by Kristen Mae
“Will you play for me sometime?”
I flick open the top sheet. “You like classical music?”
“Totally. My dad used to take me to see the orchestra when I was little. It relaxes me.”
“See, I don’t think classical music is relaxing at all.” I smirk as I tuck the sheet in, my back to her. “Some pieces are, sure, but the stuff from the Romantic era, it’s intense as fuck, so raw and gritty and just…it makes me want to throw myself out a window. Oh, for shit’s sake, did I seriously forget to bring a pillow?” I wave my hands as if I can conjure a pillow from thin air for the empty pillowcase dangling from my hand.
Daphne is shaking with silent laughter. “Use one of mine until you get a chance to go to the store. I have like five.” She tosses a pillow at me and I catch it reflexively.
Shit. What if I still have lice nits in my hair? What if I sleep on her pillow and infect her? But I don’t know how to turn down a stupid pillow without looking like a freak. I accept the pillow—a dreamy, feather-down cloud of happiness—but I do at least replace her pillowcase with mine.
“Anyway,” she says, reopening her laptop. “I’d love to hear you play sometime.”
“Okay.” I spread my quilt over top of the sheets and set Gerta in front of Daphne’s pillow. The hippo stares at me like she’s embarrassed I put her on display so shamelessly. I snap a pic for Liza, then transfer my clothes from my suitcase to the dresser. Three of the five drawers are still empty. Lame. I stuff my duffel in my suitcase and tuck them, along with my laundry basket, into my closet.
“Oh, and by the way,” Daphne says, her eyes on her laptop screen. “Anytime I’m not using my computer, you’re welcome to it. I’ll create you your own profile so we don’t have to worry about mixing files, okay?”
I lower myself to my bed, trying to act cool, but I can feel the heat beneath my skin. Like I want to be my roommate’s charity case. “You don’t need to do that,” I tell her. “I can use the computer lab.”
She shrugs. “Just sayin’.” Her laptop screen casts a bluish glow on her pale face. “So…do you party?”
“You mean…like drugs?” What does that have to do with computers? Is she worried I’ll get high and break it?
She laughs. “Well, maybe, but I meant do you go to parties?”
Oh. We’re not talking about computers anymore. “Sure, sometimes.” If you count going down the street to drink beer from a keg in someone’s yard.
“I had to ask, I mean, with the double major thing and the cello thing…and I bet you were valedictorian and president of the honor society, too.”
She thinks I don’t get out much. “I did get valedictorian.”
She lets loose a loud, barking laugh. “Are you for real? Oh my god, that is hilarious. And president of the honor society? Did I guess that right too?”
I can’t help grinning. “Not quite. Just a member, and only by default because of my grades. I’m not a ‘run-for-office’ kind of girl.” I even make the air quotes.
“I was president of my student body,” she says with a hurt look.
“Oh, I mean—it’s totally cool to be—”
“I’m kidding,” she says, laughing. “Seriously, I know I’m a walking cliché. I was a cheerleader too, and I got homecoming queen. My hair is even naturally blond.”
My roommate is a homecoming queen? I stare at her, trying to stop myself from making a snap judgment. The homecoming queen at my school was not a nice person. Not to me, anyway.
“I just figured I’d get that out of the way in case you’re one of those people who hates homecoming queens just…because.” Now she’s blushing.
“I…I don’t. I don’t just…randomly hate people.” I pick guiltily at a loose thread hanging from my Goodwill quilt.
“Cool.” She leans back in her chair, does this little hair flip thing that makes me think of the popular girls from school. “So, there’s a kegger tonight at some house just off campus, walking distance. That’s why I asked about partying. Wanna go?”
“Sure,” I say, but though my voice is airy and upbeat and agreeable, in my head I’m all turned around—a little off balance. Daphne is the kind of girl who lives in a gated community with a name like Tuscan Villas. She’s not supposed to want to hang out with me. I grab Gerta the hippo and sit her on my lap, hug my arms around her.
