Guitar Notes

by Amato, Mary

  I’m guilty, oh guilty,

  I’m guilty, oh guilty,

  I’m guilty, oh guilty,

  Doin’ time for my crime. Boom Boom Boom.

  When he’s done, she leaps to her feet. “I think they’re polyphonic!”

  “Polyphonic?”

  “Two different melodies that fit together! Lots of baroque music is polyphonic. Bach was all over it. This is so cool. Let’s record both our songs and play them at the same time and see if they fit.”

  They record Lyla’s song first and then Tripp’s at the same tempo. Then, they layer them in the same file and play them back. Each phrase neatly overlaps the other, their voices fitting together in harmony.

  Lyla’s eyes sparkle. “The opposite of annihilation!”

  Tripp laughs. “Indeed.”

  ROCKLAND HALLWAY; 3:16 P.M.

  As Lyla walks down the hall, she pulls out her cell phone and calls Tripp.

  “Howdy,” he answers.

  She presses the phone against her ear so she can hear him over the hallway noise. “Hey, do you have Sanders for science?” she asks.

  “No. I have Peakly.”

  “Are you on chapter three? Didn’t you think it was interesting? The whole eardrum thing.” There is a tap on her shoulder. She turns—it’s Tripp—and she almost screams.

  “Sorry!” He laughs.

  She looks around for Annie. “It’s just—”

  “You don’t want anybody to see you talking to me?”

  “No! It’s not that. It’s just Annie. She’d make a huge deal out of it. She wouldn’t leave it alone.”

  “Well, some people make a big deal about everything. Anyway, you’re lucky you have Sanders for science. Peakly’s voice is so annoying. I try to block it out.”

  “But the sound unit is so interesting! My voice is literally playing a tiny little teeny drum in your ear.”

  “What?”

  “How sound works. Right now, I’m talking and the sound is coming out of me as a wave of air, each air molecule pushing on the next until it travels all the way to your ear. When the wave reaches your eardrum, your eardrum vibrates, and that’s how the sound gets in you. So my voice is literally playing a little drum in your ear. Tell me that’s not cool.”

  “You really are a geek. And it’s cool.”

  Lyla spots Annie down the hall. “You have to go.”

  “I do?”

  “Annie’s coming.”

  “Okay, science guru.”

  He leaves and she rushes over to her locker and makes herself busy, pretending to text.

  “So,” Annie says. “Who are you texting?”

  “My dad.” Lyla puts away her phone and crouches down to pull her French book from the stack on the bottom. “I was just reminding him that we’re staying for Sweet Tooth.”

  “What’s this?” Annie pulls the notebook Tripp gave her out of Lyla’s back pocket.

  Lyla stands up and grabs it back. “Nothing.”

  “Wow!” Annie says. “Somebody’s touchy.”

  Lyla sees the suspicion in Annie’s face, but she smiles as if nothing is wrong.

  OCTOBER 29. WEDNESDAY.

  PRACTICE ROOM B; 11:25 A.M.

  The room is empty without Lyla. Tripp misses her immediately. He opens the guitar case and finds a note.

  Dear Mr. Odd,

  Since you are inspiring me to write songs that I never thought I’d write, it’s my turn to inspire you. Your assignment is to write a waltz. ¾ time. That means the beat of the song is

  1, 2, 3,

  1, 2, 3,

  1, 2, 3,

  Get it?

  —Ms. Even

  He gets it. A challenge. A dare.

  ROCKLAND HALLWAY, 3:13 P.M.

  Lyla sees Tripp in the crowded hallway, and her face breaks into a smile. She starts looking for Annie and then catches herself because she remembers that Annie said she had to leave early today for an orthodontist appointment.

  “Howdy, Mr. Odd,” she says. “You look positively chipper.”

  He laughs. “I am! Because of what you told me yesterday about the physics unit, I actually paid attention, and guess what.”

  “You learned something?”

  “You’re going to hear about it when you have science tomorrow. It’s cool.” His eyes get bigger. “It validates my Vibe Theory.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Remember when I told you that I’ve always felt like I could feel the vibes of inanimate objects?”

