Drum Roll, Please

by Lisa Jenn Bigelow

  Sure enough, Donna looked disappointed. “Well, unless you’re planning on playing the mash-up to end all mash-ups, you need to pick one,” she said.

  I suppose it was too much to expect David to rescue me. Sure enough, he’d pulled off the bandanna and was rolling it around his fingers. His hair hid his eyes. Everyone else watched me expectantly. “Um,” I said. “What if we did an original?”

  Everyone stared at me like a squid was coming out of my mouth.

  Donna’s eyebrows rocketed. “An original,” she repeated. “As in, something you wrote? Well. This is news.”

  It was news to me, too. Why had I said it?

  “But you don’t write—” Adeline started, but stopped herself.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Caleb said. “When are we supposed to learn a new song?”

  “Caleb makes a fair point, Melly,” Donna said. “Do you have charts for us?”

  I shouldn’t have said anything. I didn’t have a song for the band! I barely had an inkling. I’d never written a song in my life. But ever since my parents told me about the divorce, I’d been wondering how to make them hear my side of the story. What better time than the end-of-camp show, when they’d be a captive audience? They couldn’t brush me off with a full band backing me up and the sound system cranked to eleven.

  I swallowed. “I’ll have them by practice tomorrow. And if I don’t, or everyone hates it, then David should pick something.”

  “We can’t seriously be considering this,” Caleb said.

  “What,” said Adeline, “are you saying you’re not up to the challenge? Personally, I think we should go for it. David, back me up.” It was more of an order than a request.

  He blushed and stared at the floor. “It’s fine with me.”

  I felt a burst of gratitude and guilt. Adeline was standing up for me when I’d gone so long not standing up for her.

  “Okay,” Donna said. “This is your band, and you call the shots. Melly—” I forced myself to meet her gaze. It wasn’t critical or concerned, as I’d expected. She looked almost proud. “I’ll be very interested to see what you have for us.”

  Me, too, Donna. Me, too.

  “Anyway, time’s up for today. Bring your ideas for a band name to practice tomorrow.”

  Adeline waited outside Trolltunga for me. It was the first time in so long we’d been alone together. Instantly my stomach was a tangled cat’s cradle. But the time for chickening out had passed. “Will you sit with me at lunch?” I asked.

  “Do you want me to?” She sounded skeptical. “Will Olivia be okay with it?”

  “I think so.” After our talk last night, I certainly hoped so.

  “How’d she react?” Adeline said. “You know, when you told her?”

  I laughed a little. “She was surprised.”

  She laughed, too. “Which is . . . not surprising.”

  “And she was sorry.”

  “Sorry? What for?”

  “Sorry she wasn’t nicer. She didn’t know. Which was my fault. She thought—”

  “I was trying to steal you,” Adeline finished, rolling her eyes.

  “I guess it sounds stupid,” I said.

  Olivia and I had seen other kids ditch their friends for a more popular group or something, and we’d sworn it would never happen to us. Our friendship was too strong. But honestly, this summer was the first time the threat had seemed real. Now I knew how scary and horrible it was. The fear didn’t seem stupid at all.

  “Anyway,” Adeline said. “If she’s nice to me, I’ll be nice to her. I always figured someone would have to be pretty great to be best friends with you. But Melly . . .”

  When she said my name, I felt as warm and melty as a dab of butter on a slice of hot toast. “Yeah?”

  “What you said about having written a song?” Her forehead crinkled. “When did that happen?”

  “Well, that’s the tricky part,” I said. “It hasn’t, yet.”

  Adeline let out a delighted, incredulous ha! “Just when I think I’m starting to know you.”

  “You are,” I promised. “But I need your help. What are you doing this afternoon?”

  Everyone was on their best behavior at lunch. Olivia was extra polite, asking Adeline questions about her music and where she was from and nodding enthusiastically at every answer. When I told her Adeline and I needed to work on band stuff, she said, “Absolutely not a problem!” She was trying a little too hard, but I didn’t care. Things were so much better already.

