by Daryl Banner
When the class is over, the girl is long gone (she leaned back in her chair and started texting aggressively on her phone after ten minutes of fuming and glaring at me) and the guy is shaking my hand. Even his handshake is powerful.
Then he lifts his hands and signs at me: You’re really good.
I shrug: I’ve just been doing it all my life. Comes natural to me.
He nods: You’re still good. But is it distracting to interpret? Don’t you have to take notes for yourself?
I shake my head: I’m a quick learner and I hardly take notes. My older sister is kind of a genius, and I like to think some of it rubbed off on me.
He smirks appreciatively, letting out an abrupt sigh from his nose (I think that might be his way of chuckling; I can’t tell), then nods at me: You wanna be my new free non-school-appointed interpreter, then?
I smile: Sure. I’m Dmitri.
He smiles back: I’m Clayton.
And that’s how a new friend is made.
I’m so excited about it that I whip out my phone right in the middle of eating lunch in the Quad cafeteria and text my little sister Devin. I don’t even care that she might be in class. I tell her all about my new friend Clayton and how he’s deaf like her. Then I set my phone next to my plate and continue working on my tasty fish fillet sandwich, wondering if she’ll sneak away for a minute to answer back.
It’s two weeks from that moment in the cafeteria when I’m crossing the Quad courtyard and spot Sam standing by a tree. She’s with a peppy girl who chirps excitedly to her about something to do with sisterhood and sleepovers. The look on Sam’s face does not match the enthusiasm she’s receiving from that spritely friend of hers.
When I pass by, Sam’s eyes detach from her friend and find mine.
I slow my stride and keep eye contact with her. I wonder if I should go over and say something or if it’ll just piss her off and give her and her friend something to gossip about. That’s all I’d need, all the girls of the Quad glaring at me and whispering things behind my back.
I know Sam isn’t that kind of person. I genuinely know that, but I can’t say the same for her friend, who looks like the walking, talking stereotype of a person hungry for something juicy to talk about.
So I compromise with something right in the middle. As I pass, I use some hearing-people sign language: I give Sam a subtle nod of acknowledgement. It’s like “Hello” without voice. Or “I see you there”.
But Sam doesn’t return the nod. She only watches me for five more long, languid seconds before gently folding her arms and returning her full attention back to her friend.
Despite crossing her arms and not returning my nod, I have to say there’s something about Sam’s demeanor that isn’t entirely aggressive or cold. It’s almost like she isn’t mad. Maybe she’d welcome a hello.
You know, like where I actually speak to her.
Using my voice.
But all I do is continue on my way, too chicken shit to talk to her in front of her friend. I guess that nod of mine and that nothing from her will have to be enough for now. I haven’t kissed another person since her, and considering that the last time I had anything with anyone was with my last girlfriend over two years ago—junior year of high school, a girl named Tricia who was also president of the yearbook, which meant that after we broke up, I got more than a few deliberate slights throughout the whole damn book about what an awful, clumsy, unsuccessful failure I was—the kisses that Sam and I shared are more special somehow. I can still feel her lips on mine sometimes when I close my eyes at night and let my hands do what they want beneath the sheets when my roommate’s asleep.
Weeks fly by, and before I know it, I’m already prepping for spring break with my sisters, studying for midterms, and planning what the hell I’m going to do with my summer. Clayton and I start having lunch after Astronomy class regularly where I bitch about my roommate a lot. I have never clicked with a dude faster than I’ve clicked with Clayton. There’s something about him—his dark demeanor, his unpretentious attitude, his intelligence—that totally jives with me. He’s like the brother I never had, which is only weird when I’m checking him out. The more I get to know him, though, the less attraction I feel, and quite suddenly, I’m so comfortable with him that I’m spilling feelings and thoughts to him that I don’t even tell my sisters.
