Tell (14 page)

Sorting through the music did not take as long as she had previously anticipated; they were finished a little before four o’clock.  Melody checked her watch, wondering what she could do to pass the time until 4:30, when Cadie’s literary magazine meeting was scheduled to be over.  The other kids were trailing out the side door—there was an exit directly from the band room.  It was generally only used by band kids during or after practice, but throughout the day, one could see kids during their music classes looking longingly at that door.

Lucas shouldered his backpack.  “Did you need a ride home?” he asked her.

“Oh, no,” she responded.  “I just have to wait for Cadie to get out of her meeting.  Thanks, though.”  She sighed and looked around the room appraisingly.  “I guess I could practice a little bit,” she said aloud, mostly to herself.

“I’ll practice with you,” Lucas offered, immediately dropping his backpack into a nearby vacant chair.

“Okay,” Melody answered.  “We have about a half hour to kill before—oh.”  She stopped her progress toward the instrument room when she saw Cadie appear in the doorway.  “Hey.”

“Hey,” Cadie greeted her.  “Are you about ready to go?”

“Sure.”  Melody picked up her purse and smiled at Lucas.  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” she said to him as she and Cadie made their way toward the side door.

“See you later,” replied Lucas, walking toward the other door with his head down.

Melody and Cadie made their way down the steps and turned left toward the main parking lot.  The stadium was across from them, and they could see the cheerleaders practicing on the track while the football players were taking a water break and watching the cheerleaders with interest.

“So how did the first meeting go?” Melody asked as the two of them walked toward the car.

Cadie rolled her eyes.  “It was pretty brutal.  Mrs. Davinsizer wanted us to decide about switching publishers for the magazine and this huge fight broke out.  And of course the Confederacy disagreed with everything I said, just because I was the one saying it.”  The Confederacy was what a few of the literary magazine staffers called Theo Collins and his posse.  Cadie continued, “And Deirdre quit, so I really only have Lacey and Shawn who aren’t against everything I say and do.  But there are three new freshmen on staff this year, so hopefully we can get some nice kids who don’t want to kill me just because I exist.”

“Well, that’s good.  Who are the new freshmen?  Anyone I know?”

There was only silence.  Melody realized Cadie had stopped and she had walked ahead of her.  She turned and saw that Cadie’s eyes were trained on the track.  “Hello?” Melody prompted.

Cadie’s head snapped back around.  “What?” she said distractedly.

“What were you looking at?” Melody demanded, shielding her eyes from the sun and staring towards the track.  The cheerleaders were forming a pyramid, but other than that, she could not see anything that Cadie would consider interesting.

“They were throwing Susan in the air,” Cadie answered, turning her back on the stadium with finality as she walked toward the car.  “I was waiting to see if they were going to catch her or not.”

It was a joke, but it was borderline mean, even considering Cadie’s attitude toward Susan.  Melody let the subject drop.

On a Wednesday afternoon in the fall, Shane had football practice until 5:30, and their parents, Alex and Molly, would not be home from work until around that same time.  Felicia’s dance class met on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.  So on a Wednesday afternoon in the fall, Felicia had the house to herself—unless, of course, she broke the rules and invited her boyfriend over to have sex with her, which was exactly what had happened that particular Wednesday afternoon.

Felicia and Brian lay under the covers of her queen-sized bed together after having sex for the second time ever.  Brian was naked, but she had felt awkward lying completely naked in her bed, so she had hastily pulled on her white cotton panties as soon as they had finished.  Or, more accurately, as soon as
he
had finished.  Her shoulder was nestled nicely under his arm, her right arm stretched across his bare chest, his right hand resting gently on her waist.  Their legs were tangled together under the sheets.

Felicia was still unsure as to how she felt about the situation.  Following Elliot’s suggestion, she had decided to have sex with Brian again to try to work through whatever awkwardness there had been that first time.  Unfortunately, this time had not been that much different than the first, except slightly less physically uncomfortable.  Felicia still felt a sense of stunting emotional discomfort.

She had not realized she had sighed out loud until Brian said, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she answered quickly.  Too quickly—he had noticed.

“Come on,” he urged.  “Tell me.”