  Adeline picked me up at my tent after B-flat. “Where do you want to go?” she asked. “Meadow? Library? Practice stall?”

  “Do you think a canoe would be too tricky?” It had been so peaceful on the lake, so far away from everything else.

  Adeline thought it over. “Possibly. But I have another idea. Got your notebook?”

  “I don’t have a notebook,” I said. Then I remembered what I did have. I went back and got the stationery and pen Mom had packed me.

  Down at Joan Jetty, Adeline said to Skip, “One johnboat and two life jackets, please.”

  The johnboat was blunt at the ends and painted green. We helped Skip carry it to the water’s edge and plugged a long, wooden oar into the lock on either side. Adeline sat on the center bench with the oars, facing Skip and me. I climbed into the nearest seat. Skip pushed us off. Adeline dipped the oars into the rippled glass water and rowed us backward from shore. The oars creaked and splashed.

  “Not as fast as a canoe,” she said, “but it’s more stable. Plus, I don’t have to stare at the back of your head the whole time.”

  I said, “But now you have to stare at my face.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Her smile made my stomach flip. “So this song you’re writing . . .”

  “I haven’t even started,” I admitted. “I have some ideas but nothing written.”

  “Ideas are a start,” Adeline said. “Why don’t you write them down?”

  “They’re probably stupid. They’d probably make a terrible song.”

  She shook her head. “That’s just fear talking. Nothing’s scarier than a blank page.”

  Nothing? What about skydiving or car accidents or war? But I remembered standing at the edge of the dock, inching out over the water to dive. I remembered teetering at the peak of the Shivering Timbers, holding my breath, not knowing when the wheels would release. It wasn’t the doing that was the scariest part. It was the anticipation. I picked up my pen.

  “Write three words,” Adeline said. “That’s something Poppy has us do in songwriting workshop when we’re feeling stuck. Three words. Any three. And me? I’ll keep rowing.”

  I uncapped my pen and held it over the stationery balanced on my knees. The cheery yellow suns around the margins were completely wrong for my thoughts. I lowered the pen and wrote lightly, afraid to press the tip against the paper, Parents.

  It looked harmless enough. I pressed harder, adding, Divorce.

  Better, but it still didn’t get to the heart of the matter. I wrote in capital letters, hard enough to make an impression on the sheet below, MAD.

  But that still wasn’t it. Mad was what little kids got when they didn’t get a pack of M&M’s in the grocery aisle, or when someone else snatched the toy they were playing with. What I felt was way bigger than that. Adeline was still rowing, not even looking at me, so I set my pen to the paper again.

  There was no warning. That’s the worst part. It’s not like I expected them to ask my opinion, because obviously I would have said don’t do it. But afterward it’s like I still don’t get to have an opinion. They expect me to go to camp and act like everything is normal. They expect me to come home and say, okay, I get it, everything is fine. Well, it’s not fine! I may have to live with their decision . . . but I do NOT have to be okay with it. No matter how much they may want me to be the quiet little Melly they’re used to. I am FURIOUS and HEARTBROKEN and I am NOT going to pretend I’m not. They can’t tell me how to feel.


  I stopped, my hand cramped. I’d used up three sheets of stationery without realizing it, flipping from one to the next when it filled up. My pen hovered over the page, but after a moment I realized I’d said what I needed to say. I capped the pen and set it on my lap.

  Adeline settled the dripping oars in the boat. “That was way more than three words.”

  I barked a little laugh. “Yeah. I guess it was.”

  “Can I read it? Or can you read it to me?” she asked.

  I didn’t think I could, not without crying, so I passed the pages to her. She smoothed them out and read them silently. When she was done she returned them.

  “If you had to summarize this,” she said, “in ten words or less, what would you say? What would you tell your parents?”

  “Easy,” I said. “Just take the last sentence. It’s all there.”

  Adeline nodded. “That’s your song.”

  I stared at her. “My song,” I echoed.

  “Sure.”

