A loud clatter shattered the quiet. Throwing open my arms, I stopped about half a dozen from careening off the side of his desk.
“Good catch!” I exclaimed when Dad caught one an inch from the floor.
“Close indeed!” he agreed.
We both laughed. Dad straightened his keyboard tie, a birthday present from me, while I pushed my eyeglasses back up on my nose. Then I flipped my long braid back over my shoulder, and together, Dad and I restacked the CDs.
“Thanks, Mel,” he said. “Hey, and thanks for setting up the chairs.”
I nodded a welcome and pointed. “I organized the music, too. See?”
My father glanced at the neat piles of sheet music on his desk. “Great,” he said. “Perfect. But could you do me one more favor before you leave?”
“Sure.”
“Would you haul out that small viola from the storage room and rosin up the bow? I’ve got a sixth-grader, Lee somebody, who wants to try it.”
Frowning, I crossed my arms. “Dad, you gave the little viola to Maura Shannahan.”
At first, my father’s face went blank—then it sagged with disappointment.
I stared at him. “Don’t you remember? You gave it to her a week ago. She’s already broken the A string! I had to put a new one on for her yesterday in band.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Dad said. He put a hand up to his forehead and rubbed it slowly, the way he does when he’s thinking. Then he looked at me and winked. “Think I can talk her into a clarinet?”
I couldn’t help but grin. “Probably,” I said, but I was sure he could because my father is amazing when it comes to convincing kids to try new things. If he wasn’t, we wouldn’t have a middle-school band or an orchestra!
Dad rolled his shirtsleeves up and was getting back to work when the intercom came on. The light blinked, and the school secretary’s loud, nasal voice accosted us: “Mr. Mattero?”
I turned and walked away, pulling my braid over my shoulder and twisting the end of it (a habit when I’m composing). I went back to writing that poem in my head, wondering if maybe melting snow, things will grow had more possibilities than water, otter, or squatter.
But when I think back on that moment—because Dad got called down to the office a minute later—I glimpse a snapshot of my father’s face, and I can see all over again how upset he was, knowing he’d have to disappoint little Lee somebody who had wanted to try the viola. And I think of how my dad hated to squelch anyone’s enthusiasm for music because he was really dedicated. That was the one true thing I have always known for sure: that my dad loved teaching music to kids. For twenty-two years, he taught music, half of those years at Oakdale Middle School.
My father thought everyone in the world needed to master at least one musical instrument while they were young: “It teaches self-discipline and creative thinking,” he would tell you, would beg you to understand. “It builds self-confidence!” He went crazy when the school board threatened to cut music out of the middle-school budget to save money. “This would be a tragic mistake,” he was quoted in the local newspaper. The clipping is still on our refrigerator. “Music and art are the building blocks that make people and our society a vibrant and viable world!”
Of course everyone in my family played an instrument—or two or three. (Even if you didn’t really want to, I should add.) My older sister, away at college in Indiana where she is majoring in music and education, is a piano and flute virtuoso. Not to mention the fact that my sister composes some of her own pieces. She’s a regular little Mozart in training. Every year in high school she was selected for All State Orchestra, and her goal is to be a music teacher—like my dad! Believe me, she is a very hard act to follow.
My brother, too, could be in the teenage music hall of fame. Not only does he play drums and guitar (for the rock band he organized in the sixth grade), but he’s terrific on the saxophone, too. And he has the best ear of all of us when it comes to picking out a new tune. Don’t be looking for him on the music circuit though. My brother, a sophomore in high school, is also the second-string quarterback for the Wallinsburg Cougars. His dream is not only to come from behind and lead an eighty-yard drive to win a playoff game against rival Rockville High School, but to hustle and make a million dollars as a professional football player for the Washington Redskins.
Still, it’s music, music, music in our house. And just look at our names! My sister in college is Song. My brother is Cade, which is short for Cadence (the harmonic ending in a piece of music). There’s me—Melody. (Did I forget to credit myself with the viola?) Even our cat is named Harmony.
