The Midnights

by Sarah Nicole Smetana

  I turned around, grinning in front of the fridge for a few seconds before extracting the iced coffee. “It’s still a work in progress.” Then, anxious to change the subject, I said, “How’s the first day planning, Mr. VP?”

  At the end of the previous school year, Nick had been elected vice president of our student body. No one had opposed him, but he still put hand-painted posters all over the hallways with silly slogans like “Vote for Nick to do the Trick!” Cara Allen had helped him while also managing her own successful campaign for treasurer. She tried to get me to run, too, arguing that the year would be more fun if we were all on ASB together, but the whole process seemed way too exhausting. And anyway, I’d never seen myself as the student council type.

  “We’ve been meeting every afternoon this past week to get ready for the assembly,” Nick said. “You would never believe how much effort goes into it.”

  I handed him the coffee. “You’re right. Our school’s assemblies suck too much for any effort to have been exerted.”

  “But that’s why we’re working so hard, you know? We want it to not suck, for once. I’m even making a video for it. Only a few more days, though, and I’ll get my life back. You’re coming on Saturday, right?”

  “Saturday?” It was my last free night in the studio before resuming eight hours of daily classes, mounds of homework, and my mother’s constant lectures about the importance of a college education.

  “Cara’s party,” Nick said. “Didn’t she invite you?”

  “Yeah,” I said, the lie emerging before I even considered the truth. “I’d just forgotten about it.”

  Nick’s phone rang and he looked down at the screen again, frowning. “Hang on a second,” he told me. As he answered, he walked over to the window, angling his body toward the parking lot.

  “You’d better not be giving your boyfriend free drinks,” Lou said, suddenly behind me. He plopped a box of sugar on the counter.

  “He’s just a friend,” I said.

  “Nobody buys the cow if they can get the coffee for free.”

  I shook my head. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

  But Lou was already headed back to the storage room. “And don’t forget to mop,” he called over his shoulder.

  I looked around the lobby, from the milk spills on the counter to the dirty mugs adorning our haphazard arrangement of tables and chairs. In the sudden quiet, I heard Nick tell someone he was at home. “Yeah, practice was pretty intense today,” he added. “I’ll just see you at the meeting.” Then he hung up the phone and called out to me: “Hayes, I’ve got to run, but I better see you Saturday!”

  He rushed through the door before I had a chance to reply.

  Less than ten minutes after Nick’s departure, Cara Allen arrived at the café. I was sweeping the floor when I saw her black Jetta curve into the parking lot, her curly hair exploding from the restraint of a ponytail.

  “I thought I might find you here,” she said.

  “You know me.” I shrugged. “Forever a slave to the Bean.”

  She leaned across the counter to give me a hug. It was only nine in the morning, but already, she wore a pink bikini beneath a white crocheted sundress. Coconut tanning oil glistened on her arms.

  “I can’t believe you still don’t have a cell phone. I think my mom would have a heart attack if she couldn’t call me every five seconds.”

  I didn’t want to waste my own money on a cell phone, or ask my parents for something I didn’t need—not to mention that my father adamantly opposed them (and computers, and email, and MP3 files, for that matter. “Technology will destroy us,” he’d tell me, “the same way it destroyed rock and roll”). But this was not something I liked to talk about with Cara. Besides, I kind of enjoyed being disconnected. Analog, almost. Vintage. So I began scooping ice into a blender, and deflected her question with another: “I’m sorry I haven’t called back yet. How was Hawaii?”

  “The islands are incredible, Susie. I wish you could have come. Our place was literally two blocks from the water, and super close to this volcano, which, obviously, terrified me at first, but then this whole group of us decided to hike up there so I could face my fears, and . . .”

  As she described her trip, I tried to listen—I honestly did. Cara and I had been friends since fifth grade, and until that June, no more than a week or two had passed without us talking. But then she went with her parents to Maui for two months, followed by ASB camp, and I became entangled in my songwriting, and suddenly the whole summer was gone and I’d been too distracted to remember to miss her. The thing was, she just didn’t care about music the way I did; she didn’t understand how a great song could shake you all the way down in your bones when the chorus swells in for the first time, or how the right album could turn an ordinary experience into something transcendent. She didn’t understand the way a certain sound could be so striking that it gives your arms goose bumps, even as the rest of your skin sweats.

