Tune It Out

by Jamie Sumner

  “Yes.”

  This was my mom. She’d take a free sandwich from Joe’s after a show with a “please and thank you,” but try to give her “charity” and she’d just as soon spit in your eye. It had to be some kind of trade or nothing at all. There was a lady once, in Biloxi, the mom of a girl from my class. I guess she noticed my raggedy jeans and the hole in my Keds. Or maybe it was that I wore the same striped T-shirt almost every day. Anyway, she brought a whole bag of clothes to school for me. Skirts from the Gap and collared shirts from H&M already soft from washing. There was a whole pile of shoes, too. But when Mom caught me trying them on in our motel room that night, she made me pack every single thing back up and return it the next day. I cried all the way to school with the bag sitting next to me on the bus.

  “Did you ever try to see her again?” I ask Ginger. And by “her” I really mean “me.”

  “Oh, Lou, of course I did. But she just… disappeared. No forwarding address. No phone number. Nothing. Apart from the occasional postcard, she was off the map. Honey—” Her voice breaks. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I am just now getting to know you.”

  She’s for-real crying now, and so am I. But I’m more angry than sad. I’m mad at Mom for keeping every important detail from me. What my grandparents were really like. The fact that my aunt was a lawyer and nice and wanted to see me. Even the volleyball and that she used to clean people’s houses. If our past is part of what makes us who we are, like she said every time we had to move, then she hid 90 percent of herself from me.

  I’ve never cried with someone. It’s always been me alone, in the truck or hospital room or airport or this very bedroom. It feels kind of good to cry with Ginger. I give in to it another minute and then stand up and go over to the bed. I scoop up all the crackers and candy and cookies and drop them in Ginger’s lap.

  “Lou, you can keep these,” Ginger says, cradling the pile in her arms like a baby. “How about this: We can put them on your bookshelf so you don’t feel like you have to hide them?”

  “No, you take them.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. I know where they’ll be if I need them.” I smile at her because I mean it.

  “Okay.” She stands up uncertainly. “Well, good night, honey.”

  She wants to hug me so much. I can see it. I kind of want to hug her, too, to lean into someone instead of myself, but that doesn’t mean my body will agree. I know it too well for that. So I take a step back as she takes one forward. It’s the saddest kind of slow dance. She smiles anyway and then quietly shuts the door on her way out.

  I lie on the bed and think about what Well said, about how you can’t pick family. Then I think about Ginger and Dan downstairs probably brushing their teeth in their side-by-side sinks. Well’s wrong. Maybe you can’t pick who you get in the beginning, but you can sure pick who you end up with.

  11 On the Road to Nowhere

  We’re on a road to nowhere,’ ” Alexa booms over and over from the piano bench. I bob my head and hum under my breath.

  “Mrs. Nicky? What is this?” Mary Katherine shouts over the refrain. Next to me, Well sighs. She is the ruiner of all good things.

  “Alexa, stop,” Mrs. Nicky orders wearily. “Mary Katherine, this is the Talking Heads, and I have deep misgivings about your generation if you know every Miley Cyrus song but you don’t know the Talking Heads.”

  “My mom won’t let me listen to Miley Cyrus.”

  “That’s one point to your mom, Jacob.”

  “Do you want to listen to Miley Cyrus, Jacob?”

  “Shut up, Tucker.”

  “All of you, listen. You know I despise demerits and the entire negative reinforcement system, but I will pass them around like licorice if we do not stay on task today, because this show is in one month. ONE MONTH. And we don’t have a moment to lose. Sooooo,” Mrs. Nicky drags out, “why do you think I played this song today?”

  “Because you want us to be depressed?” Mary Katherine says.

  “Because we forgot our lines again and you’re punishing us?” Evan adds, and moves an inch closer to Mary Katherine so they are basically overlapping.

  “No! No, people. I played this song because this is what the opening of act 2 is all about. The Baker’s finally got himself a son.”

  Well takes a little bow here.

  “And Jack is rich and Cinderella’s married her prince,” Mrs. Nicky continues.

