“We’re screwed,” I basically whined, my leg spastically bouncing up and down to the music.
She bolted out of the chair. “We must be missing it somehow. Even Cannon Dude said ‘the secret lies with the singer.’”
I massaged my temples. “Look—I know every Loose Cannons song in existence. Mason’s lyrics are Mason’s lyrics are Mason’s lyrics, and none of them were altered during this concert. And anyway, Cannon Dude was just jerking everyone around when he said ‘the secret lies with the singer.’ He’s a jackass.”
“Okay, so he’s a smidge over the top,” Clarissa admitted, “but probably only because he’s really passionate about the band.” I exhaled, flapping my lips loudly, and she spoke over me. “No. For real. I’ve been thinking: Cannon Dude totally reminds me of this character in Star-crossed Bermuda. This superintense famous-actor guy who—”
“Star-crossed Bermuda?”
“A book I read,” she said dismissively. “Anyway, he’s exactly like this famous actor guy, who initially comes off all conceited and arrogant. The other characters in the book basically hate him. Especially his costar, Bianca, who—”
“Does this have a point?”
“It offends me that you have to ask,” Clarissa said. She did not sound offended. “Anyway, so Bianca is forced to do this kissing scene with him. They’re on the seashore, his lips are on hers, and she’s trying to remember how much she hates him but her body is betraying her. She’s realizing how sweet and tender his kisses are—”
“Hold up. Are you reading beach trash?”
“It’s quality romance.” Clarissa sniffed. “Anyway, my point here is that right after that scene, you find out that the guy is just misunderstood. Underneath it all, he’s this passionate, intense performer who rose from the trenches by working as an understudy to—”
I slapped the desk with both hands. “That’s it!” I screamed. The understudy. The guy hovering in the background, waiting for his chance to take the stage. The backup guy.
Mason wasn’t the only person who sang. He had a backup singer: Gavin.
It took us only a couple minutes to find it: Gavin’s splitting off from the lyrics, right in the middle of the very first song. So quiet and yet so unbelievably loud, he sang, “sunset on the twentieth in the park of Alexander” while Mason sang “all of the things I swear I still remember.”
And I just froze, right there, leaning toward my computer with both palms flat on my desk, because I needed my entire body to process my shock. Finally I whispered, “We have a half hour to get to Alexander Park.”
The last time I actually saw Alexander Park was a couple years ago. It was fall, the air was crisp, and the place was lit up with leaves dying in brilliant bursts of red and yellow. Mom and I had been moping around the house all morning, both of us suffering from our own respective losses. I’d just lost a soccer game, and Mom’s star goalie had unexpectedly dropped out of school. Dad had shooed us out of the house after lunch, preaching the benefits of fresh air and sunshine.
So for the better part of the afternoon, Mom and I strolled barefoot across the park’s wide lawns, our long curls joining as one in the wind. Then we lounged in the open-air pavilion, watching a skinny towheaded girl celebrate her seventh birthday. By the time we left, we were laughing our heads off and poking fun at each other, our troubles insignificant. I’d always called the place Frito Park in honor of the nearby Frito-Lay factory that blanketed the park’s entire five acres and three city blocks in a near-constant burnt smell. And now charcoal was all I smelled as Clarissa and I piled out of Gramps’s truck.
Currently, I was incognito. Which was to say that I’d hijacked my dad’s biggest, longest, grayest, homeliest sweatshirt and pulled the hood over my head, yanking the strings to effectively cover most of my face. Last thing I needed was for Mason to recognize me and cause a scene.
Or kick me out.
As I stepped onto the sidewalk, I forced in a breath and tilted my face to the wind. The afternoon was absolutely gorgeous: breezy and comfortable, without a trace of humidity. One of those perfect June days that Connecticut had coerced into feeling more like late September. The only sounds were the hum of the Frito factory, the muted traffic coming from the street, and the voices of two women, fighting like cats in a bag. Their argument was over some guy, naturally. I’d like to say that I wasn’t the type of person to be entertained by the misery of others, but, well, it was pretty entertaining.
