The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing

by C. K. Kelly Martin

  “It was okay. Kind of quiet.” I point down at his olives. “Can I take one?”

  “Sure. Work away.” He points to the TV. “I’m just watching NCIS here. It’s a pretty good episode.”

  I nod at the TV. “We were watching Ghost Hunters.”

  “I thought you didn’t like those paranormal shows,” Dad says, arching his eyebrows.

  “Gage likes them.”

  “Ah.” Dad smiles again, and now I’ve really had enough.

  “Gotta go,” I tell him, grabbing another olive. “I owe Genevieve a call.”

  I scurry up to my room and sit at the foot of my bed clutching my cell and debating who will take the news about Gage and me better. I settle on Nicole, who answers on the second ring. “Do I look older than my age?” I quiz.

  “You mean, like, every day or what?” Nicole says. “Because obviously if you have your makeup done and stuff you can look older. Why? Are you getting a fake ID?”

  “No. Someone at the store told me I looked older.”

  “Some perverted old guy?” Nicole guesses.

  “Not really. He was about nineteen.”

  “Oh, okay, but listen,” Nicole says, “I was just about to call you anyway because you have to hear this craziness — Liam just got in touch with me to say he’s having a party next weekend.” I can hear the angst in her voice but can’t tell whether it’s angry angst or excited angst. I wait for Nicole to plow forward and give me another clue.

  “Can you believe he had the nerve?” she huffs. “He said he didn’t want me to hear about it from someone else and that I should feel free to come because he always thought it was stupid the way things ended with us.”

  Okay, so she’s outraged. I remember the day she fell and messed up her leg and sympathize utterly. “If he thought the way things worked out was so stupid maybe he should’ve had your back when everyone was forwarding the video around,” I say.

  “That’s exactly what I told him. He said every time he got near me I was shooting him bad vibes and staring at him like I wanted to saw his balls off.”

  I lean back against my bed and pull off my socks. “He said that?”

  “Yup.”

  “So does he think your vibes have changed — why’s he calling now?”

  Nicole growls into the phone. “He’s decided — just now, mind you — that maybe it was hard for me and that he should be big about things.”

  “He’s a little late,” I declare. “Or is he?”

  “He’s a lot late,” Nicole says. “A day late would’ve been a lot late.”

  “Hmm. Yeah. Maybe next time he’ll figure it out faster.”

  “With someone else.” Nicole’s voice cracks as she adds, “Perfect. I wasn’t good enough for him to bother his ass figuring things out months ago.”

  “You know it’s not about you. It’s him.” I know exactly how she feels, and I also know it’s not something she feels all the time, but I wish the two of us (and maybe even Genevieve and Aya) could quit having these lapses where we blame ourselves for other people’s bad behaviour.

  “I know,” Nicole says. “I know.”

  And I know I desperately need to tell someone about Gage, but the timing is wrong. So I keep my mouth shut until Nicole and I are done and then I do an entirely unexpected thing and dial Morgan’s boyfriend, Jimmy. Morgan’s safely occupied, at the MuchMusic studio doing an interview with the next Lindsay Lohan / Miley Cyrus wannabe (I saw the commercial for the interview while Gage was flipping channels earlier) and I know instinctively that Jimmy will keep my secret.

  I’m blushing as I confide about Gage’s issue with me being fifteen, and sweating lightly as I admit he has a four-year-old daughter. But Jimmy could be a crisis counsellor; he guides me through the conversation with unprecedented cool, pausing to ask questions and let me fill in backstory.

  Finally he tells me that if I want to have a future with this guy I should think about coming clean to my friends. “And by future I mean whatever you want that to mean, Serena! But if you want to continue to have some kind of relationship with Gage, don’t you think you should stop hiding it?”

  I tell Jimmy about Genevieve, Nicole, and me — our battles with Laurier savages and our unofficial pledge to steer clear of them. I wince inside as I explain because Jimmy’s a guy himself and I know he’s no savage.