  “But…,” Geneva says from her spot by the mirrors, because she loves getting Mrs. Nicky on a roll.

  “But all is not perfect in fairy-tale land. The Baker and his wife bicker. Jack misses the beanstalk world. Cinderella’s Prince is less than charming. And so we watch and we wait”—she starts pacing the room now like a jungle cat in spangly bracelets—“for our heroes to learn their lesson. Which is?”

  Everybody finds a spot on the wall or the floor. Something to stare at so they don’t have to speak.

  Mrs. Nicky grabs the demerit slips. I can’t believe I’m doing it, but I raise my hand.

  “Yes, Lou?”

  “The story doesn’t end when we get what we want.”

  “Speak up, dear. Be a tigress, not a mouse!”

  “The story’s not over when we get what we want!” I yell, and Geneva applauds and I only flinch a little.

  “Yes!” Mrs. Nicky cheers, throwing the pack of demerit slips like a Frisbee so they go sailing under the piano bench. “Listen to your assistant director, people. We cannot stop growing. Learn from your mistakes and move, move, move onward!”

  As Mary Katherine rolls her eyes, Well leans over and whispers in my ear, “I think that was her roundabout way of telling the eighth graders they better learn their lines or else.”

  * * *

  Dan’s classroom is exactly how you would picture an English room at a fancy private school. Three walls are covered floor to ceiling in bookshelves, with gaps like big white teeth for the dry-erase and Smart boards. The last wall isn’t a wall. It’s one big window overlooking the faculty parking lot and the hills beyond. There are four photographs of the very same hills hung above the window, one taken in each season of the year. This way, he says, when you’re dead stuck in the middle of winter, you can look up and see spring just around the corner.

  I’m staring at the picture of spring, with tiny bright green buds dusting the trees like pollen, when class starts. I’m worn out from my small bit of participation in theater class today. I can’t believe I shared the “moral of the story,” as Mrs. Nicky calls it, with the class. I’m a little proud, too, though. I want to tell Andrea so she will stop leaving notes in my locker with the names of occupational therapists. But first, all I want to do is sink down in my seat in the back row and take this period off. That’s how I’ve learned to do it. If one class is a little too intense, a group dissection in science or a debate where everyone’s yelling in history, then whatever class comes next, I just… check out. I don’t sleep or anything. I just sit there with my eyes open and let my mind drift.

  “Psst. Psssssssst,” Well whispers next to me. He does not understand the concept of taking a period off.

  “What?”

  “Coach is passing back the essays.”

  “And?”

  “And you’re going to have to hold my hand if I failed.”

  I shake my head as Dan walks up and down the rows, a stack of papers in his hand. Well is always trying to get me to hold hands, high-five, pinky-swear, fist-bump. I never do it.

  Dan is just turning down the aisle farthest from me when it happens. Later, I think maybe if he had been a little closer, it wouldn’t have played out like it did. But then again, probably not. Some things are inevitable, like a train running on a broken track. Eventually it’s going to crash.

  My train wreck is the fire alarm in fifth-period English.

  It screams. I grab my ears and then my hair. It’s not stopping. I pull at my hair. Harder. Harder. Until some comes away in my hands. The pain helps.
But not enough.

  Through my arms I see people standing, laughing, texting. They are walking out. I begin to rock in my seat. Still the alarm wails. Well sticks his face in front of mine. He’s saying something, but I can’t hear him over the siren and my own fast breathing. Then he grabs at my arm. I scream and jerk away. The last ones in the room turn to watch. They’re watching me, the freak.

  I don’t care. I don’t care about anything right now but noise. I can feel it, burrowing in my ears like a worm. I’ll never get it out. Make it stop. I’m on the floor. How did I get here? Now I’m in someone’s arms. Make them stop. Too much touching. Too much sound. I’m being carried down the hall, out into the cold, cold air. And suddenly, finally, it is quiet.

  The grass is wet by the tree where I lie. It seeps into my skirt. Dan is on his hands and knees in front of me. He carried me here. Not from a fire. From a fire drill. I look past his shoulder. Kids talk and laugh in lines snaking across the parking lot. This is their idea of fun. A break from class. Principal Myers blows a whistle. They all begin to wander back inside. But not before glancing at me, the girl on the ground with pieces of her hair in her hands. I duck my head into the grass and pretend I am far, far away.

