The Bermudez Triangle

by Maureen Johnson

  “Mel, I’m late.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’ve got my lesson now. I’ll call you later, okay?”

  Avery got into her car. It was punctuation. This discussion was over. Mel wanted to do something dramatic—leap up and grab Avery, stand behind the car and block it in, scream at the top of her lungs—all awful things that would do no good. As it was, she was already sitting on the ground in the parking lot, and people were looking at her, probably thinking that she was a crazy lesbian. But all she wanted was her best friend, the girl she loved, to put her stuff back in her locker and say she’d spend the next few days with her.

  Mel watched the school buses come into the lot and Avery’s car disappear around the block. Everybody looked so happy to have the next few days off. To Mel those days were just holes—big, deep holes that she’d never be able to fill.

  26

  It was plain black, very stark. Shiny. Thin columns of white print. Photos of sumptuously curved violins. Austere rehearsal rooms with blond floors and blank walls. The occasional conductor springing up from the bottom of the page or the string quartet leaping in from the side. Everybody looking serious, competent, and calm. There was something about the way this brochure was designed that screamed: YOU WILL NEVER BE THIS GOOD. GIVE UP NOW, LOSER, WHILE RITE AID IS STILL HIRING.

  It seemed like Avery had had this brochure and application in her possession since the beginning of time. In actuality, it took her two weeks to work up the courage to rip open the envelope it came in. It had taken her another week to read it. Now she was lying on her bed in her favorite pair of gray sweatpants, which were cut off at midcalf. Her collie, Bandit, sprawled next to her like a living body pillow. Her hair was unwashed and sticking up at weird angles, and all she’d eaten were three pieces of bread with mustard and a few handfuls of cold leftover turkey The tryptophan hadn’t knocked her out, but she was feeling very languid. Now that Thanksgiving was over, she had no plans at all for days. If she wanted to, she could go to Mel’s on Saturday and stay. But then there would be a lot of sad faces and clinging, and Mel would want to talk about their relationship.

  God. She was turning into a guy. Avery turned back to the brochure. She knew perfectly well that there was no way she was going to slip into this shiny, serious-looking world. But Avery went on, skipping over the first few pages, which described how hard the school was and how brilliant all the students were, and went right for the important part—the application procedure for piano students. They required a CD or tape along with the completed application. Postmark date: December 15.

  She pushed the brochure away from her. Bandit put his paw on it.

  What the hell was she doing with her life? She was just sliding by in her classes. She’d been fired from Mortimer’s. If she was very lucky, she might be able to squeeze into a state school, pick some kind of noncommittal major, graduate, and get some generic job that required sitting at a computer. She’d gain weight from all the sitting and have to start eating frozen diet meals or drinking low-carb shakes from a can.

  She carefully removed the brochure from Bandit’s grasp and opened it again to the admissions page. She read through the list of pieces acceptable for the recording. There were enough listed that she was happy to find that she owned at least four of them and played two of them passably. This gave her the courage to continue reading:

  If you are selected to audition, you will be required to play the following from memory:

  One selection from J. S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier or the Goldberg Variations

  One sonata by Mozart or Beethoven (excluding Beethoven op. 49)

  One 19th-century composition (solo piano)

  One 20th-century composition (solo piano)

  Following the audition, applicants will sit for an hour-long entrance examination in basic music theory. Callbacks will be held the same day, and a callback list will be posted by 4 P.M. on the day of the audition. If an applicant’s name does not appear on the list, the applicant should assume that he or she is no longer under consideration for a place in the class.

  Gaz had a Tascam four-track recorder, and Hareth had an illegal copy of Pro Tools. Either way, she’d be able to get something on tape. She could persuade her music teacher at school and her piano teacher at home to write up some letters pretty quickly—they were always on her case about applying to music school. If she actually got up, got dressed, and got her ass in gear, she might be able to put this thing together.

  Instead she rolled off her bed and went searching for leftover turkey.

