carry the conversation. While they’re debating the relative merit of different drummers, Tanasia sits down.

  “Hey,” she says.

  “Hi.”

  “How’s breakfast?” I nod, looking at my soggy cereal. “Forget it, Sparrow,” Tanasia says, a sharp tone in her voice that I’ve never heard before, catching me off guard.

  “What?” I ask, looking up.

  “How freaking hard do I have to try with you?” I have no idea what she’s talking about. I thought we were just eating breakfast. “Months I’ve been trying to get you to talk to me, months. Maybe, I thought, she doesn’t know the notes are from me, maybe she didn’t hear me play the Pixies at the talent show, then we were here and I thought maybe you’d relax and give me a chance. But nothing. You pretend you don’t even know me. You’re too good for me? That’s fine. Enjoy your breakfast.”

  Tanasia goes and sits at the other end of the table, on the other side of Spike, who has paused her conversation with Lara about the djembe to raise her eyebrows at me. I want to run to the bathroom, but I can see Ren eyeing us suspiciously. Kendra appears onstage.

  “ARE YOU READY TO ROCK?!” she shouts. Everyone shouts back at her, top of their lungs, arms in the air, everyone but me. No one is looking around awkwardly anymore like they did on the first day, no one but me. I am trying my hardest not to cry, not to run away. When we break for class, I casually walk to the bathroom. Why did I come here? Who do I think I am? I’m the kid who comes home from camp. Tanasia is the closest thing that I’ve had to a friend in almost a year, and just by being my awkward, difficult self I’ve ruined that too. How did I ever think that coming here would fix this? There’s no fixing this. I take out my phone to text Mom. Then I hear her voice: I’m not coming to get you. I’m not bailing you out this time. I put my phone back in my pocket. Three more weeks seems like an eternity; Mom feels a thousand miles away. I sink to the floor. I hear Ty’s voice through the door. “Sparrow, move it. Bass time.”

  I drag my feet getting to Instrumental, but I grow an inch just walking into the room. We all turn on our amps and set to tuning our basses like Ty showed us the first day. Sienna still has trouble hearing the low tones, so Ty helps her while the rest of us play around. Ty starts us out with some old Sonic Youth videos on YouTube. We can see Kim Gordon’s hands really clearly. Ty explains that too often we don’t just let ourselves play. We insist that we’ll play once we know how, once we’re perfect. He tells us that rock is about letting yourself learn by doing, not by waiting. He plays “Teenage Riot” through a few times, and we hum along with the bass line, trying to get it in our heads. After we can sing it, he tells us to play it. He runs the video again, and we sit holding our basses, disconnected from the amps, just trying to play along. When we start to get the hang of it, we plug in the amps. “See what happens,” he says. “There’s no wrong here.”

  The leather strap rests heavy on my shoulder, like a hand, like a guide. I can’t tell my notes from Lulu’s or Alexa’s and it doesn’t matter. I press down on the strings, not too hard, not too soft, “with purpose,” like Ty told us. I strum the strings and tap my foot, and I don’t even realize that I’m smiling until Ty is smiling back at me, saying, “That’s it, Sparrow. You can tell you’ve got it, right? You can feel it!” I can. I’ve got it. I feel it. I don’t want to stop. It makes me feel like breakfast was a lifetime ago.

  The rest of the day goes by slowly after the rush of Instrumental. At lunch we have a presentation on Kathleen Hanna, so it doesn’t matter that Tanasia will never speak to me again because there’s no talking anyway. Tonight after dinner they’re going to show The Punk Singer, so at least those hours will be filled and I won’t have to sit in bed thinking about all the rooms that Spike walks so easily in and out of, filled with friends who want to see her, while I read and miss home and think about how I’m incapable of having friends and how angry Tanasia w
as this morning and wish for the relief that comes with a bass in my hand.

  There’s still the matter of dinner, though. At dinner I have a hot dog; Lara has two hot dogs and two bowls of ice cream. Tanasia waits until Spike sits, and then sits on the far side of Lara. Spike concocts what looks like a gourmet meal out of the regular offerings of the cafeteria. She’s toasted her hamburger bun and smeared avocado on each side, added red onions from the salad bar and what I think are sunflower seeds. She’s made a salad with beets and cucumber, and a hard-boiled egg, and in a little paper cup I see that she’s made her own dressing.

