Our Song

by A. Destiny

  Not that it matters, I told myself as I sat down next to Jacob at the big green V. Before we could even say hello, though, the first bolt of lightning flashed outside, followed by a thunderclap that rattled the windows.

  “Here we go!” said Marnie, taking a deep, shuddery breath.

  “Ooh, drama,” Annabelle said, clapping her hands. “I love a good thunderstorm.”

  “You and Nell both,” Jacob said, and I flashed him a smile.

  The next thunderclap, though, was scarily loud, even to me. As the lights flickered, the rain started. It came so suddenly and so hard, it was as if someone had turned on a faucet. Or more accurately, a car wash. The gushes of water obscured the windows almost completely.

  Alarmed voices rippled through the dining hall like waves of water themselves, until Mrs. Teagle’s voice rang out. She was standing near the room’s interior door, her hands cupped around her mouth.

  “Since nobody wants to go out in this rain until it lets up a bit,” she called out, “I suggest we all head up to the sing-along right after dinner? If the rain doesn’t come down the chimney, we’ll build a fire and have a surprise treat. It involves marshmallows, y’all. And, well, chocolate and graham crackers too. Oh, heck, I just ruined the surprise.”

  The room filled with nervous laughter.

  But Jacob wasn’t one of the ones laughing.

  Neither was Nanny, whom I spotted at the table next to ours. Her face looked tight with worry as she glanced my way, so I held up the little overnight bag I’d brought to dinner.

  “See you after the sing-along,” I called. “Don’t forget the popcorn.”

  “Don’t you want s’mores?” Nanny replied. “I’m pretty sure that’s what Mrs. Teagle was alluding to so subtly.”

  “Of course!” I said. “S’mores followed by popcorn is pretty much the perfect slumber party menu.”

  “Oh, to be fifteen again with an iron stomach,” she sighed.

  Either due to nerves or the promise of s’mores, everyone ate quickly, then headed up to the sing-along.

  I was one of the last people up the stairs. In the landing outside the great hall, Jacob was leaning against the wall. His fiddle case was tucked beneath his arm. He seemed agitated, fussing with his case’s zipper.

  Through the doorway, he stared at all the people finding seats and flipping through binders of sheet music. Everyone jumped when another violent thunderclap seemed to slam down on the roof, but when it subsided, they laughed.

  “Don’t you want to go in?” I asked him.

  Jacob shrugged.

  “You want to ditch, I can tell,” I said with a sympathetic smile. I nodded at his fiddle case. “I get it. I bet nobody’s in the lounge downstairs. You can go there and be alone, play a little.”

  He looked at me frankly.

  “Playing sounds good,” he said. “Being alone? Not so much. I could use a distraction from this storm, especially since we’re surrounded by . . . what did Ms. Annie call the pine trees? Basically very tall, very heavy toothpicks?”

  “Oh, she was exaggerating,” I scoffed. “We’ve got a bunch of these tall pine trees at home, too. Not one has ever fallen on our house.”

  I decided not to tell him about the one that completely smushed our car a few years ago.

  We tiptoed down to the lounge. It was dim, with just a few table lamps glowing here and there.

  Another thunderclap made them flicker, and Jacob inhaled sharply.

  “You know,” I noted, dropping my bag and flopping onto a saggy love seat by the window, “we’re actually committing a public service by being down here. If a tree actually does smash into the great hall, we can call for help!”

  Jacob finally laughed as he sat on an easy chair across from me.

  “I didn’t know you were so, um, dark, Nell,” he said.

  “Oh, I don’t think I am really,” I said. “Just . . . practical.”

  “You know the person who has to stay away from the Capitol during the State of the Union speech?” Jacob said. “Just in case the whole place gets incinerated by an alien invader?”

  “Oh my God, I’m obsessed with that part!” I said. “My parents make me and Carl watch the State of the Union every year. They say it’s our civic responsibility. And I try to pay attention, but the whole time, I’m thinking of that random secretary of the interior or whoever that they pick to sit it out. What’s that like? Do you feel like the savior of the free world, or like the girl who didn’t get asked to the prom?”