By April, he signs to me—over two plates of cafeteria pasta—that he has a spare room in his apartment, which he and his brother-from-another-mother roommate Brant don’t use at all. Trying not to act too excited at the idea of being freed from the dorms (and my exhaustingly uninteresting roommate), I sign back that I’ll consider it. Then Clayton mentions that the apartment is right by campus across the street from the theater and the School of Music. Sold—I sign to him with a grin.
It’s the last week of school when I finally speak to Sam again.
She’s in the library at the same spot where we used to meet to work on the poems together. She’s facing forward, which makes me wonder if she was waiting for me or expecting to see me walk in. No, that’s dumb and egotistical to think that. She’s here researching for a music project, surely. Not everything is about you.
Yet when I enter, she looks up from her book and something glows in her eyes despite her whole face remaining sullen and detached. I stop at the doorway, the books I was coming here to return tucked under an arm. Neither of us move or say anything or look away.
After enough time passes to warrant an intake of breath, I finally resume moving toward the counter. I feel her eyes still on my side when I slide the books across the front counter and say, “Dmitri Katz. I’m returning these.”
“ID card?” mutters the nasally-voiced green-haired punk working the computer.
I pull out my student ID and set it on the counter, then risk a glance back at Sam.
She looks away the moment I catch her gaze, staring down at a book that’s open in front of her. She bites her lip and brings a hand to her chin to rest it upon. She looks so damned cute.
“We’re done,” says the guy at the counter, slapping my ID back on the counter after checking it. “G’day.”
I give him a nod, stash away my card, then slowly head for the door. My gaze remains locked on the top of Sam’s head, wondering if she’ll look up and watch me go. I’d hate for her to just ignore me outright.
Or is that what I’m doing? Is she waiting for me to approach her instead? Maybe I’m the one who’s ignoring her.
The conflicting thoughts cause me to stop at the doorway once again, hovering like a ghost who refuses to move on to the next plane of existence, whatever that is—the summer, the plans my sisters have, rekindling my summer job at the thrift store on Third, moving in with Clayton and Brant. I just keep staring at her, desperate for her to look my way. All she needs to do is look up at me and I’ll take it as a sign that she wants me to say something.
Just look at me, Sam. Look up from that dumb book.
She straightens her posture slightly. Her lips tighten. Her eyes remain glued to the words.
Look at me, Sam.
She turns the page.
I scowl. Fuck it. I’m not turning my page.
I approach her, closing the distance between us. Only when my shadow falls over the words she’s reading does Sam finally look up, adjusting the glasses on her nose.
“Why are you ignoring me?” I blurt out.
The fuck, Dmitri? We haven’t spoken in months, and the first thing I do is throw her attitude?
Worse yet, she doesn’t seem fazed at all. Her impressively calm, deadpan demeanor remains. Normal girls I’ve talked to, they would be hurt right away or take offense or spit something right back at me.
But Samantha Hart is no normal girl. Her curious eyes look me over for a moment before she lifts her chin and says, “I’m reading about Hexadecaphonic Octave Theory.”
I stare at her for quite some time, as if trying to figure out whether she’s being avoidant, facetious, or sincere.
Why is it so hard to figure that out with her? It’s infuriating.
And oddly sexy. “Oh,” I mutter.
“It’s alright,” she decides with a little shrug, then returns her focus back to the book.
Somehow, I doubt her focus is really on the book. She’s waiting for me to say something else. Engage her, Dmitri. She’s giving you an opening … I think. “Cool. Uh …” I fold my arms and take a long, patient breath. “Is it for a class?”
“For fun,” she answers without looking up.
Fun. That’s what she calls this. Hexa-something-something Octave Theory. It’s for fun. “Sounds like … really complex stuff.”
“It is. Well, sorta. It’s also pretty simple, if you realize how much like math music really is.” She’s saying all of this to the pages of that book. “We’re stuck in the twelve notes of an octave. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and all the sharps or flats. But we don’t really consider their actual mathematical relationship. What if there were sixteen notes in an octave? We just see the twelve, and we hear a billion songs that are written using them. Everything you hear nowadays rings with the familiarity of some song you can swear you’ve heard before …” She purses her lips, her eyebrows pulling together. “I don’t ever want to be that. I want to find something new. I want … I want …”
“You want to be free,” I finish for her.
