Between the Notes (20 page)

T
he next few days at school were quiet. At lunch I started sitting with Molly and Rigby, the friend of Lennie’s who had air-fist-bumped me at the food pantry. I didn’t see the point in subjecting myself to more torture at the hands of Willow and Wynn, and Reesa’s ongoing silent treatment was unbearable. Molly slid her tray over and made a spot for me, no questions asked.

On Saturday, Mom lifted my grounding, and I immediately went back to Clayton Street. When Ida saw me standing on her front porch, she gave a big, weary sigh and held the door open. I stepped inside and followed her to the front room. The house was beautiful, with its hardwood floors and Oriental rugs and lamps with fringed fabric shades. There was a quiet, fragile feeling to her home, like an antique shop. The only sound was the tick of a clock coming from another room.

“Have a seat,” said Ida. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“No thank you,” I said. “I can’t stay long.”

She lowered herself slowly into a flowered chair that seemed
to hug itself around her as she sat. There was a table next to it, with books and reading glasses. I wondered if James had sat here, too, on this same couch when they talked.

“So, you’re Ivy,” she said.

“Oh, sorry . . . yes,” I stammered. “Ivy Emerson.”

“Well, I’ve always been partial to three-letter names that start with
I
.” She winked and held out her hand, its knuckles swollen with arthritis. “I’m Ida McDaniels.”

I closed my fingers gently around hers. “Nice to meet you.”

We settled back into our respective seats and I tried to find the right question, the right thing to say.

She rescued me. “You’re wondering about Robbie.”

It was hard for me to think of him that way. “Was that his real name? Robert?”

“Middle name. Robertson, actually. James Robertson Wickerton, named after my brother, his grandfather.”

“James Aloysius Robertson. He’s buried at the Methodist cemetery, isn’t he?” I said. “With his wife, Clara. They died a week apart.”

Ida smiled. “Robbie took you there? He was very close to his grandfather.” She pointed to the fireplace mantel, which was lined with framed photos. “There they are.”

I walked over to see the picture. It was a young James, maybe five years old, in bare feet. His grandparents stood on either side, each holding one of his hands while he swung like a monkey between them. He was grinning like crazy.

“He spent a week here every summer. They let him really be a kid. Not like . . .” She let her voice trail off.

I smiled at the boy in the photo. “James didn’t tell me they were his grandparents. He didn’t tell me . . . a lot.”

“Well,” said Ida, returning to her chair. “I’ll leave him to explain why he left home, what happened with his father and all, because that’s his business not mine. But I took him in. This was his grandparents’ house, and he’s always welcome here. I called my friend Olivia Lanahan—Mrs. Lanahan to you—and got him enrolled at the school so he could finish high school. And the rest, as they say, is history.”

“Why didn’t he tell anybody who he was?”

“He wanted to start with a blank slate—no money, no status, none of that—and see if people would treat him differently.”

“So I was an experiment?”

“Not you specifically. People in general, I suppose,” she said. “But he liked you. He came home that one night and told me, ‘She didn’t even want me to pay for her milk shake!’ The girls at his school all expected him to pay for that and a lot more.”

A pang of guilt caught in my throat. I had been drawn to James before I’d known anything about him. But had Reesa’s speculation about his wealth played a role as well? I couldn’t deny the possibility. He had everything I’d lost, and more. If I’d thought, from the very beginning, that James worked mopping grocery store floors, would I have ever gotten into his car that first time? Or would I have treated him like I’d treated Lennie?

I sat the photo back on the mantel. “Have you heard anything from him? Did he . . . did you give him my note?”

“I mailed it to him, but I haven’t spoken to him since he left. I tried calling, but that snooty butler of theirs kept telling me he was unavailable.” She chuckled in a humorless way.

“Could you give me his phone number? An email address?”

“I don’t use email, so I don’t know if he has one of those,” she said, reaching to her table for a piece of paper and pen. “But I can give you his mailing address and phone number. Can’t promise you’ll get through.”

“Thank you,” I said, the thought of James believing nobody would ever like him for himself gnawing at my stomach. “I have to try.”

I sat on my bed with the phone cradled in my lap. I had dialed his number eight times now, always chickening out at the last minute and slamming it down before anyone answered. What if he hung up on me?

My hands trembled as I punched in the number Ida had given me once more, then lifted it to my ear.

On the fourth ring, a deep, male voice answered. “Hello?”

I’d expected something fancier, and it set me off to a bad start. “I . . . um, could I speak to James . . . uh . . . Robbie . . . Wickerton?”

“May I ask who’s calling?”