I know, I know. It’s all a bit much. But please don’t compare us to the Brady Bunch because we’re not dumb like that. It’s just my parents’ style, that’s all. Underneath it all, they’re really nice, really smart people. My mother, Mary, runs a plant nursery and plays flute in the community orchestra. She let me repaint my entire room lavender last summer, and she’s hired someone to rebuild her old computer from work so that she can give it to me and I can have my own. My mother is the glue that holds our family together. And she stood by my father the entire time. She is still standing by him. I guess I should add that, too.
My father, Frederick Mattero (everyone calls him Fred)—well, up until this all happened, he was just a normal person. And he has been a great dad. I will never forget how he coached my soccer team in fourth grade, even though he didn’t know anything about soccer. And how my dad—every summer since I was eight—has taken just me on a fishing trip down the Rap pahannock River in Virginia and doesn’t even care if I don’t fish. While he casts around and reels in dinner, I sit on these flat rocks in the river and write poems. Then, while we’re sitting by the campfire, I read him the poems I wrote, and he actually listens and he always has something meaningful, something insightful, to say about them.
But there are a kazillion little things my dad does—my dad did—for lots of people, not just me, that made him so special. I mean, his blueberry pancakes on Sunday morning, his turkey tacos, his sense of humor, all the help he gave Cade’s band (even filling in one night when the drummer got sick), and the way my dad always knows the right thing to do. Gosh, and all the houses he’s fixed up with the Habitat for Humanity people at church—and the kitchen with all the new cabinets that he renovated for my mom.
Sometimes, it doesn’t make any sense that this has happened.
“Think I can talk her into a clarinet?”
“Probably.”
It keeps coming back to me—the last conversation Dad and I had before the weight of the world was upon him—and me—and my family.
After the intercom came on and Dad got called down to the office, everything changed.
“Mr. Mattero, can you come down to the office right away? Mrs. Fernandez needs to talk to you.”
Dad pushed a clarinet case against the wall with his foot and left, mumbling that he’d probably forgotten to get his homeroom lunch count in on time again and how Mrs. Fernandez shouldn’t be wasting his time with stuff like that. I had finished setting up the chairs and then returned to study hall with my journal to work on a poem about spring that I never finished.
I don’t know. It’s hard to describe, but I’m different now. And it’s not just the poetry I never write anymore or what happened to my best friend, Annie, and me. It has more to do with how I see my father, how we all see my father, and where we go from here.
It’s confusing sometimes. Because up until the day Dad was accused by those seventh-graders, I figured my father’s greatest weakness was just in being a little forgetful and disorganized. But over the next few months, I would come to know many things, good and bad, about my dad. Things that I might otherwise have never known.
And I can say the same about myself.
3
Claire
“YOU WAIT—THEY WILL GO FREAKING BALLISTIC!”
That was Jenna saying that—all the way down the hall to the school office. All the wa
y grabbing my wrist and predicting—like she almost enjoyed this—what was going to happen when we three walked in.
But a lot of stuff goes down in middle school every day, and we hadn’t counted on walking into another crisis when we went to report ours.
Everyone in the office that morning was busy—the secretary with a deliveryman and teachers walking in and out getting their mail out of their little boxes. So we stood at the counter and looked toward where the yelling was coming from: Mrs. Fernandez’s office. The door was not closed all the way, so I was able to see part of a denim jacket and an ugly little rattail, and I knew right off who it was.
“Jason,” I whispered to Jenna. “Jason’s in there.”
“Jason?”
Like how many Jasons did she know? Because I could only think of one. “Jason Hershel,” I told her.
And we all nodded—you know, “aha!”—on account of we knew why he was in there. It was for bringing those firecrackers on our bus that morning.
