Katie Cox Goes Viral

by Marianne Levy

  “She does,” said Lacey. “She lives down near those yellow fields by the rotary. Poor you.”

  Which was much more like it.

  “Exactly,” I said. “It’s like, the divorce was the worst thing in the world, and we’d just managed to get through that, and then Nose Hairs comes along, and now I’m bussing it with Jaz. Poor, poor me.”

  “Poor you,” said Lacey. “Hey, so Paige and Sofie had a fight over who got to buy these navy sling backs at Topshop, and they’re not speaking. So Savannah’s uninvited them both to her party until they figure it out.”

  Sometimes I think that Lacey isn’t quite as interested by my problems as she should be.

  “Honestly. Who even cares about shoes?”

  “Not you, apparently,” said Lacey, staring at my scuffed Doc Martens.

  “Lace, can’t you just be nice for five more minutes? We are never going to do this walk again, and I don’t want my last memory of our time together to be of you trolling my footwear.”

  She blew her bangs out of her eyes. “I’m just grumpy because I’m going to miss you. Okay?”

  Oh. “Don’t say that! We’ll still see each other all day. And we can talk to each other on the phone the entire way in, so it’ll basically be like we’re walking together.”

  “I guess.”

  She stopped under the tree with the picnic bench, where we’d sometimes share a Dove Bar.

  “What?” I said.

  “Nothing,” said Lacey. “Just…”

  She looked kind of worried, standing there, her white-blond hair blowing in the cold breeze that always came off the water, and I wondered whether she’d planned for something unpleasant to happen as a going-away present.

  That’s the problem with Lacey. She's not the best judge of that kind of thing. She could just as easily have gotten me a special Dove Bar as she could have arranged for the boys to toss me into the canal.

  I readied myself, and then—

  “Surprise,” she said awkwardly and pulled a little box out of her bag.

  “What?” I said.

  “Open it.”

  So I did, carefully, and—

  “Lace!”

  My best friend had lined the box in violet tissue paper, my favorite color.

  “It’s mementoes of our best walks. There’s the noisemaker from your birthday. I saved it. And the song we made up about the geese babies. I know you’ve forgotten it, so I wrote it down—”

  “And a pair of Dove Bar sticks!”

  My insides got as gooey as chocolate pudding. In fact, I was starting to think of a new song, maybe called something like “Walking with You,” about friendship and memories and how beautiful it all was when Lacey said, “Other surprise!”

  Suddenly, the rest of the canal crowd jumped out from behind trees and dumped me in the water.

  • • •

  I walked home and dried off and sat down on my bed, surrounded by boxes, some of which I hadn’t even unpacked from the last move, and thank goodness I had my stereo because otherwise I think I might have exploded or crumbled or something.

  That’s what I love about music. There’s always a song that knows how you’re feeling.

  I played Back to Black over and over, Tom Waits, some Leonard Cohen, lots of Patty Griffin, and Joni Mitchell. It was when I was listening to Blue for the third time that there was a gentle knock on my door.

  “What?”

  “I bring word from the rest of us,” said Amanda.

  “Which is?”

  “Message received, okay? We know you don’t want to move, but can this soundtrack of extreme misery please stop?”

  She was kind of smiling as she said it, and even though I really did not want to, I found myself smiling too. “All right. But only as a favor to you.”

  “Play me that tune again,” said Amanda. “The happy one you were doing a few weeks ago. Dah-dah-dahdah-daaaaah?”

  I played it, and it sounded…hopeful. So I played it again.

  “Does it have words?” said Amanda.

  It didn’t. Now, though, with Amanda next to me, I tried:

  “I got mad skin,

  I got mad hair,

  I borrowed your stuff, and I don’t even care.”

  “What did you borrow?” said Amanda.

  “Your yellow sweater. Deal with it, sister,” I said, leaning over to scribble in my lyric book. “Go grab your guitar? I want to hear it with a bass line.”

  Amanda got her guitar and sat down to pick it out carefully and precisely.

  “Like that but faster,” I said. “Speed it up a little.”

  Which she did, and I sang:

  “I got mad skin,

  I got mad hair,

  I borrowed your stuff, and I don’t even care.

  I’m the big bad apple on the family tree.

  Deal with it, sister. That’s just me.”

  “I like that,” said Amanda. “And I would also like my sweater back.”

  We played it a few more times.

  “Is there any more?” said Amanda.

  “It’s a work in progress,” I said. “I’ve just been finding it…hard.”

  “I do get it, you know,” said Amanda.

  “You nearly do,” I said. “There’s just that funny part toward the end. It needs a pause after ‘Deal with it, sister.’ You’re rushing.”

  “I meant about the move. I’m nervous too. And so’s Mom. It’s not just you, Katie. It isn’t easy for any of us.”

  I leaned over to get another line into my book before it evaporated.

  “We’re all finding it hard.”

  “Then why are we doing it?” I asked. “Can’t we just wait a few months?”