  “‘They can’t tell me how to feel’? That’s not remotely poetic.”

  “Poetry, schmoetry. This is the cake. The rest is just frosting. Now, scoot over.”

  I made room on my bench. The metal was hot where I hadn’t been sitting. Between that and the sudden nearness of Adeline, I was roasting.

  Her knee brushed against mine as she pulled the blank stationery and pen out of my hands, and there was that electricity again, the pulse zipping out of my heart and through my limbs and into Adeline and back again. When it came back, it felt different, as if it were carrying something of her. Something different. Something wonderful.

  Adeline hunched beside me, scribbling words. They weren’t neat or pretty like the stationery. She crossed out and drew little circles and arrows, all the while asking me questions, listening to my answers, and asking more questions. We tossed rhymes back and forth. She hummed snatches of melody. I tapped rhythms on my knees. Her song the night before had been so pretty, so polished. Had it started like this, dull and pitted and heavy, spending hours in the tumbler before its pattern shone through?

  “This still isn’t remotely poetic,” I said when we were through.

  Adeline rolled her eyes. “Give yourself a break. It’s your first song.”

  “It’s literally the most literal song ever.”

  “Okay. But does it say what you want it to say?”

  I sighed. “I guess so. I mean, I don’t think it could be any more direct than it is.”

  “Then it’s fine. Now, what do you think about it going like this?” She sang a few bars, combining lyrics, beat, and melody just like that.

  “How do you do it?” I asked, shaking my head.

  “Poppy’s workshops help. But it’s like anything else. You keep doing it, you get better.”

  “No,” I said. “I mean, how are you so sure? Of everything? All the time?”

  My words hung in the steamy summer air. Adeline blew out her breath. “More practice I guess. And a lot of faking.”

  I waited. The boat, our tiny island, bobbed in the breeze.

  “Here’s what I think,” Adeline said. “When your dad is sick and getting a little worse every day, you have to think positive. You’d go crazy if you didn’t. Especially having two little brothers. They don’t get it. They don’t get how serious things are, because things have been like this since they can remember. They didn’t see the before to know how bad the after is.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I put my hand over hers and squeezed.

  “I guess I’m trying to say I know better than to expect everything will turn out all right in the end. Some things just don’t. But even when I can’t expect, I still hope.”

  “When you kissed me—”

  “I’m sorry,” Adeline said. “I should’ve asked you first. I was so sure you were feeling something, too, that it wasn’t just me. Maybe I let my hoping turn into expecting. Or maybe I was afraid if I asked, you’d say no. Either way it was wrong.”

  I thought of David, who hadn’t asked either. “I probably would’ve been too surprised to say yes or no,” I said, “but I guess you’re right. Asking would’ve been the right thing to do.”

  “It’s more than that,” Adeline said. “I knew you were going through something with your family. I should’ve respected that. I told you, when I come here—it’s like my vacation, right? My little paradise in the woods? But the first year I came, my mom basically dragged me, kicking and screaming.”

  “How come?”

  “It wasn’t long after my dad was diagnosed,” said Adeline. “We’d known something wasn’t right for a while, and the pieces had finally fallen into place. But I didn’t understand how it worked, that he’d gradually get worse over a matter of years, little bit by little bit. I was positive I’d come home from school one day and he’d have dropped dead. It was getting to the point where I wouldn’t eat and could barely sleep. Which of course only stressed my parents out more. They decided the only way to calm me down was to get me out of the situation entirely.”

  “So they sent you here,” I said.

  Adeline nodded. “I didn’t even play guitar back then, but Mom saw a cashier at the food co-op wearing a Camp Rockaway shirt and thought it sounded like the perfect place to put me. I couldn’t believe they wanted to send me away. The way I saw it, they needed my help, and what if Dad got worse while I was gone? It was only two weeks, but it was awful. At first, anyway.”

  “What happened?”

  “Much as I hated to admit it, they were right. Getting away was exactly what I needed. It gave me a chance to focus on myself for a change, instead of being so focused on my family. By the time camp was over, I still wanted to come home. But I also knew I wanted to come back every summer, for as long as I could.”

