“Because she’s got things going on with her,” he said. “Because she needed a friend.”
Mr. Carrow nudged Oliver. “Don’t we all?”
The sound of crickets filled the air for a few seconds. “What am I supposed to do now?” Oliver asked.
Mr. Carrow pulled his face tight. “That’s a tough one. You said some pretty harsh stuff; the thing about her hair comes to mind.”
“That was bad.”
“Very bad. But in my experience, humility mixed with a genuine apology—maybe a grand apology, in your case—can speed up the forgiveness process. Ella doesn’t strike me as the kind of girl to hold a grudge.”
“Lucky for me, I guess.”
“Lucky indeed.”
—CHAPTER FORTY-ONE—
THE APOLOGY (FOR REAL THIS TIME)
An hour later Oliver was sitting on the couch in his basement staring at his collection of regimental flags. They used to make him feel cool—like a die-hard that was so legit, he’d amassed these super-rare objects.
Now they made him feel a little silly.
Oliver got up and started taking them down. He didn’t know what he was going to do with them—not throw them out—but he didn’t really want them up anymore.
Kevin texted that he was coming over. Twenty minutes later Oliver let him in and they went back to the basement.
“Some people at school said they saw you and Ella yelling at each other by the flagpole,” Kevin said. “I guess things didn’t go as planned.”
“Not exactly.”
“What are you doing?”
“Taking the flags down.”
“How come?”
“Just ’cause.”
Kevin walked over to the coffee table where Oliver had stacked them and began to fold. “So what happened?”
“She told me something I didn’t want to hear and . . . and I said some really mean stuff back. I acted like a giant idiot.”
“Did you break up?”
“We weren’t going out.”
“Right.” Kevin ran his hand across one of the flags. “So what are you gonna do?”
“About what?”
“About getting her back so you can finish the project. So I can boost my English grade. So I can accomplish my goal of becoming the first seventh grader in the greater Northeast area to have one thousand Wattpad followers.”
“I actually have no idea.” Oliver dropped the folded flags on his bed and plopped down on the couch. “Mr. Carrow said I have to apologize.”
“For the record, I also said that.”
“Yeah, I know. But this time it has to be real. And big. Mr. Carrow said something about being grand. But I’ve apologized to her before for being an idiot, so I don’t know how to make her believe I really mean it this time.”
Kevin flopped on the couch arm. “You should serenade her—like in the movies. Go to her window tonight and just start singing this song about how sorry you are. That would be epic.”
“And really embarrassing.”
“Oh, for sure. Which is why it would work.”
Oliver looked at Kevin for a few seconds. Then he looked at the pile of regimental flags on his bed. Then he thought about the electric piano and speaker up in Addie’s room.
“Kevin,” he said, “how do you feel about waving your arms around and pretending to direct a band?”
“I feel . . . not as weirded out as you might expect. Why?”
Oliver’s mind picked up speed. “. . . Sergeant Tom has a snare drum—he brought it to drill this one time . . . I have the regiment colors . . . Addie on piano . . . I think Joe has a bugle or trumpet or something . . . we’ll sound pretty bad, but not awful. Or just the right amount of awful. Would be great if we had a microphone or something to make it really loud—”
“Hal might have one,” Kevin said. “I’m pretty sure he wants to be a DJ.”
“What? How do you know that?”
“Because he runs the historical society’s Twitter account. And when he’s not retweeting history stuff, he retweets all these DJs you’ve never heard of and DJ equipment that’s supposed to be good. Not super historical, but apparently useful.”
“Can you message him or something?”
“First tell me this grand plan you have that involves musical instruments and pretty much every person you know.”
“I will.” Oliver raced to his desk and fired up the computer. “But first, I need YouTube.”
The next morning at eight a.m., the Prichard family van rolled into the nicest development within a fifty-mile radius. Oliver thought each house could hold about five of his houses inside. Maybe six.
“This is it,” Oliver said, spotting a driveway with a white Escalade and green VW Beetle. “You can let us out here.”
“Do you want me to stay?” his dad asked.
Oliver looked down at the brass buttons on his uniform. “Better not. That way I can’t back out.”
“I was kind of hoping you’d record it on your phone, Mr. P,” Kevin said. “But Ollie’s right. There are some things you can’t unsee. Or unhear.”
“Did you bring extra batteries?” Addie asked.
Oliver patted his book bag. “Yup.”
His sister smiled widely. “This is fun.”
Oliver wanted to vomit. “Let’s go.”
They grabbed the essential items from the trunk: the 104th Regiment Flag, Addie’s electric keyboard, and the piano stand. Down the street, Oliver spotted Sergeant Tom and Joe getting out of a shiny pickup truck with their instruments. Hauling their gear onto Ella’s lawn, Oliver guessed they looked like a lost band of circus musicians.
“Good luck,” Oliver’s dad said as he pulled away. His grin was a mix of secondhand embarrassment and pride.
“Did you tell Hal the right time?” Oliver asked Kevin.
“Yup.”