“More than that. I want to break beyond the walls of music. I want to see each note, each musical voice, each expression … for what it really is. I don’t ever just want to play an F. I want to understand an F. And I want to push it to be more than what I’ve learned it is my whole life, every single time I slap a finger down on that white, lazy key. F … F, F, F. I don’t ever want to just play an F again. I want to be able to unleash any music with these hands … anything in my heart. I want …”
Suddenly her eyes go wide and she stops talking, a hand drawn to her mouth.
When she was letting all of that out, it almost seemed like she’d forgotten who she was talking to. I’m watching her close back up now, and it’s the most heartbreaking thing in the world. All of that wonder and inspiration and desire … it all lives in there, within Sam. I got a glimpse of it, and I have the distinct feeling that it’s a glimpse she rarely lets anyone else see.
Maybe I’m the first. “You’re really smart, Sam.”
She’s already withdrawn completely back into her shell. She doesn’t respond as she pores over the pages before her once again. Sam brings a pale finger to the book, flips another page.
I sigh. “I’m really tired of having deep conversations with the top of your head. Your eyes are so much prettier to talk to.”
She looks up at once. There’s a look of defiance in her eyes as her hand rushes up to the top of her head. “What’s wrong with my head?”
I just called your eyes pretty. Do you not hear a damn thing I say?? I pull out the chair across from her and slide onto it, then lean across the table. “Sam, listen. I hate how things ended last semester between us. Can we at least be friends? Like, real friends?”
“No.”
She says it with such certainty, it feels like she literally just pulled out a slingshot and snapped an acorn right at my forehead. “No?”
“No,” she repeats.
“Why not?”
I see her struggling to find the words. Her eyes scan mine, wet with thoughts I know she’s too nervous to say. The last kiss we shared, the one by the fountain, it still lives between us. The crackling energy from that kiss is right there. Our lips just need to come two feet closer to make it happen again. She knows it. I know it. The tension is palpable.
Then, quietly, she parts her lips and gives me an answer. “Because you’re an F-sharp. And I’m an F-flat.”
I squint at her, not following.
She closes her book, slips it into her backpack, then rises from her seat and moves around me. And I just watch her go, the idiot I am.
Sophomore Year
Chapter 7
Sam
I poke at a kernel of popcorn on the counter. The chatter from my coworkers at the other end of the concession stand echoes across the lobby. I haven’t had a customer in an hour and my feet are killing me.
This is the price of Klangburg University. This is all going to be worth it come the fall when I’m back in West Hall, Room 202—with a totally new and random roommate, I might add, since Kelli decided to transfer across the country. I might actually miss her. She let me keep the clothes I kinda took from her closet that one night Dmitri came over. “I know you wore my top,” she told me a week later, “because I can totally smell your gross boy-perfume all over it. Just keep it.”
It wasn’t my perfume. It was Dmitri’s cologne from when we made out and wrestled each other to the floor. Not that she’d believe me.
I can still smell him when I close my eyes.
Why did I put him off the last time he spoke to me at the library?
Truth be told, I think it’s Amy’s fault. Well, Amy and all my sisters at Rho Kappa Lambda. They all got on a kick of staving off the boys so that we women could focus on our studies and not be distracted. It was supposed to be empowering or something.
The popcorn machine wheezes at my back, sputtering with the buttery crackle of a new batch about to drop.
With the minor exception of being Goddess Of The Corn, I feel anything but empowered.
