Blackbird Fly (19 page)

She turned down the volume on the television. “Not really. I just didn't feel that great.” She stared at the now-mute guy on the screen.

“Are Alyssa and Lance still mad at you?”

“Everyone is. I don't know why. I didn't even do anything.” Her voice cracked. She pressed her lips together real tight.

I thought about the bathroom wall.

“They're just jealous,” I said. And even though I knew it was true, I also knew it probably wouldn't make her feel any better.

She kept staring at the silent television with her lips pressed tight.

I searched for words in my head, but I couldn't think of any good ones. Gretchen was searching for words too, I could tell, but I wasn't sure what words
she wanted until she looked at me and said, “Apple?”

“Yeah?”

“You didn't deserve to be on the Dog Log.”

“No one does.”

She nodded. “Those lists are stupid.”

“Very.”

“Maybe we should come up with our own list.”

“Evan said the same thing. At first I didn't think it was a great idea, but then I thought of a good one.”

She smiled a little. “Really? What is it?”

“A song list.” I reached down and picked up my guitar. “You wanna hear one?”

She smiled even wider. A real smile.

“Definitely,” she said.

I sat up straight and tuned my guitar.

“Apple?” she said again.

“Yeah?”

“I think you're beautiful.”

Under any other circumstances, we probably would have thought it was the cheesiest thing ever and
giggled until we couldn't stop, but at that moment she found the perfect words for both of us.

“I think you are too,” I said, and I pulled Evan's guitar pick out of my pocket.

I decided to play “Here Comes the Sun.” Even though “Blackbird” is my all-time favorite Beatles song ever, “Here Comes the Sun” always cheers me up. Plus I'd just learned how to play it the night before.

It was the first time I ever played “Here Comes the Sun” in front of anyone, and it was the first time I ever sang in front of anyone except myself, but I didn't even feel embarrassed. I just strummed and sang and watched Gretchen giggle and listen and smile and tap her feet. I
thought about them calling me a dog-eater. I thought about the Dog Log and “Gretchen is a dirty troll” and the Hot Lot and “Big-leena” and Jake Bevans. I thought about Alyssa in the fifth grade, and how sad and boring she was now that all she cared about was tiers and lists. I thought about the way Braden had laughed at the dance and about my mother and Evan. Everything rushed through my head, but then it all faded away into the back of my mind, and none of that stuff mattered because there was music.

W
hen Alyssa and I first became friends, we would meet at the park near our neighborhood and sail down the slides or see who could go the highest on the swing set or race from the east corner to the west. As other things became more important, like tiers and boys, we stopped going. It's funny how something can be a big part of your life, and then you can forget it's even there. That's how I felt about the park until
the day Heleena and I decided to get together so we could rehearse. Heleena didn't want to practice at her house, and I didn't want to practice at mine, so after I left Gretchen's, I texted her to see if she wanted to meet under the red canopy near the basketball courts. I sat on top of the picnic table and played songs while I waited. I practiced “Oh! Darling” from
Abbey Road
. It's one of their more bluesy songs, so it wasn't the best acoustic tune, but I liked it.

I was on my fourth rendition when Heleena walked up. Her face was shiny with sweat, even though the sky was overcast. It's hot in Louisiana even when it's November and the sun is hiding.

“Are you practicing some new songs?” asked Heleena.

She sat on one of the benches instead of on the tabletop.

“Yeah. I'm trying all different ones, just to see what it's like.”

“I do that too.”

This was the first time Heleena and I had ever hung out alone, so it was kinda awkward. I plucked a few strings, and she watched me silently. The clouds shifted. It was darker than usual. It probably wasn't a good day to practice, but we needed to get some rehearsals in. Neither of us had any idea what performance we were rehearsing for, and I wasn't sure how this would help me in New Orleans, but it seemed like an important thing to do. Plus we had promised Evan.

“How did you learn to play the guitar so fast?” asked Heleena.

“I'm not sure,” I said. “I just knew. Maybe because I couldn't stop thinking about it. Sometimes I even play in my sleep. Is that weird?”

“No.”

I stopped plucking.

“What about you?” I asked. “Where'd you learn to sing?”

She thought about it for a second. “I'm not sure,” she said. “I just knew.”

We both smiled like we were sharing a secret. Maybe we were.

“I'm sorry about your friend, by the way,” she said. “She seems really nice.”

“Who, Alyssa?” I grinned.

Heleena laughed. Loud this time, not quiet like in the library.

Once we stopped laughing, I said, “It's so wrong what's going on with Gretchen, because she never did any of those things. They're just jealous. She gets put on some dumb list, and now she's an outcast.”

Heleena pulled a loose sliver of wood off the table.

“Like us,” she said.

We'd never talked about the Dog Log before. It was like this big umbrella that hovered over both of us, but we had never acknowledged it. Until now.

“Yeah,” I said. “Like us.”

