Sparrow

by Sarah Moon

  “To practice.”

  “I don’t mean here tonight, I mean, why did you come to GNRC?”

  “I wanted to learn how to play bass.”

  “Ha! Well, you’ve certainly done that in record time. But I think you wanted something else too. If you let a few folks in on what’s going on in that big head of yours, you might get that something else. It’s not as out of reach as you think. Bighead.” He knocks my head gently and laughs.

  We’ve walked most of the way between ESG and Nina. The moon lights the sidewalks, and the night air feels good on my face. I roll the sleeves of my hoodie down and look up at Ty.

  “Yeah, maybe,” I offer.

  “I’ll take a maybe. You were pretty in the zone back there. What were you working on?”

  “ ‘Q.U.E.E.N.’ ”

  “Ah, Janelle Monáe, the reigning queen of blerdom.”

  “What-dom?”

  “Blerd, you know, like you and me.” I look at him blankly. “Black nerd, bighead.”

  I smile. “I didn’t know there was a word for it.”

  “For you? There’s way more than a word, but that’s one of them, for sure.” Blerd, I think to myself. Anything that puts me in a group with Ty and Janelle Monáe is okay with me. I wonder if Tanasia knows she’s a blerd too.

  “How do you like Nina?” Ty asks as we approach the dorm.

  “The woman or the hall?”

  “Well, both, but the singer.” He pushes open the door to the hall.

  I look him straight in the face. “I can’t stop thinking about her.”

  “Hang on.” He ducks into the counselor suite near the door and emerges with a record, an actual old-school vinyl record. “Here, it’s her concert recordings. She was amazing live, so honest, so pained. She was glorious. Take it.”

  “I can’t accept this; it’s too much. Besides, I don’t even have a record player.”

  “Huh, that’s true, you don’t, do you? I’m trying to think where you could possibly play it. If memory serves, Spike seems to have a record player in that room of yours. Maybe you can open your mouth and ask her if you can use it. Hell, maybe the two of you can even listen to it together.” I twist my mouth into one corner, like I’m trying to decide whether I want to smile or scowl.

  “Nice trick,” I say.

  “I thought so,” he says.

  “You think I love Nina that much, huh?”

  “I think you love Nina way more. Go to bed.”

  I walk down the hall holding the record in my hurting hands. For the first time since I got here, I think this hasn’t all been a big mistake.

  In the morning, I do my routine, get up before the rest of the girls and brush my teeth and shower. I can barely make myself sit through the sing-along. The second I woke up, I knew I could figure out the bridge in “Q.U.E.E.N.” I just needed to get back to the practice room. Apologizing to Dr. K in my head again, I skip breakfast and go to the band room in ESG, where I’ll meet Tanasia, Spike, and Lara for our regularly scheduled Awkward Time with Ren, who’ll try to get us to bond while we don’t speak to each other (not to be confused with Awkward Breakfast, Awkward Lunch, or Awkward Dinner).

  I head to the corner and plug in my bass. I straighten up and let the strap settle on my shoulder. I put my headphones on and start playing. The first time through the bridge, I totally flub it. I’m at least two frets too high. When I try it a second time, I’m closer, and by the third time, I’ve got it down. My heart is beating in time with the song. I’m smiling to myself as I start again from the beginning.

  All of the sudden, I hear drums. I won’t let myself turn around. If I do, I’ll mess up the bass line and ruin whatever is about to happen—because something is definitely about to happen. I don’t know what it is, but the little hairs on my arms are standing on end and my stomach feels just a little queasy. I know that’s Lara on the drums.

  Then I hear a voice, beautiful and low. It’s Spike, she’s singing, I can’t believe all of the things they say about me. She knows the whole song. She sounds just like Janelle. She sounds like she’s been practicing too. When we get to the bridge, she loses the time and gets stuck but then I hear I ask a question like this, and Tanasia has taken the mic. She has more than taken it. She’s spitting the rap right into it, not missing a beat, an inflection, a single word. It’s perfect. We’re perfect.

