“What?”
His irises glowed yellowish like that tiger’s-eye stone she had when she was a kid. “Stay out of my dreams,” he said, suddenly serious.
“Stay out of what?”
“My dreams.”
Maybe this really was going in that direction. “You dreamed about me?”
“You’re quick.”
“What’d you dream?”
“If you think I’m telling you, you’re out of your mind.”
“Okay, I’m out of my mind.”
“I never should’ve brought it up.” Now his foot was tapping the sustain pedal. The piano shook slightly every time he pressed down on it.
“But you did,” she said, wiping her sweaty palms on her pants. “You must want to tell me.”
“Trust me, I don’t.”
“If you’re trying to make me beg, I’m not gonna.”
“Good. I don’t want you to.”
Anabelle felt her heart rate rising as Jonah increased the speed of his foot tapping. She grabbed his knee. “You’re driving me crazy,” she told him.
His foot froze.
“Please tell me,” she said, her hand still clutching his knee.
“No,” he insisted.
“Why not?”
“Because,” he said. “It was disturbing.”
Anabelle didn’t get to hear exactly what was so disturbing because just as she was about to ask, there were footsteps running down the basement stairs. Footsteps too light to be Matt’s. Still, she jumped up off the piano bench, trying to breathe deeply to stop the redness that she was sure was rushing to her face.
And then there was humming—a girl’s voice humming “Don’t Tell Mama,” another hit from Cabaret. Thank God, it was just Lexi. She pranced into the basement doing her dance routine, her high blond ponytail bouncing with each fishnet-legged kick. When she saw Anabelle and Jonah, she halted, her arm midair. “Um, am I, like, interrupting something?” she asked.
“No, of course not,” Anabelle said, rushing up to Lexi. “I was actually just about to come find you. I haven’t seen you all night!” She plopped down on the threadbare carpeted steps and pulled Lexi into the spot next to her.
“Where’s my brother?” Lexi asked, still looking suspicious. Her vinyl bustier creaked with every movement.
“In his room,” Jonah answered quickly, swinging around on the piano bench to face them. “Probably passed out by now.”
“Good,” Lexi said. “I’m not in the mood for his mopeyness right now. It’s enough to have to deal with the play being over. It’s like giving up your baby for adoption. Only worse, because there’s no chance you’ll ever get to see it again. Plus, I can’t believe how many seniors there are. Way more than last year. We’re losing like half our actors.”
“Funny,” Jonah said, “Anabelle and I were just talking about how she’s leaving us, too.”
“Don’t remind me,” Lexi said, sinking her chin into her hands.
He smirked. “I was just telling her how she’s gonna be a dude magnet.”
Lexi tightened her ponytail. “Oh, totally,” she said. “But how disappointed will they be when they find out she’s basically married?”
“We had actually moved past that onto another topic,” Anabelle jumped in, not liking where they were going. “Jonah had a dream about me. He says it’s disturbing.”
Lexi slapped her knees excitedly. “Yeah? What happened in it?”
Jonah shot Anabelle a you-are-going-to-regret-this look. “Nothing,” he snapped.
“Something must’ve happened if it was so disturbing,” Lexi said. “What’d she do? Try to kill you? Bore you to death with jazz theory?”
“Shut up,” Anabelle said. “If I were going to kill him, I’d do something more effective. Drop a piano on his head maybe.”
“Is that what she did, Jonah?” Lexi teased. “Or was it more of an S-and-M type of thing? C’mon, you know Anabelle would make a hot dominatrix.”
This was Lexi’s latest obsession. Trying to convince Anabelle she should be more of a bad girl. Last week she’d talked Anabelle into trying on her Cabaret costume. Anabelle had stood around in it for five never-ending minutes while Lexi giggled—gleefully? mockingly?—and then finally agreed to undo all the little hook-and-eye closures in the back. Very, very slowly.
“She was dripping hot wax on your nipples, wasn’t she?” Lexi prodded.
Jonah glared at her, exhaling loudly through his nostrils.
