“Teddy’s that sort of person—thinks he knows what’s best for me, better than I do. You got one of those?” A self-conscious flick of her eyes. But I’m stuck on Teddy. The injustice of it all.
“Why would leaving the guitar here be best? You’re literally a guitarist.”
Sadie doesn’t answer. The guitar looks so content on her knee, like a cat curled up.
Once it’s tuned, she passes it to me, then shifts onto the coffee table while we get reacquainted. “I’ve been practicing,” I explain. When she seems more startled than impressed, I add, “In my head, I mean. The way your fingers are supposed to go. There are YouTube videos and everything. See?” My fingers slot onto the frets—not magic this time, but hard-earned muscle memory—and Sadie grins, clearly pleased. My cheeks blaze hotter than ever.
Sadie hops up. “Hold on. I’ve been thinking…” She rummages around the clutter, displacing cups and papers. “Got to warn you, picks are a different feel, but I trust you can handle—aha.”
The pick is green plastic. Painfully attentive, I watch her show me how to hold it. Between my thumb and the side of my index finger, covering the cartoon turtle. “Exactly,” she says. “You know, this is how Mack preferred it too.” I return my strumming hand to the strings, not caring for once if she sees my dumb smile. She matches it, her pupils big as moons.
“All right.” She cracks her knuckles. “We’ll start slow.…” It should be easy. Strum using the pick from the thickest string down. Sadie demos the technique a hundred times, but the pick keeps flying from my fingers and I get so frustrated, so freaking angry, that when she moves from the coffee table onto the couch, next to me, I almost push her away.
“I’m trying,” I say. “I swear.” How could I still suck so bad? She said this was how my father did it. I don’t have time to fuck this up.
Sadie blows out her cheeks. Even with the windows cracked, her apartment is sweltering. Then she smiles—an authentic Sadie Pasquale half smile—and grabs my elbow, moves it up and down. “Unclench.”
I can’t.
“Relax, Koda.”
She makes me so nervous, but I try to relax. To pretend I’m water.
“There we go.” Sadie’s still making my arm flop. “Lock up and you can’t hold on to the pick. Strumming’s all about staying loose, in the wrist especially. Mack used to imagine he was”—she pauses, moves my fingers up the frets about an inch—“flicking a booger off his finger.”
I laugh. Like a balloon bursting, though. Not on purpose. “Gross.”
“Says you! Everybody’s bad when they start out, and he was no virtuoso.” Her grin slips, and she rests her elbow on the back of the couch. Softly, she adds, “He tried real hard for me. Sweet how you do too.”
I look back down at the strings, do a quick mental check to make sure I actually do know how to hold them: EADGBE. “I know you said he couldn’t play piano, but the guitar… I… I guess I figured he was born good at it.”
“Nah,” says Sadie. “Started bad, stayed bad, frankly.”
“Really?” I press my fingers down, testing the bite of the strings. “So all those people online, and the people who come up to me, telling me he was this musical genius, that he was brilliant… they’re wrong. He was more like… like me? Kind of… ordinary.”
Sadie rests her chin on her hand, eyes twitching, assessing. For what I can’t tell, but I sit extra straight. Part my lips slightly, so she’ll catch their shimmer—except as soon as I do, her gaze twitches away. “That’s one way of putting it,” she tells me.
Like I’m deterred that easily. Already I’m imagining him instead of Sadie sitting down to teach me. Both of us laughing, stumbling over the same chords over and over until eventually, one of us got it right. Like father like daughter, they’d say.
Only… that would mean missing this. The moment that Sadie and I are sharing, right now. I pick through the chord some more, getting a little better each time, and then we sit together awhile, listening to her neighbors bump around downstairs, a bus idling outside. The silence that’s opened between us isn’t the regular kind, a blank I’m rushing to fill. This is important silence. Grown-up silence.
Once I’m finished savoring it, I say, “Thanks for not being mad at me.”
She frowns. “Mad?”
“For making you cry before.”
“Oh.” Her ears redden. “That.”
“I’m sorry. It wasn’t my intention. I just… I cry too, you know. All the time. My crush called New Year’s Eve. She said she missed me, and it felt significant. The way she said it. But I know that’s wishful thinking. So.” I shrug. “Anyway. That’s what I’ve cried about lately.”