  As Avery came from her darkened bedroom, the glaring lights in the hallway almost sent her reeling. There was a strong odor of pine coming from a candle burning in the kitchen. Avery knew what this meant. Her mother always felt that the second the turkey had been put away, she was allowed to start rolling out for Christmas. As Avery made her way down the hall, she heard the 20 Classic Christmas Songs album on and saw her mother roping off the kitchen doorway with gold drugstore tinsel.

  “Crime scene?” Avery asked. “Did someone murder an elf in there?”

  “I’m going to pin it up so it drapes. Just go under.”

  Avery leaned against the wall as Bing Crosby bu-bu-bu-booed his way through “Mele Kalikimaka,” the Hawaiian Christmas song.

  “Bing Crosby used to beat his kids with empty whiskey bottles,” she said, rubbing her eyes hard with the heels of her hands, trying to get them to adjust.

  “That’s a nice piece of holiday trivia.”

  “It was an early attempt at recycling.”

  “Mmmmm.”

  Avery slid down the wall and sat on the floor. She didn’t even feel like making the effort to limbo the tinsel.

  “What are you and Mel up to this weekend?” her mother asked.

  “Me and Mel?” Avery said, her voice arching.

  “I never see Nina anymore.”

  “She’s busy,” Avery said quickly. “Student council.”

  “Nina always was a hard worker.”

  And what did that mean? Avery wondered. That she wasn’t?

  Well, okay. She was slumped on the floor like a rag. Maybe it wasn’t so unfair.

  “What’s the point of Christmas in Hawaii?” Avery asked.

  “They deserve the holiday too.”

  “Yeah, but it must be weird.”

  “Only if you’re not from Hawaii,” her mother said. “Everything’s normal to somebody.”

  And now Mom is a Zen master, she thought. Is the tinsel halfway up the doorframe or halfway down?

  With effort Avery pulled herself up from her seat. She would call Gaz. That was at least a start. Better than sitting here, wondering if the phone was going to ring or if Mel was going to turn up. This was her fate now. Inertia and life on the run.

  It would make a good band name, but it sucked as a way to live.

  Christmas

  December 2

  TO: Steve

  FROM: Nina

  Ugh. Here we go. December is like insanity month on the council. I had three different meetings after school for the toy drive, the food drive, and the holiday dance committee. How are things post-Thanksgiving? Did you eat Tofurky?

  Mel and Avery both kind of vanished off the face of the earth after the holiday. Mel called me once, but I didn’t see them at all, which was bizarre. Nothing has felt right since I saw Avery with that guy at the hayroll. I love you, and we are so much closer to being at school. They will be mailing the early decision notices sometime in the next 15 days, which is kind of more than I can even think about….

  December 4

  TO: Steve

  FROM: Nina

  I saw you online the other night and sent like 2,000 IMs. I guess you weren’t actually at your computer and your mom or one of your fugitive houseguests or the FBI read them.

  You’re probably saving a river right now, but can you write to me so I know you’re alive?

  December 6

  TO: S
teve

  FROM: Nina

  Seriously. I am about to call a search party. And I can never get through on your phone!

  v.v.v.v.v.v. anxious to hear from you. I am kind of worried that the ceiling has finally fallen in or the black stuff on the floor has swallowed you up.

  your neurotic girlfriend

  December 7

  TO: Nina

  FROM: Steve

  Sorry … we had computer problems. And the phone thing. I know. I’m really, really sorry. No Tofurky. Nut roast. Tasty but not very good on the intestines.

  Things are crazy here now too … let me know about Stanford.

  27

  Mel waited. She was sure that if she was calm and didn’t bother Avery that Avery would see there was no problem. Mel” interpreted waiting as not even speaking of the argument because she didn’t want it to grow larger and more important than it already was. If it was ignored, maybe it would wither and die.

