Between the Notes (17 page)

W
e ended up at my favorite burger joint, the Charcoal Hut. It had mini jukeboxes at each booth, with a selection of mostly old songs. James threatened to play “Stairway to Heaven.” And he insisted on ordering for me in a British accent. I couldn’t help thinking how much Reesa would’ve loved that, if she was on this date instead of me.

“The lady will have the cheeseburger deluxe, hold the onion. And I shall have the same. A basket of fried potatoes, as well.”

The waitress rolled her eyes and scribbled it down. “Anything to drink?”

“Just water for me,” I said, realizing the five dollars I had in my pocket might not even cover my cheeseburger.

James leaned toward me across the table, holding the menu up to hide our faces from the waitress’s view. “My treat. Don’t worry.”

“See? This is exactly what I was afraid of. I don’t want you paying for me all the time.”

“It isn’t all the time. It’s one time. And
I
asked
you
out. You can pay the next time.”

“That’s just it. I can’t pay the next time. I can’t pay
any
of the times.”

The waitress shifted her weight from one hip to another, tapping her pencil on her order pad.

James peered over the menu at her. “Could you give us a minute? We’re still deciding.”

She rolled her eyes and walked away.

James laid the menu down and crossed his arms on the table, leaning toward me again. “So we’ll do things that don’t cost money. We’ll go to the library or the park or the cemetery or watch TV or . . .”

“We don’t get cable. We can’t even watch real TV at my house.”

“Whatever.” He gave an exasperated sigh but paired it with a mischievous smile. “I wasn’t actually planning to
watch
the TV.”

I felt my face go red.

“I really don’t care where we go or what we do or how much it costs,” he said softly. “Every single other girl I’ve ever dated has . . .”

He stopped abruptly and looked down, fiddling with the corner of the menu.

“Has what?” I whispered.

“Cared more about money than they have about me,” he said.

I lowered my face to catch his downcast eyes. “How is that
even possible?” I said. “You’re so much better than anything money could buy.”

He smiled, chin still tipped downward. “Stop saying the right thing.”

I laughed. “I almost
never
say the right thing. You should seriously be savoring the moment.”

“I am.” He looked up at me out of the top of his eyes, through the sweep of hair across his brow. “There’s just one thing that would make this moment even better.”

I felt the blood rush to my face, sure he was going to ask me to kiss him. Right in the middle of the Charcoal Hut. But he opened the menu instead.

“Please share a milk shake with me,” he said in a pleading voice. “I’ve been thinking about it all day. Two straws.”

“All right.” I smiled.

He opened the menu again. “Chocolate okay?”

I nodded and he sat back to look for the waitress. When she finally sauntered back to our table, he struck up the British accent again. “Chocolate milk shake. Two straws, if you please.”

“Anything else, Your Highness?” She was begrudgingly enjoying herself.

“That will be all, kind lady.”

Our milk shake arrived and we slurped away at it quietly, laughing each time our foreheads touched.

“So,” he said. “Your parents seemed nice—a little confused when I showed up—”

“Sorry about that.” I took another sip of milk shake.

“You’re, uh . . . new to Lakeside?”

I paused, and then everything I’d been holding in or hiding from, pretending wasn’t there . . . it all started tumbling out. What happened with our house, my dad’s struggling business, Brady’s disability and needing the money for his therapy. Even the trip to the food pantry at the church that morning.

“I’ve seen people lined up there before,” he said.

“It was scary. I mean, the volunteers were nice and everything but the people . . .” I didn’t want to act like I was any better than they were, but some of them had genuinely frightened me—the hardness of their gaze and the way their struggles seemed to be etched into their faces. “They made me feel like a fraud, I guess—”

“Like you hadn’t suffered enough to be there?” he said.

“Yeah. Exactly.” I felt lighter, like I’d been wearing a heavy cloak and had finally managed to shrug it off. “Now you know all my secrets,” I said playfully, “You have to tell me yours.”

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “What makes you think I have secrets?”

I shrugged. “Everyone has secrets.”

“I’m pretty boring,” he said, stirring his straw in the bottom of the glass to break up a chunk of ice cream. “At least I’m not a secret from Reesa anymore. Am I?”

