This Song Is (Not) for You (8 page)

I love making things. I love taking paper and paint and creating an image that had only been in my mind but that now I can show people and try to explain. It’s my way of talking about my feelings.

I love music. I feel it in my chest and in my hands and in my feet. Music is more than just something I hear; it’s something that happens to me. I can communicate better with music than with words.

I love my parents and my brothers. Even though they don’t get me (they really don’t), they still love me. I know that I’m lucky to have a family, and I love them.

And I love Sam and Ramona. We haven’t been friends all that long, but I feel like we were always meant to meet. I love the way Sam never speaks unless he’s thought for some time about what he’s going to say, so that he can say it just right. I love the way that Ramona is so alive and full of thoughts and emotions that the words just can’t wait to get out of her mouth.

I love talking with them about music and art and the world. I love making music with them. I love it that they’re starting to make art with me.

I have a lot of love in my life. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.

I don’t know why I don’t feel sexual urges, but I don’t.

I didn’t have anything horrible happen to me as a child.

I’ve told a doctor and been checked out. Nothing’s wrong with me.

Except that something must be wrong, right?

Right?

So I should try to be with Ramona in the way she wants. I should try to feel sexual desire. Maybe it’s like a muscle that can be exercised. Maybe I can be jump-started, and then I’ll still be me, but I’ll have this thing that everyone else feels.

Similar to eighth grade, my last class of the day, my advanced orchestra class, would be the best part of my school day if it wasn’t for the presence of one person.

But if you think I’ll be hugging Emmalyn at the end of this year, overwhelmed by the life lesson I just learned, then, well, this story is not for you.

Emmalyn plays the violin. She’s actually kinda good.

But that’s not the point. No one said I hated her because she was a bad musician.

At Saint Joe’s, advanced orchestra is basically just a study hall for music. People sit in corners and run scales, practice pieces for upcoming evaluations, that kind of thing. Normally, Emmalyn and I don’t interact much here, though I can still hear her obnoxious laugh from time to time, and I swear she does it on purpose every time I walk by.

And today she stole my metronome.

It’s the school’s metronome, but I was using it. I got up to go to the bathroom, and when I came back, it was not on the piano anymore. Emmalyn was practicing with it on the other side of the music room. So the only thing to do was to march over there and demand it back from her.

“What do you mean, your metronome?” she said in the high pitch her voice gets when she’s being snotty. “It’s the school’s metronome, and we’re supposed to be sharing it. There are sixteen of us and four metronomes, and you’ve snagged one every single day all semester. That math says you’re hogging them.”

“What are you talking about? Math?” My voice was probably starting to rise too, because I saw a few people glancing over. “I was using that metronome, plain and simple. And you can’t just take it from me.” I reached toward the metronome on the table next to her. Emmalyn squawked and swatted my hand with her bow. It didn’t hurt, but instinctively I pulled my hand back.

“You are unbelievable. You’re like a five-year-old! Didn’t your mother teach you to share?” I said.

“My mother is dead, you bitch,” she said.

And I was so surprised,

that I said,

“Mine too.”

We stared at each other, and then thankfully the bell rang.

And I’m taking a metronome tomorrow. John has been pushing me hard on the scales, and Dad is counting on me. Emmalyn isn’t going to get in my way.

(Even if her mother is dead.)

“Last night when I came in the garage, it looked like Ramona and Tom were holding hands,” Mom said. We were eating Korean takeout, and then we would have the crème brûlée Mom made for dessert.

“Yeah, they’re doing that now,” I said. “It’s not a big deal.”

“They’re going out?” she asked.

“Yup,” I said. “But it’s not a big deal, Mom.”

“You’re okay with that?”

“Yeah. I mean, I kinda have to be. But it’s not a big deal.”

“Tell me if you need to talk,” she said. I focused on finishing my food after that. The moment I was done, Mom started putting the leftovers away. She’s big on eating leftovers and only cooking when it’s fun.

She used to say “Tell me if you need to talk” a lot after the divorce. I couldn’t really take her up on it though. She was too much of a mess for me to add to her burden.

