The Sound of Your Voice, Only Really Far Away (15 page)

“You need a boyfriend,” Marylin advised her on the bus one morning. “You need to have another boy waiting at your locker. Guys are super territorial. Believe me, if Matthew sees a guy at your locker, he’ll back off.”

“But I don’t want a boyfriend,” Kate complained.

“So, get somebody to pretend he’s your boyfriend,” Marylin suggested. “At least for a week
or two. I bet if I asked Daniel Wyncoop to do it, he would. Do you know him? He’s on the spring dance committee, and the other day he asked me for advice about girls. He’s pretty shy. You could be a practice girl for him, and he could be a fake boyfriend for you.”

“Wow, that might be your worst idea yet,” Kate said, reaching into her backpack for a pen. “I’m going to start making a list, and at the end of the school year we’ll compare and contrast.”

Marylin punched her in the arm. “Stop! My ideas are great. Okay, well, if you don’t like my fake boyfriend idea, how about this—why don’t you quit going to your locker first thing in the morning? Pack your first-period stuff the day before, and then in the morning you don’t have to go to your locker until second period. Maybe if you don’t show up for a few days, Matthew will start to think you have a boyfriend, and he’ll leave you alone.”

The idea of Matthew leaving her alone made Kate sad, but she had to admit Marylin’s idea might actually work. “I just want to take a break from him. Just for a little while.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Marylin said. “Not that I want to take a break from Benjamin or anything. At least, I don’t think I do. Everything’s just weird right now. I’m trying to reprioritize my life, now that I’m not a cheerleader anymore.”

“Do you think that Benjamin cares? I mean, that you quit?”

Marylin stared out the window. “Maybe a little? I think he liked the whole cheerleader mystique thing.”

Kate almost said something sarcastic, but she decided not to. It was a big deal that Marylin had quit the squad, and Kate felt like she ought to be as supportive as she could.

“Maybe he’s just getting used to the new you,” she proposed. “It took a lot of guts to quit. Maybe Benjamin didn’t know what kind of woman he was really dealing with.”

“Or maybe Mazie’s telling him terrible things about me,” Marylin countered. “Who knows?”

“Benjamin wouldn’t listen to Mazie. He’s too smart for that. Really, I don’t think you should worry about him.”

“Really?” Marylin looked at Kate, her expression torn between hope and fear.

“Really,” Kate assured her, and was surprised by how relieved Marylin looked. A lot of people probably thought that being pretty would protect her from worrying about whether her boyfriend liked her, but Kate knew Marylin well enough to know it didn’t.

That’s why I want to be free, Kate told herself as she walked inside the school building and headed toward her locker. If you like somebody, they have too much control over you. Who wants that?

Matthew was waiting for her. Why was he there, morning after morning? Did he miss Kate adoring him all the time?

“I wish I could hang out and talk,” Kate said when she reached her locker. She began working the combination. “But I have to go meet someone. I have to go meet this—this guy I know.”

“Oh yeah?” Matthew sounded like he was trying not to sound too interested. “Who’s that?”

“Just this guy. He’s, uh, nobody.” Kate tugged at her earth sciences notebook, and Matthew reached over her shoulder and pulled it out for her. “Thanks,” she said. “Stuff just sort of gets wedged in there.”

Matthew looked to his left, then to his right, like he was checking for spies. Then he leaned toward Kate and said, “Are you mad at me or something?”

“Why would I be mad at you?” Kate asked, shoving her books into her backpack. “I can’t think of any reason.”

“Me either,” Matthew agreed. “It’s just, you don’t call me anymore or come to the audio lab. And you haven’t written me a note all week. You know, ‘Who’s greater, Jack White or Jack Johnson?’ ”

“That’s stupid,” Kate told him. She zipped her backpack closed. “I would never do one that stupid.
Curious George
Jack Johnson? Really?”

“No, not really,” Matthew said, his cheeks reddening. “It was just an example. I just don’t think you should be mad at me.”

“I’m not mad at you,” Kate said, trying to sound as grown-up as possible. “I’m really, truly not. I just have a lot going on. You know, the musical and everything, and I’m writing a lot. And you’re busy too, with
World of Noise
. It’s just a busy time.”

“You sound like my mom,” Matthew complained. “Next thing you’ll be telling me you have to go to your book club meeting right after you make brownies for the PTA bake sale.”

“That’s exactly what I was going to tell you next,” Kate said. “How’d you guess?”

Matthew snorted. “Quit, okay? Just quit being mad at me and quit being sarcastic and quit thinking that just because Emily is hanging out in the audio lab that it means anything.”

“I don’t care about Emily hanging out with you,” Kate said, which was a lie, but it was a lie she wanted to believe more than anything in the world. “Why would I care?”

Matthew leaned toward Kate’s locker and slammed the door shut. “You care because you care. You can’t help it. And I care, okay? In case you were wondering.”

Kate didn’t know what to say. She stood there for a minute, staring past Matthew’s left shoulder. “But I don’t want to care,” she said finally. “And that’s why I need you to leave me alone.”

“What?” Matthew looked at her like he couldn’t believe what she was saying, his cheeks getting even redder. “You want me to
what
?”

Kate thought that he looked like he was about to cry, and maybe she was wrong about that, but she turned around and walked away anyway. Why is everything so stupid? she thought, walking into the girls’ room at the end of the hallway. Why is it so dumb? she wondered, locking herself in a stall and just standing there for a long, long time, until everything stopped hurting long enough for her to go to the office and ask them to call her house because she didn’t feel so good and needed to go home.