Felicia tried to think of something else she could tell him so that she would not have to tell him the truth.  Then she reconsidered.  Maybe she was not the only one feeling this awkwardness.  After all, it had been Brian’s first time, too, and she should be trying to make the experience enjoyable for him, too.  If something was not going the way it was supposed to, they should probably try to work on it together.  “Well,” she began slowly, sitting up slightly to look at him, “I just wanted to know if… you know, if this was going good for you?”

“What do you mean?” he asked after a brief pause.

“I just want to make sure that I’m doing everything I’m supposed to be doing,” she said, “or if, you know, there was anything I could do to make it—
better
—for you.”

He shook his head.  “No,” he said easily, “I think everything’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

“Oh.”

“Why?”  Brian’s eyes suddenly widened and he sat up sharply, causing Felicia to lean back in alarm.  “Why?” he repeated.  “Is something wrong?”

“No!” she exclaimed, too caught by surprise to tell the truth.  “I was just making sure everything was okay for you.”

He looked confused.  “Of course,” he said.  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I don’t know.  I’m new at this, too, you know.”

Brian pulled her closer to him and kissed the top of her forehead.  “Everything is fantastic,” he said.  “
Better
than fantastic,” he corrected himself.

“Okay,” she answered quietly.

So she was the only one feeling this way.  Unless he was lying to her, which she recognized could be the case; after all, she was lying to him about it.  He had practically panicked at the thought that this might not be going as well as he had thought, and she could not bear to tell him the truth.  She closed her eyes and suppressed another sigh.

She felt his body twist away from her.  Felicia opened her eyes to see him stretching his neck to check the glowing red numbers of the digital clock by her computer.  “It’s 3:45,” he said as if answering a question.

“Good, we have time,” she responded.

He held her a little tighter.  “Time for what?”

She smiled.  “I just meant that we didn’t have to worry about getting caught naked in bed together because nobody’s going to be home for awhile.”

“Oh.  I thought you meant—”

“I know what you thought I meant.”

“Well, you know, we do have quite awhile before your parents are supposed to be home,” Brian said.  He began kissing the side of her face.

“Uh-huh,” Felicia responded, drawing out the word.

“And your brother won’t be home until at least 5:30,” he continued, moving his lips down to her throat.

Felicia groaned.  “Could you please not talk about my brother?”

He pulled away to look at her reproachfully.  “I wasn’t talking about your brother.  I was talking about you and me and all the time we have left in the house by ourselves.”  Brian began kissing her again.  “What do you think we could do to fill up that time?”

Felicia felt her heartbeat quicken.  “Again?” she asked, trying to keep her voice from becoming shrill.  “Like, right away again?”

“It’s not right away,” Brian protested.  “It’s been awhile.  Do you want to?”

She hesitated for the smallest fraction of a second before replying, “Sure.”

He twisted again, this time, she knew, to reach for his wallet, which was sitting on her night stand.  He slipped the Durex condom in its blue wrapper out of one of the folds of his wallet, then tossed the wallet back onto the night stand.  Felicia leaned forward and kissed him, preparing herself to engage him in foreplay.  She thought that it would almost be a relief when he left for college this weekend; she felt that if she had to see his penis just a few more times, she might go insane.

He pushed her backwards onto the bed as they kissed.  Evidently he considered foreplay to be completely unnecessary, because he was ready to go.  He did not seem to notice, either, the lack of enthusiasm her kisses held.  His hands found their way to the hem of her underwear and tugged them over her hips and thighs.  She bent her legs at the knees, allowing him to pull them the entire way off of her body.  Brian gently nudged her legs apart with his knee, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, as if he had instructed her to do so.

He was, as she had told Elliot, fourteen inches taller than Felicia, and he had to support himself on his elbows so as to avoid completely crushing her underneath him.  She leaned her forehead against his chest, an expense of tanned skin stretched over perfectly sculpted muscles that elongated as he moved with her.

Brian really was incredibly good-looking, she noted.  She could not figure out why she was so squeamish about having sex with him.  He was physically appealing and she loved him.  So what had gone wrong in her internal wiring that made her shy away from the idea of a physical relationship with him?

