A Song to Take the World Apart

by Zan Romanoff

“Here?” Lorelei looks around them frantically but the hallway is empty, echoing.

  “We can go somewhere if you want,” he says. He tugs again, insistent. She pulls back against him and he rounds on her, furious light blazing in his eyes. His pupils have narrowed down to pinpricks. “Don’t make this difficult,” he says. His voice is rough and awful, scraped and ugly. “Please, Lorelei, please. I have to hear it again. I just have to know what you’re thinking, what you—”

  “Okay,” she says. “Okay, fine, I will. I promise. I will.” She was hoping to distract him, but his grip only tightens.

  Lorelei doesn’t know what she’s frightened of, exactly, or what she thinks he’ll do to her. She only knows that she doesn’t want to be pulled against her will, forced to sing, or told what to do. She knows that Jackson isn’t himself right now, not hardly, and that whatever she gives him will only fuel the fire that seems to be consuming him from inside. He’s already ashen with need.

  She can only see one way out of it, and her throat tightens at the thought.

  She waits until they’re pulling level with the classroom she’s supposed to be in, first-period Spanish with Ms. Brady. He stops when she does. “I’ll do it here,” she says. Jackson draws in too close for comfort. She starts to hum a melody, something sweet and broken. It’s a song she sang to the waves.

  He slackens into it, body loosening, his hand finally falling away from her wrist. His pupils swell in pleasure. His mouth dilates into a soft rounded O.

  “Listen to you,” he murmurs. Lorelei hears the echo of her own words: listen to me, listen to me. The sharp humiliation that follows comes out in the sound, and Jackson jerks back like he’s been burned. Lorelei takes the opportunity to wrench the door open and trip into her classroom, slamming it shut behind her.

  Maybe it worked, and he’ll believe that all she wants is for this to stop happening.

  Every head in the room turns her way. She barely notices. She’s still buzzing with the aftermath of the song and the pull of Jackson’s attention, and the weight of the thing she could feel between them: her mind at the edges of his.

  She finds her seat and spends the rest of the period in a dull-eyed daze.

  Jackson isn’t waiting for her when class ends.

  Lorelei usually eats lunch with Chris. Today she’s glad to have somewhere else to be, since she doesn’t want to deal with him and Jackson and the complicated mess she’s been making out of her life. She texts him, eating w Zoe, see you after school?

  The morning’s twitchy, nervous energy recedes as soon as she sits down at Zoe’s side. She feels like the shore being bared as the tide pulls away from it: only so many miles of soft, flat sand. The other girls sitting with them keep up their usual chatter. Lorelei drifts further toward calm on the familiar sounds.

  It’s only near the end of the period, when Zoe elbows her and gives her a knowing grin, that she really remembers why she’s there in the first place. They slide down to the end of the bench for some privacy. “Are you freaking out?” Zoe asks. “Honestly, I would be freaking out.”

  “It’s sort of about the singing thing, actually,” Lorelei says. “He wants to play for me. And have us try it out alone.”

  “Right. Instead of playing for you in the nice practice space they also have available.”

  “It’s a big deal that he invited me over at all,” Lorelei reminds her. “You know. With his mom and everything.”

  Zoe regards her gravely, and tucks an errant strand of hair behind Lorelei’s ear. Lorelei has been meaning to get it cut, but she’s been so busy lately that she keeps forgetting. It’s gotten a little wild, actually. When she wears it loose, she comes home at night to find it hopelessly tangled, no matter how carefully she brushes it smooth each morning. Chris says he likes the way it frames her face: like ocean spume, he said, and then laughed at himself. You know, the white part, the spray.

  It’s very different, the abstract idea that she’s pretty and the way it feels when he traces the curve of her cheek and tells her so.

  “You know what you’re doing, though, right?” Zoe says. “You want to be with him, really.”

  “I do.”

  “Because you know you don’t owe him anything. Not just because he’s making an effort. Not ever.”

  “Yeah.” Lorelei looks down the long bench to the rest of their friends, mostly pretty, serious girls. They’re gossiping and laughing, a few bent over late homework. Things felt safer in so many ways when she sat here every day, and ate in quiet while they talked.

