I swallowed hard. “About what?”
His voice dropped to a whisper. “Promise you won’t tell?”
“I promise,” I whispered back. My heart started racing.
“I lied to you. About Céline Dion.” He broke into a crooked grin. “I love that song.” He put his hand to his chest in that pained-heartbreak sort of way and started belting it out. Really, really off-key.
I almost peed myself laughing.
We kept working and laughing, and every time my giggles subsided, he’d sing another little bit of a Céline Dion song he knew. It was horrible.
And wonderful.
THIRTY-NINE
An envelope.
In the mailbox.
Addressed to me.
The handwriting looked familiar. Not the cursive James had used to write the snippet of a sonnet on the drawing he made for me, but his printing—the way he’d jotted notes in the books in our secret room.
I tore it open, my hopes lifted at the prospect of a message at last. Please, please, please don’t hate me anymore.
But it wasn’t a letter. It was a flyer for another open mic night at the King Theatre. Whoever sent it had circled the part where it said, SHARE YOUR TALENT! But there was no note. Not even a scribble in the margin.
There was, however, a little starburst shape in the bottom corner announcing a cash prize to be awarded to the winner of this month’s event. It didn’t say how much, but there were four dollar signs and a couple of exclamation marks. So it had to be more than a few dollars. Maybe fifty or a hundred? It was something, though. A trip to the grocery store. New shoes for the twins.
“What’s that?” Mom stood at the top of the attic stairs, holding freshly laundered sheets.
“Nothing.” I shoved it into my backpack.
I had told James about open mic night, how Molly wanted me to do it with her. And he’d encouraged me. Show up and sing to the tombstones, he had said. Do it for yourself. And a cash prize? That was an even better incentive, since my job hunt wasn’t going so well. I started to fantasize that maybe it was even more than a hundred dollars. Maybe two hundred. Two fifty. Five hundred? Mom wouldn’t have to worry about day-to-day expenses for a week or two.
“Everything okay?” Mom dropped the sheets on my desk chair.
I smiled, my heart racing. “Sure. Everything’s great.”
She flicked a quick glance toward my backpack, then reached over to strip my bed. Mom had employed a maid when we lived in Westside. Now she held a job and did all the housework, too. The apartment was small, but I swear she cleaned it three times as much as our old house. Or maybe I just noticed it now. It was surprising how much I hadn’t noticed before.
I took an edge of the clean sheet.
“Thanks, sweetie,” she said.
When we finished (she insisted on hospital corners), I waited for her to disappear down the stairs before retrieving the flyer. Maybe Molly had sent it. But why would she be so secretive? We’d talked about working on a song together, maybe trying our back-and-forth duel between piano and clarinet. She had no reason to send an anonymous flyer. She would’ve just walked down the road and shoved it into my hand.
It had to be James.
I folded and unfolded the ad, tracing my fingers over the words he’d circled: SHARE YOUR TALENT! Would he be there? Or watching somehow? If this was the way to reach him, if it would prove to him that I cared, there was only one thing to do.
It just happened to be the one thing that terrified me most.
I went to the secret room first thing Friday morning and opened my copy of Jane Eyre, almost expecting to find the page blank—that I’d imagined the whole thing. But the note was still there.
So serious? Love me some J.E., but what do you read for laughs?
I pulled out the envelope that the flyer had come in, set it next to the note from James. There was no mistaking they were written by the same person.
I slumped into the old library chair and stared at the flyer again. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t get up and sing in front of all those people.
But I had to. Not only for James, but the prize money . . . I had to do this.
The next open mic night was less than a week away. Next Thursday. A crazy assortment of songs raced through my mind, tumbling over each other. I needed to pick one that would speak to him. Or maybe . . .
I pulled out a notebook.
Ours wasn’t a love song. Not yet. It was a song of finding him when I needed someone. Of making mistakes. Realizing I didn’t have to fake it anymore. He’d been there for me, and I’d let him down.