Clarissa clapped her hands once. “All right. We don’t have a lot of time, so I figure we’ll just head straight down the sidewalk until we hear the crowd. My guess is that the concert will be held at the pavilion. Or else by that big fountain that’s just past the Fifth Street intersection. Okay? Okay.” And I heard her tapping away from me.
I stood completely still.
She stopped. “Maggie? Tight schedule here. Heading toward the fruits of our labor. Let’s go.”
I chewed my bottom lip. “Well, the thing is?” I said finally. “I’m not so great with intersections. Or sidewalks, for that matter.”
“For real?”
“For real.”
“No worries,” she said as she clinked her way back to me. “I’ve walked this route a thousand times. My O and M specialist brings me here for picnics all the time. Just sort of tuck up alongside me and stay half a step behind. And keep your cane in front of you.” And just like that, we took off. The blind leading the blind.
I took wobbly, uncertain steps, clipped to her elbow like a miniature koala bear on a fourth-grade pencil. Trying to distract myself, I cleared my throat and said, “So. What’s going on with Iced Coffee Guy?”
She snorted. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I mean, I don’t even know what to say to him besides ‘double caramel iced coffee, please.’” I barked a disbelieving laugh; she seemed to have no problem whatsoever cramming words into my ear. “No, for real,” she said, halting for a moment and listening. Not hearing the crowd, we started walking again. “I’m actually quite shy with boys. A failure in the romance department, just like my dad.”
“Meaning...?”
“Meaning my mom left us when I was two,” she explained in a forced perky tone, picking up the pace a little to yank me through an intersection. “I guess it was too much—having a blind daughter.”
I swallowed. It had never occurred to me that Clarissa had any real issues or problems, that blindness had stolen something precious from her. “I’m sorry,” I said quietly.
“’S okay,” she said as she jolted to a stop again.
I could hear a hum of voices to my right. We were close.
We cut through a patch of grass and up a knoll, hanging back when our canes tapped ankles. This place had a vastly different vibe than the concert at the Strand. Here, it was all quiet anticipation and reverence, mixed with the indescribable scent of people gathered together in commonality. My nervousness dissolved into eagerness. Who cares if Mason recognizes me underneath this hoodie? Who cares? It wasn’t as if he could think any less of me.
That wasn’t even possible.
I’d already lied to him for weeks. Puked in his car. Crammed a live hand grenade in his brother’s heart. What was left? And anyway, I could tell by the quiet buzz of conversation in front of me that there were enough people here to hide my slight frame. So for the first time since we’d arrived, I felt safe. Excited, even. There I was, standing in the middle of Alexander Park, among the few, waiting to hear the best emerging band of the decade. I just wanted to smile and smile and smile.
The microphone crackled and the crowd hushed. My head jerked up.
It was time.
For a couple heartbeats, it felt hard to breathe. Like maybe something had crept into my chest and taken up residence against my lungs.
I leaned toward Clarissa. “This is...”
“The best!” she squealed.
David gave the cymbals one quick hit, as though metaphorically clearing his throat, and then Mason’s voice ran
g out—devastating and absolute and compelling—buckling my knees and stealing my breath in a single instant.
I’d heard “Lucidity” probably a thousand times over the past couple months. It was a ballad that began with just Mason’s voice and nothing else, a ballad that ached and exhaled and bent and glowed, so intense and so earnest that it almost hurt to listen to it. It was as though this sort of emotion was what this park was made for, maybe even what Mason was made for—to sing here, where the modulations in his tone arched up to the sky, sank into the grass, and then vaulted back up again to twist through the trees. An instant later, the band fell in step alongside him and the music took off, all wheeling clouds and gossamer strands of wind.
There was a type of perfection I would always connect with that moment. Someday, I might forget a few of the details—how the pads of my fingers felt as they tapped the keyboard riffs on my thighs, or how Mason’s voice dipped an octave lower than expected when he sang the third verse—but I would never, ever forget how I felt.
