is if Justine is settling for Judgie McJudgment,
Ernie Earnest; whether he is still the boy who laughed instead of telling me to fix my skirt,
or whether he has changed.
Maybe I’m just jealous
that everything is happening for my friend
like a charming black-and-white movie—
dinner date, then dance invitation—
instead of the thing I have with Dave:
making out without dating; beer before wine.
I smile. “A pink dress, of course.”
We have woven our way to the cosmetics section.
I inspect a burgundy eye pencil,
take a bottle of navy-blue nail polish from a shelf.
Justine takes my selections from my hands.
“Did something happen with Dave? Are you okay?”
“Of course I’m okay. We kissed.
A lot. But it was good. I’m fine.”
“Then why the dark makeup?”
“I kind of feel like shaking things up,” I answer.
“Well, you’ll sure look more like Dave’s crowd with this.
Let’s go back to my house.
My mom hates all my candy-colored shadows.
She’ll love doing your eyes.”
72
I am the brag-about-her daughter who blithely acquiesces
to schedules, colors circumscribed by Mom and Dad.
Until Dave.
Until now.
If it’s ordinary they want,
then maybe I should transform
into something far less
than the outstanding musician I am,
show them that sending Steven away
will not turn our house into any kind of paradise.
I pull into Justine’s driveway.
Inside, we sit beneath a swirly chandelier,
on chic satin dressing table chairs,
elbows resting on the coral granite counter
in the giant master bathroom.
As she uncaps the eyeliner pencil I bought,
Shirley, Justine’s mother, gives me one of her looks,
like maybe Mom’s already told her
some of what’s going on,
or maybe it’s just that she’s known me so long,
she can read my emotions
as well as her own daughter’s.
“Look down, honey.”
She pencils black lines around my eyes,
smudging with the side of her pinkie finger;
brushes on a layer of gray eye shadow.
“Here, you can mascara your own lashes.”
“Maybe that’s a little dark for school,” Justine suggests.
“We’re not at school,” I say.
“But it’s a school night,” Shirley reminds us.
“Another half hour and you should head home.”
In the gilt-framed mirror
I see a girl who isn’t quite me—
instead, something more arresting, abstract,
like the word sorry,
the skull beneath the skin.
I hope this face is braver, more certain of things.
“I’m gonna try the nail polish.”
I unscrew the bottle,
wrinkle my nose at the stinging vinegar aroma,
glad Steven isn’t near to smell this offense.
The thick liquid spreads cold over my fingernails.
I paint imperfectly, tagging my fingertips,
coating my cuticles, as I darken each left-hand digit.
Switch awkwardly to paint my right hand,
which comes out even worse than the left.
“I could help,” Justine offers.
“No, I want to learn how to do this.”
My fingers twitch as I wait for the stuff to dry.
Shirley returns the makeup to the Walgreens bag,
steps back to study her makeover handiwork.
“That dark liner really pops the blue of your eyes.”
In Jasper, everybody thinks Shirley wears
too much makeup,
too little else;
that maybe the too-much of her
was what drove her husband away.
Justine pretends she doesn’t care,
shows her allegiance to her mother
with shocking high heels.
But maybe Ned is some kind of counterbalance,
buttoned-up, crisp,
town-approved,
fulfilling her secret dreams of a future
in unscandalous pastels.
73
It’s late when I get home,
but I go to the basement to practice anyway—
half glad, half sorry Mom and Dad aren’t awake
to see my new look.
I play the gentlest part of the Hummel concerto,
the one that calmed my brother; wonder
what the trumpet will mean, how it will live in my life,
when he is gone.
74
“Aggie is an amazing teacher, isn’t—”
Cal O’Casey begins a sentence he doesn’t finish,
taken aback, perhaps, by the black of my sweatshirt,
the Keds I carefully covered last night
with brown skeletons and squares of dark green,
the thick kohl lines around my eyes.
Even the unflappable Mrs. Pendleton pauses at my desk
en route to the front of the classroom.
I don’t need judgment from someone wearing
a barely-acceptably-teacher-length skirt,
just turn my raccoon eyes away.