“Ivy Emerson?” I immediately cringed at how ridiculous I
sounded, like I was guessing at my own name.

“One moment,” the man said. They had hold music. Classical. Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp for piano, to be exact. I knew it, because I’d played it. So
there
, snobby butler guy, who was taking way longer than “one moment.” It was at least ten minutes before the man came back. “I’m sorry, but Mr. Wickerton is not available at this time.”

He didn’t offer to take a message, but I gave him my name and phone number, anyway.

A
fter my failed attempt to call James, I gravel-kicked my way down to Molly’s house. She held a finger to her lips when she answered the door and motioned me into her room.

“Mom’s sleeping,” she said, quietly closing her door. “What’s wrong?”

“Life sucks.” I flopped backward on her bed and gazed up at the new additions to her wall. “You can quote me on that.”

She pointed to a far corner. I could barely make out where she’d written in pencil:

I snorted. “See? My life even sucks at sucking. It’s a rerun of somebody else’s sucky life.”

Molly tapped her finger to yet another quote, this one a clipping from a magazine:

Moping around at Molly’s was my new favorite pastime, but it made me miss Reesa. She never let me mope. Not for long, at least. She always came up with the plan to fix whatever needed fixing. A completely insane plan, usually. But a plan.

I turned on my side and bent my arm to prop up my head. “What do you do when a guy—the guy you like—won’t even acknowledge that you’re alive?”

“Which guy?” said Molly. She didn’t know about me and James. Hardly anybody did, since I’d kept it such a secret. It was like it had never happened.

“Any guy,” I said. “Hypothetical Guy.”

She twirled slowly on her desk chair. “Is Hypothetical Guy dating someone else?”

“Not that I know of,” I said.

“Does he know you’re trying to get his attention?”

Had James gotten my letter or my phone message? “Hypothetical Girl is uncertain.”

“Ahhhh.” Molly spun back around to face her desk and bent over her journal. She collected quotes there, including random things she overheard people saying during the course of her day. I had a feeling I’d just been quoted. She clicked her pen a few times. “You could throw a party.”

“A party.”

“You know, one of those things where people gather and
dance and drink and talk and laugh?”

“Yes, I know what a party is.”

“So, you throw a party and you invite Hypothetical Guy. But it’s not a date. If he comes, awesome. If he doesn’t, it’s a party. You’re still having fun.”

Considering I was presently estranged from most of my friends, throwing a party sounded like a great way to make a complete fool of myself. But heck, I was on a roll.

“Halloween,” I said. “We could invite all the people who weren’t invited to Willow’s bash.”

“We?” Molly raised her eyebrows.

“Well, yeah. It was your idea.”

An hour later we had decided on a theme for the party: “Come as you are.” And not as in “I’m too lame to figure out a costume” but rather, “This is who I really am.” Our invitation would encourage guests to let it all hang out, reveal their hidden identities, show their true selves. I didn’t know how I’d get James there, but after what happened between us, maybe this theme would hit home. I just hoped I could get through to him.

Walking back to my place from Molly’s, I was nearly sideswiped by a souped-up truck that stopped in front of Lennie’s place. I slowed my pace to witness the transaction. Lennie came out with a small paper bag, handed it to the guy, took his money, thank you, good-bye, the guy drove off. Carla’s advice came back to me:

Ask him about it.

Lennie disappeared around the back of his house, into the shed. I hurried across the gravel road and followed him. The small wood-and-metal structure was windowless. I stood at its door, my imagination conjuring visions of pot plants and grow lights.

Before I could change my mind and retreat, Lennie burst out and nearly crashed into me. We both jumped.

“Whoa. Hey.” His hands went to my shoulders, to steady me. Then he quickly dropped them to his sides. “Didn’t see you there. What are you doing?”

“Yeah, I . . . uh . . . just . . .” I tried to peer into the shed but his shoulders were blocking my view. “Wanted to thank you for helping out with Brady the other day. I royally messed up, and you seem to always swoop in and save the day when it comes to Brady. So, uh, thanks.”

“He’s a great kid,” he said. “I like him a lot.”

“Yeah.” I smiled nervously. “He really likes you, too.”

Lennie kicked at the dirt with his boot. We hadn’t spoken in a while, since open mic night, and I hadn’t exactly been friendly to him then.

“You, um, want to come in?” He motioned with his thumb inside the shed.

“Oh . . . okay.” I nodded.

“You’ve probably been wondering what I do in here, anyway . . .”

“No, I . . . well, yes.” I gave a nervous laugh. “People are always driving up and buying something from you, so . . .”