  “It’s good to protect yourself when you’ve been through a bad relationship,” Jimmy says. “Personally, I always fell for the most savage boys imaginable during high school. Disaster, Serena! Disaster! But with you falling for Gage so soon after you’d sworn off boys, I can’t help but wonder whether you’re in a phase where you enjoy a bit of drama.

  “Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” Jimmy continues. “But promise me if drama has something to do with it, that you won’t lose yourself in it. Drama’s like chocolate. Best in small amounts.”

  I don’t think that liking Gage is rooted in a need for drama. If it’s rooted in anything unhealthy it’s more likely related to twentynine pounds of former chunk and a deep, aching craving to be wanted the way Noah wanted Allie in The Notebook. But I don’t want just anyone to want me that way. The desire’s entirely restricted to Gage. He even makes me want to watch Ghost Hunters, and if I thought I’d never wrap my arms around him again I’d spend the rest of my life remembering how it felt to hold him because I never want to let that feeling slip away. Even remembering it is better than nothing.

  “I think I’m in love,” I whisper. “I feel almost sick.”

  “Serena?” Jimmy’s voice is as soft as down feathers.

  “Yeah?”

  “How come you called me instead of Morgan? Not that I mind, I’m glad you called, but you know Morgan would’ve been happy to talk to you too.”

  “I know.” I can’t begin to explain my reasons. I don’t know how to tell Jimmy that his boyfriend’s too perfect, too sure of himself, and on top of that, in some twisted way confiding in Morgan would feel like betraying Devin. “I guess you’re easier to talk to. Talking to my brother about relationships, um, we’re just not like that in my family.”

  “Mine neither,” Jimmy says. “It’s too bad, isn’t it? But look! If it is love it won’t burn out from not being able to touch him for two months and it won’t be extinguished by your friends either. Trust me, you need your friends to talk to at times like these. They keep you from going off the rails.”

  I promise him I’ll tell Genevieve and Nicole. I do mean it, but a revelation like that can take time and I end up seeing Gage again first. Christabelle’s mom is back from the hospital after an appendectomy, recovering nicely, and Gage and I do a repeat of our skating and diner date. After he’s finished his chili cheese fries he says he’ll drive me home and I ask if he’s afraid to be alone with me now that he knows I’m fifteen.

  Gage gives me a pointed look. “If we’re just friends we don’t need to be alone, do we?”

  Friends can cuddle, maybe. But I’m scared to say it in case he thinks I really mean something else.

  I grab the ketchup and flip the lid open for no particular reason. “I just miss being close to you,” I admit at last. “I didn’t mean anything else.”

  Gage spreads his legs out under the table so that they’re touching mine. “I miss that too.” I feel the full weight of his stare on me. It feels like sunshine. He reaches out to hold my hand on top of the table and he’s warm like sunshine too.

  I squeeze his fingers and say, “If you start going out with someone else during the next two months I’m going to kill you.”

  Gage flashes a broad grin. “Where am I going to find someone who’ll put up with me?”

  “Good point, but what do I know, I’m not even old enough to drive.”

  Gage groans and covers his face with his fingers, smile still visible between the cracks. “Thanks for the r
eminder, Serena. Am I going to hear about how young you are every time I see you for the next two months?”

  “I’d actually prefer if you forgot about that but I guess that’s not going to happen any time soon.”

  “Nope,” Gage says confidently. “It’s not.”

  “You never told me when your birthday was, you know.”

  “September ninth,” he says.

  That means there’s three and a half years between us. The number doesn’t sound like that big of a deal to me, but if you’re the kind of person to worry about numbers I guess I could see why three and a half would ring more alarm bells than two.

  I grab the bill from the middle of the table and announce, “It’s on me this time.”

  “No, it’s not,” Gage counters, reaching for the bill too. “C’mon, you didn’t even eat anything.”

  We both cling stubbornly to the diner bill, which doesn’t even amount to ten dollars, like it’s profoundly meaningful.