“My mom says one day none of it will matter. Like, when we're out of school, we won't even remember stuff that happened in middle school or high school.
She says everyone will be busy living their own lives. But I don't believe her.” She looked at me. “Do you?”

I shook my head.

“I'm not gonna wait a million years like that,” I said. “I'm gonna start a new life soon.”

“Me too. Some kinda way.” She picked off another sliver of wood. “What do you want to do in your new life?”

“Make music.”

She nodded. “Me too.”

I tried a few notes of another song on my guitar. “You wanna practice ‘Here Comes the Sun'?”

“Sure,” she said. She cleared her throat and stood up. “I've sung it about five hundred times at home. My mom even sings along with me.”

“Is she a good singer too?”

“No, she's the worst singer who ever lived.”

We laughed.

“She says I got all my musical talent from my dad,” said Heleena. “He was an opera singer in college, but
now he just sells insurance in Oklahoma. I told him that I was starting a sort-of band. He said he'll come watch us perform. If we ever perform.”

“I think I get all my musical talent from my dad too,” I said.

Heleena cleared her throat again and sang notes for practice.

“Okay,” she said. “Ready.”

I got set for a D chord, but before I played anything, Heleena's face lit up like she'd had a brilliant realization.

“Hey, I just thought of something,” she said. “We're doing it right now.”

“We're doing what right now?”

“Making music.”

“Oh.” I looked down at my guitar. “You're right.”

She nodded once and straightened her back. “Okay. Ready?”

“Yes,” I said, still thinking about what she'd said. “I am.”

The rain clouds were heavy, the sky grumbled, and it was getting dark by the time we finished rehearsing. Heleena's house was in the opposite direction from mine, so we walked to the corner together before going our own ways.

“That was fun,” she said.

“Yeah.” I looped my thumb around the guitar strap. “Maybe you can come over to my house sometime. Spend the night or something.”

“That sounds great,” she said. Her eyes brightened. “I'll listen to more Beatles music, and then I can tell you who my favorite is.”

I held up my index finger. “Always pick George.”

She laughed. “See you at school.”

I started home slowly, thinking about our rehearsal. Even though it was getting dark, I wasn't ready to go back to Oak Park Drive, where I'd have to slip the guitar through my bedroom window before going inside. I could have kept practicing until the sun came up.

I was a little more than halfway home when the rain came. At first it was a few droplets. I picked up my pace and held the guitar tight against my back. In a few seconds, the sky cracked open and they weren't just little droplets anymore. Thunder roared. I broke into a run. My hair, clothes, and Chucks were soaked, but all I thought about was the guitar.

When I got home, there was no time to slip it through the window. I had to get inside right away. I was drenched from head to toe.

“Apple!” said my mom, when she saw me. I stood inside the doorway, dripping water all over the place. “I've been texting you for twenty minutes.” She rushed off and came back with two towels. She put one under my feet. She started to wrap the other one around my shoulders, but then she saw the guitar.

“I was at the park with my friend Heleena,” I said. I took the towel, dabbed my face, and wrapped it around my head. I wanted to get to my room right away to dry off the guitar, but my mother stood in
front of me, eyeing it. She had a strange look on her face. Not anger exactly. Something else.

“Where did you get that?” she asked.

I didn't want to get Mr. Z in trouble, so I said, “I borrowed it from someone.”

I waited for her to say something else, but she didn't.

“You should've answered my texts,” she said. “Go change your clothes. Get dry before you get sick.”

I stepped around her and dripped water all the way to my room. As I changed clothes I realized what was familiar about my mother's expression.

It was the remembering look.

E
ven though it snowed in Chapel Spring the year we moved to America, I'd learned pretty quickly that the weather in south Louisiana isn't that much different from the Philippines. It's hot—really hot—and humid. Really humid. When you walk into an air-conditioned room, you immediately want to sit and rest and do nothing but feel the coolness. That's how hot it is, sometimes all the way through
December, but every once in a while there's a really amazing day. One of those days where there are white, puffy clouds floating through a bright blue sky, and even though the sun is out, it's not that hot, because the air is dry and there's a cool breeze coming from somewhere.

The Friday before the field trip was one of those days. I figured that by lunchtime it would be hotter than ever like usual, but at eleven o'clock it was still the amazing day it had been when I woke up.

Too bad we're stuck in school all day long,
I thought.

I hooked my thumb under my guitar strap the same way I used to do with my purse and turned away from the brightness of the corridor and the loud, chatty seventh and eighth graders going outside for lunch.

Then I stopped. It took Heleena and Evan a few steps before they stopped too.

“What's the matter?” Evan asked. “Forget something?”

Kids bumped into me as I stood there frozen in place and looked back down the corridor.

My Jake Bevans radar was going off—he was coming toward us down the hall—but I still didn't move.

Forty-five minutes of freedom
, I thought.

“Are you okay?” asked Heleena.

“Hey, it's the dog pound!” said Jake as he walked by with two of his friends. They barked a few times and continued on. I watched them go out the doors, into the bright sun.