I shook my head. That heavy feeling I’d just shed was starting to come back. “Could we talk about something else?”

We both leaned in to sip from the shake and our foreheads
touched. “What do you want to talk about?” he said in a voice so low, it sent a tingle up my spine.

I pulled back a few inches. “Um, I . . . uh . . . how about Shakespeare?”

He smiled and sat back, too. “You want to talk about Shakespeare?”

“Okay, no. But I do have a new appreciation for
Romeo and Juliet
.”

“I totally butchered it,” he said. “We should go see it onstage sometime, with real actors. . . .”

It was yet another thing I couldn’t afford to do. I looked down at the plate the waitress had just slid in front of me, the juicy burger and mound of steaming French fries. I’d never realized how much money ruled our lives, every activity, every conversation. It was impossible to avoid.

“They have free performances in the park sometimes,” James said quietly. “Or we can go back to the cemetery and read the lines to each other. Or . . .” He paused, a slow grin lifting the corners of his mouth. “I read the lines, you sing them.”

“Uh-uh.” I shook my head. “No way.”

“Come on.” He shook the ketchup bottle and squirted a blob onto his plate. “I want to hear you sing again.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

I dipped a fry into the ketchup and took a bite. “I’m afraid.”

“Of me?”

“No. Of
me.
”

It was a ridiculous thing to say, but James didn’t laugh at me or joke about it. He seemed to understand or, at least, he didn’t
mis
understand.

“It’s hard to explain,” I said.

He had stopped eating and was watching me, listening to me.

I stared into his pale-blue eyes. “There was this talent show when I was in the fifth grade, not just for the fifth grade though,” I said. “It was a big deal, the whole school district was involved, kids a lot older than me performing—it was held at a huge auditorium. I wrote a song and I practiced for months. I imagined it every night before bed, how I’d get up there and play perfectly and sing perfectly and everyone would applaud and I’d take bow after bow.

“But I tripped on my way onstage, just a little bit. Probably nobody even noticed, but I started thinking how I’d already messed up. It wouldn’t be perfect. Then I saw everybody staring at me and I felt nervous and I never felt that way when I practiced. It wasn’t how I imagined it. And I thought, ‘Now I’ve really ruined it.’ And the longer I stood there, the worse it was. I really
had
ruined it then. I completely froze onstage. I could hardly breathe. Some kid had to lead me away.”

“But you were little,” said James.

“I know that, but I can’t get rid of it,” I said. “The stage and the audience—that’s just what sets it off. The rest happens in here.” I tapped the side of my head. “It’s my own brain. It’s
me.
My throat
closes up. I can’t even sing to the twins at bedtime anymore because someone might hear me through our walls.”

“You sang in the band room that day, in front of Reesa, and . . . you know”—he lowered his voice—“that creepy guy in the closet.”

I tried to a smile. “Yes, but I didn’t know you were there. And I’ve known Reesa my whole life.”

“But you did it.”

“Barely. And I had to pretend. . . .” I hesitated, not sure I should trust him with the full magnitude of my weirdness.

He reached across the table to rub his thumb across the back of my hand. “Pretend what?”

“I had to imagine myself in your cemetery,” I said. “Singing to the tombstones.”

He grinned madly. “My tombstone trick worked?”

“Yeah,” I mumbled. “But I don’t know if I can trick myself like that again. And now my friend Molly wants me to perform something with her at open mic night.”

“Ah,” he said. “That’s why you were there?”

I nodded.

“And the audience was scary?”

“No,” I said. “They were pretty supportive, actually.”

“And you still think perfection is a requirement at open mic night?”

I shrugged. It wasn’t something I required of anybody else, but I expected it from myself. I don’t know why.

James leaned across the table, bent low. “Okay, so here’s the plan. You go to open mic night. You don’t have to tell anybody. Just show up and sing to the tombstones. Write a song about imperfection, and then mess it all the hell up. Do it for yourself.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”

He took another slurp from the milk shake, and I leaned in, and our noses almost touched. His hair fell across his eyes and he pushed it back. “Seriously,” he said. “If the last sound I ever hear is you singing, I’ll die happy.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. My family and Reesa had been telling me for years, and now Molly, too. Maybe I could start believing it was true. I looked away so he couldn’t see that my eyes were watering.

