The Sound of Us

by Poston, Ashley

  “Didn’t even get to tan...” Maggie mutters, pulling onto the road, our esteemed officer following close behind.

  I pick up the tabloid I’d tossed down into the floorboards earlier today and flip to the article about me. I can’t even remember what I thought was going to happen five hours ago—that he’d ask me to come along? That somehow, in this odd, strange mess of a circumstance, he’d realize how we deserve each other?

  “I mean, he totes can’t follow us all the way back to the condo, right? He wouldn’t, would he?”

  I nod absently, scanning through the article. It’s my name, over and over. Junie Baltimore. Junie Baltimore. Junie Baltimore.

  I’ve never hated my last name so much. Because Mom changed her name after she married Chuck, I’m the last Baltimore. I mean, I’m sure there are others, but I’m the last of Asheville’s Baltimores. I’m the heritage, and I just ruined my family’s name.

  “...Do you think he’s married? I didn’t see a ring. He’s a little old to not be married, right? He could totes be a cougar, right?”

  Startled, I glance up from the article. “Huh?”

  “You weren’t even listening!” Maggie accuses with a pout.

  “I was!” I argue, but she rolls her eyes and I give in. “Okay, I really wasn’t. Who’re you talking about?”

  “Roman’s dad. I didn’t see a ring on his finger.” She shrugs, chancing a glance down at the tabloid. “I can’t believe my BFF gave that garbage more attention than me. I’m hurt. Genuinely.”

  I clasp the tabloid to my chest. “You lie!” I gasp, trying to be funny, but when she frowns and doesn’t reply with her usually witty comebacks, I drop the tabloid back to the floorboards.

  She heaves a sigh. “I feel like a total skank, to be honest, following John around for a whole year while the bastard went on this massive manhunt for RoMo...and I actually enjoyed it.” She shivers. The cars on the interstate rush by in a blur. “Just so you know, like, I for reals would’ve never done something like that. You know, if I was a pap. I wouldn’t have...”

  I put a comforting hand on Maggie’s shoulder. “I know. You would’ve made up something better.”

  My attention drifts down to the tabloid at my feet again. I wonder how often people think they are doing stupendous things that are stupid...or stupid things that turn out stupendous.

  When we reach the condo, Officer Nesky—who has been trialing us the entire time—pulls up behind us in the loading zone to wait while I pack my things. Halfway back, I began to devise a plan on how to break the news to Mom and Chuck that I’m banned from Myrtle Beach for life, hoping that they haven’t seen the news. If they have I might as well go ahead and ground myself. As we pass the breezeway on the way up, Chuck materializes out of the elevator.

  He puts a hand on my shoulder, his face unreadable. “Junie,” he says in his best fatherly tone. My shoulders wilt. Oh no, he’s seen the news. “We need to talk.”

  I hope for help from my best friend, but Maggie points upstairs and slips into the elevator without me with an apologetic smile. Remind me never to rely on her for help ever again.

  “I really don’t want to...”

  “Junie.”

  I don’t want to talk to him. Not now, not ever. I want to talk to my dad, and that’s something I can’t do. I frown, staring down at my scuffed Converses. “All right.”

  He leads me out onto the pool deck. It’s dark, and most of the vacationers are out at dinner or playing mini-golf. He sits down in one of the chairs and I take the one beside him.

  He laces his fingers together. “Your mug shot has been all over the news.”

  I deflate a little. Of course, he wants to talk about getting arrested, but not about the foreclosure. “Yeah, that...”

  “And I just wanted to tell you that it is all right. We all do stupid stuff. Hell, I still do stupid stuff. Like not telling you about the foreclosure.”

  Suddenly, he has my attention. “How did you know I knew?”

  He shifts in his chair, scratching the back of his neck nervously. “They called back.” He heaves a sigh. “We were going to tell you...after our vacation.”

  “Oh.”

  He must get the feeling that I don’t believe him, because he goes on quickly, “If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t even know about it until I got the mail one day and there was a letter addressed to William Baltimore.”

  “The bar is still in his name?” My voice is tight. “Mom didn’t transfer it over?”

