by A. Destiny
I shrugged.
“I guess I’ll have to give it up,” I sighed. “I’ll find Coach at breakfast and let him know.”
“Just follow the platter with the extra bacon,” Nanny said with a smile, “and you’ll find him.”
Great, I thought. So not only do I have to tell Coach I’m bailing on his class, I have to do it in front of a mound of torturously delicious breakfast meat.
I’d been in crisis mode—shaky, guilt-racked, and high-strung—ever since Nanny had stumbled through the door.
But now that she was safe and my fate was sealed, I suddenly felt depleted and not a little depressed. I’d been trying to escape my fiddling destiny, but it had caught up with me. It would always catch up with me.
The fact that assisting Nanny would mean spending my days with Jacob should have cheered me. But I’d gotten fatalistic about him, too. Surely after being thwarted so many times, he’d been traumatized out of the idea of kissing me.
Annabelle would have said the universe was trying to tell us something.
Maybe it was finally time to listen.
Chapter Eighteen
That night in our dorm room, I told Annabelle everything that had happened. And everything I was feeling.
“I’ve got emotional whiplash,” I complained. “I want to spend every minute with Jacob. But that makes me crazy, because it’s becoming really clear that things just aren’t going to happen between us. So really, I should just keep my distance, right? But now, of course, I can’t! Which is making me crazier.”
“Wow,” Annabelle said as she climbed into her bed and snuggled into her pillow. “That sounds really complicated.”
“Right,” I said, flopping into my own bed. “And complicated is totally your area. So lay it on me, Annabelle. What should I do?”
“You should”—Annabelle’s voice sounded soft and watery—“ask me in the morning? I was up too late last night.”
“Were you with Owen?” I asked, trying not to let any jealous-green notes into my voice.
“Mm-hmm,” she said.
“What’d you guys do?” I asked.
“Walked, talked, kissed,” Annabelle said, sounding happy. “It was fun. And you know, it was all because I took your advice! Remember, you told me not to overthink it too much? To just go with it?”
I flung an arm over my forehead and groaned.
“Is that what I said?”
“Uh-huh,” Annabelle said. “Owen and I also agreed to just enjoy this month together and deal with later, later.”
“That sounds reductive,” I sighed. I’d heard Annabelle use that term in the dining hall recently. “Nice and reductive.”
“Um, that’s not really how you use that word,” Annabelle said. “I think you mean simple?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, “but you have a lot of vocabulary words I don’t get.”
Annabelle laughed while I frowned at the dark ceiling, missing the glow-in-the-dark stars that were in my bedroom at home. Staring at them always helped me drift off to sleep when I was fretful.
“Hey,” Annabelle said, reaching over to poke me, “that was good advice you gave me. Maybe it’s time for you to follow it.”
“You’re the one who told me I should think about Jacob more!” I said, sitting up in my bed and pointing at her. I didn’t care if she couldn’t see me in the dark. “That I should think about kissing him. Well, I did. Think about it, I mean. To the point that I’m now a hormone-addled ball of crazy.”
Annabelle turned on her side and tucked her hands beneath her cheek.
“I think you need to talk to him,” she declared.
“No way,” I gasped.
“Yeaaaah, you need to talk to him,” she insisted.
“Seriously, I can’t. What if it doesn’t go well? What if I’ve been delusional about him liking me that way? I have to face him every day.”
“Well, then you need to do something to take your mind off him,” Annabelle said with maddening logic. “And ooh, I have just the thing. But we’ll do it in the morning. Set your alarm for six.”
“Six?!” I said. “Why?”
“You’ll see,” Annabelle said. Then she flipped over, pointedly turning her back on me. In a few minutes, her breathing slowed and it was clear she had fallen asleep.
Remembering the gross burnt sage from our first day at Camden, I was a little apprehensive about Annabelle’s secret plan. And I was sure waking up two hours earlier than I normally did wouldn’t make the day any easier.
But what did I have to lose by going along with her? I’d already lost blacksmithing.