  “You’re like a gourmet cook,” says Lara when she sits down.

  “I dabble,” says Spike. Three of her friends come up to the table, and they talk and laugh and punch each other on the shoulder and add each other to Spotify playlists. The other three of us look at our food in silence, until Ren takes the stage.

  “ARE YOU READY TO ROCK?!” she shouts. Not really, I think. Everyone shouts back at her.

  “All right, all right.” She laughs. “Sing-along time, folks! In honor of Miss Kathleen Hanna let’s start with this.” She dims the lights and the screen comes down, and suddenly we’re all screaming along. I can’t help it. I’m singing along. I’m singing at the top of my lungs. So is everyone else. I’m just one more happy, shouting voice, we’re like waves in the ocean, one on top of the other, impossible to tell apart.

  Hi, Sparrow.” This time Dr. K seems to have grasped the concept of Skype. She’s not yelling through the screen anymore.

  “Hi.” I feel out of practice. I feel like a hundred years have gone by since my last session. I don’t have anything to say. I just wish I could carry her around in my pocket; that way I wouldn’t have to talk. She would have seen and heard all of it already. She would already know.

  “I was almost late to get here,” I say, a pathetic attempt at a conversation starter.

  “Oh? What held you up?”

  “Class. I was playing and I lost track of time.”

  “Did they give you the bass?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who’s in your band?”

  “Lara’s on drums; Tanasia plays guitar. I know her from school. Spike, of course, she’s on vocals, and me.”

  “You know Tanasia from school?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How well?”

  “I don’t know. Well enough. She sat at my table in English. We were going to be friends, but I don’t think that’s going to happen now,” I say, frowning a little.

  “What happened?”

  “She got tired of waiting for me.”

  “She wanted to be your friend.” I nod. “But you couldn’t let her?”

  “I was going to. I just wasn’t ready. Now she’s mad. I blew the only chance I had at a friend.”

  “Have you tried to explain?” I look at her, pursing my lips like, How dumb are you? “Just a question!” she laughs.

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “You might.”

  “Sure.”

  “And how is clicking with your other bandmates going?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you like any of them?”

  “They’re fine.”

  “Do they live on your hall?”

  “Spike, does obviously. Tanasia lives on Palmolive, and Lara lives on Yoko.”

  “Where are they from?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, except for Tanasia.”

  “Why did they come to camp?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Okay, well, find out and tell me when we talk next week. Think of it as homework, Sparrow. You’ve got to practice, just like for bass. Do you like the bass?”

  “I love it.”

  “What do you love about it?”

  “It makes me feel like I’m not invisible, but not in a bad way like when people sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to you in public and you want to drop through the floor. It’s like this heartbeat; it’s where the music is stitched together. I know the drums do that too, but the drums are so hard and loud. They’re like the needle; the bass is more like the thread. Done well, you don’t even know it’s there. Miss it, and the whole thing falls apart.”

  “Have you been going to meals?”

  “Yes.”

  “In the cafeteria?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good work. What time are you getting up?”

  “Well, it’s better, I’m getting up at six. I’m sorry, I just can’t get with the group teeth brushing and showering and singing and togetherness. But I’m not hiding in the bushes, so that should count for something.”

  “Indeed. Who are you eating with?”

  “Week two, start of a new hell. We eat all our meals with the band now, like it or not. It’s perfect. Tanasia isn’t speaking to me, Lara is in love with her ice cream, and I can see Spike’s eyes darting around like she’s just longing to be with her friends and be finished having to sit with the loser roommate and these strangers. It’s like six kinds of awkward at once.”

  “Maybe she wouldn’t be looking around if the people she was sitting with were talking to her.”

  “It’s okay. Lots of times, there are performances at lunch or sing-alongs at dinner. That takes the place of a lot of the talking.”

  “Do you sing along?”

  “I’m not very good.”

