Blackbird Fly (11 page)

This was the time to say something that would make me look like a decent human being, but I couldn't come up with anything, because I felt just like the dirt that Evan had brushed off his hands.

“Your friends suck,” he said. He blew at his hair and sighed. “It's really crappy to ask someone to a dance and then ditch them. Do you think I
want
to be at this stupid thing?”

“Why did you come then?”

“Because you asked me, and I thought you were interesting. Guess I was wrong,” he said.

When he walked away from me, he didn't sulk or hunch over or make a big deal of it—he just walked off. I watched him disappear across the gym. Then I headed to the girls' bathroom on the other side of the building.

The hallway was dark and smelled like textbooks and metal lockers. It was strange being there when it was empty and all the lights were out. It felt wrong, somehow, but there was really nowhere else for me to go—I couldn't rejoin Gretchen and Alyssa, Evan was gone, and I had no other friends.

I went into the girls' room and sat on the counter, even though I knew I was probably ruining my
mother's old dress. Who cared? They were right. I was no Cleopatra.

I thought about New Orleans. I imagined strumming a guitar and singing until my voice blended in with all the sounds of the city. No one would know me there. Maybe I could meet other musicians and join a band.

I tried not to cry, I really did. I had all that eye makeup on. I'd listened to “The Fool on the Hill” five times on repeat when I put the makeup on, because that's how long it took. Now I really was the fool. But not on a hill. Sitting alone on a bathroom countertop with my Chucks dangling out of a stupid Cleopatra dress held together with pins to make it look just right.

I cried anyway. My makeup would smear, but so be it. I thought about calling my mom to pick me up early, but then she'd know something was wrong, and that was the last thing I needed.

I wished I had a marker. A big, fat, black marker.
If I did, I'd march into one of the stalls and write something terrible about myself. I deserved it.

I was thinking about all the terrible things I would write when the door opened. This bathroom was really out of the way, so it was the last thing I expected. Heleena came in, bringing the distant sounds of music with her. She was looking at her feet, so she didn't see me until the door closed and she looked up. Then she stopped.

I sniffled and wiped my face in a big hurry. Not like it mattered. My Cleopatra makeup was everywhere. I could tell.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” said Heleena.

I scooted over as she walked up to the row of mirrors behind me. She narrowed her eyes at all those ringlets and started pulling out her bobby pins, one by one. The ringlets fell flat against her round face.

I studied my shoes and felt my nose run. I couldn't hear the music from the gym anymore. All I heard
was the sound of her dropping the bobby pins in the sink.
Plink. Plink. Plink.
Then she took off her shoes. I could tell that they were brand-new.

She stood there, barefoot. Then she reached into the belt of her antebellum gown, pulled out a handkerchief, and handed it to me.

“You can keep it,” she said, picking up her shoes.

And she walked out the door, leaving all the bobby pins behind her.

I
didn't hear from Alyssa or Gretchen for the rest of the weekend, but to be honest, I didn't really care. I spent most of the time in the safety of my room, where I thought about all sorts of things: ugly-girl lists, the Philippines, Jake and Braden and Alyssa, what I'd done to Evan, what I'd done to Mr. Z, running away from everyone on the field trip. Everything.

I listened to
Abbey Road
and put “Here Comes the Sun” on repeat. I listened to “Yesterday” and “Because” and dreamed of leaving.

I thought about my dad too. I wondered if he had listened to music when bad things happened to him. I wondered what his favorite Beatles song or his favorite all-time song had been, and what he would have said about boys like Jake, Lance, and Braden.

I thought about Heleena and her bobby pins.

My mother didn't bother me until Sunday night.

“Apple?” she said, knocking lightly on the door.

The fact that she knocked on the door and didn't open it told me she knew something was wrong. But I would never tell her about the Dog Log. I would rather shrivel up and die.

“Is everything okay? I've hardly seen you since the dance.”

I turned up my music. “I'm fine.”

A pause. Then she opened the door, but just a crack. I quickly wiped my hands over my cheeks.

“There is a saying in the Philippines,” she said. “Maybe you remember it. It says, ‘It's never too late to offer something good.'”

“We're in America. People don't eat dogs here, and they have their own sayings.”

She shut the door without saying anything else.

I stared at the ceiling.

It's never too late to offer something good.

But what did I have to offer? Music that I didn't even know how to play?

I reached over to my laptop. I'd only planned to switch the playlist, but instead I went online to see what the rest of the world had to say about how to play guitar.

G
retchen's locker is at the farthest end of the south hall, so every morning since the first day of school, Alyssa and I have stopped at our own lockers before meeting up at Gretchen's. On the Monday after the school dance, I closed my locker, slipped my backpack over my shoulder, and made my way down the hall as usual. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I wasn't all that surprised when they both immediately
turned their backs on me. They huddled in front of Gretchen's locker shoulder to shoulder and acted like they were discussing something really important. As I passed by I heard Alyssa whisper and giggle.

I kept walking.