Justine sighs.
“Just in time for me to start dating Ned,
you turn into Goth Girl.”
“Hope I don’t wreck your chances in the student council election.” Words I meant to sound teasing
come out with a bitter edge
that freezes Justine’s smile.
“Yeah, well . . .”
is all she says before Ned arrives, walks to her desk
with a proprietary saunter that makes me wonder
if the two of them did even more
than Dave and me on Friday night.
“Sorry, Daisy, I’m a bit confused,” Cal says.
“Is Justine running for student office?”
At the front of the room,
Mrs. Pendleton stoops to pick up a pencil,
which makes a few of the boys inhale audibly.
To her right, I see Shelby, already sitting down,
pushing her notebook into alignment
with the edge of her desk.
“Nah,” I say halfheartedly to Cal,
my eyes fixed on Shelby but seeing Steven,
imagining what it might be like for him
in a classroom like this.
“What were you saying about Aggie?”
“She’s a bit of all right, i’n’t she?
The way she plays a horn.”
Cal is looking past me now,
to a vision of Aggie, the musician in her,
just like I’m looking past him to a dream of my brother.
And I see in my mind’s eye Steven’s gaze:
distant, distracted, like both of us now.
Maybe he, too, is always looking for some faraway thing
that makes perfect sense inside his head;
it’s just that he can’t tell anybody.
“She charges a lot,” Cal continues,
“but the Ackermans are letting me earn money
by raking their leaves—and I’ll shovel their driv
eway
when the snow starts—
so I can pay.
She’s worth it.”
I look hard, maybe for the first time,
at Cal’s holey jeans, worn brown shoes, and think
maybe he’s no more ordinary-middle-class than I;
that maybe there are secrets behind his quiet smile,
reasons for the passion that throbs through his bari
like I’ve never heard before.
I try to remember how many different shirts I’ve seen
him wear,
can count only three.
Tally in my mind the price of the myriad matching sets
of Nike and adidas sweats and tees Mom buys for Steven,
sporting graphics of bats he will never swing,
baskets he will never make.
He likes smooth fabrics,
elastic-waist pants that require no belting,
adapt to his increasing size.
I think Mom likes the way that, from the back,
the outfits make him look pretty much like a normal, chubby guy.
I shake myself back into the conversation with Cal.
“Aggie’s definitely worth it.”
My voice comes out surprisingly soft.
75
Halfway through A-PUSH I realize
Dave has not texted me since Saturday night,
when I let him do those things,
when I did those things with him.
The North battles the South
in Mr. Angelli’s clipped New England monologue,
an accent that somehow lacks the drama or passion
I imagine for war
or love.
My mind drifts to an HBO moment.
I play back me and Dave on the bench by the lake,
only this time my hair is longer,
my shoes are three-inch stilettos,
and Dave . . .
Dave says words like “you’re beautiful” and “I love you”
and “I’ll call you before you even make it home.”
I am lost in Adult Content and breathing fast
when the people around me start to shuffle, pile books.
Some sound in my fantasy must have been the real zing
of the bell.
Mr. Angelli and Cal stand over me.
I wonder if they can hear
the skittering of my horny heart.
“Daisy,” Mr. Angelli begins,
oblivious to the mess before him.
“Cal here is having a bit of trouble mastering our
American history, so I’d like you to work with him
on the next project: writing a short autobiography
of a fictional Civil War–era slave.”
“Er, a slave?” I murmur doltishly.
“Cal has the reading list and the details.”
Mr. Angelli points to a paper in Cal’s hand,
gives me a nod, expecting no resistance.
Despite my dangerous
new nails-and-sneakers color scheme,
it doesn’t occur to me to resist anyway.
76
“P’raps we can meet up after school today,”
Cal suggests.
“I, um, babysit on Mondays,” I tell him.
“How about tomorrow?”
“Okay. Say, the library at three, then?”
It’s a logical place and time.
Cal can’t know that Dave and I
kind of got our start—if anything is started—
in the egg chair.
