Red Velvet Crush (19 page)

He gets lost inside himself when the music goes dark and
moody, his eyes shifting to the floor, his shoulders leaning in toward each other, sinking his button-down shirts deep between his collarbones.

I always leave the book for him on the workbench as soon as I get home, open to the page that I got to or the step I got stuck on, and he will start with something from that page, a tricky tempo or time signature when I walk in, my hair still wet from the shower or my mouth dusted with cookie crumbs straight after school.

He tilts his head, listening to what I have been working on. Then he leads me in, backing me up, filling in the rough spots and dropped notes so that we can get past the theory and move on to my music.

We have little disagreements, moments when we try to outplay each other, but I find out fast that it is hard to argue with a boy who doesn't talk. His silence and his skill win out every time.

He always marks a new page or a new passage in his music theory book before he lights out the door.

We play for days and hours and evenings, sometimes until it is dark and in the morning sometimes, too, but mostly after school, while the ginkgo leaves turn and drop, leaving a yellow trail for Ginger's bike tires to follow as they tick, tick, tick down the wet drive on his way home.

We play while the sun sets with an orange sizzle behind the house, over and over and over, while the cold starts creeping
in through the cracks of the garage in a major way and the air around our fingertips grows bitter and sharp.

We keep it loose and raw and a little unrefined until everything doesn't hurt as much. We play until I can hear the words and sing the songs and see myself in them again.

A
quiet, pattery rain falls outside. The sky is soft, and the clouds are low and smoky gray. Winston is still snoring down the hall, and I am smearing raspberry jam onto a piece of toast.

Dad shoulders in through the front door, drops a pile of mail onto the corner of the table, and stands there, studying a letter. He holds it out to me, the weight of it sagging the far corner.

The return address says “Ty.”

Nothing else. No city, no street—just a long tail on the
y
that pulls me in and leaves me hanging.

I hate it. Love it. I want to tear it apart and drink it in and ignore it all at the same time.

I sigh. What's next, a dancing telegram from Billie? A
giant gorilla that would dance around on the doorstep and accidentally mash my toes?

I pin the unopened letter to the tabletop with my fingertips and look up at Dad.

“What do you think?” I ask, suddenly feeling that my house may be built of straw.

He turns and reaches for a coffee cup.

“I think he's a boy,” he says, slowly filling his cup from the pot before he turns back to me, “and boys fuck up.”

He crosses the room with steam swirling between his hands.

“And Billie?”

“Well . . .” He drags out the chair across from me and sits down. “Billie was always going to be Billie.”

The clock on the wall over his head ticks quietly. It has a picture of a cup of coffee on it at twelve o'clock. I've heard the phone ringing in the kitchen every night since we got back, well after the house is still and silent, picked up before I can accept the sound as real and untangle myself from my sheets.

“Anytime you want,” I've heard him say in the quiet darkness. “Always.”

He probably sends her money, listens to her stories, rubbing his tired hands together in the dark, trusting that someday she will find her way home.

“I just thought he was someone else,” I say, and I don't
even try to hide the pain from my face. But I can't say the rest, so I think it: someone stronger, braver, truer.

Dad crosses his arms. His eyes grow distant.

“You should always try to see someone for who they are, Teddy Lee,” he says, “not who you want them to be.”

I watch him sip his coffee. My mom is here with him, leaning over his shoulder, refilling a cup that is pretty much already full.

Would he let
her
back in? If he were the one sitting here holding a letter, would he want to hear what she had to say? I want to hope so.

“Are all the memories bad?” I ask.

He waits. “That would make it so much easier, wouldn't it?”

I reach for the letter and nod. Yes. Yes, it would.

I am in the garage that night, stumbling and searching for my gear before it gets too late. My hands are slow and stupid in the cold. I grab the old acoustic guitar with the moon and stars on the strap and set it on the floor while I look for the case.

I only turned one light on when I came in, slowly sliding the dimmer that Jay installed to low, leaving big shadows all around me that are shaped like boxes and tires and teenage boys.

