The Sound of Us

by Julie Hammerle

  He sits up. “We have twenty-five minutes.”

  “I know, but,” I say, shrugging. “I mean, come on, Jack. What are we doing here?”

  “We’re hanging out.”

  “To what end? You still have a girlfriend, right? That hasn’t changed.”

  He says nothing.

  “And it’s not going to change.” I grab the doorknob.

  “I know it’s not fair to ask you to wait for me…”

  That’s probably what he thinks I’ve been doing. It’s probably how he’s imagined me—crying in my room, listening to sad songs, completely ripped apart by his irresistible self. “I’m not,” I say.

  “You’re not what?”

  I turn back around. “I’m not, Jack. I am not waiting for you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m not sitting around crying over you. I have other options.” I put my hand on my hip. “I kissed someone.” Take that, girlfriend-having jagweed.

  A few seconds go by and Jack clears his throat. “It’s fine, you know. I mean, obviously, you can kiss whoever you want.”

  My hand is back on the doorknob. I’m starting to feel sick all of a sudden. My stomach is churning. “Thank you for your permission,” I manage to choke out.

  “Anybody I know?”

  I remain silent, both out of necessity and to add drama to the proceedings.

  “Do you like the guy?” I can hear his voice drop a little on the question.

  “Why do you care so much?”

  “I don’t,” he says.

  I stare at him, my mouth salivating in a strange way, dragging the backs of my cheeks into my molars. I’m going to throw up.

  “I just want to know who it was.”

  “Why?” I squeak.

  “Because I’m nosy. And I still want to be friends.” Ah, friends. That stupid, meaningless word.

  “Okay fine, friend. Seth. I kissed Seth.” The contents of my stomach start to head north.

  Jack’s eyes change for a minute; they darken. I know he doesn’t want me to see that, but see it, I do. “Fine.” He shrugs.

  I cover my mouth and make a beeline for the bathroom.

  I ignore some random guy peeing in a urinal as I dash into the nearest stall and start heaving. I haven’t thrown up in eight years, not since I contracted food poisoning from Christmas dinner along with the rest of my family. I didn’t remember from that incident how regurgitating the contents of your stomach could feel so cleansing, so reconciliatory, as if I’m flushing away all of my problems along with that night’s drinks. When I finish, I lift my head out of the toilet with a clearer mind. It’s then that I realize Jack is standing behind me, holding the stall door open.

  He grimaces. “All better?”

  I nod.

  As I wash my hands and finger-brush my teeth, I notice just how repellent I look and how rank I smell. I try to smooth my hair down into something resembling a sane person’s hair-do, but it can’t hide the fact that my lips are chapped, my eyes are red, and I’ve busted all sorts of blood vessels in my cheeks by puking my guts out. Also, I’m wearing a Beauty and the Beast T-shirt. This is not a banner day for my attractiveness. I smile in the mirror at the random urinal guy as he excuses himself from the bathroom.

  Jack stands near the door, watching me with a look that shows both his concern for me and his distaste for my appearance. “Are you okay?”

  I lean my elbows on the sink and rest my eyeballs on the meaty part of my palms. That feels nice. “I am now.”

  “Good. If you’re feeling better, it’s almost ten.”

  “Okay,” I say, massaging my eyeballs. “You go back to your room. I’ll head upstairs in a minute.”

  I don’t hear the door open, so I know he’s still standing there. “Yes?” I say.

  “I can’t believe you kissed Seth.” He pauses. “I mean, he hooks up with everyone.”

  I jerk my head up, sloshing my brains around in my skull. I raise my hand to my temple as Jack watches me in the mirror. His eyes don’t look angry, but sad and disappointed, which only pisses me off more. Who is he to be disappointed in me? “You have a girlfriend,” I say. “I kissed Seth as a reaction to your girlfriend.” I blow a strand of hair out of my eyes and turn around to see him face to face.

  “But Seth, of all people, come on…” He scrunches up his face and tilts his head.

