Suddenly, Izzy stopped, got up from the drums, and waltzed over. “Can you do Tuesdays and Thursdays after school? That’s when we’ve been catching up so far. Obviously, we’ll have some gigs, too, so that’ll be a Friday or Saturday usually.”
I blinked and put the bass down. “Yeah, sure. I don’t really have any standing commitments, other than babysitting, but I can be flexible with that.”
“Awesome. So, tomorrow? Three-thirty?”
“Wait, I’m in already?” I asked.
Emerson clapped me on the shoulder, and Sayid grinned while unplugging his keyboard. “Dude,” Sayid said, “we weren’t expecting anyone to respond. This kind of music isn’t exactly big in this school, in case you hadn’t noticed. Welcome to Absolution of the Chained. We could’ve been really big, had we all been born in a town with better music taste.”
“Way to make us sound desperate, Sayid.” Izzy scowled. “People like us fine. We just usually have to tone down the screaming when we perform.”
“A.K.A., put a gag on me,” Emerson said. “I only get to have real fun when we’re playing around.”
“You’ve got to know your audience, guys, like I keep telling you,” Sayid said.
The bell rang then. “Yeah, for sure,” I said. “See you tomorrow. Let’s do it.”
They broke out in grins. It was that easy. So that’s how you got through a social situation without repelling everyone within ten feet of you. Speak as little as possible, and fill the silence in with music.
Note to self: carry bass around everywhere and break into impromptu solo whenever anyone tries to force you into conversation.
Foolproof.
As soon as we were dismissed the next day, I headed toward the music room. I got about halfway down the hallway when I ran into Juliette and Niamh. Or maybe they ran into me. Juliette did seem quite enthusiastic when she saw me. That appeared pretty normal for her, though.
“Ollie-oop,” she said, bounding over. If anyone could be called the human personification of Tigger, Juliette was it. Which made me Piglet, I guess. “Want to come hang with me and Lara? We’re gonna grab some fries then hit the mall for a bit.”
As tempting as a night with Lara was … “I can’t, actually. I’ve got band practice right now in the music room.”
“Band?”
“Yeah. It’s called Absolution of the Damned. No, wait … Apocalypse of Chains, I think. Can you have an Apocalypse of Chains? What would that involve, do you think?”
But, weirdly enough, neither of them was keen on philosophizing about various potential forms of the apocalypse. “Oh, do you mean Izzy’s band?” Niamh asked, at the same time Juliette jumped in with, “I didn’t know you played!”
“Mm, yeah. Guitar and bass. Do you?”
“Clarinet.”
“Slightly different genres, then,” I said.
“She’s seriously great,” Niamh said, and Juliette waved her hands around like she totally-didn’t-but-secretly-totally-did agree.
“I’m okay,” Juliette said. Which everyone knows is code for I was better when I was an infant than Mozart was at his peak, but N.B.D. “More importantly, you play. I could really use your help. I have to pick an audition piece for the Conservatory of Music, and I’m stuck between a couple of possibilities. Do you think you might give a girl a hand sometime?”
I was about to say sure. Totally. I know little to nothing about classical music but I’d give it my best shot.
I was about to say all of the above. But I ended up staring blankly down the hallway. I probably should’ve been used to seeing him by now, but I wasn’t. I’d seen him in English several times—he was hard to miss, given that he had a smartass remark for every few sentences the teacher spoke—as well as around the hallways and in the cafeteria. And even though I definitely hated him, and he was nothing at all like the guy I’d fallen for, seeing him made my chest tighten. Right now he was walking right toward me, his group of basketball guys flanking their captain, Matt, like disciples in a sea of black and white. It was eighty degrees outside, for God’s sake. They always wore those damn jackets, like if they took them off for a second the rest of us might forget their place in the social hierarchy.
Which, to clarify, was: Above Everyone Else.
“Is that a no?” Juliette asked.
I scrambled to catch back up. Oh yeah. Clarinet. “No, no, I’ll help for sure. Easy. That’s, uh … a great, great idea. So great. Awesome.”
