A Song to Take the World Apart (4 page)

“I don't suppose you'll forget about it now,” Oma says. She sits back against her chair and puts her knitting on the table so that her lap is free. Lorelei wants to crawl into it like she did when she was little, when she still fit comfortably into her grandmother's embrace.

“Uh, yeah, probably not.”

“Tell me why you were singing, then. Why you wanted to, all of a sudden.”

Lorelei recognizes the opportunity to tell the truth, and doesn't take it. There's no need to add trouble to the trouble she's in. “I like it,” she tries instead. “I was just— It's fun, you know?”

“Fun isn't always the point,” Oma says.

“Maybe in
Germany.
”

“It has nothing to do with Germany. It's everything to do with being young.”

“I'm not so young.”

“Talk to me in fifty years,” Oma says. She still doesn't sound angry, or even upset. “Twenty, even. You will change your mind about how young you are, and about the singing, about whatever boy you think is worth singing for.”

“What boy?” Lorelei says, too fast. She's proud that at least her voice doesn't shake. There's no
way
Oma could know about Chris, but then again her grandmother has always been terrifyingly good at guessing. Almost as good as she is at steering conversations away from things she doesn't want to talk about.

“Whoever he is,” Oma says. “There's always a boy. That's always how it starts. Your mother—” But she cuts herself off, biting down on the words. “There is always a boy,” she says again instead. “You think you're in love. You think you want to keep him. That he wants to stay with you. You sing about how happy you are, right, Lorelei? Your father said you were singing about love.”

“It's just a song.”

“You have to be careful,” Oma says. “I know we talked about this when you were young, but it changes, of course it does. I had forgotten.” She rubs a hand over her eyes. “It isn't enough, I suppose, simply to tell you that you aren't to do it ever again.”

“I just don't understand why,” Lorelei says. “If it's because I'm
good,
you shouldn't worry—I don't want to drop out of school and become the next Taylor Swift or anything. I just want to sing in the shower, to join the chorus, maybe, I want—”

“No,”
Oma says.

Lorelei feels the word like a flash of lightning, like a grip at the base of her throat. The itch that's been crawling under her skin, waiting for another chance to make itself known, flinches and disappears.

“I know you grew up here, but let me tell you: what you want doesn't always matter. There are things you don't know about our family, things you don't understand, things—” There's a long pause. “Things you wouldn't want to know. Trust me, Lorelei.”

“I just feel like I should get to make that decision for myself.”

“And I disagree.”

Lorelei shrugs. Oma's reserve is a long, high wall. There's no point in throwing herself against it.

“Dad said Mom used to sing for him,” she says, trying another tactic. “Is it— I don't know, is it because of Mom?” It would make sense. Petra has never done anything but screw up all of their lives, anyway.

“Not exactly,” Oma says.

“Oh my god, it is! Look, whatever she did, I won't do it. You know I'm more responsible than she is.”
Responsible
isn't the right word, exactly, but Lorelei certainly isn't going to get pregnant at seventeen and make her whole family move to another country because she's embarrassed. Maybe her parents met at a concert, and Oma is, like, traumatized by live music now?

“I used to perform, actually. I don't know if you know this,” Oma says. “When I was young. Until I was thirteen, maybe fourteen. And then my mother made me stop.”

“Great, so this is about
your
mother. That's so not fair.”

“She had her reasons, just as I have mine.”

Lorelei tries to imagine what the reasons could possibly be, but she's distracted by the thought of her grandmother as a young singer, standing in a white-hot spotlight and enthralling a crowd. She didn't know this about Oma, actually. Her family's life before emigration is contained in a couple of old photo albums she's paged through dozens of times. There are no pictures of Oma singing in any of them.

There are many things, it seems, no one has ever bothered to tell her before.

“Was it worse?” Lorelei asks finally. “Losing it, after being able to, for so long?”

“Like losing a limb,” Oma says. “Like losing someone I loved.”

Lorelei has always known her grandmother as a widow: her husband died a year or two before Petra got pregnant with the twins. She's always assumed that this was the loss that governed Oma's strictness. Her grandmother had watched chaos whirl up at her and decided that from then on, she was going to keep it at bay through sheer force of will.