  “You always pay,” I tell him. “It’s not fair.” So he’s older than me and he’s a guy; I’m not going to allow those things to define every single aspect of our relationship. “I’m not planning on letting go, so unless you want to sit here all night …”

  Gage looks me in the eye, judges me serious, and releases his hold on our bill. “All right. Thanks.”

  There’s still another hour before I have to be home and Gage says if it wasn’t so cold we could just walk around or something. “I wish people would keep Christmas lights up all winter long,” he adds. “Not the reindeer and other decorations, just the lights. Maybe then winter wouldn’t seem so long.”

  “You don’t like winter?”

  “I don’t mind the cold,” he says. “I just don’t like the short days. By the time I get off work the sunlight’s gone.”

  “I hate that too, but we can walk for a bit if you want. It won’t be any colder than skating.”

  Gage nods but says, “We can go back to my place and hang out there if you want — just, you know how it is, right?”

  I nod solemnly, but I guess part of me thinks he’ll back me up against the kitchen counter and kiss me until my lips are numb anyway because I’m surprised when it doesn’t happen. Instead we sit on the couch and flip channels. Gage is different from other guys I’ve known in lots of ways but he’s exactly the same when it comes to the remote.

  He says it’s because there’s nothing good on and hands the remote over before heading off to the bathroom. There’s an open DVD case on top of the TV stand and I amble over to check out what it is. Someone has printed “AC-JAN” on the DVD in black marker. Akayla Cochrane? Curious, I slide the DVD into the player and it immediately starts playing.

  Akayla’s standing in her bedroom, her hair in twin braids, grinning toothily at the camera. Her room, which I’ve never seen in real life, is decorated with perfect painted likenesses of Babar characters — Babar, Celeste, Zephir, Pom. I’m surprised I remember their names, and now that I’ve seen their images on screen I know I won’t be able to resist taking a real life peek at the bits of the room I can’t see on the DVD.

  “I don’t know what to sing,” Akayla squeals, hopping up and down. “You sing with me, Dad! You start.”

  Gage laughs from behind the camcorder. “I’m the cameraman,” he says. “You do the singing. You’re better than I am.”

  “But you sing with me,” Akayla insists, and that’s all it takes to get Gage (invisible behind the camera) to sing a duet of “Nobody Likes Me (Guess I’ll Go Eat Worms)” with his daughter. Akayla does an uncoordinated little dance as she sings, stretching her arms out to suggest the girth of the big fat ones and later dangling tiny invisible ones into her mouth and chomping down on them.

  By the end of the song she’s collapsed, face down, into giggles on her bed and Gage is laughing louder and saying, “That’s a gross song. Who wants to eat worms? You don’t even like to look at them. Sing something nice.”

  “Like what?” Akayla looks up at the camera. “I know!” She begins singing “On Top of Spaghetti” substituting the word poopses for meatball. I start to giggle at the ridiculousness of it myself, and by the time Gage joins me in the family room again I have tears streaming down my face from watching Akayla sing her icky but hilarious poopses song. It’s not so much what she’s saying that’s funny, but how much it’s cracking her up.

  Gage shakes his head as he sits down next to me, the trace of a smile on his lips. “She’s obsessed with everything related to poo,” he comments. He doesn’t seem to mind that I’ve stuck in the DVD and adds, “The next part is actually good. Here …” He swipes the remote from the coffee table and fast forwards a bit.

  “This time something sweet, okay?” off-screen Gage suggests from the TV. “What’s the sweetest thing you can sing?” He answers his own question. “Okay, I got something. I’ll get you started again.”

  Oh, I know this one too. He’s started into “Sing,” which is one of those songs you grow up feeling like you’ve known all your life. He’s right; it probably is the sweetest thing anyone can sing, and when Akayla joins in she does a good job, like she’s taking this one seriously. She sways gently on her heels, tilting her head as her big brown eyes stare earnestly into the camera.