  I’m scared to turn around, scared this has all been a dream, scared they’ll look at me and laugh and that the magic that’s been in this room, raising my hair and twisting my stomach, will disappear when I’m not looking at the wall anymore. I have a choice: I can keep looking at my wall, or I can turn around. I can act like we’re in this room together playing this song we all love, or I can stay with the wall, not the one I put up in my head, but this actual wall right in front of me.

  I turn around. I look at them one by one, and they look at each other and at me, and we are all smiling. Something’s changed. Then I see that Spike is wearing a Smiths T-shirt. It kind of seems like a sign.

  I take a deep breath and say, “Smiths. Nice.”

  And she says, “Yeah.”

  And then Lara says, “Uh, yeah, guys, they’re great. Did anyone else notice what just happened? Sparrow, where did you learn to do that?”

  We all laugh. Together. “Here,” I say, “I learned to do it here.”

  “Spike, your voice is so good.”

  “It’s all right. Sorry I flubbed—”

  “Shut up!” interrupts Tanasia. “It was amazing.” And we all look at each other in silence, because it was.

  At that moment in walks Ren, confused. “I’m sorry,” she says, “I must be in the wrong room. I’m looking for a group of girls who sit in awkward silence and don’t talk to each other.”

  We laugh and I pipe up, surprising myself. “I think the spell might be broken.”

  “She speaks!” says Ren with a smile.

  We settle into our chairs, and I sit next to Tanasia. Ren pretends to be looking for a whiteboard marker, but really she’s just letting us talk. We each say where we’re from. Lara is from Connecticut and Spike is from a tiny town upstate. She looks down when she says it, like she’s embarrassed, or maybe like she’s angry. I turn to Tanasia and take a deep breath.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I knew it was you, the notes in English. Well, I figured it out after the talent show. That was the best—it’s my favorite Pixies song. I’ve wanted to say something for months.” Now that I’m talking, it’s like I can’t stop. “I just didn’t know how. I wasn’t trying to ignore you. I’m just really bad at, well, kind of all of this. I was so excited you were here, but then I didn’t know how to say, hey, you’re the only person I’ve wanted to be friends with at our entire school and now you’re here!”

  Tanasia nods. “I knew you weren’t ignoring me at school,” she says. “You were ignoring everything. I just wanted to ignore it with you. But I could never get your attention. And then we got here, and it was like it didn’t matter, you still didn’t want to be my friend.”

  “I did. I just … Tanasia, honestly, I didn’t really know how.” I sigh and look down.

  “You’re doing okay now.”

  “Okay, folks,” says Ren, “now that this is a band, we’ve got some work to do.

  At lunch, sitting together doesn’t feel quite as much like a curse. It helps that Tanasia sits where there’s a spot now, rather than just trying to find whatever is farthest away from me. We form a square. As we settle in over nachos and beet salad, I ask Spike how long she’s been coming here.

  “Forever,” she says. “My town’s pretty rough, that’s why my parents have been sending me here since I was eight, so I could get away for the summer.”

  “What’s so bad about your town?” asks Lara, a tiny sandwich of three nachos stacked in her hand.

  “They just don’t like me there. My parents send me away whenever they get a chance. They want me to know there are places that don’t suck as much as Cowtown, U
SA.”

  Tanasia looks at Spike with her head to the side, asking the question we’re all wondering without using any words. “It’s because I’m gay, they don’t like me. Not all of New York is like Manhattan, you know?”

  “We’re from Brooklyn,” Tanasia and I say in unison.

  “WHO’S READY TO ROCK?!” calls Kendra from up onstage, and we’re all back to screaming our hearts out and listening to our guest artists for the day, who happen to be Ren and Ty in a band with a few other counselors. We cheer until it’s time to go to class.

  That night, I don’t go to open studio to practice. I sit in the room, put on my headphones, and play through the rest of “Electric Lady.” I get out a piece of paper and start scribbling. It reminds me of being in Dr. K’s office, listening to music and writing down my thoughts. It feels like a hundred years ago that I couldn’t meet her eyes, much less open my mouth. I sit on the little balcony outside our room, my feet up against the metal bars. I watch the night settle over campus and for the first time I think, Maybe I’m brave. Weaves comes on and I get the first few lines of a poem in my head and write them down. They stare back at me, not offering anything else up.