Felicia forced her thoughts away, as she had done both times before.  She felt if she had to concentrate on something else in order to get through it.  She knew that was not a normal way to be feeling, but she did not feel that she had any other choice.  The other option was to go back to denying Brian sex, and she did not want to hurt his feelings just because she was going through some major malfunction that she could not figure out.

Instead, she started thinking about her recent conversations with Elliot, in which Elliot had urged her to go forth and continue having sex with Brian, because it was bound to get better after the awkwardness of the first couple times subsided.  Her thoughts were drawn to Elliot’s comment about Shane rearranging their furniture, and she smiled despite herself.  She closed her eyes and lightly kissed Brian’s chest.

Suddenly, Felicia’s eyes flew open, and her whole body stiffened.  Brian felt it too, because he looked down at her.  “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she answered immediately.

“You were just getting really relaxed, but then you got tense again.  What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.  It’s just…” 

She shifted slightly, trying to avoid his eyes, and he took her motion as an indication that she was physically uncomfortable.  He moved his hips slightly, merging them with hers more completely, and looked down at her again.  “Is that better?”  He stroked her hair lightly.

“Yeah,” she said distractedly.

Felicia leaned her head against Brian’s chest again and closed her eyes.  How on earth was she supposed to tell her boyfriend that the only time she could relax during sex was when she was thinking about somebody else?

Thirteen

As Shane walked into the library Thursday afternoon, he was a little nervous, to say the least.  He had told Felicia last night that he would be unable to take her home from school that day because he had to stay after, but had not offered any information as to why that was.

It had remained unspoken between them, but Shane knew that neither he nor Cadie was going to tell Felicia about their plans to study together.  Shane thought it likely that someone would see them together and word would get back to Felicia, but he thought they might be able to play it off as sheer happenstance.

They had decided Thursday afternoon would work best for them to meet.  Shane did not have football practice, Cadie did not have her meeting for the literary magazine, and she had to come back to pick Melody up from band practice at 5:30 anyway, so they had figured they could stay in the library until then.

The library looked empty when he came in, except for Melissa McClellan, one of the student workers, behind the circulation desk.  He thought she gave him a bizarre look when he walked through the door, but he could have been paranoid.  Shane had deliberately dawdled at his locker so he would not be the first one there, and he assumed Cadie was there somewhere already.  Since they did not want to flaunt their newfound study partnership, Shane knew exactly where Cadie was—hiding.

The left side of the library was where most of the work stations and computers were located; the right side was where the stacks were.  It was here that Shane found Cadie, at a table buried deep in the biography section.  On the wall was a poster of a very angry-looking cartoon man with the words “Please renew before they’re due!” in big bold lettering over his head.  Someone had used a black Sharpie to draw a tiny moustache beneath his nose and a swastika on his tunic.  Shane thought this was less a political statement and more a commentary of the intense expression on the man’s face.

“Hey,” he greeted her, dropping his bag on a vacant chair.

“Hey,” she responded.  She did not look up from her calculus textbook.

He looked around.  “Nice table,” he remarked.

“I asked for something by the fireplace, but those tables were unavailable,” Cadie responded without missing a beat.

Shane smiled, plopping down in the seat across from her.  “No, this is nice.  The cobweb collection in this section is quite impressive.”

She finally looked up, and Shane realized why she must have kept her eyes averted for so long.  Their eyes locked, and he found himself unable to look away for a long, agonizing moment.  In an instant he felt the conflicting emotions of this meeting—his desire to see her versus the sheer stupidity of seeing her.  Eventually he broke the gaze and began digging through his backpack for his calculus book.

“I really appreciate you helping me
out,” she said.

“I thought you were helping
me
out,” he reminded her.

She grinned.  “Right.”

Shane pulled his calculus book out and dropped it on the table, causing their small area of the library to ring with a loud slapping sound.  “I don’t really know why you’re freaking out about this class so much.  School just started.”

“Well, if I don’t get a handle on it now, it’s just going to spiral and get out of hand.”

“It’s calculus, not a kite.”

She exhaled.  “I mean I want to understand it now before it gets more complicated.”

