Frannie and Tru

by Karen Hattrup

  Madonna girl stumbled back into the crowd to a series of loud cheers, and she was replaced by a bearded man in flannel who sang Johnny Cash while half the crowd shouted along. Sparrow began dragging the two of us from the entryway toward a place in the back, because, “Frannie, darling, you are lovely, but in the middle of this crowd you look about twelve.”

  We were halfway to our hiding spot, dead across from the stage, when Tru stopped in his tracks. Sparrow tugged on his arm in annoyance, but he was looking at the guitarist with a wily grin and would not be budged.

  “His T-shirt—that says Rutgers, right?”

  Sparrow didn’t answer him, just finished ushering us toward our dark corner. We were there all of ten seconds when a guy next to her started chatting her up. As soon as she turned her head, Tru was gone, moving up through the crowd and next to the stage, waiting for the song to be over. I gently poked Sparrow’s arm, and when she saw, she just sighed. “I knew he was going to do this. At least I’ve worked my last shift.”

  The last notes of the Johnny Cash song faded away and the two of us watched as Tru signaled to the guitarist, then whispered in his ear. The guy smiled like crazy and nodded.

  “What’s Rutgers?” I asked Sparrow.

  She shrugged. “A college. In New Jersey.”

  Of course. Tru was going to sing Springsteen. I couldn’t believe I was finally going to hear his voice.

  As a pint-sized girl with a burst of curls ran up onstage, Tru wove back to us through the crowd, looking very happy with himself. The girl warbled out the first notes of a song that I thought was The Beatles.

  “You seem to have forgotten that I asked you to lie low and not sing, but of course I never really expected you to listen,” Sparrow said. “You up soon?”

  “Well,” he said, “there was a line, but I seem to have worked around that. I’m next.”

  He was popping up and down on his heels, fiddling his fingers, absentmindedly whistling. Lacking in his typical cool resolve. Happier than he’d been in days. Seeing him like that made me smile.

  When the girl finally stuttered through the last chorus of the Beatles song to a round of polite applause, Tru made his way to the stage, cool and calm as could be. At the same time, the band members started leaving, heading over to the bar for a drink. Only the kid in the Rutgers shirt stayed, and Tru hopped up next to him and arranged himself before the microphone. He gripped both hands around it as the first chords came in, and I recognized a song that I’d been hearing for years in my parents’ van, a song that had come on again and again this summer. It always made me think of driving late at night, of going somewhere and doing something bad. And then Tru was singing.

  At first, there was too much noise to hear well; people were shuffling around, distracted by the band leaving, not sure what was happening. But after Tru got through the first verse it grew quiet. They turned their attention to the stage.

  He didn’t have the biggest voice. He didn’t have much range. But what he had was liquid and honey, the tone pure and clear. He did the song very understated, never pushing it, hardly moving. His eyes were open. I could feel the people next to us going still. I felt shivery, a sadness soaring inside me, high up in my chest—that certain sadness you only get with perfect pop music, when whatever magic there is in the melody and notes makes you feel alive and mournful all at once. He pronounced the lyrics with precision, and I took in each word.

  “It’s like someone took a knife, baby, edgy and dull,

  and cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my soul.”

  This was a song about being sad and screwed up, but it was also a song about sex, about sex that helps you forget yourself and the world and everything, everything. In that moment, I stopped thinking of Tru and started thinking of Devon, and I let myself get lost in a big rush of happiness and fear and desire and confusion, the music making all of it seem beautiful.

  As the song moved past the final verse, I didn’t want it to end.

  Tru finished with a repetition of the chorus, “I’m on fire,” and the guitarist was winding down and then people were whooping and hollering and raising glasses in the air, and beside me Sparrow was just clapping and smiling and shaking her head. For a few seconds, Tru stood there, absorbing the love, but he didn’t look as happy as I would have expected. He looked distracted, distant. He turned to leave the stage, and the guitarist reached out to shake his hand. As he did, Tru pulled him over for a moment, whispering. The guy whispered back and wrote something on the sheet of paper next to him.

