Girl, Unstrung

by Claire Handscombe

  “What’s xi?” Libby asks me.

  “A Greek letter,” I tell her, a little disappointed in her. “You didn’t know that?”

  She smiles. “No, no. I knew. I was just checking that you knew. In competitive Scrabble, there’s a rule that you can challenge someone’s word, and if it’s not a real word, they lose the points and have to miss a turn. So I’m just making sure you’re not randomly making words up.”

  When Libby first suggested Scrabble, my mind went straight to Tim. But I was enjoying the game so much that I almost wasn’t thinking about him anymore while we played. I can’t believe I laughed at him when he said he was into this. I totally get it now. I imagine that Professional Scrabble Player isn’t really a thing, so I’m not about to cross out

  LACHSA

  JUILLIARD

  SYMPHONY

  in my bullet journal and replace it with

  WIN SOME COMPETITIONS

  BECOME A PROFESSIONAL SCRABBLE PLAYER

  because I want an actual career – and also because I’m still holding out hope that my wrist will heal completely, that I’ll be able to get back on track for the original plan somehow even if I have to skip a step or two. I’m not about to give up quite so easily. Clara Cassidy, Quitter? I don’t think so. I’m aware that Libby is looking at me as if she’s trying to read me, that she’s smiling.

  “Oh no,” she says. “Have I created a monster?”

  “A competitive Scrabble-playing monster? Maybe.”

  IN THE EVENING, I MAKE Libby play three more games until I finally beat her, and then we watch a couple episodes of Parks and Recreation before bed. I like the room I’m sleeping in; it’s long and thin with a desk at the window that looks out onto a communal courtyard, where Libby and I had breakfast sitting on the grass, yesterday when it was sunny. I call it my room, and Libby says that’s fine, it can be my room, but would it be okay if I lent it to other people when I’m not here, like basically fifty-one weeks of the year? I tell her that’s fine, though I pretend to have to think about it first. I even tell her that if she and Dan need the space for a baby one day, that would be okay too.

  “We’re not thinking about that yet,” she says, in a way that makes it seem like she has actually thought about it plenty. I’m going to need to come to London a whole lot more when that happens, because you can’t be an honorary aunt from an eleven-hour plane ride away. Or, I guess you can, but where’s the fun in that?

  On the desk, there’s an old but still functioning desktop computer, a pile of textbooks, and Libby’s teaching supplies. I’ve seen a quilt cover like mine before: white with swirls of lime green and purple and grey. Do they have Ikea in England? That would totally explain it. Dan and Libby use this room to work in as well as for guests to sleep in. It’s a pretty small room for all of those uses. Everything in London is pretty small, even the apartment buildings. There are a lot more houses than apartment buildings, all squished together, not like the ones in LA. And no-one has a swimming pool, which makes sense, because when would it be warm enough to use one? The streets are pretty narrow, like they weren’t really designed for cars. And I’ve only been here four days, but so far it’s rained at least a little on all of those days. The sky can go from grey to blue to black several times in one afternoon and you can’t leave the house without several layers and an umbrella. It’s really true that British people drink hot tea all the time, too.

  Dan kind of reminds me of Hugh Grant in all those old movies from the ’90s. He doesn’t look anything like him, and he’s sandy blond, but he is a little socially awkward and you always get the impression that he isn’t quite saying exactly what he thinks. Libby says that’s pretty normal here, as if they’re talking in some secret code that they all understand but that we Americans don’t have a hope of cracking. Like, for example, do you want a cup of tea? seems to translate to I want a cup of tea and Sorry seems to have a multitude of meanings, including I’m not even remotely sorry and I think you’re the one who should be sorry. Definitely not the hardest word, judging by how often they say it Sometimes, they just put it at the beginning of a sentence, the way you might say “um” or clear your throat. Sorry, did you want another drink? That kind of thing. It’s kind of adorable, though. I like England.

