by Ron C. Nieto
So I paid back in kind. Turning on my heels, I tried the most dignified exit I could pull off—and judging by the looks of the other kids in the parking lot, it worked.
Perhaps it was cowardly, beating a hasty retreat when my friend unburied the war drums, but I was a Bitch Princess, not a National Hero.
Besides, I needed to do damage control. How many people had learned that Keith and I had shared a couple of years of elementary school? By itself, the admission wasn’t too serious. And we’d not really been friends back then—when you’re a kid, friendships are quite limited. But for a while, our parents had known each other and gotten along in a distant, nice kind of way and so had we.
Then Keith had moved. I hadn’t seen him at all during middle grade. When we met again, in high school, he was so changed that the only traits remaining were his eyes. And even those had gotten much older.
By that point, talking to him in public would have been social suicide. I had been curious, though, and had followed him to his place one day to ask how he was, why he’d moved and why his horrid taste forced him to dye his hair with silvery streaks. I never got answers, but I discovered his guitar. I had started taking detours and listening to him baring his soul while he thought he was alone.
And while the knowing him part wasn’t compromising, the spying on him part was very much embarrassing.
***
I went straight home that day. Dad hadn’t returned from work yet, but Mom was on the sofa, reading a book with the TV on mute.
“Hey, Mom,” I said on the way to the stairs. Then I stopped, my mind still whirling about Keith and Anna and Lena.
Why not?
“Hey, Mom,” I said again, wandering into the sitting room.
“Yes, sweetie?”
“Do you remember the Brannaghs?”
She seemed startled and perhaps ashamed for a second, but then she put herself together and closed the book, leaving her finger to mark the page.
“Of course. We saw quite a lot of them when you were little. I believe the boy goes to school with you now?”
I nodded. “Yeah, so… why did we stop seeing them?”
“They moved.”
Prefabricated untruth stink coming from a mile away.
“So…?” I pressed the issue.
Mom sighed. “Adriana… Mrs. Brannagh died. Cancer.”
I had no idea. I hadn’t really seen Keith’s mother around, but I’d figured it was because I took pains not to see anyone related to him.
It made me feel wretched.
“He never said anything,” I muttered. He never spoke about his father either, or his pets.
Does he have pets?
What do I know about him anyway?
Okay, not going that way. Depression awaits there.
“Shouldn’t we have been closer to them, then? You know the drill, cookies and friendly support and such.”
Mom shifted.
So that’s what makes her uncomfortable.
“They moved, and then Mr. Brannagh closed up. He didn’t look like he wanted visitors,” she explained, not believing a word she said. “Why do you ask?”
“Just realized I didn’t know the answer. I’m going up to my room. I got a lot of work, so I might not come down for dinner.”
She nodded and turned back to her book, and I mounted the stairs in a most unladylike fashion, my mind reeling. Somehow, mocking “Keith, Dracula in Drag” felt great in comparison to mocking “Keith, Whose Mom Died Tragically.” But they were one and the same, and I had been ignoring him and making fun of him for as long as high school had lasted.
Way to make myself feel better after an awesome day.
Dropping my bag and the textbooks haphazardly in a corner, I threw myself on the bed. I did have a lot of work, but I wouldn’t be able to get it done before I figured out the mess I was into.
Which meant it didn’t get done at all, because after a while of thinking, I fell asleep, dead to the world.
I didn’t dream that night.
CHAPTER 8
Next day at school, I had to wonder if what had happened the previous day had only been a dream.
Everyone acted like their everyday selves. Anna grinned and joked with me like always, and Dave came up to walk us to the cafeteria on lunch break.
It felt way too much like a parallel universe, because Lena looked nice and sweet—in her Bitch Queen kind of way, I guess—and Jack kept his big mouth shut.
I sat down and started to eat in silence, pondering my possible madness while listening to the newest gossip, when I felt movement behind me. The smile was wiped clean from Lena’s face, Anna bit her lip and Dave, bless him, reached across to put a placating hand on Ray’s shoulder.
“Got a minute?”
I would recognize the deep, rumbling voice anywhere. I thought about saying no. About ignoring him and finishing my lunch. That would have been in character for me.
But, who was I kidding? I wanted to talk to him.
“Do you really think anyone would have a minute to waste on you?” Lena’s voice sounded harsh and biting, but I covered the end of her sentence with the scraping of the chair as I got up.
The whole table looked up at me, their expressions hovering between astounded and horrified, but I kept my head high and turned to Keith with my most imperturbable look.
After a long minute of just looking, I prompted, “Well?”
He broke his surprised gaze away and nodded, leading the way out of the cafeteria. The chatter stopped in our wake and pairs of eyes from all the tables we passed by drilled my back. I could almost make out the din of their gossiping kick-starting with a vengeance when we were out of sight. Thankfully, the halls were empty and our footsteps echoed in the silence as Keith guided me away from the lunch rush, from the classes, from any possible straggler. Taking a turn to the left, he opened an emergency door into a fire exit and waited for me to enter before him.