  I wondered if Tru was going to have another turn, and I hoped he would. I wanted to stay there all night. I wanted him to sing a million songs. But as he came down the short set of stairs, I thought again of the spelling bee, and just like all those years ago, I was watching his face and trying to understand what he was feeling. This time there was no smirk. Just a smile that was forced and hollow.

  I was sure that in his mind, he was already halfway back to Connecticut. Back to his father. Back to whatever fresh miseries waited him there.

  After that, people kept coming up to Tru to say nice job or to try and talk to him, but he was aloof, brushing everyone away. He had burned off his jitters from earlier, but they seemed to have been replaced by something new. A sadness, but a fierceness, too. I was watching him nervously, but then he caught me and wiped the expression clean.

  The band returned from the bar, drinks in hand, and the guitarist was at the microphone, announcing that the break was over, digging out the page of singers to come. Tru further recovered his cool. He straightened up, looked expectantly toward the stage. The wicked grin returned. He was completely animated. As if he’d boomeranged back from low to high. Sparrow was talking to the two of us and he shushed her, put a hand to his ear, signaling that he was trying to hear.

  “All right, everybody! We’ve got three more singers coming at you. Up next is Jake. Then Sarah. Then Frannie.”

  My name hit me like ice water. I said nothing, just looked at him. Sparrow was looking at him, too, arms crossed, jaw set. He turned on an innocent expression.

  “What? She can sing! You can sing! Not great, but better than these jokers.”

  I felt a childish urge to push him. “You are so full of shit. You have never heard me sing.”

  Sparrow put a hand on my shoulder.

  “I’ll go fix this,” she said, then gave Tru a withering look before inching her way over to the band.

  As soon as she was gone, I turned an angry gaze on Tru, while he stood there grinning back.

  “You’re a dick,” I told him.

  “What else is new, right?”

  And now I was sure, there was something off about him tonight. An extra edge, but without the usual sparkle. A moment later, he left me, taking off without another word in the direction of the bar.

  I was alone for all of two minutes when I felt a hand. On my ass.

  “Little girl is back.”

  I whirled around and for a moment could only stare, shocked and disbelieving. And then I realized it was him. The creep with the potbelly, the neck tattoo. The two of us locked eyes, and I wanted to scream or kick him in the shins, but I was frozen, able only to look at his smug face, my hands quivering. I watched him part his lips.

  Already, the words little girl—little girl, of all things—were crawling all over my skin, and now he was going to say something else horrible. I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t want to hear whatever it was, because I knew the words would stick there in my mind. . . .

  “Get away from me.”

  I hadn’t said it as loud as I’d wanted to, but I’d said it loud enough that the people around us were staring. He started to put on an act, looking around in confusion like he didn’t know what was happening. More people were turning toward us, but I was still trapped so close to him, packed in with too many people, no clear way to get out.

  Then, just to my right, the crowd was parting. People were being jostled, falling aside.


  Tru was shoving his way through.

  Before I could think or talk he was beside me, his fist swinging up in a beautiful arc. I watched the path it cut through the air and could see that he’d done this before, he’d thrown a punch, and he knew how to do it with gravity and assurance.

  His knuckles smashed nose, and then there was color. Red.

  Electric, sticky red, like a burst juice box.

  The man staggered back, hands on his face, eyes shut, almost tripping as people shrank away and space opened all around him.

  I couldn’t believe the violence of it, of that single hit, because in the movies people get punched again and again and keep going. Now I knew what bullshit that was, because this guy was laid low with only one, though Tru was still there beside me, not backing away, his thin frame locked and loaded. He bounced on his toes and shook out his fist, angry and righteous.