  The two of them sound so adorable together that I want to throw my arms around Gage and crush him in an everlasting hug. He stops the DVD just after he and Akayla deliver the last line. “She’s really cute,” I say, restraining myself admirably, “even when she’s singing about poop.”

  “Believe it or not, that does get old,” Gage says, making a face. “But yeah, she’s cute.”

  “I guess she must get that from Christabelle,” I tease.

  “She must,” Gage agrees, but his eyes are sparkling. “How come I’m getting the feeling the next two months are going to be the longest on record?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ~

  GAGE DID KISS ME good night but it was short … and different, like he was making it clear there was no chance it would get out of hand. He let me look at Akayla’s room too. Her ceiling’s painted with puffy white clouds against a blue sky backdrop, and the walls, like I described before, are filled with Babar characters and a landscape of mountains and trees. Gage told me Akayla’s uncle, Damien, did it for her and that he’s in his second year of art school.

  Later I dream about that blue sky, but the second I wake up the rest of the dream is swept away, only that single image remaining. This is the day that I’m going to tell my friends about Gage; somehow I know it when I open my eyes, a corner of my mind still meditating on calm blue skies.

  No excuses. Today I’m not coming home with my secret.

  The first person I see at school in the morning is Aya, and I want to troop over to her and start blabbing my secret history of the past thirty days, just to get the initial telling over and done with. But she’s not alone. Aya and Joyeux Maduka are strolling down the hall together, looking like shiny happy people, and I wave at them as I pass, not wanting to interrupt. Izzy’s in my first period history class, but telling her before Genevieve or Nicole doesn’t seem right so it’s lunch before I get anywhere near the subject.

  I hang out by the cafeteria door and nab Genevieve when she approaches. “I have to talk to you,” I yelp. “Have you seen Nicole?”

  “No.” Genevieve squints as me. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m good. I just want to talk to you two — alone.”

  “Sounds serious,” Genevieve comments, flicking her hair back behind her ears as her eyes try to pin me down. “What’s going on?”

  “Let’s wait for Nicole. I just want to do this once.”

  We don’t have to wait long for Nicole, whose deep frown doesn’t disappear at the sight of us lounging around outside the cafeteria. “What?” she asks in a wary voice. “Why are you guys looking at me like that?”r />
  Genevieve shrugs and glances at me. “Serena has something she wants to talk about.”

  “Can we go to your car?” I squeak, focusing on Genevieve.

  The three of us zoom towards her Honda, Genevieve and Nicole eyeing me carefully, like they expect me to burst into tears. We climb into the back seat together, because it seems like the easiest configuration for conversation. Then Nicole, her frown replaced by an expression of concern, says, “Is it Devin? Did you hear something?”

  “It’s not Devin.” My lips feel like they’re cracking. If my friends weren’t staring at me with such high-definition intensity I’d ask whether either of them had lip gloss. “And it’s not something bad.”

  Genevieve and Nicole swap confused looks.

  “I met a guy,” I confess. “At the store. And I know we had this thing about not seeing anyone because most of the guys we know happen to be dicks but he’s not like that.” I can’t seem to stop talking. “At all. He’s really nice. And he’s not even interested in having sex. In fact, he won’t. And we’re at a point now where he’ll barely even touch me so —”

  “Back up,” Genevieve commands. “What do you mean you’re at a point now? How long have you been seeing this guy?” Her blue eyes are a frosty match for her tone, and Nicole, on Genevieve’s other side, is staring at me with her mouth open.

  “Not that long.”

  “How long?” Nicole asks, clenching her lips shut as soon as she gets the words out.

  “About a month, I guess.”

  Genevieve slides her right hand under her chin and says, “So that means you were single after Jacob for an entire two months.”

  I fold my hands tightly over my abdomen. “I knew you’d say I told you so. Why do you think it took me a month to mention it?”

  “It’s a bit hard to avoid saying I told you so when you turn around and act like a cliché,” Genevieve retorts.