  “London,” Dan corrects me when I say this. “You like London. England as a whole is a different kettle of fish.” There’s probably a sorry in there, but I’ve learned to screen those out. We’re going to Cambridge for the day tomorrow, though, so I’ll get to test out this theory.

  When I snuggle into my twin bed tonight – straight under the comforter, there’s no top sheet, which is a little weird – I spend some time scrolling through Scrabble-related information on my phone. I jump from website to website, Facebook group to Facebook group, Tumblr to Tumblr. There’s a lot of intensity about all of this out there. You sort of know there’s a Tumblr for everything, like bullet journals and viola playing, but taking a deep dive into this world is something else.

  I learn a lot through my scrolling, though. For starters, one of the most important things seems to be learning all the two-letter words that are allowed. They’re useful for doing the kind of thing I did with ox and xi, which apparently is a variation of something called a hook. And then there are a ton of exercises you can do, online and in special books and on the Zyzzyva app that Tim showed me, to train yourself to be better at seeing words when they’re right there in front of you in your rack of seven letters. There are lots of common combinations of letters, because there are a bunch of, say, Ts and Ss and As in the Scrabble game, much more than Xs or Qs, say. For example, AETSRDL is one of the common hands to be dealt, and so it’s a good idea to learn all the words you can make from combinations like that.

  I have an excellent memory, and I’m certainly not afraid of practicing. I have the kind of faith in practice that you really only have from repeatedly being given what seems like an impossible piece – maybe with pizzicato or double-stopping – and then three months later being able to play it damn near perfectly. Anything is possible if you really put your mind to it. If you can’t do it, you just aren’t trying hard enough. If I wanted to do this Scrabble Thing, if I wanted to be LA Junior Champion or Southern California Junior Champion, I could totally do it. Practice and determination – that’s what it’s about, like everything else in life. I just have to decide if I want it.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  At breakfast the first Saturday after I get back from London, Ebba sits across from me in silence, stirring sugar round and round in her tea. I’ve been trying, really trying, since I got back, to think about what Libby said. To let myself warm to Ebba. To push down this nagging feeling I keep getting that maybe the baggy t-shirts from a few weeks ago did mean what I thought they did. Because they wouldn’t do that to us, would they? She wouldn’t do that to us – throw us off again when things are just starting to get on an even keel, when maybe I’m just starting to accept how things are now, starting, maybe, to actually want her in my life.

  The sound of Ebba’s spoon repeatedly hitting the sides of the mug has been getting on my nerves, and then she scrapes her chair back, stands up, and practically sprints to the downstairs bathroom. I look at dad and my hands do the what the heck? gesture and he sort of half shrugs and looks at me evenly back. That’s the problem with having parents who are actors. They know how to, well, act. Exhibit Who’s Even Counting Anymore. I raise my eyebrows in what I hope is an I’m not fooled, come on, what’s going on? kind of way and he breaks eye contact to look at his Cheerios. Hmm.

  Harry’s rocking back and forth on two legs of his chair. Rosie, of course, has her nose in a book. (I’m not allowed to have my phone at the table, but somehow she’s allowed to read. I don’t know what that’s about.) Juliette is pouring milk into her bowl and I just know she’s about to spill it everywhere. There’s a lot going on. There’s always a lot going on when we’re all together. I’m leaning against the counter, waiting for my two slices
of toast to pop up when Ebba comes back. She looks pale. She looks like she hasn’t been sleeping much. I turn to her and ask, all kind and concerned-sounding, “Everything okay?”

  “Yes,” she says, and sits back down, and starts doing that annoying thing with the spoon again.

  “So,” I say. I come back to the table and scrape the buttered knife across my toast. “What’s new with everyone?” It’s a weird thing to ask of people you see all the time, but whatever. I was away for a whole week even though I’ve been back for nearly another, and anyway, I have to get at this somehow.

  “We’re starting rehearsals for our end of year recital,” Juliette says. “It’s going to be a good one this year, I can tell.”

  And end-of-year recital is an end-of-year recital, but okay.

