by Sarina Bowen
“Nah,” Jake says. “Let’s stay here.” Jake sets the cards on the floor and picks up a copy of the student newspaper off our makeshift coffee table.
I watch him for a second, feeling as if I’m missing something.
“If we’re not having gelato, I’m going to make some tea,” Aurora says, carrying her electric kettle into the bathroom for a refill.
As I watch, Jake pulls out his phone and checks the time. Then he puts it back.
“What are you waiting for?” I demand.
He shrugs, sticking his face in the paper again.
Outside, I hear voices and the sound of running feet across the courtyard. I go to the window and look down. A group of guys is hustling into the door of entryway 3.
As the door shuts behind them, I feel the hair rise on the back of my neck.
There are several rooms with the lights on over in entryway 3. After a minute I see the group appear in a room on the fourth floor. Aurora, back with her kettle, comes to stand beside me.
“Open the window,” she says.
I do, and we can hear the faint sounds of singing—the school fight song, in four-part harmony.
I turn around to look at Jake. “It’s tap night for the singing groups, isn’t it?”
His eyes lift from the newspaper and he nods. “Worst kept secret on campus.”
“Oh.” I go to sit next to him on the S.L.O. “So… I guess I’m waiting, aren’t I?”
Jake puts his hand on top of mine for about a nanosecond. Then he takes it back again.
“Thank you for not telling me earlier,” I say in a low voice. “I’d be a wreck.”
From her desk chair, Aurora snorts. “Jake is excellent at not telling.”
The minutes tick by. Aurora busies herself with flipping through a magazine, and I busy myself with feeling ill. Every minute that goes by is a minute when the Belle Choir is busy tapping someone who is not me.
Eventually there’s the sound of running feet in the courtyard again. The three of us look at each other, but I don’t get up to see which entryway they’re approaching. Then, over the thudding sound of my heart, I heard footfalls in our stairwell.
Aurora jumps off the couch. “They’re coming for you!” She throws open our door. Jessica rushes in first, followed by Daria, Other Jessica, and nine other girls. They made a quick horseshoe in front of me and began to sing “Our Glory Years,” a traditional Claiborne song.
I just stand there, open-mouthed, while the sounds of twelve blended voices reverberate off the walls. When it’s over, Jessica beckons me to the end of the horseshoe and puts an arm around me. “Rachel, would you like to be a member of the Belle Choir?”
“Heck, yes!”
There’s a cheer from the hallway and I turn to see a small group of our neighbors peering in.
Twelve girls hug me quickly. And then the Belle Choir begins to file out of the room, on their way to tap somebody else.
I close the door, then turn to see my two friends smiling at me. Aurora claps her hands. “Don’t you want to call your dad and tell him?”
But hearing his name is not what I need right now. Because I’ll never know whether I would have gotten in if I wasn’t Freddy Ricks’s daughter. “It can wait,” I say.
* * *
October arrives, and the trees all over town are painted in glorious colors. The maples turn an astonishingly bright shade of red, and the yellow elm leaves look lit from within.
The sun begins to set very early, which means it’s already dark when my Belle Choir rehearsals end each evening.
I walk back to Habernacker alone, humming whatever tune we’ve sung last. We’re working on Jessica’s arrangement of John Lennon’s “Imagine.” She’s made it into an ensemble piece, bringing in voices one by one until it rises to a great crescendo. The climax of the song makes chills run up and down my back, in the best possible way.
Jessica—the pitch—runs the Belle Choir with an iron fist. During the first couple of rehearsals I was a little afraid of her. Maybe that’s silly, but I want to do well.
When she gives me a solo stanza of “Imagine,” though, I start to relax. Rehearsal is my favorite thing to do. Life is basically perfect between seven and eight p.m. on weeknights.
The Saturday before Halloween, I play a Belle Choir recording while Aurora and I sit painting each other’s toenails on the S.L.O. “If you get sick of hearing this music, just say the word,” I insist. “I’m still trying to learn the repertoire. But…hold still! You wiggle too much.”