Sadie’s chin is still in her hand. “There’s one thing he was good at. Bawling his eyes out all the goddamn time.”
Breathless, I whisper, “Why? His depression?” I don’t feel depressed. Not really. More like, stupid, and cowardly, and wet from Lindsay’s voice being in my head all this time. I miss you. But I can’t tell Sadie that. Can I?
She leans closer. Her breasts brush the loose fabric of her shirt. “Sometimes,” she says, “this being alive business rubbed us raw.”
A breeze slithers through the window, rustles my hair. I nod, amazed. “That’s it. That’s totally it.” I mean, if I had the words, those are exactly the ones I’d use. Sadie sits back, and I notice for the first time how much paler she seems than the last time I saw her. Thinner, too, if that’s possible.
She rolls the pick between her fingers. “You look different tonight. Wasn’t sure if I should say.”
“Oh.” I blush. Guess we’ve both kind of changed. “Yeah. I was… doing some spring cleaning, I guess. A closet purge? All my clothes suck. But then I found this, and I remembered you and my father wore lots of lace. So.”
She smiles, smoothing the collar that hasn’t stayed flat all day. “He’d approve.”
My stomach butterflies. “Really?”
“Sure. I thought so the second you took off your coat. One look and I said to myself, ‘He would’ve loved that.’ Loved me in it. Same difference.” She fiddles with an earring, avoiding my eye. “It is nice. Seeing you again. Whole time I was up at Teddy’s, I kept wondering… maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe this is all bad news. I mean, we’ve gone this long not knowing shit about each other, right? Me in my bubble, you in yours? But the truth is, kiddo, I don’t mind having you around. A little cry now and then might be good for me.”
I smile. It’s just incredible. The seemingly infinite space between this idea you have of a person and the Sadie I’m getting to know, a dawning sense that as much as I need her, she might need me a little too. Incredible, and exciting. Like the feeling tumbling around inside me is a song we’re both writing. I want to tell her how glad I am that she’s decided I’m worth keeping around. I want to whisper, Nobody gets me like this. Not even Lindsay… but that could change.
I put my hand out. “Let me try again.”
Sadie flips the pick up like a coin. For good luck, she explains, slapping it turtle-down into my palm. “Now blow.”
Somehow, I get what she means. She blows on the pick and so do I, like we’re starting some kind of fire. Her breath is hot ash. Mine catches at my sticky lips. “Does this really help?” I ask, once the plastic’s warm. And Sadie giggles and whisks a finger down my jaw, filling me with shivers. Good shivers.
“Want advice? About this girl?”
“Of course—”
“ ‘Fear’s always there.’ That’s what Mack used to tell me. This was before we were famous, back when I still believed him. ‘Fear’s there, Sadie, so…’ ” She pushes my hand toward the strings. “ ‘Do it afraid.’ ”
CHAPTER 16
THE BRACELET HAS JUST ENOUGH chain to twist around each of my fingers once, then back again. I test the L’s tip with my thumb. Sharp, but I pretend it isn’t. I try to imagine myself here in my room six months from now, or however long it’ll take calluses like Sadie’s to form,
digging this silver L into the rind of my thumb and feeling…
Confident.
But it’ll be summer in six months, my birthday far behind me. Fear’s always there, Sadie said. Or said my father said. Same thing. He’d probably want me to make a move this very instant. He wouldn’t tolerate me standing here, wrapped in a bath towel, dripping all over my carpet, when there’s a girl you love out there, noise to be made. I loosen my hold on the bracelet, drizzle the chain onto my desk so the L rests on top. With a fingertip, I make minor adjustments. Poke and poke until the silver glints exactly right.
A muffled crash. I scream and almost let go of my towel. “Mom?” It’s just after eight. She shouldn’t be home for another hour. Acid surging, I step to the closed connector door. “Are you back?” God—what do I do? Did she notice I wasn’t home? When she doesn’t answer, I creep into her room. It’s dark. Like, deep-sea nightmare dark, a faint light emanating from her en suite. “Mom?”
