Cornered (9 page)

“They use their lies,” she sang, holding the last word. Her voice was quiet but strong. More than strong. Powerful. I was blown away by just those four notes. I'm even worse at singing than I am at instruments. I'm such a bad singer that my rendition of “Happy Birthday” can make a person sort of sad they survived another year.

She continued, switching to a low quiet part that she almost growled. “And their fists. To divide you from your friends. You prepare, you adapt. But they wound you in the end.” Here her voice swooped up, effortlessly gliding back to the high notes. “As a youngster in the corridor, you just wish to comply. As a person, getting older. You spit into their eye.”

The instant she sang the word “eye,” the rest of the band exploded. The huge drummer unleashed an epic clatter. The nerdy bass player broke off a funky groove. And Tiffany began to scream. I mean, really scream. She had to step away from the microphone so she wouldn't shatter our eardrums. Even without the amplification, and even with the huge noise made by the rest of the band, she was loud.

This is what she screamed/sang: “You're only as ugly as you let them make you feel. I felt ugly. I was ugly. I was ugly. I was ugly.” It was intense. I had to look away. There were a few more verses, and each time the chorus changed slightly. The next time it was “You were ugly” and on the final cacophonous chorus she sang: “We felt ugly,” then “We are ugly.” She repeated this line over and over as the music swelled and crashed, settling into a quiet groove. “We are ugly. We are ugly. We are ugly anyway.”

The rest of the band joined her and soon the whole room was singing. The coffee drinkers looked up from their conversations to sing. The solitary bearded dwellers in the back put down their paperbacks to sing. The hefty lady who made my tea stopped wiping glasses and started to sing. “We are ugly. We are
ugly. We are ugly anyway.” Their voices soared. “We are ugly. We are ugly. We are ugly.” The weird thing is, it was totally beautiful. The whole show was.

By the end of it, I was about to take out my phone to text Nate how great it was. And then I heard my name again. It was Tiffany, speaking into the microphone.

“I'd like to dedicate this last song to Bryan Forbes, a guy who made my life miserable in elementary school. 1-2-3-4!”

The drummer started a bouncy beat, and the bass played a familiar tune. I couldn't place it at first. It was like a melody from my subconscious. From my dreams. Then it hit me. “Puppy chow, puppy chow! Make your lucky pup say wow!” She sang it a few times; the song had no other words. Then she started improvising. “Thank you, Bryan Forbes, for teaching me to be alone. Thank you, Bryan Forbes, for pulling the scales from my eyes. Thank you, Bryan Forbes . . .”

At least I
thought
she was saying “thank you.” The drums were pretty loud, and she was sort of mumbling. There was a pretty good chance she was saying something else. It was clear though, that she was pointing right at me. Someone threw a spoon at me. For a second I thought it was a knife, but no, definitely a spoon. Still, I took that as my cue to leave. I stood up. Another spoon was thrown. It hit me in the ear and fucking hurt. I looked around for help. Tiffany's eyes were closed, and I don't think she noticed. Not that she would have helped me anyway. Another spoon, right in the back. Um, nice lady with the flower, you work here, right? I searched for her, but her
back was turned. The whole crowd began singing with Tiffany. Chanting, pointing, and throwing things while the drummer pounded furiously on the snare.

“Thank you,” (I think), “Bryan Forbes. Thank you, thank you . . .”

It was a good thing to be a runner. My heart was pounding and my stomach was lurching and everything in my body was saying,
Go!
So I went. I pushed through the crowded coffee shop, past the singing, pointing, taunting. Past the flying cutlery. I shoved open the door and ran out into the cool night air. I looked back for the mob that would follow. I expected a chase. I expected pitchforks and torches. But no one came, and after a few blocks, I was sure I had outrun them all. Jesus. I was so pissed! At Tiffany, at Nate for some reason, at everyone. And, to be honest, I was pissed at myself.

• • •

I couldn't call Uncle Eli. He'd want to pick me up at Vortigern's, and no way was I going back there. It was just a few miles away to their house. I remembered the route, and even though I wasn't dressed for it, I kept running. I settled into my steady long-distance pace. It felt weird running in jeans at night, and I'm sure I looked insane. Once I got to the house, I pulled out my phone to text Nate about the tragic turn of events. After I gave him the basic details:

ME: you'd think that someone who knows what it feels like to be excluded wouldn't turn around and do that to others

NATE: you know nothing at all about human psychology, do you?

His little gem of wisdom pissed me off, mainly because I knew he was probably right. I felt so shitty right then. I didn't want to talk to him anymore, but I needed to talk to someone. I checked the clock. It wasn't very late, and my parents were a full time zone away. I was sure my dad was still awake reading. I debated for a minute, then pressed the button.

“What's the trouble, Bryan?” Dad asked, barely giving me time to say hello.

“Nothing's the trouble,” I lied.

“Just calling to say hello? I don't believe you.”

“Geez, why can't I just be calling to say hello?”

“I can hear it in your voice.” Stupid parental superpowers. Was I that obvious? Dad and I never really had deep conversations. He expected me to do things a certain way, and mostly I did them. When I messed up, he yelled and that was about it. I never really thought about it, but maybe all I wanted was to impress him. Maybe that's even why I didn't have the guts to go against the crowd, because I didn't want him to think
I
was weird. But maybe that's just making excuses.

“I'm feeling guilty about something,” I said.

“Why? Who's pregnant?” I wasn't sure if he was trying to be funny, but it made me laugh.

“What?” I said. “No. Nice assumption, Dad. It's just that . . . I'm . . . I'm feeling guilty about something that happened a long time ago. I don't feel like going into it, but I was a jerk once.”