I got up and peeked into the outer supply closet, to make sure nobody was there. Then I locked myself in the secret room.
It wasn’t easy without my piano. I thought about the moment James and I first met by the hedges, tried putting it into words. “Caught by surprise, leaves in my hair . . .”
I wrote it down. More lyrics came. And along with it, a melody. I bent over my notebook and scribbled, singing along. “. . . Rusty bicycle, you didn’t care . . .”
Soon, my pencil could barely keep up. The song fell out of nowhere onto my lips. It didn’t come out perfectly. Words didn’t always rhyme where they should, but the message was there. “All I knew was a mistake, my world a lie, my life a fake . . .”
I wrote and erased and wrote some more. I tried to imagine the piano accompaniment. Moody and slow, eerie almost, then building faster and louder like thunder before a final calm. I couldn’t wait to lay my hands on a piano. When I’d done as much as I could with paper and pencil, I gathered my notebook and bag and ran for the band room.
The band was in there.
I laughed at myself, how making music made me oblivious to everything around me sometimes. Like the fact that school was in session.
It was nearly eleven. I’d missed my first two classes, so I scurried to my third-period trigonometry class. Took my seat in front of Reesa. She didn’t say anything but tapped my shoulder. When I twisted around, she handed me a sheet of paper.
It was an assignment from English.
“Thanks,” I said.
She nodded. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. We still were not officially talking. Our communication had advanced from icy glares to the occasional grunt or nod. I caught her watching me with Molly and Rigby, and she caught me watching her with Willow and Wynn.
I’m pretty sure I’d landed in the happier place. She kind of looked like a kidnap victim afraid to risk an escape from her captors.
Molly and I sat on the curb outside her house Friday after school, soaking up the last few rays of Indian summer sunshine. We were trying to make a playlist of music for the party.
“No Lucinda Williams,” I said. “Too depressing.”
“Yeah, but if I hear that song ‘Happy’ one more time, I’m going to scream. It’s like the song that will never die.”
“Don’t forget, Rigby is making a song list, too.” I glanced sideways at Molly and we both started laughing. Rigby had turned out to have eclectic taste in music.
“I love that kid,” said Molly, “but what was that drum-circle thing he was playing the other day?”
“I liked it,” I said, still laughing. “It felt very, I don’t know . . . primitive.”
“If you’re into that sort of thing,” said Molly. “Personally, I’ve never been a fan of the didgeridoo.”
We played songs back and forth until Lennie’s Jeep drove up to the corner. He beeped his horn and waved for us to come over.
“I’ll go see what he wants,” I said.
I jogged to the road and leaned on the open passenger-side window. “What’s up?”
“I’m making a trip to the junkyard,” he said. “Wanna come? Now’s your big chance.” He waggled his eyebrows like it was the most tempting invitation imaginable.
Lennie had promised, or rather dared me to go with him engine-surfing (his term) at the junkyard. Once a week or so, he scoured the new arrivals for p
arts. I made the mistake of saying it sounded like fun, and he went on and on about the thrill of the hunt. When I busted up laughing and told him I was kidding, he said I definitely had to go. He would prove how much fun it was.
“Sounds like a blast, Len,” I said. “Really. But I promised Molly we’d get a song list ready for the party. You’re coming, aren’t you?”
“You mean to the party in my own backyard?” he said. “Yeah, I’ll probably be there.”
“I’m glad,” I said.
Lennie gave me a thumbs-up and threw Molly a salute.
I skipped back to the curb in front of her house and sat down.
“Call me crazy,” she said, “but I’d say Hypothetical Guy is plenty aware that you exist.”
“Huh?”
“Lennie. He’s Hypothetical Guy, right?”
“What? No! Why would you think that?”
“Oh.” Molly looked away with a pursed-lip smile. “No reason.”
“He’s not,” I said. “Absolutely, totally not.”