In homeroom Braden was the same doofus he usually was. It was like the dance hadn't happened. That's how it always is for the people on the other side.

When the lunch bell rang, I made sure to take the long way to my locker so I wouldn't have to pass Gretchen's locker again. I passed Evan a couple times, but he just walked by like I wasn't there.

I wished I wasn't. I wished I was on my way to my new life instead of going to the library for lunch. According to Alyssa, that's where the “losers” go when they have no one to sit with.

Heleena was there, sitting in a corner, wearing earbuds and reading. I wondered what she was listening to.

The only other person there was Mrs. Fastaband, who was sitting behind her desk. When she saw me, she asked if she could help me find anything. I thought about asking if she knew of any good holes I could crawl into. Instead I asked if the library had a music section.

“Looking for anything in particular?” she asked.

“Something about guitars, maybe. Like the different kinds and how to play them.”

I expected her to say no, because our library isn't very big, but to my surprise she pointed to a section next to the biographies. There were two books on how to play guitar. I pulled both of them from the shelf and was walking toward a table when Evan entered the library and headed to the biography aisle. When he saw me, there wasn't much he could do. It's hard to do a freeze-out one-on-one.

“Hey,” he mumbled, and kept walking.

“Hey,” I said, to his back. There was a tight knot in my stomach, and my palms got sweaty as I watched
him turn the corner.
I'm sorry, Evan
.
I don't know why I did the things I did
.

I sat silently at a table and opened
Teach Yourself Guitar.

I'd found plenty of videos online that gave lessons on how to play guitar, but it was tricky to learn anything when you don't have an actual instrument. The book was tricky too. I tapped on the pages with my pencil and stared blankly at the diagrams. It was hard to concentrate anyway, knowing that Evan was just a few feet away. I knew I should go apologize, but I couldn't bring myself to get out of the chair.

I pulled my red notebook out of my backpack. I usually kept it in my weekend backpack, but every now and then I brought it to school for emergencies. I figured today would be an emergency, and considering that no one except teachers had spoken to me all day, I was right.

On the first blank page, I wrote
Guitar-Getting Plan
at the top, but after several minutes of staring at the
carved graffiti on the library desk (
school sux
, it said), I had only two ideas: Strike up some kind of bargain with my mom or save up my lunch money until I had enough to buy one.

Lunch ticked by slowly. Time moves differently when you don't have friends. I thought about Gretchen and Alyssa under the oak tree, Alyssa eating her Funyuns and Gretchen sticking her empty Skittles bag in her pocket. When a lump formed in my throat, I swallowed it away and pushed the heels of my hands against my eyes so I wouldn't cry. That's all I needed—to start crying right there in the library with Evan in the aisle nearby.

When there were ten minutes left of the lunch hour, I walked over to Heleena. She didn't seem surprised to see me. She just took out her earbuds and looked up. Kind of smiling, kind of not.

“I know it's annoying when people interrupt when you're trying to listen to music,” I said, motioning toward her earbuds. “But I just wanted to say thank you for letting me borrow your handkerchief. I'd give
it back, but it's got makeup all over it. Maybe I can buy you a new one.”

“It's okay,” she said. “It cost only a dollar.”

“Your costume was really cool. I meant to tell you that.”

She smiled. “I liked yours too.”

“Except for the runny nose and smudgy eye makeup.”

“Yeah.” She laughed. It was probably the quietest laugh I'd ever heard. “Except for that.”

When I left Heleena's table, there were still seven minutes left of lunch. I checked out
Teach Yourself Guitar
from Mrs. Fastaband. Instead of going back to my locker, I turned left.

To the band room.

Since I wasn't allowed to be in swing choir, take music lessons, or do anything except “real subjects,” as my mom called them, I didn't spend too much time in the band room, but I thought it was the best room
in Chapel Spring Middle School. It smelled like old instruments, probably because there were dozens of them everywhere—saxophones, trumpets, flutes, clarinets, trombones. There was an old drum set in the corner, even though no one ever played the drums for band, and a piano on the other side of the room. Sheet music was scattered around, some pages with only a few simple notes and others with hundreds—so many that I wondered how anyone could ever play it. There were also instrument cases of all shapes and sizes and different kinds of oils, cleaners, and reeds too.

When I got there just before the end of lunch bell, the room was empty.

I'd written an apology to Mr. Z the night before. I figured I would leave the note under his door and get out of there as soon as possible, considering what had happened to me the last time I was in the band room, but I got distracted by a French horn. It was hanging on the wall, all rusty and beat-up. I stopped
to examine the keys and study how the pipes twisted and turned all the way up to the spout, or whatever it was called. I didn't touch it though. With my luck the whole thing would have come crashing down.

If not for that French horn, I would have been in and out of the band room in a flash, but instead I was still there when Gretchen and Alyssa walked in for swing choir.

“Hey,
Cleopatra
,” said Alyssa, with a snort. “What are you doing here?”

I slipped the note for Mr. Z deep in my pocket and held the thick guitar book close to my chest.