  “‘Come on?’ what, Jack? I want to know. ‘Come on?’ what? Come on that Seth was just using me or come on that you’re so insecure you think I’d never want you after him? Because, guess what, lying next to you on the bed tonight was killing me, killing me. Do you understand that? Whether or not he was using me or I was using him, you have been using me since we met. And I expect it from Seth because look at him, but I never expected it from you. I thought you were a Krakow.”

  Jack looks down at the floor. I follow his eyes. A few strands of long, dark hair form an X on the bathroom tile. He takes a deep breath and lets it out. “I planned on telling you tonight that I was going to break up with my girlfriend, but…”

  “But what?”

  “But…” He shakes his head. “But nothing. I don’t know.”

  “But you’re not going to break up with her anymore, now that you know about me and Seth,” I deadpan.

  “That’s not what I was about to say.” He pulls his eyes up to meet mine. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I feel like I’m being pulled in a million directions.”

  “Two directions,” I say. “Me or her. It’s that simple.”

  “It’s not even remotely simple. If I choose you, I hurt her. If I choose her, I hurt you. In either scenario, I also get hurt. It sucks.”

  “Yeah, it fucking does suck. Of all people, I fully grasp the reality of how much it sucks. So, I’m bowing out. Go be with your girlfriend and stay together forever and get married and have lots of babies and never talk to me again, because you’ve obviously got a good thing going with her. There’s your life in a nutshell. All laid out at age seventeen. Congratu-fucking-lations.” I turn away from him and stare at an unsettling brown blob on the wall across from the door. I blink back the tears that had come storming into my eyes without warning. “I think we should go back to leaving each other the hell alone. My life really started to come together without you in it.”

  “I don’t want that. God, staying away from you is the last thing I want. I know what I have to do, Kiki. I have to break up with her. I know it. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy for me.” He sighs. “I think that’s what this was all about. That was the ‘but’ at the end of my sentence. That was me venting to you about how hard this is going to be for me. Please don’t read more into it than that.” He touches my shoulder.

  I shake his hand away and turn around to face him. “Screw you and things being difficult. Do you know what I risked for you? Our stupid little night in the basement could’ve cost me the scholarship.”

  “I know,” he says, “I’m sorry.”

  “You spent night after night alone with me watching Project Earth in your room, you asked me out, you almost kissed me. The whole time you had a girlfriend.”

  “You have no idea how awful I feel.”

  “How awful you feel? I kept blaming myself for things not happening between us. I thought I was repulsive to you for some reason. I thought I had screwed up.” I beat back tears with my eyelids.

  “You didn’t screw up, obviously. I did.”

  “Yeah, and you kept screwing up and you kept stringing me along. How can I trust a person who does that, who thinks so little of me and my feelings?”

  “Kiki, I want to make things right. I do.” He hesitates like he’s about to say more, but he doesn’t. He stops there.

  “Make things right how?” I ask.

  He says nothing.

  I blow out a long, trembling breath. “I think it’s too late for any of this, Jack. We have, what, a week left here before the end of camp? What’s the freaking poi
nt?” My stomach sinks, and I have to turn away from him. If I stay here, I know what will happen. We’ll make up and we’ll go back to the way things were. Nothing will have changed. He says he’ll break up with his girlfriend, but when is that ever going to happen? Not tonight. Probably not tomorrow. He’ll keep searching for the perfect time to drop the bombshell and it’ll never come. By that point, camp will be over and I’ll be heading back to Chicago, probably with an opera scholarship in hand.

  Why does that final thought make me feel even worse, not better, than I already do?

  My eyes fixed on the exit, I say, “Let’s cut our losses and move on.” I march out the door, leaving Jack alone in the bathroom.

  chapter twenty

  Kiki Nichols @kikeronis: There aren’t enough sad songs in the world.

  Smart Singer Girl @smartsingergirl: @kikeronis You angry? Sad? Hurt?

  Smart Singer Girl @smartsingergirl: @kikeronis Remember that mix you made me when Travis dumped me? How about “Limp” by Fiona? Feel better?

