Our Song

by Fraiberg, Jordanna

  “You can’t let her get to you,” Annie said once they were gone.

  “She’s my replacement,” I said flatly, staring up at patches of the dark sky poking through the top of the castle. “My upgrade.”

  “Sometimes I just want to shake you. Do you even hear yourself? You’re a thousand times better than Betsy Brill, but that’s not even the point because you can’t see it.”

  “No, I’m not. My life is over,” I said emphatically, propping myself up on my elbows.

  “If you think your life is over, then do something about it.” She went to put her boots back on and gather her bags. “Maybe you were given a second chance for a reason. Maybe this is your opportunity to start over. Did you ever consider that?”

  I knew she was only trying to help but her words cut deep. I suddenly felt very tired, like I could slip into a long, permanent sleep. “No,” I said. “I’m not like you.”

  “That’s right, you’re not. And you’re not like Betsy or Derek or your mother or anyone else you think has control over your life. You’re the one in charge. You’re the only one who can change your destiny no matter what you might think. The sooner you figure that out, the sooner you can start living for real.”

  • • •

  We drove home in silence. The moon was even brighter now, exposing all the fault lines in the pavement along the way. When I was little, I would avoid the cracks in the sidewalk and step over them, convinced it would keep me safe. But now I knew it was useless. The cracks were everywhere, and there was no escaping them.

  The house was dark when I came in. I had no idea whether my father had come home yet, and I didn’t care. Before heading out into the garden, I stopped to do my nightly check of Derek’s Facebook profile. I nearly fell out of my chair when a new picture—of him and Betsy—appeared at the top of his page. A sharp pain pierced through me as I stared at the two of them, cheek to cheek, all smiles. It was just like the pictures he and I used to take. Betsy had only just posted it a few moments ago. It was as if she had done it for my sake, like she knew I still obsessively checked his page and wanted to send me a clear message that Derek belonged to her now.

  But my heart stopped when I noticed another change. There, in clear black print, his relationship status now read, In a relationship with Betsy Brill.

  My stomach clenched and my heart sped up in my chest. I felt like I was on the verge of throwing up. It hurt all over and nowhere in particular. I sat back and caught my reflection in the window. My hair looked all knotted and covered half my face. I looked just like the girl in that horror movie The Ring. I was terrifying. No wonder Derek could barely look at me anymore.

  I ran down the hall, past my bedroom, and into the bathroom. I flicked on the light and searched the medicine cabinet for the blunt scissors my mother always used to cut Noah’s hair. The shelves were practically empty, devoid of the collection of old prescription bottles and Advil and cold medicines that normally accumulated there. I felt a dull jab in my gut. Yet another sign that my mother didn’t trust me.

  I finally found the scissors, hidden in the back of the second drawer next to the sink. I grabbed a thick chunk of hair and began to cut.

  In the mirror’s reflection I watched the long strands float down, like feathers in suspended animation, daring me to care.

  But I didn’t. I no longer had a reason to.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE LAST BELL of the day finally rang. I sprang from my seat and was first out the door. There were still almost four hours until the meeting, but being on the move made it seem like time might go by just a little bit faster. I was sure Nick hadn’t given me a second thought; that is, if he even remembered who I was. And there was no guarantee he’d even show up, especially given the fact that he spent a grand total of about twelve minutes at the last meeting. Still, the thought of seeing him again allowed my mind to escape while the rest of me was trapped at school. For those few minutes that we spoke, I didn’t feel like I was playing the role of Olive Bell the way I had to here at school.

  Out in the hall the bell reverberated against the metal lockers. Classroom doors swung open like dominos. Students streamed into the corridor, surrounding me like an army of marching ants. Instinctively, I reached up to tuck a lock of hair behind my ear but felt nothing but bare skin. I glanced up, afraid of the intense stares I had become accustomed to. But no one was looking. Maybe I was finally old news now; maybe chopping my hair off wasn’t such a disaster after all.

  “Boo!” Annie grabbed me from behind and yanked out one of my earbuds.

  I jumped, nearly dropping my books. “Jeez, you scared me!”

  “I still can’t believe you cut it all off,” she said, touching my empty back where my hair used to fall. It was like a blanket had been yanked off me during the night. I couldn’t decide if I felt lighter and free, or naked and exposed.

  Just then Derek rounded the corner. It was pointless trying to avoid him anymore. It just made the times that I did see him hurt even more.

  I quickly buried my head in my locker. Derek used to make fun of Annie’s short hair behind her back, saying she looked like a “lesbo”—his word, not mine. Even though my hair wasn’t boy-short like Annie’s, I could still practically hear him laughing about my new look with Betsy.

  “Can you not make a big deal of it?” I hissed.

  “How can I not make a big deal? This is, like, the boldest thing you’ve ever done! Not to mention you look freakin’ awesome.”

  I stared at my reflection in the mirror tacked to the inside of the door. My face looked so big and round framed by the short, blunt cut. I’d made sure to even it out into a semi-stylish bob. At first, I looked like a crazy person, with long, uneven strands sprouting out at every angle. I could tell my mother wasn’t into my new look from her reaction (“Oh, you cut your hair”), but short of praise, she let it go. Looking at it now, I tugged down on the edges, willing them to magically grow back, to reverse my actions. “It was an impulse. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t think more often.”

