Tune It Out

by Jamie Sumner

  “Fine. You don’t. Maybe it was just my imagination that you were basically mute today at school.” I look down at my feet. Well points at the sky. “But it’s a full moon and we’re both up, so hang with me for a minute, will you?”

  Lit up as it is by moonlight, the wet lawn looks almost like a lake. At its far end, the gate that leads to the path through the forest is just visible. Something near my foot catches my eye.

  “Is that a quarter?”

  Well blinks at me a second before he says, “I couldn’t find any rocks.”

  “What?”

  I bend down and follow a trail of quarters from the patio. It ends in a small pile two stories below my window.

  “Is this what woke me up?” I ask.

  He nods and doesn’t look one bit embarrassed. This kid can literally throw money away.

  I hold up my phone. “Why didn’t you just call?”

  He grins. “I saw it in a movie once.”

  We sit next to each other on the lounge chair. I make sure there’s enough room that we aren’t touching. I think back to this morning. Andrea. The SPD. It sounds fake. I glance at Well, his hair almost blue in this light. I will never tell him. I’ve never had a friend like Well, or any friend, really. I could blame it on moving so much, but it’s not just that. Getting close to someone is hard when you can’t get… close. If he knows there’s something wrong with me, he’ll act different, and I always want him to be exactly like this.

  He catches me looking at him. “So?” he asks.

  “So, what?”

  “Are you going to try out for Into the Woods?”

  I snort. I can’t help it. The idea is snortable. “Um, no.”

  “Why not? It’s a musical. You can sing better than miss priss Mary Katherine, who you know is going to get one of the leads.”

  Mary Katherine is an eighth grader in our class. Sometimes she rolls her uniform skirt so short you can actually see her shirttail hanging out underneath.

  “Never will I ever get onstage.” Not again.

  “That’s just great.” He stands up and starts marching around the fire pit. This is new, I think. Mad Well. “You can sing me and Geneva under the table, and we’re still trying out. Tucker is helping to build the set, which is one almighty set, because he basically has to hammer together a forest for Little Red Riding Hood, a castle for Cinderella, Rapunzel’s tower, the beanstalk… I can’t even remember what else now.” He stops. “Anyway, Jacob’s helping with sound and lights. And what are you going to do? Sit and knit?”

  “No. I’m assistant director.” I hadn’t told anyone this part yet, because I wasn’t sure I was going to do it.

  “Oh.” He stops and sits down again.

  “I talked to Mrs. Nicky about it yesterday. She told me that everybody in class has to do something. So, I could either help with the costumes, be a stagehand, or, and I quote, ‘assist me in directing this musical so it does not turn into a monstrosity.’ When I asked her what an assistant director actually did, she said, ‘Keep the menagerie in line.’ Whatever that means.”

  “So, if I get a part,” Well says, “which I will, because this cast is huge and our class is not and also because I am awesome, you’re going to be bossing me around?”

  “Yep.”

  “Huh. All right. Actually, that’s excellent.” He jumps up again. “Will you promise to tell Mary Katherine every single time she misses a high note?”

  “I swear.” I hold my hand to my heart. I guess I am taking the job.

  “No.” He turns to me and holds out his hand. “Pinky promise.”

  His nail is emerald green. He must have done that tonight. I look at it, and my heart trips over itself. I can’t take it. Even this kind of small contact is too hard. It’s not that I think his hands are dirty or sweaty. It’s just too unknown, like an alien offering a high five. It could be awesome, or it could be terrible. My heart starts thumping. I push my knuckles against the fabric of the chair until I hear the threads creak. Well’s still waiting, like he has all the time in the world, while I panic.

  The moment stretches and stretches until it’s almost like an out-of-body experience. I can see myself, sitting crisscross-applesauce, looking up at a boy who actually thinks I’m not a freak show. His hand casts a shadow across the patio. Just do it, I want to yell. Just wrap your finger around his and make a promise. It’s the easiest thing in the world. But I jump to my feet instead.

  “It’s freezing! How’d you get here, anyway?”