The sisterhood is becoming a problem. Amy texts me all summer, bent on controlling my life one tiny piece at a time. She wants to hang out. She wants to visit where I live. She wants me to visit the sorority house. She doesn’t seem to understand the concept of a summer job, figuring that I can totally take a weekend off whenever I want. She wants to take me to Paris with her and her family. Then, while she’s in Paris and I’m spraying sticky Coke syrup on my hands from a broken soda nozzle at the theater, she texts me pic after pic. I see her dancing under the Eiffel Tower where she tells me we need to take a dance class together. Then I get to see her face filled with fourteen different kinds of pasta in Italy where she reminds me to count my carbs this summer. She sends me pics from the airport before returning home from her big European adventure, telling me how she can’t wait for the fall to start and hopes I remember all of our sisterly slogans. “No boys,” she keeps saying when she calls me every night. “I hope you’re not even thinking about dating any of those sexy violinists at the Music school!”
It’s in the middle of replacing a disgruntled customer’s spilled box of Milk Duds that I realize I need to end this relationship with Amy—and I need to end it soon.
I’m not a Really Kool Lady anymore.
And I don’t think I ever was.
“It’s just not a good fit for me,” I try to explain one night during a busy midnight release shift.
The screams and laughter of a hundred excited girls ring in my ears from the lobby as I speak to Amy on my phone. I’m in a corner of the scullery by the sinks where a fellow coworker is trying (and failing) to construct a butter pump. Amy called me the second I sent the cryptic text message attempting to reclaim my independence.
“I’ve really been more of a loner my whole life,” I go on. “I don’t think the idea of a sisterhood—”
“You’re crazy!” she nearly screams in my ear, matching the noise of the lobby filling my other ear. “No! We’ve been so good to you! The ladies at Rho Kappa Lambda … They w-w-would be … devastated!”
Truth be told, Amy is the only person in the whole sorority who pays me any mind at all. I don’t fit in with any of those pretty, rich girls or their elevated fashion knowhow. The only heart I’m breaking here is Amy’s. “I’m really sorry. To be fair, I wasn’t even paying my dues. So … I was never a real sister.”
“You are a real sister! You’re my real sister!”
“Again, not really. I mean, sure, from my dad’s antics of the past year, I wouldn’t doubt that I might have five or six half-sisters out there somewhere by now, but you’re not one of the
m, unless my dad is also a time traveler. Which is possible,” I consider, biting my lip.
“I was paying those dues for you because you’re my sister!” she growls—yes, growls—as her voice starts working its way up her vocal range with impressive commitment. “I … I paid for you! I’m paying for you! I’m still paying! You owe me! You owe me your loyalty to Rho Kappa Lambda! For life! You can’t leave!”
“I’d really like to talk about this more, but the popcorn’s burning.”
I hang up.
It’s the last words we exchange. She even stops texting. It’s almost eerie, how instantly Amy and the world of Rho Kappa Lambda vanishes from my life. When I’m clocking out for my final shift of the summer, which also happens to be the final day of my break—a Sunday night at the end of August—I feel my phone buzz and wonder if Amy has finally decided to make amends and allow me to leave peacefully. Instead, it’s a notice of warning from my phone company that the bill is late and failure to pay will result in a loss of service. After a quick call and a discussion with my mom, it’s decided to cancel our plan.
After all, school comes first.
School always comes first.
“Maybe you can get yourself a teaching degree,” my mom tells me when she’s driving me back to campus that same evening. “Teachers make good money. And you get all your summers off!”
I hug my backpack to my stomach as we pull up to the curb of the familiar bright red Theatre building with glass windows lining the front. Everything is stark and quiet and shadowy, the sun having set an hour ago. I read “Theatre, Dancing, Excellence” across the front of its double doors.
I’m thinking of Dmitri suddenly, staring at those silent glass doors.
“Samantha, are you sure this is the drop-off?” my mom asks from the driver’s seat, biting her lip. “Doesn’t look right.”
I adjust my glasses, run a hand through my hair, and peer through the car window, craning my neck to see the top of the building. A three-story tower juts out from behind it like an antenna of some huge red insect. It’s sort of cute. I see it all the time on my way to the Music building, right across the courtyard from here.