by Ginger Scott
“They’re no khakis, but they’re pretty swag,” Casey says behind me. I suck in air and keep my eyes on my brother.
“I think I’d like these, then, Murph,” he says.
I nod and tell him to pass them to me under the door so I can pay.
As I wait at the register, Casey taps me on my arm with the weight of my notebook. My eyes flick up to his face, but he’s looking at the notebook instead of me.
“I like this one,” he says, his face sort of serious.
I take it in my hand, relieved to have it back while also nervous at which one he’s opened it to. I swallow and say, “Okay.”
I pay and hand Lane his bag, then fall behind him and Casey as we walk through the mall back out to my car. I’m expecting to find the page opened to the sexy lyrics I was scribbling this morning—about wanting to be touched and feeling excited…about boys with stubble on their face and music at their fingertips. But that’s not the page he has opened. It’s on one of the first things I wrote.
I don’t even ask, getting into the backseat and leaving Casey with no choice but to drive us home. I haven’t looked at this song in years. I wrote it as an exercise when people were pushing me to sing. I was fifteen, and angry and depressed. He doesn’t even know what these words mean; they mean so much.
Boxes, locks, unspoken wishes
Traps, choking, candle burning dissonance
Inside, tangled, open mouthed pettiness
Coughing, breathing, whistles at a girl…he’s a boy
Shouting, screaming, no mistaking
Pounding, breaking, overtaking
Staring, holding, touching, molding
Candy-coated kisses on the strings of my guitar
This is my song
You’ll never hear it
I mouth the words until I look up and notice him watching. His eyes aren’t the same as they were during the drive here. I’m relieved that he isn’t teasing me anymore, but I also can’t tell what his eyes are saying. I think they pity me. I wonder if he knows they should.
We get to the driveway, and Casey lingers at the door of my car, his eyes down and my keys in his hand, stuffed in his pocket. Lane rushes toward the house to put on his new jeans to show our mom, and when the door slams shut behind him, we’re left in my parents’ driveway all alone. This is that scene from high school that never happened—me and that boy kicking our feet awkwardly, not sure what to say, outside my house.
“Thanks for driving,” I say, rolling my eyes, because that’s such a stupid thing to say.
Casey breathes a short laugh and nods.
“No problem. Hey, let me know…how the pants go over at school? Or…just…if he has any more problems?” Casey looks up, one eye squinting.
I shrug.
“You can’t fix his problems for him, Casey. But it’s sweet that you want to try,” I say.
He smiles, but it’s short-lived, his mouth stretching to a straight line, his gaze falling to his feet. He pulls my keys out to hand them to me, then reaches into his back pocket, pulling out an envelope.
“What’s this?” I ask, shaking my head and taking both the keys and envelope as he hands them to me.
“Last night was a good payday, and I promised I’d get your car fixed, so…” he stops short of finishing.
I turn the envelope in my fingers and peel open the flap to see several twenties.
“I had the bank give me cash because I didn’t want you to have to deal with a check or whatever, and I wasn’t sure where you wanted to take it or how much…”
“Thanks,” I say, blinking rapidly in disbelief. I’d actually forgotten about the scratch on my door, and I figured he was thrilled I hadn’t brought it up. My eyes look at it now, behind him, and it seems so small.
“Sure,” he smiles. “Speaking of…I have to head over to Houston’s. I want to get his dent fixed, too.”
“Don’t leave,” I interrupt.
My eyes go wide, and I scramble because, what? Don’t leave? That was out loud!
“Yet,” I add to his confused face. “Don’t leave until you see Lane in his new jeans.”
“I saw them at the mall,” he says, brow bunched.
“I…I know, but he’ll want to show you again. In front of my parents. He’ll be proud, and you represent the cool-guy opinion. So just come in…just for a minute.” I somehow piece together a really flimsy excuse. My palms are sweating through the envelope.