So I talked to Ramona instead when I needed to talk to someone.

Mom pulled out the little blowtorch she bought for melting sugar. She fiddled with the knob and tapped it on the table.

“Now how does this work?” she mumbled.

• • •

Once a month my dad picks me up on a Saturday afternoon. We go to a Cardinals game or to see a new exhibit at the art museum. Then we go to a late dinner at an expensive steak house. Dad asks me questions about school. He asks my opinions on current events. That night I sleep in the guest bedroom of his downtown loft.

In the morning he drives me home. Even after he bought me my car, our routine never varied. He could see me more if he wanted to. He never calls me. He trusts that the money he spends will keep me safe for the next month.

When he lived with us, he was hardly ever around, and he’d been satisfied with third-person updates. Now I actually have a period of focused attention.

I used to be angrier about it.

But talking to Ramona made me realize that being angry was pointless.

All it did was hurt me, without any effect on the situation.

So I’m not angry with Tom for being with Ramona.

Tom and Ramona care about each other; that’s a good thing.

But I still don’t have anyone to talk to about it.

• • •

“I’m not angry at Tom,” I said. I watched my mother as she delicately ran the flame across the sugar snow. “But I guess I do wish I were in his place.”

And my mom, she didn’t overdo it.

“That must suck,” she said as she flicked off the torch. “Does Ramona know how you feel?”

So.

There was just too much shit going on, and I fucking had to make some art.

It’s almost Christmas, and all around us, people are equating material goods with love. (Some of these commercials scare me.)

So I thought I’d make a statement about first-world materialism in the face of world hunger, ’cause you know, it’s Christmas.

I’d make a poster for the mall parking garage. Something to shock people into knowing what I know—that some people are starving and other people are buying stupid stuff.

I’d find the saddest image I could and put something under it like “Ask her what she wants for Christmas.”

So I searched for “starving child” images.

(Do not search for “starving child.”)

And I learned that I knew nothing.

I did not know that an infant could be stretched so thin that it would scare me.

I did not know. I did not know.

That babies have skulls and ribs and eyes that can scream.

I did not know

We all are skeletons,

Corpses walking around with life-flesh encasing us for now.

And all it takes is the tip of a scale, and you’re just living

bones and

paper skin.

Ready to be forgotten.

If it weren’t for journalists with cameras and teenagers with something to prove.

• • •

So.

I didn’t do the project.

Because my problems are that I have a girlfriend and a best friend, my parents want to talk to me while we eat dinner together (which we do every night), and I think going to school takes up too much of my time.

I took some money out of my savings account and donated it to a world hunger charity. And I went downstairs and looked at our Christmas tree.

I sat there for a long, long time.

The morning after Christmas, I lay in bed for a long time. The light had that winter feeling of thick, cold cloud cover. My bedroom overlooks the alley and the neighbor’s brick wall.

No grass, no trees, just the red brick and dirty mortar, one iron star support, and a small triangle of sky.

I love my window’s wall. I’ve watched late-afternoon light drift across it in sadness and in joy, and I’ve stared toward it at night and wondered,
What is life for?

I know a special crack in a certain brick.

I think I could fit the top of my thumb in one chipped corner, but I suppose I’ll never know for sure, since it’s up at the third floor.

What I’m trying to say is that you could take a picture of this wall and a bunch of other redbrick walls, and I could pick mine out. Easily.

What I’m trying to say is that I love this brick wall because it’s the brick wall that’s been outside my window all my life.

But it could have been another brick wall in another place. Or a hedge. Or a bridge.

The morning after Christmas, I lay in bed and watched my wall and I thought,
Sometimes love is like that.
It’s about a certain time and place, circumstances that could have changed. Tom says he doesn’t think his parents would like him if he were someone else’s son, but he is theirs and they love him, so it’s fine. There were friends I had in junior high because we were there at the same time, and when we weren’t there, we weren’t friends anymore, and that was fine.

People you don’t know blend together as identical as Pink Floyd’s bricks in a wall.

But when I met Tom, it was like he was already my wall.

Okay.

Wait.

