Sunshine State

by Sarah Gerard

  “I’m the oldest living person born with AIDS,” he yells over the music. DJ Qwork is still spinning. I wonder how long I’ve been doing this. I really like how it feels. “I go around to high schools and old people’s homes and I talk about overcoming hardship.”

  “What do you tell them?” I say.

  Gisele and TJ return. We’re again on the balcony. Jerod is with us now. His eyes are closed and I’m rubbing his cheekbones. A bottle of Vicks VapoRub appears next to me. I wipe some under his nose. Gisele and TJ are holding hands, and we all accept it; we want them to be in love; love is beautiful. I light a cigarette. I light another off another. I make out with Jerod and then go back to making out with Gisele. I take my shirt off and empty a bottle of water over my head and lie on the floor. Gisele is in the living room spinning glow sticks, and we’re all in the back of TJ’s car riding home at sunrise.

  Vocalists are required to perform at their senior recital two Italian songs, two French, two German, and two English. We sing Mozart, Bach, Handel, Schumann, Strauss, and Berlioz. We sing Irish and American folk songs. We sing jazz. Lily’s best aria is Mozart’s “Batti, batti, o bel Massetto” from Don Giovanni. It’s passionate and heartrending; it fits her personality. Mine is Caccini’s moody madrigal, “Amarilli, mia bella,” full of torture and vibrato. Students’ private voice instructors assign six of the songs, and the other two can be songs of a student’s choosing. I plan to sing, as the songs of my choosing, Handel’s aria “Lascia ch’io pianga” from Rinaldo and “Sally’s Song” from The Nightmare Before Christmas—Gisele will be performing “Jack’s Lament.”

  I’m looking ahead to what kind of artist I want to be once I leave the protective confines of the high school. Though I like singing opera, I’m not passionate about it. Singing other people’s songs for a living doesn’t appeal to me. I’d rather sing my own. My training is in choral music, so I explore composing for choir: I take a sheet of staff paper from my music theory notebook and begin to compose an “O Magnum Mysterium,” mostly because I like the one we’ll be singing in the winter concert. I draw the treble and bass clefs and ponder the first note. All I know about composing is what I’ve learned in music theory class. I don’t play an instrument. I know little about the tradition of the form in which I’m writing. I suddenly feel like I’m attempting to write a novel knowing only the basics of English grammar. I don’t make it past the first line.

  I’ve been taking guitar lessons with my uncle and toy with the idea of pursuing a path as a singer-songwriter. I even cobble together a few songs. My guitar is an acoustic Austin I bought at Sam Ash for $300. I call it Betty—it’s definitely a lady. I like to tune Betty; tuning is something I feel I can do well. After tuning her, I like to play a G chord and then move my ring finger from the lowest string to the string above. I’m not sure what this does technically, but I feel it improves the overall sound of the chord, so I implement this trick in all of my songs. Simple and depressing, my songs employ as many combinations of E, G, D, and C chords as I can muster.

  I enjoy the singing part of being a singer-songwriter. Since childhood, I’ve trained myself in a soprano register, though I’m more comfortable singing alto. I feel that sopranos are, de facto, truer vocalists. I have a clear, high voice, and can perform complicated variations in pitch. More than any other kind of song, I enjoy ballads—the musical theater instructor once told me I sound like a country singer. But more than singing, I enjoy writing lyrics. I feel the poetry of my lyrics and the quality of my singing voice together outshine my limited proficiency with guitar. Sometimes my lyrics evolve from poems; sometimes I begin with the intention of writing lyrics and then just continue writing when I reach the end of a song. My journal entries are sprawling and emotionally wrought. A few times, I read them aloud to my parents—to communicate something otherwise ineffable? I don’t know. I consider my future persona to be an admixture of Ani DiFranco, Tori Amos, and Sylvia Plath. I have a lot of complicated feelings and someday people will care about them.