Casey is staring at me, his head leaning slightly to one side and his lip curled just enough. I overlap this visual with the memory of his hand on my body and I quiver, having to take a step or two back just to mask it.
“All right,” he says, the word a little tentative, but his smile more anxious now.
“All right,” I repeat, walking backward and begging him to follow in my head.
I lead him through the door, and we stop at the hallway where my brother stands with one hand on either wall, kicking his legs out one at a time to show our mom how long his new pants are.
“They look very nice,” she says, complimenting him.
My father is making a sandwich at the counter, but stops to look over the rim of his glasses, nodding to agree.
“Yep, they’re pants,” my dad affirms. My mom shoots him a look and he raises his shoulders at her, mouthing “What?” She juts her chin forward and wrinkles her nose, gritting her teeth, and my dad rolls his eyes. “They’re great pants. Amazing pants. The best pants I’ve ever seen,” he says, turning to my mom again and mouthing “happy?”
She smiles and mouths, “Yes!”
“I like them almost as much as the khakis,” Casey says. My father stops making his sandwich, my mother freezes, and I hold my breath. We all look to Lane, who is still looking down at his own legs.
“Me, too. They’re not as comfortable. The khakis are better. But it’s nice to have something different,” he says, turning to move back to his room. “Thanks, Casey!” he shouts over his shoulder before shutting his door.
“Anytime, buddy,” Casey calls out after him.
I’m facing my dad, watching him look on at Casey with curious eyes. His hands finish building his lunch, but his gaze remains on the boy he doesn’t know much about. Casey slides closer to the counter, and my mother joins us.
“Why’d you have to bring up the khakis. Didn’t you tell him, Murph? The khakis were the problem,” she explains, a gentle worry line on her forehead.
“No,” Casey says. “The khakis weren’t the problem.”
My mom opens her mouth to respond, but shuts it quickly, taking in his words before walking away.
“You’re right,” she says as she moves down the hall to my parents’ room.
My father’s eyes have never left him; they’re still scrutinizing the details. He’s dusting crumbs from his hands over the sink, all the while looking, until I see his mouth begin to curve up in approval. My father’s head leans forward so he can peer over his glasses, and Casey meets his gaze. No words are exchanged, but my father nods once, then walks past us, patting Casey on the shoulder with a heavy hand twice.
We both hear the television click on.
“Your dad…he’s…” Casey says, looking out into the room, to the back of my father’s head. “Kind of intimidating. Like…like a professor who knows you don’t have the answer.”
I chew at my cheek, but eventually smile and look Casey in the eyes. I wait for several seconds, then I step closer and pat him in the same spot on his shoulder before turning to walk toward my room.
“That shit isn’t funny, Murphy. Not funny at all,” he chuckles.
“It’s kinda funny,” I say, my chest thumping, because he’s following me. He stayed. He saw Lane. He’s still here.
I’m stunned.
Casey
I think the only person left in this house who I’m not afraid of is Lane. But I don’t think it would take much for him to put me on edge, too. It’s because I want him to like me. I want them all to like me. The way I wa
nt Houston’s family to like me, only I’ve been family to Houston for so long that it’s easy to be around them now. Murphy’s family—they’re all new.
And I like them—the way they laugh and tease, the way they talk. I love how they look at each other, and how nobody yells or lectures. Her house always smells like cookies.
Nobody here is dying with an iron heart like they are in my family’s home.
I want Murphy to like me most.
I like Murphy.
It is most definitely, without doubt, not about just the music any more. It’s about making her happy. It’s about making her shine. And not because I want to ride her coattails, but I just want it for her.
Her room is still so young. It makes me smile as I follow her inside. I stop at the door and hold it, waiting for her to turn around.
“I don’t know the protocol here, do I close this? Or…will your dad knock me out with a bat if I do?” I chuckle.
Her eyes grow wide for a second and she starts wringing her hands, then swallows.
