Between the Notes (22 page)

M
om woke me early on Saturday for our second food pantry run. We knew what to expect this time, but that only made us dread it more. We needed the food, though. Mom had served a meal she called “mixed steamed grill” the night before. It was basically little bowls of whatever we had leftover from the last few nights, and some mashed potatoes she whipped up with an egg and fried.

We pulled into the parking lot of the Northbridge Methodist Church. Again, we sat and watched for a while, working up the nerve to get in line for our number. I recognized some of the people we’d seen last month. But I didn’t see Chandra or Rigby anywhere.

“I don’t know that I’ll ever get used to this.” Mom let out a sigh. “Let’s go.”

We got in line.

As the door opened, the same man from last month started handing out numbers. We were seventy-five.

Mom said, “Any idea how long it will be?” Like we were in line for a table at a restaurant.

“Thirty, maybe forty minutes,” he said.

She nodded. “Let’s wait in the car.” Mom started to walk away, but I turned back to the man.

“Is the church open?” I asked. I remembered there was a piano, when James and I were here last. And I hadn’t had a chance to play the song I’d written yet. This was the perfect opportunity.

He nodded. “Around front. Sanctuary’s straight ahead.”

“I’ll meet you back here,” I called to Mom, and bolted around the corner before she could argue.

But I didn’t go inside right away. I looped around to the side that faced the cemetery. Crossing the church parking lot, I followed the path James and I had taken to the giant oak tree. I even sprinted to the top of the hill to recapture the breathless intensity of that day, to remember how he’d made me feel. To remember
him.
We’d been apart now longer than we’d been together.

Was I hanging on to nothing? It didn’t matter.

I dropped onto the bench that overlooked the cemetery. Something was lying in the grass in front of the Robertsons’ tombstone. I went over to get a closer look.

Daisies. Fresh cut.

I spun around, searching for him. “James?” I called.

It was a cloudy day, and the sound of my voice seemed to disappear into the gray.

The only other soul in the cemetery was an elderly man.
He stood in front of a stone for several minutes with his hands clasped in front of him, then turned and hobbled slowly away.

I was alone.

I made my way back to the church and went in the same doors that James and I had entered to find a telephone. I peered into the sanctuary. It was empty, and so was the room to the side where I’d seen the piano that day.

“Anybody here?” I called out.

James told me the pastor kept it all open so people would feel free to come and go as they pleased. So I went in. The piano sat in the corner, past a long table filled with artificial flower centerpieces. I looked toward the doorway to make sure nobody was there, lifted the lid from the piano keys, and sat down to play.

It came out mostly as I’d imagined, with a few surprises from today’s visit to the cemetery. An intricate, somewhat frenzied bit was my heart racing, searching for him. Then it calmed and ended sweetly. The happy ending I hoped for.

I sat motionless, breathless, for a few minutes.

Clap, clap, clap.

I gasped, turning to the sound of a single pair of hands, applauding from a dark corner.

“Beautiful,” said a faint voice. A figure stepped into the light. It was the elderly man from the cemetery. “This is why I leave the church open.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I tried to find someone to ask . . .”

He hushed my apology. “Come again. Whenever you like.
Maybe you can perform for our congregation someday.”

I bit back my usual reaction to dismiss such a suggestion as ludicrous, and smiled instead. “Someday,” I said.

Running around to the food pantry entrance, I heard the man announcing “Up to eighty!” on his microphone, and saw Mom walking in.

“Mom!” I called.

She turned, looking peeved. “Where—”

“There was a piano inside,” I said breathlessly.

That’s all I had to say.

T
he days leading up to open mic night and our Halloween party spilled together, an abstract painting of my rising panic. I hadn’t told anyone I was planning to perform, since it was scary enough knowing James might be in the audience. I didn’t want a hoard of friends and family showing up. But keeping it secret was only making me more nervous.

If Reesa hadn’t been mad at me, I would’ve told her, but . . .

“Hey!” Molly snapped me out of my wishful thinking. I’m not sure how long she’d been sitting there across the lunch table. “Where
were
you just now?”