FORTY
Mom woke me early on Saturday for our second food pantry run. We knew what to expect this time, but that only made us dread it more. We needed the food, though. Mom had served a meal she called “mixed steamed grill” the night before. It was basically little bowls of whatever we had leftover from the last few nights, and some mashed potatoes she whipped up with an egg and fried.
We pulled into the parking lot of the Northbridge Methodist Church. Again, we sat and watched for a while, working up the nerve to get in line for our number. I recognized some of the people we’d seen last month. But I didn’t see Chandra or Rigby anywhere.
“I don’t know that I’ll ever get used to this.” Mom let out a sigh. “Let’s go.”
We got in line.
As the door opened, the same man from last month started handing out numbers. We were seventy-five.
Mom said, “Any idea how long it will be?” Like we were in line for a table at a restaurant.
“Thirty, maybe forty minutes,” he said.
She nodded. “Let’s wait in the car.” Mom started to walk away, but I turned back to the man.
“Is the church open?” I asked. I remembered there was a piano, when James and I were here last. And I hadn’t had a chance to play the song I’d written yet. This was the perfect opportunity.
He nodded. “Around front. Sanctuary’s straight ahead.”
“I’ll meet you back here,” I called to Mom, and bolted around the corner before she could argue.
But I didn’t go inside right away. I looped around to the side that faced the cemetery. Crossing the church parking lot, I followed the path James and I had taken to the giant oak tree. I even sprinted to the top of the hill to recapture the breathless intensity of that day, to remember how he’d made me feel. To remember him. We’d been apart now longer than we’d been together.
Was I hanging on to nothing? It didn’t matter.
I dropped onto the bench that overlooked the cemetery. Something was lying in the grass in front of the Robertsons’ tombstone. I went over to get a closer look.
Daisies. Fresh cut.
I spun around, searching for him. “James?” I called.
It was a cloudy day, and the sound of my voice seemed to disappear into the gray.
The only other soul in the cemetery was an elderly man. He stood in front of a stone for several minutes with his hands clasped in front of him, then turned and hobbled slowly away.
I was alone.
I made my way back to the church and went in the same doors that James and I had entered to find a telephone. I peered into the sanctuary. It was empty, and so was the room to the side where I’d seen the piano that day.
“Anybody here?” I called out.
James told me the pastor kept it all open so people would feel free to come and go as they pleased. So I went in. The piano sat in the corner, past a long table filled with artificial flower centerpieces. I looked toward the doorway to make sure nobody was there, lifted the lid from the piano keys, and sat down to play.
It came out mostly as I’d imagined, with a few surprises from today’s visit to the cemetery. An intricate, somewhat frenzied bit was my heart racing, searching for him. Then it calmed and ended sweetly. The happy ending I hoped for.
I sat motionless, breathless, for a few minutes.
Clap, clap, clap.
I gasped, turning to the sound of a single pair of hands, applauding from a dark corner.
“Beautiful,” said a faint voice. A figure stepped into the light. It was the elderly man from the cemetery. “This is why I leave the church open.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I tried to find someone to ask . . .”
He hushed my apology. “Come again. Whenever you like. Maybe you can perform for our congregation someday.”
I bit back my usual reaction to dismiss such a suggestion as ludicrous, and smiled instead. “Someday,” I said.
Running around to the food pantry entrance, I heard the man announcing “Up to eighty!” on his microphone, and saw Mom walking in.
“Mom!” I called.
She turned, looking peeved. “Where—”
“There was a piano inside,” I said breathlessly.
That’s all I had to say.
FORTY-ONE
The days leading up to open mic night and our Halloween party spilled together, an abstract painting of my rising panic. I hadn’t told anyone I was planning to perform, since it was scary enough knowing James might be in the audience. I didn’t want a hoard of friends and family showing up. But keeping it secret was only making me more nervous.
If Reesa hadn’t been mad at me, I would’ve told her, but . . .