“Oh, uh…well…I guess you can close it? I mean…yeah, just close it,” she says, straightening her posture mid-speech and shaking out her nerves with a flit of her hand.
I smirk and look at the door handle, then back to her. Her eyes are wide on it again. She’s nervous about being alone with me, which is either really good, or really bad.
“You know what? It’s your parents’ house, and out of respect…” I say, letting go with the door about six inches from closed. I see her exhale.
“Thanks for coming with us, and for what you said to Lane,” she says.
My eyes find hers like magnets, and I hold them as long as she’ll let me, eventually blinking, her long lashes sweeping over her freckle-dusted cheeks as her gaze falls to her lap and her teeth pin her lip in this perfect grin. Her smile is like her songs.
“Your brother is a really neat guy,” I say.
She giggles. “Ha…neat. That’s…that’s just a really strange word to see come out of your mouth,” she says.
My mouth twists as I raise my eyebrows once.
“I just meant…you’re like…cooler than the word neat,” she says, her tongue all nervous, the words having a hard time flowing.
I glance up and run my hand through my hair, holding it out of my eyes, and she remembers that she has my hat.
“Oh, yeah…” she says, standing and pulling it from her pocket. She hands it to me. “Sorry, I forgot.”
“Thanks,” I say, sliding it on and moving to the opposite wall of her room, sliding down with my legs out in front of me.
There’s a short period of silence, and at one point, we’re both chewing at the inside of our mouths and staring at each other.
“It’s a neat hat,” she finally says, giggling lightly and blushing at her joke.
I kick my foot forward into her toe and she glances up.
“You’re neat,” I say, which only makes her blush worse.
Satisfied, I lean forward and run my thumb along the spine of a few of her music books. I stop when I reach a thin booklet labeled THEATER PHOTOS. I pull it out halfway and look to her for approval. I already stepped over the line stealing her songbook, which I’m glad I did. I saw the one about last night at the club with me. But I didn’t want to embarrass her. I meant what I said, too—the last song I flipped to, the one at the beginning, hit a nerve. She should put music to it.
Murphy shrugs, so I pull the book out, flipping through scrapbook pages of her in many of our high school productions. I recognize some of them from the yearbook, but there are others that are just of her with friends behind the scene. In a few of them, she’s being held by a guy I faintly recognize. I bet he was a nice guy. I hate him.
“Boyfriend?” I ask, quirking a brow and touching the photo in question.
“Hookup,” she says, holding my gaze. I wait for her to say she’s fucking with me. She doesn’t, so I widen my eyes and mouth okay. She laughs once as I gaze down.
“Like you can judge,” she says once my eyes are no longer on her.
Her response stings, but I keep my eyes on the pictures in front of me and give her that one, because she’s right—like I can judge. Though, since I heard her song, I haven’t done any hooking up. Nobody seems to be able live up to the temptation Murphy already is.
I flip to another page and she lets out a heavy breath, so I look up.
“Yes, boyfriend,” she says. “I don’t know why I said hookup. I just wanted to seem cooler than I really was, and now I feel stupid,” she says, hooding her eyes and lifting her fingers one at a time to peek at me.
I give in with a half smile.
“It’s okay. And…” I look down again, flipping through more pages, “I liked it better when he was just a hookup. Not really crazy about boyfriend.”
When I glance up again, her eyes are waiting, and her mouth is shut. She isn’t blushing, but she’s understanding a little more. Yeah, Murphy…this is about more than music. You aren’t just neat.
Her book is in my lap, and her body is in front of me, and all I want to do is toss it to the side and sit up on my knees to touch the real thing, but then there are those little digs she takes. I’m pretty positive that Murphy wouldn’t trust me if I did.
I don’t really blame her.
“I stuttered,” she says, breaking the silence. Our eyes are still locked as she speaks, her pupils dilating with her honesty. I can see the panic coursing through her veins, and I can tell her heart is beating harder. “You asked about Helen Keller. Earlier. I…I stuttered. I loved theater, and I wanted to be on stage, but I couldn’t…I still can’t…get the sentences out.”
