Our Song (20 page)

“Along with the flexible forearm?” Jacob said skeptically.

“Yup,” I said, trying not to sound bored by this discussion of fiddle technique. “Everything loose, everything easy.”

“Yet every note perfectly in tune and right on the beat,” Jacob said, shaking his head.

“Yup,” I said again, laughing this time. “Simple.”

Jacob shrugged and tried my wrist-dropping trick. But that made him forget to loosen his bow arm. When I corrected that, his wrist crept up again. That's when Nanny sauntered over and watched Jacob play for a couple of measures.

“I think this is a wrist issue,” Nanny said, squinting at Jacob's left hand. “You need to drop it a little and . . . Nell, show him what I mean.”

Shooting Jacob an apologetic glance, I picked up my own fiddle and played the passage with my wrist low and my limbs loose. The music was as light and fast as a bird's wing.

“See!” Nanny said. “Simple. And impossible, I know, darlin'. But just keep working at it. One day—
click—
it's gonna be right there, and you'll thank me for all this torture.”

Jacob gave Nanny a sheepish smile. She headed over to Victoria, but I stayed put.

“You know I totally hate you right now,” Jacob whispered to me.

“I'm sorry!” I whisper-wailed.

He laughed and cringed all at once.

“Don't be,” he said. “You can't help it if you're a ridiculously
talented Finlayson, any more than I can help being . . . whatever I am.”

“You're a fiddler, Jacob,” I said fiercely. “A real one. Please don't doubt that. So yeah, you didn't have what I had growing up. But you've got so much passion. And, hello, you're here! You're learning every day.”

“You're right,” Jacob said, gazing at the floor. “I just wish sometimes that it didn't have to be so hard to get what you want.”

Since his eyes were downcast, I allowed my gaze to linger on his shiny hair, his beautifully imperfect nose, his sharp jawline.

“Believe me,” I whispered. “I know exactly what you mean.”

Chapter
Twenty

H
ere was another thing Nanny
hadn't told me about her fiddling class. On the second-to-last day of the session, they got to escape from Camden!

Of course, Nanny didn't refer to it as an escape. She called it a field trip.

We left early in the morning, all of us piling into Camden's big, clunky, forest-green van. We were headed for Asheville, about an hour's drive from the school.

My family went to this little North Carolina city often to play concerts. It was one of my favorite places on earth.

On one hand, it was a cute, small town tucked away in the mountains—the kind of place you go to get
away
from the big city. But in many ways, Asheville was more urban than Atlanta.
Where Atlanta sprawled, overrun with strip malls, downtown Asheville was packed densely with walkable streets and plazas, and awesome, quirky shops topped by lofts. It was filled with artists and musicians, many of them just a few years older than me. Rent was cheap in Asheville, so they were free to prowl the sidewalks, making renegade public art.

That's why we were going there. Nanny (I'd learned) subjected all her Camden students to the Busking Test. They had to play on various street corners and see if they could hack performing for random strangers.

When we made it down from Camden's mountain, I couldn't stop myself from whooping with joy. I turned my face toward the open window, grinning as the wind did its best to breeze through my hair. (In honor of my return to civilization, I'd flatironed my less-black-than-ever bob and sprayed it into submission. I was also wearing one of my favorite shreddy tank tops and a miniskirt.)

“I have permits for each of you,” Nanny announced, passing back a stack of stapled papers, “as well as maps of all the places busking is authorized in the city. So if the police hassle you, you can just produce your paperwork.”

“Ms. Annie,” Victoria said breathlessly, “you make it sound like we're planning a caper instead of just playing fiddle on the sidewalk.”

“
Just
playing fiddle on the sidewalk?” Nanny gasped. “Vicki, nothing's more badass than busking.”

“Nanny!” I gasped. “Did you just use the word ‘badass'?!”

“Sorry, sweetheart.” Nanny shrugged. “There's really no other word for busking. It's not for the faint of heart. To start with, you don't have a captive audience who've bought tickets to your recital and
have
to be polite. Passersby are brutally honest. You play something that hooks 'em, they'll stop and give you two precious minutes of their time. If you
really
wow them, they'll drop a dollar into your fiddle case. But it's also good if people tell you you're noise pollution. That shows you made an impression.”

“Insults are good?” Jacob asked from his seat next to mine.

“Oh, yes,” Nanny said, nodding hard. “That's why I harass
you
people every day. The only thing I don't want to hear about is indifference. If someone walks right by you without noticing you're there? Well, that means you're background noise. You're the wallpaper. And you all have too much personality for that.”

After we arrived, Harley parked our mortifying short bus in a parking deck. We all grabbed our fiddles and stumbled out to the sidewalk.

“It feels so . . . crowded,” Shana said, clutching her violin case tightly. A small pack of people sauntered by, all of them proudly wearing that skinny, scruffy, sleepy-eyed look of college kids on summer break. One of the girls had teal hair and chipped black nail polish. The guys all wore T-shirts advertising bands that nobody had heard of yet. Their hair looked like their girlfriends had given them DIY trims with razor blades. They were so impossibly cool, I couldn't help but stare.

I sneaked a glance at Jacob to see if he was playing it cooler than I was. But he had the exact same stargazey, yearning look on his face. It made me want to throw my arms around him and bury my face in his neck.

I didn't do that, of course. I
couldn't
do that. But I did hazard a smile at Jacob, a big, geeks-like-us grin.

Meanwhile, Harley spotted a chain coffee shop across the street about a block away.

“Shana!” he said, squeezing her arm.

“Ooh!” she cried, clapping her hands. “We are going over there
right now
.”