Now, though, Lorelei sees that there might be something deeper, something she lost long before Papa. Her grandmother wanted something for herself, a space and a voice, and had it taken away from her. She misses it and refuses to want it back. That's Oma, for sure, resigning herself gracefully to whatever there is to resign herself to, and putting a good face on it, and writing a thank-you card for the good parts as soon as she gets home.

Downstairs they can hear the twins coming in, tumbling over each other, hushing their voices after a morning spent outside.

Lorelei asks, “Do you miss it?”

“Every day,” Oma says. “But it was worth it. It was the right thing, in the end.”

“Will you ever tell me why?”

“I hope I don't have to. I hope you will find something else to do with yourself.”

“But if I keep at the low end,” Lorelei says. “Like we practiced when I was little. If I don't—”

“It's better that you don't,” Oma says. “It's better if you leave it alone. Let it go.”

“Let it go,” Lorelei repeats.

“You're very young,” Oma says again. “Start early. It's easier.”

Everyone acts normal at dinner. Lorelei is surprised, and then not: her family specializes in acting like weird things are normal. Plus, the twins don't know about what happened this afternoon, and now they're too busy trying to get permission for something to notice any leftover tension.

“Jens and I might miss dinner on Friday,” Nik says.

“If that's okay,” Jens adds. He's carefully not looking at any of the adults in particular: Petra won't say anything, so there's no point, but Oma will always find a reason to refuse. The trick is to get their father to agree before that can happen, without letting him know that he's the easiest mark at the table.

“What's so important that you have to miss a family dinner?” Oma asks.

“Soccer team bonding,” Nik says. “Ollie is having some of the guys over—”

“Jens isn't on the team.”

Jens says, “Ollie's a good friend of mine from elementary school, though. Dad, do you remember when he had that birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese's?”

Henry nods vaguely.

Jens says, “Where he threw up in the ball pit?”

“Sure. Of course.” Lorelei can't tell whether her dad is lying or not. “Be sure to tell his mom I said hi.”

Jens and Nik exchange a glance that's basically an invisible high five.

Petra's phone starts ringing. She pulls it out of her pocket and doesn't apologize. “Work,” she says. “I have to take this.” She gets up from the table. Lorelei can hear her starting to argue with someone as she goes up the stairs.

Oma turns to the twins. “You'll want to get some studying done tonight, if you're going out this weekend.”

“Absolutely,” Jens says.

“You can get started on that,” Henry says. “I've got the dishes.”

Oma says, “Lorelei, help your father.”

Henry looks startled to be reminded that he has a daughter. His whole genial absentminded-professor thing falls away in the face of having to spend fifteen minutes with her, standing at the sink. He looks like a trapped animal.

“No,” he says. “No, it's fine. I've got it.” He grabs a few plates and hurries into the kitchen before Oma can object. Lorelei pulls her shoulders together and imagines shrinking down and down, so small that no one would have to see her or even think about her. She's used to her parents basically ignoring her; actively avoiding her is new, and she's surprised by how much it hurts. She really didn't mean to screw anything up.

Oma looks at all the empty chairs around her and folds her hands in her lap. She leans her head back and closes her eyes. Lorelei almost never sees her grandmother resting; she's always moving, tending the garden or making food, cleaning the house, paying bills, knitting blankets. Oma comes off as spry and vital, but her hands are liver-spotted with age and her skin is almost transparent, tissue-thin.

“I'll clear, at least,” Lorelei says. She can't disappear, but she can grease the wheels of the household's working: be good and easy and helpful. That she knows how to do.

Oma doesn't say anything.

Lorelei brings a stack of dishes to her father in the kitchen. The roar of the faucet makes saying anything impossible. When she passes back through the dining room, Oma's eyes are still closed, and the expression on her face is one she would hide if she knew anyone was watching. Her grandmother looks exhausted, drawn and drained.

She looks like my mother,
Lorelei thinks, recognizing for the first time the way each of their lovely faces is marked, indelibly, by the signs of grief and loss.

L
ORELEI'S PLAN IS TO
avoid Chris at school, where there is no music or nighttime magic and she's just another sophomore. He might not even recognize her without makeup, wearing boring jeans and a T-shirt and blinking through pale eyelashes.

