Our Song

by A. Destiny

  I would have blushed at her comment about my non-figure, but I was having too much fun. So I just rolled my eyes at Ms. Betty and kept dancing, doing a simultaneous heel spin and head bobble.

  By the time I finished my twirl, Ms. Betty had yanked Jacob away from the dishes. Then, with our hands still in hers, she turned us toward each other and sashayed backward, extricating herself from our little dance party.

  For a moment, we froze. Jacob looked a little panicked, and I’m sure I did too.

  “Dance,” Ms. Betty ordered us.

  We danced.

  At first we did it with irony, exchanging a silent we’re-just humoring-our-elder-and-nobody-shall-know-of-this promise.

  But then Aretha started chanting, “R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me. R-E-S-P-EEEE-C-T . . .”

  And, well, I defy anyone not to go wild when you get to that part of the song.

  I threw my arms over my head and swiveled like a corkscrew. Jacob started pogoing.

  A moment later we were singing along: “Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me!” and dancing together. We quickly found a rhythm. When I swayed backward, he swayed forward, and vice versa. Our faces moved so close together that I could see tiny beads of sweat on Jacob’s upper lip and I could smell the sharp, clean scent of his skin.

  That’s when I stopped singing. I couldn’t inhale Jacob’s wonderful smell and shout “Sock it to me” at the same time.

  But I didn’t stop dancing, not until the last note thrummed out of the radio. When it did, Jacob and I landed with thuds, breathing hard, our cheeks flushed. I giggled while Jacob swiped at his forehead with his T-shirt sleeve.

  Only then did we realize that Ms. Betty had disappeared into the big walk-in pantry on the other side of the kitchen.

  We were alone.

  And our faces were still very, very close together.

  This was the moment when we should have pulled away from each other, laughing and rolling our eyes at our own goofiness. But the moment passed and we didn’t move. We remained eye to eye.

  I couldn’t catch my breath, and it wasn’t from the singing and dancing.

  Just when I felt my lips tingle in anticipation, just when my eyelids began to flutter closed, just when I thought that something momentous was about to happen between Jacob’s mouth and mine, the kitchen door slammed open.

  Jacob and I jumped apart. Then we spun around to find Mrs. Teagle standing in the doorway, one shocked hand on her mama-bird chest. She looked from us to the floor beneath our feet to our dishwashing station.

  I looked around too, noticing for the first time the chaos that our little dance party had wrought. There were puddles of soapy water on the floor and a pile of unrinsed dishes congealing in the sink. The Hobart’s green light indicated that a tray of dishes was long finished and waiting to be unloaded. I guess I hadn’t heard the beep over the loud music.

  “My lord!” Ms. Teagle said, turning the radio off. “What’s been going on here? You can hear the noise almost up to the great hall!”

  “Oh, Mrs. Teagle,” I gasped. “Um . . . what’s going on is . . .”

  I looked pleadingly at Jacob for help.

  “We were moved by the music, ma’am,” Jacob said seriously. “We started dancing. You can understand, can’t you? I mean, as director of a school that’s all about music and art?”

  I had to bite my lip hard to keep from laughing.

  “I understand that you don’t seem to be taking your punishment very seriously,” Mrs. Teagle said with a frown. “I’m of a mind to give you kids another night of dish duty to teach you a lesson about finishing what you’ve started.”

  I gave Jacob a quick glance, looking for the telltale neck splotches he got when he was upset.

  They weren’t there.

  But when I looked at his eyes to see what other emotional intel I could glean, his glasses were too soap-speckled and steam-fogged to see anything.

  As we waited for Mrs. Teagle to pronounce our fate, I felt something like hope. It seemed I did want to spend another night with pruney fingers, scalded skin, hat-head . . . and Jacob.

  But Mrs. Teagle shrugged.

  “Just get the dishes finished and clean up the rest of this mess,” she said with a tight smile, “and we’ll call it even. I think it’s time for everyone to get back to their normal schedules anyway.”

  She peered around the kitchen, and only when it was clear that Ms. Betty wasn’t within earshot, added, “I’ve gotten a few complaints about the scones. They’re too fancy! It’s time for Ms. Betty to give up on that Yankee.”