“She's been moaning about missing her precious soy lattes ever since we got to Camden,” Harley confided to the rest of us. Shana laughed and punched his arm.

“I could go for a Frappuccino,” Tamara piped up. Murmuring in agreement, the group began to walk toward the shop. But I hesitated.

Coffee chains made me itchy. They were well lit and easily wipe-downable. The baristas wore green visors.
Everybody
had heard of the bands on their sound system.

“I wonder if they'll have pumpkin flavoring, even though it's summer?” Shana said.

Jacob held back with me, and once again, we exchanged a secret smile.

“I have a feeling that you think pumpkin soy lattes are a crime against nature,” he whispered.

“Not against nature so much as against coffee!” I said, curling my lip.

“This from the girl who likes her coffee white,” Jacob teased me.

“Beige!” I protested. “You can still taste the coffee under the milk. Faintly. How did you know how I drink my coffee anyway?”

“Do you know how I take mine?”

Without hesitation, I said, “Black, half a teaspoon of sugar.”

“See?” Jacob said. “I don't know if you've noticed, but we've been having breakfast together for a while now.”

I felt the same way I had that first morning Jacob saw me in a swimsuit—revealed.

But not necessarily in a bad way.

“Anyway,” Jacob went on, “I'm not feeling much like coffee right now. I'd rather eat.”

“Want an early lunch?” I proposed, glancing at my phone. “It's eleven thirty. If we eat now, we'll be hungry again before we head back to Camden, and we can get some gelato.”

“You know,” Jacob said, as we crossed the street, “to look at you, you would never guess how obsessed you are with food.”

“I'm only obsessed when I've been subsisting on a diet of meat-free casseroles,” I said.

“Well, I'm obsessed all the time,” Jacob admitted. “But I'm a guy. We're universally acknowledged to be pigs. Most girls are all about the salads.”

“I guess I'm different from most girls,” I said with a shrug.

“You're singular,” Jacob said.

“What?”

“You said that to me once,” he said. His neck started to go blotchy, and he avoided my eyes. “When I called you ‘y'all.' You said, ‘I am singular.' I've got to say, I agree.”

“Singular” doesn't seem like a compliment. After “smart,” most girls would probably prefer “pretty” or “bubbly” or “hot.”

But “singular” made me swoon. Once again, I had that urge to throw myself at Jacob.

Instead I hurried over to Nanny, who was holding the coffee shop door for the other students.

“Well,” she mused, “I suppose as long as we're here I might get myself a grande macchiato with an extra shot and a caramel drizzle.”

“Nanny!” I said. “How many more times are you going to shock me today?”

“Sweetie,” Nanny said, “exactly how old do you think I am?!”

“You are fabulously youthful,” I said, giving her a quick hug. “But you are old-
fashioned
.”

Nanny let the door fall closed after the last of the fiddlers had gone inside. She gave me a tilt-headed squint.

“You know,” she said, “a person who likes old music isn't necessarily old-fashioned.”

She glanced at Jacob, who was standing a few feet behind me, his hands dug into his shorts pockets, his neck unblotching slowly.

“That was one of the things,” Nanny said, her voice low, “that I hoped you'd learn at Camden.”

“I—” I began, “I mean I—”

I didn't know what to say, except that it was kind of hard to change a major cornerstone of your worldview while standing in the doorway of a coffee shop.

And on an empty stomach.

“I . . . think Jacob and I are going to skip the coffee,” I said. “We're going to get something to eat instead. Then we'll find a spot to play.”

Nanny's smile was sweet and open.

“That's fine,” she said. “Have fun, sweetheart. Since our phones work here, I'll call you if I have any problems with this fancy camera of yours.”

Nanny patted my camera bag, which was slung over her shoulder. She'd asked to borrow it so she could shoot everyone while they were busking.

I gasped and slapped my back pocket. I'd gotten so used to my phone not working at Camden that I'd almost forgotten it was possible to make calls on it instead of just using it as a clock.

“Yeah, call me if you need anything,” I said, pulling my phone out. “But I've got the camera all set up for you on auto-everything, especially auto-focus. You should be good, even with one hand.”

“Okeydoke,” Nanny said. “Oh, and Nell. For your busking, I recommend that you go to the corner of Wall Street and Battery Park Avenue. It's perfect for you.”

“Wall Street and Battery Park,” I murmured, pulling my map
and permit out of my other pocket. “Okay, why not? See you later, Nanny.”

And then, because she'd been cool about me ditching the group—with a boy—I gave her another hug. I reached to open the coffee shop door for her, but she waved me away.

“You've been very helpful, Nell, since—” Nanny lifted her splinted hand and frowned at it. “I know it hasn't been easy.”

“None of this has been easy,” I admitted quietly. I glanced over my shoulder at Jacob. “But a smart lady once told me that nothing worth doing was easy.”

I wondered if Nanny knew what I was really talking about.

“That woman was a genius,” she said, “whoever she was. Now go get yourself a cheeseburger, Nell. You look too skinny, and you're definitely not fooling
me
with that silly vegetarian act.”

Jacob heard that bit and didn't stop laughing until we were half a block down the street.

“I'm glad you find me so amusing in my anemic state,” I said.

“Nell . . .” Jacob suddenly stopped walking and turned toward me. I felt a swoop in my belly.

“Yes?” I said. It came out squeaky.

“I want to . . . ,”Jacob said hesitantly, “I want to buy you that cheeseburger.”

Okay,
not
the romantic declaration I'd been expecting.

“You're not serious,” I said, giving him a shove.

“I'm as serious as a fried chicken leg,” Jacob said.