  The back of my head throbbed like the wound was still fresh. If I had stopped to think, I would never have done a lot of things. I angled the door to try to catch a glimpse of Derek through the mirror, but he was already gone.

  “I seriously can’t wait for you to meet someone else,” she said, following my gaze to Derek’s locker. “It’s the only thing that will make you forget him once and for all.”

  My mind immediately went to Nick. But instead of feeling excited by the possibility of seeing him tonight, I suddenly felt terrified. I had almost told Annie about him so many times this past week, but now I was relieved that I hadn’t. I’d already built him up in my head more than I should have. Telling Annie would elevate him to some super status and only guarantee disappointment.

  Annie was looking at me expectantly. What did she know about moving on anyway? “Is that how you’ve gotten over all your exes?” I asked. The words came out sharper than I’d intended.

  Annie reached into her locker. “I have to return this,” she said, holding out a book as if she didn’t hear me. But I knew she had, and that I had gone too far.

  “I didn’t mean that—”

  “I’ll meet you at my car in five,” Annie said, cutting me off before I could finish.

  I let it go as she hurried down the hall toward the library. I knew that if Annie didn’t want to talk about something, there was no point trying. Like the time her parents went through a rough patch freshman year. She had told me enough to know that they were fighting, and that I shouldn’t ask any questions. It was the main reason I knew I could count on her to not push me about that night. Annie was always private, especially when it came to her parents. They were this tight, happy little threesome that existed apart from the rest of the world. I used to think it was because she was an only child, but I came to believe it was really that her parents were so much cooler than everyone else’s. They were interesting and fa
ir and you could say anything to them without worrying they’d take it the wrong way. Maybe it was why Annie didn’t care about boys and love as much as I did. Because she had so much love at home. It wasn’t that my parents didn’t love me. I knew they did. They just didn’t know how to love me in the right way, in a way that didn’t make me feel so alone.

  I slammed my locker shut, trying to focus on the fact that soon enough I’d be miles away from everything I was trying to forget, when I came face to face with Derek. He appeared out of nowhere, like he’d dropped out of one of the ceiling panels. He looked up at the exact same moment and just stared at me. It was the first time he had really looked at me since everything happened, without turning his head away or averting his gaze. It was like he really wanted to see me. His lips began to move as he took a step closer. The air became heavy with the odor of chalk and stinky sneakers. It felt like the yellow walls were closing in on me. I had been desperate for Derek to talk to me, to acknowledge I still existed, for some sign of hope that I could cling to, but now that the moment had actually arrived, I took off in the other direction.

  Annie was dancing wildly in the driver’s seat when I got to the car. She lowered the volume when she saw my expression. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  I put on my sunglasses and took out my iPhone. “Mind if I plug this in?”

  “Be my guest,” she said, detaching hers from the adapter and swapping mine in.

  I cued up my play list, turned the volume loud enough that we couldn’t talk, and leaned back in my seat as we drove down Vista, aka Derek Memory Lane. What was he trying to tell me out in the hall? Just thinking about it gave me a queasy stomach.

  I rolled down the window and tried to focus on the road ahead. It had been repaved when I was in the hospital. They redid it every year to fill the same potholes that kept coming back. Even though they only appeared on one part of the road, the city applied a fresh layer of asphalt to the whole boulevard, making it into one long, perfect strip, like a tarmac. But the more I stared at the inky surface, with its dotted lines the color of sunshine, the more I saw the gaping holes it was trying to cover.

  I rolled the window back up and turned to Annie. “Let’s go into the city early today.”

  • • •

  When we got to L.A., I asked Annie to show me around her old neighborhood. We had plenty of time to kill, and it was only ten minutes away from Hollywood. I felt bad about what I’d said earlier about her nonexistent exes. Even if Annie seemed to have forgotten it, I wanted to somehow make it up to her. It got me thinking again about how Derek used to call her a lesbian. It wasn’t just because of her hair, but how she never flirted with, or showed any sign of interest in, boys. I told him he was just full of himself because she never flirted with him. But now I was beginning to wonder if Derek had somehow been more perceptive about my best friend than I was.

  “This is my old school.” Annie slowed down as we approached a quaint, red brick building. It looked like the kind of school you’d find on the East Coast, surrounded by tall trees and a grassy lawn.

  “Wait, this is the infamous Potter School for Girls?” I asked as a group of students came out a side door in matching plaid skirts and white shirts. I recognized the uniform from Annie’s albums.

  “The one and only,” she said, with a hint of wistfulness in her voice. Whenever she talked about it, the school always sounded like this magical oasis, where you didn’t have to worry about what to wear or who to impress. It was so small that there weren’t any cliques and everyone was friends, even with their teachers, whom they called by their first names. I wondered if feeling so safe and protected back then is what made Annie so confident and different now. Maybe by looking the same as everyone else on the outside back when she was little, she was free to be different on the inside. There was clearly no one else like her in Vista Valley, but we didn’t have any schools like this.