“Sweet.” Daphne hops up and pulls a fluffy white towel from the top shelf of her closet. “I’m gonna shower. Then you wanna grab dinner and afterward come back and get ready?”
“Sounds good.”
She reaches for her shower caddy, throws her towel over her shoulder, and pulls open the door. “By the way,” she says, turning. “That hippo is cute as shit.”
Chapter Three
I’m in a bedroom—no idea whose—with a guy I met five minutes ago. It’d be pitch black but for the light seeping through the crack beneath the locked door. He’s got me pressed against the wall with his hand up my shirt, and he’s slobbering on my neck like a dog and making weird grunting noises. The confidence he so convincingly displayed at the party was profoundly misplaced. Typical. I roll my eyes in the dark and tell him to hurry—I have a friend waiting. Daphne’s out there somewhere, amid the liquor bottles and booming music, totally sloshed. She thinks I went to pee.
“Damn, girl,” he says, and I feel his palm sliding up my thigh, lifting my skirt. He pushes my underwear down clumsily, and over the muffled bump of the music outside I hear him fumbling with a condom. I should just leave him like this, with his pants down. I’m not even sure what I’m doing here, only that I had a surge of excess energy and needed to unload it somewhere, anywhere. This guy was making eyes at me, so…lucky him.
I lift a leg unceremoniously, and he shoves himself into me—downright exuberant with his thrusts. Eager fucking idiot. I know I told him to hurry, but what I really meant was How long are you going to slobber on my neck and paw at my tits? I can’t believe anyone really likes it this way.
His shoes squeak against the wood floor of whoever’s bedroom we’ve just hijacked, and he’s panting hard, completely out of sync with the music. So he’s probably also a terrible dancer. He tries to kiss me on the mouth but I give him my neck again, pretend that’s how I like it. Does he honestly not notice how utterly silent I am?
Apparently he doesn’t. After he finishes, as we’re putting our clothes back in place, he says, “That was fucking awesome. Can I call you?”
“It was ordinary and uninspired.” I stare into the darkness where I know his face is. “And no, you can’t call me.”
I leave the room, blinking against the bright light of the hallway as I go in search of Daphne. She won’t have missed me; I was only gone a few minutes.
* * *
Almost there. I hoist Daphne up the few steps to the door and swipe my key card to let us in.
She lays her head on my shoulder as we shuffle through the lobby. “You’re such a nice person, Malory, just, oh my god, such a nice person.”
“You’ve known me a whole twelve hours.” I smile and roll my eyes. She’s still leaning on me, hunched over with her head on my shoulder. I stare down at her face. “You’re not gonna puke on me, are you?”
“I sure fucking hope not.” She belches, and I will the elevator to hurry up. Our room is only one flight up, but no way am I climbing even that far with her hanging on me.
“I’m sorry you don’t have parents, Malory. That’s sad.”
Whoa, what? The elevator clatters open and we stumble inside. “What makes you think I don’t have parents?”
“You came all by yourself today.”
My chest tightens. “They’re just…not around.” She doesn’t need to hear my sob story. And I’m in no mood to tell it.
“Well, I’m sorry about that, then.”
Back in our room, I pull her covers down for her and she falls into bed with her clothes on. I tuck her in like a mother would tuck in a child, pulling the covers up to her chin and tur
ning off the overhead light so that the only light now comes from the glow of the pink lamp on Daphne’s desk. It reminds me of my own mother, how she used to tuck Liza and me into bed every night. She was so tenderhearted and kind. Mom never yelled at us, not unless she needed us to hide, fast.
I’m still sitting on the edge of Daphne’s bed when it begins to shake. I lean in for a closer look. She’s crying—actually crying. I almost laugh, thinking she’s dissolved into drunken melodrama, but she looks so sad that I stop myself. “Hey, it’s okay,” I tell her. I feel like I should put a hand on her arm or something to soothe her, but I don’t know her well yet, and I don’t want to be weird.