I find the case under some sawhorses marked P
UBLIC
W
ORKS
D
EPARTMENT
because Winston is such a klepto. I lower my chin
down into my scarf, feeling my own breath warm against my lips as I carefully set the guitar into its cracked leather case and click the latches shut.

My shoulders sag when I pull the guitar case off the sawhorse in front of me. It crunches across the pot stems and seeds sprinkled there.

One of Ginger's bright pink Post-It notes catches my eye as I pass by the workbench on my way to the door. I slide my finger down the marked page. I haven't finished today's theory yet.

I push the door open with my toe. The sky outside is dark and gray and swirling, brewing up a storm. A streak of lightning zaps the sky, hurrying me across the grass toward my car at the edge of the street.

Winston is watching me from the kitchen window, peeking through the curtain, the tip of his cigarette burning orange and bright in a long slat of light.

When the clouds break open, he looks skyward, and I start to run.

It's time to break some hearts.

I do not drive by his house; I don't even think about it. Yet I find myself in a neighborhood that looks a lot like Ty's, where normal people live normal lives and porch lights shine out into the night, leading everybody safely back home.

Stopped at a corner of a tree-lined street in front of a big
brick house, I lean forward until I can pull Ty's letter out of my back pocket.

I balance it in my hand, feeling its weight. The sight of his handwriting makes my heart beat faster.

Would it be easier if he had just disappeared? If he had been a person who existed once, had been everything to me once, and then just wasn't?

My light is just beginning to flicker again. It dodges and dashes, fighting against all winds, and I am afraid that one look, one touch, even just one word from Ty will snuff me out.

I let the letter drop on to the seat next to me, and I drive away.

The rain is disappearing into a mist that clings to the road and the tires on the trucks in front of me. I open my window on my way out of town and breathe in deeply.

After exiting on the first ramp that leads toward downtown, I take a right. I follow streets named after presidents and states. I make an entire constitution full of turns and one more right to a street lined with shops and galleries and parking meters planted next to small green trees at the curb.

Driving slowly, I pace a guy in a saggy knit cap and a girl in a flowered skirt and Wellington boots. They rush along the sidewalk, holding hands and bouncing off each other like they are in love.

They disappear behind me as I pull up and park in front
of a coffee shop. The sign above my wet windshield says:
OPEN MIC TONIGHT! DOORS AT
9! I sit back and watch a small crowd trickle in and out: boys with goatees and girls in socks and sandals.

It's almost eleven when I finally grab for my door handle. I hop across the flooded cracks in the sidewalk and, holding on tight to my guitar case, stop under the awning to wipe the rain from my face.

The place is packed, a jumble of round tables and mismatched chairs on a stained wooden floor. The coffee cups are thick and white, every one resting on a white saucer. The air is heavy, weighted down with talk and the sogginess of the passing rainstorm and the smell of cinnamon.

It is only a small coffee bar in a nearby college town, but still, I have to sign up and wait through two other performers before I get a turn. I follow a girl in a holey sweater who reads some angry poetry.

I climb up onto the stage by myself. It is so tiny I'm not sure you can officially call it a stage. It is more of an apple box with a riser attached to the back. And the crowd is right there, hanging at the tip of my toe when I cross my leg and adjust my guitar.

The sounds of breathing and the scuff of chairs and the whoosh of the espresso machine surround me. The angry poet stands, lips drawn tight, like a fuzzy stalagmite in the back row. Someone close by clears his throat, impatient. I am stalling.

Even if I don't like to admit it to myself, I keep thinking that Billie is going to show up, pull out a chair, and sit down next to me. She'll prop her sparkly guitar between her legs and pretend to play, shining me on, along with everybody else.

Looking up into the single spotlight strung overhead, I gather myself together and start to play. My heart aches for the beat of a drum.

But my guitar fills the room. I sing, softly at first, focusing on the new fingerings that Ginger taught me, leaning hard on one word, drawing out another, moving forward step by step, my voice building as I feel the small space around me expanding, getting bigger and bigger until we are floating, the book-smart girls and the boys who like them, the band geeks with the good haircuts and the knitters and the studiers and the poets and the part-time rappers, we all are swirling together in a twirl of music and magic and steamed milk.

