Write This Down (13 page)

So I picked
Roman Holiday
to watch tonight instead. I love
Casablanca
more, but it would make me too sad to watch it now.

*   *   *

It's cold and windy on Sunday after church, so I lie on the couch by the gas fireplace in the family room. I should be working on my novel, because the big day with the two agents at the public library is this coming Saturday, now less than a week away. Instead I'm writing a new batch of poems about Cameron. But I don't write flowery rhyming poems with “thee” and “thou” this time. Hunter's mockery, not to mention the
New Yorker
rejection, has cured me of floweriness. Now I'm striving for the simple style of Cameron's song lyrics.

Maybe my poems could be made into songs, too?

I'll need music to go along with the words. Even though I love playing the flute, I've never tried writing music. Maybe Cameron can collaborate with me: I'd write the lyrics, and he'd come up with the melodies.

Here's the one I wrote that I like best:

Maybe I care because you don't.

Maybe I will because you won't.

And yet I think that if you smiled,

I'd smile, too.

And I think that if you left,

I'd go with you.

I imagine Olivia critiquing my song: “Autumn, what do you think the reader will
learn
from this poem? We get that you like Cameron, but we don't know
why
. What is it
about
Cameron that justifies your feelings for him?”

But Olivia is still the one who knew that Kylee's knitting triumph would make a fabulous article.

And I'm the one who didn't.

Guess who I wrote my feature about? I couldn't think of anyone else, so I wrote about, yes, my father, and how he was named Best Orthodontist in Broomville seven years in a row. What seventh grader writes a “fascinating person” feature about her
dad
? Only a seventh grader who already blew a major chance to write one about her best friend.

*   *   *

The
Peaks Post
is published on Thursday. Olivia's article about Kylee is right there smack in the middle of the front page, complete with a smiling photo of Kylee and pictures of two dogs wearing Kylee's sweaters that Olivia must have gone down to the Broomville Humane Society to take. I don't read it. I can't bear to read it. I don't even let myself collect a copy from the huge piles I see on tables at various points throughout the school hallways. Yet I can't help but see them.

Even as we're standing by our lockers before the first bell, a bunch of girls come up to Kylee to squeal over the article.

“Those sweaters are soooo cute!”

“You should sell them! I want one for my dog for Christmas!”

“Do you think my cat would wear a sweater?”

“Can you make these in people sizes?”

“Can you teach me to knit?”

“We should start a knitting club at Southern Peaks!”

“I never knew so many dogs needed homes!”

Ms. Archer begins journalism class by holding up the hot-off-the-press
Peaks Post
for everyone to see. She does this whenever anyone in the class has an article in it.

“Good morning, intrepid reporters!” she greets us. “I hope you all grabbed your copy of the
Peaks Post
this morning and checked out your classmates' work. We have a terrific feature by our own Olivia Fernandez profiling our own Kylee Willis. Good work, Olivia!”

Olivia flashes Kylee a big grin.

Kylee grins back.

My heart twists.

“And,” Ms. Archer continues, “we have an insightful review of Broomville's new knitting store, Knit Wits, by that same Kylee Willis. Nice job, Kylee.”

What?

I totally did not see that coming.

How
could
I have seen that coming when my own best friend didn't even tell me that Ms. Archer picked
her
review—
not
Olivia's and
not
mine—for publication?

I wonder if Kylee will turn around and look at me with pleading eyes.

She doesn't.

As the day began, so it continues. Kylee is mobbed in the halls even by kids who don't know her.

“Are you the girl who was in the paper today?”

“Are you the knitting person?”

“That is so cool, what you did.”

“Do you need a dog model? I have a dog who would look so great in your sweaters.”

I don't say anything to Kylee about the Knit Wits review. If I were a truly good friend, I'd congratulate her on her first publication. But if she were a truly good friend, she would have told me about it ahead of time.

I feel almost as terrible as I did when Hunter showed my poem to the band.