Lexi shot up. “Well, sorry it had come to this, but you’ve really left us no choice,” she said in that singsong tone she used when she was about to do something that was fun for her but not for the person she was about to do it to.
Anabelle knew what was coming. It was a well-known fact that Jonah was crazy ticklish. Really, you just had to wiggle your fingers by his neck to get him going.
Lexi charged Jonah and dug into his stomach. “Help me!” she called to Anabelle as Jonah thrashed around.
Anabelle reluctantly got up and joined in. She tickled Jonah along his ribs, his sides, his gut. She realized she’d never touched another grown guy in these places aside from Matt. Jonah felt different—stronger and more squishy all at the same time. Under his armpit was really warm. A little damp. When she tickled him there, he dropped to the floor, laughing uncontrollably. It was the kind of laugh that sounded like it hurt.
He rolled around, struggling, then forcefully grabbed hold of Anabelle’s wrists. “Stop!” he screamed, his face red and tear-streaked. “Seriously, stop!”
Anabelle choked on her breath. Lexi jumped back and let go of him as if he were a pot of boiling water she’d just grabbed without oven mitts.
Jonah stood up, lifting Anabelle by her wrists, and slammed her against the wall. “You want to know what it was about?”
She nodded, not sure if she really did anymore.
“Jesus, Jonah, let go of her,” Lexi said. “We were just messing with you.”
Jonah loosened his grip. But he leaned down and put his nose right up against Anabelle’s. “I dreamed I was lying in my bed,” he said. “On my back. And you came flying into my room. Gliding through the air. And you stopped right above me. Just hung there, floating.” His breath was hot on her upper lip. “And then you kissed me. And kissed me and kissed me. And it just wouldn’t stop.”
“Wow,” Lexi said. “That is disturbing.”
That night, as Anabelle lay awake in her bed, she felt as if her insides might erupt right out of her skin like molten lava. She wanted to scream; she wanted to break something.
But she had to keep quiet. Her little twin sisters were asleep in the bunk bed on the other side of the room.
She got up, thinking maybe she’d call Matt. She’d left his house without saying goodbye. The plan had been for her to sleep over, like she did most Saturday nights, but somehow tonight she felt like she’d rather be woken up by her sisters at dawn than get to sleep in in Lexi’s room. Plus, she had thought the walk home would clear her head. It didn’t.
She crept downstairs, knowing exactly where to place her foot on each step to avoid creaking. In the kitchen she picked up the phone. She started to dial, then hung up. Matt would probably be unintelligible by now and talking to him would just make her feel worse.
She went to the bathroom, flipped on the light, and sat on the cold tiles, wishing she could make the queasiness in her stomach go away. Maybe you can, she thought. She raised the toilet seat and leaned over the bowl, sticking her finger down her throat. This was how you did it, right? She’d seen kids at parties make themselves throw up this way when they’d had too much to drink.
Nothing would come out, though, no matter how hard she strained. All it did was gag her.
She stood up and looked in the mirror. Her skin was all gray. Tiny purple blood vessels circled her eyes. She stared at her zombie-esque face for a minute or two, then went digging through her mother’s makeup bag looking for some concealer. Just in case she wasn’t herse
lf by morning.
{ A MIX TAPE for the BEARS }
tobin wood
When Tobin pulled his dad’s Woodworks Plumbing van onto the Fletchers’ car-packed lawn, he saw something truly horrible in his headlights: the profile of a girl sitting on the trampoline, banging her brains out with her fist. The worst part about it was, it was Anabelle Seulliere, the only reason he’d come to Matt’s graduation party to begin with. Each time she pounded her head, her corkscrew curls shook violently—those curls that were a girl version of his. Those curls that made him wonder during concerts if people noticed they looked alike and thought they belonged together.
You’ve gotta do something, Tobin thought. But what? Maybe she didn’t want to see anyone right now. And shouldn’t the person comforting her be her spoiled brat of a boyfriend? Or was he the one who’d made her this upset?
Tobin was having trouble thinking because of the racket coming from the house. Sounded like some band was “rocking out,” as wannabe musicians called it. All he could hear was a blast of unsteady bass and drums. How is it possible to rock out, he wondered, if you can’t keep a beat?