  The next morning, despite being hung over and tired, I climb out of bed early, before Brie even.

  I need to do something proactive. I need to exorcise Jack from my mind. I need to get back to brass tacks, to double down on why I even came to this camp in the first place.

  The scholarship is right there. We have about a week left of camp now and I am one of the front-runners. All I have to do is perform well for seven more days and I’ll have an all-expenses-paid trip to Operaville for four years.

  Four. Years.

  Again that thought doesn’t improve my mood. It tires me. I know it’s probably because I’ve been living in this pressure cooker for five weeks and I still have another week to go. It probably also has something to do with the fact that I’m still sad about how things went down between Jack and me and no amount of practicing will rectify that.

  But now that Jack is out of the equation, all I’m left with is opera.

  There’s no promise of romance or secret basement performances. There’s just…opera.

  Most of the people here at camp, like Brie and Kendra, know without a doubt that this is what they want to do with their lives. They want to sing classical music. They listen to operas in their free time. They have famous sopranos on their walls.

  I couldn’t name five famous sopranos if you held a gun to my head. And, frankly, I’ve always been fine with that.

  But I can name every singer-songwriter ever featured on Project Earth. I can go into deep detail when comparing and contrasting all of Fiona Apple’s albums. I can picture myself on stage in a coffeehouse performing for a small group of dedicated fans. I cannot see myself wearing a placard around my neck for days at a time because I’m on “vocal rest.”

  But what does that mean?

  I wash my face and grab my stuff and head over to the practice rooms.

  I suppose I don’t need to worry about it right this second. I can keep my head down for another week, get the scholarship, and go home secure in the knowledge of...what? That I’ll be able to go to Krause? That I can still study music, even if maybe it’s not the music I’m all that excited about? Maybe I’ll learn to love it. Either way, I’ll figure it out later. Right now, job one is getting into school here. I can’t lose sight of that.

  It’s so early in the morning that the practice rooms aren’t crowded, but several instrumentalists and vocalists are there performing their respective numbers in a hodgepodge of noise that doesn’t help alleviate the headache I can feel marching outward from the depths of my brain. I guess this is what a hangover feels like.

  Through all the sound, one instrument stands out—a rich baritone crying out from the corner practice room at the end of the hall. I make my way over there and peek through the window. Seth is standing next to the piano, facing the outside, and he’s barreling through what I amazingly recognize as a Sondheim song. I guess some information has sunk in this summer.

  I watch him for a few moments, taking in his voice, his carriage, his Seth-ness. When he reaches a stopping point, I knock on the door. Seth turns around, surprised, but smiles when he sees it’s me.

  “You’re here early,” he says.

  I walk over to the window, peering through my reflection to see the sun rising in the distance. A lump grows in my larynx and my voice wavers. “I’m not sure why I’m here, Seth.”

  “Here in this practice room?”

  “Yeah. No.” I shake my head. “It’s stupid. I’m having kind of an existential crisis this morning.”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  “I envy you and Brie.”

  He blanches at her name. “Why?”

  “You guys know what you want. There’s no question about it. You sing this music”—I point to his Sondheim song—“and you come alive. You know what you want to do. You know what you were meant to do.”

  “What were you meant to do?”

  “Probably watch TV and chat about it on the internet.” I think about playing music with Jack in the basement, about wanting to be up on stage at Crossroads like Tromboner Dave, but what is that? That’s just as bad as lying around watching shows all day. It’s not a career. It’s fun and games. It’s taking someone else’s music and farting around with it. It’s not creating anything. It’s nothing. It’s garbage.

  “You’re really good at music theory,” Seth says.

  I can’t answer him. Tears threaten to spill over. I’m no better than Jack, am I? He’s stuck in his relationship and his pre-law/golf plans, hiding his drumming from everyone, but I’ve also been pretending. I’ve been pretending to be an opera singer. I’m here, not because it’s what I long to do with my life, but because I wanted to prove to Beth that I could. On some level, I’m here for revenge, which, when you’re talking about the rest of your life, is both childish and cowardly.