  She nods and laughs. “You can hear which crayon in the box is happy.”

  “Exactly. Well, Peakly said that everything vibrates.”

  “Even dead things?”

  “Everything. Even dead things. Even pomegranates. This pencil, even though it’s perfectly still, is vibrating because all matter is made up of molecules, and all molecules are made of atoms, and all atoms vibrate all the time.” He holds the pencil to her ear. “Can you hear it?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s your problem.”

  “I thought I had a problem,” she says. “I just never knew what it was.”

  Tripp smiles. “Every vibration is a sound; therefore everything has a sound.”

  “Therefore you can hear the pencil?”

  “We can’t hear the pencil because it’s vibrating at a rate we can’t detect, but it’s making a sound.”

  “Like the dog whistle thing!” she says.

  “Exactly.”

  “So if I had the eardrums of a dog, maybe I could actually hear my bones grow!”

  He grins.

  She goes on. “The other day, I walked out and saw the maple tree, you know, the one in front? And the leaves were so red, I had this feeling that they were actually singing.”

  “I’m not the only odd one.”

  She grabs his pencil and tucks it behind her ear. “Now we’re both physics geeks.”

  “I’m also chipper because I’m writing a song,” he says.

  “Hmmm, let me use my superhuman cilia and listen to your thoughts.” She closes her eyes as if she is in a trance. “Could it be … are you writing a waltz?”

  “Yep. I decided to call it ‘The Pomegranate Waltz.’ ”

  “I want to hear it.”

  “I can hear the melody for the verses and the chorus, but I haven’t come up with any lyrics yet.”

  They reach her locker and she stops. “We could work on it together in the little room on Thursday,” she says.

  “A collaboration,” he says. “Batman and Robin.”

  “Bonnie and Clyde.”

  “Bert and Ernie.”

  “Jekyll and Hyde.”

  “Shouldn’t we be naming musicians?” he asks.

  She laughs.

  THE METRO; 4:09 P.M.

  As soon as Tripp sits down on the Metro train, his phone buzzes, and he almost groans out loud when he sees that it’s his mom calling.

  “Tripp! I want to talk with you about something.” Her voice has that forced cheerful buzz. “I think it’s something you’ll like. I’ve made an appointment with an advisor at Crenshaw—”

  BOOM! The walls cave in. “You have got to be kidding,” he says. “I’m not going to change schools.” The doors shut and the train pulls out. “Tell me that you’ve made an appointment because they need new carpeting.”

  “I’ve been thinking that it might be a good place for you. Small class sizes. Top-notch teachers.”

  “Making me go to a tutor session is one thing. But you cannot make me go to a new school.”

  “You’re not getting anywhere at Rockland and—”

  “I’m actually starting to like science, Mom.” The train rumbles around a curve.

  “You didn’t turn in your algebra homework. I saw the zero on Edline this morning.”

  “I’ll get my grades up.”

  “Which is what you said during the entire second semester last year, and it didn’t happen. Anyway, I made an appointment—”

&n
bsp; “—which you will cancel,” Tripp says.

  “—for tomorrow at five thirty.”

  “No.”

  “Hear me out.” Her voice sweetens. “It’s just a preliminary interview. If you come with me to Crenshaw and behave yourself during the interview and genuinely have an open mind about listening to what it might offer you, then I will let you have your guitar back.”

  The earth screeches to a stop in its orbit.

  “You will let me have my guitar back?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Right after the interview. We’ll drive straight to the store and get it.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  “It’s a deal.” He agrees, hangs up, and immediately calls Lyla.

  She answers in a whisper. “Hello, Mr. Odd.”

  “Why are you whispering?” he asks.

  “I’m in my private lesson with Dr. Prevski, but she just went to the bathroom.”

  “I’m getting my guitar back tomorrow.”

  “Hurray!” she whispers. “That’s great.”

  “Thanks. I’ll let you go. Adios.”

  “Au revoir.”