Niamh was giving me a hesitant look again, like the one she gave me when I over did it with the compliments at the back-to-school party. “All righty guys, well, I’ve got to run if I’m gonna make it to Spin class, but I’ll see you later.”
Sometimes being around Niamh exhausted me. This was the seventh time she’d gone straight to the gym after school in as many days. Who knew when she had time for homework.
Juliette folded her arms in the direction of the basketball guys as they disappeared down the hallway. “Will troubles, huh? Have you spoken to him since the party?”
I pulled my best “Will, who’s Will?” expression. Which was probably about as convincing as Juliette’s “I’m mediocre at clarinet” face. “Nah, but it’s fine. What happens over summer stays over summer, right? It’s not like we’re enemies. We just …”
Just what?
Juliette nodded, like I’d made total sense. “Yeah, got it. We hang out with the basketball guys at lunch sometimes, you know. Mostly because of Lara and Matt being tight. We sat together yesterday. I forgot to tell you.”
My stomach spun and flipped and nailed a triple Salchow. So, if I hadn’t ditched to meet Izzy and the others, I would’ve ended up sitting with Will? I wasn’t sure if the idea was horrifying, or something I’d trade my guitar for. “Oh,” I said. “Great. That is so great.”
“I’ll hit you up about the audition thing, yeah? See you tomorrow. Have fun at practice.”
She headed off down the hall. Well, at least I was prepared now. Likely, in the near future, I’d be stuck in close vicinity with Will. Will, who’d spent all day every day with me this summer. Will, who now seemed to have developed an acute allergic reaction to me. That was fine. This was fine. I definitely had the tools in my vast and nuanced social tool kit to deal with this without making it uncomfortable for everyone.
Really, the only option I had right now was to stop liking him. Obviously, nothing was going to happen, so cut that cord as quickly as possible. Step one: delete his number from my phone.
There. Done. That was only 95 percent agony. It was getting easier by the day to move on from him. With any luck, it wouldn’t take too long for him to feel like a scar instead of an open wound.
I strutted the rest of the way to the music room wearing a self-satisfied smirk. Here walks Ollie Di Fiore. Master of his feelings, expert detacher, only mostly devastated.
Now there was something to put on my tombstone.
6
“You’re trying to play me,” Will said, darting forward to take the basketball from me. “You can’t be this bad.”
Said the vice-captain of the basketball team. I hoped he was more encouraging to his team members on their off days.
I stepped back, trying to dribble the ball, but hitting the air instead as the ball lost its height. “I swear I’m not,” I said. “These skills are all innate. Couldn’t fake them if I tried.” Will lunged for the ball and I threw myself onto it, burying it under my body. “It’s still my turn. Time out!”
“You’ve lost your privileges.”
“You can’t discriminate against me because I suck, Will.”
“I can do whatever I want, it’s my house. Come here, come on.” Will clapped his hands, and I got up, still clutching the ball. “All right, okay. We can revisit dribbling later. Can you handle a pass?”
“Are you asking me if I can handle balls, Will?” I grinned, and he darted forward to wrench it from my grip. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry! That was bad. I’ll focus. Please, explain how on
e passes a ball.”
Before Will could figure out if my deadpanning was serious, his father poked his head around the side of the house. “Hey, you two. I’m heading to the store. Any requests for the grill tonight?”
Will took the distraction as an opportunity to reclaim the ball. Right out of my hands. This guy’s parents had never taught him to play nice. “Mm, yeah, can we do hamburgers, Dad?” he asked.
“Sure thing. How ’bout you, Ollie?”
Will shot me a sideways warning look. I knew what it meant. Don’t even think about saying sausages. I almost did it, just to see his reaction. But I opted not to. Double entendres were funny when we were alone, but it’d be significantly less funny if his dad got suspicious and banned him from seeing me for the rest of the summer. “Hamburgers sound great to me, Mr. Tavares.”
Mr. Tavares made a super-uncool clicking noise and gave us finger guns as he left.
I turned to Will, shaking my head with a grin. “You always expect the worst from me.”
“Because I know you.”
“Details, minor details.”