I feel almost as terrible as I did when
The New Yorker
rejected my poems.

Maybe even worse.

*   *   *

After school, my mom is driving us to ballet. Neither of us is talking in the car.

I'm looking hard out of the window—the animal shelter sign says
ENROLL FOR PUPPY PREP SCHOOL NOW!
—when I feel Kylee's hand reach out for mine.

“I'm sorry,” Kylee says.

“For what?” I don't even try to keep the bitterness out of my voice.

“That Ms. Archer picked my review, not yours.”

Even as publication-crazed as I am, I know that's not something Kylee should have to feel sorry about. Who knows more about knitting stores than Kylee? Of course, her review would be wonderful. Ms. Archer told us to pick a subject that would draw on our special areas of expertise; she never told us to pick a subject that would allow us to get revenge against somebody who broke our heart. Besides, Kylee's review makes the perfect companion to Olivia's feature.

Kylee totally does not need to apologize to me for getting published first.

“I'm glad she picked your review!” I say. It's even (sort of) true. But then the bitterness creeps back into my voice. “But why didn't you tell me?”

“I just felt so bad. Because I knew you wanted it more. And I wanted it more for you than I wanted it for me.”

How can I stay bitter with a friend like this?

“But you're going to get published, too, Autumn,” she promises me, as if she has the power to make the promise come true. “You'll get published in a bigger, better place than our school paper. Maybe this is the week you'll hear from
The New Yorker
!”

Now tears blur my vision, not tears of disappointment for my rejection, but disappointment in
me
for not sharing it with Kylee. Who am I to be mad at
her
for keeping a secret?

I shake my head.

She reads the truth from my forced smile and welling eyes.

“Oh, Autumn,” she says, squeezing my hand and snuggling up against my shoulder.

Whatever dreams don't come true for me, I have the best friend anybody on earth ever had.

I squeeze her hand back and rest my head against hers, without speaking.

 

20

We haven't had a family dinner, with all four of us at the table, for days. Dad was away at an orthodontist convention. Hunter's been claiming to be at extra sessions with the band. I had dinner at Kylee's one night because her mom made this special spicy pork-and-noodle dish that I love. But we're all here tonight.

“What's new with you, Autumn?” Dad says. He always starts with me, as if to get some good news before he has to turn to Hunter for the bad news. But today I have no good news. Today I have the total opposite of good news.

“Nothing,” I say with false brightness.

“Nothing?” Mom asks.

I thrust out my chin. “Nothing,” I repeat. I can be as surly as Hunter when I want to be.

At least there are only two more days until the agents come to the library and I have a chance to show them chapter one of Tatiana and Ingvar. Plus, there's still the essay contest, though my hopes for it are dimming. Winners are supposed to hear by mid-November; it's already November 10, and I have a feeling I would have heard by now if they read my essay and were enraptured by it.

“Hunter, what's new with you?” Dad asks.

“The band has another gig,” Hunter says.

“That's wonderful!” Mom gushes.

“And we're getting paid this time,” Hunter adds, unable to keep the pride out of his voice.

For a second I feel as if I'm in some kind of alternative universe, where I'm Goofus and Hunter is Gallant, where I'm the one sitting in sullen silence while he gets to crow about a major accomplishment.

But I'm not going to let him know how jealous I feel.

“To Hunter!” I'm the first one to say, holding up my water glass to start a round of clinks. And once Dad raises his glass, too, I almost do feel happy for Hunter, and happy for me. This is what normal families should be doing, celebrating someone's success with an ice-water toast.

“What
is
the gig?” Mom asks.

“We're playing for the dance at Southern Peaks,” he says. I notice he doesn't call it Southern Pukes this time. A school that is paying you to play at their dance can't be all that pukey.