  With Chris everything is terrifying because it’s new. And it’s that fear that’s made sharp corners between her and Jackson and Nik and Angela, between her and everyone else in her life. She’s never loved someone and had to expect to lose them before. She’s realistic about where Chris will be headed next fall: to college, probably, which even if it’s in-state will be a different world. She can’t expect he’ll try to take her with him.

  She’s never been alone in a house with a boy who wanted to kiss her before. She’s never sung with anyone, either, and she’s not sure she’ll be able to, even though she wants to so badly it burns. But she can’t say that to Zoe.

  “I don’t think I’m afraid because I don’t want to,” she says instead. “I think I just…don’t know what to expect.”

  “I’m looking forward to your report back,” Zoe says. The same hand that smoothed Lorelei’s hair comes up to hover in the air between them for a moment, and then falls back down. “Your first reports from the, ah, unexplored territories.”

  There’s no excuse for them to touch but Lorelei leans against Zoe’s shoulder anyway. Touching Chris always feels complicated, explosive. Zoe’s warmth at her side feels like animal comfort, like home.

  “Do you think you will? With Daniel?”

  “Who knows?” Zoe says. “I wouldn’t rule it out, I guess.”

  “It’s up to you,” Lorelei says. “I mean, obviously, it’s fine with me, if you do. Whatever you do with him. I trust you.”

  “I’m glad.” Zoe really does sound relieved. Lorelei wonders exactly how much crap Carina’s been giving her, and resolves to be better about the whole thing. Zoe deserves it.

  The bell rings. The sound is so shrill and sudden that Lorelei flinches. All of the morning’s fears rush over her again. She wants to cover her ears to keep everything out. Instead, she forces her breath to slow before standing and swinging her backpack up onto her shoulder. Zoe, still seated, looks up at her. “Be safe, Lorelei,” she says.

  “You too,” Lorelei says. “Okay, Zo? You too.”

  She spends the rest of the day walking close to the lockers and checking behind her every few steps to make sure she isn’t being followed. Jackson’s imaginary presence haunts the hallways; she wonders if she’s haunting him too, the ghost of her voice ringing in his ears. She’s so jumpy that Mrs. Whitlock pulls her aside at the end of class to make sure everything’s all right.

  I can’t go to Chris’s like this, she thinks desperately, making her way through the hall. I can’t—what can I— Jackson will be waiting with him on their usual bench out in front of the school. He’ll see her, he’ll say something, he’ll—

  “Watch it,” someone says as Lorelei brushes too hard against traffic moving in the opposite direction. She looks up to apologize and it’s Nik, only playacting at being gruff. He’s seemed a little more relaxed lately, something smoothing the corners of his eyes.

  He turns around and falls into step with her. “You seem distracted,” he says.

  “Mmm.”

  “You catching a ride home with us again or are you, uh, studying at Zoe’s?” He raises his eyebrows once, twice, three times.

  “Zoe’s,” Lorelei says.

  “You have the patience of a saint,” Nik tells her. “After that show, man. I don’t think I could listen to those songs over and over every week.” He thinks she’s just going to band practice. Lorelei doesn’t see the point in correcting him.

>   “They’re pretty good,” she says instead. “I don’t mind.”

  “You don’t mind for other reasons.”

  “It’s nice to be around,” Lorelei says. “Sometimes. Just. All of that sound.”

  “Yeah,” Nik says. “Our house is pretty quiet, huh.”

  “It kind of blew my mind, the first time I went to one of their shows. It was just—loud.”

  “They are definitely loud.”

  “Shut up!” Lorelei elbows her brother.

  “I’m glad you’re getting out of the house, though,” he says. “I used to worry about you a little bit. Jens and I have been screaming since we were kids, but you seemed to fit into that quiet in a way I never understood. You were always trailing Oma like this little blond shadow, and you never wanted to play or get dirty or loud. It seemed like you were happy to just—I don’t know. I think it’s good for you, getting out.”

  “Even with Chris?”

  “Even with Chris.”

  They’re nearing the bench. Chris is idly strumming his guitar. Jackson is rigid at his side. He turns his head as they approach and his eyes skip right over Nik, landing hard on Lorelei. She swallows around a lump in her throat.