He looked at her sharply, wondering if that remark had truly been about calculus or a commentary on their situation.  He said, “I think you stress yourself out too much.”

She shrugged.  “I think I’m pretty comfortable with the balance I’ve struck.”

“How many times have you taken the SATs?”

“Twice.”

“What percentile?”

Cadie shifted slightly.  “The first time it was the eighty-seventh; the second time it was the ninetieth.”

“And I bet you’re planning on taking them again.”

She looked at him guardedly.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“How many times have you taken them?”

Shane sat back in his chair.  “Yeah, I should probably register for those.”

“You haven’t—Shane, how do you expect to get into college?”

“I’m not too worried about getting into college.  To be honest, I’m more worried about what’s going to happen after I get there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Cadie, what do you want to do with your life?”

“I want to write,” she answered immediately.  “But I can hardly do that right away.  I’ll probably pursue something in editing or publishing until I can get published myself.”

“And the funny thing is, you knew the answer to that question right away.  And you don’t look stressed about it.  So why stress yourself out getting there?”

“What do
you
want to do with
your
life, Shane?” she challenged him.

“I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to be doing with the rest of my life,” he admitted.  “I mean, I like football, but it’s not like I’m going to be a professional football player.  I don’t even know if I want to play in college.  It’s exhausting now.”  He tousled his hair absentmindedly.  “I guess that’s what stresses
me
out.  So I prefer not to think about that right now.  I’m more concerned with the ride than the destination.”  He looked at her, and was surprised to see that she was smiling.  “What?” he asked.

Cadie instantly wiped the smile off her face, though it seemed like it took an effort to do so.  She stared back down at her calculus book.  “Your hair is crazy,” she said directly to the book.  She covered her mouth with her hand, and Shane could tell she was smiling behind it.

Shane tried fruitlessly to flatten his hair, though he suspected that was not why Cadie was smiling at him.  “Well, whatever,” he said gruffly.  “Let’s look at some calculus.”

“Have you thought about finance?” she asked him.

“What?” he asked, perplexed.

“I was asking if you’ve ever thought about a career in finance, since you like math.  Are you good with money?”

Shane considered this.  “I
have
some money.  I keep it in a lock box under my bed.”

“See, you’re already advanced with the financial management.  My box of money is under my bed too, but it doesn’t have a lock on it.”

“That’s because your sister doesn’t keep track of all the bad words you say and try to steal your money if you don’t contribute to her swear jar,” Shane pointed out dryly.

“That’s true.”

“I’ve never really thought about finance.  Although I guess it could be kind of cool.  I mean, when you play Life and you’re the accountant, everyone has to pay their taxes to you.”

“I don’t think that game is an accurate reflection of how life really is.  Nobody drives an aqua PT cruiser.”

Cadie dropped Melody off at the school at 5:00 on Friday evening.  The bus would be departing at around 5:30 for the away game that was to start at 7:00.  There were three school buses parked in the bus depot between the high school and the stadium, along with a trailer that was used to haul the uniforms, the pit equipment, the colorguard equipment, and the bigger instruments that band members could not easily stow under their seats on the bus.  There were two more buses parked on the other side of the parking lot, next to the gymnasium’s separate entrance, and these were for the cheerleaders and the football team itself.

Melody felt a little flutter in her chest, as she always did before a band trip.  The bus ride was about an hour, the game would be around three hours, and they would arrive back at the school at eleven at the earliest, putting her back at her house by around midnight.  She knew lots of kids labored for late curfews in order to stay out with their friends each night, but Melody’s curfew on Friday nights was dependent on the location of the game and how long the four quarters of the game lasted.  From September to November each year until she graduated high school, Melody would never be a girl who worried about having nothing to do or nowhere to go on Friday nights.  As surely as second period meant band rehearsal, Fridays meant football games.

If anyone had ever suggested that Melody might envy a girl who went out to the movies with her boyfriend on a Friday night, that person would have been foolish.  On the contrary, all of Melody’s friends were around her at these times, from the seats on the bus to the bleachers in the stadium, and it was a life she was glad to have chosen and always sorely missed when the early weeks of November came to a close and marching band season was over.  She would miss it even more when she graduated and did not have band camp to look forward to every summer.

