they’ve built in one of the community barbecues.
“I brought marshmallows for the s’mores.”
He gestures to a grocery bag in the back seat.
“It looks cold out there,” I say.
Instead of opening my door,
I clamber over the gear shift onto his lap.
“And I’ve had such a long day.”
He gives me a funny grin, puts a hand on my cheek.
“You always surprise me, Daisy.”
“What? Not Daisy-brains right now?”
I press my face into the heat of his palm.
In answer, he draws me to him.
Every kiss sends a tingling thrill deeper
into my chest, my stomach, down.
I want “Adult Content.”
I want “Some Nudity.”
I don’t want to be the town’s-pride-trumpeter,
Accepted two years running to Honor Band of America
(I didn’t apply this year
since Mom is afraid to be home alone).
I want to be neither reliable nor extraordinary;
neither sound nor silence,
but just a girl kissing a tousle-haired bad boy.
I want to be now.
I let my lips open, feel Dave’s tongue connect with mine.
Condensation clouds over the car windows.
Straddling his lap, I slide my hands to the buttons of his shirt.
He puts his hands over mine, finishes unbuttoning,
shrugs it off.
I tug my sweater over my head,
struggle out of the second sleeve.
The clack of my watch against the driver’s side window makes me giggle.
Dave gives a growling laugh.
His lips move from my mouth down the side of my neck
to my shoulder.
His warm hands slide up to my breasts,
so I have to arch my back to keep kissing him.
I think I would do anything to forget today,
to make time stop now, this night.
But maybe it’s regret for wearing practical,
laceless underwear or the dropping temperature outside
that makes this more difficult than our first time at the lake.
I press against Dave,
feeling for that stilling magic in the heat of his skin.
Try to close my mind to the picture
of Justine doing this with Ned;
to the image of my parents sitting angrily on the couch, waiting for my return;
to the worry that someone from the bonfire by the lake
can see us through the steaming car windows.
As Dave reaches behind to undo my bra,
there’s a thump on the roof of the car.
“Hey, Miller.”
It’s jack-in-the-box Josh Belden,
popping over to cool our heat once again.
“You gonna pony up some marshmallows?”
“Get away!” I shriek, flailing for my sweater.
Dave wraps calming arms around me.
“Give us a couple minutes, okay?”
“Shit, sorry man.”
Belden retreats to the waterside.
I crumple onto the front seat floor,
try to scramble back into my clothes,
as desperate to get away from this humiliation
as I am determined not to go home.
Dave lines up the buttons of his shirt.
“You okay down there?”
“I’m, uh, I’m fine.”
“Do you want to get out of here?” he asks.
“I don’t know.”
I retie the right, black-heart-and-red-diamond-
embellished Ked, which has somehow come unlaced.
“Belden didn’t see anything,” he assures me.
“And he wouldn’t say anything anyway.”
“Do you remember in second grade,
that time my tights got stuck . . . ?”
Even in the dim light cast by the faraway fire,
I can see the flash of Dave’s carelessly hot grin.
“Wouldn’t admit it if I did.”
Past the bonfire crowd,
the full moon is suspended marshmallow-white
over the blue-black water.
110
Sweater straightened,
I slide back up onto the passenger seat,
turn on the radio.
A thumping rap recounts things that are hot, irresistible.
I wish there wasn’t a party at the pits,
or that Dave hadn’t brought me here—
that we were alone together
somewhere.
He turns down the volume, lets out a long breath.
“This was not what I expected from tonight.”
He tries to take my hand.
A wave of anger makes me cross my arms over my chest.
“What were you expecting?
If you want more than a make-out buddy,
you have to ask a girl on a real date,
with a restaurant reservation and a menu.
Not marshmallows and Belden’s brew.”
“I didn’t mean . . . Shit, Daisy,
I was hoping we could be . . .”
“Be what?” My face feels like fire.
“Playground pals again? We’re seventeen years old.
You’ve barely talked to me since grade school.
