by Daryl Banner
Dessie and I have lunch in the University Center food court. Her teriyaki sub is cut in half—one for her, and one she offers to me—and a basket of potato wedges sits between us.
And musical notes hover before my eyes on a crinkled sheet of paper before me.
Angry musical notes. And they’re not mine.
See, there’s this redhead with square shoulders and a cute face who I pass by every time I leave Music Theory on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Last Thursday when he dropped a sheet of paper—this sheet of paper—by the water fountain down the hall from my class, I picked it up and shouted out for him, but the noise of the hall was too loud and he didn’t hear me. I looked down at the paper—which was the second page of sheet music for an unnamed instrument—and saw a name scribbled up at the top.
Tomas Novak.
I must have been in some sort of dreamy state of mind because I hugged that sheet of paper in my dorm later that day—in which Dessie kept complaining about how bad her rehearsals were going for her play Our Town—and wondered if Tomas was the name of the cute boy who dropped this or the composer of the work. Or both? His hair was on fire and he wore a striped sweater—and he made it look kind of sexy. He had a long build, taller than me, and I was sure he had freckles. I was almost sure he had freckles, even though I’d never seen his face.
I had read the music and wondered what instrument it was for.
I heard the sweet melody in the soft, whining tone of a violin.
I closed my eyes and imagined sitting next to him on a piano bench, playing this page of music together on the piano. His shoulder would touch mine as he’d gently pull the bow across the soft, singing strings. I’d look up at his face and smile contentedly.
And then it’d be Dmitri’s face.
My fantasy fell apart.
“I just asked if you’re okay, Sam?” calls out Dessie from across the table, snapping me back to the present.
I pinch my lips, meet her eyes, then nod with a bit too much aggression. I chomp off the head of an innocent potato wedge to show exactly how okay I am.
Want to know what I did with this sheet of paper? I found the cute redhead by the fountain after my next Theory class yesterday, since I had to wait the whole damned weekend, and I got his attention with a too-rough tap on his shoulder, which seemed to annoy him as he turned around to meet me.
“What?” he grunted. I smiled and handed him the sheet of music, proud of myself. He snatched the paper out of my hands and squinted suspiciously at it. “The hell is this?” he mumbled irritably.
“You dropped it,” I explained. “Last Thursday.”
“Oh.” He barely looked at my eyes, studying the sheet of music.
“What instrument is it for?” I then asked, clasping my hands and feeling like every stereotype of a flirty girl I’d ever seen in my life. How do I act sexy? Do I twirl some hair around a finger? Do I bite my lip and look up at him like I’m up to no good? Do I touch his arm?
But all I thought about was Dmitri, and every little thing I tried to do to get him to notice me flooded into my brain. No matter what I did, I couldn’t stop thinking about the boy from that Poetry class.
“Don’t need this anymore,” he said abruptly, handing the sheet of paper back to me so roughly, it crinkled. “Thanks, though.”
I blinked at it, then looked back up at him. “What’s the song?”
“Something I was working on, but gave up.” His voice was smooth and light. I’d call it flippant, but I don’t think he meant to sound as dismissive as he was. “I’m working on better things now.”
“I’m Sam.”
“Tomas. See ya.”
“Without the H, I know,” I mumbled, but he was already walking away and didn’t hear me. “And what’s the instrument?” I called out through the noise from nearby classrooms that were emptying, since it was the end of the hour. “You didn’t answer my … my question.”
And he never did. The hall stole away any further attempt to get his attention. I went from a flirty girl to an invisible ornament hanging on the wall. His music that he didn’t need, the music he ditched to move on to better things, sat in my hand and grew heavier somehow by the second.
Now I’m staring down at its angry notes in the food court. I’ve hung on to this paper for a whole week now, imagining the beauty in its mystery. I can’t hear the music anymore. It’s just scribbling on a page. It’s a graveyard of treble clefs and rests and hanging quarter and whole notes that the world will never hear. Tomorrow’s Thursday, so I’ll see him then. I should try to talk to him again. Maybe I caught him on a bad day. Maybe Tomas and I could be music collaborators.