“Hate to break it to you, kid, but you were a jerk more than once.”

“Thanks?”

“I mean—we all are, Son. That's part of being alive. We're all just trying the best we can. Guilt is a useless emotion if we let it eat us up. But it's there for a reason. It's telling us to do better next time. That's all we can do. Do better next time.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I said. Weird thing is, it actually did make me feel a little better. We chatted for a little while longer, about not much of anything. I thanked him again.

“You're welcome, Son,” he said. “I still have no idea what we're talking about and nobody better be pregnant.”

• • •

I stood in Tina and Eli's driveway looking at their house. It was a very quiet suburban neighborhood. I knew they'd think it was pretty weird that I decided to walk/run all the way back, but I was banking on them being cool with it. I opened the door and heard the TV on in the living room. I poked my head in, trying not to scare them.

“Hey,” I said.

Uncle Eli and Aunt Tina both jumped up and made the same exact confused face.

“How the heck did you get back home?” Uncle Eli asked.

“I decided to walk. Well, run,” I said.

“Not a great concert then?” Eli said.

“It, um, had its moments,” I said. “But I had to leave
unexpectedly.” They looked at each other but said nothing. “I'm just going to go upstairs to lie down.” Which I did. Until a half hour later, when the doorbell rang.

I stuck my head over the balcony to see who the hell was showing up so late, even though I pretty much knew who it would be. Tiffany looked sweaty and exhausted, wrung out like I did after a race. I guess playing a concert was sort of the same thing. She was smiling politely at my aunt and uncle. How did she even find me? And what was she doing here, acting like it was perfectly normal?

“Hi, nice to meet you Mr. and Mrs. Forbes. I'm so sorry to show up so late. I just, well, I had to talk to Bryan.” They looked up and saw me standing there. I wasn't sure if they could read the look on my face because, well, I wasn't sure what I was feeling myself.

“We'll leave you alone,” Aunt Tina said, pulling Eli back toward the living room.

“We'll go outside,” I said, still confused. “Take a walk if that's okay?”

So there we were. Me and Tiffany Sanz, walking through the suburban quiet of Westport. I found myself leading us the opposite direction of town. Out where the suburbs become more rural, even quieter. There was a long bridge that ran over a small river.

“What are you doing here?” I asked as we walked.

“I needed to talk to you,” she said.

“Wasn't there some sort of after-party where everyone
burned my picture or poked a voodoo doll or something?”

“Well, yeah, sure, but skipping the after-party only increases my rock star cred.”

“Does making me fear for my life also increase your rock star cred?”

“Oh, come on, those nerds weren't going to kill you.” “You never heard of what-do-you-call-it . . . Columbine? Virginia Tech? I could go on.”

“Oh, I've heard all about that,” she said. “Believe me.”

“You're not making me feel better,” I said.

“You think those hipsters were hiding guns in their beards? Ooh, that's a good line.” She pulled out a notebook and wrote while singing quietly. “Hipsters with guns in their beards.” It sort of made me hate her.

“How did you even find me?” I asked.

“Your aunt is Tina Forbes. I looked her up online. Found the address. Easy enough.”

“Okay, but still: why? Why are you here?”

“Listen: I'm sorry if I embarrassed you, but really I do want to thank you.”

“Thank me? For what?”

“No one should ever be treated like I was. That's a fact. But in some way you helped me realize early on what I didn't want to be. You helped me become me. Ooh, a rhyme!” She opened her notebook again.

“Well, I feel like crap about it. But you probably wanted that.”

“Maybe a little.” She gave me a look. An innocent look. A look that made me realize the sad little girl was still there under the rock-star cool. “But more than anything, I guess I want to know why you did it.”

“The million-dollar question,” I said.

“That's not an answer,” she said.

“Is there one?”

“You tell me.”

There was a long pause. We stopped and leaned against the rails of the bridge, staring over the small river. A car drove by, its motor purring in the night, its lights briefly illuminating the darkness.

“The truth?”

“The truth.”

“I think I did it just so people wouldn't tease me.”

She laughed. “Why would people tease you, Bryan Forbes? You're like perfect.” I rolled my eyes. “Good grades, good family, good at sports . . .”

“I'm good at running,” I said. “That's not a sport people exactly give a shit about. Plus, you know, they used to tease me too before you showed up. They had a mean name they used to call me. They taunted me.”

“They did? What was it? Jacques Strapp?”

“Why are you obsessed with jock straps? I'm a runner, remember? I've never worn a jock strap in my life.”

“What then? Tell me.”

“Uh-uh,” I said. “No way. No freaking way I'm telling you.
I've seen you with that notebook and that pen. Everything I say goes into a song.”

Without pausing for a moment, she threw her notebook off the bridge. Its pages fluttered like a bird. Like a dying bird. It splashed into the water.

“Now you have to tell me,” she said.

“That was really cool, but no.”

“Why not?”

“It's painful.”

“Painful? I just got up on stage and sang the lucky pup song to a crowd, Bryan. Don't you know that confronting pain is the only way to make it go away? Don't you know that art is the best tool in life to turn shit into gold? Mr. Clarke taught us that.”

“He did?”

“Well, I'm paraphrasing.”

“Okay, fine. Taylor and Amanda and them used to call me ‘the Beak.'”

“What? Why? Because of your nose?”

“It's sort of large, if you haven't realized.”

“No,” she said, looking closely. “It's just that you have a small face.”

“What?”

“Just kidding,” she said. “Relax. Ain't nothing wrong with a bit of beakness.”

“Thanks?” I said, smiling despite myself. “But if your next album is called ‘Bit of Beakness' I'm going to kill you.”