  “She didn’t want to. What I’m saying is, your mom wanted to handle it herself.”

  “Handle it? She kept it a secret. That’s my bar. That’s my future.”

  “But it doesn’t have to be,” he tries to reason. “This is your life, Junie. The bar was your father’s.”

  I ball my hands into fists. “And that is my father’s bar. We could’ve done something! I could’ve done something...”

  But Chuck’s shaking his head vehemently. “She was going to tell you. Don’t hold this against her.”

  “It’s hard not to.”

  “I know,” he agrees. “But try to understand. Your mother hates secrets.”

  I have no argument to that. Mom could’ve kept Chuck a secret, but she hadn’t. She chose instead to be ridiculed for marrying so soon after Dad’s death that it reeked of an affair. They shunned her from the book club, from barbeques, from Homeowner meetings...she took it all with flawless elegance, electing to fill her time with new things—woodworking classes, yoga, weekends off with Chuck.

  Even I know that Chuck and Mom honest-to-God love each other, and I know that Mom and Dad honest-to-God did, too, and a love like that you can’t hide because you don’t want it secret. You want the whole world to know.

  I’m not mad at Chuck because he loves my Mom. I’m mad at him because he’s not Dad. And, all of a sudden, that sounds like a very silly reason to be mad at someone at all.

  “I’m just...” I hesitate, twirling my finger around a lock of hair, “I’m sort of scared.”

  He reaches over, very tentatively, like I’m a wild tiger at the zoo, and places his hands over mine. It’s supposed to be comforting, I guess, but his palms are sweaty and heavy. “We’ll all sit down and figure it out, okay, Junie?” When I pull my hands out from his and wipe them on my shorts, he adds, “Is there anything else?”

  “Remember when I went to get underwear?” I take a deep breath and start from the beginning. It’s a long story, and I flub a few things, but I have to give Chuck credit for listening so long. As the words spill from my mouth, it feels like a great anchor has been untied from my feet, and I am slowly rising back to the surface for air.

  When I finish, he puts a hand on my knee and says in a very solemn voice, “Juniper Baltimore, you’re grounded. For life.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  “Grounded!” I growl, shoving my duffle bag into the trunk of Maggie’s purple car and slamming it closed. Officer Nesky has gotten himself a donut and a coffee from the gas station across the street. He waves at us when I glance back at him, and scowl because no one should be that friendly after midnight. “After I came clean, told the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me Bruce...”

  “Almighty?” Maggie slides into the driver’s seat. I buckle myself in shotgun.

  “Springsteen.”

  “Oh. It could be worse.” She backs out and we start down Ocean Boulevard toward the interstate, t-minus six hours until home. Officer Nesky pulls out after us. “We could still be in jail with those super creeps.”

  “I think one was a prostitute.” Roman Holiday’s “Deep End” pulses through her speakers before I reach over to turn the dial. “Classic rock?”

  “Sure.” She glances over. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  I flip the radio on, and the sweet voice of Bon Jovi crackles through the speakers. Savoring the sound, I close my eyes and sink back into the polyester seats. The cherry-smelling car fragrance sways in time
to “(Do You Want To) Make a Memory.” “Yeah, I mean how unfair is this? I owned up to my mistake. Fat good that did me. God knows I’ll be the talk of the town for the next year anyway, so go ahead and ground the soon-to-be social pariah!”

  “At least they won’t be talking about your mom’s marriage anymore,” she offers up. “But that’s not what I meant. I mean if you’re okay with...you know who.”

  “Oh,” I reply, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible to the pink elephant in the car, “that.”

  “Yeah, that. You’re not okay.” It’s not a question anymore, but a statement.

  I sigh. “At least now he can stop running right? He always talked about this...I dunno, this roar of the crowd, and I can’t imagine him anywhere except onstage, adored by—by I dunno, his fans. Thousands of them. He needs to be adored. He needs to be loved.”

  “But what about you?”