Will shrugged, glanced behind him, and threw the ball backward over his shoulders. It went straight through the hoop. I couldn’t stop myself from cheering, legitimately impressed. “Holy shit! That was actually awesome.”
“Wait, did it go in?”
“Straight in.”
“No shit? Total fluke.” He spun around, pumping his fist.
“Check the modesty on this guy.”
“My fingers aren’t big enough,” Crista complained, spreading her hand like a starfish over the fret board.
I rolled back on my haunches to see for myself. On the one hand, she kind of had a point. Her fingers were skinny and short, little spidery things. At best, she’d end up with killer cramps after a few chord progressions. Then on the other hand (no pun intended) I’d seen a four-year-old on Ellen nail Santana, so, really, she was years behind already.
I couldn’t quite bring myself to explain to my little cousin that her weak will was bringing shame on the family, and that Ellen would never want her at this rate. Instead, I grabbed the neck alongside her. “Here. Put one finger here on the fifth string. Remember which one that is? Perfect. And then this one”—I grabbed her middle finger and raised it—“up here on the sixth string. I’ll hold this one down here. Remember which string this is?”
“First.”
“Great job, right. Now, do you think you can give it a strum as well?”
“That’s too far, Ollie. You do it.”
“I do it,” Dylan interrupted. Up until now he’d been playing some pig-based game on his iPad near his bed like a good twenty-first-century toddler. I should’ve known he was following along with what Crista and I were doing on the guitar. If Crista was doing it, Dylan wanted to do it, too. Luckily for the sanity of everyone in the family, Crista didn’t mind indulging him. Once or twice, I’d actually caught her staring at him while he slept with a slightly deranged expression, while whispering, “Sleep well, Anna,” to him. I assumed Crista was probably Frozen role-playing, so I didn’t ask. Well, that and because I was secretly terrified she’d come out with something horrifying, like, “Anna was the girl who lived here a hundred years ago, and is currently sleeping next to Dylan right now.”
All I’m saying is, I’ve seen enough horror movies to have a healthy mistrust of kids.
“Pinch your hand like this and play it, Dyl,” Crista instructed. Dylan did as he was told, and honestly it wasn’t half bad. Maybe I was putting my Ellen hopes on the wrong cousin, here.
“Awesome, guys. That’s what a G-seven sounds like.”
Crista’s grin was so big you’d think she’d wrapped up a performance in a sold-out amphitheater. “Can you play the song again, please?”
“Which one?”
“The one that goes daa-da-daa-da-da-da.”
Unfortunately, Crista’s singing abilities were questionable, so I remained lost. I shrugged, while Dylan absent-mindedly strummed the guitar. “I’ve, uh … forgotten that one.”
Crista sighed, like I was the biggest idiot she’d ever met. Oh no, not her, too. “The one with all the chords.”
Right, that one. That really narrowed it down.
“Because you showed me the C, and the A minor, and then I couldn’t do the G one, and you said you’d show me that tonight.”
Suddenly it clicked. She wasn’t talking about an actual song I knew, just a progression I’d made up on the fly the other night while I was keeping an eye on the kids in the tub. I grabbed the guitar and played what I could remember, narrating as I went. “So it’s C … A minor … F … and G-seven, like you guys just played.”
Crista jumped up and started spinning in circles, her tight curls splaying out behind her. “It sounds like ‘Let It Go’!”
I mean, not really. No. “Oh yeah, I can see that.”
Why do we lie to children?
I kept playing the progression, and Crista pretended to fling off an imaginary glove, with Dylan twirling around behind her now. Before Crista could burst into song, like I was 90 percent sure she wanted to, Aunt Linda pushed open the door. I hadn’t even heard everyone come home. It was impossible to predict how long I’d be babysitting when Aunt Linda had appointments in oncology. Sometimes she and Uncle Roy would be home in half an hour, sometimes I’d get a text with her credit card details asking me to order Chinese for delivery. Hence, why I’d started leaving a guitar here. Figured I might as well give myself something productive to do if my shift got extended.