Clarissa grabbed my hand. I squeezed and didn’t let go, smiling the most genuine smile I’d had in years. And just for that moment in time, I couldn’t remember what it felt like to be unhappy or unfulfilled or unloved. This was my whole world, in this very moment, and for the first time since I’d lost my sight, I felt like I belonged.
“Reach your hands back a little more,” said a fellow restroom patron who wore so much sweet-smelling perfume, she was giving me a candied headache.
Trying not to inhale, I nodded a thank-you in her direction and moved my hands backward in the sink. Nothing.
Ugh.
I wasn’t in the mood for China Bistro Day, and I certainly wasn’t in the mood for this restroom. Couldn’t we go back to knobs? What was wrong with knobs? You grope around for them, find them, and turn them. One, two, three. But these days, you have to be a Hogwarts graduate to get all this automatic stuff to function properly.
I waved my hands under the sink again. And...nothing.
“Here—let me help you!” she yelled. She took my hands unexpectedly, attempting to move them to the right spot. Startled by her sudden touch, I sucked in my breath and twitched away from her, which must have triggered the automatic faucet, because water was abruptly flying everywhere, spattering my hands and face.
She stuffed a wad of paper towels in my hands and said sympathetically, “I’m sure it isn’t easy being blind.”
I fought the urge to sigh. She was using the Voice—the one people use that is saturated with pity. I said, “I’m fine, thanks,” and I took off toward the door, suavely tripping on what sounded like a trash can on the way out.
China Bistro Day was a cornball holiday, a ridiculous celebration that Gran had fabricated years ago to persuade Gramps to eat Chinese food. Gramps, a picky eater who always claimed that “Chinese food has too many damn colors in it,” would unfailingly grumble and grouse all the way to the restaurant, but when it was time to leave, his plate was always licked clean.
The tiny restaurant was out in the sticks, about twenty miles inland from our house. Which was sort of weird if I really thought about it. Why drive away from a perfectly decent midsize city to Podunk, Connecticut, to eat a meal? But the fact was, years ago Gran had claimed that this place was the best, so this place was where we came. Even now, years after Gran’s death, we all piled into the car on this day and drove to the China Bistro for dinner.
I’d been coming here since I was a little girl, so I knew the place well. I knew it was owned by an ancient Chinese woman who shook a good-natured index finger at me when I used a fork instead of chopsticks. I knew that there were so many reds and yellows and oranges decorating the place that it looked as though a Starburst bag had burst all over the walls and then tracked its feet over the throw rugs. I knew that the fortune cookies tasted like pure heaven when dredged through plum sauce. And I knew that the side window overlooked a monstrous soccer field owned by a neighboring college. My mother always requested a table next to that particular window, which meant that we usually had to wait to be seated. Tonight had been no exception. We’d waited a full hour for our table. It was now creeping up on eight o’clock, and though our table was dotted with appetizers, Gramps was growing more and more irritable with every passing second.
“Where are the breadsticks?” he said in a surly voice.
“Dad,” my father said to Gramps, “there are no breadsticks here. It’s a Chinese restaurant.”
Gramps was a big eater. I knew this because he spent a good deal of time in our kitchen, mooching food out of our fridge. He lived with us without technically living with us, in the garage we’d converted to a one-room apartment after Gran died. While he griped about his lack of privacy, he spent more time in our house than in his own place, swiping food from our refrigerator and watching TV on our big screen. Though he’d never actually said it, I knew why. He was lonely. He missed Gran.
Since my mother spent her days coaching and Dad spent his days lawyering, Gramps leveled out our lopsided house. He was the guy who was available to cart me around when I needed to go somewhere. He was the guy who sat with me at the counter to eat microwavable frozen dinners. He was the guy who’d taken me to the hospital when I’d come down with meningitis.
The morning I’d gotten really sick, I’d stumbled out of bed and into the kitchen. Though it was only five o’clock, my mother was already up and dressed in her usual attire: pleated khakis and a pressed oxford shirt. She was making a pot of coffee.
