Audition & Subtraction (6 page)

“It's not supposed to sound perfect on your own. It's a duet,” Mom said.

“But I don't do the melody right without Lori.”

“I'm sure you'll work it out with a little more practice. You don't give yourself enough credit.”

I rolled my eyes. “You're such a mom.”

“I think I've just been insulted,” she said, smiling. She handed me another packet. “You and Lori did a duet last year, and you pulled it off. You'll do the same this year.”

“Nothing's the same this year,” I said.

“Such as?”

A pair of green-yellow eyes popped into my head. I shoved the packet in the stapler so hard, it double-stapled.

Mom's eyebrows rose an inch. When her eyes weren't all red, puffy, and tired, they were pretty—dark brown and shaped like half-moons.

“It's just the new guy. Michael Malone.”

“The one who sits next to you?”

I nodded and leaned on the counter, watching her stack the pages, but not really seeing anything except Michael. “He doesn't say anything during practice, but I can tell he's listening, waiting for me to mess up. So he can say he's better.”

“Is he?”

“No,” I said. Then I shrugged. “I don't know. Maybe. He never squeaks, not even on the high notes.”

“You don't squeak, either.”

“Yeah, I do—when I get nervous. And I can't help getting nervous with him sitting next to me.”

“Then ignore him.”

“It's not that easy.” I flicked a nail through the corner of a packet, fanning the pages like a deck of cards. “He's always there. If he's not staring at me, he's staring at Lori.”

“Lori?”

“He's got these beady eyes. You don't notice it at first, but they're too close together, like a gorilla or something.”

“A beady-eyed gorilla?” She handed me another packet.

I nodded as I fed it to the stapler. “And his knees are bony, and he never ties his shoes. The laces are always trailing in the dirt, and I mean, who knows what germs he's dragging around with him. Plus, he never swabs out his clarinet.”

“What does Lori think of him?”

I shrugged. “She likes him, I guess. When he gets out of school, he wants to play in his father's band in New York, so she thinks that's cool.”

Mom made this noise in the back of her throat that was supposed to be understanding but was actually annoying. “You just need to concentrate on your own playing.”

“I am. I just wish Lori had more time. Our first read-through for Mr. Wayne is on Monday.”

“You've got the whole weekend,” she said, sliding the last pages together.

A gray piece of construction paper fluttered off the counter. I grabbed it in midair and turned it over.

“Auditions for community theater?” I scanned the flyer, then shot my mom a horrified look. “No way am I doing this.”

She snatched the flyer out of my hands. “It's not for you. It's for me.”

I gasped. “You?”

She set the flyer back on the counter. “Mrs. Lansing gave it to me. Something I might want to get involved in.”

“Community theater?” I puckered around the words as if I were saying “toe fungus” or “chronic canker sore.”

“Yes, community theater,” she said sharply. “Auditions are tomorrow night, and I'm going. You'll be at your father's.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. But why can't I stay here? I hate going to that house. It's always so dark, and I'm afraid to touch anything or I'll leave fingerprints.”

“Tatum,” she said, and her voice sounded really tired all of a sudden. “It's just very clean because your dad is rarely in town. He feels bad that you don't spend more time there.”

“Well, I feel bad that he doesn't come home.”

She sighed—but it was one of those heavy breaths full of stuff she didn't have to say because I'd already heard it before.

We need some time.

Even adults don't always have the answers.

We're doing our best.

It's not about you; it's about us.

Ha.
It sure felt like it was about me.

“Anyway,” she said, “you'll be there while I'm at the audition.”

I pulled the flyer closer with the edge of one finger and read the description.

Harry and the Heiress:

An Assisted-Living Love Story

By local playwright Anita Weebans

Desert Rose Nursing Home

“A romance with old people?” I asked. “I don't get why you'd want to do something like this.” Once, Mom
had dragged me to a musical her friend Mrs. Lansing was in. It was a bunch of white-hairs singing off-key in a church auditorium.

“Because it might be fun,” she said.

Fun?
Was she really that desperate? I rubbed a hand over my stomach where garlic potatoes suddenly churned. Of course she was that desperate. She sat at home and watched tearjerkers and ate Junior Mints. And I'd overheard her talking to Grandma about how awkward it was to go out with her friends because they all still had husbands. She didn't need community theater. She needed Dad back.

So what if his new job kept him away so much? Having Dad a little bit was better than not having him at all.

Why was I the only one who could see that?

I looked up from my sheet music at the sound of the front door slamming. My bedroom clock glowed 8:54 p.m.—Andrew must be home. My fingers stilled on the keys of my clarinet. I didn't have my mouthpiece attached—I'd just been slowly going over the hard section of the duet, working my fingers over the keys. If I did it enough times, they would learn what to do without my brain having to tell them. At least I hoped so. I started the thirty-second notes again, but mostly I listened.

There was a soft muffle of voices—Mom saying hi and asking about practice—and then Andrew's size 11 shoes on the stairs. He pounded up them, three or four at a time, and the floor shook a little as he reached the top. The upstairs was just big enough for a computer desk at the top of the landing, and our two rooms connected by the bathroom.

Then I heard Andrew's bedroom door, a slight squeak as it closed. A thud and then another thud—him kicking his shoes off. Silence. He'd be leaning over his iPod right now, turning it on and … a drumbeat thrummed from his room as the music kicked on. I smiled a little—I could time his movements to the second.

