Our Song

by Fraiberg, Jordanna

“What about Betsy?”

  “It’s over.” He cleared his throat the way he did on the stand during a debate when he was about to make his closing argument. “She doesn’t get me. Not like you do, Wollie. It’s not too late to go back to the way things were. And we have Georgetown next year.”

  I heard him, but nothing sank in. Not the fact that it was over with Betsy, that he wanted me back, that he assumed I’d gotten into Georgetown, or that we’d spend the next four years there together, just like we planned in another lifetime.

  My mind flooded with memories of Nick, still frames from the past few months: waltzing out into the middle of traffic, his banged-up car, the dead garden, his empty home. And the last time I saw him. Pieced together, they didn’t tell the story I had imagined, about two lost souls bound together by one shared experience, one shared pain. In this version—reality—I was all alone.

  “Okay,” I finally said. “I’ll go with you.”

  A hopeful smile blossomed on his face. “It’s like you always said: we’re meant to be.”

  I felt the slight twinge of my heart opening up just enough to let Derek back in. He had a point: here we were, a few months later, right where we left off. We could step back on the same path, like nothing had changed except for the date on the calendar. I knew better now than to try to fight it. All I had to do was accept that he finally wanted me back, that he was giving me the second chance I dreamed of, that this had been my fate all along. I wasn’t going to let my anger over Nick take that away. Besides, Derek had already apologized. Now it was time for me to forgive him.

  He walked me to my next class. Even though he said it was over with Betsy, I was relieved we didn’t run into her in the halls. I knew how it felt, and no matter how mean she had been to me, I still didn’t want to rub it in her face. I waited until Derek was gone before slipping back out into the hall. I made a beeline for the darkroom. There was still one thing holding me back and I needed to fix it.

  “Whoa, slow down,” Annie said as we collided at the door.

  I ignored her and went straight for the clothesline. It was empty. “Where are they?”

  “Where are what?” Annie said, setting her bag down as the second bell rang.

  “My prints.”

  “I put them over there,” she said, pointing to a neat stack on the counter.

  I could see Nick’s face staring back at me from the top of the pile. I ran over, picked it up, and began tearing it apart.

  “Ol, don’t…” Annie said, coming toward me.

  She tried to pull the other prints away, but I boxed her out and quickly made my way through the rest of the pile, ripping each photo to pieces. When I got to the blurry one Nick had taken of us, I finally realized why it had come out like that. Because it was a picture of nothing, a picture that was trying to capture something that didn’t exist.

  “Not the negatives!” Annie gasped as I snapped the crisp film cleanly in half. I kept going until the pieces became too small to break apart. When I was done, I slumped to the floor.

  “Will you please tell me what the hell is going on?” She dropped down to the ground next to me.

  “Don’t you have class?” I said, swiping my legs over the scattered remains, like they were used confetti.

  “I don’t care.” She reached for my hand. “I’m worried about you.”

  “Don’t be,” I said, pulling it away. “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not.” Annie knew something had happened with Nick, but I refused to tell her the details. I would only share that it was over and I never wanted to hear his name again.

  “Derek asked me to prom.”

  “Ha!” Annie scoffed. “I can’t believe the nerve of that—”

  “I said yes.” I picked at the tiny, sharp shards of film that were stuck to my palm. They looked like amber splinters. “We’re probably getting back together.”

  “Ol, no matter what happened with Nick…”

  “This has nothing to do with Nick. You don’t know what it’s like to have your life fall apart. This is my chance to get it back.”

  “Derek isn’t good enough for you. You’re making a big mistake.”

  “Well, good thing it’s none of your business.”

  “Oh I get it, it’s only my business when you need a ride or a scapegoat.”

  “I wish you’d stop telling me what to do, pressuring me to be somebody I’m not. I should never have listened to you to be bold.”

  “So this is all my fault? I’d like to know when you’ll start taking responsibility for your own life, including the crash, because we both know it didn’t happen because you were late.”