I smiled. I had to tell someone. “Open mic night. Onstage. Scared shitless.”

“Seriously?” Her eyes widened. “You’re going to do it?”

I looked around, made sure nobody was listening. Swallowed. “Yeah,” I said. “Don’t tell anybody. Can you come? I might need someone to drag me off the stage if I freeze up.”

Molly grinned. “First of all, you’re not going to do that.
You’re going to be awesome. And second of all, I wouldn’t miss it. Friday?”

“No,” I said. “It’s Thursday.”

“I’ll be there. Do you need a ride? I . . . wait.” She opened her bag and pulled out the little agenda she used to keep track of homework assignments. “Shit. I can’t go.”

“Why not?” My voice was suddenly all whiny and pleading. I hadn’t realized how badly I wanted someone to be there with me. To get me through it.

“It’s my dad’s birthday,” she said.

Her dead father’s birthday. “Oh.”

“Not a good night to leave Mom home alone,” she said. “We’re going to my dad’s favorite restaurant. There will be crying involved.”

“I understand,” I said.

“I’m hoping it gets easier. Last year was a bitch.” She returned to her sandwich until she realized I wasn’t eating. “You want me to help you rehearse? You look like you need a fix.”

I smiled. “I do. But the band room is occupied by the jazz band. So annoying.”

She snort-laughed. “How rude of them. You could always use the piano in the choir room.”

“There’s a piano in the choir room?”

She looked at me like I was an idiot. “You’re kidding.”

I skipped lunch that day and again Thursday so I could practice. But the song changed every time I played it. I was so
distracted, obsessing over how to fix it. Reesa would’ve noticed something was wrong. But Molly was busy with everyone who kept running over to RSVP for our party.

“What if all these people actually come?” She held up the list she was keeping in her Trig notebook.

“Maybe we should decorate or something,” I said. “I think my mom has some Christmas lights we could drape around the trees.”

Molly nodded toward Willow, who was racing up and down the halls like a lunatic. Our party was getting all the buzz, and it was sending Willow over the top of crazy. She kept reminding people about the amazing band her mom hired, and the caterer. Don’t forget the caterer! All this time I thought people cared about that stuff. But somehow, our promise of a bag of chips and maybe some dip was going head to head with her beef tenderloin wraps and stuffed mushrooms. And we weren’t losing.

It was Halloween, after all, and Lakeside was a helluva lot scarier than Willow Goodwin’s well-appointed living room. Our “come as you are” theme was appealing, too. Guys were not interested in dressing like it was the Roaring Twenties. They had no idea
how
to dress for the 1920s.

Willow was putting the full-court press on everybody she knew, collecting RSVPs like votes in an election. “Can I count on you?” “I’m counting on you!”

Molly and Rigby and I watched it all like the circus it was. We just wanted our little party of outcasts to have fun.

“You haven’t told me what you’re wearing,” said Molly. For a second I thought she was talking about open mic night, and almost described the shimmery purple dress Dad had rescued from our old house. I had snuck it out of Mom’s closet, along with a pair of black heels. But what to wear for Halloween?

“I have no idea,” I said.

“Come on. You’re just not telling me.”

I smiled, wishing that was the case.

“Fine.” She crossed her arms. “I’m not telling, either.”

The morning of open mic night I spotted Reesa standing in front of her locker—staring into its depths. She’d been doing a lot of that lately. Then she’d sort of “wake up” and look around and almost catch me watching her—just as I kept almost catching her watching me. Even Molly had noticed it. She said, “Talk to her. She clearly wants you to.”

I wanted to tell her about open mic night. I wanted her to
be
there. But every time I thought to approach her, I’d remember how she’d slammed the gate to her driveway in my face that day. I don’t think I could take it if I told her about my performance and she didn’t show up. Not with her knowing how scary it was for me.

But the Halloween party wasn’t a big deal. If I invited her and she didn’t show, I’d live. So when I saw her standing there alone, and the party only two days away, I knew I might not get another
chance. I opened my bag and pulled out my last invitation. She didn’t even notice me until I was inches away.