She could dress up if she wanted to. She has a closet full of nicer stuff, mostly the dresses her mom brings home from work, samples or factory rejects with uneven hemlines and missing buttons, problems Oma could fix in a few minutes. But Lorelei never puts them on. She doesn't like the air of petty bribery that accompanies them, these things her mother gives her instead of affection and attention. They hang in her closet like artifacts on display.

Still, Lorelei borrows Zoe's lip gloss after lunch on Monday. She's glad she did when Chris lopes up next to her in the hall a couple of hours later, sleepy-eyed even though it's well after noon. He nudges her with the tip of his shoulder as they fall into step. “Here you are,” he says. “I've been looking for you.”

“Here I am,” Lorelei agrees.
Of course I'm here,
she thinks. It's two p.m. on a weekday and she's walking from English to history, her last class of the day.

“It's weird, right?” He walks so close at her side that their hands brush occasionally, his knuckles against the skin of her wrist. He keeps turning to look at her too, not even shy about it. “Seeing people in different contexts.” Lorelei flashes back to his mother in the dark club, serene and distant.

“I've seen you around before,” she admits. “I think of you as being, like, a creature of the halls.”

“A creature of the halls!” he repeats, delighted. “I mean,
no,
but that's—that's great, I like that, a creature of the halls.”

She doesn't ask if he's ever noticed her. Pretty blond girls are a dime a dozen at Venice and all across west Los Angeles. She's part of the scenery here: there are palm trees and ocean views and blondes.

“Are you going to class?” she asks as he follows her around a turn.

“Nah,” he says. “Maybe that's why you see me in the halls so often. That's mostly where I am.”

“You don't get in trouble?”

“I don't.”

“How—”

“I've got a system.” His mouth turns sly. “I can show you, if you want.”

“Um.” Lorelei ducks her head. “That's, uh, really cool of you.”

“But you're going to class.”

They've pulled up outside the classroom door. Lorelei fiddles with the strap on her backpack and examines the bright blue polish chipping off her nails. She has never ditched in her life.

“Yeah.”

“S'cool.”

She twists her mouth to hide a smile of relief that he won't try to convince her, and that he doesn't care if she doesn't want to be bad.

“Come find me after school, though, okay? My car's in the shop, so Jackson's supposed to drive me to practice, but he and Angela always have, like, at least a half hour of making out somewhere between last bell and us leaving, so I should be findable.” He raises an eyebrow at her and rises up onto his toes, drifting farther into her space. “Assuming you know where to look.”

I don't,
Lorelei wants to say, but she does, and he knows it. He turns on his heel and disappears down the hall.

She walks into class still flushed, her cheeks warm with high, bright color. Mrs. Whitlock asks her a question, and when she answers it, the attention of the room shifts her way. Boys lean over their desks toward her like flowers tilting toward sunlight. Some of the girls do too.

Lorelei notices it and she doesn't. High school is always a sea of bodies reacting to one another, pushed and pulled by chemical change and a lot of loose talk. She never feels like she understands it completely. Anyway, everyone drifts back into place after a minute or two.

Lorelei's mind is elsewhere. She's pleased to have gotten the answer to Mrs. Whitlock's question right, and that she's had her turn in the spotlight already. She spends the rest of the period thinking about Chris.

As promised, he isn't hard to find. Lorelei tries to look casual as she walks out, chatting with Taylor, who sits next to her in class, but as soon as they walk through the school's front door, she spots him. He's sitting on a bench with his guitar in his lap. Jackson and Angela are sitting next to him, and they are, in fact, making out, so she has to pause awkwardly in front of their trio.

“Oh,” Taylor says. “Um. Bye?”

“Yeah,” Lorelei says. “Bye!”

Taylor gives her a little side eye as she leaves, surprised at the company Lorelei is keeping. Not just seniors: seniors in a band.

Chris smiles up at her. “You found me!”

“I looked.”

“Sit.” Chris bumps a hip against Jackson, who scootches over and lets Angela crawl into his lap.

Lorelei is no stranger to PDA. She's not
innocent,
not exactly. She's seen movies, educational screenings put on by Carina in the Soroushes' living room late at night. But she's never been this close to live making out before, the wet slurps of mouths and tongues, even their breath getting sloppy and loud. She watches Angela's hand disappear up the front of Jackson's shirt as she folds herself into the space next to Chris.