Then these past few weeks . . . I don’t understand.
You’re a badass slacker and I’m a band geek
with a totally messed-up family.”
“Don’t play the messed-up family card with me!”
I am not used to the steely glint in his eyes.
“When we were still playing on the swings, everyone
in this town knew my mom was screwing around.
Except me.”
“I didn’t,” I lie,
just like Justine after my flubbed solo with the orchestra,
even as I remember Mom and Dad
discussing the messy Miller marriage
at our own kitchen table,
back when Steven was small enough to manage
and my parents believed their love for each other
was built of steel, not sand.
“I’m gonna bring the marshmallows down to Belden.”
Dave’s voice is cold with disbelief.
He gets out of the car, slams the door a little too hard.
Is it wrong to tweak the pitch of memories
so the bad ones don’t play in our hearts in minor keys?
How does Jasper choose
which of its townspeople’s many unsecret secrets
to keep?
Why do I cling so hard to the echo of Ned
laughing at my upturned skirt
but let myself forget that feeling, after hours spent
pushing cars alongside Steven,
of him pelting the little metal toys at my head,
my back—
how I would run to Mom, bury my face in her shoulder,
and both she and I would cry?
What was Dave hoping we could be?
The question leads me down to the lake.
“Sorry I got so angry,” I whisper to Dave.
“Things are bad at home.”
He hands me a marshmallow speared onto a sharp twig,
gently kisses the top of my head. “Don’t get burned.”
I lean against his shoulder,
still afraid to ask what he wants,
what he wanted that very first day I cau
ght him waiting
outside the band room at school,
because I’m not sure what answer I’d want him to give me.
What truth.
What lie.
We let words fall away,
just laugh when every other marshmallow
erupts into flames,
pull our sleeves over our hands so the cold beer bottles
don’t freeze our fingers.
Until I finally feel ready for Dave to take me home.
111
The house is quiet when I get home.
Mom has fallen asleep on the living room couch,
a sweaty, muscle-bound guy on the television
promising her rock-hard abs
in twenty minutes a day.
I don’t wake her. Just hit the TV “off” button,
switch off the lights,
tiptoe up the stairs.
Gentle snores slide under the door of Steven’s bedroom.
Before the divorce,
before the room was repainted in girl-power pink,
Justine and I used to sneak into her dad’s office
where, hidden in a bottom drawer,
he kept his Playboy magazines
and one inexplicable Playgirl,
which we explored to tatters.
I try to imagine Dave
beneath his flannel boxers, low-slung jeans,
looking like one of those baby-oiled photographs;
think of Steven,
how often, now,
his hands stray into his pants.
It drives my mother crazy,
uncertain whether to reprimand or ignore,
or cry.
Is Steven any different from me?
What does his mind do when his fingers travel there?
Does he imagine, with the sensation,
a face,
a loyalty?
Does he fear a betrayal?
A lust unrequited by love?
112
I should be more elated by Dave’s Sunday morning text:
“Missing you till Monday.”
Steven’s waffle unburnt,
routines in place, Dad spends the morning
repairing the cracked kitchen drywall.
He stays with Mom after lunch,
so I can go down to the basement
and start trumpet practice before the sun sets.
It feels like a day in the normal house
I sometimes dream about.
113
“We visited one of those autism homes
for Steven this weekend,”
I admit to Justine as we drive to school Monday morning.
“What was it like?”
“I don’t know. Clean. Calm. It seemed okay.”
The subject pinches like a new pair of shoes,
but each time I take a step, give up a few words,
the leather of my pain stretches,
makes a little more room for me to breathe.
“Clean is good. More than can be said for my bedroom,” Justine says.
I smile. “Yep, you’re a slob.”
“Ned can’t stand the clutter.
I swear, he tries to fold my clothes
every time he comes through the door.”
“Every time?”
She blushes.
We pull up to a parking spot
right by the front entrance of Evergreen High.