“Sure.”
77
“Hey, Goth Girl!” Justine catches up with me
in the parking lot after school,
Ned a few paces behind her.
“Please don’t call me that.”
“What do you want me to call you?”
Justine’s Monday outfit is absent its usual touch of pink.
Instead she wears a crisp white blouse over a pleated
blue mini, very “naughty schoolgirl,”
or perhaps not so naughty
with those three-quarter sleeves
mimicking Ned’s “ready to work” effect.
Are we so easily transformed by boys?
So quickly angelified
or darkened
by their attention
or disaffection?
“Just plain Daisy’s worked since forever.” I try to smile.
Now Dave is sauntering around the side of the school.
Should I keep chatting with Justine?
Fill the time required for him to reach the parking lot?
“I know you’ve got to go home now,” Justine says.
“But wanna come for ice cream with me and Ned
tomorrow after school? You could invite . . .”
“I’ve gotta do some tutoring.”
Ned wraps his hands around Justine’s good-girl middle,
his cheek pressing against her flat-ironed hair.
“Tutoring. That’s cool,” he says.
“What kind?” Justine asks.
“Helping Cal O’Casey with A-PUSH.”
And maybe, just maybe, I’m a little glad
to see the lift in her eyebrows, the second’s hesitation
before she completes her turn into Ned’s arms.
78
I cling to the steering wheel,
trying not to look in my rearview mirror at Dave
reaching his Fiesta’s parking spot,
pocketing his phone,
flipping through his ring of keys.
It starts to rain as I pull onto Main Street.
Wishing for the drop of five degrees
that would transform the wet to snow,
I switch on the windshield wipers.
There is never a perfect wiper speed
to smooth away the rain:
Kind of like making out, the fast setting is too fast;
the slow too slow to clear the driver’s view of the road through the falling water.
“Hey, Daisy,” Mom calls as I come in the door.
“Hi.” I’m puzzled by her jeans and sweater.
“No yoga tonight?”
“No, something different.”
Her smile fades into confusion as she takes in my eyes,
my nails.
“You look . . . different, too.”
That’s when two text lines from Dave
buzz into my phone.
“Why’d you run from the parking lot just now?”
“I’ll, uh, be right back.
Just gonna drop my backpack in my room.”
Steven’s head turns slightly as I double-time it
up the stairs, but even darkened Keds
don’t make much noise on hardwood.
I set my bag by the door, which I push carefully shut;
sit on my unmade bed.
Heart pounding, I look at the lines again,
wishing I could call Justine right now, ask her what to do.
I could, I guess, but I know that would mean my story
might be shared with Ned.
Ned Hoffman:
a perfectly decent guy
and the embodiment of all that is frustrating
about small-town life.
Ned Hoffman, who also knows about everyone’s sordid sagas. Though everybody does in Jasper,
not everybody makes you feel like, when they look at you,
all they see are your unsecret secrets.
Ned Hoffman does.
Ned Hoffman, who is now kissing my best fr
iend.
“If you don’t text back,
I’m gonna dial this phone and actually call you.”
More lines zing from broken-family, stepchild,
make-out-buddy Dave.
Has Ned heard about that yet?
I ransack my memories of HBO romances,
wonder what to type back to Dave,
but no sexy high-fantasy
or teen-about-to-die-falls-in-love story I can recall
suggests the words I should use,
the words that could hold the longing,
the uncertainty in my heart.
That’s kind of blue.
79
I nearly throw the phone across the room
when, seconds later, the voice of Yoda
begins insistently repeating,
“Ringing I am; this is your phone calling,”
a ringtone I haven’t changed since my
obsession with Star Wars
evolved into HBO nights.
I am holding the slim phone like it could burst into flame.
Answer or ignore?
The second option makes me think of a word
I attach so often to Steven—
he is ignoring me . . . I am being ignored—
even though I know it isn’t right.
I press the “answer” button,
mute with uncertainty.
“Daisy? You there? You okay?”
Dave’s voice is rumbly-warm,
The Sound of Letting Go Page 11