  “Hey,” she says. Her mind races desperately and hooks into the first terrible thought it finds. “Do you think you could talk to Jackson?”

  “Why would I want to talk to Jackson?”

  The camaraderie of their walk dissolves. Nik looks at her with flinty eyes.

  “Um. He mentioned that you guys hung out sometimes? The two of you?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, he said— I’m supposed to go over to Chris’s,” she admits in a rush. “And he doesn’t think it’s a good idea, but, you know, you just said, he’s good for me, and we’re not gonna do anything, really, so, it would, uh, it would be nice if you could just distract him. Jackson. For a minute. For me.”

  “What do you know?” Nik asks. “What did he say?”

  Lorelei is torn between wanting to protect herself and knowing she owes Nik the truth: That Jackson never said anything. That he never would and never will. (For better or worse, she thinks.)

  “He didn’t say anything. I might have seen something. Once. Just for a minute.”

  Nik’s face flashes hurt, the expression so raw that Lorelei gets caught and cut by its sharp-toothed edge. He says, “You didn’t tell me.”

  “I wanted to let you keep it,” she says. “I didn’t want to— I didn’t think it mattered. If I didn’t tell.”

  “You can’t ask me to do this.” Nik looks at the bench, where Jackson has turned away from them to talk to Chris. The longing he allows himself is a brief, bare moment. Lorelei only catches a glimpse before it disappears completely. Then he’s composed again.

  “I’m sorry,” she says in her smallest voice. “God, Nik, I’m sorry.” She had assumed it was just like Jackson said it was: they messed around, and then they stopped. She had never considered that Nik might not have wanted it to.

  “You didn’t know.”

  “I didn’t. I thought you were okay with it.”

  He laughs humorlessly. “I’m fine with it,” he says. “C’mon, we’ll talk about this later.”

  Then, like it’s nothing at all, he does it. Nik puts on a face Lorelei hasn’t ever seen before, something too loose and sunny to be real. The tightness that stays around his eyes gives him away. Jackson doesn’t seem to notice.

  Chris sees Lorelei and gets up to greet her. He wraps an arm around her and starts walking them both toward the car. As they leave, she turns back to watch Nik and Jackson sitting and talking in public. So this is what Nik will allow himself: the part where he sits in the sunlight, and pretends he isn’t feeling anything out of the ordinary.

  CHRIS AND HIS MOTHER live at the border between Santa Monica and Venice in a nice house in a pretty, well-groomed neighborhood. Whatever else has been going on in Mrs. Paulson’s life, she’s kept the property up beautifully: there’s fresh paint on the eaves, and flowers are blooming in the garden. Inside it’s all dark wood and big windows. The whole place shines with glossy, lacquered stillness.

  The house is quiet in its own way, not like Lorelei’s, in which quiet is just another quality of the air. Here there’s a thick, stale sadness she can almost smell, something musty and pervasive that refuses to be swept out or wiped up. For a moment Lorelei imagines Chris’s mother on her knees, scrubbing and scrubbing, going out of her mind trying to make the house right again. Then she shakes herself out of the fantasy. Mrs. Paulson probably doesn’t even do the cleaning. Maybe they have a maid.

  Chris’s hand is warm in hers. He tugs her past the living room, and the den, toward the stairs.

  “Hang on,” she says. She might be stalling, just a little bit. “I don’t get the full tour?”

  “It’s a pretty boring tour,” he says. “The downstairs is really Mom’s domain. Unless you have an interest in interior decorating I didn’t know about?”

  Lorelei shakes her head. She doesn’t know if it’s her place to ask, but he brought her here. Maybe she has the right to be bold. “I thought— You said your dad had instruments,” she says. “I was wondering if they were still around.”

  “Some of them are in storage,” Chris says. “People packed them up before Mom could stop them. But the rest are still—”

  He pulls her with him, toward a set of sliding doors Lorelei assumed led out to the porch.

  Instead, they open onto a small sunroom. It’s a little gem of a space: French doors look out over the backyard, and light is streaming in through the windows, winter-bright. It catches on three guitars, a couple of basses, and the black back of an enormous piano that sits in one corner. Lorelei pulls away from Chris to trail her fingertips over it. The sunlight is so white that it turns her skin translucent.