“We really need that—”
A black Monte Carlo rolled down the street pumping some serious bass. Hal got out of the passenger-side door, unloaded his gear from the trunk, and waved to a person behind the tinted windows.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “My mom overslept.”
“Don’t you drive?” Kevin asked.
“I’m only fifteen.”
“Seriously? I had you pegged for at least twenty.”
“I have one of those older-looking faces. Anyway, I’ve got your mic and speakers.”
“Hal, you rock,” Oliver said. He put up his hand for a high five. Hal lightly pressed his hand against Oliver’s so they were basically holding hands. He must be new at it too.
Oliver turned to Sergeant Tom and Joe. “Thanks so much. I really appreciate it, guys.”
“Are you kidding?” Sergeant Tom asked, shifting the strap on his snare drum. “It’s not every day I get to break this baby out.”
Joe emptied his spit value. “Where to, Private Prichard?”
“Better get as close as we can,” Oliver said as they walked across the lawn up to the gigantic house. “The volume on those portable speakers probably doesn’t carry that far.”
“She carries,” Hal said. “She carries.”
“I can guarantee this neighborhood has never had a block party,” Kevin said. “This is gonna be epic.”
“Here is good.” Oliver stopped right in front of a shrubbery walkway, no more than ten feet from the front door. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
Addie set up her stand and Oliver dropped the keyboard onto it. Hal rigged up the portable speaker cables and did a quick sound check. Sergeant Tom let a few beats fly on his snare; Joe kept at it with the spit value emptying. Oliver unfurled the flag and took up a position in the middle as Kevin did a few practice swipes with a conductor’s baton that was really a magician’s wand they’d dug out of Addie’s costume bin.
The whole routine took less than a minute.
“If this works out,” Kevin said, “we should look into doing birthday parties and bar mitzvahs. I mean, we have the gear.” He pointed at Oliver with the baton. “Now text her.”
Oliver fumbled for his phone and dropped it. He’d been this nervous once before: last night when he was hugging Ella.
Hey. I’m at your house. On the front lawn. Can you come outside? I have something to say. Actually, to sing.
“Did you use my joke?” Kevin asked. “Something to sing?”
“Yeah.”
“Nice.”
Oliver stared at the phone.
No response.
“You know, I’ve been meaning to bring something up,” Kevin said. “Storyline. Not the project—this one. The storyline of you and Ella. It’s a pretty good one.”
“Agreed,” said Sergeant Tom.
Hal opened some M&M’s. Whatever—his job was done.
“Is this really the best time?” Oliver said.
Addie played a few keys. “Ollie says she’s not his girlfriend.”
“Your brother is in some denial about that,” Kevin said.
“Guys, seriously.” Oliver’s eyes shifted between his phone and the windows, terrified of the moment he’d see Ella peeking out. “Not now.”
“I’m just saying that as far as stories go, you and Ella have a great one. Think about it: Two outsiders are partnered together for a project. They each learn that the other is really cool. They become friends. They start to like each other more than friends. They go on an adventure. They have a fight. One of them—you—screws things up majorly. Then you do this grand gesture to fix it.” Kevin tried to balance his baton on a finger. “I mean, the only thing left is for you to ride off into the sunset. Which in the modern narrative would be you two making out right here on the front lawn—”
An upstairs window opened, shocking Oliver into a hasty start of his grand apology.
A poorly practiced rendition of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
Belting out the Union Army’s anthem at eight o’clock on a Sunday morning in full uniform over a sound system arranged by an M&M’s-addicted kid while your sister plays the electric keyboard and your only friend randomly waves a baton around and two grown men in full Civil War regalia play drums and bugle is kind of like dropping over the edge of a roller coaster. It was terrifying at first, but once he embraced the terror and let his lungs do their thing, it wasn’t really that scary. Oliver had practiced the song about twenty times last night and another ten this morning, and while he didn’t exactly hit all the right notes, it didn’t matter. No matter what was coming out of his mouth, he was really saying: I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. Please forgive me. I’m an idiot. And so on.
Oliver closed his eyes toward the end and almost forgot about being nervous; he was crushing this thing. Yeah, he sounded pretty bad, but that was the point. He didn’t care. He was sorry. He really did want Ella to forgive him. And if this awful, shameful performance took him a half step closer to that, then who freaking cared. It would be worth it.
And just like that, the song was over.
Oliver looked up at the window.
“Ella: I’m so sorry. This time I mean it. I’ve acted like such a gigantic idiot since we got partnered together, and last night was the culmination of that acting like an idiot. You were right about everything. Stone did matter, even though he didn’t fight and died of diarrhea. I just didn’t notice soldiers like him before because it didn’t really fit with the Civil War I already knew. I got bored, so I found something familiar in the H. Weller thing—which I still think might be something—but I get that it’s not part of the project and that the other stuff about Stone’s life was just as important. I’m sorry.
“To prove that I really mean it, I wrote an epitaph for Stone’s grave, which according to Google, is a phrase or statement in memory of a person who has died. ‘Here lies Private Raymond Stone, Beloved Son and Soldier, Who Gave His Life for His Country. A True Hero.’”