Suddenly Anabelle started hitting herself with both fists at the same time. She was doing it so hard, Tobin was afraid she might crack her skull.
He slammed on the gas, heading across the lawn toward the trampoline. Anabelle squinted into the headlights, then dove down into the net as if hiding from him. Great, he thought. Am I supposed to pretend I didn’t see her? But there was no turning back now. He’d probably have to circle around the trampoline just to turn back, anyway; despite all of his dad’s training, Tobin still wasn’t any good at reversing in the van with no rearview mirror.
He stopped alongside the trampoline and rolled down his window. Anabelle was sprawled out, facedown. She didn’t sit up. Maybe it wasn’t too late to sneak off unnoticed. No, he couldn’t do that. What if she was really in trouble? But what if she didn’t want him to be the one to help her? Jesus, stop being such a wimp, he told himself. Just talk to her.
“Anabelle?” he said finally.
No answer. Maybe he didn’t say it loudly enough for her to hear him over the rock stars? Or maybe she wanted him to leave. Yeah, probably.
Just as he was about to drive away, he heard a faint Mmhmm and Is that you, Tobin?
“Yeah, it’s me,” he said, thrilled that she recognized his voice.
“Did you, um, see me just now?” It was a little hard to make out what she was saying—she seemed to have her face pressed into the trampoline net. Tobin wondered if he could just pretend he hadn’t heard her and let the question go.
But she asked again: “Did you see all those mosquitoes flying around my head? I was swatting and swatting at them.”
He had this feeling that she knew that he knew she was lying. It was too early for mosquito season. And those punches she was giving herself were not little bug-killing smacks. But he went along with it anyway, relieved she’d cleared the air with an excuse. “They’re gone now?” he asked. “The mosquitoes, I mean.” Duh, what else would he mean?
“Yeah, they’re gone.”
“Um, do you want me to go away?” he asked. “I mean, you can be alone if you want. I just, y’know, you asked me to come to the party.” He looked over at the house. Through the living-room windows he could see college pennants hanging from the ceiling in a row of colorful pointy triangles. Matt’s little sister was standing on the couch directing a game or something—she always seemed to figure out how to be in charge even when it wasn’t her party. Kids mingled around her in pre-hookup mode, the room dotted with red plastic beer cups. In a smaller window below that one he saw Matt Fletcher’s bearded face bouncing around, a guitar in his hands. So that’s where he was. “There isn’t really anyone else in there I want to see,” he told Anabelle. “But I don’t mind if you don’t want me to—”
“No, stay,” she said, cutting him off. “I don’t want to see anyone in there either.” Wow, did that mean she and Matt were fighting? Did that mean he had a shot with her?
Who was he kidding? She’d never split up with Matt.
The drums gave one last shimmery bash and then, thank God, the so-called music was over. Matt’s head disappeared from the basement window and Tobin hoped he wasn’t coming outside.
Tobin shut off his headlights but stayed in the still-running van, pushing his thumbs through holes in the sleeves of his hoodie and drumming them against the steering wheel. A chorus of crickets chirped all around him. If he listened carefully he could hear one that stood out—offbeat but still part of the group somehow. The soloist in the choir.
“So are you gonna join me or what?” Anabelle asked. She sounded annoyed.
“Oh. Right, yeah, of course.” God, why was he so retarded when it came to girls? Or, girl, really. Anabelle was the only one who turned him into such an idiot. “I was, uh, just getting something.” He reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a tape labeled FOR ANNABELLE.
Tobin loved the rattly feeling of a cassette tape in his hands. Cassettes were old-school and romantic. You could record onto them and practice from them and play them in your parents’ beat-up cars. And he knew that Anabelle felt the same way. It was the first thing they’d ever bonded over.
Before this moment, here’s how Tobin had imagined the handoff of the FOR ANNABELLE tape going down: He’d be saying goodbye to her after having not talked to her enough at the party. Then he’d pull the tape out of his pocket, push it into her hands, and kind of run away like the nervous freak that he was. Never in a million years did he think he’d be able to share this tape with her, live and in-person—to actually see her reaction to it.