  “You mean Martha Stewart?” I squeaked. “That Yankee?” Having to hold in so much laughter was making my stomach muscles hurt!

  “No worries, Mrs. Teagle,” Jacob said. He pointed at the baking counter, where a couple of deep steel pans held Ms. Betty’s expanding yeast dough. “Those are going to be cinnamon rolls in the morning.”

  “Mmm, Betty’s cinnamon rolls,” Mrs. Teagle purred, a dreamy smile on her face. “Now that’s more like it.”

  She looked at her watch.

  “Shame you’ll miss the sing-along tonight,” she said. “It’s over in twenty minutes. But I would like to see you there tomorrow.”

  She glared at us, and her voice went sharp again.

  “Am I clear?” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jacob and I said automatically.

  “All righty, then,” Mrs. Teagle burbled. Like so many Southern ladies, she was an expert at turning charm into menace and back again. “Good night, darlings.”

  After Mrs. Teagle left, Jacob and I allowed ourselves one more belly laugh before we got back to work.

  We’d become such experts at loading and unloading the Hobart that we didn’t even finish much later than usual. After we’d transferred the last stack of dishes to a clean cart, we used rags to soak up the puddles on the floors.

  Jacob scoured the sink with what seemed like extra attention, and I used stainless-steel cleaner on the counters instead of the usual spray bottle of soapy water. I buffed them until they shone.

  After that, we looked at each other blankly. There was nothing left to do.

  Together we looked over at Ms. Betty. She was back at her work, hauling out baking pans, a rolling pin, and other pastry-making tools.

  Jacob looked at me and raised his eyebrows in a question.

  I knew exactly what he was asking. I didn’t think twice about my answer.

  “Ms. Betty,” I called across the kitchen, “want some help with those?”

  She laughed.

  “What? Haven’t you had enough of this place yet?”

  “We’re just angling for a hot cinnamon bun,” Jacob said.

  “Well, too bad for you, these are rising overnight and won’t be ready till tomorrow,” Ms. Betty said.

  Jacob shrugged and grinned.

  “Oh well,” he said. “Then I guess we’ll be on our way—”

  “Hold it right there!” Ms. Betty cried, pointing at us with her rolling pin. “You offered. I’m acceptin’. Get some clean aprons on and get yourselves over here.”

  We spent the next forty-five minutes rolling out spongy swaths of dough, sprinkling them with a streusel of butter, sugar, and cinnamon, and coiling it all into spirals. Ms. Betty then used a scary-looking cleaver to chop the long rolls into fist-size buns.

  As we worked, we sang along with more Motown songs, told jokes, and snuck tastes of the streusel.

  Then, when there was really nothing left to do, Jacob and I hugged Ms. Betty good-bye and left the kitchen. By then, my fingers had unwrinkled, and they smelled like cinnamon.

  Jacob and I walked slowly toward the dorms. Our feet crunched, crunched, crunched on the gravel path while the crickets and cicadas called to one another. The silence between us was comfortable, until we got to the three-pronged fork in the path. One fork led to the women’s and family dorms, one to the men’s, and the last headed to the little cottages where
Nanny and the other instructors stayed.

  The space behind my sternum felt hollow. I somehow recognized the feeling as pre-loneliness.

  After tonight, I realized, I would see Jacob only at meals. Those happened three times a day, but they were obviously far from private. They were also often dominated by Annabelle’s long lectures and Isabelle and Marnie’s quilting-bee gossip. (Okay, the gossip was usually pretty good, but still . . .)

  I also realized that even before kitchen duty had turned into a dance party, it had been kind of . . . fun. When can you say that about a dishwashing job?

  Except . . . I wasn’t saying any of this to Jacob. I couldn’t. It would have been too mortifying.

  The one thing I absolutely didn’t know about Jacob was whether he was also having these confusing, perhaps-more-than-friend-like feelings about me.

  I wasn’t about to try to find out.

  That’s his job, I thought to myself as we stood at the forks in the path, not yet saying good-bye. If anybody’s going to say anything, it’s got to be him.