Actually, if you want to know the truth, I’m glad he got hauled in. I don’t much like Jason. He still calls me “Tubs” even after all the weight I’ve lost. But more than that, those firecrackers sounded just like a gun going off, and that’s not funny. We all dove down in our seats and little Madeline Ott cut her lip hitting the floor and was bleeding all over the place, including on my new sandals when I went over to help her up. When the bus pulled over, we all saw Jason laughing his head off. But in a weird kind of way that was a relief. Because then we all knew it was just Jason and not like real bullets flying around in there.
Jason is so over the top. I remember in first grade how he and his older brother rented out Playboy magazines on the bus. For a quarter you got to look at one for, like, five minutes before Jason grabbed it back and hid it in his backpack. Not that I ever paid to look at one, but I did catch a glimpse.
You know, I always wondered what those girls got paid for posing in those Playboy pictures. I mean, exposing their privates like that, did they like get paid a lot? I’ll tell you this. Those pictures were provocative. I know that word now, and I am here to tell you that no matter what those parents said, none of us could ever be called provocative compared with those Playboy pictures!
Anyway, a narrow view is all I had of Jason. Enough to see his dumb head nodding slowly, like on automatic. “Yes, ma’am . . . yes, ma’am.” Even Jason would not want to take on Mrs. Fernandez or give her any crap because she is one tough, bull moose of a woman. I think she could’ve picked up Jason with one hand and stuffed him in her wastebasket if she had wanted. When the yelling was over, Jason shuffled out with Mrs. Fernandez right on his heels.
“Remember, that’s a warning, Jason,” Mrs. Fernandez called after him.
I started getting cold feet then—and butterflies in my stomach—seeing Mrs. Fernandez all red-faced and worked up after yelling at Jason. But Jenna didn’t wait for her to cool down.
“Mrs. Fernandez!” she called out.
The principal turned her head toward us.
“We need to talk to you,” Jenna said quickly. “Suzanne and Claire and me.”
I swallowed hard, and Suzanne shot me a desperate look.
Jenna sucked in her breath. “Something’s happened, and we need to report it.”
Mrs. Fernandez frowned and came over. When she stood on the other side of the counter from us, Suzanne and I scooted close together.
Jenna raced on. “Something happened in the music room, Mrs. Fernandez. A teacher did something that we don’t feel very good about . . .”
Mrs. Fernandez sighed. You could tell she did not want to deal with us. “Girls, if you’re having a problem in class, then we need to arrange a parent-teacher conference—”
“No!” Jenna stopped her. “We need to tell you because we’re pretty sure it was abuse. We think it was sexual abuse.”
Instantly, and I mean instantly, the office became silent. The secretary stopped keyboarding. The receptionist put a hand over the mouthpiece of her phone. Even the FedEx man froze with a package in his hand. For a minute there, we must have looked like we were in a commercial or something. At least that’s how it felt. Like it wasn’t real somehow. Like we were outside ourselves, watching it.
At first Mrs. Fernandez seemed confused. But then she motioned for us to come around the counter—and she separated us! “You in here, in my office,” she said to Jenna as she took her by the arm.
We three glanced at one another, our eyes saying what we could not say out loud: Remember everything. Be strong. We’re best friends.
After Jenna disappeared behind the office door, Mrs. Fernandez pointed her index finger at the room next door, the office of our assistant principal, and told Suzanne to go in there. But Suzanne just stared at her, like she was paralyzed. Then she started doing her lip-sucking thing, and there was a terrible, awkward moment when neither one of them moved. Mrs. Fernandez stood with her finger pointing and her gold charm bracelet dangling off her beefy wrist until Suzanne finally obeyed.
“And you,” Mrs. Fernandez said, motioning to me. She put a hand on my shoulder and looked around. Mrs. Sidley, my English teacher, was coming toward us with a bunch of papers in her hands. The principal asked her, “Could you please escort this young lady down to the guidance office?”
Mrs. Sidley’s surprised eyes caught mine. “Certainly,” she said.
