Frannie and Tru (20 page)

I realized that, of course, I should bring the vodka to Prettyboy. After all, it was supposed to set off a perfect night, be the key to something special. Part of me still didn't want to drink it yet—as long as it was there, then I felt like something great was waiting ahead. But the summer was so close to over, and I had always meant to share it with Tru. It seemed almost like a bad omen if we didn't drink it together.

The time had come.

I thought about digging it up now, but I wasn't sure where I'd hide it, and decided I should wait until right before the big night at the jump-off. For a few more moments, I looked down into the park, then turned around to go inside. But with one hand on the screen door handle, I paused.

Tru was standing in the dining room with my mother. They were partially blocked from my view, but I could see that she was hugging him and saying something in his ear. She pulled away, keeping her hands on his shoulders, looking him in the eyes, saying something more firmly. Secret words that didn't reach me.

I waited for them to separate, then came inside and went straight to my room.

Friday evening Mom was going out to a wine bar and then to a late movie with Nancy and some of her friends. Jimmy had cackled like a hyena when she told us what she was doing, and he didn't even know who Nancy was—if he did, he probably would have laughed until he died. To be honest, I'd almost laughed, too, because Mom never did things like that, and for a moment I'd thought she was joking.

Then I thought of my father gone. I thought of how hard this summer had been on her. I thought of her taking Tru and me to that show. Suddenly, I felt like an ungrateful little monster.

She got ready to leave and came downstairs in a black wrap dress and her big gold jewelry. Watching her stand by the door, adjusting her hair in the mirror that hung there, I saw that she was young, younger than I'd ever stopped to realize or think
about. Barely past forty. When her ride honked out front, I ran over and hugged her before she left. I told her she looked nice.

“Nice for an old fat lady,” she said, and patted my head. “You look so pretty lately I can hardly stand it.”

She smiled and told me that I should be good. Then she was gone.

I started to go upstairs but paused on the first step when I heard whispers in the dining room. I shifted to the left and saw Tru, conspiring with Kieran in the corner. I paused, hoping they wouldn't turn around and see me.

I overheard Tru telling Kieran that he didn't want to stay at Siren all night for whatever this mystery concert was. He wanted to go for a bit, but then he and Sparrow would drive over to The Mack's last party of the year. Kieran and Tru started debating who would stay sober to drive the minivan home.

“You realize I'll also be bringing . . . ?” Tru said this in a loud voice and pointed in my direction, looking dead at me, knowing all along that I had been there.

Kieran turned and saw me at the bottom of the stairs. He looked worried, but said that it was fine.

We walked to Siren, just Tru and me. He kept looking around, seeming to take everything in, first the houses in our neighborhood and then the busy street with all the shops. Kids on skateboards passed us by, then couples on dates, just like that first night. As I watched Tru watching everything, I realized that we wouldn't make this walk again. Tomorrow was the jump-off. Sunday he was going home.

I almost cried.

“Déjà vu,” Tru said as we approached Siren, only this time Sparrow was outside waiting for us, leaning on a lamppost, smoking a cigarette in tight black ankle pants, black flats, and teeny little black tank top with a sweetheart neckline. She looked like some newer, better Audrey Hepburn.

“Nice outfit,” Tru said when we reached her. “But if you're dressing up for Kieran, he seems like more of a jean-shorts-and-tube-top kind of guy. Or maybe your mom's old cheerleading uniform?”

She ignored him, snuffed out her cigarette, and took me by the elbow. Tru followed us inside, past the same sad, loser bouncer, who looked no happier than last time to see the two of us. I forgot to hide behind my hair, and he seemed particularly upset by my obscenely young face.

But it didn't matter. We were in.

This time there was no water music, no girl in a purple bob. Just a bunch of guys in T-shirts and jeans playing a Madonna song, while a girl who looked extremely drunk clung to the mike and sang passably along. A big red banner hung over the stage, screaming,
KARAOKE . . . LIVE!
in glittery letters.

“You wanted to come to
this
?”

I hadn't meant to be rude, but the question burst out before I could think. Sparrow leaned on her knees she was laughing so hard, only standing up to point at Truman—who, surprise, didn't seem to care what we thought.