  This wasn’t because he was the boy and I was the girl.

  No, it was because he was the earnest, matter-of-fact one and I was the cagey, embarrassment-prone one.

  So I waited one beat longer. Would Jacob seize this perfect opportunity, when the night air smelled cool and sweet and a big crescent moon hung above our heads?

  Jacob shoved his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders up to his ears. He gazed up at the inky, twinkly sky for a moment.

  Then finally, finally, he said something.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever forget Ms. Betty dancing to Aretha Franklin,” he said.

  And even though I was disappointed that he was talking about Ms. Betty instead of us, I had to laugh.

  “Yeah, that was something to see,” I replied.

  “It was fun,” Jacob said. “Tonight.”

  I wanted to search his face to see if there was some deeper meaning attached to the statement. And by fun, I mean dancing with you, making pastry together, and oh yeah, almost kissing next to Hobart.

  You know, something like that.

  But Jacob was still gazing up at the stars. I couldn’t read his face at all. So I just offered a lame reply.

  “It was,” I agreed. “Fun.”

  I waited for him to say something else. Or do something else, like take my hand or touch my shoulder or put his lips softly on mine—

  “Well, good night!” Jacob said, suddenly tearing his gaze from the sky so he could smile at me. He gave a little wave and abruptly turned to tromp down the path to the men’s dorms. He headed away so quickly, I barely had a chance to call after him, “Uh, yeah, good night.”

  I hoped he couldn’t hear the wistfulness in my voice.

  As I headed down my own path, I suddenly became very tired. My footsteps grew heavy and shuffling. The scuffing of my boots on the pebbles was so loud that I almost didn’t hear Jacob call to me.

  Luckily, though, I have the Finlayson ears. I stopped and turned toward him.

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday,” he observed.

  “Um, yeah?” I said. It felt awkward talking loudly to each other across the ten-foot pie slice of grass that separated our pathways.

  “Well, that means we have the day off,” Jacob said. “I think I’m going to take a hike.”

  “Oh,” I replied. “Where are you going?”

  “I haven’t tried the Saturn trail yet,” he said. “You know the one that makes a loop up and down the mountain?”

  “I remember that from the last time I was here,” I said. “It’s a pretty hike. Kind of long, though.”

  “I like long walks,” Jacob said.

  I hesitated for a moment before I said, “So do I.”

  Jacob shrugged.

  “Well, I’m going right after breakfast,” he said, “if you want to come.”

  It was not a romantic proposal.

  It sounded more like an accidental date, like I’ll be there and you’ll be there so we’ll both be there, but not really, you know, there together.

  But still, it made that hollow feeling inside my ribs go away. So I nodded at Jacob.

  “Right after breakfast,” I confirmed.

  And when I resumed my walk to my dorm, I found that my step had lightened again and I couldn’t stop smiling.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The hike might have been wonderful. There was one rub. Late Saturday night the temperature spiked, rolling in with the dark like a damp, oppressive blanket.

  Around midnight, Annabelle and I cranked up our ceiling fan and tossed off our quilts, sleeping only under thin top sheets. At three a.m. I could hear her tossing around, flipping her pillow over in a desperate search for a cool spot. It wasn’t there. I knew this because I kept doing the exact same thing.

  Finally, around five thirty, we gave up, threw on swimsuits, and headed for the lake with towels draped around our necks.

  We kicked off our flip-flops and walked on the grass so our feet wouldn’t crunch on the gravel paths, waking up anybody who’d managed to sleep in the heat. We didn’t speak for the same reason.

  When we reached a safe distance from the dorms, I expected Annabelle to start talking, probably about global warming. So I headed her off at the pass.

  “It happens almost every summer, just so you know,” I said.

  Annabelle turned to me, her eyes cloudy with thought.

  “What?” she asked.

  “The heat,” I said, gesturing through the thick air with a limp hand. “It’s not necessarily a sign of the environmental apocalypse. It’s just part of living in the South.”

  When Annabelle didn’t respond, I added nervously, “You know, in case you weren’t prepared, coming from up north.”