  So I let her talk, my mind whirring back to the lyrics tucked inside my apron. Nick’s reaction had galvanized me, and I yearned to set the new words to song. Instinctively, my hands added the rest of the ingredients to the blender: milk, coffee extract, chocolate powder.

  “ . . . but if I told you, Nick would probably kill me,” she said then. “He’s been working so hard, and the whole thing is supposed to stay classified until Monday.”

  At the mention of his name, my eyes shot up. I caught Cara’s expression changing in a way I didn’t recognize—just a slight slant of the chin, a strange pucker to her lips.

  “Sounds like fun,” I said, wishing now that I’d been paying attention.

  “Way more than I expected.” She fidgeted with her phone. “But what about you? Tell me everything you’ve done this summer.”

  “Mostly just working,” I answered after a pause. “Busy, but boring.”

  “Well it’s time for that to change. My parents are going away for the weekend, so Josh and I are throwing a party on Saturday before he goes back to Santa Barbara and school starts. You have to be there.”

  “I might have to work,” I said, turning on the blender.

  “I know this place isn’t open all night,” Cara yelled over the crushing of ice. “And the party probably won’t start until like nine, anyway.”

  “The next morning, I mean. I think I have to open.”

  “So come for an hour. Come on, Susie, we haven’t hung out in months.”

  The blender stopped. I said I’d try, and topped off Cara’s drink with a generous swirl of whipped cream. Like Nick, she always ordered the same thing.

  “Is this for me?” she asked.

  “Extra whip, as usual.”

  “Oh, Susie, that’s so nice of you.” She gazed uncertainly at the drink.

  “Isn’t this what you always order?”

  “I’m trying to cut out unnatural sugars. But I can bring this to Josh. He’ll love it.” Grinning, as though everything had worked out perfectly, she added, “Can you just make me an iced coffee?”

  As Cara diluted her drink with milk and raw sugar, a silhouetted figure stepped into the café. Light painted his body, illuminating his tight jeans first, then his T-shirt, his narrow face. My heart leapt. Even though he had a different haircut and his eyes were hidden behind boxy black sunglasses, I recognized him instantly: Cody Winters.

  He’d been a senior at my high school when I was a freshman. Back then, he walked around with an acoustic guitar strapped to his chest, singing songs like “Crimson and Clover” in the hallways. I’d craved him in a way that felt savage and frightening, dragging Cara with me as I trailed him around campus, and now here he was, removing his sunglasses, ordering coffee.

  He looked directly at me. “Make that a medium,” he said.

  This was the first time he had ever spoken to me. I glanced at Cara, who was mouthing Holy crap! and gesturing at Cody Winters’s back.

  “Room?” I mumbled, trying to ignore her.

  “What
?”

  Heat spread through my cheeks. “Would—would you like room? In your coffee. For cream.”

  “Nah,” he said. “Black’s cool.”

  My hands trembled as I took a paper cup from the stack and filled it with coffee. When I turned back to hand it to him, sunglasses once again covered his eyes.

  “How much?” he asked. He pulled a Marlboro from his pack and placed it between his lips.

  “A dollar seventy-five,” I said.

  He handed me two. “Keep it, uh . . .” He trailed off, squinted at the name tag on my chest. “Susannah.” I put the money in the register and took out a quarter for the tip jar, but then Cody walked over to the condiment bar for a sleeve and Cara focused on stirring the raw sugar in her drink, and I decided to shove the quarter in my pocket.

  “You’re Cody, right?” I heard Cara say.

  I looked up, horrified.

  “I’m Cara Allen. You probably knew my brother, Josh Allen? From high school?”

  “Sure,” he said, cigarette bobbing between his lips as he reached across her. “I knew Josh.”

  “Well, Josh is throwing a party on Saturday before he goes back to school, and you should totally come.”

  Cody nodded. I couldn’t tell if he was looking at her. “Cool,” he said, and then left the café.