“Actually,” Sparrow said, “I saw them last month. The band's
pretty amazing. They play weddings, too, so they know everything. There's just no machine to follow, so you have to know the words.”

Madonna girl stumbled back into the crowd to a series of loud cheers, and she was replaced by a bearded man in flannel who sang Johnny Cash while half the crowd shouted along. Sparrow began dragging the two of us from the entryway toward a place in the back, because, “Frannie, darling, you are lovely, but in the middle of this crowd you look about twelve.”

We were halfway to our hiding spot, dead across from the stage, when Tru stopped in his tracks. Sparrow tugged on his arm in annoyance, but he was looking at the guitarist with a wily grin and would not be budged.

“His T-shirt—that says Rutgers, right?”

Sparrow didn't answer him, just finished ushering us toward our dark corner. We were there all of ten seconds when a guy next to her started chatting her up. As soon as she turned her head, Tru was gone, moving up through the crowd and next to the stage, waiting for the song to be over. I gently poked Sparrow's arm, and when she saw, she just sighed. “I knew he was going to do this. At least I've worked my last shift.”

The last notes of the Johnny Cash song faded away and the two of us watched as Tru signaled to the guitarist, then whispered in his ear. The guy smiled like crazy and nodded.

“What's Rutgers?” I asked Sparrow.

She shrugged. “A college. In New Jersey.”

Of course. Tru was going to sing Springsteen. I couldn't believe I was finally going to hear his voice.

As a pint-sized girl with a burst of curls ran up onstage, Tru wove back to us through the crowd, looking very happy with himself. The girl warbled out the first notes of a song that I thought was The Beatles.

“You seem to have forgotten that I asked you to lie low and not sing, but of course I never really expected you to listen,” Sparrow said. “You up soon?”

“Well,” he said, “there was a line, but I seem to have worked around that. I'm next.”

He was popping up and down on his heels, fiddling his fingers, absentmindedly whistling. Lacking in his typical cool resolve. Happier than he'd been in days. Seeing him like that made me smile.

When the girl finally stuttered through the last chorus of the Beatles song to a round of polite applause, Tru made his way to the stage, cool and calm as could be. At the same time, the band members started leaving, heading over to the bar for a drink. Only the kid in the Rutgers shirt stayed, and Tru hopped up next to him and arranged himself before the microphone. He gripped both hands around it as the first chords came in, and I recognized a song that I'd been hearing for years in my parents' van, a song that had come on again and again this summer. It always made me think of driving late at night, of going somewhere and doing something bad. And then Tru was singing.

At first, there was too much noise to hear well; people were shuffling around, distracted by the band leaving, not sure what was happening. But after Tru got through the first verse it grew quiet. They turned their attention to the stage.

He didn't have the biggest voice. He didn't have much range. But what he had was liquid and honey, the tone pure and clear. He did the song very understated, never pushing it, hardly moving. His eyes were open. I could feel the people next to us going still. I felt shivery, a sadness soaring inside me, high up in my chest—that certain sadness you only get with perfect pop music, when whatever magic there is in the melody and notes makes you feel alive and mournful all at once. He pronounced the lyrics with precision, and I took in each word.

                           
“It's like someone took a knife, baby, edgy and dull,

                           
and cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my soul.”

This was a song about being sad and screwed up, but it was also a song about sex, about sex that helps you forget yourself and the world and everything, everything. In that moment, I stopped thinking of Tru and started thinking of Devon, and I let myself get lost in a big rush of happiness and fear and desire and confusion, the music making all of it seem beautiful.

As the song moved past the final verse, I didn't want it to end.

Tru finished with a repetition of the chorus,
“
I'm on fire
,” and the guitarist was winding down and then people were whooping and hollering and raising glasses in the air, and beside me Sparrow was just clapping and smiling and shaking her head. For a few seconds, Tru stood there, absorbing the love, but he didn't look as happy as I would have expected. He looked distracted, distant. He turned to leave the stage, and the guitarist
reached out to shake his hand. As he did, Tru pulled him over for a moment, whispering. The guy whispered back and wrote something on the sheet of paper next to him.

I wondered if Tru was going to have another turn, and I hoped he would. I wanted to stay there all night. I wanted him to sing a million songs. But as he came down the short set of stairs, I thought again of the spelling bee, and just like all those years ago, I was watching his face and trying to understand what he was feeling. This time there was no smirk. Just a smile that was forced and hollow.