Now I have something else in my life to hope for. Even though my publishing dreams have had some crushing disappointments, the first big
if
of my Cameron-at-the-dance fantasy has come true: Paradox is playing there! Now all I need is for Cameron to come to the dance, and for the band to play his song, and for him to ask me to dance. The first two of these are now pretty likely. So I need to concentrate all my deepest wishing on the final one.

I'm so lost in these thoughts I miss the last couple of things said at the table. Apparently, while I blinked, it all turned not-so-good.

“All I meant,” Dad is saying, “is that while it's great that the band is getting gigs, you should consider signing up for some school clubs or activities, too. You're on a roll now! Keep the momentum going!”

“Save the Rhinos?” Hunter asks. “Anime Club? Board Gamers Guild? Like, my life will be totally better if I join the Board Gamers Guild?”

“Okay.” Dad forces a smile. “I concede that the Board Gamers Guild is not likely to be a big life changer. But what about the school newspaper, or the debate team, or the knowledge bowl? Or—even if you don't want to do cross-country—surely there is some other sport…”

“Oh, Derrick,” Mom says. “Let's just celebrate Hunter tonight.”

“That's what we're doing,” Dad says. “But, Hunter, you're in high school now—”

“Am I? Thanks!” Hunter says. “For a moment there I had forgotten.”

Dad's color deepens. Like Mom, I wish he'd get off the why-don't-you-do-a-sport topic. But Hunter's sarcasm is going too far.

Dad continues as if Hunter hadn't interrupted him. “And college admissions committees are going to want to see more on your application than ‘drummer in a rock band.' That's a fact. I'm just pointing out a fact.”

“Maybe I don't want to go to college,” Hunter shoots back.

I wait to see if Dad is going to blow up over this one, but he gives another conciliatory smile, even though it's a condescending smile, too.

“You say that now. But let's see what you're saying two years from now when all your friends are applying to colleges and getting into good places. Your mother and I want you to have choices. We don't want you doing anything now that limits your choices.”

“Maybe
my
choices for me are different from
your
choices for me.”

“You aren't going to have
any
choices then”—Dad raises his voice—“if you don't start making some different choices
now
. You do realize that report cards come out next week?”

Hunter shrugs.

If there's one thing Dad hates, it's a shrug.

“I hope,” Dad says, “that a certain drummer will complete some missing work and turn it in between now and then. I hope that a certain drummer can bring up certain grades to at
least
C's so that he doesn't get grounded. It's hard to play at a dance if you're grounded.”

Hunter has already pushed his chair back from the table. He walks upstairs without a backward look at his barely touched make-your-own taco.

Maybe he's gone off for one last-ditch study spurt to get his grades back on track. He could still finish that missing work and turn it in for partial credit. Hunter is smart. He could raise his grades if he tried. He's just never cared enough to try.

“Couldn't we be happy for just one evening?” Mom asks as I hear Hunter's door slam.

“He's not going to get into a decent college with those grades,” Dad says wearily. “How happy will we all be then? How happy will
he
be when he gets a dead-end minimum-wage job with no benefits and no future, just a few fifty-dollar gigs now and then? We've tried letting him have his own way, follow his own path, walk away from the cross-country team after one week—one week! Maybe we need to ground him right now, today, this minute, rather than sit around waiting for him to fail next week, or next year, or for the rest of his life. Maybe it's time we imposed some consequences on him, or one of these days the real world is going to be doing that for us.”

“Give him one more chance,” Mom says. “You've made your point. Let him get that missing work finished on his own. Maybe we haven't trusted him enough.”

“Or maybe we've trusted him too much,” Dad says.

So Hunter and I are both Goofuses now, and our family has no Gallants at all.

 

21

When I get to the library for the Calling All Authors event, I see a big sign saying it's in the auditorium. It took longer to bike here than I thought it would, and the auditorium is already packed. Apparently there are a lot of people in the world who want to find out how to get published. Kylee offered to come with me today, for moral support, but I decided this was something I needed to do alone.