I find her rooting around in the vanity, lip and eyebrow pencils still rolling across the tile. “You scared the crap out of me,” I say. Frowning, Mom uncaps a lipstick, reaches for another with the intensity normally reserved for hunting down gluten-free oatmeal. It’s dark in here, too, except for the vanity bulbs. They’re on full blast. Mom’s photos around the mirror, her trays and trays of ransacked cosmetics, glow like offerings on some kind of crazed fashion altar. She stands with her back to me, studying a tube of lipstick. “Mom? Hello?”
She grabs my arm so swiftly I yelp and pull away, but it’s no use. I’ve been swatched. A slash of pearly pink.
“What do you think?” She returns dubiously to the tube. “Too sheer, right?”
I pretend to examine the tuna-fish white of my inner arm. Why…? When I look up, Mom’s sitting on the vanity bench, strands of hair springing from her bun. “It’s nice,” I say at last.
She groans—her head drops to her hands. “Too sheer. Everyone is obsessed with mattes now…”
I spot a pencil she missed beneath the bench. It’ll take real talent to reach it without dropping my towel. “We’re having trouble coming up with colors for the spring issue,” she goes on as I strain and stretch. Luckily, I did inherit her freakishly prehensile toes. “We’ve been beating our heads against the wall for weeks, and I finally thought I had just the color, but it’s not right. Nothing is right. It’s humiliating. We’re expected to be at the forefront of such things, and we can’t even predict what colors will trend…” She trails off, tapping her tongue against her teeth. Then her eyes snap to mine. “Where were you?”
My skin prickles. “My room.”
“You weren’t there when I arrived half an hour ago. I was calling for you. Didn’t you hear me?”
“I—I was in the shower.”
I don’t need the mirror to know my face is getting hot. Mom eyes me. Not menacingly. More like, that weird, invasive curiosity that’s recently got her asking all sorts of unnecessary questions about my life. When she scoots closer, I swear it’s the Peruvian restaurant all over again. Dim lighting. Zero options. Studying and homework excuses are out, with the school quarter ending soon. Must keep expectations minimal.
Cautiously, she says, “You’ve been taking a lot of showers at night lately.” This throws me too—until I realize it’s the result of careful guesswork. Most nights she doesn’t get home before I’m in bed, but she could’ve smelled my lavender shampoo clogging the air, seen the damp towels that I’m not exactly diligent about tossing in the hamper.
My foot slips, sending the pencil rolling farther beneath the vanity. “What’s wrong with that? I always took night showers before. Because of swimming, remember?”
“Nothing’s wrong with it, honey, I just figured…” She shrugs. “I don’t know. New routines.”
“I like my old routines.” And not reeking of cigarettes.
But even that, I’m beginning to enjoy. A reminder that Sadie and I have something, no matter how fragile. Mom’s nose crinkles like she’s smelled what I wish I still could: Sadie’s smoke twined around me. I dip my head, keeping these thoughts private as I stretch my leg farther, ignoring the warning that zings up my hamstring.
I could tell her I was with “Sarah.” I could tell her we flung ourselves across Starbucks couches and talked for hours, like Lindsay and I used to do. But now, even uttering Sadie’s alias feels one step too close to the truth.
“Got it.” I pluck the pencil from between my toes and clink it onto the vanity. The color is unexpected. Blue deep as an ache.
Mom says, “You can talk to me, Koda. About anything.”
Except I can’t. Not when Sadie’s given me all I need to know, when the last time we spoke about Lindsay, Mom told me friends having boyfriends was just something I’d need to get over. Joke’s on you, Mom. Because my father believed differently. Because I am done, so thoroughly, violently done, with this sewn-up world that Mom has tucked around me. Mom’s never done anything bold in her life. She organizes drawers. Conference calls.
And Lindsay still doesn’t have a boyfriend.
Mom’s eyes are the inky blue that means tears are imminent. She regards me so intensely I can’t look back, end up running my finger down the photograph of her kissing me on the vanity that she showed me weeks ago. When I figured I’d never see Sadie again. Do it afraid. Her words drum in my ears. Do it afraid.
That’s the real reason Mom didn’t want me meeting Sadie. The danger that I would make my own decisions. Think my own thoughts.
