Get Happy (19 page)

He laughed. “I need some Min vim.”

“See you tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“I love you, Fin.”

“I love you, too, Min.”

24

S
CHOOL WAS STRANGE
because I felt as if my entire world had changed and yet absolutely everything was exactly the same. Almost exactly. In U.S. gov, we had moved on to the Industrial Revolution, and in bio, we had moved on to land mammals. Change in content. No change in boredom.

I called Joy. If I really didn’t have to deal with Cassie at work, I wanted the job. I told her I couldn’t come in that weekend because of my aunt’s visit but that I could return the next. “Thank the Lord,” she said. “And stay away from the fruity-tooty tanning cream.”

Aunt Joan flew back to Colorado on a school day.
I was sad to say good-bye, and I think she was, too, because she gave me a bone-crushing hug. That woman is strong. I guess when you live on a ranch, you don’t need to buy workout DVDs to stay in shape.

After school, I arrived home to the hum of the washing machine in our otherwise quiet house. My mom had taken the day off and was doing all the laundry. I grabbed a snack and went up to my room, which was still as bare as a monk’s cell, and there on that ugly brown bedspread was a beautiful, brand-new uke, just like my old one.

I picked it up and strummed it.

In the hallway, my mom walked by with a laundry basket.

“Did Aunt Joan get me this?” I asked.

She shifted the load in her arms. “I did,” she said.

I didn’t know what to say.

She shrugged. “I was dying to buy you a new bedspread, but I’m going to let you pick that out. I have a sneaking suspicion that we do not have the same taste.”

I had to laugh.

Her eyes filled with tears and she choked up. She set down the basket and came into my room to hug me.

I felt the rage rising again, but love was there, too, deep inside, and I reached through the anger and hugged her back.

T
HAT NIGHT
, I played and sang my heart out.

25

I
T WAS
H
AYES’S
birthday. Fin and I took him to Pan Asia Café and I brought cupcakes, so we lit a candle and sang and gave him our present, which was an old paperback we’d found at Bookman’s Alley:
Clever and Cool Ways to Avoid Curse Words.
We signed the card
Love, Joy Banks.
Hilarious.

We hung out in town all night. I had my uke, so we did a little busking and made enough money to split a second dessert at Hartigan’s.

Fin had to go, but Hayes and I walked over to the
lake. We took off our shoes and walked on the cold, soft sand to the water’s edge. All the stars were out and the moon, full and bright, spilled a glow on the lake, rippling a path of white light across the surface. Small waves were breaking lightly right at the edge of the shore.

Hayes picked up a stone and skipped it across the water. Then he waded in up to his knees, not bothering even to roll up his jeans.

“You’re insane.” I laughed and suddenly remembered his list. “Hey, it’s your deadline! Did you do everything on your list?”

He turned back toward shore and looked at me. There was enough light for me to see his face. His hair was longer now, the curls falling in his eyes.

A gentle wave came in, and Hayes raised up on his tiptoes to avoid getting wetter. “I have one thing left.”

The wave folded and the foam spread at my feet. “You have to do it,” I said. “Tell me what it is.”

“I can’t tell you the last thing,” he said. “But remember how you wanted to know the first thing on the list?”

I nodded.

“I’ll show you that.” He pulled his folded index card out of his wallet and held it up.

“Just say it,” I said.

“No. You have to come out here and read it.”

“I’m not coming out there,” I said. “The water is freezing.”

He shrugged. “The water is invigorating.”

Minerva, thy name is Curious. Bracing against the shock of cold, I pulled up my skirt and waded out. He was right. The tingling on the bottoms of my feet was that good kind, when the water is just cold enough to wake up all your cells, to make you feel alive.

Another small wave was coming in and Hayes rose up again on his tiptoes and held the card higher, the white of it almost blue in the moonlight, so that only the top few resolutions were visible. There it was in his neat handwriting, in black ink, above
get a job
and
record some music:

I was speechless.

The wave broke and the tide rushed back out,
stronger than I expected, pulling the sand from under my feet. I stumbled and caught my balance just in time.

He put the list back in his pocket.

“ ‘Say hi to Minerva Watson’ was … that was on … that was the first thing on your list?” I stammered.

“Remember that day I got on the elevator and said hi to you, and Fin joked about how I was stalking you?”

“I do.”

He smiled. “I sort of was.”

Another wave came, and I braced for the shift in the sand. “Why did you want to say hi to me?”

He took a step closer. “Last semester, I had two classes by your locker, so I kept noticing stuff about you. That poster you had … 
REJECT THE ORDINARY
 … the way you and Fin would sing harmonies … the way you shared the locker and would leave each other notes … the way you guys made each other laugh … the way you yelled at Rick Rogan for giving Fin a hard time. I said to myself,
That girl is interesting
.”

The moon seemed to be glowing brighter, as if someone had turned up the voltage.

“I can’t believe you noticed me,” I said.

He laughed. “You guys were really loud. You were
impossible not to notice. But I didn’t do anything about it all semester. When school started up in January, on that first day back, I heard you singing your tiny violin song in the park after school and you were wearing funny striped leggings and big snow boots, and then you tried to give Fin a piggyback ride and you both fell down in the snow. I tried to find the right moment to say hi at school but didn’t. So the day of the audition, I followed you into town, and I kept waiting for you and Fin to say good-bye and walk down separate streets, only you didn’t. So I just followed you both into the building … and the rest is history.”

The sound of people laughing drifted from somewhere down the shore and mixed with the sounds of distant traffic and the leaves of the treetops rustling in the breeze. They were beautiful sounds, all-is-right-with-the-world sounds.

“Okay. I’ll tell you a secret,” I said. “I wasn’t going to audition that day, but then you got on the elevator and you said you were going to do it, so I said yes.”

“Because of me?”

I nodded and looked out at the lake. “I said to myself,
That guy is interesting
.”

He smiled. Killer dimples. “Okay. Close your eyes.”

“Why?”

“ ’Cause it’s almost midnight and it would be ridiculous to not do the last thing on my list.”

“Is the last thing on your list ‘Throw Minerva in the lake’?”

He laughed. “No. Close your eyes.”

“But I don’t want to miss it.”

“If you don’t close your eyes, you will miss it.”

“Okay.” I closed my eyes. A small wave crested just over my knees, sending a new chill through me. The wave broke and I could feel the tide rushing out, the particles of sand slipping underfoot, the current trying to pull me off balance again, but I dug my feet into the sand and held on.

“I’m going to do it right now,” Hayes whispered.

And then he kissed me.

SOME OF MY SONGS