Don't Blame the Music

by Caroline B. Cooney

  I stared at him.

  “The crime,” said Miss Margolis, “is that you have diminished your quiz time by five minutes and you never will get to the three questions at the end of the test.”

  Silence reigned.

  We took the quiz.

  Or rather, the class took the quiz. I had difficulty even taking hold of the pencil.

  The rest of the morning was like one great final exam. There was but one question: Would I cry in public, or would I last till I got home?

  It wasn’t so much that kids were being mean. It was rather that Ashley had been mean, and my mother had fallen apart, and things were awful, and held every promise of getting more awful—and who wants a fascinated world to know that? I wanted to take my crush on Anthony and hug it to myself, and instead I was being pierced on every side by the general interest in Ashley. Nobody else had an older sister who brought nightmares wherever she went. They wanted the details.

  I didn’t have details.

  Just terrible raw emotions I didn’t want either.

  Their questions chewed at me, catching my skin. I began to look forward to lunch as the great escape. There would be more people there, with more time to ask questions, but I would sit with Cindy, and Cindy would be my buffer.

  I headed for the cold-lunch line, which was shorter than hot lunch. Mrs. Finelli, who was once Ash’s English teacher, said, “I hear your sister is home, Susan. I hope she’s well. And things are going right for her.”

  I had my stock answers ready now. “She’s fine,” I said. “It’s good to have the family complete.”

  “I’ll bet,” said Shepherd Grenville sarcastically, laughing to her friends, her fellow shining stars, who appeared behind me in the lunch line I had thought would be safe. “I’ll bet it’s really choice around your house right now, Beethoven. My older brother told me Ash was really insane. She wanted fame enough to stand on anyone. Kick anyone! Knife anyone!”

  “Just like you, huh, Sheppie?” said Whit Moroso.

  Shepherd does not like to be upstaged. Especially by a delinquent like Whit she would normally never even speak to. Shepherd fans glared at Whit. Whit stared back at them until they flinched and looked away. He really has a criminal aura. Not Shepherd’s super-prep style at all.

  “Thank you, Whit,” I murmured. I chose a cheese sandwich and Lime Jell-O. We always have gourmet cuisine in our school.

  “Any time.” He walked past me without looking at me, which I did not mind, because Whit frightens me. And yet he had stood up for me twice in a row.

  It was too confusing to consider.

  Shepherd said sharply, “Beethoven, how far have you gotten with your plans for the music division?”

  I stared at her. Twenty-four hours had passed and I was supposed to be able to present the details already? “No place,” I said irritably. I tried to think why she was attacking me like this, and then it occurred to me—Ashley. Shepherd was afraid some of that ugly crude cheap behavior would somehow rub off. After all, she had put me in a position of importance on her yearbook. Ashley and the Hall family might be infectious.

  Yearning for comfort I sat down next to Cindy. My thoughts were fragmented and my body felt worse, as if I were coming down with flu. Cindy will make it all better, I thought, turning to her. She’ll say—big deal, so they’re interested in Ash. It’ll be a one-day wonder. Tomorrow they’ll have forgotten. And say, don’t you think Anthony is spending a lot of time looking your way? Don’t you think maybe Anthony has a crush on you?

  Cindy bounced in her chair, patted mine noisily, as if she and the chair were clapping. She had a bite of my cheese sandwich before I did, to see if mine was fresher than hers, and she said, “Tell me all about it, Susan. I am like absolutely dying. You didn’t even call me up. I don’t know a single thing. Now tell us everything. Is she on drugs? Is she still with that last rock group? Is she all burned out? My parents always thought she’d burn out very very young.”

  I said, “I forgot to get milk.”

  I walked away from the table, but I didn’t go to the lunch line. I left the caf and went down the hall. I walked faster and faster and then I stopped pretending to myself and just plain ran.

  In the girls’ room I rushed into a stall, slid the lock closed and stood there with the tears running down my face. The sobs came. Huge racking sobs as noisy as thunder.

  No need to panic, I told myself. You can handle it. You’re still Susan Anne Hall. Plain solid sturdy Susan Hall. You have to be loyal to your sister, and you’re managing.

  The sister who would consider it a favor if I would shut up.

