The Sound of Your Voice, Only Really Far Away (4 page)

The room suddenly filled with the rustling of paper. Lorna leaned over and tapped her pencil on Kate’s desk. “Think about it, okay? The musical? It’s the only way to save me from my mother.”

“I’ll think about it,” Kate promised, pulling out a sheaf of poems from her notebook. “I’ll let you know by tomorrow morning.”

But in her head she was thinking, Radiohead or Green Day? Bruce Springsteen or Elvis Costello? PJ Harvey or Pink?

She had a million of ’em.

“Sounds like the boys’ basketball team could take a few lessons from the girls this year,”
Kate’s dad said at dinner that night. “The girls’ zone defense is really working out for them.”

Kate nodded. She’d discovered that if she tried to look interested in her dad’s basketball reports, he’d drop the topic after a minute or two. Once, she’d made the mistake of rolling her eyes, and he’d gone on for fifteen minutes about the importance of girls’ athletics and how girls used to have to wait till high school to play organized sports. Did Kate know that his sister, Tess, had been a great soccer player, which was too bad, since there were no soccer leagues for girls when Tess was growing up?

Kate hadn’t rolled her eyes since. She’d thought about trying to explain to her dad that she hadn’t given up sports for good, she was just dedicating this year to playing guitar. But she knew he wouldn’t like that, either. Kate’s guitar playing seemed to make her dad nervous, although he was acting a little more relaxed about it since she’d started playing acoustic. One afternoon last fall when she was still messing around on Flannery’s electric
guitar, her dad had stood in the doorway to Kate’s bedroom and said, “That sounds nice, Kate, but are you sure that’s how you want to spend your time?”

Kate had put down the guitar and stared at her dad. “What do you mean?”

Mr. Faber had shrugged. “I don’t know, I guess I was just thinking about how we used to spend Saturday mornings playing pickup games over at the Y. You were turning into a good little point guard, Katie. I played guard in high school. I’ve got a lot more tricks I could teach you.”

“It’s not like I’m never going to play basketball again, Dad. But right now I want to learn how to play the guitar.”

“You could focus on music later,” her dad had insisted. “Like when you’re old and your knees are shot. You have your whole life to play punk rock music, but the opportunity to play basketball? It’s a ten-year window at best.”

Kate suppressed her urge to giggle uncontrollably. Punk rock music? She’d been working out a riff from a Creedence Clearwater
Revival tune. That was so pre–punk rock, it was practically ancient.

“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t see playing the guitar as my path in life,” Kate had told her dad. “It’s just something I do for fun.”

Mr. Faber had taken a deep breath. “Sports are fun, Katie. If you want to have fun, play sports.” Then he’d turned and walked down the hall.

Kate had waited a minute before closing her bedroom door, and she’d waited for a few more minutes after that before picking up her guitar again. When her dad had knocked on her door five minutes before, she’d been happy, and now she felt terrible. Kate felt guilty that she’d stopped going to the Y to play basketball with him, but it had started feeling sort of weird. The guys she and her dad played with had begun acting differently around her, like she might break or cry uncontrollably if they fouled her.

Kate stretched her arms toward her toes. It was funny how her mom seemed to get Kate’s love of music and her dad didn’t. Her dad was
always going on about the importance of girls playing sports, but didn’t he see that it was important for girls to play music, too? And not just pretty, I’m-so-sad-about-my-bad-boyfriend music, but music about being angry or excited, music about feeling crazy or weird or wild.

Now, sitting at the dinner table and listening to her dad talk about why man-to-man defenses were useless at the middle-school level of ball, Kate wondered if what she’d told her dad last fall was true. Had she really meant it when she’d said she didn’t see playing guitar as her path in life? Well, she supposed the question was, a path to what? Kate wasn’t thinking about becoming a famous rock-and-roll star or anything like that, though she could see putting out a CD on an independent label some day. But that wasn’t really a path; that was just something she daydreamed about on the bus to school.

Here was the thing about guitar: When Kate played, she didn’t worry about whether or not she was fat (she sort of thought she was, although Lorna insisted that Kate was perfectly
normal), or when she was going to get her first period (her mom had been fifteen—
fifteen
!), or if she should try to fit in more and be like other girls. She didn’t worry about grades. She didn’t even worry about whether or not Matthew Holler was her boyfriend or a boy who was a friend who sometimes kissed her behind the garage. When Kate played guitar, she didn’t worry about anything at all, except making the chords sound as clean or as soft or as fuzzy as she wanted them to sound.

Playing basketball had been like that too, she realized as she took a bite of baked potato. Maybe sports and music weren’t so different. With basketball and guitar, you had to live precisely in the very moment you were living in. You had to train your mind not to wander off into the future or onto the topic of whether your zits were getting out of control.

“I’m thinking about trying out for the school musical,” Kate said suddenly, surprising herself, and by the looks on their faces, the rest of her family too. “I think it’s important to try new things. And besides, I like music.”

Mr. Faber nodded, looking pleased. “I think that’s great, Katie. Being in a musical is like being on a team, in a way. It’s about working together, cooperating.”

“Oh, Mel.” Kate’s mother sighed. “Being in a musical is about singing and self-expression. Enough with the sports analogies, honey.”

“Being in a musical is about hanging out with geeks,” Tracie offered through a mouthful of baked chicken. “The geekiest of the geeks. Computer nerds used to be the geekiest of the geeks, but now you never know if they might grow up to be billionaires. So now it’s the musical kids who wear the geek crown.”

“Good,” Kate told her sister. “I like geeks.”