  The background noise came back to me slowly—first the shouts and then the scraping of bar stools and the screeching of microphones with no one singing into them. Firm hands gripped my arms from behind and I gasped, tried to pull away, but then I saw it was only Sparrow. With one hand still on me, she grabbed Tru and yanked him hard, one time, two times, three, until he finally relented and started to follow behind her. I chanced a final look back at the man as we began our retreat and the blood was ghastly, curving around his mouth and dripping down into the wispy hairs of his chin. The whole way to the back door Tru was pointing at him and yelling—yelling crazy things like “You fucking pig, I will kill you!”

  And then we were outside. I was hanging there like a rag doll; Tru was still tensed and sputtering, and Sparrow had to push us down the alley in the direction of her car. We stumbled ahead of her, and I couldn’t stop looking down at Tru’s hand, where a trace of red lingered on his knuckles.

  “No. No. No. You are out of your mind. There is no way in hell we are going to the party.”

  We had scrambled into the car and driven several blocks away, now parked on a quiet side street, engine and lights turned off. Sparrow glowered in the driver’s seat, while next to her, Tru defended himself, insisting that no one would try to track them down, and even if they did, the best thing we could possibly do was to go somewhere else, where we wouldn’t be found, or where we could establish some kind of alibi. I cowered in the back, wishing I was home in my room.

  “An alibi?” Sparrow said. “An alibi? ’Cause if they actually find you and try to charge you with assault, you think that would work? I repeat: you are out of your mind.”

  “Charge me with assault? They should charge that asshole with assault!”

  Sparrow turned around and looked at me very seriously.

  “What did he do to you?”

  I wished she hadn’t asked. Just like before, when Tru and I had talked at the beach, I didn’t want to say it aloud. It seemed like that made it more real, and I didn’t want it to be real. But she kept looking at me, brow furrowed.

  “He just . . . called me ‘little girl.’ Grabbed my ass.”

  I looked out the window instead of at her face, but I could feel the anger coming off her.

  “What a fucker,” she whispered. Then she looked at Tru. “You saw that?”

  “I saw enough.”

  Sparrow sighed loudly.

  “All right, okay. But still. I could have had that asshole kicked out. We could have had somebody threaten him, scare the shit out of him. Johnny from behind the bar or someone. You had to go all Rambo on him instead? Jesus Christ.”

  Again, I saw the fist. The blood. Tru in a rage. Sparrow was right—it was not the way to handle it.

  But I was still glad that he’d done it.

  More than that, though, I just wanted to forget the whole thing happened. Not that I thought it would be that easy. The exchange with him had lasted less than a minute; counting the punch it was still less than two. But that didn’t matter. I could already feel it taking up space in my mind, preparing to lurk in some dark corner.

  But that was something to think about and deal with later. For now I just wanted to drop it. I squirmed in the backseat, ready to get the hell out of there.

  “So what are we doing?” I asked.

  “Going to the party,” Tru said.

  “I have so had enough of your shit tonight,” Sparrow said. “We are not going to that party.”

  He blew out a hard singular breath and put one hand on the dashboard in front of him, seeming to steady himself.

  “Look,” he said. “We’re supposed to meet Jimmy and Kieran there. I told Kieran I’d drive the minivan home. Which means he’s already been there for two hours, drinking. And if I don’t show up, I don’t know what they’re going to do.”

  Sparrow angrily rolled down the window and lit a cigarette, puffed on it for half a minute. Finally, she spoke.

  “We will go there. We will get Kieran and Jimmy. You will drive them home immediately.”

  Sparrow turned the key without waiting for an answer, and her sporty little car roared to life. Before she pulled out, she looked back at me.

  “Frannie, honey. I’m sorry.”

  We sped off into the night, Sparrow clicking through a couple of songs, unable to settle on anything, no music right for this moment. She turned the sound off, and we sat there in silence. I was left with the echo of Tru singing at the bar, those dangerous words.

  A little question wormed its way back into my mind, something I’d started to wonder before, but had forgotten in the midst of everything.

  “Why did you say I could sing?” I asked Tru. “You have never heard me sing.”

  For a moment he said nothing. Then he spoke, in a kind of faux-serious tone, thick with sarcasm.