  “Sounds great,” I say, to keep this ridiculous farce of a conversation going. I try to think what else I can ask about it to make it seem like I care more than I do, but I already know which piece they’re doing and I don’t know what to ask about the steps. Like, is there a particularly difficult arabesque or something? Do people even talking about this stuff in normal conversation? Ballet’s not something you can talk about in the abstract without at least demonstrating it. And as both my parents have frequently had to say over the years, we don’t do ballet at the breakfast table.

  “It’ll be on pointe,” dad says, because of course he does.

  Ebba shakes her head and smiles. She’s so in love with him that it makes me feel a little queasy a lot of the time. The way women look at my dad, it’s kind of ridiculous. I mean, come on: did you not notice how bad that pun was?

  “Anything else?” I say. “Anything new?”

  You can always tell when it’s Rosie’s turn at the toaster because she turns it up too high and before long there’s the smell of burning. And yep, sure enough.

  “New since when?” my dad asks.

  “Oh, you know. The last few weeks.” I look at Ebba, who’s across from me. “The last – period.”

  She looks down at her tea and stirs it some more.

  “Ebba,” I say. “I think it’s safe to assume the sugar is stirred in by now.”

  “You’re probably right,” she says. She stirs it some more, though, just to be sure, and also possibly because she knows it’s irritating me and she wants to irritate me just a tiny bit more.

  This was a tactical error on my part, though. What I should have done is left the question hanging in the air. What’s new? In the last period? Until Ebba couldn’t stand it anymore and said, in a small voice, I’m pregnant. I can see it now: Harry asking, What does pregnant mean? Ebba saying, It means I’m going to have a baby. Rosie looking up from her book. A baby? she’d ask, the way she always emerges from her book half-way through a conversation so that we all have to tediously repeat it all to update her. Whose baby? What? What are we talking about? Juliette would sit there with her mouth open, in shock or in her usual awe of Ebba or in fear that she wouldn’t be the favorite anymore. And dad would try to make it look like this was exactly the way he wanted the news to come out, not a problem at all, this was exactly how he planned it, all casual, like there’s nothing at all to worry about when it comes to how we’d all react, babies after all are small and unobtrusive and almost completely quiet almost all of the time. And if Harry wants to know where the baby is going to come from and how it got to be in Ebba’s belly in the first place, dad’d be only too delighted to explain to him in front of all of us right there at the breakfast table, maybe he’d even use an actual egg to illustrate. Poke it with a knife or something to represent the sperm entering the egg so that it splits into the cells that eventually make a baby. And then he’d turn to the rest of us, maybe put Juliette on his lap, even though she’s almost ten and way too old for that, and explain that this changes nothing that we’ll all always be his favorite children, and now there’ll be another favorite child, too. And then maybe Harry would whine, But I like being the littlest. And I would take him on my lap and say, I know, I know, you’ll always be my favorite little brother, and I’d look at dad and say, like, the way people actually mean it when they something is their favorite. You’re the brother I like best, more than all the others. Harry would say, we don’t have any other brothers, and I’d say, no, but this baby might be a boy, and then we would. And then his face would go all crumply and dad would panic but try to cover it and calmly say, but wouldn’t it be fun to have another boy to play with? And Rosie would say, That’s sexist, dad, and Juliette would say, well boys and girls are different, that’s just a fact, and pretty soon everyone would be arguing and talking over each other and I would lean back and look at Ebba and watch her will the ground to swallow her up and wish she had never come into this family and messed with our lives.

  But I made the tactical error with the spoon thing, betraying my irritation too early in the game, and now I’m not sure how to get back on track with the conversational plan.

  “I’m learning the Vaughan Williams Galop,” I say.

  “That’s great, honey,” dad says, like he even knows what the Galop sounds like. Like maybe he is relieved that I had this big announcement (which even when you care about the viola as much as I do and even when you’re finally getting back on track with your damaged wrist is not really that much of a big announcement) and that’s why I started the conversation and it’s not at all because I’ve guessed that Ebba’s pregnant.