  The sister who didn’t want my welcome, because it was charity, and she would hate me for it.

  But also—also—the sister who years ago knelt beside me, kissing a skinned knee, murmuring, don’t cry, Susie, don’t cry, Ash will make it all better.

  Footsteps in the bathroom.

  I stopped breathing, as if I were doing something criminal and didn’t want to get caught. Halting steps. And then a halting voice. “Susan? Are you here?”

  Cindy.

  I couldn’t speak.

  “I know you’re there,” she said. “I can see your feet. Those are Beethoven shoes. I know because I was with you when you bought them.”

  I waved my toe at her.

  “Oh, Susan, I’m sorry,” said Cindy, leaning invisibly on my stall door. “I didn’t mean to be rotten. I was a toad and I know it. I was hurt because you didn’t call me up last night to tell me. Everybody in school knew before I did and I’m supposed to be your best friend. I’m sorry, Susan.”

  “If you’d stop blocking the door I could come out,” I said.

  We stood giggling, sniffing back tears, and I came out and we hugged. “Oh, Cindy, it was so awful. You should have heard the things Ashley said to my mother.”

  Cindy patted my back, like burping a baby. “Do you remember how bitter my sister Elaine was when she didn’t make cheerleading captain?”

  Elaine had been a stupid jerk who didn’t deserve to make peanut butter, let alone cheerleading captain.

  “Elaine was so rotten to us my father wanted her to apply for early admission to college so she’d leave home a year ahead of time. And that was only a high school cheerleading squad! Whereas Ash told the entire state of Connecticut she was going to succeed. And she didn’t. You have to expect her to be bitter, Susan. You have to be nice to her. Eventually she’ll calm down. Elaine did. I even like Elaine, now and then, sometimes on her good days, for a few minutes.”

  We giggled.

  “That was sweet of Whit to help you,” said Cindy. “I’ve always liked Whit.”

  “Why?”

  “I think he has potential.”

  “As what? A hit man?”

  Cindy giggled. “First of all, he’s unbelievably cute.”

  “Whit?”

  “Forget that he scares you. Take a look at his profile and his bod.”

  “You’ve given this a lot of thought,” I told her.

  Cindy shrugged. “I give all persons of the male persuasion a lot of thought. Now don’t worry about Ashley so much, okay? It’ll work out.”

  She was thinking of Elaine. But Elaine just wanted to be cheerleading captain so the boys would go after her more. Ashley wanted twenty thousand screaming fans to watch her walk onto a stage. It’s not the same league and the bitterness would not be the same level. “I guess you’re right,” I said, because Cindy was my friend.

  “Of course I am. You’ll see. After all, you two have the same genes. She can’t be that bad.”

  Five

  ONE MORE CLASS TO go and I’d be released from school.

  Like the end of a prison sentence.

  I slid into Brit lit.

  Anthony slid into the seat next to me.

  If the space shuttle had landed there, I could not have been more surprised. We don’t have assigned seats, but everyone tends to sit in the same place each day. Some people like back corners, so
me people like the middle and nobody ever likes the front. I was in front because I had come late from the girls’ room. Anthony, who invariably takes the back middle where he can survey everybody else, had no reason to sit by me. Nobody would ever think of taking Anthony’s favorite seat away from him.

  I forgot Ashley.

  All I could think of was that I had not brushed my hair or checked my eye makeup after weeping in the bathroom. What if I had mascara tracks down my cheeks?

  Mrs. Danenburg read aloud from Chaucer.

  Anthony passed me a note.

  It said, Want to go to creamcakes after school?

  Creamcakes, with a small c, was a strange little restaurant. A boutique, really, filled with sachets, lace, and ribbons. It served a fragile little meal it referred to as “real English tea.” I could not imagine Anthony or any other real boy going into creamcakes. It was so completely an elderly woman’s kind of place.

  And yet—it was awfully romantic, in a delicate frothy sort of way.

  A first date, I thought. At creamcakes!

  I was afraid to react. Mrs. Danenburg might notice. The world might notice. I had to think about it by myself. Because this meant that not only did I have a crush on Anthony, but Anthony had a crush on me.