And Jacob? Him, I’d never really had.
• • •
The next morning Annabelle and I left the dorm at six fifteen. She somehow looked gorgeous in a pair of Indian pajama bottoms and a tank top, her curls plaited into two loose braids.
I, on the other hand, was wearing two different flip-flops and had a bad case of dandelion head.
But at least the heat had broken as promised. The air felt cool and clean. It pepped me up and even made me feel a little optimistic.
Annabelle carried a sack made of burlap or hemp or some other earthy-smelling fabric. From it, she extracted a bottle of water and a bag of nuts.
“Breakfast,” she said handing them to me before taking out her own bottle and bag. “Raw almonds and dried blueberries. Full of antioxidants.”
“Does that mean we’re skipping real breakfast?” I asked. “I heard Ms. Betty’s making sweet potato biscuits.”
“This is a cleanse,” Annabelle pronounced seriously. “Sweet potato biscuits are full of processed wheat and butter.”
Super-delicious processed wheat and butter, I grumbled in my head. Then I peered suspiciously at my water bottle.
“There’s no wheatgrass or anything like that in here, is there?” I asked.
Annabelle heaved a long-suffering sigh.
“It’s not that kind of cleanse,” she growled.
“Sorry,” I murmured.
Annabelle tried to make her face return to its former serene, yoga-goddess expression.
But I guess she couldn’t quite cleanse my wheatgrass crack from her mind, because a moment later she slapped her hand over her mouth and snorted.
That made me start giggling, and soon we were both stifling shrieks of laughter.
“Here, calm down and have a raw nut,” I gasped, thrusting her bag of squirrel food at her. “Yummy.”
“You’re a nut,” Annabelle replied, grabbing an almond and pelting me with it.
Then we hurried away from campus. After a few minutes of hiking in the glow of the sunrise, I realized where we were going.
“This is the Saturn trail, the one that goes to the creek,” I said.
“Uh-huh,” Annabelle said. “We need running water.”
I skidded to a halt.
“Not that running water,” I said. “That creek is the exact wrong place for me to ‘cleanse’ myself of Jacob. Every time I picture the two of us in that creek I get . . . well, I get very distracted.”
“Ooh!” Annabelle exclaimed happily. “That makes it an even more perfect place for this! C’mon!”
She grabbed my arm and yanked, forcing me to continue up the trail. When we arrived at the creek, it was bathed in slanting rays of sunlight. It felt so much like a magical glade, I was tempted to start turning over rocks to look for fairies.
“Wow,” I breathed. “I’m usually more of a sunset girl, you know, because of my love for sleep and all, but this sunrise is really pretty.”
“Shhh,” Annabelle whispered.
“Oh, right,” I said, trying not to giggle again. “Less talking, more cleansing. So what do we do?”
Ceremoniously, Annabelle pulled a slip of paper and a pen out of her bag.
“Write down what you want to cast out of your mind,” she ordered.
I crouched down and pressed the paper to my knee.
Jacob, I wrote.
Then I b
it my lower lip. What was I saying, exactly? The last thing I wanted was to cast Jacob out of my life. Even though we’d known each other for such a short time, he somehow already felt like an essential part of me.
But he also made me feel this unwelcome wanting. Missing. I missed him, even though he was right here.
Then I realized that what I wanted and missed wasn’t Jacob himself. It was us—the couple we should be instead of just friends.
No matter how much I loved talking to Jacob and walking with him and even flinging soapsuds all over an industrial kitchen with him, the “just friends” thing was torturing me.
When I released my lower lip from between my teeth, I was surprised to feel it trembling. Tears prickled behind my eyes. I clenched the pencil in my fist and muttered, “#$%^.”
“Whoa,” Annabelle said. “Where’d you learn that?”
“Oh, sorry,” I said, hoping she couldn’t hear the tears in my voice. “That’s what happens when you hang around with a bunch of blacksmiths.”
“Maybe it’s also what happens when a cute violinist has you in his crush clutches?” Annabelle asked, smiling at me sympathetically.