  “I don’t think good’s the point.”

  “It’s not. Every morning we sing as a hall before breakfast; I didn’t tell you about it before because I didn’t know because—”

  “Because you were hiding in the bushes.”

  “Right.”

  “Funny what you miss that way. What’s the song?”

  “Every hall sings a song from their musician before breakfast. ‘I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free.’ ”

  “That’s a pretty perfect song.”

  I smile a little. “I mean, the lyrics, though. I wish I could be like a bird in the sky? This song is my anthem!”

  “Billy Taylor and Dick Dallas, it’s like they wrote it with you in mind.”

  “Literally. We all had to pick anthems, and this is mine. Ren told us to pick a song as our anthem, to carry it around in our heads, let it change how we walk, how we talk, how we feel. To pick it up when we feel lonely, to turn it up when we feel happy, to let it be our witness. I like the idea of Nina as my witness. I googled her. She had such a sad life; did you know she was crazy?”

  “Crazy’s just a word. Nina was a lot of things.”

  “Yeah. It makes me sad that she never got to be as free as this song.”

  “Go find out some things about your bandmates. Stop wishing you could do all those things that you can do and go do them. And talk to Tanasia. She might not be quite as done as you think she is. For Nina, if nothing else.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “See you next week.”

  The next day at lunch, they show a music video. It’s Janelle Monáe’s “Q.U.E.E.N.” I love her style. It almost makes me consider trading in my hoodie for a tuxedo. I love her voice. I love that bass line. The crowd literally goes wild after lunch; we’re shouting, “ENCORE, ENCORE!” and they play it three more times before they can get us to head to practice.

  It’s never hard to get me to practice, but we’re supposed to be working on songs for our individual bands, and since we can barely speak to each other, my band obviously hasn’t been writing a lot of songs together. I pretend to fiddle with the tuning, but Ty figures out that I’m stalling.

  “No songs yet?” he asks.

  “None.”

  “Hmm. So, what are you going to do about that?”

  “We’ll work on it.” Famous last stalling words.

  “Okay.” He sounds doubtful. He should be; I am.

  “Can I work on another song today?”

  “Yeah, okay,” he says, trying to hide a flinch as Sienna gets too close to her amp.

  I put my headphones on and start playing “Q.
U.E.E.N.” over and over until I can hear the bass and then more until I can hum it. I unplug and play through the song with my fingers on the frets. The afternoon goes by in a flash. All I want to do is master this song. I want to be a girl in a tux playing backup for Janelle. A Monette. A whatever as long as I can be in the same room as that music.

  There’s open studio time tonight after dinner for bands to practice together; ours has elected not to (duh), but I go over to ESG, where the practice rooms are, and I find an empty one. I stand in the corner with my back to the door and I play “Q.U.E.E.N.” until my hands are tired and there are lines on my fingers where I’ve been pressing the same strings over and over. The beginnings of calluses. I play until all the lights in the other studios are off and then I keep playing.

  “Sparrow.”

  I spin around, pulling my headphones off of my ears and dropping my hands from the bass at the same time.

  “Hi,” I say to Ty, who is looking at me with a lot of concern. “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong is that it’s ten fifteen and you were supposed to be on the hall thirty minutes ago and no one knew where you were.”

  “I’m sorry; I lost track of time.” It’s true. I have no other excuse. There’s a clock over the door, but I’m facing away from the door. There’s a clock on my phone, but it’s been in my pocket since I set my music on repeat. Ty sighs, long and deep but not angry. “I’m glad you’re safe. You know, if you’d talk to a few more folks, they might have been able to tell me where you were.”

  Ah, yes. The talk-to-people-Sparrow lecture that I’ve been hearing since forever. I nod. I find that most adults take a nod for agreement when really all I’m saying is Yes, I hear the words that are coming out of your mouth. Still, it works for them.

  “You can keep your nod, I know you’re not going to do it. I’m just saying, you might try to let some of these girls get to know you. They’re not so bad.”

  I don’t say anything. I busy myself putting away the bass and unplugging the amp.

  “Why did you come here, Sparrow?” Ty asks as we walk out the door.