Lunch is teriyaki beef and sautéed carrots—not bad.
After, Dave invites me to hang out behind the school
and I go,
closing my mind to the “A-absent” and “T-tardy”
symbols accumulating on my attendance record,
to A-PUSH’s imaginary Jeremy
and my neglected real-life tutee, Cal.
We don’t talk about Saturday night;
just watch the high clouds floating over the playground,
agree on our hopes for Thanksgiving snow,
kiss enough to make me late for concert band class.
114
“Daisy, I have e-mailed both your parents and yourself.
No one has replied about your absences from zero period.”
Even though the class has started,
Mr. Orson comes out to talk to me in the hall.
His eyes, full of gentle concern,
take in my heavy-shaded lids,
my unembellished black sneakers.
“I haven’t stopped practicing, Mr. O,” I assure him.
“This isn’t like you. Mrs. Pendleton told
me your parents are making some”—
he hesitates—“changes at home.”
I stumble backward,
more stunned than if he’d slapped me.
My Monday charade of gorgeous normalcy is shattered.
“Changes,”
I whisper inside my head.
Seven harsh letters ricochet round my skull.
I try to quiet my heaving chest,
wait for some answer, any words at all,
to will their way to my lips.
“Then you know why.”
“I wish I could let you take more time.
But I can’t falsify the attendance record,
and if you have too many unexcused absences,
you’ll be automatically failed.”
He puts a hand on my shoulder.
“The jazz band needs you.
I think you need them, too.”
He smiles, but I can’t smile back.
Behind him
I see every concert band member’s eyes
boring curiously through the interior window,
watching us.
I bend down, pretending to fix my sneaker lace, whisper
the knife-word that’s never been wielded at me before:
“Failed.”
It feels strangely satisfying—different,
like my dramatic eyes. Kind of easy, too—
not so much an action
as a nonaction, a silence, a not-being-there.
“You know,” Mr. Orson continues,
“I wrote some glowing recommendations for you this fall.
I never imagined you were the kind of person
who would give up music
just because other parts of your life got difficult.
I pegged you as one who would, despite anything,
hold on.”
“I thought so, too,” I whisper,
eyes focused self-protectively inward.
I straighten my back, lift my chin,
try to channel Justine
as I follow him into the band room.
115
“Want to come with us for coffee at Bouchard’s?”
Ned asks after school,
too quickly for Justine to shush him,
his mouth moving before he realized
the invitation he’s extended is to the girl
who is kissing Andy Bouchard’s trophy wife’s son.
“Or we could go for ice cream.”
Justine tries to pull my fingers from my car door handle.
“Unless you’re waiting for Dave.”
“I should probably get home.”
I toss my backpack into the passenger seat.
An inexplicable surge of worry passes through me.
“Call me later. We’ll talk.”
Justine’s expression assures me
she hasn’t spoken of Steven to Ned,
which makes me smile with gratitude
even as I press my foot hard on the
gas pedal,
slide through the four-way stop sign without braking.
There’s a police car outside our house, lights flashing.
And an ambulance.
Mrs. Allen from up the street stands in our front yard,
her toddler daughter balanced on her hip.
“I heard your mother scream. I called 911.
She’s in there now.”
She points.
Mom is on a stretcher in the back.
A uniformed EMT kneels beside her.
“I told your dad I’d watch for your car,
let you know what happened.”
“Wait for me,” I yell to the medic.
“I’ll ride to the hospital with her.”
I dash through the open front door.
The hall is littered with broken glass,
strewn with sprays of dried flowers.
Through the kitchen entryway I glimpse Steven
flailing against the locking embrace of Dad’s angry arms
as I run back out to the bright-red van.
116
Dad kisses Mom gingerly
when we come through the front door five hours later.
He has managed to get Steven to take a pill
that will make him sleep.
“You okay?”
“I’m . . . fine.”
The bruise over Mom’s left eye is getting darker.
The Sound of Letting Go Page 16