“Hey, munchkins,” she said as she scooped Dylan into a hug. “What are you still doing up?”
“Well, funny story,” I said, letting Crista take over the guitar. “I went to the bathroom for one second, I swear, ten seconds at most. Then when I came out, a quarter of the Nutella jar was magically gone.”
“Magically gone?” Aunt Linda repeated, raising her eyebrows. Neither Dylan nor Crista met her eye.
“Magically,” I confirmed. “I know it had nothing to do with these two, because they told me it didn’t, and I know they’d never lie. Then, Aunt Linda, the funniest thing, after I’d cleaned all the Nutella off their faces and hands, they had all this energy. Almost like they’d had a whole heap of sugar.”
“How mysterious,” Aunt Linda said, putting Dylan back down. She seemed out of breath, just from holding him for that long. “And I’m sure the Nutella on their faces was a coincidence, too?”
“Total coincidence.”
Aunt Linda shared a conspiratorial glance with me. I could tell she wasn’t pissed, but looking at her, I felt guilty for not trying harder to get the kids to sleep on time. Her eyes were all puffy and red, and the wrinkles on her face seemed more obvious than usual.
“Okay, guys, time for bed,” I said, getting up. “For real.”
“It’s okay, Ollie, I’ll take it from here,” Aunt Linda said. “Roy’s ready to drive you home. You’ve been here for too long already.”
“I don’t mind, really,” I said. “It’ll take me five minutes. You haven’t even taken your jacket off yet.”
That was another thing. It was eighty degrees today. No one in their right minds needed to wear a jacket in this kind of weather, but Aunt Linda always seemed to need a jacket or coat these days. The sundresses she used to live in when I was little were banished to the back of the closet.
Aunt Linda hesitated. She totally wanted to take me up on the offer. So I launched into the bedtime routine, which was pretty familiar to me these days. “Hey, Crista, finish getting into your jammies. You’re not sleeping in that shirt. Dyl, go grab your chi chi.” His chi chi was some raggedy, woolly, bacteria-filled thing he carried around for comfort. I think it was supposed to resemble an animal, but mostly, it resembled my nightmares. To each his own.
The kids did what they were told. Like I said, they were pretty much saints. Aunt Linda told me once they weren’t always so well behaved. They seemed to sense that she needed a brea
k.
Aunt Linda hovered, then cracked. “All right, well, I might go put on some tea, then. Thank you, Ollie. You’ve been such a help.”
“It’s cool, really.”
She smiled and rested her head against the door frame. “I heard you playing. I’m so glad you kept it up. You’ve always been so talented.”
“Not really. I just like it. But thanks.” Even as I said it, I knew I sounded like Juliette.
“Mama, Ollie taught me how to play ‘Let It Go’ on guitar,” Crista piped up in a muffled voice as she pulled her pajama shirt over her head.
Aunt Linda shot me a look that was half sheer terror, half witch hunt. The face of someone at peak Frozen saturation.
I didn’t, I swear, I mouthed, making chopping motions by my neck.
I was saved by Dylan returning with his chi chi, which he’d apparently found in the pantry, next to the Nutella jar. Aunt Linda retreated to the kitchen, and I worked through the bedtime routine of checking under the bed for monsters (while making zero jokes about the chi chi being the real threat) and reading the same fifty-word picture book approximately fifty times.
Dylan was out first. Crista had her eyes closed, and I thought I was ready to clock out. I’d almost made it to the door, when, “Ollie?”
So close, and yet … “Yeah?”
“When is Will going to come over again?”
Damn. Hearing his name was like being lightly shoved onto the edge of a cliff. If you’re ready for it, no harm done. If it catches you off guard, bam, over you go. Suddenly, ridiculously, I wanted to spill my heart out. To someone who’d get it. Who knew how close we’d been all summer. So I didn’t feel like I’d imagined the whole freaking thing. Even I knew that a seven-year-old didn’t make the ideal confidante for romantic issues, though, so instead I shut it down. Right down. “Will was from the lake, remember? He doesn’t live here. We can’t see him anymore.”
Only Mostly Devastated Page 5