I followed my English teacher’s big butt down a narrow hallway in the back of the office to the guidance counselor’s office and sat down on a hard plastic chair. The room didn’t have a real window in it, but the guidance counselor had made a fake one so it looked like it did. She put curtains up around a poster of a pretty-phony-looking mountain scene from Switzerland or someplace. Someplace with chalet houses. I mean, who is she kidding? We know that there is not a snow-capped mountain with chalets and cows grazing in the meadow across the street from Oakdale Middle School. There’s no oak and there’s no dale either. Just a trashy two-lane highway with a traffic light in front of the school driveway that blinks yellow all the time. And on the other side is a dry cleaner’s run by a Chinese family and Frank’s Auto Body Shop, where my cousin, Herky, works.
EAGLES SOAR. YOU CAN TOO, another poster shouted. Boy, I wished I was an eagle and could’ve soared right out of there.
Nervous, my eyes flicked to yet another poster, all fancy writing: To thine own self be true . . .—William Shakespeare.
I wondered what that meant, that Shakespeare quote. I thought about it while I was waiting on the hard chair to tell Mrs. Fernandez what Mr. Mattero did. And I thought I had that quote figured out, that it meant to always be the kind of person on the outside that you were on the inside. Or vice versa. In other words, to not be a big fat hypocrite or anything.
And that made me think back to when I was new in middle school. To sixth grade, how I was myself—and how that didn’t do me a lick of good because nobody liked me. I was a little bit chunky then—that was before my diet—and all my old friends from fifth grade, suddenly they were wearing really sexy clothes all the time—like tight jeans and crop tops—and talking to boys online after school and planning to hook up at the movies, and I didn’t want to do that stuff. (Of course, it’s not like I turned them down because they never even called me anymore.)
Suzanne was the only friend who stayed a friend in sixth grade. Those girls didn’t much like Suzanne either, but I don’t know why. Because of her asthma? Because she has to use an inhaler and she can’t run and do all the things we do in gym? Because she’s shy? Because of her bad skin? What? I don’t know. But we stuck together. We ate lunch together every day, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Cheetos, Oreos—a lot of junk food, come to think of it. Then, after school, after Suzanne and me got off the bus, we’d hang out at her house or my house and do our homework together. We played basketball Wednesday nights at the rec center, and on weekends we hooked up and went to the mall, even if it was just to visit the puppies in the pet store or squirt stuff on eac
h other at Bath & Body Works.
Still, it was a lonely year. At school all the time we had to listen to those other girls—girls who used to be our friends—whispering and giggling about their sleepovers and boys they liked and stuff like that. I didn’t like sixth grade, and I didn’t much like myself either. I stopped eating in sixth grade.
The next year, when school started, Suzanne and me and some other kids in our neighborhood got transferred to a different school because of overcrowding. I was glad, but it didn’t make any difference, because the cool girls at Oakdale ignored us, too—even though I had lost all that weight over the summer. Then, pretty soon after school started, Jenna moved into our neighborhood and showed up on our bus. She was so hot, I remember thinking how Jenna could pick any of the popular girls at Oakdale and be, like, friends immediately. But she didn’t. She decided she didn’t like the popular girls at our new school. She said they were sluts. She picked us—Suzanne and me—instead. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, who would have thought that could happen?
A couple of minutes passed while I was thinking back on how we became friends. I looked at the clock and wondered what we were missing in earth science. We were doing the chapter on weather, on wind and evaporation and stuff. Would the teacher notice we weren’t there?
I was tired of reading posters on the wall, but there wasn’t anything else to do. One of them said that getting respect starts with respecting yourself. I swung my head around to look out the door. Well, so far, Mrs. Fernandez hadn’t shown much respect for any of us. We weren’t bad kids like Jason Hershel, who brought firecrackers on the bus that could actually hurt someone. Besides, didn’t she care about what we said? What one of her teachers did? Didn’t she know what kind of courage it took for us to just walk in her office?
Mrs. Sidley, who had been very quiet, peeked back in looking a little sorry for me. “Claire, what happened?” she finally asked, stepping into the doorway.
What Mr. Mattero Did Page 2