She knew there were kids who were in band just for something to do, or because their parents wanted them to be, or because they had been in it for so long already that it would never occur to them to quit.  Melody was one of those kids who lived and breathed music and absorbed it at any opportunity she got.  Band, to her, represented a love of music, a love of the rush experienced during a truly fantastic performance, a love of her peers and the camaraderie they had in sharing music together.  Though she was only a sophomore right now and not thinking too in depth about her future, Melody was almost certain that the only career in which she could see herself was that of a music teacher.

Melody increased her pace to a jog as she headed toward the bus parked in the middle of the other two.  It was well-known among the band members that Bus One was the loud bus, Bus Three was the quiet bus, and Bus Two was somewhere in between.  The
volume of the kids on the bus generally had to do with the attitude of the chaperones that rode with them.  Mr. Bell always drove the trailer with the percussion instructor, Travis, riding shotgun.  The chaperone on Bus One was always the guard instructor, Lisa, who spoke loudly, laughed loudly, and had no qualms when everyone around her was equally as loud.  Jack, the brass technician, rode on Bus Two and was mellow and easygoing enough for everyone to be loud and excited, but the second someone started screaming, he had no qualms about telling them to shut the hell up.  Technically, there were no chaperones on Bus Three except for Kristy, the drum major, but everybody knew that she could not stand screaming, singing, or even loud conversation, and nobody dared cross her.

She and Andy had ridden Bus Two together since her first season in marching band, three years ago.  They always sat together, too.  She had with her a backpack, as well as a blanket and pillow.  Though, she thought hopefully, she might not need the pillow if she fell asleep on Andy’s shoulder, which had happened from time to time last year.

Melody boarded the bus to deposit her things in a seat before retrieving her uniform from the band room and taking it to be loaded on the trailer.  She saw Andy near the back and started maneuvering down the aisle toward him.  They had sat near the middle of the bus last year, but she supposed that since he was a junior now, he was a little higher up in the pecking order.  When she reached him, however, she stopped short—he had just plopped down in a seat next to Neil.

“Hey,” Andy greeted her.  “I told Neil I would sit with him.  You don’t mind, do you?”

“Hey, Melody,” Neil said coolly.

“Hi, Neil,” she responded.  “No, of course I don’t mind.”  Of course she
did
mind, but she was not about to raise a stink just because she had been shafted out of her seat partner.  However, she felt like an orphan as she looked around for a place to sit that was not taken.  There were items in almost every seat on the bus now, and she would probably be stuck sitting near the front with the freshmen.  Or worse, with Mike and Patrick.

Fortunately, as she turned to make her way toward the front of the bus, Lucas made his way back toward them and slid into the seat directly in front of Andy and Neil, where his backpack and pillow already were.  “Hey, Melody,” he said.  “Did you want to sit with me?”

She smiled mercifully at him.  “Sure.”

The football spiraled against the sky, fast-paced, unstoppable, and for a second Shane thought that it might escape his catch, but this thought was fruitless.  He jumped, extending his left arm as far as he could, and the laces tipped his fingers, bringing the football’s rapid descent to a halt in his hand before it could spike into the artificial turf.  He stumbled a little as he came down from the jump, but before he had even completely regained his balance, he had switched the ball to his right hand, reared it back over his shoulder, and fired another missile across the field.

Will pointed at Tyson, who took off after the ball and clamored to get under it.  Shane used the opportunity to stand still for a moment and catch his breath as he watched the football’s progress toward the cluster of players on the other side of the field.

This was not really a drill they had, or even any kind of structured practice, but just something they did to warm up and have a little fun before the intensity of the game started.  The sun had started to set over the Appalachians, causing the clouds in the evening sky to be tinged with pink, an effect that made them look, to Shane, as if they were burning at the edges.  The stadium lights were ablaze in anticipation for the darkness that would eventually settle over the field once the sun had finished its disappearing act over the rounded tops of the mountains.  The bleachers were already littered with spectators on both sides, though the home side was much fuller than theirs.  Their team had a staple following of parents and fanatic football enthusiasts, but an hour was a long trek for the fair-weather fans, even on a nice September evening.