“Too much?”

“Nope,” I said. “Just right.”

I
went to sleep Saturday night nearly delirious over my date with James, but Sunday morning the joy was gone. Reesa hated me. I kept picking up the phone to call her, to apologize again, but what more could I say? I
had
lied to her. She had every right to be mad.

I took a walk around the neighborhood after breakfast and found Molly sitting on the stoop of her house, which was small but cute. The yard was neatly trimmed, and flower boxes hung below the windows. She smiled as I approached. “Hiya, neighbor.”

“Hey,” I said. “I think I can see your house from my bedroom.” I pointed toward my attic window, which peeked out above the squat houses. Molly had picked me up on Friday night, so I hadn’t been sure which house was hers until now.

She craned her neck sideways to see my window. “Ah. Cool.”

“Lennie calls it ‘Turd Tower.’” I crinkled my nose.

She smiled. “At least you have a view.”

“Luxurious Lakeside penthouse with spectacular view,” I said with exaggerated enthusiasm, like I was reading a real estate advertisement. “Extra-brown exterior hides the dirt!”

Molly swept her hand to the side to present her own house. “Charming mobile home poorly disguised to
not
look like it belongs in a trailer park!”

I laughed. “It doesn’t! Not at all.”

“Yeah?” she said, standing and motioning me to follow her. “Wait till you see the lavish interior.”

We went in, and it was nicely decorated but there was no hiding that it was a trailer once you stepped inside. It was long and narrow. Molly’s room was on one end. We walked through the living room, kitchen, and bathroom as she led me to her room, and my mouth fell open as I stood in the middle of it and looked around. Unlike the drab décor of my attic, which clearly evoked that I had no intentions of staying long, Molly’s was a work of art. She had painted a collage of images and words directly onto the walls. There were poems, quotes, lines from books. It was a cocoon of self-expression, of grief and joy and everything in between.

“Wow. This is amazing.” My eyes scanned the walls, reading quotes by Mark Twain and Dr. Seuss, Emily Dickinson, and Charlie Brown. I pointed to one that had no attribution:

“Who said that?”

“Anonymous,” said Molly. “Anonymous has a lot to say.”

Some of the quotes were scribbled with pencil or marker, others were applied neatly with stencils. There were colorful designs twined through and around them, like a complicated dance of snakes and vines and fireworks.

“This is my current favorite.” She pointed to one scripted beautifully in purple ink.

It was by Picasso. “I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money,” I read.

“When I first saw that, I was like, huh? Who would live like this if they didn’t have to? But then I thought about all the stuff that’s actually kind of cool about this place.”

I gave her a skeptical glance. “Seriously?”

“I can scribble on my bedroom walls and nobody pitches a hissy fit,” she said.

“You can eat supper on the living room floor,” I said. “You can talk to somebody at the other end of the house without getting up.”

She laughed. “Nobody cares if your lawn isn’t mowed just so, or what kind of car you drive, or if you have the right clothes or the right friends or . . . you know. All that crap.”

Or if you shop at a food pantry, or let your disabled brother play in the road, or . . .

“Money does come in handy now and then,” I said. “For, like, food and stuff.”

“Yeah. There’s that.” She grinned.

“Speaking of which. I looked for a job yesterday,” I said.

“Where?”

“A used-book store. And Save-a-Cent.”

“Any luck?”

I shook my head. “Do you have one?”

“Nah. My mom wants me to focus on school, get a scholarship if I can.”

I hadn’t even asked what had become of my college plans. There was supposed to be a fund for that, but I didn’t know if it was still there.

“I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up,” I said.

“Me neither. It’s impossible to think that far ahead,” said Molly. “I hardly know what I want to be
tomorrow
.”

I lay back on her bed. “Why did we ever stop being friends?”

“I was ousted. Remember?” The slightest edge came to her voice. “Queen Willow didn’t want me in her court anymore.”

I kept staring at her ceiling, not sure what to say to that. I’d been a member of that court. I still
was.
I had felt horrible about what had happened at the time but I hadn’t
done
anything. I hadn’t questioned Willow’s version of the truth. I hadn’t said anything about my suspicions that Willow was the one starting all the terrible rumors about Molly.