“I can’t help it,” Aurora claims. “I’m very teecklish.”
There’s a knock on our door.
“Come in, Jake!” Aurora calls.
“How’d you know it was me?” he asks, opening the door.
“X-ray vision,” I supply. But who else would it be?
The smile he gives us is devilish. “Looks like I’m interrupting something kinky.”
“Oh, you wish,” Aurora scoffs. “Rachel, that looks fine. Really.”
“Well, you don’t make it easy.” I cap the polish and Aurora swings her legs onto our makeshift coffee table.
“Have a seat, Jake.”
He climbs past Aurora and sits in the middle. His T-shirt reads: Insufficient Memory. “Anyone have plans tonight? Hot dates?”
“We were going to look at the movie listings,” I say. My phone rings, and I get up to answer it.
“Don’t smear the polish!” Aurora calls.
I walked four steps on my heels while the phone continued its trill. “Hello?”
“Rae,” a soft voice says.
“Haze?”
He lets out a breath. “I just really needed to hear your voice.”
“Are you okay?” My friends are watching me from the couch.
“Yeah. I just really miss you.”
I give up on heel-walking and hurry into the bedroom. “I miss you too,” I say as I close the door.
“Liar.” He laughs gently. “You’re busy.”
“I have been busy. I should still have called you, though. But it’s good not to think too much about last year.”
His sigh is heavy. “Okay. I guess it would be. I could have called you too.”
An excellent point. “What’s new with you? How’s the job?”
“I found it, by the way. The worst job at the theme park.”
“Really? Which one?”
“Remember the race cars in Tomorrowland? I’ve been refueling them. No shade anywhere. And at the end of the day you smell like both sweat and diesel.”
“Oh Haze, I’m sorry.”
“It’s not so bad. The pay is awesome and my pass gets me into any park. I’ve been on Tower of Terror about a thousand times.”
There’s a knock on the bedroom door.
“Just a second.” I open it.
“We’re thinking of going to the hockey game instead of a movie,” Aurora says. “Is that okay with you?”
“Hockey? I guess. I’ll be right there.”
“Hockey?” Haze repeats. “That sounds fun.”
“Does it? I thought they fight.”
He laughs. “At your school? That would be some serious nerd-on-nerd violence. That I’d like to see.”
“When you put it that way, I guess it doesn’t sound so bad.”
“So. Do you have a boyfriend yet?”
“No.”
“You hesitated.”
“I did not.” But I don’t want to have this conversation.
“I know you’re far away, Rachel. But I think about you all the time.”
“I’m sorry.” It’s the only reply I can give that’s both true and also kind.
“Naw. Don’t be. Have fun at the hockey game. And call me sometime.”
“I will,” I promise, hoping I’d follow through.
When I come out of the bedroom, Jake’s eyes follow me across the room.
“Who was that?” Aurora asks.
“My best friend from Florida.”
* * *
“Come, on, SHOOT! Aw!” Jake collapses back into his seat.
Aurora and I exchange amused glances. Who knew that our favorite astronomer could get so worked up over sports?
There are two minutes left in the game. When Jake told me there were three periods, I didn’t believe him at first.
“Of course there’s three,” he says. “Why is that weird?”
“I’m from football country. We like even numbers.”
“Hockey players have enormous backsides,” Aurora points out.
“That’s padding. They’re basically, like, bubble wrapped in there— NOOO!”
Jake, and half the other people in the student section, stand up to peer at our goal. “Phew. That was close. Our goalie should get the Medal of Honor.”
“I need some of that padding,” Aurora complains. “My derriere is cold.”
“We’ll have to toughen up the girls from Spain and Florida,” Jake says, his eyes trained on the ice.
“Women,” corrects Aurora.
“Right, just like I said. GET HIM!” Jake shouts.