  “This is where you met Jessica, right?” I knew that it was, but I suddenly wondered if there was more to their friendship than Annie was letting on, not just to me, but maybe even to herself. I glanced at her from the corner of my eye to gauge her reaction. She just nodded and continued driving, until the school was just a red dot in the side view mirror.

  We got an early bite at Annie’s favorite diner. It was where she and her parents used to go for Sunday brunch before they moved. She said it was the best place for people watching, a place where young hipsters stumbling home from a Saturday night out in Hollywood and local families like hers intersected. With its torn vinyl booths, old-fashioned jukebox, and tattooed clientele (both young and old), it was a far cry from my family’s Sunday brunch scene at the club. I couldn’t imagine my mother ever setting foot in a place like this.

  • • •

  “See you back here in an hour?” Annie said, checking her watch. This time we got to the community center with ten minutes to spare.

  Flipping down the visor for one last glance in the mirror, I pushed my hair forward so it covered more of my face. I wondered if I’d ever get used to the person who now stared back at me. “Wish me luck,” I said as I hopped out of the car.

  “Luck for what?” Annie called out after me, but I pretended I couldn’t hear her and ran through the cracked double doors. If I stopped now, I might never make it inside.

  The security guard nodded as I hurried past him to room 109.

  There were still a few empty seats as I made my way to the circle, with most of the people from last week in their same spots. But there was no sign of Nick. What did I expect given how little he seemed to want to be here last time? It was stupid to think that he’d come back just for me. But that didn’t stop me from holding my breath every time the door creaked open. Or from deflating a little more each time it wasn’t him. I had the sinking fear that he wasn’t real, that maybe he was just a figment of my imagination, like the song running through my head.

  “Let’s get started,” Stuart said, once all the movement and chair scraping had come to a stop. “We’ll go clockwise tonight, starting with Michael.”

  I glanced toward the exit, hoping to see the door swing open, but it didn’t. No one else was coming.

  A man two seats over cleared his throat. He looked like he was around my father’s age. He was dressed like my father too, in a suit with a fancy-looking leather briefcase tucked under his chair. I wondered if he had a wife and kids at home just like my dad, if he stayed up late at night drinking scotch while everyone else slept. “Pure bliss,” he said. “That’s the best way I can describe what it was like.”

  He closed his eyes and let out a long, deep exhale, like he was reliving the moment right there. I could never imagine those words coming out of my dad’s mouth. I shifted to dislodge my thighs from the sticky plastic seat and wondered if Michael had been more like him before he died.

  “I felt this overwhelming sense of cosmic unity,” said the woman to Michael’s left. It was hard to tell how old she was. Her dark hair had silver and white streaks running through it, but her skin was smooth and wrinkle free. She could easily have been one of those people who turned prematurely gray at thirty or a sixty-year-old health freak.

  Now it was my turn. My heart began to race as I glanced around the room. Beads of sweat formed at my temples as all eyes turned to me. It suddenly felt hot and stifling. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t belong here. I was nothing like these people. All I had to do was get up and make it across the room and out the door. Annie would be waiting for me on the other side. But a buzz swarmed into my head. It was so dizzying I wasn’t sure I could get up.

  “Olive?” Stuart finally said after a sustained silence.

  Just one step at a time, I told myself as I peeled my legs off the chair. They felt leaden and heavy, like I was stuck in quicksand. Zeroing in on the red letters of the exit sign above the door, I bolted. I kept running down the darkened corridor, like I was stuck in a bad dream that would drag me back if I stopped for even a second.


  The dying sunlight filtered in through the mottled double glass doors at the end of the hall. I was almost there. Just a few more steps to go when—

  Bang.

  I barreled into someone.

  “Whoa, are you all right?”

  It was Nick.

  I doubled over, struggling to take in deep, heaving inhales, but seeing him only made it worse.

  I felt his hand on my shoulder. “This way.”

  I straightened up as he guided me over to the wall. “Stand here and close your eyes,” he instructed.

  I leaned into the wall, my palms outstretched against the cool cement surface. “That’s it,” he said as I bowed my head and closed my eyes.

  “Now.” He drew in closer, his lips almost brushing against my ear as he whispered. “I’m going to count to ten and all that matters are the numbers. Nothing else, okay?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. Here we go. One. Two. Three…”

  His voice was so soft and commanding that my humiliation started to give way to an overall sense of calm, like he was hypnotizing me.

  “Six. Seven. Eight…”

  I was concentrating so hard on his voice that I realized it was the only thing I was hearing. Miraculously it had taken the place of all the buzzing in my head.

  “Nine. Ten.”

  When I opened my eyes, Nick was standing next to me, wearing the same navy blazer, the same red sneakers, and the same pair of ripped jeans. Seeing him again felt both natural and completely unexpected. It was like an almost-vu, where I almost but couldn’t quite remember experiencing this same feeling before.

  “You cut your hair,” he said, studying my face in a way that made me uneasy and excited at the same time. I nodded. “You look more like yourself.”

  The hint of a smirk edged up the corner of Nick’s mouth. It made him look even cuter, if that were possible. “So, are you going to turn me down twice in a row?”