A sudden sting of tears filled my eyes, which was
so stupid.
Getting drippy over my brother and his routine—
please
. I should be glad when Andrew was playing baseball or staying over at Dad's—it meant I got the whole upstairs to myself. But I liked the squeaks and the thuds. I liked him being home …
our
home. I set down my clarinet and slid out of bed. I opened up my side of the bathroom and walked through.

“Andrew?” I knocked on his door.

“Yeah?”

I swung it open and leaned against the frame, trying not to breathe in the combo of manly musk and sweaty cleats. A dirty baseball jersey lay on the floor next to muddy socks and his Adobe Wildcats baseball hat. Andrew sat on his mattress, phone in his hand. He'd
grown so much the past year, Mom kept promising to buy him a bigger bed.

He rubbed his fingers through his hair, scratching along the indent from his baseball hat. “What do you want?”

“Nothing.” I pushed the door out with a foot and pulled it back in with my hand, listening to it
whoosh
as it swept across the carpet. “Did Mom tell you she's trying out for a play?”

He looked up from his phone. “What kind of play?”

“A lame one.”

“Do we have to go watch her?”

“I don't know. She hasn't tried out yet. Auditions are tomorrow, and she wants me to go to Dad's.” I swung the door out and in again. “I hate that house.”

He typed something in his phone. “Yeah, it's dark.”

“And … shiny. Is it weird being there at night?”

He hit a key on his phone and set it down. Then he pulled up a leg and rested one arm over his knee. “No, it's just … quiet. Mom's always got the dishwasher running or the laundry going. Over at Dad's it's nothingness.”

“I'm not going to sleep there.”

“No one said you have to.”

“I don't know why you do it.”

He shrugged. “It's still Dad.”

“But it's not our house,” I said. “Just because he moves, I'm supposed to act like it's my house? Like we
all belong there?” I pushed at the door again. “Has he said anything? About Mom or coming home?”

Andrew shook his head. “He asks how we're doing.”

“What do you say?”

“We're fine.”

I straightened. “You shouldn't say that. We're not.”

He gave me a long look. “I'm not saying it doesn't suck. But we
are
fine.” Then he ran his hand over his chin, back and forth, as if he were brushing off crumbs.

I frowned. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

I rolled my eyes. “Well, anyway, we're not fine. We're messed up. Dad's flying off to China, and Mom's going to be acting in nursing homes.”

He rubbed a finger over his face again. I squinted as something dark caught the light. “Is that a hair on your chin?”

Andrew grinned. “Yeah.”

I moved in closer, climbing over a pile of clothes to see better. One dark hair poked out of the bottom of his smooth chin. For the past few months, Andrew had sprouted the beginnings of a fuzzy blond mustache, but this was a dark, actually legit, hair.

“Pull that out,” I said. “It's weird.”

“It's my beard.”

“It's a hair!”

“It's a beast of a hair!” He pushed off the bed and
went to stand in front of his closet mirror. He tilted his head and studied his chin. “It's good luck. Since it's been growing, the baseball team hasn't lost a game.”

“You lost last week,” I said.

“But we won this week.”

“Because of that hair?”

His grin widened. “Fear the beard, baby.”

I blew out a breath. “What does Emily think?”

“I don't know.”

“She's going to hate it.”

“So she'll hate it.” He shot me a look. “You gotta stop worrying about what other people think, Tay. Grow a backbone.”

I pretended the words didn't sting. “If I grow a backbone as raggedy as that beard, we really are going to be a messed-up family.”

He laughed, and his eyes, so much like Mom's, softened. Andrew had grown tall and lean like Dad, but he had Mom's almond-shaped brown eyes. I got Mom's round face and ski-slope nose, but Dad's olive-green eyes. We were both pieces of them … and we were ourselves because they'd made us together. Because they were together. Now it was all coming apart. Like strands of DNA unraveling.

“I don't want them to split up, Andrew,” I said.

He shrugged. “I know.”

“So what do we do?”

“I don't think there's anything we can do. They messed it up; they have to fix it.”

“What if they don't? What happens to our family?”

He sighed. “I guess we'll be the way we are now.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That's what I'm worried about.”

“Are you sure she's coming?” Mr. Wayne asked me. “Maybe she forgot.”

“I reminded her,” I said. “I know she knows.” I paced back to his office door and looked down the hall. Nothing but emptiness and the odd smell of plastic sweat that seemed to lurk around the band room.

“It's not like Lori to be late,” Mr. Wayne added.

Yeah,
I wanted to say.
It's also not like Lori to be busy for practically the whole weekend.
Sure, we'd done a
Pirates
marathon on Saturday, but she'd spent almost the whole time on her phone sending texts. To guess who. Finally, I'd told her to stop or she'd end up crippled with finger strain.

She'd barely paused in her typing. “I think it's helping my dexterity.”

Great. So now beady-eyed, bony-kneed Michael was helping her with dexterity. What a guy.

On Sunday, she'd gone to her grandma's house and then couldn't practice at night because she was behind on math homework. Which she wouldn't have been except that she'd wasted so much time texting Michael.

But this was different. This was our first time playing our duet for Mr. Wayne. This was District Honor Band, and my grade, and me chewing holes out of the inside of my cheek.

Why didn't she answer her phone? I stared at my cell as if I could will it to ring. The dark screen stared back.

Mr. Wayne shuffled some papers on his desk. “We don't have much time before students begin arriving.”

“Can we wait a few more minutes?” I asked. “Please.”

His eyes smiled at me. “Why don't you have a seat, Tatum? Let's use the time to have a little chat.”