  Bon Jovi fades into Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” and the edges of my lips twitch up a little at the acoustic guitar. I remember the way Roman cradled Holly’s guitar against his chest, the way his calloused fingers slid across the strings with a wispy sort of grace. Those same fingers that touched the small of my back as his bristly cheek pressed against mine, his breath hot against my neck.

  I pick at the cemetery dirty under my fingernails. “I miss him,” I say, but I don’t just miss him. There’s a hollow part of me full of nothing but the echoes of what might have been, if he wasn’t famous, and if I wasn’t...well, me. “It’s all so impossible, Mags. I keep thinking back on it and just a few days ago I loathed this guy with every fiber of my being. I should’ve known better.”

  Maggie tilts her head, and the lights from the oncoming cars light up the earrings in her ear and bounce across her bangles and necklaces like prisms of light. “Grams once told me that all the best things are impossible.”

  I nod, but I don’t believe her. If the best things are made of impossibilities—incalculable moments strung together in imaginary constellations—then how come they can’t ever become real?

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Maggie and I stare at the Roman Holiday wall-shrine on the biggest wall in her chartreuse-colored room. Everything from t-shirts to posters to concert tickets to magazine cut outs to dream boards stretch from one end to the other. It’s a testament to her love for the band. Or her insanity. Maybe a little of both.

  We stand side-by-side, looking up at the massive wall, before she takes the article she cut out from The Juice about us and pins it right in the middle.

  “At least the article gives your wall some flavor,” I try to joke, although just looking at the cutout makes me want to vomit.

  “Yeah, it’s pretty amaze-balls, ain’t it.” Stepping back, she admires her work. “You know what?”

  “What?”

  “I think it’s time for a new wall.”

  I study my best friend for a long moment. The dark circles under her eyes mirror mine. When we got in at six-thirty this morning, neither of us could sleep so we sat up watching TV for hours.

  “What are you thinking?” I finally ask, and she smiles.

  “Oh, Juniper, I have plans.” Slinging her arm over my shoulder, she waves her hand across the wall. “It’s time to dive into a new fandom. Get on another bandwagon, travel where no man has gone before! Ooh, Chris Pine.” Her eyes begin to glaze over. “A shrine to Chris Pine’s hunkalicious ass.”

  I chuckle. “I dunno, Robert Downy Jr. is pretty hot, too.”

  She hums the beginning notes to Metallica’s “Iron Man” and plucks our article from the middle of the wall. She begins to rip it down the middle, but then, on second thought, sets it gingerly on her bed. “Just, uh, don’t destroy anything. It totes might be worth something. Someday.”

  “I hope no one ever wants a Roman Montgomery PEZ dispenser,” I deadpan as I peel it off the wall from where she taped it.

  “Oh, shut up and start peeling. We have a new shrine to erect!” She begins to name off other bands and actors in the running, and all I can do is shake my head while I take down the ab-licious poster of Roman, and try to remember him as nothing more than this.

  Chapter Thirty

  When my parents finally return home on Saturday, Mom agrees to break the news of the foreclosure to the employees. She doesn’t say when, and she doesn’t want to talk about it. Typical.

  Chuck doesn’t retract his decision to ground me, and even when I beg he doesn’t budge. Here I am, eighteen and graduated from high school and...I’m grounded. Like a kid again. No—it’s worse, because they refuse to let me out of their sights. I’m in prison, only my jailors pretend like they still love me. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ll secretly put a tracking device in my scalp when I go to sleep tonight.

  Note to self: sleep with the door locked.

  Mom and Chuckles are telling me exactly how disappointing I am over a dinner consisting of a five-dollar pizza and a free bottle of soda. Apparently I should possess something called common sense—which I have, thanks—but Mom won’t let me get in a word edgewise, and when I finally do, Chuck fails me.

  “Tell her there was more to the story than what’s in those tabloids,” I plead to Chuck, who feels sort of like my last hope of not being grounded for the rest of my life.

  “I think...” he hesitates, his mouth full of pizza, and Mom shoots him a lethal glare. “I think she knows best.”