  This semester, I’m also enrolled in a photography class. Each student in the class has been assigned a camera, and I carry mine everywhere. I love feeling the weight of it around my neck. I imagine invisible rectangles framing everything. Being in the darkroom is a way to obliterate time. I love the magic of the image emerging from the white, and the smell of the chemicals. The word “aperture” sounds like kissing. “Shutter” sounds like butterflies. I begin telling my friends of my plans to pursue a path as a photojournalist—specifically in the world of rock music. I’ll be a staff photographer for Rolling Stone, I say. Traveling with my favorite bands will be my job. I’m going to see things I can never see otherwise. Just think of all the people I’ll meet.

  My parents and I go to New York City to visit colleges. We rent a room on the tenth floor of the Helmsley Hotel on Forty-Second Street. From the nearest corner, we can look west and see the lights of Times Square. It’s my first time here, and it’s night. My parents have gone to bed, and they’ve specifically told me not to leave the hotel unaccompanied. I’m outside on the curb, pointing my camera west down Forty-Second Street, bringing the distant glow into focus.

  “Whatcha lookin’ at?” says a voice behind me.

  I lower my camera and turn around. Two men in suits smile back at me. The taller one has Italian features: olive skin, thick hair, and a trimmed beard. The other is younger, lighter-skinned, with light eyes.

  “Taking pictures,” I say.

  “Are you a photographer?” says the tall one.

  “I’m just taking a class.”

  “Oh? A college class?”

  “High school.”

  He smiles slyly. “I bet there’s not even film in that camera.”

  I look down at my camera, then down at my outfit. It’s chilly; I’m wearing a baggy faux-fur Nine West jacket and closed-toed Birkenstocks. I’ve drawn all over the thighs of my jeans.

  “It has film in it,” I say. I hold the camera out to show him, pointing to the window in the back that displays the roll.

  “You know, we’re photographers,” he says.

  “Really?”

  “We are. We shoot for National Geographic.”

  “Wow,” I say.

  “How come you have your aperture stopped down so low?”

  I look at him. I know this word “aperture” and can locate it on a camera, but I don’t yet have a grasp of its function. When taking a picture, I simply turn the wheel on the top of the camera and the one on the front until the light meter is green. I can fix a good deal of my camera-related errors in the darkroom, or I feel that I can. The ones that I can’t, I simply call “abstract.”

  “I don’t really know,” I confess. “We haven’t really learned that in class, yet.”

  “Bullshit,” he says. “You’re not in high school.”

  “I am,” I say. I take my wallet out of my pocket and show him my driver’s license. In the photo, I’m wearing a burgundy Bad Kitty T-shirt, dangly earrings, and heavy eye makeup. “My birthday is right here,” I say. “I’m seventeen. I’m here visiting colleges.”

  He looks at me and then back at his friend, who’s been standing a few feet away from us while we talk. His friend smiles and shakes his head.

  “Listen,” says the tall one. “You don’t want to be taking pictures of Times Square. Everyone takes pictures of Times Square—you’re not going to take one better than they did. You need a story.”

  “What do you mean?” I say.

  “I mean a story, something to care about, with people. Come here, I’ll show you.”

  He puts his hand on my back and starts to guide me. We turn off of Forty-Second Street down a darker street that’s mostly empty. We walk quickly and silently. Midway down the block, we stop outside of a bar.

  “Here,” he says. “Look at this.”

  A man and woman smoke outside, silhouetted by a streetlight.

  “What about it?” I say.

  “What about it?
This is a story,” he says. “They’re arguing. There’s conflict.”

  He’s right—I notice it now. They aren’t yelling, but their body language is tense. Still, I don’t connect with the composition.

  “Take it,” he says. “Come on.”

  “What’s interesting about it?” I say.

  “Point the camera and take the picture. Trust me. Do it now.”

  We’re in a restaurant around the corner from the bar. They sit on one side of the table, I sit on the other. I’m trapped by the wall behind me, the window to my right, and the empty chair to my left. They ask if I want to order something and I say no. When the younger man’s coffee arrives, I say that I’m going back to my hotel.

  “No, no, wait a minute,” says the tall one. “Stay. We were just talking.”

  “I can’t,” I say. “I’m sorry, I have to go back now.”

  “Just stay for a minute.”

  “I really can’t.”

  He looks at his friend. His friend shrugs. “Let her go,” he says.