  “I’m thinking the first one,” Jacob said. “Politicians aren’t exactly humble, you know.”

  I laughed, then pointed at his fiddle case with my foot.

  “So, are you going to play?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Jacob said with a sigh. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s kind of hard to play in front of you, you of the effortlessly rubbery forearm and the calluses that could hammer nails.”

  “Listen,” I said. “I actually do understand in a way. I know what it feels like to want something and not know if it’s possible; if you’re even worthy.”

  “Is that how you feel about blacksmithing?” Jacob asked, sounding surprised.

  My eyes widened as I realized what I’d just said—and what I’d meant. I hadn’t been talking about blacksmithing at all. I’d been talking about him.

  Now I really did need to change the subject.

  I quickly unzipped my overnight case and pulled out my camera. I’d tossed it in while I’d packed, thinking I might take some photos by storm light.

  “How about this?” I proposed. “You play, I shoot the storm. It’ll be like we both have our own projects.”

  Jacob smiled.

  “As you wish,” he said.

  “Are you implying that I’m bossy, Farm Boy?” I said, poking at his Princess Bride reference.

  “That would be inconceivable,” Jacob declared.

  “Har, har,” I said drily.

  Chuckling, Jacob pulled out his fiddle and started plucking the strings to tune it. I tapped buttons and twisted dials on my camera, adjusting it for night vision. High above our heads, I could hear the sing-alongers start a mountain tune with pretty harmonies. Outside, the rain whooshed against the window in rhythmic gushes. It was all very cozy, which must have been why Jacob relaxed. In fact, as he got ready to play, he moved closer to the window.

  “So I can see,” he explained, pointing with his bow at the porch light just outside the glass.

  He nestled the fiddle beneath his chin and poised his bow over the A string. Just before he started playing, though, he looked over at me and smiled.

  “I’d like to think I’m more of an Inigo Montoya than the Farm Boy,” he said.

  I smiled.

  “The guy who spent his whole life learning sword fighting to avenge his father?” I said. “Yeah, I can see that.”

  “Well, the first part,” Jacob said. “Not so much the revenge. My dad’s alive and well and probably eating nachos in front of a DVR’d UConn game right now.”

  “Mmm, nachos,” I groaned. “With ground beef?”

  Jacob snorted. Then he started playing.

  I couldn’t move during the first few seconds of his piece. It was one I knew, an Appalachian fugue that Nanny taught a lot. I’d always had a soft spot for it, but the way Jacob played it made it sound like something I’d never heard before. His touch was so light and airy, yet powerful.

  It’s possible that the way I heard Jacob’s music was affected by the way I saw him. With the big window behind him, he was nothing but a silhouette. He swayed gracefully with the music. The lean muscles in his bowing arm rippled, and his hair flopped all over the place, looking way more rock star than Appalachian fiddler.

  Only when I realized that he was more than halfway through the piece did I remember the camera sitting in my lap. Stealthily I picked it up, not wanting to break his concentration. I turned off my flash so I wouldn’t distract him—and because I wanted to capture th
at silhouette against the light outside.

  I started shooting. At first I focused on Jacob’s bow arm, but almost without realizing it, my lens traveled upward. His face was shadowed, but even in this light, I could see it was filled with concentration and joy.

  His eyes were closed, but during a big crescendo, they opened. At that exact moment, lightning flashed, making his face look exultant and, frankly, gorgeous.

  I forgot to lift my finger off the shutter button, filling at least twenty frames with his face.

  A moment later, like a magic spell had broken, he was done. I dropped my camera in my lap. Jacob stared at me, looking stunned and delighted.

  He shook his head in wonder.

  “I never played it like that all day,” he said. “Not once. What did you do to make me play like that?”

  “Maybe I reminded you that playing a little fiddle isn’t as high stakes as fighting to the death to avenge your father,” I said.

  Jacob grinned at me.

  “Want to hear some more?” he asked breathlessly.

  “I do.”