I was sure that in his mind, he was already halfway back to Connecticut. Back to his father. Back to whatever fresh miseries waited him there.

After that, people kept coming up to Tru to say nice job or to try and talk to him, but he was aloof, brushing everyone away. He had burned off his jitters from earlier, but they seemed to have been replaced by something new. A sadness, but a fierceness, too. I was watching him nervously, but then he caught me and wiped the expression clean.

The band returned from the bar, drinks in hand, and the guitarist was at the microphone, announcing that the break was over, digging out the page of singers to come. Tru further recovered his cool. He straightened up, looked expectantly toward the stage. The wicked grin returned. He was completely animated. As if he'd boomeranged back from low to high. Sparrow was talking to the two of us and he shushed her, put a hand to his ear, signaling that he was trying to hear.

“All right, everybody! We've got three more singers coming at you. Up next is Jake. Then Sarah. Then Frannie.”

My name hit me like ice water. I said nothing, just looked at him. Sparrow was looking at him, too, arms crossed, jaw set. He turned on an innocent expression.

“What? She can sing! You can sing! Not great, but better than these jokers.”

I felt a childish urge to push him. “You are so full of shit. You have never heard me sing.”

Sparrow put a hand on my shoulder.

“I'll go fix this,” she said, then gave Tru a withering look before inching her way over to the band.

As soon as she was gone, I turned an angry gaze on Tru, while he stood there grinning back.

“You're a dick,” I told him.

“What else is new, right?”

And now I was sure, there was something off about him tonight. An extra edge, but without the usual sparkle. A moment later, he left me, taking off without another word in the direction of the bar.

I was alone for all of two minutes when I felt a hand. On my ass.

“Little girl is back.”

I whirled around and for a moment could only stare, shocked and disbelieving. And then I realized it was him. The creep with the potbelly, the neck tattoo. The two of us locked eyes, and I wanted to scream or kick him in the shins, but I was frozen, able
only to look at his smug face, my hands quivering. I watched him part his lips.

Already, the words
little girl
—
little girl
,
of all things—were crawling all over my skin, and now he was going to say something else horrible. I couldn't stand it. I didn't want to hear whatever it was, because I knew the words would stick there in my mind. . . .

“Get away from me.”

I hadn't said it as loud as I'd wanted to, but I'd said it loud enough that the people around us were staring. He started to put on an act, looking around in confusion like he didn't know what was happening. More people were turning toward us, but I was still trapped so close to him, packed in with too many people, no clear way to get out.

Then, just to my right, the crowd was parting. People were being jostled, falling aside.

Tru was shoving his way through.

Before I could think or talk he was beside me, his fist swinging up in a beautiful arc. I watched the path it cut through the air and could see that he'd done this before, he'd thrown a punch, and he knew how to do it with gravity and assurance.

His knuckles smashed nose, and then there was color. Red.

Electric, sticky red, like a burst juice box.

The man staggered back, hands on his face, eyes shut, almost tripping as people shrank away and space opened all around him.

I couldn't believe the violence of it, of that single hit, because in the movies people get punched again and again and keep going. Now I knew what bullshit that was, because this guy was laid low
with only one, though Tru was still there beside me, not backing away, his thin frame locked and loaded. He bounced on his toes and shook out his fist, angry and righteous.

The background noise came back to me slowly—first the shouts and then the scraping of bar stools and the screeching of microphones with no one singing into them. Firm hands gripped my arms from behind and I gasped, tried to pull away, but then I saw it was only Sparrow. With one hand still on me, she grabbed Tru and yanked him hard, one time, two times, three, until he finally relented and started to follow behind her. I chanced a final look back at the man as we began our retreat and the blood was ghastly, curving around his mouth and dripping down into the wispy hairs of his chin. The whole way to the back door Tru was pointing at him and yelling—yelling crazy things like “You fucking pig, I will kill you!”

And then we were outside. I was hanging there like a rag doll; Tru was still tensed and sputtering, and Sparrow had to push us down the alley in the direction of her car. We stumbled ahead of her, and I couldn't stop looking down at Tru's hand, where a trace of red lingered on his knuckles.