Our Song (6 page)

“You don’t need to wear them in the car with these windows so heavily tinted. It’s not good for your eyes.”

She hated that my father had the windows done and complained it made it seem like he was some kind of chauffeur for the mob. It was also her typical, indirect way of letting me know she didn’t like the glasses.

“Don’t worry, Mom.”

She turned toward my father and began rattling off all the things she had to check once we got there—the flower arrangements, the tablecloths, the Easter baskets. Her nonstop chatter sounded like the drone of a persistent fly. Every once in a while, she interrupted her stream of consciousness to tell my dad to slow down, pointedly glancing back at me each time.

“You’re the one who’s in such a rush, Marian.” He sounded tired.

And it was no wonder. I had been sneaking out into the garden every day since I’d been home, and every night around two in the morning, my dad would appear, like clockwork. First, the kitchen light would go on and he’d get a glass to measure out his scotch. Then he’d loosen his tie and remove his jacket before moving over to the window. Swirling his drink, he’d just stare out into the darkness. I always dozed off while he was standing there. It was practically the only time I slept. Maybe because I knew he was watching over me, even if he wasn’t aware of it.

I stared out the darkened window at the matching whitewashed, mission-style buildings. I used to think they were transplanted from Spain or something. Even the McDonald’s had a quaint, old-fashioned feel to it, making it seem like it was actually a fancy, stand-alone restaurant, not some run-of-the-mill fast food chain. But now, as I looked closer, all the buildings seemed so fake, like a movie set, with nothing real behind their facades.

“Oh darn, don’t tell me,” my mother cried out, peering down at her legs.

“What’s wrong?” my father said evenly. He never got rattled by her intensity.

“There’s a tear in my stockings below the hemline. I was so distracted I left the spare pair in the vestibule.” That was my mother, always planning for a potential emergency.

“Can’t you just go bare? They’re skin color anyway.”

“No I
cannot
, Henry,” she snapped, like it was the most absurd suggestion ever.

My cheek muscles tightened, trying to stifle a smirk as my father made a U-turn in the middle of the road. It had been a while since I’d smiled.

“What are you doing?” my mother asked, finally taking her eyes off the rip.

“Going home so you can change.”

“We don’t have time. Just take me to the drugstore, it’s closer.”

My dad parked in front of Vista Valley Mart while my mom ran inside. Noah started humming the theme song to
Spiderman
.

“Come on, Ollie, name that tune,” he said breathlessly between notes. It was a game I taught him on the long drive to Arizona last year, when we went to visit one of my mom’s cousins.

I slumped lower in my seat, trying to quell my nausea. All I could think about was the last time I was here, with Derek, and what we had come to buy. Our second anniversary was coming up and I had convinced myself I was finally ready. Technically, Derek was the one who bought the condoms—and picked them out—while I nervously kept a lookout for our nosy neighbor,
Mrs. Miller, who was shopping in the next aisle. I knew she would report every detail back to my mother if she spotted me. It was the neighborhood code. Derek thought my paranoia was funny and chased me around the store, waving the box in the air before pulling me into a bear hug in a fit of laughter. Back then, all I could think about was whether Mrs. Miller had seen us. Now, I would have given anything to laugh like that with him.

My mother practically jumped out of the moving car when we finally pulled up to the main entrance to the club. “We’ll meet you inside, Henry. Olive, can you give me a hand?” She passed me a box of toys from the trunk, prizes for the Easter egg hunt.

My Dad and Noah went to park while I followed her inside. I held my breath and kept my head down as we walked through the lobby. I knew Derek would be here with his family, and there would be no avoiding him. But maybe it would be different here. Maybe it would remind him of how things used to be, of the fact that this was where we met, on a beautiful, sunny Sunday, just like this one.

I made my way to the table where Noah eventually joined me. My dad was checking on his tee-off time, while my mother was flitting this way and that, tending to last minute details.

“Check this out!” Noah sprang from his seat to show me his latest tae kwon do moves. Sometimes I wished I could be more like him: carefree, oblivious to what other people thought. Maybe it was because he was a boy, or because he was eight years old. Either way, I was never like that.