  “What do you even know about relationships anyway?” I flared. She had no right to question my judgment, to challenge me about that night. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. The simmering rage I didn’t realize had been building up inside flowed out of me like lava. “Skyping with someone a million miles away doesn’t count. Not that you’d have the guts to call Jessica your girlfriend even if she lived next door. You pretend you’re different, but you’re just as fake as everyone else.”

  I took a deep breath and felt a knot unravel in my chest. But as I saw the look of devastation spread across Annie’s face, another one began to form. I wondered if Nick felt the same way after he told me the truth, after he detonated the connection between us.

  “I figured you’d change after everything you’ve been through.” Annie’s voice was low and deep. She sounded like a different person, a stranger. She kneeled down and started picking up the broken pieces. “Now I know there’s no cure for selfishness because you’re worse than you were before, if that’s even possible.”

  The knot in my ribcage tightened and began to throb. I got down on my knees to help her, when Annie briskly stood up to leave.

  “Leave your key on the counter when you’re done.” She gathered her things and paused at the door. “There’s no reason for you to be in here anymore.”

  CHAPTER 28

  “HOLD STILL AND keep your eyes closed.” My mother was inches from my face, clamping the curler down on my eyelashes. I had always sworn I would never allow her to use it on me, but like most things, I’d learned it was easier not to resist.

  Now that I was getting my grades up and hadn’t pulled any more rebellious stunts, there had been a sort of détente between us. And of course, it didn’t hurt that things were back on track with Derek.

  “Don’t get too carried away, Mom. I’m just going to the gym.” If it were up to me, I’d be going in jeans instead of the Laura Ashley floral gown my mom had come home with when she noticed I still had “nothing to wear.” I had taken the black dress and all the new clothes I’d gotten with Annie and buried them at the back of my closet. They reminded me too much of Nick, and of Annie, and of the person I was pretending to be.

  “It’s not the gym tonight. It’s Atlantis!” That was this year’s theme. The prom committee had apparently ordered ice sculptures in the shape of sea animals and all sorts of other ridiculous decorations to try to cover up the fact that it was still the stinky gym where basketball was played. I could think of a million better uses for that money, and a part of me even felt guilty for lending my support to the stupid tradition by showing up. “I’ll never forget dancing with your father at our prom. I still have my corsage, you know.”

  “Well, it was different back then.” I wondered if my father was already dreaming of his escape when he danced with her that night. If he was just going through the motions, like I was. But I was doing this for Derek, because the tradition suddenly seemed to be very important to him. He was the one who’d arranged everything for tonight, like ordering the limo and the corsages, figuring out what time we needed to be there and which after-parties we’d hit. He’d handled all the details I used to imagine I’d be in charge of. It was like there’d been this role reversal between us, like he was doing all he could to make up for lost time.

  “You just wait and see,” she said.
“You’re going to look so beautiful. Derek won’t know what hit him when I’m through with you.”

  Derek would be ringing the bell soon, waiting at the door in his rented tux while the stretch limo idled outside. I tried to tell him that a cab would be good enough, but he insisted, saying he only wanted the best for me. My mother would be beaming, poised with her camera, and my father ready to pop a bottle of champagne while they waited for my grand entrance. I could see the whole night unfold before it even started, like a scene in one of the teen soaps I used to watch.

  “Open your eyes.” My mother took a few steps back to assess my face before coming at me with the blush brush. “And that about does it. Take a look!”

  I went over to the full-length mirror on the back of my parents’ bathroom door and stared at my reflection. With the help of about a hundred bobby pins, she was able to pull my hair back into a bun. It almost looked like I had never cut it. But even so, I hardly recognized myself in that dress, with my red lips, pink cheeks, and glittery eyes. It wasn’t just the clothes and makeup that seemed foreign. It was deeper than that, like I had left my body and another eighteen-year-old girl had taken over, telling me when to sit or stand, when to speak or smile.