  I’m feeling restless

  Reckless

  Like flying up at night and never coming down

  I let the words mix with the night breeze, Weaves playing off my balcony into the darkness. I get lost in the light from the windows making bright shadows on the grass. Maybe I would have finished the poem if I hadn’t heard Ty call room check. I didn’t realize how long I’d been sitting there. My legs are wobbly when I stand up to run to the door. I don’t want Ty to worry about me like he did last night; also, I don’t want to piss him off. In my stumbly rush, my paper falls from the balcony to the dark ground below. I try to grab for it, but I’m too slow and it’s too far down. After being off the hall last night, I know there’s no way Ty will let me go down and get it. I pray for squirrels to eat it or for a heavy rain tonight. I get to my door right as Ty is headed from our neighbors to us. Spike rushes down the hall from the other end and slips in.

  “Right under the wire, Spike,” Ty warns.

  “Sorry,” she says, and she does look sorry.

  “And you, fugitive, glad to see you here tonight.” I smile. “Okay, that’s it,” Ty says, raising his voice to address all of us. “Lights-out in five. Good night!”

  We close the door. “Where were you running here from?” I ask Spike.

  “Open studio. Thought I might see you there.”

  “Nah, I stayed in.”

  She points to my headphones, which are still on the balcony and still playing; she can hear the tinny blare of guitars from inside. “What were you listening to?”

  “Weaves.”

  “I love Weaves!” She’s smiling, maybe talking a little louder than she means to.

  “Hey,” I say, feeling a little of the magic still in both of us from the morning. “Do you like Nina Simone?”

  “Are you kidding? I requested this hall. There’s no one like Nina Simone.”

  “Um, Ty gave me this record of hers because I love her, but I don’t have a record player. Would you want to—”

  “Play it? Yes!” When Spike is enthusiastic, Spike is very enthusiastic. She’s a lot like a puppy, lots of energy, lots of love, just lots of everything. She grabs the record from my bed. “I love vinyl; it’s such a warmer sound, you know?”

  “Uh-huh.” I don’t know. My mom loves technology, always embracing the next new thing. It’s like she doesn’t want to get old, to fall behind. She had the world’s first iPod, and now she has wireless speakers synced to her iPhone.

  Spike puts on the record, and the crackle and hiss of the needle in the grooves sounds like a fire. Warm. Exactly the right word. The track starts, and you can feel Nina’s voice in the room like a third person. She tells us, “The name of this tune is ‘Mississippi Goddam.’ And I mean every word of it.” I like her speaking voice; it’s younger than I thought it would be, but then the song is pulsing, her pain right under every word like always, and something else, something stronger. She reminds me of Patti Smith, of those moments when we risk everything because we have nothing to lose.

  When the song finishes, I look at Spike and say the world’s least descriptive word: “Wow.”

  “Yeah. Did you know it was banned in Southern states? She could have gone to jail for playing it. She was brave.”

  “She was crazy.”

  “She was both,” Spike says, a little sadly. We’re in the middle of “Four Women,” when Ty knocks on the door.

  “Ahem,” he says. “Lights-out means lights-out. It’s past eleven.” His voice is all stern and counselory, but his face tells a different story, an extremely-pleased-with-himself story. A stay-up-as-long-as-you-want story.

  “Sorry,” we both say as Spike makes a big show of turning down the music.

  “Good night, troublemakers.”

  We close the door and I say, “Do you like Patti Smith?”

  “I don’t know a lot, just what they play here at lunch sometimes.”

  “Have you heard ‘Pissing in a River’?”

  “I don’t know, I think I’d remember that.”

  I plug my iPod into Spike’s dock and play it. We sit in silence and listen. I fold up my legs and rest my head against my knees. It’s my favorite way to listen. When I look up, Spike has tears in her eyes.

  “Right?” I say.

  “Totally,” she says, wiping a tear away when she thinks I’m not looking.