  “Yeah,” I say. Nothing else. Ebba takes the spoon out of her mug and lays it on the table. I can’t decide if it’s a plea or a threat that I see in her eyes.

  “Really great,” she says, echoing dad. “I have to go. That ballet class isn’t going to teach itself.”

  She stands up, walks over to dad, and leans down and kisses him, because of course she does.

  “You sure you’re up to it?” he asks her, quietly, but not so quietly I don’t hear.

  “I’ll be fine,” she says.

  Like, hello? Is nobody else noticing this stuff? I get Harry being oblivious. He’s a six-year-old boy. And even Juliette – she giggles when Dad and Ebba kiss, like it’s something delightful. If Rosie was any fun at all, if she wasn’t always reading, even at the breakfast table, I could nudge her and exchange sideways speculating looks with her. But she’d have to be a different kind of sister for that to work. You’d think that with two sisters I could have gotten lucky with one of them.

  Maybe this baby will turn out to be the kind of sister I’ve always wanted.

  Yeah, right. Likely story.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Who was I kidding about having to decide if I wanted the Scrabble thing? Of course I want it. It’s killing me that I can’t be the best at the viola right now. That I’m not working toward anything. That I’m just drifting through life doing homework and talking about boys with Katie. There’s only so much pre-sex speculation I can take without wanting to scream. Look, Katie, either do it or don’t, I want to tell her, so that at least our conversations can move past what it will be like and whether it will hurt to what it was like and whether it did.

  Now at least I know that sex is twelve points and that sext is also an allowable word, and at least that adds a much-needed new angle to our conversation, something for me to turn over and over in my head while she’s off on her usual monologue about all the reasons she wants to and all the reasons she doesn’t and what if the condom breaks and then again that’s what Plan B is for, but that means her parents will have to know and can you imagine the horror and she’ll be grounded for weeks and what if Jason breaks up with her because he gets tired of waiting, which hopefully he wouldn’t since he says he loves her, and love is stronger than that, right? Oh my gosh, yes, please give me a list of words with the letter x to rehash in my head while I nod and smile so that the boredom doesn’t kill me.

  My parents are bewildered by my newfound enthusiasm for Scrabble, and I don’t blame them. One minute I’m all about the viola, and the next minute I’m back from London
and I have word lists on color coded Post-Its stuck on my bathroom mirror, and I’m curling up on the sofa with a dictionary in preparation for the Pasadena tournament, the LA-wide tournament, the Southern California and then the national tournament.

  But here’s the thing: even now that I’m allowed to play the viola again, I can’t play anything like as much as I would need to in order to get into LACHSA and it doesn’t even matter because I can’t get into LACSHA anyway, and I couldn’t even if I were the best violist in the world, because they don’t reschedule auditions and they don’t taking rising juniors or seniors. So I have all this spare time and all this competitive energy and if I don’t direct it somewhere it’s quite possible I will actually go crazy.

  And then, of course, there’s the thing that happened between the minute I was all about the viola and the minute I became all about Scrabble: Tim. The reason for the whiplash. The reason for my unforgivable distraction. The dream crusher. There’s a little part of me that wants to crush his dream, too. And if I could get good enough to beat him, if I could take his victory away from him, that would make us something close to even. Only something close, because winning a Scrabble competition is not exactly comparable to being accepted into LACSHA and the entire rest of my life changing, or starting, or going down the road it was always supposed to go down. It feels like I was born to play the viola. I’m pretty sure nobody is born to play Scrabble. But still. If we were something close to even, maybe I’d be able to look him in the eyes again.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  When I get home to dad’s from school the last Friday of April, the house feels different right away. Something in the air, maybe? And then I realize: no. It’s not the air at all. Someone’s crying. Ebba. I don’t want to have to deal with this, whatever it is, but I can’t remember if dad is working today or where anyone else is. I drop my bag at the foot of the stairs and run up them.