“Take off your glasses.”
I look up at the sound of Dessie’s abrupt change of tone. Once again, I’m yanked out of my thoughts and tugged into the present by my roommate’s voice. “Hmm?”
“Glasses,” she orders me. “Off.”
Is there something crawling on my face? I slowly take off my glasses and lower them to the table, then proceed to watch the blur in front of me with confusion. What is she doing?
“Interesting,” she mumbles.
“I can’t see your face.”
The blur that is Dessie tilts her head. “Let’s get away from campus. We don’t have any classes until tonight. I want to go shopping.”
Shopping? I make a clumsy grab at my glasses, getting them back onto my face before I stammer, “Shopping? I don’t—”
“You’ve worn that shirt three times since Friday.”
I glance down at my Portishead t-shirt. So what’s her point? I like this shirt. But maybe she has a point. I return her gaze and shrug. “I guess I could use a little shopping. I think there’s a thrift shop on Avenue D.”
What follows next is a series of events out of a cutesy romantic comedy where the sassy rich roommate makes over her friend by taking her to all the best shops in town.
I seriously never thought I’d be the girl who allows herself to be whisked away to every high-dollar store from here to the highway, but with each shopping bag we gather, I start to realize more and more that Dessie doesn’t plan for me to spend a cent.
I have no idea what to even make of this. No one’s done something of this magnitude for me before. “I can’t let you pay for all this,” I tell her at the counter of a store.
“I’m not,” she tells me with bright eyes. “My credit card is.”
Swipe. Cha-ching.
But the true transformation doesn’t happen until I’m seated in the chair of a salon and the stylist at my back asks me what I’m here for. I’m staring at a blur in the mirror that’s supposed to be me and interpreting his words with far more meaning than I think he intended. What are you here for, Sam? What do you want?
I’m thinking about my dad suddenly. I’m thinking about the song that Tomas started and threw away. I’m seeing Dmitri’s face on that first day of Poetry class when I bravely scratched my name down in the wrong place on that seating chart. Was that the biggest mistake of my life, or the greatest feat I’ve achieved yet?
Did my father break free to become who he was destined to be, or did he throw away a good life? What’s right? What’s wrong?
“Take it all away,” I tell the stylist. “Take away everything bad. Just leave something good. Make me a new person.”
The stylist says, “Alright. Hold steady, drama queen.”
I’m about to correct him and say that that’s my roommate, actually, but the moment the buzzer touches my head, there’s no going back. The long strands of black float to the floor. Old Sam disappears in soft black feathers that dance past my naked eyes, devoid of the protection of those glasses I hide behind.
“That’s … not the cut we discussed,” murmurs Dessie afterward.
The tone of her voice worries me. I’m legally blind and my glasses are on the counter. “It’s kinda the one I wanted,” I insist defensively, then worriedly add, “I can’t see how it looks. They made me take my glasses off.” There’
s no answer. She doesn’t even seem to move or breathe. “You’re worrying me.” I watch the blur of my roommate turn to the girl at the counter. I hear the beep of a computer. My worst fears are coming alive. I’ve made a horrible mistake. I’ll have to plan how to avoid my classes and hide in my dorm for the rest of the year. Or I’ll learn to wear hats. I hate hats, but I’ll learn to love them. “It’s horrible. It’s hideous. I’m gonna scare children. That’s what it is, isn’t it?”
Finally, Dessie’s hands are near my face, and my glasses slip back in place. The world comes into blindingly sharp focus.
And then I turn from looking at Dessie’s pretty face and over to the mirror where I see another pretty face.
Another pretty face.
My face.
I can’t blink. I feel like I’ve just caught the gaze of some girl who’s been going to my school, but I never thought to approach her or say hi. It’s the face of a girl I think I should know, but I don’t. She’s new. She’s kind of inviting in an eerily familiar way, like a long-lost sister. Her hair is short but chic, the front being the longest and cascading in a short, cute wave. The rest is cropped and layered, a few strands here and there at the ears. She’s like a cute pixie with dark hair who’s ready to fly from the nest, ready to float from her flower kingdom and soar among the ravens, ready to cast her first spell.