“It’s not drugs, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“No, I . . .”

Lennie smirked, reached back, and pushed open the shed door. “Welcome to my den of iniquity.”

I stepped gently into the small space, which was lined with shelves, each one about six inches deep. Covering the shelves were gears and chains and mechanical-looking pieces I couldn’t begin to identify. In the corner, on a plywood workbench, sat a computer—a brand-new desktop Mac. And in the middle of it all, a table with a postage meter, and some packing tape, scissors, and boxes. Everything was super neat and organized.

I strolled around the table, browsing the bits and pieces on the shelves. “What is all this?”

“Small engine parts, out-of-stock stuff mostly,” he said. “I take them off junkers, put them up on my website, people order them for old cars they’re fixing up, stuff like that.”

“You have a website?”

He walked over to the computer and hit the space bar. The screen lit up. Across the top it read,
LAZO
’
S ENGINE PARTS
. The artwork was similar to Lennie’s tattoo.

“Lazo?”

He shrugged. “Better than Lazarski. I didn’t want my business to get confused with my dad’s. He used to have a body shop.”

I took the computer mouse in my hand and scrolled around
the site. There was a section for automotive parts, and another one for other types of engines—lawn mowers, chain saws, washer/dryers. You could order an item to be shipped or pick it up. Voilà.

Not a drug dealer, then, but a budding entrepreneur? “Did your dad teach you all this?”

“Some.” He picked up a part that was lying on the desk and placed it next to a similar one on a nearby shelf.

“You said he had a body shop. . . .”

“Yep.” Lennie ducked down to search for something in one of the boxes beneath the counter. “Messed up his back when a car fell on him a few years ago. So now he mostly sits around smoking weed.” Lennie found the part he was looking for and stood up to face me. “Medicinal purposes.”

I stepped back. “So your dad’s the pot smoker?”

“Didn’t see that one coming, did ya?”

I swallowed hard. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “Not your fault.”

“I mean, I’m sorry about what I said, before. About you smelling like a bong. I thought you were a total pothead.”

He snorted. “Guess you were mistaken.”

It’d been happening to me a lot lately.

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I figured you’d decided who I was, and nothing I said was going to change it.”

“Not being totally freaking scary might’ve changed it,” I said.

He laughed. “I’m not that scary.”

“Seriously? That first day when we moved in? You and that guy with the scar?”

“That’s my cousin Frankie. He’s such a bonehead.”

“Well, he’s a scary bonehead. He called me a Westside bitch. He didn’t even know me.”

Lennie leaned back against the workbench, arms folded across his chest. “And what do your friends call me? They don’t know me, either, but I’m pretty sure they don’t think very highly of me.”

All the words we’d ever used to describe Lennie’s crew ran through my head.
Druggie. Stoner. Lowlife. Loser.
But I didn’t say them out loud.

“That’s because you hang out in a pack, like you’re part of a gang—”

“And you don’t?” he interrupted, coughing like he’d just swallowed something the wrong way. “Your friends are a
way
scarier pack than mine are. I mean, that day I brought you the potato? I was just trying to be funny, and Willow Goodwin nearly sliced me open with her
eyes.
That bitch is scary.”

“Yeah, okay. I see your point. But your friends have
tattoos
, and they, I don’t know . . . they
snarl
.”

Lennie bent and unbent his elbow in my direction so show off his tattoo of gears and chains. “Oooh. Scaaary,” he said, then gave me his best snarl. “Like this?”

“Yeah, like that.” I smiled, then stepped closer and pointed to his tattoo. “Can I see it?” I had been curious, but didn’t want him
to think I was staring before.

“Sure,” he said, pulling his sleeve up over his shoulder. His arm was more muscular than I would’ve thought, since he was so tall and lean, but I pretended not to notice. I focused instead on the intricate gears on his elbow and shoulder, and the chain that wound around them. I wanted to trace it with my fingers, the way it bulged across his biceps.

“Stop flexing,” I said.

He laughed. “I’m not. I’m just naturally buff.”

“Right.” I gave his shoulder a gentle shove.

I suddenly heard Mom calling for me from the side yard, looking up toward our kitchen. I stuck my head out the shed door. “Over here, Mom.”

“Oh!” She spun around, surprised to see me with Lennie. Or maybe it was the way he was pulling his sleeve back down over his tattoo. “We’re home from therapy,” she said. “Can you watch Brady for a bit?” She pointed to where he was gathering his stones out front.

“Sure,” I said, then turned to Lennie. “I have to go throw gravel now. Thanks for giving Brady a new hobby, by the way.”

He laughed. “No problem.”