“Maybe,” I said. As I smiled back at her, a tear did squeeze out of my eye and trail down my cheek. I swiped it away and looked down at my little slip of paper again.
I amended it to say, I want to stop yearning for more with Jacob. I want to be satisfied with the way things are.
I folded the paper into a tiny square and tried to hand it to Annabelle.
“No, no, this is your journey,” she said.
“O-kay,” I said. “So . . .”
“So, throw it in the water!” Annabelle declared. “Cast it away.”
I took a breath and tossed the paper into the creek. As tiny as it was, it didn’t fly very far. It landed with a plop, then caught on a rock for a moment before the water whisked it away.
It was all very unsatisfying.
“Maybe I should have made a wish or something,” I observed.
“This isn’t throwing a penny in a fountain, Nell,” Annabelle scolded me. “It’s much more meaningful. And besides, you’re not done.”
“Oh,” I said, watching as she reached again into her burlap sack. She pulled out a necklace—a black leather thong with a tiny glass jar dangling off it.
“Now,” Annabelle instructed, “open the jar and fill it with some mud and water from the creek bed.”
“Seriously?” I said.
“Nelllll.”
“Okay, okay,” I said. I squatted at the edge of the creek and scooped up a thimbleful of brown silt and mucky-looking water. As I screwed on the top and put the necklace on, Annabelle waved something at me. I breathed in a gust of acrid smoke.
“The sage smudge!” I coughed. “I was afraid of that!”
“What? It’s part of the cleansing,” Annabelle insisted.
“Well, I’m cleansed enough, thank you!” I yelled.
“All right,” Annabelle said. She dipped the smudge in the creek, and the flame went out with a hiss. “I hoped it wouldn’t be as gross out in the open air.”
“Well, it’s the thought that counts,” I said, giving her a quick hug. I stretched my necklace taut so I could eye my little jar of creek water and silt.
“So, let me guess,” I said. “Every time I start to feel like a puddle around Jacob, I’m supposed to look at this little jar of mud and say, ‘Om’? And then I’ll feel better?”
“It’s not mud,” Annabelle said. “It’s a remnant of your cleanse.”
“Okay, enough with the potty humor already!” I said.
Annabelle burst out laughing and gave me a shove.
“This is serious!” she said.
When my own laughter ebbed away, I gave my “remnant” a more thoughtful study.
“It’s a placebo,” I noted, remembering the time I’d learned about those in my sophomore science class. There were medical studies in which some people were given a real drug, and others were given sugar pills but told they had the real drug. Often, the patients with the fake pills did just as well as those with the real ones, simply because they believed in them.
“A placebo? How do you figure that?” Annabelle said as she slung her bag back over her shoulder.
“It’s not about the mud,” I said. “Or the slip of paper. It’s about what they mean to me.”
“Well, that’s right, I guess,” Annabelle said. “So do they? Mean something to you?”
I felt grateful to Annabelle for this “journey,” semi-ridiculous though it was. But I couldn’t lie.
“I honestly don’t know,” I said. “I like the idea of them. But will they work?”
Life would be much easier if you could just will ideas into reality. If I could know that Jacob felt the same way I did.
If I could know that being together in Nanny’s fiddle class would bring us closer, instead of tearing us apart.
If we could get over this “just friends” thing—and see what was on the other side.
Chapter Nineteen
I expected Nanny’s class to be unpleasant.
I braced myself for that specific, flinchy pain that only happens when a fiddle string is played flat and/or screechy.
I prepared for boredom and plenty of long minutes spent gazing out the window while Nanny drilled her students.
And I resigned myself to a whole new set of sore muscles as I shifted from hauling and hammering to fingering, bowing, and clamping a fiddle between my chin and collarbone.
What I didn’t expect was a game of badminton.
Yes, badminton.
We would have played tetherball, but Nanny cast the deciding vote.
“That’s all I need is to mess up my other hand whacking some ball around,” she said. “Badminton I can handle.”