  In the great lottery of life, my sister Ashley had drawn one thousand percent of the family poise. She could do anything in public. I couldn’t even turn my head, smile and murmur, “Love to.”

  After a long time I managed to face Anthony, nod, and put on a reasonable facsimile of a smile. It felt crimped and false. But Anthony grinned cheerfully and nodded back.

  Whatever Chaucer and Mrs. Danenburg had said together, I missed. When class finally ended, I had done nothing except think up rock lyrics involving Anthony. Anthony is a very difficult word to rhyme.

  Anthony walked me to my locker. He helped put my books in my bookbag. And then he actually carried my bookbag. I was already trying out my name with his. Anthony Fielding. Susan Hall Fielding. Susan Fielding. I liked it.

  Anthony had a Mercedes. Everyone in his family has a Mercedes. Anthony’s is silver gray. That way he can distinguish it from his mother’s, which is dark gray, his father’s, which is black, and his sister’s, which is cream. If I had a Mercedes, it would be scarlet and it would flash in the sun and everybody would recognize me.

  I’ll marry Anthony, I thought, and be rich and drive a Mercedes.

  We passed Whit Moroso and one of his band mates, Carmine. Whit was his usual expressionless self, dark, and looking like someone with secrets to match. As for Carmine, he has truly awful acne, as if something exploded in his skin.

  Carmine didn’t look at us. Whit did. He raised his eyebrows at me, as if there was something quite amusing about seeing me with Anthony. It made me mad. Why did I have two debts to Whit Moroso, of all people?

  Anthony guided me across the parking lot to his Mercedes. I had spotted it anyway. Even in a school this rich, very few seventeen-year-olds have their own Mercedes.

  And I spotted, too late to hide my feelings, Shepherd Grenville in the front seat. “Hi, Beethoven!” she cried, waving out the open window. “I’m glad you could come along. We have so much to talk about.”

  “Hop in, Beethoven,” said Anthony, smiling, opening the back door.

  Well, that explained why we were going to creamcakes. It was Shepherd’s kind of place. Elegant, expensive, sophisticated.

  I wanted to die.

  I had practically married myself off to Anthony and I was nothing more than an arrangement he had made for Shepherd.

  Shepherd turned in the front seat and rested a beautiful slender hand on the leather upholstery. Her fingernails were perfect. A single narrow bracelet shimmering with green stones—which might even have been emeralds, knowing Shepherd—hung from her wrist.

  She smiled at me. She knew, and I knew that she knew, that I had thought Anthony was asking me out. She had planned the afternoon that way.

  Shepherd Grenville, you scum, I thought. You ought to have a complexion like Carmine’s, and he should have your peaches and cream.

  Shepherd was getting her revenge for what Whit Moroso said to her. Sheppie wouldn’t dare try for revenge on Whit himself. She was probably as afraid of Whit as I was. But who would have expected Sheppie to be the revenge type? You would think someone who had everything wouldn’t need to bother.

  Anthony caught Shepherd’s smile but apparently not the meaning behind it and said to me, “So how’s the game plan for music editor coming along?”

  “Anthony, I only got appointed twenty-four hours ago.”

  “But I have so much planning ahead,” put in Shepherd gently. Explaining the complexities to the slow of mind. “I really do need to know how many pages you’re going to want, Beethoven.”

  Anthony found a parking space right in front of creamcakes. He led that kind of life. There were always free spaces waiting for Anthony, instead of Anthony waiting for free spaces.

  If I let Shepherd take control, she would make a fool out of me in front of Anthony. I could not bear it. “Let’s put off serious talk until we’ve had a chance to order,” I suggested, ushering the three of us into creamcakes and choosing the table myself. What if Shepherd chose not to follow me? I would be stranded. They would head for another table and I would have to stumble after them and mutter apologies and look stupid.

  But they followed me.

  The table was tiny, because the amount of food they planned to serve was so tiny. Creamcakes was not a place for your typical adolescent appetite. It was for people like my mother, on the twenty-fifth year of their diets. However, the arrangement meant I was very very close to Anthony.

  He smiled at me happily. Did he have any idea what was passing between me and Shepherd? Sometimes I don’t think boys can read anything but words. And maybe not even those.

  “I hear your sister is home,” said Anthony. No prying. His voice was its usual light friendly self.