  Outside on the curb, the tall one insists on hailing me a taxi. When one arrives, the younger man climbs inside and grabs my arm and yanks me downward. I yell at him to let go, pulling backward. A twenty-dollar bill appears in his hand, and before I know it, he’s putting his hand in my jeans pocket, and stuffing the bill down inside. I jerk myself free, repeating the word “no.” The taxi pulls away. I run the three blocks back to my hotel and go directly upstairs, my heart pounding.

  My parents are awake when I come into the room. They’re angry that they don’t know where I’ve been. I lie. I tell them I was downstairs on the mezzanine floor, taking pictures from the Helmsley’s balcony.

  Back in Florida, I develop the picture I took outside the bar. I find it underexposed: the focus soft, with no details. The sign on the bar awning reads “Attitude Adjustment Hour.” I feel afraid and ashamed looking at it, knowing that this is not a picture I wanted to take; that I took it only because I was told to.

  I carry it around in my binder for weeks, wondering what to do with it, unable to let it go. Each time I remember it’s there, I feel the man’s hand again on my lower back: the way he guided me, the way I let him. I hear again his telling me that my photographs need a story. I think about this with obsessive concern each time I compress the shutter. I think about it as I write in my journal. I think about it as I play my guitar. I see the photograph in my binder each time I open it, feeling again the jolt of terror and the yank on my wrist. Over time, the jolt becomes a quick tug, then a vague sickness, then a faraway cringe.

  I can’t bring myself to tell others about that night. But the picture is nonetheless a record of it that I can’t afford to lose. Finally, feeling I can’t throw it away, I frame it and hang it on my bedroom wall.

  Miles has the idea to sell Ashley’s birth control placebo pills on the beach as ecstasy. Clearwater Beach, always packed, is their best bet. They go down to the boardwalk on a weekend, when the knickknack peddlers line up their booths on the pier and fire dancers spin by the water and college students get wasted and stumble down the strip. They repurpose the baggies their own beans came in and target dumb teenagers desperate to get high. Ashley is there to look trustworthy. Miles talks up the quality of the drug. They charge $25 a pill. They make $175.

  We meet at the duplex on a Friday night. I’ve brought clothes for sleeping over: baby blue pajama pants that I put on immediately, my elementary school T-shirt, and bunny slippers. There are glow sticks waiting in bags on the table: someone purchased them at Spencer’s Gifts earlier in the day. We’ve each brought extra packs of cigarettes and Vicks inhalers. Clark is there—by this time, I’ve decided he’s cool. Miles turns off the lights in the living room and turns on the black light above the TV. We crush our beans on the coffee table and snort them through rolled-up dollar bills. Clark rolls a blunt to facilitate our highs while the ecstasy kicks in.

  I’m sitting sideways on the couch, legs extended before me, my arms crossed over my chest. Ashley is sitting behind me with her arms wrapped around mine and her legs extended on either side of my own. “Close your eyes,” she says, “and breathe with me.”

  We breathe in and out; in and out; in and out.

  We fall backward together, and she pulls me down against her chest. My eyes roll into my head and flutter. We rock back and forth, back and forth. Warmth spreads from the top of my head into my groin and gathers there, trickles down to my feet. Ashley’s hands find my face and massage my temples. Someone drips cool water over my forehead and drags it through my hair.

  I’m speeding over a digital freeway, and beneath me is a curling baseline that arches into my spine. A man’s voice traces the line of a mountain range in the distance and I feel it in my belly. I hear Miles then Ashley, but I don’t know what they’re saying, so I open my eyes. We’re back in the same living room, on the same night as before, only everyone looks different. Dirty Vegas’s “Days Go By” is on the speakers.

  “Do you see his glasses?” Ashley says to me. She’s cross-legged on the floor with a pillow on her lap. She’s changed into a sports bra and basketball shorts. Her hair is gathered in a messy bun on top of her head.

  “I swear I’m not wearing glasses,” says Clark.

  “You are!”

  “I’m not.”

  Miles is sitting next to me, I realize. His bent knee is resting against my thigh. “I’ve heard that before,” he says, shifting his weight so we’re touching more. “It’s the ecstasy. Some people see glasses.”

  “I see them,” I say.

  “You do?” says Ashley.