  “Of course I do, and Junie—” she uses a fork and a knife to cut her slice of pizza into tiny pieces, like she’s secretly imagining it’s me she’s shredding to smithereens “—needs to learn a little respect, and responsibility. Especially for the people who graciously let her live in their house. Now eat your pizza. It’s getting cold.”

  Just to spite her, I inhale the rest of my pizza and chase it with a gulp of soda. “Can I leave?”

  Mom scowls and begins to answer, but the phone cuts her off. It rings again, and when no one gets up to answer it, I do. “Hi, this is the Conway’s.”

  “Is there a Junie Baltimore?” asks a feminine voice.

  “This is she...”

  From the kitchen table, Mom turns around and raises a curious eyebrow, and Chuck mouths, “Who is it?”

  “I’m from The National. Are you the same Junie Baltimore who had relations with Roman Montgomery of Roman Holiday?”

  “What?”

  “As in, did you have sex?”

  Flustered, I can only think of the truth. “I never even thought about it.” Much.

  “So then, you sold him out to the paparazzi for fifteen minutes of fame?”

  My mouth gapes open. “Who the hell is this?”

  “And,” the woman goes on, “that you and your friend—Magdalena Shreveport? —desecrated Holly Hudson’s gravesite during the memorial?”

  This person wants to rile me up. For all I know, she’s taping this conversation and waiting for something to nibble at. So, I do the only thing I know how to—I slam the phone down on the charger.

  From the table, Chuck asks, “Who was that?”

  “No one,” I lie, and sit back down at the table. “Telemarketer,” I add, and it’s finally enough for them to nod and dismiss it. Mom goes back on her rant about respecting authority, and acting like a civil young lady, but her words float over my head because I can’t stop worrying about the reporter on the phone.

  If one reporter is that intense, imagine a whole army of them. Imagine them converging on a single person after the most tragic death of the year. God, that must’ve been scary.

  No wonder Roman ran.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  “Junie!” Chuck calls from the kitchen.

  I crack my eyelid open and groan. So my life isn’t a nightmare. It’s real. Chuck calls my name again from the kitchen. The one day Chuck takes off work, he has to wake me up before noon?

  When I crawl off my bed and thump down the stairs into the kitchen, they’re humming along to “Crush on You.” If it’s possible, Roman Holiday ha
s become more popular. Not that I hate them anymore. Now, I just want to gouge my eardrums out every time I hear them. Which is a step up, I swear.

  Flour and icing powder the countertops in the kitchen. Did World War III erupt in the kitchen while I slept?

  Chuck and Mom are making cake pops for the neighborhood’s end-of-summer cookout—the one I’m still invited to. The only one I’m still invited to.

  “What is it?” I ask, sitting down at the table.

  Mom hands the cordless phone to me with it squashed between her elbows. “You’ve got a few letters on the counter and some man wants to talk with you. Something from last week...?”

  “What?” I mouth, curiously putting the phone to my ear. She shrugs and hands Chuck another stick to shove into a cake ball. I get up, grabbing the stack of letters, and walk into the living room for a little privacy. “Hello?”

  “Junie Baltimore?”

  “This is her,” I answer, tearing open the first letter.

  Go to hell slutface, it reads. I drop the letter on the coffee table like it’s a hot iron. My eyebrows furrow in vexation.

  “I’m sorry, but who is this?” I ask into the receiver, a bad feeling ebbing in my stomach.

  “Go fuck yourself. I hope you die.” Then, a dial tone.

  More surprised than offended, I toss the phone onto the couch. The next letter is addressed to me too in loopy, heart-swirling cursive. I don’t recognize the handwriting, or know anyone from Michigan, but I open it anyway.

  How can you think you’re good enough? Stop ruining his life! You stupid bitch. You’re welcome.

  Flabbergasted, I shred open the next two letters. Are they all like this? They call me worse names, and one even includes a cutout from one of the tabloids with devil horns drawn to my head and a penis shoved against my lips.

  The last letter is from Asheville. Great. It’s a very polite un-invite to the neighborhood cookout. At least I knew that was coming.

  Returning the cordless phone to the kitchen, I slide up onto the barstool. Chuck slips Mom a peck on the cheek while reaching for another cake pop stick.