  “Ta-ta. That’s good-bye in Thai.”

  “Is not. Cheerio. That’s good-bye in Old English.”

  “May the force be with you.”

  “That’s what science geeks say.”

  “Takes one to know one.” He gets off the train and sees a musician playing. “Lyla, wait! Listen …” He holds out his phone so that she can hear the sound of the echoing trumpet. “I’m in the Metro. Somebody’s playing.”

  “We should do that,” Lyla says. “Got to go.”

  He closes his phone and stands still. It’s an old jazz song that he has heard before. His favorite elementary school teacher used to sing it all the time. “What a Wonderful World.” The trumpet’s soaring voice rides into the air. Tripp imagines each note causing a ripple effect in the air, sending wave after wave of sound into his ears. He imagines the sound playing his tiny eardrums and the vibration of the drum sending the waves of sound through his entire body, striking against the strings of his soul.

  The musician catches him watching, and they share a wordless nod of appreciation, musician to musician, while the song goes on.

  LYLA’S HOUSE; 9:42 P.M.

  Lyla is dishing up bowls of ice cream for herself and her dad when her phone rings. It’s on the table closest to him, so he picks it up and looks at the display.

  “Who is Tripp and why is she calling so late?”

  Lyla jumps over to the table and takes the phone. “Oh … it’s a he. I mean, he’s a him. He’s probably calling about homework. He’s in my algebra class.” She answers, pressing the phone into her ear. “Hi.”

  “So, if everything has a sound,” Tripp says, “then the moon must have a sound.”

  Lyla glances at her dad. “Hold on, Tripp. Let me get my backpack. I can read you the assignment.”

  Tripp laughs. “Wow, Ms. Even. Is that the first time you’ve ever called me by my actual name?”

  “Why can’t he check Edline?” her dad asks.

  “Does this mean I have to call you Lyla?” Tripp asks.

  “Hold on.” Lyla lowers the phone. “Dad, it’s not a big deal. He’s just missing the algebra assignment.” Before her dad can say another word, she grabs her backpack and takes it into her bedroom. “Okay, I’m back,” she says into the phone.

  “I am missing the algebra assignment, but that’s not why I called,” Tripp says.

  Lyla throws her backpack on her bed and closes her door. “I didn’t want to have to explain anything to my dad.”

  “Sorry. I called at a bad time.”

  “No, it’s okay. I’m in my room now.”

  “So the question is: what sound do you think the moon makes?”

  Lyla walks over to the window. The overhead light in her room throws a superimposed image of her reflection on the glass. She presses her face to the window, cupping her hand around her eyes to block out the light. The crescent moon’s whiteness is brilliant and wild, as if its source of light is coming from its own state of mind.

  “I think it’s wailing,” Tripp says, and he starts singing this funny falsetto.

  Lyla’s dad opens her door, and Lyla turns to her desk and picks up a pencil. “You’re supposed to do problems one through six. Got it?”

  “You turned into a mean algebra machine,” Tripp says. “Why can’t you say, ‘Excuse me, Dad, but I’m trying to listen to the moon’?”

  She walks over to her backpack on the bed and puts the pencil in the side pocket. “I can’t really give you the answers, Tripp. You have to figure out the solutions yourself.”

  “Hurt me, Ms. Even,” Tripp says.

  Her dad’s presence in the room is like a black hole, pulling her in when she’d rather be talking with Mr. Odd. Reluctantly, she says good-bye. As she closes the phone, her dad hands her the bowl of ice cream.

  “It seems rude of this Tripp to call and expect you to give him the answers.”

  She turns her back so that that he can’t see her smile. She likes the sound of Tripp’s name in the room, even if her dad has no idea who he is. “He’s not rude,” she says, glancing out the window. “Just … well … odd.”

  OCTOBER 30. THURSDAY.

  PRACTICE ROOM B; 11:33 A.M.

  Tripp knocks on the practice room door and it opens.

  “Mr. Odd!”

