The Hard Kind of Promise (10 page)

It scared Sarah that Marjorie was yelling. She had never heard Marjorie yell before. It felt as though if they didn't stop yelling, they were going to teleport themselves to a different universe, like on the old
Star Trek
shows Marjorie loved. A universe with red oceans and blue trees and inhabitants who read minds and didn't need air to breathe. A universe where they weren't friends anymore.

"I'm
always
saying it's okay!" Marjorie yelled.

The words reverberated in the air around them as Sarah realized that she'd been wrong all those times when she'd thought Marjorie didn't get it.

Marjorie had gotten it all along.

Joey watched them with his mouth hanging open.

"It's not my fault!" Sarah thumped her fists against the sides of her thighs in frustration. "I can't get out of chorus! Do you want me to just forget about rehearsals? Do you want me to flunk?"

"No. "Marjorie's glasses were a little fogged up, but Sarah could see that behind them, she closed her eyes.

"Well, what do you want me to do?"

"Nothing. "Her eyes were still closed. "Nothing."

"I don't know how to make it right!" Sarah said.

Without meaning to, she had made it into a question.

"You guys are like my sisters," Joey said. "Except they hit each other."

"Just forget about it," Marjorie said. "Can't you just forget about it?"

Marjorie wouldn't forgive her. Sarah knew she wanted to stay angry and hurt a little longer. Maybe to hold it over Sarah's head. Maybe just to feel superior. It seemed unfair to Sarah that she wouldn't just let it go, when Sarah kept saying she was sorry, over and over.

"Lizzie gets that it's not my fault," Sarah said. "Why can't you?"

Marjorie opened her eyes. They stared at each other for no more than a few seconds, but to Sarah it seemed like hours: protracted, interminable. Marjorie's eyes were hard and blue, not giving anything away, like the eyes on a marble statue.

"We have to get back to work," she said. "It might rain. We have to get going."

Behind her, Sarah heard the distant sound of voices singing scales, and knew that she was already late.

"Marjorie—"

But Marjorie turned her back. She hopped toward Joey and craned her neck to see into the camera's viewfinder. Sarah knew she was being shut out, that it was Marjorie's way of pretending she wasn't there.

It was like being erased.

"Fine," Sarah said. "Fine! Be a baby! Who cares? Not me!" She turned and began to run back to the auditorium. "Not about you or your stupid movie!" she yelled over her shoulder.

Marjorie didn't yell anything back, but Sarah knew she had heard every word. The silence behind her was louder than yelling.

On Monday, Sarah found Lizzie and Carly between periods.

"Marjorie isn't going to hang out with us anymore," Sarah said.

"Thank God!" Carly said. "No offense, but she was really getting on my nerves."

"What happened?" Lizzie asked.

"It's too complicated to explain." Sarah was afraid
that if she tried, she might cry. "I'm sick of even thinking about it."

"You can eat with us," Lizzie said.

"Thanks."

"It was bad, her eating with us," Carly said. "I could tell people were wondering what
she
was doing with
us.
"

"That's really mean," Lizzie said.

"Well, I don't care," Carly said. "I'm sorry, but I don't. You know it's true. We're different from her. The way we dress, how we talk. What we talk
about
." She pulled her jean jacket closed and folded her hands under her crossed arms to keep them warm. "People should be friends with people who are like them."

Out of habit, Sarah wanted to defend Marjorie, but she stopped herself. She didn't have to anymore.

Also, some of what Carly said was true. They
were
different from Marjorie. They talked about hairstyles and boys and clothes. Marjorie talked about old movies. They wore cool sneakers and jeans and hoodies. Marjorie wore clogs and overalls.

"It's too hard to be friends with people who are too different," Carly said.

"You shouldn't say that stuff," Lizzie said nervously.

"Why not? It's true," Carly said. "I'm sick of pretending to like everyone. I like people who wear cute clothes and eat normal things for lunch."

The bell rang.

"Marjorie is gross," Carly said.

"Shut up!" Sarah said, shocked at herself, at how angry she was. She never said "shut up."

Carly looked at her with wide-open eyes.

"She is not gross!" Sarah yelled. She could feel tears in her eyes and at the back of her throat.