Kate’s dad picked her up in front of the school. “Good thing I was working at home today,
huh?” he asked as Kate slid into the front seat. “Your mom would have come except for that whole cupcake thing.”

“Yeah, the Garden Club luncheon. I can’t believe I forgot about that.”

“Two hundred fifty cupcakes for seventy old ladies,” Mr. Faber said, shaking his head. “I don’t know, that seems extreme to me. So how’s your stomach? Do we need to stop at the drug store for some Pepto?”

Kate had told the school nurse she had a bad stomachache. Stomachaches were her go-to excuse for getting out of school. You could have a stomachache and still have a normal temperature, not to mention that as soon as you said your stomach hurt, everyone got immediately concerned you were going to throw up. The throw-up factor packed quite a punch, in Kate’s experience.

“I think I just need to eat some toast or something,” Kate told her dad. “Just something to settle my stomach down.”

“Maybe we should stop at Elmo’s on the way home then. I don’t think Mom’s letting anyone
in the kitchen right now. It’s cupcake central in there.”

Elmo’s was the diner where Kate and her dad used to go after they played basketball on Saturday mornings. Mr. Faber always ordered a cheese omelet and an extra-large orange juice. For a while, Kate had been methodically working her way through the breakfast menu, but had given up when she got to the tofu and sprouts frittata. After that, she usually just got strawberry yogurt with granola and a Danish.

Kate had never been to Elmo’s on a weekday morning and was surprised to see how busy it was. “Breakfast rush,” her dad said as he pushed open the door. “Expect to hear the clatter of silverware.”

A waitress guided them to a booth, and as she took her seat Kate heard what her dad meant. It was like a symphony of spoons tapping against coffee cups and forks scraping plates. “It would be so cool to record this,” she told her dad as the waitress handed them their menus. “Matthew could totally use it for his
World of Noise
project.”

As soon as she said it, she wished she hadn’t. The sad feeling started in her stomach and then it covered her all over, inside and out. In a weird way, it seemed like Matthew had died. He’s gone away from me, she thought, and then, because she was a poet and a songwriter and couldn’t help herself, she thought, My baby’s done gone away, done gone away from me.

“You know what I’d do if you were a guy—I mean, a grown-up guy?” Mr. Faber asked, and Kate shook her head no. “I’d say, ‘Let’s go out and play some hoops and then go grab a beer.’ I realize that’s a totally inappropriate response to a thirteen-year-old girl who’s feeling blue, though. Well, not the hoops part. Maybe instead of a beer, I could buy you a jelly doughnut?”

Kate shrugged. “A cheese Danish might be nice.”

“Your stomach up for it?”

“I’m starting to feel a little better, I guess.”

Her dad grinned from across the table. “I bet nobody’s on the court at the Y right now. We could have it all to ourselves.”

“I don’t know, Dad. I mean, my stomach’s
feeling better, but I don’t know if I want to play basketball.”

“Okay, here’s another idea. We get our Danish to go, and we drive around town with the radio turned up all the way—any station you want—and then we go shoot some hoops.”

“You really think that will help?” Kate asked, having her doubts. What if her dad wanted to listen to Bon Jovi on the radio? Or even worse, Rush?

Her dad lifted his arms into the air, like a wild-eyed preacher on TV. “We’ll roll down the windows and sing loud as thunder! We’ll play air guitar like rock gods! It’ll be like we’re teenagers again, free from worries and woe!”

Kate looked around nervously, but no one seemed to be paying attention. “Um, Dad? I’m still a teenager. In fact, I just started being a teenager a couple of months ago.”

Mr. Faber nodded his head knowingly. “Yes, but you are full of worry and woe, are you not? And you’d like to be free from it, am I right?”

What could Kate do but say yes? She
was
full of worry and woe, after all, not to mention
that she had a heavy heart and a head full of broken dreams.
My baby’s done gone, and now I’m sad and blue
, she sang to herself. But that wasn’t even right, was it? It should be,
I done gone and left my baby, and now I’m sad and blue
.

Really, Kate had no idea where this stuff came from.

“Two words for you, Katie,” her dad said, and now he was grinning like a maniac as he pulled out his wallet and waved the waitress over to their table. “Free. Bird. ‘Free Bird.’ Do you know that song? Man, I love Lynyrd Skynyrd! I’ve got their greatest hits CD in my car.”

Kate started to giggle. She’d never seen her dad like this before. “I like Lynyrd Skynyrd too. I could listen to some Lynyrd Skynyrd and drive around with you.”

“And play some hoops?” Mr. Faber asked, sounding hopeful. “I think you’d feel better if you did.”

“Okay, okay!” Kate said, still giggling. When the waitress came back to their table with her Danish, she wrapped it in a napkin and slid out
of the booth to follow her dad through the restaurant’s din and out to the parking lot.

“You’ll see,” Mr. Faber said, opening the passenger-side door for her. “You’re going to feel so much better after this.”

“Maybe,” Kate said. “But maybe I’ll feel worse.”

“Wait and see,” her dad said. “Wait and see.”

Kate got into the car and started nibbling her Danish, and that definitely made her feel better. She guessed she might feel okay in a little while. She didn’t feel too terrible right now. Even though there was still sadness inside of her, she could feel something light, too. Maybe it was a bird that had just discovered it was free, she thought. Maybe it was a bird about to fly.

the light you can hold in your hands

On Saturday morning Marylin wakes to the sound of chattering, and when she opens her eyes, she sees a bird sitting on her window-sill chirping away, like it’s trying to tell her something.
Wake up!
Or
Spring is here!
Or
This is the first Saturday of the rest of your life!