“Hi.”
“I was coming to find you.” His jaw’s a little flushed, which reinforces my suspicion that he ran.
“Yeah?”
He lets me go, then rubs his neck. My bag slides down my arm, so I hoist it back up.
“Want to hang sometime this week?” He sends the words flying at me as fast as one of his footballs.
“Um.”
People shuffle past, knocking me into Jasper. I’m so close I can see his pupils pulse in anticipation.
“We could go to a movie or something,” he says.
“Um. Sure?” He breaks out into a grin that freezes when I add, “Let me ask Rae—”
“Rae?” His smile falls. “I meant you and me.”
Oh. Oh … “Like a date?”
He rubs his neck so hard I wonder if he has a crick in it. “Yeah.”
Whoa. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because Mel likes you,” I blurt out. “She’s my friend. I can’t do that to her.”
Jasper doesn’t question that Mel and I are friends, which strengthens my resolve not to get involved with him. If he really liked me, he’d know who my friends are—is—and see right through my lie.
“Anyway, I need to get to class.” As I sidestep away from Jasper, I bump into another male body. I look up and find Ten staring down at me. “Sorry,” I mumble, before hurrying to my next class, alert so as not to knock into yet another person.
I want to tell Rae about Jasper asking me out, but she’s too busy discussing homecoming with the committee she’s invited to have lunch at our table.
After school, although I planned to go straight to Lynn’s house to ask her for input on my song, Rae coerces me into grabbing frozen yogurt. Since I can never say no to food or to Rae, I end up at the Dairy Fairy with an extra-large serving of rocky road.
“RaeRae!” Melody waves at us from the line of customers.
Rae gestures her over, which leads me to guess they made up. From the way Laney, who’s standing next to Mel, glares at the refrigerated display, I’m deducing she and Rae didn’t.
“I’ll grab two more seats,” Rae says, which gets Laney’s attention. Rae hooks her foot around the leg of an unoccupied chair and drags it over. “Can you grab that one, Angie?” She tips her head to the empty chair behind me.
I grab it and spin it around just as the girls make their way over to our table.
“Who wants to go dress shopping for homecoming with me this weekend?” Rae asks.
Laney’s black eyes taper on Rae. Unlike Mel, she doesn’t sit.
“I’m real sorry about the Brad thing, Laney,” Rae says. “I hope he didn’t retaliate or anything.”
Laney’s lids hike up in surprise at Rae’s concern. Or maybe it’s the apology that has her baffled. “He didn’t.”
I find Brad’s nonretaliation surprising. Maybe he’s not as big a jerk as he seems to be.
“So, shopping?” Rae repeats.
“I’m in. I saw this gray dress at the mall that I’m dying to try on,” Mel says.
“Laney?” Rae asks.
As she sits, Laney bobs her head. And just like that, the hatchet is buried.
Laney’s only been in Reedwood for a year, so I don’t know her well, but I assumed she was the type to hold grudges because of how reserved she is. Which is silly, of course. Personality isn’t determined by how vocal you are.
Rae glances at me. “Angie?”
“I do need a dress.”
Rae rolls her eyes. “Don’t sound so enthusiastic,” she says, which makes Mel snort and Laney sort of smile.
Mel sucks on her spoon, then points it at me. “Did you ask Ten to homecoming, Angie?”
“Ten? No.” I shake my head. “Why?”
“I was just curious. You two seem close.”
“What?” I sound like someone’s strangling me.
Rae’s cheeks grow as fluorescent pink as her nails. “Why don’t we all go dateless?”
“Cool with me.” Mel scrapes the bottom of her frozen yogurt cup. “Laney?”
Laney sighs. “Sure.”
As we discuss hairstyles and makeup, Rae’s skin tone settles back to its normal hue.
After we part ways, I bike over to Lynn’s house, rehearsing my lyrics softly. The more I ruminate on them, the more ambivalent I feel. I desperately need Lynn’s opinion. By the time I reach my coach’s house, my stomach is as knotted as my windblown hair.
I roll my bike down the paved pathway and hook it to the porch rail, then pull off my helmet and finger-comb my locks as I ring the doorbell.
What if Lynn hates the lyrics? Would she even tell me?
Finally, the door opens. “Hey, Angie,” Lynn says. “Did we have a lesson today?”
“I wrote the song. I mean, a song. I wanted to run it past you and maybe work on it. If you have time.” I was so intent on getting her opinion I didn’t stop to consider if she was busy.
“Um. I’m free in a half hour. Can you come back then?”
I’m taken aback. Come back? “Can’t I wait inside?”
Her left eye spasms. “Um.” She glances behind her, at the door of the piano parlor.
“Or I can wait out here?” I say.
She releases a breath. “Okay.”
After she closes the door, I flop down on the porch swing. My history notebook peeks out from my bag, which I take as a sign. I grab it, along with my notebook, and read about the Vietnam War, jotting down important facts, but soon wisps of the piano lesson inside distract me. Like drifts of pollen, the voice trickles through the drywall and coils in front of me.
I sit up straighter, as though adjusting my posture will somehow make the voice clearer. It doesn’t. I need to get closer. I find myself creeping around the house, toward the window of the piano parlor.
Like the rumble of thunder, the voice grows louder, deeper, strengthening until it overpowers the birds chirping in the magnolia tree. I stand with my back against the wall, my fingers tapping the rhythm against the rough surface. When Lynn plays the treble clef, hitting higher notes, the voice splinters, and the music stops.
My fingers still. I hold my breath, afraid Lynn and her student will hear me breathing.
Lynn starts up again, this time on the bass clef, and the voice takes on a roundness, a depth, a raspiness that pitches me into a velvet chasm of sound. I hope the singer doesn’t smoke, because it would damage her throat. Vocal folds like hers shouldn’t be exposed to nicotine. They should be sealed off from any pollutant. I close my eyes, hanging on every note. The voice morphs into a tangible, fluid thing that undulates and bends and bursts with deep colors. Scarlet, violet, navy.
Lynn reaches the next low octave, and still the voice throbs and sways, braiding with the instrument until they fuse and become indistinguishable. A part of me is jealous, but another part is awestruck.
Lynn once told me to treat singing like a sport: to become good at it requires building muscle; to stay good at it requires practice. Yes, some people have musicality and can match pitch, but most lack power and texture. Those two elements separate the greats from the goods. The voice I’m hearing right now is definitely a great.