“Okay, everyone,” Nanny ordered the students, “gather your gear and let’s hit it. And don’t forget the music stands this time! Remember when we had to impale our poor sheet music on those tree branches?”
Everybody busted out in gales of you-had-to-be-there laughter. Then they loaded themselves (and me!) down with their fiddles, music stands, lunch cooler, and a badminton set that had been stashed in the corner of the little cabin where Nanny held her class. Also tossed in the corner, I noticed, were a croquet set, some beanbags, and even what looked like a pair of stilts.
“Surprise, sourpuss,” Nanny said, grinning at me as she followed her students out the door. “You didn’t think we just sat in that room and played scales all day, did you?”
“Um, yeah, sort of,” I stammered, trailing after her with my arms full of picnic blankets.
“Like I said,” Nanny said, “Camden is a magical place. You don’t, how do you say it, ‘dis’ magic by doing the ordinary.”
The class trooped toward the big open field behind the great lodge. It was a favorite for lawn games and picnics and lolling. As they strolled along, chatting and laughing together, I caught up with Jacob.
“So this is why you were desperate to get into Nanny’s class?” I said. “Badminton!? How did you get all those finger cramps and calluses if you were playing badminton?”
“Oh, that was the first few days,” Jacob said. “The hazing, we called it. Ms. Annie didn’t let up until Tamara over there passed out one day.”
“What?!” I shrieked as Jacob pointed at a girl wearing a kelly-green headband and cute capri pants.
“I’m kidding!” Jacob said with a laugh. “Although don’t let Tamara fool you. She’s only a high school freshman, but she’s hard-core. She kicked my butt when we did hurdles.”
“Your bu— hurdles?” I sputtered.
“Hurdles are the best!” Jacob assured me. “Especially for me. You know I’m kind of hung up on counting. But you do enough hurdles, the rhythm just kind of moves into your bones, you know. Then hopefully into your music, too. That’s the part I’m still working on.”
Then he gave me a sweet smile that filled me with a glowy feeling. I
dared to think that maybe the whole silly cleanse plus mud talisman had worked. I was feeling a little better about Jacob. I realized that when I was with him, I couldn’t help but enjoy his company, despite the yearning.
And despite the fact that in two weeks, he’d be returning to Connecticut and I’d be back in Georgia.
The fact was, I was also distracted from Jacob by Nanny’s crazy class.
At home, my grandmother was a taskmaster. She made me memorize a new piece of music from day one, and then made me practice it ten times a day. Here at Camden, she was like Maria von Trapp and that teacher from Dead Poets Society, all rolled into one. Nanny was cool.
And the badminton lesson couldn’t have been more fun.
I’d always loved the game. I loved how the shuttlecock moved in slow motion and the rackets were wispy and weightless. Badminton was a sport made for the non-sporty, i.e., a bunch of musicians.
Although once we got the game going, I realized Jacob was right. Tamara was a badass. She beat the pants off the rest of us, who included Will, a boy who’d also been playing fiddle all his life, an engaged couple in their early twenties named Shana and Harley, and Victoria, a quiet classical violin major who wanted to get her Appalachian groove on.
The game worked like this. Four players worked on the Appalachian fugue, while the remaining two played badminton. The players had to keep time with the back-and-forth of the shuttlecock and vice versa, all of them trying to feel their way to perfect, yet organic, rhythm. When Nanny yelled, “Switch!” the badminton players dropped their rackets and ran for their fiddles, while two of the fiddlers thrust their instruments at me (when playing fiddle/badminton, apparently, the assistant’s job is handling the gear) and dashed out to the court.
And of course, we all laughed hysterically through the entire thing.
Another thing we did was duck into the trees to find the perfect echo chamber for the music. The students played facing each other and with their backs to each other, trying to infuse their playing with the breezes whispering through the leaves or with the grind of the cicadas.
It was all really, really weird. But you know what? It worked. The students’ music wasn’t perfect, but it had life and lilt to it. Even Jacob’s.