I finish, and the applause drowns out the café noise along with the pounding of my heart. I slide my guitar off my lap and start to rise, aware of a hot rush rising on my cheeks.

“A
www,
come on!” somebody yells from a table in the back, sounding exactly like Jay, and my stomach trips over itself. “One more!”

The grad student manning the sign-up sheet nods when
I look over. A girl with a fat, wrinkled journal tugs at her cardigan and sits back down, bumped.

I slide back onto the stool and put my fingers over the frets, thinking.

What song can I pull from the memories and moments that are mashed together in my head? I wasn't expecting an encore. Then it comes to me: an arrangement that Ginger and I have been working on in the garage. It is supercheesy and completely unexpected and totally perfect. It is “Faith.”

I start, close and low at first, then louder and louder, until my voice is clear and strong and steady, and I am so excited that I desperately need to swallow, but I don't.

I strum and I sing and I feel the tiny gusts of air from hands clapping to the beat around me. A blonde on my right is singing along. A silver bracelet twinkles on her wrist.

There are times in your life that you know are good. They sparkle and glow. This is one of them. Everything is rich and saturated and absorbing, yet somehow I feel separate, as if I were watching every moment from above, with the color turned up. Every single second is sharp, with slanting light like an autumn day and a crisp, sweet breeze. Life crackles under my feet.

When the applause starts to thunder, I can breathe. I set my guitar at my side and smile out at the crowd.

I uncross my legs and rise out of my chair to cheers and glowing phones and one of those wolf whistles that streaks
over the top of the crowd. The poet in the back looks like she might be on the verge of happy; her mouth is starting to curve up at the corners.

I do a strange kind of bow, or maybe you can call it a curtsy, as the applause fades away and I stand in the light.

I
drive through the rain after my set at the coffee shop, steering my car past neon exits and all-night truck stops. I pass the first place we ever played and Randy's radio station, the place where we started.

I turn down our street with no curbs, just gravel and grass, back toward home. I cross cracked linoleum, worn carpet, and a soft triangle of light on a pink rug. The quilted kittens stand by as I drop my bag and return my guitar to the corner of my room so the moon and stars can watch over me, shining.

I crawl under my covers and snuggle myself in tight, a new song starting in my head. It's the one about falling hard and forgiveness and soft green palm fronds resting on the ground behind me. Then I close my eyes and I sink,
into a downy pillow, a warm quilt, a sweet song.

I sleep with the door open.

The coffeepot gurgles on the counter the next morning. Dad is at the table, watching it bubble. Winston is one seat down, drawing mustaches on the underwear models in a catalog with a ballpoint pen, his knee bouncing under the table.

Padding across the cool floor in bare feet, I think about finding a spoon, maybe some juice. A light is on in the garage, beaming out into the foggy backyard.

I stop in front of the fridge.

A strip of pictures—the kind you get from a photo booth at the mall or a tourist trap—is slipped under the edge of the magnet that holds up our growing grocery list.

Billie and Ben.

Billie and Glen.

Billie and all the Blasting Cap boys crammed into the photo booth. One of the boys is only a skinny tattooed shoulder in that shot, another boy just a blur of dark hair and a frozen arm tucked into the lower corner.

The last one is Billie, by herself. She smiles back at me in a bright coral T-shirt, waving at the camera. Where did she manage to find a stamp?

I slip the strip of photos out from under the list. The top edge is bent and wrinkled, probably from being jammed into a back pocket and then into an envelope. I nudge it toward the
middle of the fridge with my fingertip, and then set a magnet at the top, so we all can see her.

Dad slides out of his seat. He walks up beside me and rests his warm, rough hand on the top of my shoulder. Reaching past the care package he is building for Billie on the countertop—quarters for her laundry, candy to rot her teeth, and a pair of warm socks I know she'll never wear—to straighten the photos.

He centers the magnet.

“Who's making the eggs?” he asks.

Winston stops, mid-mustache and points at me.

“Of course.” Dad laughs, grabbing the big glass bowl from the highest shelf and handing it to me.

We have scrambled eggs with toast and jelly.