  * * *

  I do not go to school for the remaining three days before Thanksgiving break. I do not go to rehearsal. I do not answer Well’s texts. I do not listen to music or look at Mom’s guitar, which is still shoved under my bed. I do not let Ginger make me an appointment with Andrea. I shower. I eat. I rub antibiotic on the places in my scalp that are raw where I tore away my own hair.

  We leave for the beach Wednesday morning. This is what Ginger and Dan do every Thanksgiving. They drive to Seaside, Florida, and stay in a condo and eat seafood instead of turkey to give their thanks. I don’t really care what we do. I don’t care about much of anything. I lean up against the window in the backseat of the Lexus and watch the world slip away.

  It takes seven and a half hours to get to the ocean. Somewhere on the Alabama highway, Ginger twists around in her seat and lifts her sunglasses to look at me.

  “There’s something we need to talk about.”

  There’s a red barn with SEE ROCK CITY painted on it. I follow it with my eyes until it’s out of sight.

  “I don’t want to talk about what happened at school,” I say after it passes.

  “It isn’t that.”

  “What, then?”

  She twists some more in her seat to get another inch closer to me, and Dan reaches out to turn down the audio book. It’s some Tom Clancy mystery he picked up at Cracker Barrel on the way out of town. He called it his “beach read.”

  “It’s about your mom,” Ginger says.

  Something in my chest stirs. It’s fear raising its head.

  “What? What’s happened to her?”

  “Nothing’s happened. It’s good news!” Ginger’s voice is doing that thing again, fake cheery and two octaves too high, her Mary Poppins voice. “She’s coming to Nashville. Melissa called yesterday to let me know she’s requested a visit. Isn’t that great?”

  Mom. In Nashville.

  “Why didn’t she just call you?” Or me?

  A pause hangs heavy in the air before Ginger speaks.

  “Until we have the hearing and the court makes its decision on custody, it has to be a supervised visit. I’m sure she was just trying to play it straight.”

  Play it straight. Yeah, right. When has Mom ever played it straight? We used to sneak into chain hotels for free breakfast. No one ever looked twice at the mother and daughter at the waffle station as long as we were mostly clean. Even at the casinos, she was always looking for an angle. She lied about my age to get me into those karaoke nights. I look out the window. Pine trees and dirt and a warped sign letting the world know there’s a McDonald’s and a Hardee’s at the next exit.

  “When?”

  “Next week, after we get back. If that’s okay with you?”

  I don’t say anything. Eventually Ginger turns back around. When has anybody cared about what’s okay with me?

  * * *

  The condo is on the bottom floor of a towering complex the deep pink color of salmon. It overlooks the ocean. And then, as if that’s not enough, there’s a pool about a hundred yards away. This is not beer cans and cigarette butts in the sand next to a broken grill. This is rented umbrellas and daiquiris from the poolside bar. This is how rich people do the beach.

  Our first night here, we pick up fried fish sandwiches and hush puppies from a place next to an outdoor market selling sundresses and straw hats. We take them back to the condo and eat around the glass dining table. Afterward, Dan digs in the cupboard underneath the bar area and pulls out battered games of Monopoly and Boggle.

  “Want to play?” he asks me. He looks so hopeful with his bare feet on the tile floor. I shake my head.

  “I will dominate you in Boggle,” Ginger says to him, still false cheery. They are playing their parts, but I don’t want to play mine. I’m too tired to pretend to care.

  She shows me to my room. The bed is white wicker, and there’s a sliding glass door that leads out to my own patio. I can hear Dan shaking the Boggle box in the living room. I turn off the lights, slide open the door, and lie down on the bed so I can hear the ocean. The rolling in and out of the waves is nice, a noise that my stupid body has decided is safe.

  If I could figure out why waves are calming but fire alarms are terrifying, would it make a difference? Could I be normal then? But what if there are no reasons? What if this is just who I am, forever and ever? Forget friends. Forget school. Forget plays and movie nights and midnight talks with Well. Maybe Mom was onto something. Maybe we were better off alone.