  Amanda thrummed some more on her guitar. “Maybe Mom wants to get going with the rest of her life. The divorce went on long enough.”

  “Yeah,” I said. It had gone on long enough.

  “We’ll move,” said Amanda. “And we’ll unpack, and then everything will get back to normal.”

  “I guess,” I said. “Want to see something funny?” And I showed her the video of Nicole’s ear.

  “Eeeurgh! How have eight and a half thousand people watched that?”

  “Have they?” I looked at the view counter, and they had. “Wow. It’s gone totally viral.”

  We were silent for a second, thinking of all the people out there watching a close-up of Nicole’s ear and sending it to their friends. Or maybe their enemies because it really was disgusting. If one person sent it to two people, then they each sent it to two people, then each of them sent it to two people…

  “But why?” said Amanda. “Will you forward me the link? Adrian will love it.”

  “So what’s it like?” asked Lacey the day we moved into the new house.

  I was about to tell her that the phone reception was terrible, but then my phone went and hung up on her, so I guess that said it for me.

  Our new house was great. In a sort of really dark, horrible kind of a way, where the floors creaked and everything smelled a little moldy and the windows didn’t open right and when you did get them unstuck, you couldn’t shut them again.

  “It’s got so much character,” said Amanda, who’d dropped her keys between the floorboards and couldn’t get them back out.

  And when I went out to explore, all the neighbors were about eighty and said things like “Good morning” and “Nice day to wash the car” and “Watch where you’re going, young lady” just because I happened to be walking and texting at the same time, which is completely normal everywhere else, and it’s hardly my fault that mobility scooters can’t get out of the way.

  “There’s such a sense of peace,” said Amanda, who was listening to Black Sabbath.

  And we were in the middle of actual nowher
e. There was just a pub, a load of smelly pigs, and a field of oilseed rape, which really needs to get itself a new name.

  And Adrian had stuck his drum set right under my bedroom window, so even after I’d unpacked my boxes and put all my things away, the room still didn’t feel like mine. All I could see were mountains of flattened cardboard and cymbals and walls the color of pee.

  I thought I’d write a song about it, but the pee thing made it sound like the whole situation was funny, and it wasn’t. At all.

  Then I tried finishing “Just Me.” I had two verses but no ending. And after half an hour, I still had no ending, just a whole pile of things that didn’t rhyme with other things and a sore brain.

  So instead I tried moving the wardrobe over a little in case that helped things.

  At which point the wardrobe door fell off onto my actual face.

  “Mom? Mooom!”

  It wasn’t Mom who appeared outside my bedroom door but Adrian.

  “You mother can’t come upstairs right now. She’s lying down.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s had a small electrical shock.”

  “From what?”

  “The oven.”

  “Do ovens usually give people electrical shocks?”

  Adrian looked a little uncomfortable. “Not usually, no.”

  Our thoughtful moment was interrupted by Amanda, who was looking flushed and upset and distinctly non-Amandaish.

  “It’s fine, but I was looking under my bed for my hairbrush. I can’t find it anywhere… And I saw a mouse. Well, mice, I guess. Three mice. At least three mice.”

  “What do you mean at least?”

  “They move really fast,” said Amanda. “And I didn’t want to look at them closely because they were mice.”

  “Probably pets left behind by the last people who were here.”

  “The dead lady?” I said. “Maybe they came out of her corpse.”

  “Katie!”

  So we all sat down and had our first ever family gathering to list all the things that were wrong with the house. It went like this:

  • strange smell (even after opening the windows)

  • windows that open but don’t close again

  • a really big hole in the floor of the pantry

  • oven electrocutes you

  • mice

  • the toilet flushes with hot water (two words: poop soup)

  “It’s not so bad,” said Amanda in a way that made it clear that even Miss Optimism thought it was bad.

  “I’ll talk to the real estate agent,” said Adrian, tapping out the world’s slowest text message with one of his massive thumbs. He stared at his phone. “It’s not sending. Why won’t it send?”

  “There’s reception if you lean out of the window, so it feels like you might be about to fall out,” I said helpfully. “Or at the end of the driveway.” And off he went.

  The rest of us stared at one another.

  “Did you not notice any of this when you came to look around?” I asked Mom, trying to make it come out light and nonaccusing.

  “We only looked quickly,” she said. “It was such a bargain…”

  She looked all small and hopeless, and I wanted to yell at the universe for being so mean.

  “We’ll figure it out,” said Amanda cheerfully. “Really, it’ll be fine. Better than fine. We’re all in this together.”

  “I’m going for a walk,” I said.

  “Now?” Mom asked.

  “To see the bus stop. Since I’m going to have to be there tomorrow morning anyway.”

  I left her in her room and went off down the driveway, past Adrian on his phone, past Amanda’s hairbrush, which I went back and retrieved from the recycling heap, and off into the sunshine.

  Now I want to be clear that what I am about to say does not in any way mean that I was happy or that I liked the new place or that I wanted to be there. No way.