"Don't tell me to shut up!" Carly said.

Kids were pushing past them, trying to get to class. But Sarah was frozen in the middle of the hallway. She felt that if she moved, it would be like telling Carly to think whatever she wanted about Marjorie.

Even if she and Marjorie weren't friends anymore, she couldn't let Carly say she was gross.

Lizzie pushed between them and grabbed each of them by the elbow.

"Come on, you guys," she said, moving them forward in the hall. "Carly, quit being so heinous."

"I'm not being—"

"Just shut up, then," Lizzie said, letting go of Carly and steering Sarah into a deserted bathroom. She closed the door, and Sarah burst into tears.

Once she started, Sarah couldn't stop, not even when the bell rang, letting them know that third period had started.

"You're going to be late for PE," she burbled to Lizzie, who was standing by silently, handing her paper towels for her runny nose.

"It's okay," Lizzie said. "It's too cold for calisthenics."

"But you'll get in trouble. Your mom will be mad."

"My mom's always mad."

It was embarrassing to cry in front of someone else. The tears felt inexhaustible, like rain pouring from a cloud in Sarah's head that wouldn't empty.

Lizzie didn't say anything. She just kept handing over paper towels.

Snot poured out of Sarah's nose. She started to hiccup.

"This is disgusting," she said, wiping her face with another towel, willing herself to stop sobbing.

Lizzie shrugged. "I cried like that when my dad left. And when my dog died," she said. "Sometimes life is just really sad. And you have to get it out of you."

Sarah nodded and hiccupped. "I'll be all right. Just go to class," she said. "Please. It's okay. I'll be all right," she said again.

"Are you sure?" Lizzie peered at her as though she
were a vase that had fallen and shattered, a dangerous mess of sharp, broken parts.

I'm sure.

Lizzie gave herself a quick glance in the mirror, then looked back at Sarah. "It's for the best, maybe," she said softly.

Sarah felt the back of her throat ache with new tears. She forced herself to swallow them. "I just have to sit here a minute," she said. "To let my face go back to normal."

Lizzie nodded. "Don't be too late," she said. "Mrs. Fogelson makes you do extra homework problems if you're too late."

When Sarah was sure Lizzie had disappeared down the hall, she cried a little longer. She told herself it was to get rid of as many tears as she could so they didn't start leaking out in the middle of doing complex fractions.

But really it was because she was so angry. That Carly was hateful, and also a little bit right. That Marjorie wouldn't just try to be like everyone else, even if it was only in public, for a few hours a day. That everything changed, whether you wanted it to or not. That nothing was fair.

THAT NIGHT, Grandpa arrived unexpectedly at five.

"Dad, I didn't know you were coming, or I would have made more for dinner," Mom said.

"Not here to eat," he said. "I'm here to take ole Henry to the park."

On hearing his name, Henry, who had followed Mom and Sarah to the front door, stood tall. His tail wagged madly.

"We're going to practice heeling, aren't we, boy?" Grandpa said.

"Can't you teach him some tricks?" Sarah asked. "Heeling is just walking. He already knows how to do that."

"We're going to teach him how to do it right," Grandpa said. "Want to come along?"

Sarah was cranky and hungry. "No, thanks," she said. Then she added, "It would be more fun if it was tricks."

Grandpa bent low, fastening Henry's leash.

"I'm thinking of entering him in the All Good Dogs Day contest this summer," he said.

All Good Dogs Day was held in July. There was a dog parade, a dog talent show, an obedience competition, and awards for Best Dog Costumes. You could buy regular ice cream and doggy ice cream. Grandpa had tasted the doggy ice cream once. He said he was glad he wasn't a dog.

"He's already a good dog," Sarah said. "I don't see why he has to win something to prove it."

"He doesn't have to. But I think he's got the competitive spirit. He likes learning new things. I think he'd like a trophy with his name on it. An award or something."

"It's too bad there's not an award for face-peeing," Sarah said. "He'd win that."

Henry was eyeing Grandpa intently. Sarah realized he was waiting for Grandpa to hold a treat overhead, the signal that he was supposed to sit.

"We should be careful about feeding him too many treats," she said. "Henry might get fat."