  I look at Clark, who turns to face me. We gaze at each other. He’s prettier than I remember.

  “I see them,” I say.

  Each Wednesday after school, the music department holds student recitals, or “juries,” in the small performance hall in Building 3. Juries are graded the same way as senior recitals, but on a smaller scale, and attendance is mandatory. Roughly ten students perform each week, from the instrumental and vocal music departments. Every music student has to perform three times a semester, one piece each time. Typically, these are pieces they’re already practicing in private lessons. Juries terrify me.

  It’s just before the winter break. I’m lining up to perform Schumann’s “Er, der Herrlichste von Allen,” a song I hate. The ascending lines are aggressive, stampeding—like barging into someone’s room uninvited. The German language to me is equivalent to barking—there’s no poetry in it. I’d much rather sing Italian. Besides, the translation of the song is embarrassing: the speaker is a woman who’s fawning over a man, showering him in the dorkiest praises: “O, how mild, so good!” It’s nauseating. I inherited the song from Mrs. Pfister, my voice teacher the year before; she pressured me into learning it. Imagining singing it now, in earnest, in front of my classmates, and projecting from my diaphragm, fills me with dread.

  I begin to cry. There are people behind and in front of me: Trang, a timpanist; Billy, a trombonist; Kelly, a vocalist; and others I know from the music department. I’m aware that as I cry, I’m producing mucus and my throat is swelling, both of which inhibit singing. This makes me cry harder. I count the number of people ahead of me in line: three. I take several deep belly breaths. Trang turns around to ask if I’m okay and then steps into the nearby bathroom to get toilet paper. I’m suddenly aware that I’m crying in front of Billy, which further embarrasses me—I’ve always had a crush on Billy. The thought of singing “Er, der Herrlichste von Allen” in front of him is the most mortifying thing I can think of.

  Before I start to cry again, before I realize what’s happening, I’m outside the building. The campus is empty; all of the zoned students left after sixth period and the art students left after seventh—only music students remain. The sun has been setting earlier each day as Christmas approaches, and the darkness of the late afternoon drops another layer of silence over the already silent campus. I squat on the sidewalk and hang my head between
my shoulders. Rescheduling the recital is not an option. I procrastinated in signing up for my third performance, and now there are no slots left in the remaining recitals before the break. It occurs to me that this wasn’t going to be a good performance, anyway: in general, I have an issue with “projecting”; my voice is not very loud. That’s why Mrs. Pfister assigned “Er, der Herrlichste von Allen” in the first place—so I’d learn to sing louder.

  I hum scales as I go back inside in a last-ditch attempt to soothe my voice after crying. I stop at the water fountain, aware that the icy water is not doing me any favors. Billy is performing; only Trang is ahead of me. I now see that Ms. Loup is on the piano. I’ve been taking private voice lessons with Ms. Loup since I was seven years old. We used to meet in her house in Clearwater on Saturdays. In her living room was an upright piano and stacks upon stacks of musical scores. It was there that I learned the name George Gershwin. Ms. Loup taught me “Lascia ch’io pianga”—one of the songs I’d chosen to sing in my senior recital—when I was twelve years old. It was coincidence that led her to work at the arts high school the same year I entered it. I feel instantly comforted with her here.

  I clear mucus from my throat as I step into the hall. My vocal cords are sore, but there’s something about it that I like—a battle wound. Ms. Loup pounds out the opening chords of “Er, der Herrlichste von Allen,” and I make a conscious decision not to care about how my performance is received. I don’t give a shit about opera, anyway: I’m going to be a singer-songwriter, or a music journalist, or a poet. I take a deep breath and open my mouth. I close my eyes.

  I’m kissing Eric Steeler on the quad. It’s after lunch; we’ve been sitting together recently, and today he decided to walk me outside. Eric is in a hardcore band called Incarnadine Ashes. Until recently, he was dating Bianca, one of the prettiest and most mysterious visual artists in the school. Eric isn’t as pretty as Bianca, but he makes up for his deficiency in the beauty department by embracing his emo side: all dark puppy eyes, passable skills on the guitar. He tells me he’s writing a song about me, and we kiss some more. Then I see Jerod’s brother.