  It was just…there was something really nice about walking down the driveway and along the sidewalk with the grass smelling green and fresh, all beaded with drops of rain and glimmering in the light. Hardly any cars came past, and the sky felt high and open, empty and waiting to be filled.

  I let loose a few bars of “Just Me,” and it sounded even better outside. Especially after I adjusted the melody just a little and sent the last verse spiraling up toward the watery sun.

  “I got mad love,

  I got mad hate,

  I’ve got my whole life to come, and I just can’t wait.

  And here’s the thing, I think you’ll agree,

  We’re all in this together. It’s not just me.”

  The words fell into place like they’d been there all along.

  I did a twirl and then another. There’s nothing quite like using a hairbrush as a microphone.

  “Are you all right, dear?”

  There was the bus stop. Complete with two old ladies.

  My face was hotter than the sun. Hotter than the sun on fire. Which I think it is anyway, but still.

  “You have a lovely voice,” said the nearest one. Then, to her friend, “Doesn’t she have a lovely voice?”

  “She’s the one who ran into my scooter,” said the other lady.

  “Oh, is she?” said old lady number one, eyeing me closely. It was then that I decided to turn around and go home.

  • • •

  When I got to the end of the driveway, my phone started ringing in my pocket. When I saw who it was, my heartbeat went syncopated, which is fun when it’s music, but biologically speaking, probably not the best.

  “Dad!”

  “We’re just taking five, so I thought I’d check in on my special girl.”

  It’s the miracle of phones that even though he was in the United States, his voice sounded so clear that if I shut my eyes, I could pretend that he was standing just behind me, his hands on my shoulders, holding me close.

  “I’m all right,” I said. “We’ve just moved into the new house.”

  “And?”

  “It’s fine,” I said. I didn’t want to spend my precious Dad minutes on anything even slightly Adrian. “How’s California?”

  “All good.”

  “Hot?”

  “Oh, yes. You really must visit.”

  “You know Mom won’t let me come while school’s in session.”

  “Honestly, your mother. You can’t be doing anything important.”

  “Only schoolwork.”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  “Or,” I said, trying to keep the hope out of my voice and failing, “you could always come here? We have lots of space now.”

  “Soon,” he said. “Work’s pretty busy at the moment, but soon.”

  Dad’s a session musician, which is the coolest of the cool. He’s an amazing guitarist. Plus he also plays bass and the keyboard and the clarinet, although I have no proof of the last one, and he does have a tendency to exaggerate.

  Even so, he’s basically the best guitarist in the world, and I’m not just saying that because we share chromosomes. You can hear him on zillions of tracks, from cereal commercials to stuff by very major rock stars who I’m not allowed to name because it’s supposed to be them playing, not him.

  The only difficult thing about Dad being so awesome is that his work is not very regular, so when he does get offered a job, he kind of needs to take it.

  “I’m still planning on coming over just before Christmas,” he said.

  “Of course. And Christmas isn’t that far away.”

  “Only a few months.”

  For all the magic of cell phones, I could feel the whole distance between us. Every last millimeter.

  “Written anything good lately?”

  “I’m working on a couple of things,�
�� I told him. “Hey, what did you think of the last batch?”

  “Oh, fantastic. All of it.”

  “Really?” My heart did another flip. “I wasn’t sure about ‘Wet Weather.’ But if you like it—”

  “I love it,” said Dad. “The lyrics are phenomenal. Your best yet.”

  “‘Wet Weather’ was the instrumental number. The one with a ripply part at the beginning that was supposed to sound like rain?”

  “Of course it was. And I thought it was amazing.”

  Now it was a good thing we were on the phone, or he’d have seen me crying. “Thank you, Dad.”

  “I’ve got to go back into the studio now, sweetheart. Sorry this is such a quick one. You take care, won’t you?”

  “I will. And Dad—”

  And at that point, the stupid, stupid, stupid reception cut out, and he was gone.

  So I stomped back up the driveway, and then I stepped on a snail and felt bad and tried to walk a little more delicately and then stepped on another snail anyway, which just goes to show that sometimes there really is no point to anything.

  And then I thought about having to ride the bus with Finlay and Nicole, who were sophomores, and Mad Jaz, and my mood got even worse, if that’s possible, which it was.

  We’d started calling her Mad Jaz as a sort of joke, although it isn’t that much of a joke because Jaz has a tendency to go crazy.

  Like, once there was this stretch of muggings downtown, and we had a policeman come in to show us self-defense. He needed a volunteer to demonstrate his techniques and picked Jaz, and to cut a long (and violent) story short, Jaz ended up being arrested.

  I’d been keeping away from our resident psycho-goth, which luckily had been pretty easy to do because Jaz seemed to have made the decision to stop coming to school. Of course, now that I thought about it, that meant she almost certainly wouldn’t be riding the bus anymore. After all, why would you go all the way to school if you weren’t planning to be in any classes?

  I walked through the front door to find that everyone had mysteriously vanished.

  “Hello? Hello?”

  Nothing. Just some distant guitar noise.

  “Manda?”

  I went upstairs and across the landing.