The Sound of Letting Go

STASIA WARD KEHOE

the

sound

of

letting

go

VIKING
An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA)

VIKING

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First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2014

Copyright © 2014 by Stasia Ward Kehoe

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Ward, S. (Stasia), date–

The sound of letting go / by Stasia Ward Kehoe.

pages cm

Summary: At seventeen, Daisy feels imprisoned by her brother Steven’s autism and its effects and her only escape is through her trumpet into the world of jazz, but when her parents decide to send Steven to an institution she is not ready to let him go.

ISBN 978-1-101-62655-9

[1. Novels in verse. 2. Autism—Fiction. 3. Trumpet—Fiction. 4. Jazz—Fiction. 5. High schools—Fiction. 6. Schools—Fiction. 7. Family problems—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.5.W24Sou 2014

[Fic]—dc23

2013013098

For Thomas, Mak, Sam, Jack,
and Kevin.
Always.

Dave Miller grins in my direction.

At least, I think

his easy-eyed, right-cheek-dimpled expression

is meant for me.

It’s hard to be certain, since we are separated

by the fingerprinted interior window that divides my band room refuge from the chaotic dissonance of the rest of Evergreen High.

Dave was my best friend in kindergarten.

We split jelly (no peanut butter) sandwiches together,

told our parents that we’d marry

and build a house, someday, in Dave’s backyard.

But life isn’t kindergarten, and by now,

junior year of high school,

we live on different social planets,

our orbits rarely intersecting,

though sometimes, in the morning,

he’s there outside the band room

making my stomach flutter,

making me want a peanut-butter-free jelly sandwich.

I wonder what sort of smile would telegraph the reply,

If-you-are-looking-at-me-hey-there-but-if-you-are-not-

I-don’t-mind.

Whatever it is, I hope that’s my expression

as I pack up my trumpet,

smooth my hand over the once-black case

now customized with a zillion jazz-musician,

classic-album, instrument art stickers I’ve made

using mom’s scrapbooking gadgets

because my mother keeps things organized.

Our lives in labeled albums,

our showpiece house in designer paint colors

vacuumed, swept, so pretty that if you just looked

you might want to come inside.

But if you listened,

you’d hear another story:

incomprehensible wailing,

shouting, urgent phone calls,

crying. You’d want to ask if a monster

lived in our house.

I am not sure how I’d answer.

I snap the buckles,

hoist my backpack over one shoulder,

slide my trumpet case up onto a band room shelf.

I’ll retrieve it after school.

“Busy tonight, Daisy?”

Dave catches me at the door.

I resist the instinctive
why?

and say, “Not really.”

“A bunch of us are going to The Movie House.

Wanna come?”

Dave’s golden-brown eyes hold me,

his hopeful voice a beckoning bell

silenced by the drum crash of reality.

Wednesday is one of Mom’s yoga nights.

A night I watch Steven.

“I—I think I’ll have too much homework for that.”

Heart skidding, I walk down the hall to homeroom,

eyes pointed resolutely forward, resisting

the urge to glance back, see if Dave is watching.

I slide my backpack off my shoulder, straighten my spine,

give my hair a casual, carefree shake, just in case.

“The Movie House,” I whisper through near-motionless lips.

I have this habit of sometimes saying words out loud,

narrating my life as I wish it could be,

pretending the pounding in my chest is because I am, secretly, a spy girl or mad scientist,

that my reason for scurrying home, turning down Dave,

is something more exotic than unpleasant.

I let my imagination wander to the possibility of
yes
.

In my mind, I sit at The Movie House beside Dave

and he puts his hand gently over mine on the armrest

that separates us,

and it doesn’t feel anything like our old sandbox high fives,

and he isn’t the detention-garnering slacker he’s become

but the astronaut-engineer-firefighter he used to portray

when he wore a near-perpetual chocolate-milk mustache

and hair buzzed short by his dad, like a soldier’s.

“Wednesday at The Movie House”

could be the title for an album,

something brassy, instrumental, full of hope.

And that makes me smile a little,

thinking of music inside my head despite my pulsing regret

for saying no.