I swallowed. “I wasn’t a very good friend to you. I—”

“Don’t.” She held up a hand to stop me. “It’s done. I don’t blame you.”

“But I should’ve stuck up for you. I just went along, like a sheep.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I got off the ride and you stayed on.”

I watched her spinning on the chair and realized that was exactly how I felt—like I was spinning around and around on a ride that was moving too fast to get off. I’d been hanging on and trying not to fall, or at least not vomit. Keeping up appearances, being the girl they thought I was . . . it was dizzying.

“I really need to get off that ride,” I said. “I can’t take it anymore.”

Molly smiled. “So do it.”

“Just jump off?”

“Walk away. Don’t look back,” she said. “That’s what I did.”

“But, they’re my friends—I . . .”

Molly stretched her arm out to tap her finger on one of the wall quotes:

I leaned closer to see who said it, which was written smaller. “Elbert Hubbard,” I said. “Who’s that?”

“Writer, philosopher. Died, like, a hundred years ago. Smart dude.”

“So I should just tell them everything.” That about-to-vomit
feeling started to come back.

“Or not.” Molly shrugged. “Do you even care what they think? What Willow and Wynn say?”

I bit my lip, afraid to tell her that I
did
care what they thought. At least what Reesa thought. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I did. I lay back on her bed while she doodled at her desk. What was the worst thing that could happen if I told everyone about the move to Lakeside, the food bank? James didn’t care. Molly certainly didn’t care. I was faking it for the wrong reasons, for the wrong people. It was too much work. I could see what it was doing to my parents, pretending everything was okay when it wasn’t. It would’ve been easier if they’d told us all along.

When I got up from Molly’s bed, I still felt a little dizzy, but I knew what to do. “I’m going to ride the bus tomorrow,” I said.

She twirled her chair around to face me. “You want to sit with me?”

I shook my head. “No, actually. I want to try and face it on my own. Is that weird?”

“Nah,” she said. “But I’ll be there if you need me.”

Monday morning, before I left for the bus stop, I checked myself in the full-length mirror Mom had hung on the inside of our front door. She would’ve considered that garish at our old house, but her standards were different now. I looked okay. My hair was still slightly damp so it was behaving itself. Skirt, tights, boots,
jacket . . . all good. Since I wasn’t riding my bicycle, I traded my backpack for an oversized tote bag I’d bought at Bloomingdale’s a couple of years ago and used maybe once.

Molly was waiting at the bus stop, swinging her clarinet case, when I arrived.

“Hey,” she said. “Nice bag.”

“Thanks.” I started to say where I’d gotten it but stopped myself.

Lennie drove past us in his Jeep. He was very intently not looking at me, but he did slow down and ask Molly if she wanted a ride. He looked at
her
and said only
her
name, to make it perfectly clear I was not invited. “No thanks,” she hollered, and he continued on.

“I’m cultivating a reputation as a badass,” she told me, “and the state pen bus is a key part of my strategy.”

“Is it as awful as they say?”

“Nah,” said Molly. “Most of these tough guys are just big talkers. Talk back and they usually leave you alone.”

She kicked at the gravel a bit. A few pieces went into the grass.
Brady will get those later,
I thought.

Our bus, number thirteen, rumbled up and we climbed on. The so-called “cool kids” were sitting in the back, the ones who were afraid of them in the front. I found an empty seat in the middle. Molly sat across from me diagonally and slumped down, propping her knees on the back of the seat in front of her.

I tried to assume an equally relaxed pose, but it was a little
more difficult to accomplish in a skirt. The bus wasn’t crowded, so nobody bothered me for my seat. Then this guy got on who looked like he should’ve graduated three years ago. He strolled down the aisle, giving a couple of the kids in front a less-than-playful shove. I kept my eyes focused on the dark-green faux-leather seat back in front of me and waited until he passed to let out the breath I’d been holding.

Too soon.

He stepped backward and sat right next to me. “Mind if I join you?”

He angled his body toward me with one arm draped over the back of the seat. I could feel his hand grazing my shoulder. “I’m Mick,” he said. “What’s your name?”