  Well’s hand falls. And then he gives me a wicked grin. “Well, Suzy Lee, I may have ‘borrowed’ my dad’s golf cart.” I follow where he’s now pointing and spot a white golf cart half in the grass, half on the sidewalk.

  “You drove that all the way here?”

  “It’s just a few miles.”

  “You drove a stolen golf cart a few miles down the road in the middle of the night?”

  “Borrowed golf cart.”

  I bet the police wouldn’t see it that way, I think, remembering the night of the crash. If Well wrecked it and hurt himself, I wonder if his dad would get in trouble like my mom. Probably not. People with enough money to own golf carts as toys don’t get investigated for neglect.

  “Your dad is going to freak.”

  Well shrugs, his favorite gesture, and pulls the hood from his sweatshirt up so his face falls into shadow. “Nah. One”—he holds up a finger—“he’d have to notice me first to notice I’m gone. And two”—he counts off—“he’d have to be home.”

  “Is your mom there?”

  “Nope. San Francisco—permanently. When they divorced, she moved back there to be closer to her family. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s not a big Japanese-American crowd in the Bible Belt. Dad’s actually from New Jersey. I don’t know what kind of voodoo he pulled to get her to marry him and move here in the first place. He’s very successful in his business, but an epic failure at the whole marriage thing. And the parenting thing.”

  So Well’s mom is in California too. I bet she misses him. I bet she calls. I bet she flies him first class out to see her. I wonder if he wishes he could live there around people who look more like him. But if he did, we would never have met, and I already can’t picture that version of my life.

  “So, you’re home alone?” I ask.

  “Um, no. The home is alone. I, however, am here with the lovely Louise Montgomery, and she is about to sing me a song that will carry me safely onward.”

  “No, uh-uh.” I move backward toward the French doors.

  “Oh, come on. We can do what we did before. Just pick a song. Anything. And we’ll pull it up on my phone. And I won’t even look at you. Swear. We can turn back to back, and you can pretend you are alllllllll alone.”

  I picture him going back to his empty house. He’s more alone than me right now. And I think of the pinky promise I couldn’t make. I can do this, though. I can sing.

  “All right,” I say, despite the fact that I want to puke.

  “All right!”

  “Shhhh!”

  “Okay, okay. What do you want to sing?”

  Nothing, I want to say, while he pulls out his phone. But then something comes to me, and I tell him to put it away. I don’t need the music.

  “Turn around,” I say, and he does so we’re back to back but not touching. Then I close my eyes, and it’s like I really am all alone, singing to myself:

  I start off low and quiet, so it’s almost a hum.

  “ ‘You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…’ ”

  I can see Mom lying next to me in our truck bed with the canopy off so we can watch for shooting stars. This was our bedtime song. My heart twists. It hurts to sing it, and I wonder, wherever she is, if she feels it right now too.

  “ ‘In all my dreams, dear, you seem to leave me…’ ”

  When I hear it like this, in the dark with Well, I realize it’s not a lullaby at all. It’s the saddest song in the world sung to the person three th
ousand miles away who broke my heart. After it’s over, I turn around. Well has his head in his hands. Is he missing his mom too?

  I tug on his hood. He looks up.

  “Lou,” he says, his voice pleading, “if you don’t sing in this show, it’ll just break my heart.”

  I have never wished for physical contact in my entire life. But right now all I want to do is shove Well into the fire pit.

  “Broken hearts make for great acting,” I say, and jerk his hoodie closed. Now he’s just two eyes peering out of a dark hole.

  He mimes an arrow to the heart and falls down.

  “You’re killing me, Lou. You are absolutely killing me.”

  10 There’s No Business Like Show Business

  It’s the end of October. The month-anniversary of my car wreck and the last time I saw my mother. The last time I spoke to my mother. I’ve called Joe hundreds more times. And hung up when he answered. What good does it do to check up on her when she’s not checking up on me? Wherever she is, she’s got a phone. Maybe she’s decided to make Tahoe permanent, just without me. Last Saturday, I slid her guitar under my bed. There’s no point keeping it tuned, so why keep it out?