"Don't worry," Grandpa said. "I'm getting him into fighting shape."

He said it as though Henry were a boxer in training for an important bout. Sarah looked at Henry—his hopeful, alert eyes—and wondered if he would care about beating other dogs. She wished everything didn't have to be about winning, but somehow, that's how it always ended up.

Henry had lowered himself to the ground, but not close enough to Grandpa's feet. "No treat until you do it right," Grandpa said.

She was a little mad at him, which she almost never was, for taking something that had been just for fun and making it into something that had to be worked at and practiced and done just right.

For the next two weeks Mr. Roche made them sing every day after school and for five hours on Saturdays and Sundays. Sarah felt as though all she did was sing and eat and do homework and sleep. She could feel herself beginning to hate singing. Her throat hurt. Sometimes she wished Handel had never been born.

But then a funny thing happened. She could hear herself singing better. She sounded in tune all the time.
She could hold the notes without having to take another breath. She could sing her part even when the sopranos were singing theirs.

"Come on, altos!" Mr. Roche boomed, his arms thrashing out the beat. "Stick with it! Come on!"

Lizzie and Sarah exchanged looks, then concentrated on his baton. Sarah could feel her breath in her abdomen, right where it was supposed to be. She sang, and the words of "The Lone Wild Bird" stopped being just words. Her lungs were full of music. Her heart grew large with sound and feeling.

"Not bad," Mr. Roche said. He wiped the sweat off his forehead as he riffled through the pages of his score. "Not bad."

He wouldn't look at them, but Sarah knew he was proud.

At lunch on the Tuesday before the competition, she asked Lizzie, "Have you noticed that you hear those songs in your head all the time?"

Lizzie rolled her eyes. "I
dream
about them," she said. "I wake up, and it's like I've been listening to 'Praise the King' in my sleep."

"You know when we're all singing together and in tune and it's just, I don't know,
right?
And then we stop, and it's like the air around us is vibrating?" Sarah brushed chocolate chip cookie crumbs off her lap.
"Sometimes, just walking around, I feel like that. Like the air is buzzing from all the music in my head."

"You guys are bizarre," Carly said. "It's just singing."

Sarah and Carly hadn't mentioned Marjorie since their fight two weeks before, but they hadn't made up, either. Mostly they just talked about boys and pretended that the fight never happened. But Sarah noticed that Carly seemed a little less welcoming of her, a little more willing to be unreservedly critical.

"It's like there's music everywhere, and the only way you can hear it is by singing so much," Sarah said.

Carly licked mustard off the tip of her thumb. "I'm going to try out for tennis," she said. "My mom says tennis is a good sport to do because you can do it when you're grown up. And also, you get to wear cute little skirts."

"Tennis makes me too sweaty," Lizzie said. "I can't do sports that make you sweat. I sweat enough just from having so much hair."

"You guys should do a sport," Carly said. "Sports are cool. Unless it's something like bowling."

"I don't like sports," Sarah said. "Playing or watching."

In PE, she didn't like caring so much about winning; it made her feel as though she were being chased. Even when the teachers said that winning didn't matter,
that what counted was teamwork and good sportsmanship, they still liked it when you won.

Sarah's dad and Diane watched sports on TV all the time. When baseball was over, they switched to football. After football season ended, they watched basketball. Sometimes, if they got desperate, they even watched golf. Sarah got the feeling that they watched sports because it kept them from thinking too much about things that were hard to think about. That if they turned off the TV, they'd have nothing to say to each other.

"Who has time for sports, with all this singing?" Lizzie said.

"You guys should be careful," Carly said. "Singing is kind of weird."

Sarah felt everything freeze, the way it did between the time when you burned yourself on the hot iron and the moment when you screamed.

"What," Lizzie said, turning to Carly, "are you even
talking
about?"

"Everyone knows that cool people do sports and weird people do music," Carly said. When she saw Lizzie's mouth drop open, she added, "But it's okay. Singing is much cooler than
band.
Band people are really weird. I mean,
tubas?
What kind of a normal person plays the
tuba?
"

"What about the flute?" Lizzie asked sarcastically. "Can you be normal and play the flute?"