“Here.” I thrust the invitation into her hands. My heart was in my throat, waiting to see if she’d crumple it up or throw it at my feet. But she took it and scanned the text.

“Come as you are?” She did a pretty good job of pretending she hadn’t heard about the party.

“Uh-huh.”

“How very Kurt Cobain of you.”

I shrugged. I hadn’t thought of the Nirvana tune when we came up with the theme, but she wasn’t the first to mention it. Lennie kept singing it when we were working in his shed. He had the perfect raspy voice for it. “Anyway. I hope you can come.”

“It’s the same night as Willow’s party,” she said.

“Yeah, well . . .”
Willow and I don’t have the same friends anymore,
I almost said. I felt tears coming to my eyes so I blinked a few times, really fast.

“I’m late for class,” Reesa said quickly, then turned and walked away.

“I can’t imagine having a party without you,” I said, but I don’t think she heard me.

I
told my parents I’d be spending the evening at Molly’s, not catching a cab into downtown Belleview to perform an original song in front of a crowd of strangers. The fewer people who knew I’d be there, the fewer people who’d witness my humiliation if I froze again onstage. After this, I told myself, no more secrets.

What I hadn’t anticipated, however, was finding a note from my mother under the Buddha paperweight on my desk in place of the money for cab fare I’d put there.

I threw my room upside down on the odd chance I’d forgotten about some hidden cash. Then I sat on the top step to the
attic, nearly hyperventilating, and dropped my head between my knees. I would simply ask Dad for the money when he got home. If he got home in time. He’d been working late the last few days on a big job he said might turn things around for us. I could ask . . .
Who could I ask?
Molly and her mother were broke. I certainly couldn’t ask Reesa or any of my old friends. There was nobody. Except . . .

I jumped up and looked out the tiny attic window at Lennie’s shed. There was a sliver of light beneath the door, so I ran down our three flights of stairs and into his yard, and knocked. The door wasn’t latched and pushed open slightly at my touch.

Lennie turned in his computer chair and saw me. “Come on in,” he said, swiveling back to face his work.

I took a couple of steps toward him. “I, uh . . . have a favor to ask.” I paused. “Remember when you offered to pay me for my help, and I wouldn’t take it? Well, I need some money now and I was wondering if, maybe . . . if you could loan me forty dollars.”

He spun slowly around to face me again. “For . . .”

I opened my eyes wide. “None of your business.”

“Okay.” He returned to his keyboard. “Then no. I’m not giving you forty dollars.”

“I didn’t ask you to give it to me. It would be a loan.”

“Not until you tell me what it’s for.”

“Why do you even care?” I stomped over to where he sat. “Fine. It’s for a dress. I need to buy a dress for . . . homecoming.”
I cringed at the lie, the pathetic breaking of my promise to stop telling them.

He shook his head. “Uh-uh. First of all, where are you going to find a nice dress for forty bucks? Lame-ass lie, Emerson. And you wouldn’t come begging at my door for dress money, anyhow.”

“I’m not begging. You said you’d pay me.”

“And you said you didn’t want to be paid. But now you do. So what gives?”

“Nothing gives. I just . . . need . . . forty dollars!” I sucked in a shuddering breath and started to cry, which surprised me as much as Lennie. I buried my face in my hands.

“Whoa,” he said. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?” I grabbed for a roll of paper towels he kept on the counter and tore off a few sheets to bury my face in. Once the tap was open, I couldn’t stop until it ran dry.

Lennie backed away from me at first, like he was afraid I might explode, then stepped closer and closer until his shoulder was aligned with my nose. He put his arms gently around my back and pulled me into a hug. I let my head fall against him, my body relax.

“Sheesh,” he said. “I’ll give you the forty bucks already.”

“It’s not for a dress,” I said, still sniffling.

“You don’t have to explain, really. I—”

“It’s for cab fare into Belleview and back, to the King. That’s
all. I’m performing at open mic night tonight. Nobody knows.”

His brows knit together. “What time do you have to be there?”

“Seven.”

He smiled. “I’ll take you myself.”