“Sorry, I don’t mean to cry—I think I’ve just been…” She wipes a tear away with a perfectly manicured finger. “It’s a lot, to be away from my parents for the first time—oh god, I sound like such a baby!”
“No…no, you don’t.” But she kind of does. Her parents only left this afternoon. Two parents. Both alive and nice and normal and sane. She has pink storage bins and inspirational posters. A rainbow of brand new clothes in her closet.
“No, it’s not that. I mean, for my mom…for me to be away…it’s hard for her.” She sits up and reaches for a tissue from her desk. “I’m not just her daughter…”
“Not just her—?” The golden glow of Daphne’s lamp gives me the impression we’re in a bubble by ourselves. A group of students bustles noisily by in the hallway outside, but they seem worlds away.
“Ugh, I’m being super cryptic. Sorry.” She sniffles and dabs at her eyes with the tissue. “My sister, she was amazing—just like you, musically talented. She played the piano. And she was so kind and generous and good at everything. She was perfect, really, just so perfect.”
“Was?” But I know where she’s going with this. I feel like an asshole now.
“She died.”
“I’m sorry, I—”
“And after that, my mom put everything into me, you know?” Daphne looks up at me, her dark eyes shiny in the dim light.
I nod. I understand how that can happen, how when you lose someone you love that much, you end up carrying around a mountain of displaced love. Refugee love. There’s no place to put it, and it’s a terrible, oppressive burden, so you start unloading it, dumping it onto whoever you can, whoever is closest. Liza and I did that after Mom died. I’d be dead if we hadn’t.
“So it’s like I’m two people now,” Daphne’s saying. “Like I have to do enough living for both. I have to be careful, I have to be safe. I have to get everything right. And here I am running around piss-ass drunk—”
“Hey, you’re at college. Besides, that’s an awfully big burden—”
“I can’t disappoint her. I just can’t. I know it’s not fair. But it’s how I feel, and I don’t know any other way to feel.”
I nod again. I get that. Probably more than she knows.
“Go to sleep now,” I say, pulling her covers back up for her. “You’ll feel better tomorrow.”
“Unless I’m hung over,” she sighs.
I get up and grab a bottle of water from the mini-fridge in the corner. “Drink this, you’ll be fine.”
“God, you’re nice.” She uncaps the water and takes a sip. “You know, I was really worried I was gonna get a freak for a roommate.”
I switch off her lamp and climb into my own bed. “I was worried I was gonna get a homecoming queen.”
“Fuck you,” she says, but I can hear the smile in her voice.
“Fuck you too.”
“Night.”
“Night.”
* * *
Conch Garden’s downtown is much like Sarasota’s, but it has a college feel, with hip little cafes and organic eateries, quaint antique shops, and bars that are sleepy by day and—judging from the broken glass and cigarette butts littering the entrances—quite raucous by night. Though it’s a Monday and still very hot, it’s close to lunchtime and there’s a decent crowd milling in and out of the stores. I might actually be able to make some money here.
I roll my cello to a bench in front of an antique shop and breathe in the rich, spicy scent of incense drifting from the door. It’s a burnt kind of smell, but a nice one, at least compared to the awful stench of Aunt Bonnie’s Marlboros. I unpack my cello and plant myself on the bench, my case open in front of me for tips.
I always begin with scales. People stop and listen when I do—the human ear seems to enjoy the inherent harmonic organization. The scales in minor keys get the most attention, as they have a built-in longing, a kind of soul-stroking melancholy that reels you in. I have a memory from when I was younger, maybe ten, still playing on the first cello my parents bought me, before they had to sell it and I was forced to learn on one of the beat-up instruments from school. I was practicing a minor scale, exercising my vibrato, flexing my little finger muscles as I narrowed and widened the vibration of each note. My father came to my bedroom door and peeked in to smile at me. “That is so beautiful, Malory,” he said. “It sounds so…sad.” He leaned on the doorframe and listened for a while, his face knit with concentration. This is how I always remember him: leaning on the doorframe, staring in at me, offering tiny morsels of praise.