  He brushes a hand over her shoulder, and rests it gently at the nape of her neck. “Can you play?”

  “Nah,” she says. “I never learned.”

  “You should.” He drops a kiss on the top of her head, and circles around her to sit on the piano’s bench. The hinges are silent when he lifts the lid. “Mom keeps it tuned,” he says. His hands are soft on the keys. “He barely played it, and I’m not—I hardly know how, but—she keeps things going,” he says, almost to himself. “She does.” He shakes his head and smiles up at her. “Anyway. Lorelei. Lorelei. Do you know that song?”

  “What song?”

  Chris hums a few notes before he starts to sing. “You told me tales of love and glory / same old sad songs, same old story / the sirens sing no lullaby / and no one knows but Lorelei.” He tries to pick it out on the piano and can’t quite get it right. “Seriously,” he says. “No one’s ever sung you that song before?”

  “Nope.”

  But that’s what Hannah must have meant about her name—that it was a reference to this, or something like it. She wonders whether her mother or her grandmother picked it out for her, and what she meant by it, exactly. Just now it seems like a cruel kind of joke. Same old sad songs, same old story.

  “My dad loved the Pogues. I can’t believe I haven’t sung it for you before. Maybe that’s your song.”

  “Maybe.” Lorelei circles around the piano and sits down next to him on the bench. “Seems kind of narcissistic, though, to sing about myself.”

  “You’re a siren on the rocks all right,” Chris agrees. “My Lorelei.”

  She knows what he’s talking about, but for a second she hears it wrong, and thinks of a siren like a bell sounding or a klaxon warning danger. A wail piercing the peaceful air.

  Chris sings the next line softly, just to her. “River, river have mercy / take me down to the sea / for if I perish on these rocks / my love no more I’ll see.” It’s the sweetest thing Lorelei has ever heard.

  “I’m ready to go upstairs now,” she says.

  Chris closes the lid on the piano keys carefully, and then takes her hand in his to lead the way.

 
Lorelei has never kissed a boy on a bed before. It makes more sense, basically: The rucked-up mess of Chris’s sheets and quilt is soft under her back. They can fit together, here, and find space to get comfortable. He hovers over her and doesn’t kiss her. “We don’t have to,” he says. “I didn’t just bring you here for—whatever. I mean. We don’t have to do anything.”

  Lorelei thinks of Zoe saying the same thing earlier, how abstract it all seemed, sitting next to her in the cafeteria. Then it was just concepts: mouth, hands, and, or— Now it’s her and Chris, and the way their bodies want to touch each other.

  “What if I want to?” she says, and leans up to kiss him instead.

  Still, he’s careful with her. His hands smooth gently over her T-shirt and down to the sharp corners of her hip bones. He touches her like she’s unfamiliar territory, which, she supposes, she is.

  “You’ve done this before,” she says at some point.

  “Not with you.”

  The light in the sky falls low. Lorelei knows what sunset looks like from the coast, at the earth’s raw edge. Now she knows what it looks like sprawled across Chris’s bed, from behind her eyelids. She takes her shirt off and takes his shirt off. He’s a little surprised.

  “I didn’t think I would be in charge of this operation,” she says when he hesitates.

  “I didn’t know what you’d want,” he says. He takes his hands off her and gestures to the space that’s opened up between their bodies.

  “I’m not sure I know, really,” Lorelei says. “I’m just making it up as I go along.”

  “Improvising.”

  “Sure.” A thought occurs to her. “If you don’t want to—” she says. “We don’t, um, I don’t expect anything. Obviously.”

  Chris laughs and butts his forehead against her shoulder, pushing her back onto the pillows. They smell like him, like his soft, sleeping body.

  “I want to do everything with you,” he says. “I just— You’re younger than I am, you know? And you’ve never—before?”

  “Not really,” Lorelei admits. She feels unaccountably safe, even now, as bare as she’s ever been. Chris leans over her and looks down at the plain black bra Zoe helped her pick out at Victoria’s Secret just before this whole thing got so, so real.