Oliver took a deep breath for the finale. “I’m so sorry for everything—from trying to kick you out of the group to last night. And I really mean it.”
He squinted up in the morning light. All he could see was her outline.
The window slammed shut.
“You tried to kick her out of the group?” Addie asked. “That’s mean.”
“Maybe a little repetitive with the ‘idiot’ stuff,” Kevin said. “That’s the kind of thing you should have run by me. As Head Writing Consultant, I would have suggested throwing in a couple ‘morons’ or maybe some adjectives like ‘gigantic moronic idiot’—”
“Ollie?” someone called out.
Oliver whirled around.
To see Ella.
Across the street.
And one front yard down.
A white Escalade and green VW Beetle sat in that driveway too.
“You’d think these rich people would diversify their purchases,” Kevin said.
Oliver half waved.
“What are you doing?” Ella called out.
“Uh . . . apologizing.”
“To who?”
“I thought this was your house.” He pointed to the driveway. “The cars—they’re the same.”
It was hard to read her face from this far back.
“Ollie,” Addie said. “I think we should call Dad.”
“What—?”
A police SUV rolled down the street and slowed to a stop along the curb—right in Oliver’s line of sight to Ella.
“Plot twist,” Kevin said. “This is what’s called a plot twist.”
—CHAPTER FORTY-TWO—
CAPRI SUN (VARIETY PACK)
“An apology.” The tall, thick, very annoyed police officer stared at Oliver, Addie, Kevin, Hal, Sergeant Tom, and Joe as they stood on the edge of the correct lawn. Ella’s lawn. By now her parents, Charlie, and about five other families had stumbled out of their houses to see the commotion. “That’s very unusual.”
“We thought it was our friend’s house. I’m really sorry. I can go apologize to that lady.” Oliver turned and looked at the forty-something, tight-exercise-pants-wearing woman glaring at him from the front lawn they’d invaded. “Again.”
Kevin coughed through a laugh.
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” the cop said.
“I should have double-checked the address, Officer,” Oliver’s dad said. “It’s really my fault.”
“She’s your friend, and you don’t know where she lives?” the policeman asked Oliver.
Oliver cut Ella a quick glance. He didn’t know if she was still mad. Had she heard any of the song or the apology? Did almost getting arrested count as a grand apology? “We just became friends. For a school project.”
The cop turned to Ella’s parents. “That true?”
“It is, Officer,” Ella’s mom said. She sounded really embarrassed, and kept looking around at the gawking neighbors.
“All right.” The cop sighed. “Nobody’s in trouble here. Just use some common sense next time, okay? People get very protective of their Sunday mornings. They’re not so into strange children breaking into song on their front lawns.”
“Yeah,” Oliver said. “I’m really sorry.”
The cop turned to his cruiser. “One last question: Why ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’?”
“That’s a fair question, Officer,” Kevin said. “Of all the songs, across all the musical genres, why would we settle with that? I mean, it’s like eight verses long.”
The cop waited for an answer.
“It’s the grandest song I know,” Oliver said. “And I needed something grand.”
Oliver saw Ella’s smile. Everything was going to be okay.
“How about
we all have a less grand Sunday, okay?” The officer climbed back into the SUV. “‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic,’” Oliver heard him mutter as he started the car. “You gotta be kidding me.”
“Sorry again about all this,” Oliver’s dad said to Mr. Berry. “Bit of a misunderstanding.”
“No harm done,” Mr. Berry said, glancing at his phone. “I’d love to invite you in, but”—he pointed at the phone—“conference call.”
“On a Sunday morning? You should complain to your boss.”
Oliver heard Ella snort.
“Can’t,” Mr. Berry said, “I am the boss. Okay, well, it was nice meeting you . . .”
“Dave,” Oliver’s dad said, “Dave Prichard.”
“Nice meeting you, Dave. We should get together sometime.”
And then things got suddenly awkward. Oliver wasn’t really sure what was supposed to happen next. He’d escaped jail, but now he had to finish what he’d started in front of a very live and personal studio audience. Ella’s family was all still standing around outside.
Here’s to humility, he thought.
“So you’re Oliver,” Charlie said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Kind of a rebel?”
“Uh, sure.” He cleared his throat. “How’s Hogwarts?”
“What?”
“Your college.”
“Wharton,” Charlie corrected him. “It’s good.”
Ella was staring at him.
“Did you know Ella can make a card disappear?”
“I know,” Charlie said. “She showed me last night.”
“And she can eat a Wendy’s meat cube in like a minute.”
Charlie threw her eyebrows up and started to walk inside. “I did not know that.”
“So,” Oliver said. They were finally alone. “What I was trying to say was—”
“I heard you.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. I got your text and went to the front door. I watched the whole thing from my house.”
“So . . . you heard everything. The song. What I said after.”
She nodded.
“Okay, then. Do you . . . forgive me?”
The Not-So-Boring Letters of Private Nobody Page 16