I’m enjoying the view, and I don’t mean the game. Jake’s cheeks are flushed, and there’s a solidness to him that appeals to me. Sometimes when I look at the sturdy slope from his neck to his shoulder, I wondered how it would feel to rest my hand there.
Aurora catches me watching him. She winks.
Oops. I turn my attention to the rink. “It’s probably a bad sign that most of the game has been played in front of our goal, huh?”
“That would be correct,” Jake grumbles. “If the center could only—” He stands. “Breakaway, baby!” One of the Claiborne players is sprinting toward the opposing side. “SHOOT!”
The player shoots. And misses. And when the game ends, the score is 0-1.
* * *
The following weekend, Aurora packs an overnight bag. She’s headed to Boston for the evening, to see her father who’s in the country on business. She has a few minutes until it’s time to leave for the bus, and she spends them texting with someone.
“Who are you talking to?” I ask peevishly. I’m annoyed at having to spend a Friday night alone.
“It’s my old boyfriend in Spain.”
“Isn’t it the middle of the night in Spain?”
“Si. He is in a club, and his friends have all hooked up and ditched him.”
“You never told me about a boyfriend. Do you miss him?”
Aurora tucks her phone into her pocket. “No, not really. He’s a great guy. Really great. But we are totally wrong for each other. One of the reasons that I chose Claiborne was to make the breakup happen.”
“Aurora, seriously? I wouldn’t have thought you’d ever done a cowardly thing.”
My roommate inspects her fingernails. “I’ve done a few.”
I’m floored. “Well, I’m glad you did. If you liked him more, I would have missed out.”
She reaches over and squeezes my hand. “See, I don’t understand why you can say nice things to me, but you won’t tell Jake how you feel about him.”
“Maybe I don’t have anything to tell.” That’s a total lie, which is why Aurora rolls her eyes when I say it.
But Jake is too special to risk. If I make it awkward, he might disappear.
Aurora gets to her feet. “You two deserve each other.” She picks up her bag. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Have fun!”
Our room is too quiet once she leaves to meet her father. So I pull out my phone and call my own. I haven’t seen Frederick all week.
“How you doing, kid?” he answers.
“Good. I just called to see what you were up to tonight.”
“Tonight?” There’s a pause. “Well, I assumed you’d be busy with your friends. So I planned to stay in. I think I’m fighting off a cold.”
“Okay…”
“Can we get lunch tomorrow or Sunday?”
“Sure.”
After moping around for a couple hours, I remember there’s something I need from the bookstore. So I put on my coat and open the door.
Lucky for me, Jake is just coming down the stairs.
“I’ll come with you,” he says, when I explain my errand. “I just need to drop this in a mailbox.” He holds up an envelope. “For the parents. My mom writes me these letters, and I never seem to reply.”
“Can we speed walk?” I ask. “I think the bookstore closes at eight.”
We walk together through the cool night. Jake chatters beside me. He’s all fired up about the astronomy club, which gives me an excuse to admire him under the pretense of listening. “We’re looking for unidentified planets,” he says. “Amateurs find planets all the time. It doesn’t matter that the telescope isn’t powerful enough to see them.”
“Really? Then how do you know they’re there?”
“Well, gravity. Stars travel in smooth orbits, unless they have a planet around them. They wobble. The size of the wobble tells you something about the planet. So you can prove they’re there, even if you can’t actually see them.”
“Cool.” I love how animated his face becomes when he’s talking about telescopes.
“Why are you going to the bookstore at eight on a Friday night, anyway?” he asks.
Ouch. I know my social life isn’t exactly setting the world on fire. I don’t need a reminder. “Why are you walking me to the bookstore on a Friday night?” I counter.
Jake shrugs. “It beats playing another level of Black Ops.”
“Well, there’s an endorsement,” I say under my breath.
“What?” he asks, his eyes wide.