  “Oh, that,” Annabelle said absently. She smiled, even as she lifted her mane of ringlets and fanned the back of her neck with her hand. “Oh, this is so much better than a New York heat wave. There, you have cement baking the soles of your feet and taxis blowing hot air up your legs. And the smell! Ugh. At least here, it feels clean and green.”

  “And hot,” I noted with a laugh in my voice.

  “And hot,” she said. I was not used to such brevity from Annabelle. She was clearly distracted, but I wasn’t about to ask her why. Not when the heat was making my brain fuzzy and I hadn’t had any caffeine yet.

  After another minute or so of silence, Annabelle stopped in her tracks and turned to me.

  “How do you do it?” she asked.

  “How do I do what?” I asked. Annabelle was seventeen, gorgeous, self-assured, and (so she thought) knowledgeable about everything. What could I possibly be doing better than her?

  “How are you staying so together?” Annabelle asked. “I’m a basket case over Owen, but you, you make falling in love look like a breeze!”

  “Love?” I squawked, skidding to a stop in the dewy grass. “Owen? Love? Annabelle, what are you talking about?”

  “Hello?” she replied. “You and Jacob.”

  I widened my eyes and started to shake my head.

  “I’m not sure if anybody else has caught on to you,” she said, ignoring me. “Don’t worry. It’s just, well, I’m your roommate. And I’m very intuitive. Except, well, except when it comes to my crush. I’m a nervous wreck, Nell! I mean, do I tell him how I feel? Do I not tell him, but just show him? Do I just wait for him to come to me? That doesn’t seem very feminist, but . . . Anyway, how did it happen for you?”

  “How did what happen?” I said.

  “How did you and Jacob become an item?” Annabelle asked.

  “An item?” I squawked again. I was beginning to sound as birdlike as Mrs. Teagle. “Where did you get that idea?”

  “Please, you disappear with him every night after dinner,” Annabelle said. She set off again toward the lake, and I stumbled after her. “And didn’t you go to the river with him a couple of days ago?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “That’s
totally romantic,” she said. “I mean, you don’t spend that much time with someone that you don’t adore, you know?”

  “I—I don’t know, Annabelle,” I blurted. “It’s not like that between me and Jacob. At least I think it’s not. Not on his part, anyway. Oh, who knows, maybe it is! The bottom line is, I don’t know because nothing’s happened between us.”

  “Really?” Annabelle asked skeptically.

  “I’m pretty sure I’d remember if I’d kissed Jacob,” I replied with an eye roll.

  “Just because you aren’t kissing,” Annabelle said, “doesn’t mean nothing’s happening between you.”

  “Oh,” I said. I blinked as I pictured Jacob’s smile, which seemed different, special, when it was directed at me.

  Then I thought about our time together and that thing he’d said to me in the kitchen, the compliment lost to the cacophony of the dishwasher.

  I remembered him bent over the infirmary doorknob with my bobby pin, taking a risk for me.

  As Annabelle and I rounded the thicket of trees that separated the lake from the rest of campus, she said something else.

  “A few nights ago, you told me I shouldn’t overthink things with Owen,” she said. “But maybe you should be thinking about things with Jacob a little more.”

  “You know, I think you’re ri—”

  “Oh my God!” Annabelle cut me off and clutched my arm with the grip of a bird of prey.

  “Whoa!” I winced. “Were you always this strong or is it the pottery lessons?”

  “He’s here!” Annabelle whisper-shrieked. “Owen!”

  She motioned with her head at the lake, while also averting her eyes from it.

  I looked, then laughed. There were at least a dozen people splashing around in the water, driven from their beds by the heat, just like us.

  One of them was Owen, shaking his wet hair out of his eyes like a happy dog.

  And another one was Jacob.

  An irrational part of me thought that Jacob must know we’d just been talking about him.

  And a rational part knew I must look terrible. I was sweaty and disheveled. I hadn’t even bothered to brush my hair.

  It comforted me a little bit to see that Jacob wasn’t wearing his glasses in the water. But obviously, his vision wasn’t too terrible, because he spotted me anyway, squinting as he waved.