Just then Derek’s family came into the dining room. They
were all there, even Greg and Ashley, his brother and sister, who were home from college. Ashley always intimidated me. She was a senior at Vista Valley High back when I was a freshman, and all the guys in the entire school were in love with her. Not only was she smart and beautiful, but she was an amazing swimmer. Her reputation lived on through all the trophies she had won, still on display in the glass cabinets in the school halls. She swam for Stanford now and was probably going to make it to the next Olympics. His brother Greg was just as impressive: a senior at Georgetown, he already had a job lined up at the White House for after he graduated. Derek wanted to be just like him. He never said it, but he didn’t have to. Greg was the real reason Derek was so obsessed with going to Georgetown next year.

My heart clenched in my chest thinking about Georgetown, about next year. By then everything would be back to normal, I told myself. By then, he’d see me differently, the way he used to, before that night.

“Ollie, you’re not watching!” Noah swung his arms in front of my face, knocking over a glass of water.

“Careful,” I hissed as it clanked over the silverware, sending water in every direction. But it was too late. Ashley looked right at me with no hint of recognition before whispering something in her mother’s ear. Mrs. O’Brien quickly glanced up, her posture straightening like a cat’s, as they shuffled to their table, only four over from ours. Derek was so engrossed in conversation with Greg and his dad that he hadn’t noticed me yet. Mrs. O’Brien made sure to keep it that way, guiding Derek to the opposite end of the table, where I had a lovely view of the back of his head.

“There’s Derek!” Noah was already on his way to greet him, but I managed to grab hold of his arm. “Ow, you’re hurting me.”

“Sorry,” I said, releasing my grip. “It’s just that Derek’s busy now. Show me another move. You’re really good.”

“Why doesn’t he come over anymore?” Noah just stood there, staring at me. “Did you guys have a fight or something?”

My heart sank and I struggled to choke back a sob. Noah loved Derek and looked up to him like a big brother. I never thought about how everything that happened, and how acting like it
didn’t
happen, affected him too.

“What’s going on here?” My mother appeared, immediately mopping up the wet tablecloth with her napkin. “Noah, did you do this?”

“It was my fault,” I covered. Taking the blame was the least I could do, if I couldn’t tell him the truth about everything else. That was the one thing my mother and I agreed on. We were both trying to protect Noah, even if it was for different reasons.

I stared down at my plate throughout lunch, moving my food around to make it look like I was eating. Luckily my mom was too preoccupied making sure everyone else was having a good time to notice.

Once dessert was served, she leaned into the table toward my father. “Is everything settled with the insurance claim?”

“Not yet.” He cleared his throat, like there was something stuck in it.

“It’s been over three weeks. What’s the hold up?”

My stomach contorted into knots. They were talking about the accident.

“These things take time, Marian. I said I would tell you when I got the report from the appraiser.”

Derek was laughing at something Greg said. He still hadn’t noticed I was right behind him.

“I sent Carolyn a flower arrangement.” She glanced over her shoulder at Derek’s mother. “But I never heard a word.”

“That’s not necessary, Marian. It’s all being handled,” my father said. “I’m on top of it.”

“I should go over and say something.” My mother whipped out the compact from her purse and began reapplying her lipstick. “I don’t feel right about this.”

She
didn’t feel right about it? I was the one everyone was talking about.
What about me?
I wanted to scream. But I remained silent, slumped in my seat, reminding myself that causing a scene wasn’t going to help anyone, least of all me.

“Do whatever you like.” My father put his napkin on the table and got up from his seat. “But I have to go. It’s tee-off time.”

Finding my legs, I pushed my chair back and stood to follow him.

“Where are you going, honey?” my mother asked, as if she’d dipped her voice in a vat of syrup. She only spoke to me that way in public, when she was within earshot of others.

“To get the cart.” She couldn’t possibly expect me to sit there while she marched up to Mrs. O’Brien, who clearly wanted me to disappear even more than Derek did.

“I was hoping you’d help me with the egg hunt. You used to love it when you were younger. Remember?”