“Whatever,” I tell her.
I almost cringe. Seventeen years of the Mariah-and-Koda show, and this is the nastiest I’ve been to her, ever. I brace myself. Expecting tears, a slap, even though she’s never hit me, doesn’t have the guts to hit me. The anticipation’s so massive I almost don’t notice Mom’s preoccupied with the picture too, and that her wondrous face doesn’t look right. Bones rearranged, shadows falling where shadows shouldn’t be. She stands up. The gauze of her skirt swishes as she crosses to the Jacuzzi.
“I think I’ll take a bath, then,” she announces, bending to yank on the tap. Water thunders into the tub, blotting out the rest.
“What?”
“Nothing, Koda, I’m just talking to myself. Good night.”
That’s it? I’m… dismissed? Okay. That was easier than I thought.
I’m halfway to my own room when she calls me back.
“Koda.”
Water glistens, the tub nearly full. Mom sits on the edge in her work clothes, the swishy skirt and aggressively rosetted blouse that I’m through wishing would look good on me. Her eyes widen, like she’s just now, for the first time, really taking me in. I mean the essence of me: beyond my height and stringy hair and barely managed skin.
My fingertips sting. I switch the hand that’s holding my towel. Too close to being naked—all the way naked—in front of my mother.
“I was just going to say”—she reaches to unlace her boots—“that I know I’m busy. Incredibly busy, and that’s not always fair, to you or me. But… I’m still your mom.”
She pauses.
“Okay, well…” I’m backing away. “Good night.”
Mom turns back to the water. “Love you.”
I say I love her too. My hair separating into tentacles, like it always does half-dry.
* * *
When my phone pings the next morning, I’m braless, sweating in front of the mirror. An email, probably. School stuff. I bite open another bobby pin, wishing my heart would stop pounding.
It’s after seven. Mom would flip, but I don’t care if I’m late. Chemistry sucks. My hair resembles something put together quickly by birds. I tear out every pin, all twenty-two, and fling them onto the counter. Default hair it is. Lank on top, wavy underneath. Baffling. And I can’t wear the same thing I wore yesterday, which means I’m officially out of Sadie-and-Mack-approved-clothes. Luckily, I do have a backup. Tugging on my chunky sweater, I try to figure out if this will work, if I can really go to sc
hool without anybody noticing my nipples. They don’t show, but still.
My phone pings again, and my chest spasms; metallic excitement floods my mouth even though I know it’s just another email. Before returning to my bedroom, I take one more look at my boobs. Various looks. Side angles. It does feel good, not having them all smashed together. Why have bras always felt mandatory in public? I can’t believe I’m just now trying this out.
In my bedroom, Vinnie hunkers beneath a leaf. I drop him a worm pellet, then untangle my phone from the covers. Not email alerts but texts. From Lindsay. For Vinnie’s benefit I try to seem indifferent, cool, as I swipe them open.
Hey Koda. U at school yet?????
I can’t sleep
It’s about peter
Vinnie’s filter bubbles. I lower myself to the edge of my bed.
oh. What’s up?
ugh idk it’s just that we’ve been talking more lately and
idk. Idk idk idk what to do
y?
well bc he says he misses me
While I wait for her to say more, I pull up my conversation with Sadie, but there’s no way to tell if she read the message I sent after talking to Mom last night, or if she’s on her phone right now or wants to text me. I swipe back to Lindsay.
I think he wants to get back together
I stare at the screen.
ok lol
is that what u want??
Idk what I want lol!!
That’s why I’m telling u
The bracelet is still on my nightstand. I loop it around my fingers again. And again, watching the chain shimmer. I don’t know if Lindsay would even like it. But I’ve also resolved to be done with that type of thinking.
My fingers are turning purple. I shake the chain free and start typing.
I say u shouldn’t
he’ll just break your heart again
Yaaa but…
He breaks it so good :P
It strikes me as something Sadie would say, and for a second, I almost envy Lindsay. Her willingness to get her heart pulped over and over, just because of who’s doing it. Without thinking, I type, So u breathe his name then, only to realize when her reply comes through—huh????—that I’m using a code she can’t read.
The Mythic Koda Rose Page 12