  It’s fine though, really. I have my own life now. Ginger and Dan and I even have Taco Tuesdays. She picks up food from a place downtown near her work, and we eat in the living room, watching episodes of Modern Family and trying not to drop queso on the leather couches. I love Taco Tuesday.

  Yesterday the weather turned warm again. So today Mrs. Nicky has taken the class outside into the golden sunlight to run lines. I’m sitting on top of a picnic table with the script in my lap. Geneva is lying on her stomach at my feet, drawing a seahorse on her arm. The green in her hair has faded to moss. She looks a little mildewed. But it’s a lovely mildew.

  Well is in the shade of the oak tree that grows just outside the entrance to the dining hall. That oak drops acorns on your head like tiny bombs if you’re not careful. It’s also got a perfect curve for your back. You can lean against it forever. These are the things I know because I’ve been here a month. This is what happens when you hang around a place long enough to be more than a traveler passing through.

  Jacob and Tucker got a pass to study hall today, because, as Mrs. Nicky put it, “Their services are not needed.” I wish that were true for Mary Katherine, or any of the eighth graders. None of them know their lines, which means that I, as the assistant director, am basically reading the entire script aloud.

  “No!” Mrs. Nicky yells, and snaps her fingers. I jump, and Geneva lifts her head. “Stop shaking the table.”

  “Sorry,” I mumble. Even when I know it’s coming, it’s still hard to make my body stay still.

  “Mary Katherine, Lacey, Evan… you three listen to me.” Mrs. Nicky pushes up the sleeves of her shirt. It’s a man’s button-down, and the sleeves fall right back down over her jangly bracelets. “This is a story of wanting.”

  She starts marching around the picnic tables.

  “Wanting what you can’t have and giving up everything, everything,” she stage whispers, “to get it. Rapunzel, you want freedom. Cinderella, you want love. And Jack, you’re not just trying to sell a cow. You want fortune and glory. But—” She pauses and looks every one of them in the eye where they sit cross-legged in front of her. “But,” she whispers again, “that is just the beginning of the story. This is about what happens after happily ever after.”

  Mrs. Nicky is good at monologuing. All three of them nod. But I can see Mary Katherine texting under her leg. Well smirks. Despite what he said about getting a small part, he’s the Baker, the one who basically ties all the characters together. Geneva is the Witch, which is right up her alley. Yesterday, at lunch, she practiced casting a spell on her cheese sandwich to turn it into a grilled cheese sandwich. She said it was to get into character. She made me taste it. We both agreed it was a little warmer. She and Well already know their lines.

  But as the assistant director, or AD, I’m looking at the production calendar and counting down the six weeks we have until the show and wondering how all these different parts and all these different people will come together to become the “musical masterpiece” that Mrs. Nicky claims it will be. I’m glad I’m going to be standing offstage on opening night.

  When the bell rings at the end of class, Mrs. Nicky throws her hands up in exasperation and stalks off, leaving me to gather up all the scripts and return them to the dance room. Well helps, claiming chivalry, but I know he just doesn’t want to go to English. We have an in-class essay on The Giver today, and he hasn’t even finished the book.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t make it through The Giver, but you can read and memorize this script in a week,” I say, stacking the black binders up against the wall once we get to the dance room.

  “The Giver is so boring,” he whines.

  “The Giver is about doing your own thing when everyone else tells you it’s wrong. It’s basically about you, for heaven’s sake!”

  He stops stacking binders and starts fixing his hair in the mirror. “You want to write my essay for me, then?”

  “No, I do not. And that was the late bell. Come on. I may live with him, and he may like me for helping him with his crossword puzzles, but at school, Dan will definitely give me demerits.”

  “Fine. Then after I fail the essay, do you want to come over to my house with Geneva and the guys tomorrow night? We’re dressing up and watching Hocus Pocus for Halloween.”

  “Okay. Yeah. Just come on.” I have no idea what Hocus Pocus is, and in all this time Well and I have spent together, we’ve never been to his house, but I see Andrea in the hallway and I will do and say anything to get away.