  Tripp steps in and smiles. He remembers a report he wrote in the sixth grade about how monarch butterflies migrate from the north every year to the same fir trees thousands of miles away in Mexico and imagines that stepping into this room feels as good to him as landing on a Mexican fir tree must feel to a migrating butterfly.

  “Let’s hear your ‘Pomegranate Waltz’!” She hands him the guitar and sits on the bench.

  He sits on the floor and tunes up. “This was a hard assignment. I’ve never written anything in three/four time. I kind of like my tune, but you need to help me think of lyrics.” He plays and hums the melody.

  “Ooooh, it’s actually pretty,” she says.

  He winces. “I wrote a pretty song.”

  “You did. You should be proud of that. A great musician can write all kinds of songs.”

  He keeps playing, and when he comes around to the verse again, she sings, “I like the sound of a pomegranate. I must be from another planet.” She laughs.

  “My planet is mostly made of granite,” he sings, and stops. “See? It’s impossible.”

  “It doesn’t have to have the word pomegranate in it,” Lyla says. “Play it again. I’ll sing the first thing that comes to my mind.”

  He plays.

  She sings, “I like the sound of your name in my ear.” She stops and blushes. “I didn’t mean you you. I mean it doesn’t have to be based on anything true, right? We can make up a song, imagining someone is singing it about someone else. Forget it. Let’s start over.”

  “No. It’s a good first line. Let’s keep going. I like the sound of your name in my ear. I like to hear …”

  “What you have to say?”

  “That’s good. Then something that rhymes with say … I want to pay you lots of money …” He sings and laughs.

  “How about I’d like to pay attention to you?”

  “… instead of doing my homework.”

  “Instead of doing all the things I have to do.”

  “Good. Good. But let’s make it shorter. Instead of doing what I have to do.”

  Lyla writes their lyrics in her notebook. “Okay, let’s sing what we have so far.”

  I like the sound of your name in my ear.

  I like to hear what you have to say.

  I’d like to pay attention to you—instead of doing

  What I have to do.

  “Ooh,” she says. “It sounds good. Sing it again and I’ll try singing harmony.”

  “I don’t know if I can sing
if you’re doing that.”

  “Yeah, you can. Sing your note and hold on to it no matter what I sing. You have to listen to yourself and don’t let yourself be pulled off the note. Imagine you’re on one street and I’m on the other. Parallel. We’re going in the same direction, but you have to stay in your lane.”

  “Okay.”

  “Sing this note.” She gives him a note. He sings it. “Now stay there.” She adds her note one third above it.

  She makes him practice it a few times, and he gets it.

  “We’re good,” she says.

  “Actually really good!” he admits. “We should play in the Metro.”

  “You need a permit,” Lyla says. “I read an article about it once. You have to send in an audition video.”

  “Well, we should do it. Or we should do weddings. I was at this wedding in September and the music was really bad. We could do a lot better.”

  “We could!”

  Without warning, the door opens and Ms. Kettering and Mr. Jacoby are staring at them.

  “Lyla!” Mr. Jacoby says.

  Lyla jumps up. “We were just working on some music together.”

  “I know I made the rules perfectly clear,” Mr. Jacoby says. “Practice rooms are not for socializing.”

  “We’re not socializing,” Tripp says. “We’re—”

  “Save your explanation,” Ms. Kettering says. “Come up to the resource room. I’d like to talk with you and Benjamin.”

  As Tripp puts away the guitar, Mr. Jacoby explains that he has lost privileges to use the practice room. Period.

  Lyla blanches. “But it was my idea. I’m the one who should lose privileges.”

  Tripp protests, but Ms. Kettering hustles him out the door.

  ROCKLAND HALLWAY; 3:16 P.M.

  Lyla has walked through the afternoon in shock, unable to concentrate on anything except the thought of Tripp not being allowed back into the practice room. The effort it has taken to get through each class, to pretend that nothing is wrong, has made her feel sick to her stomach. As soon as her last class ends, she texts Annie to say that she doesn’t need a ride home today. It’s another lie, but she needs to find Tripp.