Turning my head slowly, I considered a fake name. But I’d had enough of the lies. “Ivy.”

“Where you from?”

“I live here in Lakeside.” Time to own it.

“I didn’t ask where you lived,” he said. “I asked where you’re from. ’Cause you sure ain’t from Lakeside.”

Someone in the back of the bus yelled, “She’s one of those snobby Westside bitches.”

“Thought so.” Mick grinned, looking me up and down. “Aww, what happened? Lose your trust fund, sweetheart?”

“Get lost,” I said.

“Now, don’t be like that.” He slid his thumb down my arm.

I jerked away from him, and he laughed but pressed even
closer. His knee jabbed into my thigh. I felt a surge of anger, like everything I’d been holding in these weeks was about to explode. In one swift movement, I scooped my hands under his leg, lifted it off the seat and shoved him away. I may or may not have let out one of those tennis-player grunts in the process.

He fell backward, his arms flailing but unable to grasp anything. The surprise on his face was matched by my own. I had toppled the guy. He landed with a loud
thwack
in the aisle, his arms and legs sticking upward.

“Hey!” He scrambled to right himself and lunged for me, but another set of hands came out of nowhere and pushed him back down.

“You heard her,” said Molly. “Beat it, asshole.”

“What the . . .” Mick’s face reddened, whether in anger or embarrassment I couldn’t tell.

Molly leaned into him before he could regain his balance. “Back off,” she snarled. If she hadn’t been saving my ass at the moment, I would’ve been more scared of her than Mick.

He ambled away, trying to salvage his tough-guy image. There was a smattering of “nice try” and “don’t take that shit” remarks from the back of the bus. Molly reached her hand out and said, “C’mon,” and led me to her seat.

“Thanks.” I slid toward the window, strangely calm now that my anger had found an outlet.

“He did the same thing to me when I moved here. The jerk-off.” She plopped down, flushed and breathing heavily.

“How long ago was that?” I said.

“Last fall.”

Beginning of sophomore year. Months after Willow had ousted her from our circle, which explained why I hadn’t known about it at the time.

“Did one of your parents lose their job or something?”

She didn’t answer right away, and I thought perhaps I’d gotten too nosy. “Sorry, none of my business,” I said quickly.

“No, it’s not that.” Molly looked down at her hand and began tracing the lines of her palm with a finger. “My dad died.”

I closed my eyes. “God, Molly. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks.” She sighed. “Anyway, we couldn’t afford the house in Westside after that.”

“We lost our house, too,” I said.

“Sucks,” said Molly.

I nodded. “The worst part is losing my piano. That’s why I went to the band room to practice that day.”

“I can’t practice at home either.” She drummed her fingers on the clarinet case sitting in her lap. “Mom works nights, sleeps days. It’s too loud.”

“Sucks,” I said back to her, and we both laughed.

Having someone to talk to—and laugh with—was helping, but not enough to completely calm my anxiety about stepping off that state pen bus in front of everyone. When we pulled up to the school, I was surprised that nobody seemed to notice I even existed. Molly nudged me with her elbow. “It’s really not that bad.
You think everybody’s watching you, but they really only care about themselves.”

I looked around as we walked into the school, at the girls smoothing their sweaters and skirts and hair from the rumpling of the bus. At the guys shoving each other in the arm, nervously glancing at the girls derumpling their sweaters and skirts and hair. At kids who laughed a bit too loud. Or rolled their eyes at the kids who were laughing too loud. Everyone was pretending to be something—cool, aloof, carefree. Something they weren’t. I was so tired of pretending.

Willow and Wynn were already taking out their containers of organic vegetables and finger sandwiches when I got to our lunch table later that day. Jenna Watson was there, too. She sat with us when she was between boyfriends. But Reesa was nowhere in sight. She had sat in stony silence through AP English and had breezed past me and James when we stopped to talk after class. I kept trying to catch her in the hall, but she kept disappearing. I never got a chance to tell her what I planned to do at lunch.

I sat down at our table with the apple I’d brought from home and a carton of chocolate milk. There was no way Taco Surprise would make it down my throat today.

“Did you see that skirt Chandra Mandretti is wearing today? Sooo cute. Must be vintage,” said Willow.