“Mom, I have a fever,” I said, my voice slow and thick.
She frowned and touched my head with the back of her hand. “Oh, sweetheart,” she said, her face crumpling. That was the thing about my mother: she hated seeing me sick. “You must have that flu that’s going around.”
“Yeah,” I told her, so lethargic that the words felt heavy as I struggled to move them out of my mouth. “And my head is killing me. Plus, my neck? It’s so stiff.”
She held my face in her palms and kissed me on the forehead. “Go back to bed and rest. I’ll call my boss and tell him I won’t be in today.”
“Don’t you have a game this afternoon?”
She waved a dismissive hand and nudged me toward my room. “That’s why I have an assistant coach.”
Guilt clawed at my stomach. “I’ll be fine, Mom. Promise. I just need to sleep. Go to work.”
And so she did.
Four hours later, I called her to tell her I was getting worse, but she must’ve already headed to the field, because I got her voice mail. Six hours later, Gramps took me to the emergency room. Two hours after that, I’d nearly died—twice—from my fever. Three hours after that, I was blind.
But tonight at the China Bistro, my mother had absolutely no problem picking up her phone. It rang twice during dinner. Both times it was the university.
“Hey, kid,” Gramps said to me as Mom took her second call. “Your friend just walked in.”
My fork hovered over my plate. “What friend?”
“The blond one with the big mouth.”
Lauren.
I swallowed. “Where is she?”
“Hostess station.”
I probably should have stayed put, just sunk down in my seat and played dumb. I had the perfect excuse for not knowing she was there, after all. But something inside me tugged me upright, toward the hostess station. Maybe I wanted to find out why she hadn’t come to my house with Sophie. Maybe I wanted to know where I stood with our friendship. Maybe I was just into self-torture.
I called out a general hello as I approached. And in the short, uncomfortable silence that followed, I almost spun around and hauled ass back to the table. But then Lauren descended on me in a cloud of her mother’s perfume, hugging me quickly in one jerky motion and then pulling away. “Maggie!” she said, her voice overly resonant for such a tiny place. “Holy crap—I haven’t seen you in forever.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s been a while. I thought maybe you’d come by with S
ophie last week.”
Awkward pause.
I crossed my arms. Shifted my weight. Trying to calm down, I tapped the little Chopin riff on my side. Then the Clarissa rhythm. Then both of them together.
It didn’t help.
Finally Lauren cleared her throat and said, “Yeah, well, I had plans to hang out with Kirsten Richards. Remember her? Used to play middie for Southington? The girl who could hit the upper nineties without even trying? She’s on our team now! She moved here after you...”
Another awkward pause.
“Lost my eyesight,” I supplied.
“Right,” Lauren said. “Anyway, we sort of lucked out because Kirsten’s, like...well, you remember. She’s so good. She’s already bagged a full ride to UConn!”
“A full ride to UConn,” I breathed, swaying on my feet as the enormous injustice sucked the wind right out of me. “Good for her.”
And as I lugged myself back to the table, I realized that Lauren hadn’t even bothered to ask how I was doing. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised. Lauren had always been more interested in Maggie the Soccer God than just plain Maggie. Still, it didn’t hurt as much as it should have. I just wondered why I’d set the friendship bar so low.
“How’s Lauren?” Dad asked as I sat down.
“Great,” I said with false cheer.
“Did she mention where she’s applying to college?” he asked.
I propped my elbows on the table and jammed my fingers into my eyelids. “She didn’t say.”
Dad cleared his throat, segueing into interrogation mode. “What about you? What did you think about those DVDs?”
“I haven’t had a chance to listen to them.”
“Chop-chop,” he said, his tone practiced-casual. “For the record, Cal Poly sounds amazing. They have some awesome programs for the visually impaired. Your mother is dead set on Missouri State.”
I heard Mom’s phone snap shut. “I’m not dead set on it, Steve,” she interjected. “The choice is ultimately up to Maggie.”
The way she spoke about me—it was like I wasn’t even here.
The One Thing Page 14