I played for hours that day, played that stupid minor scale for far longer than was necessary, until my fingers were too raw to practice anything else.
Today is a minor scale day, too. Liza sent me a text this morning, Sucks without you here, and is there anything more melancholy than that? She started her junior year today and feels as out of place in high school as I always did. Hang in there! You can do this! I texted back, and sent her a picture of a cheerleader waving a pair of pompoms over her head because I knew Liza would appreciate the irony.
But now my throat is all tight and I have that heavy, leaden feeling again, the certainty that I’ve done something terrible in leaving her. That I’ve abandoned her. I put my bow across my lap and wring the stiffness from my hands. After improvising for a while—variations on the minor scales—I play the slow movements from the Bach Cello Suites, putting my music down on the ground so I can read from it since I don’t have all the movements memorized yet. In spite of the heat, a small crowd gathers, and I let myself get lost in the music for them. After forty-five minutes, I’ve got what looks to be about thirty dollars in my case.
My shirt is sticking to me. I’ve worn as little clothing as possible to stay cool, just a T-backed tank and a pair of cutoff denim shorts, but the heat is pretty wicked even at this time of year. My cello needs constant retuning because the wood is expanding with the heat and pulling my strings sharp. Still, I should go another hour, I think, so I don’t have to come back again too soon.
I take a breather from playing for a moment, doing the math in my head, thinking about the pillow I still need to buy and how much groceries and gas will cost. And what if I still have lice? I shove that thought out of my head. My scalp’s not itchy, and I haven’t found anything the few times I’ve combed through to check.
I’m wiping sweat from my hairline with the back of my hand, readying to set my bow on the string, when a man from the crowd approaches. “You’re hot,” he says, and just as I’m about to roll my eyes, he holds out a bottle of water—covered in beads of condensation. He looks cool too, actually: young, maybe just a little older than me, with near-black hair and icy blue eyes.
I smile through pursed lips. I’m sure he’s going to come on to me, and I don’t want to encourage him. “I have my own water.” He is way too clean-cut, with his crisp button-down shirt and smooth-skinned hands. I bet he plays golf.
“I thought you might like a cold one.”
I shrug. “Thanks.” I take the water from him, uncap it and take a sip. Admittedly, it’s far more refreshing than my 85-degree bottle. I chug a few more sips. God, I had no idea how thirsty I was.
“Are you a student at the university?” he asks.
“I start tomorrow.”
“I thought you must be new. I’ve ne
ver seen you out here before. You play beautifully.”
Oh boy, here we go. I smile again, still through tight lips.
“If I wanted to hear you play again, where would I go, and when?”
I have to laugh. So predictable, these guys. “I have no idea. I play in the streets all the time, as long as it’s not raining and I have nowhere else to be.”
He looks into my open cello case. “Seems like you make good money doing it.”
For half a second, I’m paranoid he might try to take my money, but that’s ridiculous. This is not a guy who needs to take anything from anyone, ever. He’s too put together. Too smooth. His thick hair is shiny, tousled but natural, like it might actually sit that way without any styling at all. His khaki pants look new, or maybe freshly ironed. Who irons khakis?
“Do you live with your mom?” Did I just say that out loud? It was the ironed pants that made me say it. Jesus.
“What?” His head jerks back a little in surprise, and he laughs too, revealing a charming dimple. “No, I don’t. I live on my own.”
My face is hot now, and it’s nothing to do with the outside temperature. My perspiration rate has doubled. “Sorry, I have no idea why I just said that. I might be suffering from heat stroke.” What is wrong with me?
His dimple deepens with his smile, his eyes crinkling merrily. “The heat does make us crazy. I don’t normally go around quenching random street musicians’ thirst.”
Well, you do look like a tall glass of water, and thank god that little zinger stays in my head where it belongs. Behind him, my small audience is lingering, the little kids craning their necks like they’re hoping to hear more. “I should start playing again before I lose my listeners,” I say. I feel on display now, with this Superman clone talking to me—much more on display than when I’m playing.