It was like when I’ve had a bad day. And I’m tired. And I finally go into my room at the end of the day and I see the window, and I remember that I’ve felt this bad before, but it always gets better again, that life happens in cycles.

When I met Tom, that’s how it felt. Like Tom’s very existence in the world reminded me that I was Ramona, drummer and pianist, and I was gonna get into Artibus, get out of high school, and get on with my life as a musician. A musician.

And he reminds me of this every time I see him.

I am in love. With Tom. And with Sam, who I knew was my Sam as soon as I met him.

Some people don’t think this could be true.

But I do.

I am.

I love.

Ramona has to practice piano a lot during school breaks, so Tom and I have been hanging out without her. He never talks about Ramona in a way that makes me uncomfortable. You’d never know they were going out except when she’s in the room.

It’s easy to pretend it’s not true.

Tom loves the series of guitar and guitar-like instruments that my father buys each Christmas and birthday. Yesterday he played the sitar and I played the banjo, and we made up a song called “Hamlet.” The lyrics are “Words, words, words.”

Tuesday, we glitter bombed a slide in the park. Now it has the words
FREE TO BE HAPPY
written in yellow, glittery puff paint down its blue plastic side. Three days and it’s still there; it’s kinda endearing how happy that makes Tom.

Today, we hung out at his place. Tom’s room is really small, but he’s covered every inch of the walls with images and words, some big, some small. It’s kind of oppressive but still awesome. We were talking about Ramona’s drumming, and he said, “She’s really just a pure percussionist. It’s no surprise that her second instrument is the piano.”

“It’s her first instrument actually,” I said.

“Well, she started playing it first, but Griselda is her main instrument now,” he said.

“Nope,” I said. “Ask her about it. She’ll tell you that piano is her main instrument.” I was standing, wandering around the room, studying the walls. “Art Is the Proper Task of Life” said a bumper sticker near me.

“But her heart is with her drum kit,” he said. He was sitting on the floor, leaning against the bed.

“Yeah, I know. But it’s with the piano too, ’cause of her mom. You know.”

“Oh,” he said. But it didn’t sound like he knew. I got the feeling that she hadn’t said much to him about her mom, and I couldn’t help but be happy about that.

“What’s this?” I asked. I touched a photograph that hadn’t been there before. I thought it was something from a horror movie at first glance, but I realized it’s a baby, skeleton thin and large eyed.

Behind me, I heard the floorboards creak as Tom shifted.

“I put it there to remind myself that I’m lucky to have more than I need.”

He sounded embarrassed, so I let it drop.

“Let’s make some music,” I said.

And we did. And it was great. Because Ramona was right. Tom is a great musician, and we were meant to meet him and be his friend, and they were meant to be together.

It’s true.

Even though I wish that I was meant to be with Ramona too.

(Too?)

“You have to participate in the senior showcase,” Ally Tabor says to me the first day back at school. She’s linked arms with me in the hallway as if we’re the very bestest of friends who always walk together.

“Hi, Ally. My break was great. Thanks for asking,” I say. (It’s funny that she’s accosted me today. I’ve been thinking about the two-and-a-half-week romance we shared, what with Ramona and all. Mom was making me participate in at least one club that semester because I “needed to make friends.” I went to the drama club meetings, and for a little while Ally wanted to hold my hand, and then she didn’t. The next semester Mom didn’t make me have a club.)

“Please, Tom! Please. If we don’t have enough interest this year, then they may not have a senior showcase next year.” Her eyes widen at this terrible possibility.

“And since we won’t be here next year…” I say.

“Tom, the senior showcase is about more than just our senior year. It’s about all the seniors that have ever—” Then she prattles on about traditions and passing torches. Like I said before, Ally takes her drama club presidency very seriously.

“Just do one of your music-like things, Tom,” she says as she deposits me outside my next class.

“Music-like things?” I say. I roll my eyes.

“You’re going to end up participating. You just wait,” Ally says. “You’re secretly dying to show our classmates your music, and I have a long-term plan for wearing you down. Bye!” She scurries off to class or to conquer a small nation.

And I am not participating.