“Hey!” Molly snapped me out of my wishful thinking. I’m not sure how long she’d been sitting there across the lunch table. “Where were you just now?”
I smiled. I had to tell someone. “Open mic night. Onstage. Scared shitless.”
“Seriously?” Her eyes widened. “You’re going to do it?”
I looked around, made sure nobody was listening. Swallowed. “Yeah,” I said. “Don’t tell anybody. Can you come? I might need someone to drag me off the stage if I freeze up.”
Molly grinned. “First of all, you’re not going to do that. You’re going to be awesome. And second of all, I wouldn’t miss it. Friday?”
“No,” I said. “It’s Thursday.”
“I’ll be there. Do you need a ride? I . . . wait.” She opened her bag and pulled out the little agenda she used to keep track of homework assignments. “Shit. I can’t go.”
“Why not?” My voice was suddenly all whiny and pleading. I hadn’t realized how badly I wanted someone to be there with me. To get me through it.
“It’s my dad’s birthday,” she said.
Her dead father’s birthday. “Oh.”
“Not a good night to leave Mom home alone,” she said. “We’re going to my dad’s favorite restaurant. There will be crying involved.”
“I understand,” I said.
“I’m hoping it gets easier. Last year was a bitch.” She returned to her sandwich until she realized I wasn’t eating. “You want me to help you rehearse? You look like you need a fix.”
I smiled. “I do. But the band room is occupied by the jazz band. So annoying.”
She snort-laughed. “How rude of them. You could always use the piano in the choir room.”
“There’s a piano in the choir room?”
She looked at me like I was an idiot. “You’re kidding.”
I skipped lunch that day and again Thursday so I could practice. But the song changed every time I played it. I was so distracted, obsessing over how to fix it. Reesa would’ve noticed something was wrong. But Molly was busy with everyone who kept running over to RSVP for our party.
“What if all these people actually come?” She held up the list she was keeping in her Trig notebook.
“Maybe we should decorate or something,” I s
aid. “I think my mom has some Christmas lights we could drape around the trees.”
Molly nodded toward Willow, who was racing up and down the halls like a lunatic. Our party was getting all the buzz, and it was sending Willow over the top of crazy. She kept reminding people about the amazing band her mom hired, and the caterer. Don’t forget the caterer! All this time I thought people cared about that stuff. But somehow, our promise of a bag of chips and maybe some dip was going head to head with her beef tenderloin wraps and stuffed mushrooms. And we weren’t losing.
It was Halloween, after all, and Lakeside was a helluva lot scarier than Willow Goodwin’s well-appointed living room. Our “come as you are” theme was appealing, too. Guys were not interested in dressing like it was the Roaring Twenties. They had no idea how to dress for the 1920s.
Willow was putting the full-court press on everybody she knew, collecting RSVPs like votes in an election. “Can I count on you?” “I’m counting on you!”
Molly and Rigby and I watched it all like the circus it was. We just wanted our little party of outcasts to have fun.
“You haven’t told me what you’re wearing,” said Molly. For a second I thought she was talking about open mic night, and almost described the shimmery purple dress Dad had rescued from our old house. I had snuck it out of Mom’s closet, along with a pair of black heels. But what to wear for Halloween?
“I have no idea,” I said.
“Come on. You’re just not telling me.”
I smiled, wishing that was the case.
“Fine.” She crossed her arms. “I’m not telling, either.”
The morning of open mic night I spotted Reesa standing in front of her locker—staring into its depths. She’d been doing a lot of that lately. Then she’d sort of “wake up” and look around and almost catch me watching her—just as I kept almost catching her watching me. Even Molly had noticed it. She said, “Talk to her. She clearly wants you to.”
I wanted to tell her about open mic night. I wanted her to be there. But every time I thought to approach her, I’d remember how she’d slammed the gate to her driveway in my face that day. I don’t think I could take it if I told her about my performance and she didn’t show up. Not with her knowing how scary it was for me.
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