  “And here you are,” I said, not sure what all this had to do with me.

  “Melly, meeting you—” Adeline said. Her cheeks flushed dark rose. “I’ve had crushes here before. You know Yasmina? If you think Olivia had it bad for Noel, you should’ve seen me last summer.”

  “You’re kidding!” I said. I’d known Adeline and Yasmina were close, but I’d always assumed they were plain old friends.

  “Not even a little bit,” Adeline said. “It didn’t help that she was a year older. I basically worshipped her. It’s embarrassing to think about. When she and this Bass Cliff guy started hanging out, and I realized she was only ever going to like me as a friend, I was devastated.”

  “Did she know?”

  “She’s never said anything, which is fine with me. Things are better this way.” Adeline shrugged. “But you—you’re the first person I thought might really like me back. So I went after you, full steam ahead, only thinking about what I wanted. Not about what you might need.”

  “Look,” I said, inching closer. “Whatever you think you did wrong, I forgive you, okay? And I do like you back. And I want you to kiss me.”

  In the movies, everyone closes their eyes when they kiss. I didn’t want to. Not just because I was afraid of missing Adeline’s lips and getting her ear instead. I didn’t want to miss anything about the moment, from the clear bright sky over the deep blue lake, to our little johnboat aimlessly floating, to the blue and black damselfly resting its wings on the blade of an oar.

  I leaned forward, eyes locked on Adeline’s so there would be no question what it meant, and kissed her. And when our lips touched, I could’ve sworn the world was spinning backward, the johnboat had capsized after all, and we were tumbling headfirst into the water.

  But there was the smell of sunscreen on Adeline’s cheeks, her chapped lips, both soft and rough, against mine, and the sun setting us on fire.

  “Okay then,” Adeline said shakily, pulling back. “Okay.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Twenty-Five

  At band practice, Donna wasted no time. “Okay, Melly. Don’t keep us in suspense. Where’s this song you have for us?”

  Adeline had shown me the c
hart at breakfast. “I finished it last night after lights-out,” she’d whispered, so Olivia and the others couldn’t hear. “Had to hide my flashlight because Poppy kept catching me. I’ll make copies after breakfast.”

  She’d written “How to Feel” in block letters at the top, then the melody line and chords and lyrics. It was so unlike the chicken scratch on that ridiculous sunshine paper. It felt real.

  After shuffling around the cabin, handing everyone a copy, I sat behind the drums, staring at my hands. Donna hummed the melody, tapping her hand against her thigh. “I think I get the idea,” she said, “but why don’t you sing it through for us?”

  I froze. My imagination had jumped to everyone singing together, everyone else’s voices drowning out mine—the way I was used to. The way, I had to admit, I sometimes preferred. But of course, we didn’t have a recording for everyone to listen to. That was my job.

  “I could sing it for you, if you want,” Adeline said.

  It would’ve been so easy to say yes, and part of me sure wanted to. But it was my song. I had to do this for myself. “No,” I said, “I’m okay.”

  Adeline nodded. “I’ll back you up if you change your mind.”

  Hands trembling, I lifted my sticks and clicked them together. One—two—one, two, three, four. Adeline came in on guitar. Then I started singing, grateful we’d kept the melody super simple and smack in the middle of my lousy range. I didn’t even have to sing, really. I could almost talk my way through the lyrics, pretending I was Lou Reed. No one would accuse him of having a beautiful voice, but he was a legend. That was one of the great things about rock, I was coming to accept. You could have the worst voice in the world, and it didn’t matter as long as you sang like you meant it.

  Of course, I wasn’t Lou Reed. My voice shook along with my hands, and I stumbled more than once, even though I was playing at a turtle’s pace. I kept my eyes on Adeline’s, occasionally glancing at the chart, more for security’s sake than out of necessity. We’d sung all the way back into shore yesterday. I knew the song by heart.