“I want to go with Dad.” It wasn’t just that I wanted to
escape before she did anything humiliating, but that I genuinely felt like being with him. Being the only ones awake in the middle of the night made it seem like we had some sort of secret bond. Even if I was the only one aware of it.

“Honey, I don’t think it’s such a great idea for you to drive the cart today.”

“But I always do. I’ve driven it a million times.”

“Henry?” she said with a strain in her voice, trying to get my dad to reinforce her position.

But he didn’t have to. It was obvious she didn’t trust me driving a vehicle of any kind, even one that went five miles an hour on grass.

“Forget it. I’m going home.” I took off before she could stop me. I knew she wouldn’t raise her voice or run after me. Not here.

I slipped out through the back of the clubhouse and started across the golf course. It was the quickest way home. I didn’t care about the risk of getting struck by flying balls. Part of me wanted one to hit me. Maybe it would knock me out of my misery for good this time.

Even though I never played, the location of every fairway, putting green, and hole was cemented into my brain. It wasn’t just from carting my dad around, but from all the times Derek and I had sneaked off to fool around here. Practically every square inch of the perfectly manicured course contained a memory from our past. My heart ached as I got to the fairway leading up to the twelfth hole. That was where it all began. When I reached the pole with the little flag marking the cup, I dug my heel into the green. Chunks of mud and grass came flying up and scattered over the surface.

“Hey, what are you doing?” One of the groundskeepers emerged from a nearby bunker and started lumbering toward me. “Young lady, stop!”

But I had already bolted down the other side of the green, the slope of the rough increasing my speed. On foot, he was both too far away and too fat to catch me. But I kept running, cutting diagonally into the shrubs behind the swampy pond that spilled out onto the far end of the parking lot. There was a service entrance a few hundred feet ahead that would land me out on the street.

As I snaked around the lot, I heard the crisp snap of a club making contact with a ball. Instinctively, I ducked and stopped in my tracks. Looking up, I spotted the white ball arcing over a row of parked cars, its dimpled indentations glinting off the sun like a star. It was heading right for the roof of a silver Mercedes, but luckily landed in the hedges just a few feet to its side.

Where had it come from? The ball was too far from the course to be a stray, and the driving range was all the way over on the other side of the clubhouse. A few seconds later, I heard another snap, followed by another ball flying overhead. This time, I traced its path backward: to the silhouette of a guy standing on the roof of an old Jaguar.

Who was he and what was he doing hitting balls out
here
? It was definitely against club regulations, and no one
ever
broke the rules, at least not so blatantly. I crept closer to get a better look at him. He was tall and slender, with a mop of shaggy brown hair that covered half his face, obscuring his features. He wore a navy blazer, like he had just come from brunch, only I hadn’t noticed him inside. He reached down and pulled another ball from the
bucket at his feet. Tossing it up in the air, he swung wildly. His whole body swayed in sync with his stroke, like he was putting everything he had into the effort. That’s when I noticed that he was holding the club from the wrong end, like it was a baseball bat. The ball followed the exact same path as the previous ones, landing closer to the Mercedes, like he was deliberately trying to hit it. The graceful motion of his body seemed so at odds with what he was actually doing, with the intensity and passion inherent in every stroke.

A jolt ricocheted through me as I watched him reach for another ball. The pivoting of his hips, the flick of his head, the swing of his arm. I was certain I had never seen him before. But the electric sensation that I had, that I
did
know him, surged up and down my limbs like a live wire.

Before I knew it, my legs were propelling me forward, darting between the parked cars, leading me into the thick of trees beyond the lot where the ball had traveled, way off its target. Was it intentional? Did he mean to miss this time? Pushing the overgrown brush aside, I found the ball shimmering on a patch of mud, like it was waiting for me.

Just then, I heard the faint sounds of a smooth, velvety voice. A male voice. I whipped around, hoping it belonged to the guy, that I would get a better look at his face, but no one was there.

The voice grew increasingly louder. That’s when I realized why I couldn’t see who it belonged to: it was coming from inside my head, harmonizing with the melody like a siren call. Then, out of nowhere, words suddenly broke through, like clouds dissipating after a rain storm, clearing the sky.