Okay, here goes, Tobin thought. His hand quivered slightly as he popped the cassette into the stereo and pressed play.
He got out of the van and hoisted himself onto the trampoline, then sat a safe distance from Anabelle, who still hadn’t budged from her uncomfortable-looking facedown position. Should you have sat closer to her? he wondered as the hiss of the recording kicked in. Just, like, a foot closer? And then in came the piano, beginning with four bars of sparse chords. Next, the cello with its soft sweeping melody. Tobin imagined that this was him on cello, with Anabelle on piano, and that he was looking deep into her pale green sea-glass eyes, following her slow and steady tempo. He wondered if she was picturing playing the piece with him, too.
You definitely should’ve sat closer to her, he thought. But it would probably seem strange to do that at this point. Too obvious and predatory. Maybe he could offer her his hoodie? It was still a little too cold to be outside in just a T-shirt and her arms were covered in goose bumps.
“This is nice,” Anabelle said when the violin came in, joining the piano and cello. “What is it?”
“Oh, the music?” Tobin said, as if he didn’t even realize it was on—as if it had just randomly started playing in his car. “Schubert’s Piano Trio in B-flat. The slow movement.” He was glad she liked it but decided he’d wait till later to tell her the tape was for her, that it was, in fact, an entire mix of pieces they could play together. Maybe. Someday. If she wanted to.
“It’s so sad,” she said.
“But in a good way, right?” He hoped she wasn’t changing her mind about liking it.
“No, in a totally good way.” For the first time, she turned to look at him. Her forehead and nose were imprinted with the grid of the net. “You know what it makes me feel like?”
“What?”
“Lie down like me,” she told him. “With your face in the trampoline.”
He did. And in the process got a little closer to her—still leaving just enough space so that they weren’t touching. He hoped she wouldn’t freak out and think he was coming on to her. But she was the one who’d said to lie down, so he figured he wasn’t breaking any boundaries.
“See all that grass down there?” she asked.
Hovering over the lawn, all he could see was grass. “Yeah, I see it,” he said. His vo
ice cracked a little because he was thinking about moving his sneaker over to touch hers, which, of course, he didn’t.
“So this music,” she said, “it makes me feel like, even though I’m looking at a whole bunch of grass, all I can see is a single blade.”
This was what was great about Anabelle. She spoke so poetically about music. Tobin knew what he liked and what he didn’t like, but talking about it never came naturally to him. “That is the absolute most perfect way to describe it,” he told her.
“You’re just saying that,” she said. “You don’t even know what I mean.”
“No, I do. I know exactly what you mean.”
“Prove it.”
“That single blade you’re looking at?” he said. “I’m looking at the same one.”
“Yeah?” She giggled. “Which one?”
“That one right ... there.” As he pointed, his finger brushed her cheek. He quickly withdrew his hand, but she didn’t even seem to notice he’d touched her.
“You mean the one farthest to the right in the clump under my nose?” she asked with the delight of a four-year-old.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s the one!”
He was suddenly overcome with the desire to kiss her. Out here in the dark, no one would ever know. What is wrong with you? he asked himself. She’s got a boyfriend.
“Tobin?” Anabelle said as the dainty last notes of the trio faded and the spooky chords of the next piece started up. It was Beethoven’s Sonata for Piano and Cello no. 2 in G Minor. He couldn’t wait to hear how she’d describe this one.
“Yeah?” He glanced up to see if she’d moved her face out of the net. She hadn’t, so he put his back down, too. He kind of liked this position. He felt like a superhero. Well, one who could only fly three feet above the ground. But still.
“You seem like you can keep a secret.”
Yes! She saw him as trustworthy. “Sure, I can do that,” he said. “Who would I tell, anyway?”
“I’m kinda having this problem,” she confessed. She was tapping one of her fingers on the net in time with the music. She must’ve picked up on the gorgeous way the rhythm had just changed.
The View from the Top Page 2