“I just wanted to give you this,” he says. He holds out a little package wrapped in green tissue paper. Inside is a silver necklace, with a heart carved out of a stripy golden wood.
“From the sassafras tree,” blushes Jackson. “I carved it myself. Well, with a bit of help from Mehmet…”
I run my finger over the smooth shiny surface. It feels warm.
“Turn it over,” says Jackson.
On the back there is carefully carved writing: EZ/JF 4 EVER. The infinity sign curls underneath.
I put it around my neck. “It’s beautiful.”
“You’re beautiful,” he says.
I look at him standing there, a big pleased smile on his face, the puppy poking out of his shirt, his dark eyes shining, his hard brown boy’s hands stroking the dog. He’s the one who’s beautiful, inside and out. I take the puppy and put it on the floor. Then I take Jackson’s face in my hands and kiss him full on the lips.
I don’t feel scared anymore. I don’t want to run away. His lips are cool and dry. He tastes of chocolate milk. He puts his arms around me and my heart says this is the flavor I choose. I stand there for this moment breathing in his skin and feeling his hug seep into me like sunlight. It’s warming all the cold places under my skin.
When we go up on stage, you can hear a pin drop. This is partly because Mrs. Reilly announces us as if she’s introducing the plague. It’s also because Badman looks like a zombie from a horror film. Out of the corner of my eye I can see little Robbie Mason inching onto his mother’s lap. I don’t think Homeland High has ever seen an act like ours. But as soon as Badman starts his first riff, and Asim comes in, right on time, with Jackson’s bass rhythm backing the guitar, I forget to look at the audience. I’m listening for Badman’s chord change and there it is, perfect, like a question I’m ready to answer. The music flows up through my belly and out into the air, easy as breathing.
I close my eyes and it’s like swimming down under a wave. Instead of silence there’s only sound, this one conversation we’re having here on Earth. I can hear Asim pushing the drums, playing on top of the beat like Valerie showed him, a little faster than the real rhythm. Badman is pulling against him, laying back just a heartbeat, playing with the pulse of the song. It’s as if we’re all talking, expressing who we are, pulling and pushing the rhythm and making this pattern that I don’t ever want to stop.
When I open my eyes I see the pink dresses swishing beside me and they’re a surprise, like sudden flowers against our black. I love them! The girls’ voices slide into the chorus with mine and we belt it out, smiling like maniacs. We can’t stop smiling. Each of us is a part weaving the pattern, and now I can feel the groove Valerie described—we’ve clicked into this place where we all belong, where the energy is flowing and we could go on forever, easily, without effort, just like the planets doing their thing, like the cycles of night and day. Asim still looks kind of delirious, almost cross-eyed with delight. I grin back at him. It’s as if we’re all connected up here inside some divine bubble of happiness, just doing what we were meant to do.
Badman takes off now with his solo. His fingers are working their way up the neck, the high notes spurting light as spray, then crashing like bombs into the dark. Badman’s flying way out there, improvising his way into some other galaxy. His notes have flung past the pattern we were making, discovering notes and sequences we’d never heard in our garage band. I realize I’m holding my breath, going where he’s going and for a moment I think maybe he’ll never come back, but like Led Zeppelin he catches himself and Asim is there to meet him, drumming us back into the main rhythm. We fall into the groove, but it’s a new journey, and as the beat takes over I try to make my larynx into drums the way Juanita taught me. We’re listening, talking, soaring, and now I see that the front rows of the audience are on their feet, clapping and swaying, and then everyone’s up, catching the wave we’re on and Badman is taking us higher.
I’ll never forget tonight even if I live to be a hundred. Even though Daniel got sick and threw up on Mom’s lap and she had to take him home before we finished our number. Even though Eight ran out into the audience and Mr. Phillips nearly stepped on him. And even though Badman’s dad arrived late, only after Badman had finished his solo.
“He got here, didn’t he?” Badman said. “And all the way from New Zealand!”
Up there on stage, nothing could touch what we had. It was like Valerie’s perfect harmony—keeping your own tune while listening to others. Usually that’s hard. Takes a lot of concentration. But tonight it was natural, the only way to be.
Jackson says he won’t forget tonight either, and if we can do this happy stuff more and stop disabling our immunity systems with anger, maybe we will live to be a hundred. When he said “happy stuff’ he smiled in a funny way, so I don’t know whether he meant the music or the kiss. Maybe it was both.
The last three weeks, there’s been more “happy stuff” than I ever thought possible. Which is pretty amazing, since it all came right after the most unhappy experience in my entire life. But the singing took me away. Practicing every afternoon in that garage—it was like having a bubble of happiness inside. Once you’ve felt that, Jackson says, no one can ever take it away. It’s a part of you.
You know how Frank Sinatra said rock was the end of civilization? Well, I think it’s what helps keep everything going. You’ve gotta hear the music that sets you free. Then you’ve got the glory inside you. If you didn’t have that there’d be no point in getting up in the morning and brushing your teeth. It’d be like being in jail. Or dead.
Maybe I’ll write a song about it.
17. Jackson
I just have to add something that I haven’t told you. It won’t take long. But do you know what? When I kissed Esmerelda on the night of the school concert, I forgot to count. No challenges, no numbers. Absolutely nothing happened in my head. For me, that’s about as rare as snow in summer. It was the best feeling. When I listen to Ez talk about singing, I think kissing must do the same thing. Hypnotize you.
I couldn’t help thinking afterward, though, about exactly how long the kiss lasted. I went through it all in my mind, and I even tried to kiss the mirror, to get it right. The glass was really cold. Ez and I, we didn’t dislocate our jaws or anything, but we did have our lips open a bit. I figure it went for about sixteen seconds. That one kiss was so good, I didn’t even need to ask for another to make it even.
A kiss like that could change a guy’s whole attitude to life.
I told Asim that, and he could see it. He thinks he’ll have his first kiss in eighth grade. I’m just glad I got mine out of the way in seventh grade.
Mom says I’ll really enjoy the rest of high school. She thinks I’ll grow into myself, like finding the right-sized suit. I hope so—before I moved to Homeland I felt empty a lot of the time, with too much loose space inside.
“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all,” said Helen Keller. Well, I think I’ve had about enough adventures to last a lifetime. But then again, maybe this is only the beginning.
You never know.
Copyright © 2006 by Anna Fienberg
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You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce, or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
First published in Australia in 2006 by the Penguin Group, Puffin Books
First published in the United States of America in August 2007
by Walker Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc.
E-book edition published in November 2012
www.bloomsburykids.com
For information about permis
sion to reproduce selections from this book, write to
Permissions, Walker & Company, 104 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request
p. cm.
Summary: In 1970s Florida, eleven-year-old Violet’s world is upturned by the arrival of a girl from Detroit who seems bent on stealing Violet’s best friends, but by summer’s end, Violet’s relationships have only gotten better.
[1. Best friends—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Neighbors—Fiction. 4. Summer—Fiction. 5. Lightning—Fiction. 6. Florida—History—20th century—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.H31365Vio 2008 [Fic]—dc22 2007049129
Book design by David Altheim
ISBN: 978-0-8027-3498-3 (e-book)
Number 8 Page 25