“Pretty damn hot, huh?” murmurs Dessie at my side.
I can’t stop staring at myself. I literally don’t believe what a simple haircut can do. My eyebrows, too. They did something to my eyebrows. I think they might have knocked me out when I wasn’t looking and performed some kind of eyebrow transplant surgery. Maybe they gave me a new face, too.
“You know, hair grows back,” Dessie nervously adds, “and if you don’t like it—”
“I love it,” I blurt. “I love it so much. It’s really the best thing. Wow.”
And my eyes. I knew they were hazel, but I didn’t realize how rich they were. My irises are green crystals with a hint of copper at the center, bursting forth from my dark pupils like a warm, alluring fire.
Maybe I got an eye transplant, too.
Dessie talks my ear off on the way back to the dorms, then freaks out when she realizes she’s late to her lighting crew (which she’s excited about, oddly) and takes off after quickly changing into one of her new dresses she bought with me. I watch her go, sitting on my dorm bed, and soon the silence of the room surrounds me.
I have to go into the bathroom and stare at myself again.
I’m pretty sure I’ll never get used to the girl in the reflection. I don’t even know what to do with her. I have some new clothes, courtesy of Dessie—oh no, wait; courtesy of her credit card—and I have a brand new look complete with coconut-and-cream-scented hair products. When I blink, the girl in the mirror blinks too. When I bring my fingers to my face, she mimics me almost tauntingly.
I sleep with my eyes open that night. Or at least I think I do.
I memorize the bumps and ridges on our dorm ceiling.
Dessie moans in her sleep. Twice. I hope she isn’t doing anything in the bed over there, thinking I’m in dreamland. I don’t think I’ll be sleeping tonight. I’m too busy being traumatized by wondering where the old Sam went and who this new person in the mirror is.
Then suddenly the next time I blink, morning light pours over my body.
Dessie’s already left for her class and I’m stuck in the closet staring at my new clothes and having no idea what to do with them. My eyes keep drifting over to my old clothes—and that big ugly t-shirt my dad gave me. It looks so out of place suddenly.
I pick out the first thing Dessie bought me in the first store we visited. The lady there didn’t seem to blink the whole time she stared at me, perhaps aghast that a girl like me was going to represent the brand name she sold. I want to have some sort of Pretty Woman big-mistake moment with her, but even I’m not convinced these clothes are for me.
Refusing to look into a mirror, I dress myself. I feel so ridiculous. My boobs are saying hello. My legs are, like, visible. There’s no way I can leave my dorm like this. I feel like it’s Halloween already.
Then I glance down at my geeky watch—the one totally misplaced item in my day’s attire that I simply can’t let go of—and note that I only have three minutes to get all the way across campus to class.
I step into my shoes, grab my bag, and tear out of the room. It’s only when I’m halfway across the Quad courtyard that I realize I’m not wearing the shoes that were bought with this outfit; I’m wearing my totally rundown, dirt-soiled sneakers I’ve had for years.
When I reach the School of Music, I’m sweating everywhere, but at least I can run in these shoes. I push open the door, scuttle down the short hall, then make a left and another left.
Then I stand at the door to my classroom and realize I can’t enter. My whole body has turned to stone. I can’t turn the handle.
I try to swallow and can’t.
I might be dying. I’m really not sure. I’ve never been this nervous before. I feel like the whole class is going to stare at me when I walk in. It’ll be as if Amy and her little army of evil girls are in there somehow, and they’ll watch me, waiting for me to trip over my ugly sneakers and eat the floor.
A minute later, I’m leaning against the wall by the water fountain, staring out at the front glass walls of the School of Music, clutching my backpack to my chest like a newborn clinging to her blankie. I’m a newborn. I’m freaking out about the brand new world around me. My eyes are adjusting to the light. I want to go back into my mom’s womb.
Okay, maybe not that far.
Soon, the noise of people moving around me alerts me to the fact that class has already ended. It’s so much easier to blend into the crowd when there is a crowd to blend into. I resolve to get to all of my classes early to avoid this sort of fear-of-people-staring-at-me thing.