  First the Thanksgiving holiday went by. The Podds were visited. Mel found out that Richie had broken his collarbone jumping off someone’s gazebo. Jim bought some kind of fancy new stove and Mel was forced to admire it. Lyla expanded her list of acceptable foods to incorporate mashed butternut squash with margarine. These were the highlights—the rest was unforgivably dull.

  She spent the next three nights sitting with her dad, watching cheesy, romantic movies. Weirdly, her father was a huge fan of them. He owned DVDs of Notting Hill, When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, and Four Weddings and a Funeral. These were his favorites. If his day was particularly long, he’d come home with two boxes of mac and cheese and pop one of those movies in and they would watch together. Underneath that rugged contractor’s exterior beat the heart of a sixteen-year-old girl.

  Mel wished she could tell him as they were three hours into a Humphrey Bogart fest on AMC that she really didn’t want to watch Casablanca, because her own heart was about to explode. She couldn’t bring herself to do it. She sat there with him on the couch, the tissues on her lap, praying that Ilsa didn’t get on her plane and leave Rick. But she did. It figured. Mel cried. Her dad cried. They were the Crying Family.

  When she returned to school, just as an added precaution, Mel took extra time in the morning to make sure she looked her best. She kept her hair down because she knew Avery loved it that way. She wore skirts and her favorite ribbon choker. She got new lip gloss. She tried some eye liner.

  She was aware that people were looking at her more than usual. She was too preoccupied to care. When a cheerleader got out of line in the cafeteria right as Mel stepped behind her, when a table of guys grew eerily silent as she walked past, Mel ignored it. Getting noticed by Avery was the only thing that mattered.

  All this effort was for nothing, though, since Avery managed to make herself invisible. Mel tried to end up in the right places so that Avery would be able to see her, but the most she ever got was a glimpse of Avery’s wine-colored leather jacket disappearing into the parking lot.

  A week passed, and the waiting got harder. Mel started about a hundred notes and e-mails—she spent every class composing them in her head and sometimes writing them down. She went to school. She came home. She dumped her stuff on her bedroom floor. Sleeping made the waiting easier, so she took naps. Her dad would wake her up for dinner and ask her if she was feeling sick. She listened to the same songs over and over until they were imprinted in her brain and flowed through her dreams. The only thing Mel’s life was leading up to was a phone call or a note or a visit that never seemed to materialize.

  Things started to fall to the wayside. The random handful of college applications sat on her desk, unexamined. Every time she opened one and tried to read it, she felt a weird kind of paralysis—she couldn’t imagine leaving here, leaving everyone, and going off to live in one of these concrete towers or stark brick buildings with a bunch of strangers. She picked at her homework selectively. She spaced out in class, looking at all the girls and imagining what it would be like to kiss each one, wondering which ones would actually want to try.

  None of them would be like Avery, though.

  Throughout all of this, Nina was insanely busy. Every time Mel saw her, she was running to a class or a meeting or an event. Besides, she’d already asked not to be put in the middle, so Mel said nothing to her. Instead she confided in Parker—before English, at lunch, at work, on the phone, online—nervously asking him over and over if that was the day she should finally talk to Avery. He always said yes, and he was always good about it, although he looked a little frustrated after two solid weeks of being asked the same question.

  It all came to a head one night at work, halfway through December, as Mel was sliding two Mortiburgers from under the heat lamps and thinking about the fact that she hadn’t even started studying for her trig midterm, which was only two days away. The cook leaned out and peered at her through the opening, his face spookily illuminated by the heat lamp, causing it to glow red.

  “So,” he said, “where’s your girlfriend?”

  And that was that. The bottom dropped out for Mel. She couldn’t be in the pantry anymore—or in the restaurant—or possibly anywhere. Mel abandoned the burgers and ran to the nasty employee bathroom, back in the storeroom, and barricaded herself inside.

  The void had finally swallowed her up: she was alone and confused and sick of waiting and repulsed by everything.

  She wasn’t coming out.