  He played again. This time, I didn’t shoot. I just watched. Then I closed my eyes to listen. Then I watched some more. At some point, I kicked off my shoes and curled up on the love seat, tucking my legs under the long skirt of my sundress.

  At another point, the rain seemed to shift from torrential to merely pouring, and the sing-along crowd drifted from singing to chatting to shuffling down the stairs. But I was only half-aware of it all. Even in the cavernous lounge, surrounded by doors and windows, it felt like Jacob and I were in our own little world; like nobody else existed.

  Maybe that was why Jacob could play so comfortably.

  Or maybe, I thought, it’s because he’s playing for me.

  As happy as this made me, I wasn’t sorry when Jacob finished his final piece and flopped down on the couch next to me.

  “Wow,” he said, laying his fiddle and bow on an end table. His voice was low and throaty. “That was . . . surprising.”

  “Camden is full of surprises,” I said quietly. I wanted to turn toward him, to look him in the eyes, to make it that much more easy for him to kiss me. But I was too nervous.

  “That’s definitely the truth,” Jacob said. His voice had gone back to normal—light and lilting. “I can’t imagine anywhere else where some skinny little girl could start a water war among a bunch of blacksmiths.”

  I laughed.

  “Oh, I love blacksmithing. Only surrounded by people like Clint and Jim and Coach could I be considered ‘little.’ ”

  “Don’t you like being tall?”

  “I guess,” I said, shrugging. “I had a complex about it in elementary school, when I was the tallest kid in my class, girls and boys included. But now that most people have caught up, I don’t think about it so much.”

  “I guess I’m glad I don’t have to have a complex about being short,” Jacob said. “I think I’ve got enough to contend with, between the glasses and the violin.”

  He twisted on the love seat to face me, and suddenly, I found it impossible not to look at him.

  “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with glasses or violins,” I whispered.

  As if on cue, lightning lit up the sky and illuminated Jacob’s face. His expression seemed at once determined and fearful.

  I guess the determination won out, because he began leaning toward me, his head tilted to the left. The post-lightning thunder boomed nearby, but Jacob didn’t seem to even hear it. Reflexively I tilted my head to the right, and my eyes fluttered closed. As I waited for his lips to touch mine, my heart pounded in my ears, canceling out the whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of the rain.

  That’s probably why I didn’t hear, at first, my grandmother slam through the door. I also didn’t hear her moans.

  No, the only thing that made me open my eyes was the kiss—the kiss that never happened.

  By the time my eyes had refocused, Jacob was already at the door, helping Nanny hobble inside. She was wearing her yellow raincoat, but the hood had fallen back and her face was soaked. It was also contorted in pain.

  That’s when I noticed Nanny cradling her left arm in her right hand.

  “Where were you?” she snapped at me.

  Chapter Seventeen

  About an hour later, after Mrs. Teagle had taped up the middle two fingers on Nanny’s left hand and I’d run to her cottage to get her some dry clothes, we were back in the lounge. Nanny was stretched out on a velvet couch the color of eggplants. Her good hand held a mug of herbal tea, her feet were covered by an afghan, and Jacob and I had turned on enough lamps that the room’s thrilling shadows had been replaced by a warm, golden glow.

  Now Jacob and I sat in armchairs facing Nanny. These chairs, I might add, were a good six feet apart. Wherever I aimed my gaze, I made sure it was not at Jacob, and I’m pretty sure he was doing the same thing.

  “Nanny,” I said. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Nell, stop saying that over and over,” Nanny insisted. “It’s done. And besides, it’s not really your fault. A misunderstanding, is all.”

  By “not really your fault,” Nanny pretty much meant it was all my fault.

  The whole time Jacob and I had been hidden away down here, Nanny had thought I was upstairs with her, tucked into the soprano section, warbling away while the storms raged outside.

  When the sing-along broke up—and I was nowhere to be found—Nanny assumed I’d gone ahead to her cottage. She bundled herself up in her slicker, borrowed one of the lodge’s big golf umbrellas, and trudged through the rain to meet me there. When she found the cottage dark and empty, she got worried and hurried back toward the lodge to try to find me.