“Enough,” Mr. Faber told his daughters. He turned to Kate. “I think it’s good you want to be involved. To be on a team.”

Kate just nodded her head and gave her dad a big smile, like she thought he was absolutely right. Maybe he was. Kate didn’t know. All she knew was she was tired of her dad looking at her like he wasn’t quite sure who she was anymore.

“So did you hear?” Lorna asked when Kate met her in the auditorium ten minutes before auditions started on Friday afternoon. “The musical is going to be
Guys and Dolls
. It’s about gangsters.”

“Like
The Sopranos
?” Kate asked, sitting down. “Isn’t that sort of bloody for middle school?”

“No, it’s about
funny
gangsters,” Lorna informed her. “Like from the 1930s or something. I don’t know anything about it besides that.” She turned to Kate. “Give me your honest opinion—should I try out for the lead? I’m not that great of a singer, but I think it would make my mom happy.”

Kate scanned the crowd of auditioners. “Well, I see Phoebe Washington, who has a great voice, and Ginny Woo, also great. The entire middle-school chorus is here . . . and . . . whoa!”

“Whoa what?” Lorna asked anxiously. “Somebody even better than Phoebe?”

Kate shook her head. “Flannery’s here.”

Flannery was sitting by herself in the back of the auditorium, and if Kate was seeing things clearly, she was knitting. What was Flannery doing at tryouts? And since when had she been a knitter? This was all too weird.

“Is her hair still pink?” Lorna asked, straining to see where Flannery was sitting.

“It’s red now,” Kate informed her. “She’s talking about doing purple next.”

“Well, go find out what she’s doing here,” Lorna said, practically pushing Kate out of her seat. “I’m dying to know.”

Lorna found Flannery fascinating. It was like Flannery did the things Lorna dreamed of doing but really didn’t want to do—like dye her hair purple. Lorna wasn’t really a purple-hair person, but she liked the idea of being a purple-hair person, and so she liked the idea of Flannery, even though when Kate offered to introduce her, Lorna had said no thanks. Flannery was a little too nervous-making, in Lorna’s opinion.

Kate thought Lorna and Flannery would hit it off, but she didn’t try to force them together. The fact was, Flannery
was
pretty cranky. Kate
was used to Flannery’s crankiness, but Lorna might take it the wrong way.

Sure enough, Flannery’s expression was pure grouch when Kate reached her row. “I keep dropping stitches,” she complained, holding up a knitting needle for Kate to see. “It’s driving me crazy.”

“I didn’t know you even knew how to knit,” Kate said, sitting down. “Are you just learning how?”

Flannery nodded. “I’ve been reading all this DIY stuff online—you know, grow your own food, make your own clothes. Megan got me into it. I’m trying to make a sweater, but I royally suck at it.”

“My mom knits, if you need any advice,” Kate told her. “Mostly she knits socks and gives them away.”

“I totally want to learn how to knit socks,” Flannery said, looping a strand of yarn around a needle. “I want to be able to make all my own clothes, underwear included.”

“That’s cool,” Kate said. Onstage, some teachers had started to gather—Mr. Periello, the chorus director, and the drama teacher, Ms. South—and people had started to whisper, like things were
about to get started. “So, are you trying out for the play?”

“No, I’m here to conduct a scientific study,” Flannery replied. “What do you think?”

Kate couldn’t tell whether Flannery was being sarcastic or not. Flannery was the sort of person who pretty much always sounded sarcastic or annoyed. “I think it would be hard to conduct a scientific experiment while you’re knitting.”

Flannery raised her eyebrows. “You’d be surprised what you can do with a pair of knitting needles.”

“Probably,” Kate said. “But really—are you auditioning or not?”

“Of course I’m auditioning. Why else would I be here?”

“To conduct a scientific experiment?”

Flannery laughed. “I’m taking drama for my elective, and Ms. South is giving extra credit to everyone who auditions. I can act, but I can’t sing, so there’s no way I’ll actually get a part. But I’ll get extra credit.”

It always surprised Kate that Flannery
cared about her grades. Flannery seemed like the sort of person who wouldn’t care if she flunked out. But at the end of every quarter, when the honor roll was posted outside of the front office, Flannery’s name was always on it, no matter what color her hair was or how bad her attitude had been the last three months.

“By the way, it’s still big news about the Matthew-Emily split,” Flannery said, squinting at her knitting like she’d lost something inside of it. “Emily’s telling everyone it’s your fault.”

“That’s dumb,” Kate said, staring straight ahead. She didn’t know if this was something she wanted to discuss with Flannery. Flannery hung out with the same group of eighth graders as Matthew did, the ones with vaguely bad attitudes and lots of black T-shirts, so she’d know what was really going on. But sometimes Flannery was a little too honest for Kate’s comfort level. Sometimes Kate could live without Flannery’s opinion.

“Yeah, that’s what Matthew says too,” Flannery said. “He says you guys are just friends. He broke up with Emily because he wanted to be free.”

“He did?” Kate felt her stomach fill with butterflies, the bad kind, the kind with poison on their little proboscises. “He does? Want to be free, I mean?”

“Sure,” Flannery replied, poking her right-hand needle into a left-hand needle loop. “Everybody was totally amazed when he got together with Emily in the first place. Although now he says she was never really his girlfriend. But if she wasn’t, then why did he have to break up with her?”

“Yeah, that’s a good point,” Kate said, her voice sounding hollow. “Well, it looks like things are about to get started.” She stood up, amazed by how much she felt like a zombie, someone who had been dead for a while now but had miraculously retained the ability to walk and talk.