  After ten minutes or so, one of the assistant managers knocked on the door. Panicked, Mel faked some coughing and retching noises, which probably didn’t fool anyone, but she still managed to get off for the rest of the night. Parker wasn’t working, but he was supposed to come by at eleven to pick her up. But it wasn’t Parker she needed.

  She called Nina.

  28

  Nina had been sitting at her desk, looking through the twelve-page study outline for the AP history midterm, which was in two days. It had just occurred to her that she was in serious trouble since she’d had no time at all to even think about studying for it. She’d been busy with the council, as well as four other midterms and the fifteen-page paper that she’d just handed to Frost that afternoon. She almost told Mel she couldn’t pick her up, but when she heard the panic in Mel’s voice, she accepted her fate and headed for her car.

  She was doomed anyway. Might as well go down helping a friend.

  Mel was waiting for her on a bench outside of Mortimer’s, huddled in her blue coat. She got up when she saw Nina pull into the lot and quietly let herself in.

  “What’s going on?” Nina said. “Are you sick?”

  With that, Mel dissolved completely into tears. Nina quickly pulled into a parking space and wrapped Mel in a hug.

  “What happened? Are you okay?”

  “Shewu call mee,” Mel gasped.

  “What, honey?”

  “Shheeeeewuughghhcalllghmeee.”

  It took ten minutes of sobbing and hiccuping before Mel was able to relate the story clearly enough for Nina to understand.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Nina said when Mel was through. She reached into the well between the seats and pulled out a tiny pack of Kleenex. Mel worked her way through half the pack.

  “Can I ask you something?” Nina said tentatively. sure.

  “How did you know?” Nina asked. “About being gay. What was it?”

  Mel rubbed the tip of her nose and looked over in surprise. Nina realized that this was the first time she’d ever really asked. Some friend she’d been.

  “I didn’t really get it at first,” Mel said. “I thought I just really liked certain people. And then I realized that I really liked certain people. And then I noticed they were all girls.”

  “You don’t like guys at all?”

  “I like them,” Mel said. “I think they’re nice. But I never felt anything. Not like what other girls seemed to feel.”

  “How long have you known?” Nina asked.

  “A long time,” she replied s
oftly. “Years, probably.”

  Mel sniffed for a minute and made a little pyramid of the tissues.

  “I don’t want you to feel like I thought Avery was better than you or something,” she continued. “I think you’re beautiful and great. No offense. I swear.”

  “I never …”

  “It’s okay,” Mel said. “But just so you know. You’re wonderful—but it’s not like that. In my mind, you’re Nina.”

  “But Avery is Avery,” Nina said. “How is it different?”

  “You know how you can sometimes tell when a person might like you?” Mel explained. “There’s just something about the way they look at you or the way they keep trying to talk to you? Probably like you and Steve.”

  “Yeah,” Nina said, stiffening at the sound of his name. “It was like that.”

  “I just want to give her another day or two,” Mel said, sniffing. “I think it’s just hard for her to get used to the idea of people knowing.”

  The words wanted to jump free of Nina’s mouth—I saw Avery with Gaz.

  “Mel …” she said.

  She clamped down her back teeth again. Mel slumped against Nina’s side, and Nina stroked her hair.

  As they sat there, Nina realized that this was the first time in a long while that she hadn’t been on the sidelines watching. She knew something that Mel didn’t. She was needed. She was involved. And she could, potentially, use what she knew to get Avery to talk to her. Avery owed her, after all.

  She felt a sudden surge of enthusiasm. She sat Mel upright.

  “I’ll talk to her,” Nina said.

  “I don’t think she wants to talk.”

  “She needs to talk, Mel. It might be easier for her to talk to me because I’m kind of uninvolved. I know how to facilitate. I spent all summer learning about facilitation.”

  “Really?” Mel asked.

  “This is us. This is the three of us. We can fix this.”

  This was the first time in months that the “we” actually included Nina. Mel seemed to realize this too because her eyes lit up.