  A gust of wind that turned her umbrella inside out, a disorienting thunderclap, and a slip in the slick grass were all it took to send Nanny sprawling, spraining the middle finger of her left hand. Her fiddle-fingering hand.

  And now Jacob and I were squirming with guilt.

  “It’s still raining,” I said, my voice thin and desperate-sounding. “Do you want me to go to the kitchen and make some popcorn? I know where Ms. Betty keeps it.”

  “No, dear,” Nanny said. “Not in the mood.”

  She moved her bandaged hand a bit and winced at the pain.

  “All I really want is for this ibuprofen to kick in,” she sighed.

  Jacob jumped up and grabbed a small, round pillow from a nearby chair. He gave it to Nanny so she could rest her hand on it. While she smiled weakly at him, I growled, “I wish this stupid place had cell reception. You could have just called me. Then none of this would have happened.”

  “Or if I’d kept my head on straight,” Nanny said, frowning. “But you know me and thunderstorms, Nell. I’m a wreck.”

  “Excuse me?” I sputtered. “No, you’re a rock. What about all our storm-watching nights on the window seat? We always had such fun.”

  “Well, it was either that,” Nanny said, “or I rattled around at home, jumping half out of my skin with every thunderclap.”

  That’s when I realized what all that popcorn on the window seat had been about. Nanny had made the storms into a party for me and Carl to make herself less afraid.

  “It became all about you,” Nanny said. “I had this silly idea that if a tree ever fell on the house while I was there, I’d somehow make sure that it hit me and missed you.”

  “Wow, Nanny,” I said. “That’s sweet, in a twisted kind of way.”

  I sneaked a glance at Jacob and found him peeking at me, the corners of his mouth twitching. I knew just what he was thinking: See, Nell? Being dark must be in your genes.

  Nanny, meanwhile, emitted a dry little laugh.

  “That’s just how you think once you’re a parent,” she said. “Even more so when you’re a granny. I guess that’s why I was worried about you tonight.”

  Normally, this would have made me indignant and embarrassed. I was fifteen! I didn’t need Nanny to rescue me or take care of me. I could ta
ke care of myself!

  But she looked so sweet and vulnerable and, well, old there on the couch with her afghan and tea. I couldn’t be annoyed with her. I was just grateful she wasn’t hurt worse by her fall.

  “By the way, Nell,” Nanny added, “Camden isn’t a stupid place. It’s magical.”

  “And I took it away from you,” I said. My voice suddenly went thick, and tears sprang to my eyes. “Mrs. Teagle said you need two to three weeks to heal. By the time you can play again, we’ll be home.”

  Nanny gazed down at the big wad of gauze on her hand.

  “I can’t play,” she declared. “But I can still teach. Except I’ll need help.”

  Jacob perked up, seeming grateful for something to do.

  “Everyone in the class will help you,” he promised. “Whatever you need. And if they try to bring in a sub, we’ll boycott!”

  “Oh, Jacob, bless your heart,” Nanny said, smiling at him again. “But I don’t think any grand rebellion is going to be necessary. All I need is someone who can play what I say. A translator, I guess you’d call it. And that someone has to know my musical language; has to know it very well, indeed.”

  I slumped down in my chair and gazed at the ceiling. I felt like a balloon being deflated, the air flowing out of me with a pathetic, whistling sound. Nanny could pretend all she wanted that she was just doing some innocent musing, but her manipulation was crystal clear.

  “I suppose the best translator,” Nanny went on, “is someone who’s been speaking that language her whole li—”

  “Okay,” I blurted. “I get it, Nanny. I’ll do it.”

  “You’ll . . .?” Jacob looked at me, his eyebrows so high I could see them above his glasses frames.

  “I’ll be Nanny’s assistant,” I told him.

  I turned to Nanny.

  “So, you’ll tell them what to do and I’ll demonstrate how to do it?” I said.

  “That’s about it,” Nanny said, nodding firmly and looking pleased with herself. “It’s what we’d planned on anyway, remember?”

  “But what about blacksmithing?” Jacob said. He was sitting on the edge of his chair now, looking concerned.