  “Oh no, it’s starting to drizzle,” my mother gasped, peering out the window as the sky darkened. “Tonight of all nights.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, trying to appease her, like it was her prom that was about to be ruined. “We’re going to be inside anyway.”

  “But the pictures!” She threw her hands up in the air in defeat. “I wanted to get some of you two in the garden.”

  Now that Derek was back in our lives, she delighted in throwing around that term, you two. It had only been two weeks, but in just a couple of days, we had slipped back into our old routines: sitting together at lunch (where my place had been reinstated), hanging out after school, watching movies on Friday night. We still didn’t hold hands in the hallways, but now it was because of my terms. I still wasn’t ready to kiss him, even in private.

  Neither of us mentioned the accident. It was like I had stepped into an alternate universe, where we never broke up and I didn’t crash his car, where Nick didn’t exist, and where my heart never got broken. Everything looked exactly the way it had always been. It reminded me of a movie my father showed me once, The Truman Show, where Truman’s whole world turns out to be fake, where everyone’s in on the secret except for Truman himself. But in my case, it was the other way around. I was the only one in on the joke, the only one who could see that everything in my world was superficial, and that just beneath the surface, it was a whole different story.

  The rain started coming down harder now. The louder it got, the more it calmed me, its pitter-patter replacing the rhythm of my own heart.

  “He’s early!” My mother squealed as the doorbell rang. “You stay here, I’ll get it.”

  She giggled and ran downstairs. I stood in the middle of the room, staring at the reflection of the strange girl in the mirror, the girl everyone expected me to be.

  The front door creaked open. Over the sound of the rain, I detected a slight strain in my mother’s voice, even though I couldn’t make out what she was saying. The door closed again, and I heard her footsteps shuffling back upstairs.

  She came back in, her brow furrowed.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked through the mirror’s reflection.

  “It’s not Derek. It’s that boy from the club. From that day—”

  “What?” I whipped my head around.

  “He insisted on speaking with you. He has an English accent. I thought you said he was from school.”

  My heart started to quiver, sending quick, sharp jabs into my chest. She searched my face for guidance but I couldn’t move or speak. “I’m going to send him away.”

  “No, wait,” I spat, finding my words. “I’ll do it.”

  Without thinking, I moved past her into the hall, practically tripping over my dress. I gathered it up off the floor and ran the rest of the way. I hesitated when I got to the door. Did I really want to do this? Leaning into the black wood, I pressed my right eye against the peephole and peered through.

  It was really him.

  Suddenly lightheaded, I reached for the doorknob to steady myself and opened the door. Nick was standing under the awning, sopping wet like he’d been out in the rain for hours. It was as if everything was happening in slow motion, as if I wasn’t in control of my own limbs.

  “Olive.” His voice caught, like he could barely utter my name.

  The rain blew in, drops spraying across my dress. Despite the breeze, my cheeks burned and my skin pricked with heat. “What are you doing here?”

  “I had to see you.”

  His shirt and jeans were soaked through. The way his wet hair stuck to his forehead exposed his face completely, revealing a scar above his left eyebrow. It looked pink and tender, as if it had never fully healed.

  “What else is there to say?”

  “There’s something…” His voice cracked as three beads of water rolled down his cheek. Were they raindrops or tears? “Can we talk?

  If I said yes, I knew I wouldn’t be inviting just Nick in, but all the painful feelings I’d pushed down and cemented over. But as I looked into his gray eyes, I knew it was already too late.

  “Come inside,” I said, opening the door wider.

  CHAPTER 29

  MY MOTHER HOVERED nervously in the front hall. “You better finish getting ready,” she said, even though we both knew I was done. Perfectly primped and packaged.

  “This won’t take long.” I led Nick upstairs to my room. It was the only place where we’d have any privacy.