  We stay up until 2:00 a.m. listening to music. I play the Bots for her; she plays me Gossip, Sleater-Kinney, and THEESatisfaction and we both geek out about our love for Sonic Youth. Finally, Spike says, “I guess we should go to bed,” and we turn out the lights and while we’re lying in bed trying to keep our eyes open for just another minute, Spike says, “Sparrow?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m really glad you started talking to me.”

  “Me too. I’m sorry I didn’t before. You just seemed like—”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you had all these other friends. Like I was just in the way.”

  “I thought you didn’t like me because I’m gay. I get enough of that at school.”

  “Honestly, Spike, I’m so shy it didn’t even occur to me. I know that sounds weird, but I was just busy thinking about how awkward I felt, I wasn’t thinking about who you like to make out with.”

  “I thought that’s why you didn’t want to talk to me. You seemed so freaked out by me.”

  “Classic mistake,” I said, smiling in the dark. “I’m freaked out by everyone.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re less scared now.”

  “Me too. I’m sorry. I know I’m kind of crazy.”

  “Whatever. I think you’re brave.”

  The next day at breakfast, Tanasia and I are the first two there.

  “Hi!” I say when she sits down.

  “Hi,” she says back with a half smile. “I still can’t believe you’re talking.”

  “Me neither. We’ll see if it lasts. While I’m in the habit, though, I just wanted to … Thanks for giving me another chance. I know I’ve had a million already.”

  She nods. “You better be worth it.” She smiles.

  “I’ll do my best to meet your standards.”

  “Please do.”

  We smile at each other, and it is crazy to me that this is the same person who was sitting in English with me all year.

  “So, what are we going to do about a band name?” I ask.

  “Yeah, I have no idea. I guess we’ll figure it out today with Ren.”

  “I can’t believe the show is in, like, a week and a half. I could vomit.”

  “Nice breakfast chat, Sparrow.”

  “Well, you wanted me talking; this is what it’s like.”

  We’re laughing when Lara comes and sits down without saying anything. She pokes at her oatmeal.

  “What�
��s wrong?” Tanasia asks. Lara doesn’t answer.

  “Lara, I just started speaking; you can’t stop now,” I say, trying to joke her into talking, even though that’s never worked on me.

  “I’m just off today,” she says quietly. “It’s, um, my birthday.”

  Spike slides in next to her. “Did I just hear you say birthday? HAPPY BIRTHDAY!”

  Lara turns so red you can’t see her freckles. She looks down. “Thanks.”

  “Why is your birthday a bad thing?” asks Tanasia.

  “I don’t know. I’ve just never had a great one. I’m always away at camp for it. It’s never that fun.”

  “Well, we could make this one fun.” You can see the wheels turning in Spike’s head as she speaks.

  “So, you’ve been to GNRC before?” I ask.

  “No, not this camp.”

  “Which one?”

  “You wouldn’t know it.”

  “Why not?” asks Tanasia. “I’ve been to three different camps before this one.”

  “I’m pretty sure you haven’t been to fat camp,” says Lara, pushing her oatmeal away. It’s cold now, and a gross film has started to form at the top.

  “Your parents send you to fat camp?” asks Spike, stunned.

  “No, I’m sorry, not fat camp—True You/New You Camp for Health. Whatever. It’s fat camp. Every year since I was nine.”

  “But you’re not even that … ” Tanasia doesn’t know how to finish the sentence.

  “Fat. Yes, I am, but I don’t care. They do. Every year they send me and every year I have, like, a piece of celery with a candle in it for my birthday. It’s the worst.”

  “Are they like that when you’re home too?” I ask.

  “Yeah. They’re on me at every meal. I’ve got a meal plan I have to follow. They go through the trash in my room looking for candy wrappers. Being here is the first time I’ve ever been able to choose my own freaking meals. You might have noticed I have frozen yogurt at, like, every meal. The sweet taste of revenge.”

  “They don’t even let you have frozen yogurt?” asks Spike, reeling from the injustice of it all.

  “Spike, they don’t let me have cheese.”