  I got into this program over Beth. Maybe it’s because I’m a better singer than she is. Maybe it’s because my sister pulled some strings. Part of me wonders if Beth, who’s known me longer than most people on this planet, knew I wouldn’t fully appreciate the chance I’ve been given. Maybe that’s why she lashed out at me. Maybe she wanted this more. Maybe she would’ve appreciated it more. And I, on some level, took it away from her. It’s like if she had gotten a job reviewing Project Earth for The AV Club or something. I’d be pissed, knowing that the opportunity went to someone who would never appreciate it.

  I sniff. The tears are starting to come, and I can’t stop them. I slump to the floor in front of the window. Seth slides down next to me, our backs against the floor-to-ceiling window. The cold of the glass pushes through my Beauty and the Beast T-shirt. I forgot to change it this morning.

  “You want to talk about it?” Seth says.

  “You kissed me, Seth,” I say, opting to deal with this over my potential career misstep.

  He laughs. “You kissed me first, if we’re being technical about it.”

  “You’re right,” I say. “I kind of just wanted to see if I could.”

  He lets that hang there, and so do I.

  I am seven days away from a scholarship and I’m kicking all kinds of ass. I proved, to myself and everyone else, that I can do it. For once in my life, I’m winning. I’m the star.

  And I’m also probably a complete troll for resenting my position even a little bit.

  I am this close to a full scholarship to Krause. I am this close to forging a path for myself that leads to music and not to teaching high school Latin to a bunch of teenagers who couldn’t care less about declensions and conjunctions. I am this close to having the thing Jack thinks eludes him—a choice, the opportunity to be the musician I am down in the basement, to make music my everyday life.

  I can’t squander that. I can’t let a little self-doubt get in the way of what I truly want.

  I stand up and swing my backpack over one shoulder. “Back to work,” I say.

  chapter twenty-one

  Kiki Nichols @kikeronis: Growing up suuuuuucks. #
blessed

  Later that morning, Seth and I head downstairs for our Friday morning voice class. After I left him, I found my own practice room and worked on the song I’ll be performing for my peers today: “Non disperar, chi sa?” from Handel’s Giulio Cesare.

  It’s an aria about a famous Roman dude. It’s like the two paths my life could take have converged into this one song. Will opera win, or will it be Latin?

  Today it feels like opera has taken the lead. The panic that filled me this morning is gone. I’m in good voice. I know the lyrics by heart. I feel like I might be able to seduce the actual Julius Caesar were he to rise from the dead and walk into Room Y106 today.

  However, as the clock clicks over to nine, Mr. Bertrand does not swan into the classroom. He glides in, sure, but he glides in somberly. I check my music one more time to make sure that it’s ready to go. Mr. Bertrand doesn’t look happy today. I’m going to have to perform my best to get even a little praise out of him this morning. Bring it on, Mr. Bertrand. I am ready.

  But the door opens again. Mr. Bertrand is not alone. Mr. Zagorsky, Ms. Jones, and the other voice teachers enter the room and so do all of their voice students.

  I’m sitting between Kendra and Norman, with Mary on his left. Seth, Brie, and Andy are on the other side of Kendra. I peer down the row at Seth and mouth, “What’s going on?” He shrugs and shakes his head.

  The other students—Finley, Yvetta, Philip, and everyone else—find seats around the room. The rest of the voice faculty stands in front, arms folded, as Mr. Bertrand putters behind us, attempting to set up a laptop on the AV projector table. Head down, he snaps his fingers at Mr. Zagorsky. “Tim,” he says, “you’re better with these electronic doohickeys.”

  Mr. Zagorsky rolls his eyes and approaches the AV cart in the center of the room. He proceeds to give Mr. Bertrand a tutorial on how to use the equipment.

  Two desks down from me, Mary’s leg is bouncing like a piston.

  Norman nudges her in the side. “Are you okay?”

  She nods.

  I lean across Norman and whisper, “You look like hell. Seriously, what’s wrong?”