  * * *

  It’s Thanksgiving Day. Ginger, Dan, and I are sitting at a table on the top-floor open deck of a restaurant called Bud and Alley’s. It’s cool up here with the wind blowing. Heaters have been placed around all the tables, and I scoot as close as I can to the metal coils without getting burned. Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville” is playing over the loudspeakers when the waitress brings out our tray of fish tacos and fried squid. This isn’t the weirdest way I’ve spent Thanksgiving. One year Mom had me singing outside the doors of a Best Buy at midnight to hit up the Black Friday shoppers. We took in a good haul. Folks had a lot of money to burn. But I don’t want to think about Mom right now, or anything really. I focus on my food instead.

  I’m squeezing lemon on my fish when Dan raises his hand like he’s in class. “Why don’t we go around and say what we’re thankful for this year?” He’s wearing a gray cardigan over a Hawaiian shirt and his nose is a painful sunburned red. He is the nerdiest, most earnest person I know. It’s a shame I’m going to have to quit his class because I’m too much of a freak to be in school.

  “Fine. I’ll start,” he says when neither Ginger nor I speak. “I am thankful for coffee in the morning, crossword puzzles in pen, a newly strung tennis racket, a beautiful wife, and a brilliant niece who got an A on her English essay.”

  “Thanks for putting me after the tennis racket,” Ginger says through a mouthful of crab. “All right, my turn. I’m thankful I don’t have to wear heels for five days, for a husband who can reach the top shelf in the pantry, for mocha fudge chunk ice cream, and a niece who reminds me to be brave.”

  They look at me, waiting for my thanks. The problem with filling your life with people is that they expect things from you, things like love and gratitude and normalcy. I pick at the skin around my thumb. “Um… I’m thankful for you guys and for the tacos.”

  They smile. Dan makes a toast to “the holidays” with his water glass and we eat and it’s fine. It’s really, really fine.

  * * *

  It’s Saturday night. Ginger took me shopping at the outlet mall today. We walked through J. Crew and American Eagle and bought walnut fudge at the chocolate shop. I got a North Face jacket for 75 percent off. It was still too expensive, but Ginger insisted. The shopping was h
er shot at trying to cheer me up.

  They’re back at the condo now playing Monopoly. I wouldn’t have guessed how serious Dan gets with the board games. Last night he had to walk away from Boggle when Ginger threatened to tear up the score cards if he didn’t calm down. They both seemed mostly back to normal tonight, less fake happy and more relaxed. But then, after I went to bed, I heard Dan bring up the occupational therapist that Andrea recommended. Ginger said, “I know she needs to see someone. We just can’t push her yet,” before they both fell into silence. So not entirely back to normal, then.

  I snuck out with a blanket to sit by the ocean so I wouldn’t have to hear more. It’s almost dark, but not quite, and the beach is empty. I pick at one of the scabs on my head. It’s beginning to flake off, settling on the shoulders of my jacket like dandruff. Perfect. I think about Monday and school. I haven’t told Dan and Ginger I’m not going back. Will Well and Geneva and Tucker and Jacob, my first real friends, even notice when I’m not there? Or maybe they weren’t ever really my friends. Maybe you can’t be friends with someone you don’t really know.

  And then there’s Mom, who I’m going to have to see after almost eight weeks of nothing. I wonder if she even wants to see me. Or is this just one of the steps she has to go through to give up custody? I pick at the threads of the blanket and ignore the twist my heart makes at the thought. At least I can give her back her guitar. One less reminder of her after she’s gone.

  My phone buzzes in the pocket of my new jacket, and when I pull it out, the screen lights up.

  fine

  u don’t have 2 talk 2 me

  but u have 2 listen 2 this…

  It’s Well. I watch the little dots hover on the screen while he types. And then he sends me a link. It’s a new Spotify playlist.

  LOU’S SURVIVAL PLAYLIST

  “Have It All,” Jason Mraz

  “Unsteady,” X Ambassadors