  I had been so completely convinced that I would never see him again, but here he was, walking into my room, just as I was about to go to prom with Derek.

  “You can sit here,” I said, gesturing toward the armchair.

  “I prefer to stand, if that’s okay,” he said, shuffling on his feet. It was the first time he ever seemed nervous, out of his element.

  “I don’t have much time,” I said, glancing at the clock on my bedside table. Derek would be here any minute. “It’s prom.”

  He probably thought the whole idea of prom was ridiculous compared to all the balls and fancy parties he was used to, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care what he thought of my room, or the goofy family pictures lining the hall, the size of our house, or even my mother. I had nothing left to hide.

  A single raindrop clung to a clump of wet bangs and dangled precariously above his nose. It looked like it was suspended in midair. “I’m sorry,” he croaked.

  He had the same look on his face that he’d had the day he apologized in the pond, underwater. Only this time, I could hear him clearly. This time, I knew what was wrapped up in that expression. It wasn’t love. It was guilt.

  “I’m so sorry,” he repeated, bowing his head. “About what I said to you in the darkroom. It wasn’t fair. I wasn’t at the meetings looking for unstable girls. That’s not how I think of you. Far from it.”

  Had he come all this way just to say that? It was a little too late. And it still didn’t change the most important thing of all. “You lied to me.”

  “I know. It’s the second-worst thing I’ve ever done.”

  My back stiffened. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “I came to tell you about my accident. I did have one. That part was true.” He walked over to the window and tugged on the braided rope that dangled next to the curtains.

  “It doesn’t matter anymore.” I clenched my hands into balled fists. I couldn’t tell what I was feeling, fear or anger or both. “I don’t want to know.”

  “Please, Olive. If you never want to see me again, I promise I’ll leave you alone forever. Just hear me out.”

  He was wearing the white T-shirt he had on that day at his house. Even though all his shirts were identical, I knew it was the same one because it still held the faint tr
ace of my blood.

  “Fine.” I sat on the edge of my bed. My legs felt too weak to stand. “You have five minutes.”

  He cleared his throat and began. “I came back to Los Angeles last June, right after graduation. It was the first time the whole family was home together in almost two years. Me, my parents, and…” The color drained from his face. “And Theo. My older brother.”

  His brother? His voice wavered and my mind flashed to the frame on his desk. “The boy in the picture,” I said. “That was Theo.”

  He nodded and looked down at the floor, unable to meet my gaze. “I was supposed to go travel with friends for the summer, but I came back so I could spend the summer with him. We hardly ever saw each other anymore, not since he graduated Eton and joined the golf tour. It was his passion and it took him all over the world. But he’d just accepted a job as the pro at a country club and was going to be home for the first time in ages.”

  I knew exactly which club he meant. Our eyes met as the pieces slowly started to take shape. It reminded me of the way images gradually formed out of nowhere in the photo developing trays. “You can stop,” I said, my voice softer now.

  But he didn’t.

  “My father had just bought a Learjet, his latest toy that sat unused in the hangar, so I decided to get my pilot’s license. But by the third lesson, I became impatient. Screw the license, I thought. Why did I need a piece of paper to fly my own plane? I was convinced I already knew how.”

  My stomach tightened into knots as I listened, afraid of where he was going, unsure I wanted to know. I focused on the silk fringe of the curtain brushing up against his fingers as he continued.

  “Then, on the morning of June twenty-ninth, I invited Theo out for a flight before work. It was overcast with the type of fog that normally burns off quickly, a typical June gloom morning. But when we got to the airport, the fog was even worse. Theo suggested we wait for a clearer day so we’d have better views. He said we had the whole summer ahead of us. But I insisted. We were already there and it’d be a waste to turn back. ‘We’ll fly above the clouds,’ I told him. ‘Just a quick spin.’ I was so desperate to impress him. I wanted him to be proud of me in the way that my father never was, the way he was only proud of Theo.”