I shake my head. “Nothing. I left my copy of Anna Karenina under Frederick’s couch in California. And the lecture is Monday. If they don’t have one, I’m screwed.”
“I thought you read it already.”
“Didn’t memorize it, though. But you’re right, I should probably find something better to do with my Friday night.” As hints go, it’s awfully weak. But I can’t tell Jake how hyper I feel just walking with him. Or that I’ve memorized the shape of his smile.
“I suppose you could download a digital copy,” Jake suggests. “If they’re sold out.”
“True.” Sigh.
On Main Street, we pass a bar called Mary’s. Something makes me stop and take a closer look at a couple who’s seating themselves at a high table near the front. Maybe it’s an oblique glimpse of his leather jacket, or the set of his shoulders as he arranges himself on the stool.
It’s my father. The same one who just told me he was spending a quiet night alone.
I stare. Opposite him sits a woman with shiny brown hair. They’re already deep in conversation. As I watch, he puts his hand on the woman’s arm, and then she laughs at something he’s said.
“Rachel, what’s the matter?”
I don’t answer. Instead, I move to the other edge of the window, so I can see the woman’s face. She’s pretty, with smiling eyes. But the way he looks at her makes my head ache.
“I see my dad, that’s all.”
“Do I get to meet him?” Jake asks.
“No,” I say more forcefully than I mean to. “He looks busy.” And then I drag my eyes from the window, heading down the street again. My pace forces Jake to run to keep up with me. I stop in front of the bookstore, which is already dark. The sign says that they close at seven thirty.
“Damn,” I swear. “Damn, damn, damn.” But it’s not really about the bookstore. My father lied to me so smoothly. It makes me want to howl.
I can hear my mother’s voice whisper, A man will say anything.
“Rachel.” Jake puts his hands on my shoulders. “She dies in the end.”
I feel close to tears. “Who does?”
And then we’re facing each other, close together, looking into each other’s eyes. “Anna Karenina,” he whispers. A smile flickers across his fa
ce. The moment yawns open, the outcome hinging on me. I feel him waiting for a tiny sign from me. A signal.
Or maybe he’s not waiting at all, and it’s all in my head.
Frederick’s lie stings. His rejection makes it impossible to be sure that Jake’s smile isn’t mocking me.
“She dies in the end,” I say slowly. And suddenly I just can’t take the pressure or the disappointment. “That’s not funny,” I bite out, taking a half-step backward. Jake’s hands slip off my shoulders.
“Well, wait… That’s not what I meant!” he says, and then cringes. “Shit.” There’s a horrible silence, one I could have broken if I weren’t so torn up inside.
Angry Rachel is back. “You’d better mail that letter to your parents.” I point down the street toward the post office. As if it makes no difference to me what he does with his Friday night.
Jake tightens his grip on the envelope. “Yeah. I guess. You coming?”
Slowly I shake my head.
We have another stare-down, with Jake looking at me like he’s trying to solve a problem. He waits, but I don’t budge. I feel as closed down as the bookstore. And dark inside.
After one more tentative glance at me, Jake turns slowly around and heads down the street. By himself.
I watch him walk away, my misery complete. I’m very much alone now, at eight o’clock on a Friday night. Breathing in the chilly November air, I have no idea what to do with myself.
I will not go back and look in the window of Mary’s again. That’s too pathetic, even for me. So I cross the street. The bus from Boston has just disgorged its passengers onto the sidewalk, and they fan out in every direction, wheeling bags and suitcases behind them.
One figure has only a duffel bag over his shoulder, and an oddly familiar gait. It’s such an improbable sighting that I almost don’t bother calling out his name.
But, God, it really looks like him. “Haze!”
He turns around.
Chapter Sixteen
I run to him, laughing. “My God! What are you doing here?”
“What do you think? I’m here to see you. Nothing else could get me onto a bus for thirty-six hours. It’s a little birthday present I’m giving to myself.”