  “Well, I’ve heard someone singing. In the morning. In the shower. That’s why I signed you up for the song by that ex-Disney girl. That seems to be your favorite. Or I know you do some of your own versions of the Suck It, Sparrow catalogue. Something Motown maybe, or The Beatles? Or how about “Lola”? You’re pretty good at that one.”

  I was having one of those moments when I felt like a moron, slow and dumb as could be. How? I kept thinking. How? How? How? Then the pieces fell in place, but with agonizing slowness.

  If Tru had heard me in the shower, then he’d been home in the morning.

  If he was home in the morning, he’d skipped class.

  If he knew I sang all those songs, he’d skipped class more than once or twice or even three times. He’d skipped it a lot.

  I started to wonder if he’d ever been at all.

  The very idea unraveled me, loosened my insides. I couldn’t imagine skipping even one class, and Tru might have blown off an entire course, doing it without a care, doing whatever the hell he pleased all the time. He turned so he was sideways in his seat, looking back at me in the dark.

  “You know that little window in the basement, the one in the bedroom? You should really have it fixed. Very dangerous. You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to slip right back inside.”

  Sparrow told him to please just be quiet, he was giving her a headache, but he kept holding onto the headrest, staring at me as if he wanted me to cry or freak out. And I was freaked out. He was riled like I’d never seen him before.

  I started to wonder who he’d really thrown that punch for—me or him.

  The Mack’s family lived in a neighborhood within the city limits but set apart, an enclave of winding roads and great big stand-alone homes. His was grand and white with columns out front. The street was already thick with cars, and we parked a couple of blocks away. Tru wanted to go in alone, but Sparrow didn’t trust him, and wasn’t willing to leave me abandoned in the van either. That meant we were all going in.

  We crept through the backyard, Tru leading the way to a pair of sliding glass doors that opened into the basement. He knocked three times and the curtain was brushed aside by Preston Ames, a soccer player I knew vaguely as a happy stoner. He let us inside with a goofy smile.

  “Greetings
! You’re, like, fashionably late.”

  I was so wrecked by everything that had just happened, I’d had no chance to prepare myself. I wasn’t ready to be here, in a room full of my former classmates who were older and cooler than me. I went in last, tripping over the doorjamb.

  The basement was a huge open room with a pool table, a bar, a keg in the corner, and eyes—so many eyes, sweeping in our direction. I saw dozens of people that I hadn’t thought of once in all these weeks of summer: beautiful girls, bitchy girls, JV basketball players I’d had moronic crushes on freshman year. Way in the back, The Mack was pouring shots behind the bar. Jimmy sat on top of it, next to a little blonde I didn’t recognize. “Sweet Jesus!” he yelled. “Who let my freaking sister in?” I knew my face was red, red, red, but I also knew that no one was looking at me, because everyone was looking at Sparrow. Not looking, staring. And they were staring because nobody knew who she was and because she was beautiful and because she was dressed too nicely for this party. But I knew they were also staring because she was the only black girl there. There was cattiness and envy coming off the other girls in waves, while boys everywhere were taking her in, and I hated everyone, hated all of it.

  Kieran appeared at our side, Sparrow and me both relaxing at the sight of him. He put a hand on my shoulder, his other hand holding a red plastic cup.

  “How’s it going?” he asked, his face bright and happy.

  Sparrow bit her lip, and I stood there, without a single word at my disposal. Kieran wrinkled his brow.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I know I’m driving. This is just Coke, I swear.”

  “Wait, you’re driving?” Sparrow asked. “Tru told us he was driving.”

  And that’s when I turned and realized he was gone, across the room.

  Standing with Jeremy Bell.

  I could see in an instant that things were bad.

  He was standing close to Jeremy, too close, inclining his head in Jeremy’s direction, telegraphing what was between them. Jeremy was totally freaked. He wasn’t ready for this, wasn’t ready for people to see him here with a boy. He actually started edging away until his back was against the wall with nowhere to go. I wondered how the hell Tru could be so oblivious, how he could possibly miss how upset Jeremy was.