  “Yes. She arrived unexpectedly right after you dropped me at home.” I wedged that in to see how Sheppie reacted. She reacted wonderfully, with an almost-glare at Anthony that she instantly disguised as a smile. “How sweet of you to give Beethoven a ride home,” said Shepherd. And if he did anything as sweet as that again, she would put a knife between his ribs. I was beginning to enjoy myself. Me, Susan Hall, a threat to Shepherd Grenville. Mirabile dictu.

  “I imagine life in this little burg will perk up now,” observed Shepherd. “Ashley won’t let us all lie around in a stupor.”

  “My goodness, Shepherd,” I teased. “All this time you’ve been lying around in a stupor? And here I thought you led an exciting life. Cheer up. Ashley gives lessons. Drop by sometime for a free demonstration.”

  Anthony laughed.

  Shepherd pretended to laugh.

  Instead of basking in reflected glory, I was getting in a few sharp digs of my own. It made the day I’d endured—and the evening I would face when I got home—a little less awful.

  A waitress trundled up with a tiny silvery cart covered with a lace cloth and plates of tiny baked delicacies. We each took one. Shepherd nibbled hers. Anthony swallowed his whole. Shepherd said, “Soo, Beethoven. Any thoughts?” She steepled her fingers in front of her, knowing I had no thoughts at all, especially on innovative yearbook ideas.

  “Because if you don’t think you’re going to be able to come up with something, we have a volunteer to take your place. It wouldn’t be any problem, Beethoven. You mustn’t worry about it.”

  I rarely feel anger. It’s just not one of my emotions. Ashley got all that, along with the poise. I had not, after all, intended to be music editor. I certainly had enough to do senior year without that burden. But Shepherd was not talking yearbooks here, nor her entrance into Harvard. No. Dull little Beethoven, whom she had chosen, I now saw, just because I would not outshine her—dull little Beethoven apparently had enough luster to make Anthony notice.

  So she wanted me out.

  And
she wanted me to go out the door with my shoulders hunched in shame, admitting I wasn’t able to do the job. Admitting it in front of Anthony.

  “That’s very thoughtful of you, Shepherd,” I said. “Senior year is going to be demanding. It’s sweet of you to be concerned with whether I can manage it all.”

  Anthony did not detect any sarcasm whatsoever. Boys are quite thick. Even unbelievably cute ones like Anthony. He nodded with me, saying earnestly, “Absolutely. I mean, what’s the point if it’s no fun? If it’s just a burden?”

  “Oh, exactly. I totally agree, Anthony. But you know, I think I’m going to have a wonderful time.” I tacked a happy smile on my face. “I’m already deep into stage one.” I took a bite of pastry. No matter how dainty I tried to be, that miniature excuse for food could not be stretched more than four bites. Stage one, I thought desperately. What on earth can stage one be?

  I remembered the raised eyebrows of Whit Moroso—the contemptuous amusement he felt at the sight of me with Anthony. My cheeks burned. Words came right out of my mouth, without my considering them at all. “I’m going to interview all the members of the various high school rock bands. Crude Oil, of course. The Slippery Six. The Broken Ankles.”

  “What a terrific idea,” said Anthony, meaning it. “I forgot about all those groups. I mean, you always think of marching band, and concert choir, and that kind of thing, but of course, Beethoven! You’re right! The really interesting music comes from the kids who organize themselves.” He said seriously to Shepherd, leaning across the table so she would have to lean toward him too, “I think Crude Oil is a great group. Don’t you?”

  “They’re a bunch of semimusical juvenile delinquents,” said Shepherd.

  “You’re just jealous because Beethoven is the one who gets to hang out with all those skanky dudes,” said Anthony, “while you’re stuck with my type.”

  Shepherd was not sure she liked this. Anthony had not said she was stuck with him—just that she was stuck with his type. She said stiffly, “It is a fairly interesting idea, Beethoven.”

  When you’re hot, you’re hot. Go with it. “You know,” I said, “I’d prefer to be called Susan. After all, we don’t want to go on hurting Ludwig’s feelings year after year.” I steepled my fingers and leaned to Shepherd. “So from now on, it’s Susan, okay?”