  “Oh my God, Cara,” I said, unable to suppress a burst of laughter. Though I could hardly utter a sentence in his presence, Cara had made Cody Winters just another guy who used to go to our high school, who knew her brother, who might come to her party. Her speech hadn’t ever faltered. I covered my face with my hands.

  “I can’t believe you invited him,” I said.

  Across the counter, Cara shrugged, as though the idea of being embarrassed hadn’t even occurred to her. “Well, I guess now you have to come.”

  Later that morning, I walked home through wind-scrambled streets. Fallen palm fronds littered the sidewalk and garbage cans had toppled, the loose trash fluttering between fences, hedges, and cars. In front of a Spanish bungalow, a cracked ceramic pot spewed bone-dry soil across the previously immaculate porch. In the gutters, white plastic shopping bags banked like snow.

  As I walked, sweat dripped into my eyes. For a moment, I closed them. And that’s when I felt it: a rhythm, hidden amid the disarray, itching across my skin. I paused, listening carefully to the peculiar din of my windblown streets—the clattering of trees and crash of overthrown lawn furniture, a choir of defiant birds trilling from an unstable telephone wire. The sounds converged, playing harmoniously off each other, and all at once I found myself deep in the previously inaccessible marrow of my new song. The opening began with the same simple chords I’d played the night before, but this time a drumbeat swooped in underneath and the verse burst into the chorus, fast and unexpected. I sang out loud, fitting my lyrics into the patterns around me. “Don’t Look Back,” I decided to call it. Joy strummed in my chest.

  As I came upon my block I began walking faster, anxious to get inside and grab a guitar. I was halfway down Catalina Street before I noticed my father’s truck was still in the driveway.

  Inside the house, my mother sat at the kitchen table alone, gazing out the window. Bright sunlight illuminated the strands of her yellow hair, the modest diamond adorning her wedding ring. She had one hand clasped around a mug of coffee. The other was fingering our telephone.

  I crossed my arms, trying to offset the growing stir of uneasiness in my stomach.

  “Where’s Dad?” I asked.

  “Where do you think,” she said.

  “Doesn’t he have work?”

  My mother smiled, but her eyes remained dim. “Sonja should be here any second,” she said.

  Sonja was one of my mother’s coworkers at the catering company. She lived nearby and offered to pick my mother up whenever they served the same shifts. Briefly, I wondered why my mother didn’t just take the truck, but of course, the answer to that was obvious. The truck wasn’t supposed to be here. My father wasn’t supposed to be here.

  Outside, Sonja double-tapped her horn. My mother sighed and rubbed her temples. “I should be home around eight,” she told me. “I’ll bring leftovers if I can, but there’s some spaghetti sauce in the fridge if you get hungry.” She kissed my forehead before she left.

  After, I sat in her chair. The seat was warm. Through the window, I could see the front of the garage. To confirm my suspicions, I clicked on the phone and hit redial.

  “Finch Electronics,” a woman said. “How may I direct your call?”

  My mother only called my father’s office for one reason: to tell them he was sick when he wasn’t. I’d witnessed these deceptions numerous times throughout my childhood, after my father fell into a spell of depression and locked himself inside the studio. Each time, I expected my mother to bang down the door, drag him out, and force him back to the office, but she didn’t. Instead, she’d invent an illness, something banal like the flu. It’s been going around, she’d explain. It was bound to catch up with him.

  But no. That didn’t make sense this time. He hadn’t been depressed last night; he hadn’t been vehemently complaining about the stifling monotony of his job, or had an explosive fight with my mother. We’d worked on my song. We’d talked about the Spades. Nothing was wrong.

  And yet, even in that moment, I suppose part of me already knew this wasn’t true.

  “Hello?” the woman said. “Are you there? Can I help you?”

  I wish, I thought, and hung up.

  After a while, when my legs grew tingly and I finally stood from my mother’s chair, I decided to make my father lunch. I put a baloney sandwich, some potato chips, and an apple in a grocery bag, then headed out to the garage.

  “Dad?” I said. I knocked on the door but there was no answer. I tried the handle. Locked.

  Placing my ear against the wood, I knocked again, this time listening for movement inside the studio. “I have food for you,” I said. Somewhere out of view, a siren wailed. When nothing else happened, I left the bag on the doorknob.