“Sorry about them,” he says. “J's parents are super strict, and Angela's folks are…Jehovah's Witnesses?”

“Regular old evangelicals.” Angela pulls away long enough to correct Chris. Jackson is still kissing her neck.

“Anyway. Not into, uh, alone time for these two.” He waggles his eyebrows indelicately at her. “So they get it where they can.”

“I don't mind,” Lorelei says. “What are you playing?”

“No-thing.” Chris strums a few big, loose chords. She watches his callused fingers working the strings, and her own fingertips itch. She can't tell whether she wants to touch him or the guitar, each of them smooth and shining in the sunlight. “I was trying to, like, make something up, but it all just sounds goofy.”

“Sounded all right to me.”

“I mean, it doesn't sound
bad,
” he says. He plucks stray notes while he talks. Lorelei envies the ease of his body making music without him noticing. “It just doesn't sound like a song yet, you know? I can make sound, but I'm having trouble making music. I was thinking about you, actually. I've been thinking about you singing with me.”

They're sitting in warm September sunlight, but Lorelei can't help her shiver.

“Shuuuut uuuup,” Jackson groans. He disengages himself from Angela and swivels around to address Chris directly. “Can this artistic bullshit, please, dude, I am begging you.” He notices Lorelei for the first time and tilts his head in her direction. “Don't listen to him, little freshman,” he says. “Chris is one hundred percent full of shit.”

Before Lorelei has time to correct him—she's a
sophomore
—Chris cuffs him on the shoulder and Jackson shoves him back. They're clumsy and familiar with each other, tumbling off the bench so they can wrestle on the grass.

This leaves Angela and Lorelei sitting at opposite ends of the bench, watching. Angela very deliberately straightens out her skirt and her tank top, runs her fingers through her hair, and checks her makeup in a silver heart-shaped compact mirror. She doesn't look at Lorelei. “Boys,” she says eventually.
“Boys.”

Jackson has Chris haphazardly pinned. He beams up at Angela. “Look what I did for you, baby,” he says. “I caught you a Chris.”

“Not interested.”

Jackson knees Chris in the thigh and scrambles back up to the bench. “Didn't catch your name,” he says to Lorelei as Angela resituates herself, draping her legs over his.

“Lorelei.”

“Lorelei. Cool. Jackson. And this is Angela.”

“Angela,” Angela affirms. Then she nips at Jackson's earlobe.

“So how do you two know each other?”

“Lorelei came to the show on Saturday,” Chris says. “We started chatting. Turns out she goes to Venice too. Obviously.”

“Oh, right,” Jackson says. “You said. I remember now. You coming to watch us practice?”

Lorelei shakes her head. Her brothers are probably already waiting for her in the parking lot. She should go now before they start to wonder, or, worse, look for her.

“I should go, actually,” she says. “Gotta find my ride.”

“I can get you a ride home after,” Chris offers. “If that's the issue.”

“Oh.”

All of yesterday's weird, ominous warnings swirl up in her head: the story of Oma singing and being silenced, and the emptiness of her father's glassy, exhausted eyes. But then she looks at Chris, sunny, smiling, normal and happy, and it seems impossible that anything about this could be dangerous. He's just trying to pull her into his world of band practice and hanging out, catching rides, maybe even eventually making out on a bench somewhere too.

Screw it,
Lorelei thinks.

“If it's not gonna be a problem?” she says. Chris shakes his head emphatically. “Let me just go tell my— I'll be right back.”

She finds Jens and Nik waiting impatiently and tells them that she's going over to Zoe's. Someone will drop her off at home later. She's never lied to them like this before, but it's easy to make her voice come out steady and even. Of course they believe her. Where else would she be going?

“Tell Oma,” she says. “And Mom and Dad, I guess.”

“Sure,” Jens says. He's sitting in the driver's seat, already turning the keys in the ignition. “Hey, Nik, this means we can—”

The rest of his suggestion is lost as the engine roars to life and the twins start to roll their windows up. Lorelei sees, though, the suspicious look that Nik gives her as they pull out of the lot, the frown that formed at the corners of his mouth when he listened to her lie.