“You don’t seem too worried about my flaunted reputation today,” I said, unable to hold the silence any longer, even though it wasn’t a very nice way to start the conversation.
He smiled, neither happy nor amused. Just a physical gesture of a smile.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s okay. No one will think that anything happened while being alone and sequestered in a fire exit, the most clichéd make-out spot in the world.” I couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice, but managed to tone it down. A little.
“I meant about yesterday. I’m sorry about yesterday,” he amended, reaching up to brush his hair out of his face and to look at me.
That threw me off balance.
“It wasn’t your fault. I just took it out on you because you were handy,” he went on.
“You sure know how to make a girl feel special.” He tried to elaborate, but I held up a hand. “It’s okay,” I said. “That guitar is very important for you, isn’t it?”
“She’s my life.”
“Was it a gift?” I had been thinking about it before going to sleep. He had gotten so mad when I had told him to just replace it because it was old; perhaps it was a gift. Perhaps it was the last gift from his dead mother.
“Yeah.”
“Oh,” I said, eloquently. “Was it, you know…?” I trailed off, pinned under his unflinching stare. His eyebrows had shot up and he looked incredulous. “Your mother’s?” I finished.
“Are you alright?” he asked in turn.
“Why shouldn’t I be?” I hadn’t lost a parent, after all.
“Because you’ve not talked to me in six years.” He leaned against the handrail and averted his eyes.
I winced. Those were just the cold facts. The truth. There was nothing I could reply to make it better, no decent excuse, but I had to try.
“I’m talking now.”
“What for, I wonder,” he sighed, defeated. Then, he answered my original question. “It’s from my father, if you must know.”
That busted my sentimen
tal theory.
“It seemed to be very important for you. That’s why I wondered.”
“He saved for over a year to buy it for me, so yeah, it’s special.”
I blinked. “I thought you said it was second hand.”
“It is,” he said with a shrug.
“So it belonged to someone in particular.”
“A random dude who decided to stop playing,” he answered, the beginnings of amusement tingeing his expression.
“It is a really expensive guitar, then?” This was starting to look like a game of twenty questions, and I felt like I had completely missed the point of the conversation.
“Expensive brand, but their cheapest model,” he said, tsking at me. “Not everyone is as rich as you, Princess.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“No big deal.” Another shrug and a few moments of silence. Then he said, “Mrs. Goodman.”
“What?”
“It wasn’t because of your shoes,” he explained, smiling ruefully. “Our neighbor is a nosey old lady, and she saw you. Almost called the cops on you, too. And I shouldn’t have brought it up yesterday, much less the way I did.”
Should I breathe easier or feel more embarrassed at having been discovered?
“You could tell who I was from the description of an old lady?” I tried to cover up my insecurity by being playful. Somehow, it didn’t feel as weird as I thought it would be.
He pulled out his cell, an older model, and grinned for the first time.
“Nope. From the pictures,” he said, flashing me the damning evidence.
I withered in dismay and he laughed, a rich, vibrating laugh that almost made me want to be caught at something ridiculous again just to hear it. Almost.
He pocketed the device again once he sobered up. “We should go back. I don’t want to keep you from your world too long.” His words were bitter, but his tone wasn’t. There was a small lingering smile still on his lips when we turned to go back into the building and he stopped me at the door.
“So, see you around,” I said awkwardly.
“Hey,” he called after my retreating back. “If you want to listen again, you don’t have to stay out. I meant that part, even if it came out wrong.”
A hopeful, insecure tone crept into his voice. I didn’t do hopeful, insecure very well, so I ran off with barely a nod.
***
I left the fire exit and tried very hard not to think about what had happened there. In a way, I guessed, it had not been significant. It had been a short conversation, plagued by more silences than words, and, as far as conversations went, it hadn’t been too deep either. Of course, this only made my feelings harder to understand, because I never became nervous talking, much less talking to a guy, and much less talking to a guy like Keith.
Except, perhaps that’s the issue. I think of him as Keith now, not as the nameless, faceless music I listen to at night and certainly not as the emo-goth-weird kid of school.
Realization hit me as I rushed along the empty corridors to our theater meeting, but I didn’t have time to ponder on the implications.
I burst into our classroom.
“I’m so sorry for being late, Professor,” I said, speaking over Lena’s voice with vindictive smugness.
Mr. Hedford didn’t look too chipper today.
“Not to worry, not to worry. Miss Brighton here was just informing me of the terrible accident of yesterday. It seems we have lost our chance at an original soundtrack…”
The students from younger years, who had not been around during the “accident,” started whispering among themselves, looking devastated. It helped to solidify my own resolve.
“We still have the scores, Professor,” Lena was saying. “I have a friend outside school who can play the piano; perhaps we can get him to help?”
I didn’t wait to find out whether the professor would turn the offer down. “That won’t be necessary.”
“You will play?” Lena gave me a disdainful look, and I could see that she actually wanted me to say yes to free up the role of Lady Windermere for her.
God, she really was a Queen… Keith was right.