Just as I’m about to go, however, Tomas passes right in front of me. He stops at the water fountain for a sip—his routine after every class Tuesdays and Thursdays, apparently—but doesn’t bend down yet to drink. He’s stopped in his tracks and he’s staring at me.
Well, my boobs, more accurately.
“Hi,” I greet him quietly.
His cutely flustered eyes drift up to my face. “Hey. Hi. Are you—? Did you want a-a-a drink? Is that what you’re waiting for?”
I blink. “Um, no.”
“Oh, okay. You’re just … uh, y-you’re just standing there,” he says. “Sorry. My mind’s all weird. I haven’t eaten all day. I’m Tomas.”
My lips part with disbelief. He doesn’t fucking recognize me. At all.
“My name is Delilah Beckenhart Von Hildamas the third,” I answer him, “Princess of Moltavia and heir to the throne.”
His eyes shrink. “R-Really?”
I swallow. For some reason, my nervousness has vaporized in an instant. I’m rendered invulnerable. I can say and do anything I want. It literally is Halloween and I’m just playing a character.
“No. I’m … I was kidding. We met. Before. I’m Sam.”
Tomas blinks a few times, then squints his eyes in confusion. “I don’t remember a Sam.”
“Your sheet music …? Remember the sheet you dropped? The music you were working on but then gave up?”
“Oh.” Then a rush of recognition crashes over his face. “Oh! That! Yes, right! Oh! You’re the girl who found it and … and tried to return it to me. Oh, wow. Oh.” His hand slaps his forehead as his eyes drift.
Right back to my boobs.
I’m not used to this sort of attention, so I don’t really do anything about it except keep talking. “That’s me. Sam. I just … I got a haircut.”
Understatement of the year.
He pulls his eyes (it’s an effort) up to my hair. “I like it,” he decides. “It’s … short.”
My hand goes self-consciously to it, my fingers dancing along the prickly hairs near my ear. Isn’t this the point
when I should totally play blasé and walk off like he means nothing? Or should I start twirling a finger around my hair?
Oh, forgot. I almost don’t have any anymore. “Well, I gotta go,” I tell him abruptly. “Bye.”
I pass by him, leaving poor Tomas by the water fountain to watch as I sashay away. Or at least that’s what I think I’m doing. I probably look more like I’m trying to walk-off a wedgie.
It’s in front of the School of Theatre that his voice catches me. “You wanna do lunch sometime?”
I spin around. Tomas stands there in all his gangly glory, totally out of breath and with pit stains. His cheeks are flushed to match his hair.
I wasn’t exactly expecting him to chase after me. “L-Lunch?”
“Or study together. Or, like, whatever. I could show you the music.”
He just said he could show me the music. That so sounds like a euphemism for something else. Yeah, I’m sure he wants to show me all his music—every inch of it.
I don’t make these kinds of jokes. Not even in my head. What’s up with me? Maybe the loss of hair has let out all my wildness. I’m a totally different person.
New Sam, she shrugs nonchalantly, kicks her shoe against the pavement, then looks up at Tomas all flirty and says, “You wanna … show me your music?”
“Yeah,” he says quickly. “We could meet in one of the rehearsal rooms. Like, tonight.”
“Tonight’s no good,” I murmur back to him.
Playing hard to get. That’s a thing, right?
“What about tomorrow night? Eight p.m.?”
I have no plans. Like, literally nothing at all. “No good either. I’m really busy. All tied up.”
“Alright. Well, what about the weekend? Or next week?”
“Hmm. Not sure.” I bite my lip and shrug.
A genuine look of annoyance storms over his face. “So, like … when the hell are you free?” he asks.
All the levity of our moment crashes to the ground. Maybe I’m playing a bit too hard to get. “I’m, well …” I drop the whole act at once. “Actually, yeah, I think I’m available. Saturday night, maybe.”
His face relaxes; his antidote was me saying yes. “S-Saturday night, then. At eight. Music building. I’ll bring my instrument and … and my music. We’ll, like, share tunes or something. I have … uh, lots.”