  I’ve gotten really good at avoiding her. I come in the back entrance to school in the morning and make a wide sweep of the front offices if I’m ever on the first floor. I know she knows I’m dodging her. I know she wants to bring up the sensory stuff again. But obviously there’s nothing to talk about, because I’m fine, I’m managing it all on my own, so why talk at all?

  * * *

  Dan drops me off at Well’s place at seven p.m. sharp. I haven’t been nervous until now, because I’ve spent the last month getting used to Well, and he’s about as close as anyone can be to making me feel comfortable. But now that I’m standing with my feet on the flagstone driveway leading up to the enormous wooden doors of his ginormous house that is all stone and wood and copper rain gutters, I can’t move. Well lives in a palace. The front doors have actual antlers for handles. I count the garage doors—one, two, three, four—in a separate miniature version of the main house. An entire home for your cars. Imagine that. Well told me there’s a pool, too. Of course there is.

  What would he or Geneva or Jacob or Tucker think if they knew I was living in a truck a month ago? I have a deep craving to dive headfirst into my old sleeping bag, wherever it is three thousand miles away, and never come out again. But then Well opens the door wearing a green silk dress complete with corset, heels, and black lipstick, and I feel… better. Well is 100 percent a person who lives by his own rules. He wouldn’t care if I lived in a hot-air balloon before this. Actually, he would love that.

  After Dan beeps his horn and drives off, Well grins at me and then frowns. “You didn’t dress up!”

  “And you dressed up as… a Disney princess?”

  “NO! Have you seriously never seen Hocus Pocus?” He shakes his head at my jeans and Hard Rock sweatshirt and Converse. I’m really proud of my Converse. They are bright red and the first “new” thing I let Ginger buy me that I got to pick out.

  “Um, no?” I say. Should I have previewed this movie to make sure it’s not loaded up with things to make me scream or jump or cry? I know my triggers. I can’t believe I didn’t come more prepared.

  “If we’re getting all honest here”—Well leans in—“neither have I. But it’s Bette Midler and Halloweeny. If you want to be a real thespian, you have to watch it.”

  “What’
s a thespian again?”

  “Ha. Ha. Get in here. Everybody else is already downstairs.”

  I follow him down the polished spiral staircase, keeping my distance, because he is clomping along in five-inch heels, and he is not very good at it. I wonder where he even got them, or the corset, for that matter.

  “I raided the costume closet at school,” he says, even though I didn’t ask. “The high school did Gone with the Wind a few years ago.”

  When we get to the bottom of the stairs, I forget all about the dress. “You’re kidding me, right?” Red velvet theater seats five rows deep sit in front of a screen that stretches all the way along the wall. There’s even a curtain to pull across it.

  Apparently Well’s version of “come watch a movie at my house” is actually “come watch a movie in my theater.” My stomach bottoms out at the idea of it. A whole room of your own just for movies.

  “What?” He grins. He has a smudge of black lipstick on his front tooth.

  “So, be real honest here. Is your dad a millionaire?”

  “Honestly? Yeah. Now come on! I’ve got marshmallow ghosts and peanut butter pumpkins.” He clomps away, but I’m still trying to take it in. Where do you put a million dollars? Mom and I never even had a bank account.

  Geneva sees me frozen by the foot of the stairs and waves me over from the very back row (because the basement theater is big enough to have a “very back row”). I focus on my red shoes and make myself move. When I get to her, she stands to give me an air kiss. That’s the thing I appreciate about Geneva. She’s all air kisses and nods, no contact. I think she dislikes touching people as much as I do. Tonight she’s in a black cat outfit, complete with ears and tail.

  Tucker waves from down the row. He’s got his size-thirteen feet up on the back of the seats in front of him. Like me, he’s not dressed up, except for a black witch’s hat, which I have a feeling Well forced on him. I plop down next to him, careful to keep my elbows tucked in. He burps, long and loud.

  “Tuck! Ugh.” Geneva turns up her nose, a perfectly irritated cat.