“Keith will play,” I said aloud, smiling sweetly at her before turning to Mr. Hedford. “His guitar got dumped, but it’s not broken. I went to talk to him about it, and he’s still willing to be part of the project.”
I said “dumped” on purpose. I wanted Mr. Hedford to realize that it had been no accident at all, but the idea might not have come across. In any case, judging by the bright smile in his usually too pompous face, Lena could kiss her plot goodbye.
Of course, she would try to get him to quit again. Perhaps she’d even try to really break his guitar, but we’d cross that bridge when we got to it. Since she already had her revenge on him for bustling Anna, she’d have to find new excuses or the rest of the group wouldn’t back her. Well, we’d give her no excuses.
Or something.
“That is amazing!” exclaimed our professor. “I must thank you for being late today, Ms. Thorne. I imagine this conversation was the reason for your tardiness?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Good, good. Please, do let Mr. Brannagh know that he’s welcome to come and practice at the auditorium any time, if he needs a place. Now, since we have the decor and the music, shall we start reading the lines?”
Cheering. Wild cheering.
And no amount of death stares from Lena could wipe the smug grin off my face.
CHAPTER 9
“Hey, Alice,” Dave said when the reading was over. “Why don’t we go and get a celebratory drink? The play’s finally under way!”
I hesitated and he hurried to add, “All of us.”
Glancing at the sneering Jack and sullen Lena and carefully neutral Anna, I hid a wince and shook my head.
“Perhaps next time, Dave. I really have to go home today.”
He looked convinced, albeit crestfallen.
Ouchy. Okay, never mind. Don’t let that look guilt you. I need to be home; it isn’t even a lie. And I can’t afford to go out. There are lines to read, homework to do…
Except, without realizing it, I was walking a very familiar path that didn’t take me home. It was taking a side trip through a crooked neighborhood, which had seen much better days, past abandoned yards and fences with the cozy, white paint peeling off the swollen wood.
It felt different in the dim afternoon light, not as scary as it did by night, but much more lonely and pitiful. It was quite sad that Keith had moved away from our area and into this depressed street, but even I knew better than to ask why sometimes.
When I arrived at his house, I forced myself not to jump into the yard and not to hide against the wall.
I will go around to the driveway and up to the front porch, and then I will ring the bell…
Come on, ring the stupid bell!
Taking a deep breath, I punched it in and the electric buzz echoed beyond. A light came up in the hall and I gripped my bag with both hands to try and hold myself in place.
I shall not bolt, I shall not bolt…
Then, the door opened and I decided I didn’t want to start running for the hills after all. Keith stared out at me, hair held back in a high ponytail and a crooked smile in place.
“Hey,” I said when he remained silent a bit too long. My voice came out shaky, but it snapped him out of whatever reverie he’d fallen into.
“Hi,” he said, stepping to the side to let me come in. “I’m glad you chose to come.”
I shrugged and tried for a lighter tone. “I didn’t want your grandma neighbor to sic the cops on me.”
“Or worse… the psycho ward.”
“Stalkerish is so not psycho,” I said, rolling my eyes at him.
“It is in the movies.”
“Of course. Because Hollywood does such great research.”
That made him laugh again and I laughed along, surprised by how easy it was.
“Come on
in.” He closed the door behind me and motioned me through a small foyer, down a short corridor and to his room.
“Your father?” I dallied a bit at the door. Taking into account that two days ago I’d have been caught dead before talking to this guy, entering his room felt awfully intimate.
“At work. Should be back in another couple of hours, right in time for dinner.” He half turned and gave me a funny look. “Are you worried I might jump you?”
“No!” I replied a bit too fast and he snorted. I entered his room, just to prove that I wasn’t intimidated. “I just thought I should say hello to him, that’s all,” I tried to amend, still gripping my bag with one hand.
“Stay around for a couple of hours and you will,” he said with a shrug. “I’m sorry, the amp and rack are here. Still, if it would make you more comfortable, you can sit in the living room… It’s not as if the house is too big for the sound to reach you.”
I finally had gathered the resolve to come here. I wasn’t giving up my front row seat.
“What’s wrong with the chair?” I asked, all flippancy, crossing over and dropping down with all the grace I had learned in my Princess days.
Something screeched and hissed and I jumped away fast as lightning, brandishing the bag like a clubbing weapon in front of me.
Shame colored my cheeks and my hand started to shake. Keith’s laughter refused to be held in any longer, and he cried from the force of it. I could have sworn I saw a big fat tear welling up in the corner of his eye.
Then, still grinning, he took my bag from me and hung it on a hook beside his door. He held out a hand for my jacket, mirth barely in check.
“You should’ve seen your face.”
“You could have told me about that thing.”
“Sparrow? He’s big enough to see. Unless you’re too busy sashaying, I guess.” He laughed again. Hard.
I glared daggers at Sparrow. The big, black monster looked back with the same amount of lost love from his new perch upon the table.
“He hates me,” I said, a tad childishly, giving Keith the jacket without taking my eyes off the beast.
“You almost killed him.”