  Back inside, I picked up the guitar my father kept in the living room: a 1974 Martin dreadnought acoustic with a big glossy body and steel strings. It was a beautiful instrument, and something about playing it—the surprising lightness, maybe, or the fact that it could very well be the most expensive thing we owned—had always made me feel powerful.

  Now, when I sat down on the sofa with the guitar, I felt nothing. I heard nothing but the hot, dry winds whipping down from the desert, rattling our avocado tree, tipping the city on edge. Whatever harmony I’d imagined before was gone.

  For three days, my father stayed in the garage. My mother called his boss every morning to update him on the progress of the “stomach bug,” and every evening I left a new bag of food outside the garage’s side door—whatever I could scour from our house without her noticing. She didn’t want me to encourage him. In fact, she hardly seemed worried at all. Like she knew something I didn’t.

  During those days, hours slunk by. Cara called on Friday to see if I wanted to go to a movie, but I didn’t feel comfortable leaving my house unless I had to. My father had never remained isolated for so long, and I wanted to be there when he surfaced. So I told her I might have the flu.

  “It’s been going around,” I said apologetically.

  “Well, it better be out of your system by tomorrow,” she warned. “Worse comes to worst, we’ll just set you up with your own personal barf bucket, because let’s face it: my mom would kill me if you puked on one of her rugs.”

  Truthfully, though, the excuse didn’t seem like much of a stretch; I’d felt in some fundamental way off-kilter ever since my father locked himself in the studio and I lost the rhythm to my song. I hadn’t given up on “Don’t Look Back,” but the harder I tried to wedge the pieces together, the less they seemed to fit. Only one partial line had stayed with me, its euphony jangling, useless, in my head: I can’t let go, I can’t let go, I can’t let go . . .


  By Saturday, I’d grown restless.

  Our house sealed in heat like Tupperware and it was too stuffy that day to do anything useful, so I decided just to lie on the couch, in the direct line of fan-churned air, and listen to my father’s records. His collection was massive; he had everything from the Allman Brothers to the Zombies, stacked six shelves high and over two hundred wide. I put on Rubber Soul first, followed by Rumours and Surrealistic Pillow, hoping that immersing myself in the enduring brilliance of my favorite albums would help dislodge the fragments of “Don’t Look Back” from deep within my memory. But by early afternoon, all I had to show for my efforts was a pervasive sheen of sweat on my skin and the twang of a sitar stuck in my head. I put the records back in their alphabetical places on the shelf and switched to the radio, nudged the dial to K-Earth 101. “It’s Too Late” crackled through the speaker.

  “Oh, I used to love this song,” my mother said from the kitchen, where she’d been scrutinizing the Los Angeles Times. She started singing along, her voice ambling over the music with a polished, stunning softness. For a moment, I almost forgot about my father, my lost song.

  Then she stopped. “I think I’ve found one for you, Susannah. Sales associate at the new Nordstrom they’re opening in the mall.”

  “My job’s fine,” I said.

  “The possibility of commission, too,” she continued. “That could be much better than the tips you get over at Lou’s.”

  “You’re the one who wanted me to apply there in the first place,” I reminded her.

  “And I think the job has been really good for you. But that doesn’t mean you can’t keep an eye out for something better. It’s important to have options.” With a false note of casualness in her tone, she added, “By the way, have you looked into any of those colleges yet?”

  I crossed my arms. Perspiration puddled in the creases of my elbows. “I haven’t really gotten to it.”

  “If I remember correctly, UCLA has an early admission deadline. Long Beach might have one too.”

  “Do we really have to talk about this right now?” I moaned. School had never been more than a job to me—I went, completed the requirements, and came home. But my mother had gone to UCLA for two years, and she’d always harbored the fantasy that I would complete what she didn’t. Once, after she forced me to take the SATs, I made the mistake of asking her why she didn’t go back and finish her own degree instead of pressuring me about mine, and for a week after she refused to do anything for me. “This is what it would be like if I went back to school,” she had said. Because I couldn’t cook, I ate nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches until my mouth felt permanently coated and parched.