My eyes fall to her hands, which are twisting again.
“It was really bad when I was younger. My mom homeschooled me until high school, but I wanted to have friends and to have that high school experience. Totally overrated, by the way,” she chuckles.
I smirk, because I understand. I lived the life of the party, and I said yes to everything and everyone in my circle of friends. I did it because I had nowhere else to be. If I went home, it was suffocating, unless nobody was there, which was most of the time. When my father was home, the questions came fast and my answers were pointless. Make sure you test high in AP. Did you ask for college credit? See if your counselor has scholarship packets. Did you say you wanted to take music? That’s a waste of time. Don’t waste time. Frivolous. Pointless. Useless.
“And Helen Keller…” I say, looking up at her with that page open in her scrapbook.
“Yeah, she didn’t talk. Kinda perfect role for me!” she grins.
I laugh lightly, my eyes falling back down to the photo—it’s the same one in the yearbook, the same one I stole from Houston and look at almost every night. It’s her eyes. Those unbelievable eyes.
“I bet you were great in it,” I say, glancing up again.
She tilts her head to the side and takes in the picture, leaning forward and twisting the book in my lap so she can get a better view. She falls back to her bed, sitting on the edge, and lets a full smile stretch her lips.
“I was fucking phenomenal,” she says.
I laugh without sound and shut my eyes, shaking my head.
“You seem to have found your voice just fine…and your modesty,” I say.
“It just about kills me every day,” she says, her smile falling into a more serious expression. She leans back on her hands and takes in a deep breath before letting her head tilt back, her hair fall down her arms and her eyes close at the coolness of her ceiling fan.
I don’t ask her, instead waiting patiently for her to tell me. Whatever it is, it’s personal—one of those deep scars. And for the first time since knowing this Murphy, since wishing I knew the one in the photo, I see the exhaustion on her body and face.
“It’s like acting,” she says, her head falling forward and her eyes meeting mine.
“What is?” I ask.
“When I sing. When I talk. When I…when I
anything really. I’m constantly acting. It’s a performance,” she says.
I tilt my head, not understanding.
“That’s how the music started,” she says, leaning back again, this time falling flat against her bed and pulling her knees up, turning and lying on her side to face me. She’s beautiful this way.
“Before my freshman year, I went to see a specialist who suggested I try singing as a form of therapy,” she says. “I’d already played the guitar since I was nine, so he thought it might come easier that way.”
“And did it?” I ask.
“Not at first,” she says, pulling the familiar black notebook from her night table where she had set it and flipping through a few pages before stopping and tossing the open booklet to me. It’s the song I heard her sing to her brother the other day. It’s quirky and sweet, nothing but rhymes—almost like something my sisters used to sing in the street playing jump rope.
“This is Lane’s song,” I say, giving her a half smile. She reflects my expression and closes her eyes in fondness.
“It is,” she says. “That one came so easy. I think because it’s about him, and it made me think of him and these silly words he and I like to say. I wrote it to help him with bad dreams, stringing together all of our favorite things. And then I played it with my guitar, and for the first time ever—for as long I can remember speaking words—everything came out fluid. It was like water. So easy.”
“That’s amazing,” I say, the nagging feeling triggering thoughts…memories.
Murphy lays flat against her hand, her other arm falling over the edge of the bed, tickling the strands of carpet below, her fingers delicate just as she is with her guitar.
“My therapist said it’s common—for stutterers. When you’re trying to just say what’s in your head, it’s too much. It’s like the intersections in your brain that work on forming sentences and actually speaking them get overloaded, a kind of traffic jam. It causes all of these misfires in your brain and your mouth just mimics it,” she says.
“You said it’s exhausting. And sometimes…” I don’t finish, because I don’t want her to think I notice. It isn’t noticeable, really. It’s only that now that I know…I see it.