Frannie and Tru (7 page)

Lying a certain way on the corner of my bed, tilting my head back just so, I couldn't see the brick of any houses or the dull gray metal of any streetlamps. Not one hint of the city. There was only the crisscross of branches, leaves twitching in the wind. Beech leaves, I knew. I always knew which trees were which.

Maybe that explained why it was the weekend and I had nothing to do.

It was now seven days since Tru arrived and we went to Siren. Six since we'd been to the quarry. I was back to being alone. Breathing quietly, I tried to focus on the leaves and only the leaves. My seventh-grade health teacher had taught us to meditate, which everybody mocked and hated, no one really trying, the boys falling asleep or pretending to, the girls peeking at each other through eyes that were supposed to be closed. But like
always, I'd listened and done what I was told. The lesson had stuck with me. I went home and tried it on my own, and years later, I still did it—at least my own version, here on the edge of the bed. I always kept my eyes open, losing myself in the green, and on good days I could almost forget where I was.

But today, instead of trying to drift away, I was writing a simple speech. I would tell Tru that I wanted to see Sparrow again. Not wanted to, needed to. I had to meet her cousin and his friend who went to my school, because otherwise—come September—I'd be walking into the building a hopeless nobody who knew no one. I'd add something at the end about needing Tru's help, maybe point out that he'd been a little mean to me. But I'd make that part quick. Nothing desperate.

I got up and hurried down to the basement.

It was just past noon. The twins were stirring, but not actually up, since on the weekends, we weren't forced to eat breakfast together. Tru I found wide-awake. He was in his room, making his bed, and his hair was still wet from the shower, slicked back, like an actor from some old movie. I was ready to blurt out my whole canned speech, but as soon as he saw me, he smiled and pulled a set of keys from his back pocket. My mom's keys. He gave them a jingle.

“You need to get dressed,” he said. “We've been invited to band practice, and I've even been given permission to drive. While you were sleeping the morning away, your mom and I did a test run around the block.”

I stared at him, uncomprehending. “What do you mean, band practice?”

“Remember Sparrow's cousin, Devon? Kid who plays the violin all day? Guess he has a little rock band, too, with a couple of his friends. They're doing a show soon, and they need to practice for an audience. I already told your mom that Devon's friend goes to your new school, and she's very excited for you to make friends at your new school, Frannie.
Very excited
.”

This was exactly what I'd wanted, but I was still sort of annoyed. I had things to say about what I needed, about how he'd been treating me. But even as I tried to hold on to my anger, I felt it receding. I now suspected that when it came to this summer, to Truman, I had two distinct choices. I could choose my dignity, or I could choose Tru's world.

“Are we leaving now?” I asked.

Tru raised the keys again, jingled a “yes.”

We got into the minivan and Tru looked through the CDs in the glove compartment, this time picking U2. As soon as the van was out of the neighborhood, he rolled down the windows and turned on the music. He made some
ugh
noises, flipping past a few tracks, finally settling on “Bad.”

“So I saw the famous Jeremy Bell last night.”

I waited for him to say more, but he said nothing. As he pressed on the gas, the van became an unbearable wind tunnel, warm air whipping our faces and tangling my hair. The bass bumped brokenly from the old speakers, creating a humming under my skin.

“He was at the party?” I asked dumbly.

“Yes, he was.”

The car rolled on. The wind blew on.

“So did you talk to him?” I asked. “What happened?”

“What happened?” Tru got that sneaky look, the one that was all in his eyebrows.
“Veni, vidi, vici.”

I was pretty sure I should know what that meant, but I couldn't remember, and when he offered nothing else, I finally had to ask.

“Was that—was that Latin? From class? How did you learn that so fast?”

Tru looked out his window and laughed.

“Well, that was some Latin I already knew. It's a famous quote?
Julius Caesar
? It means ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.'”

“Oh, right.”

And I
had
known that. I'd heard it somewhere, I was sure, I'd just forgotten. I looked out the window, feeling stupid and trying now to commit the phrase to memory.
Veni, vidi, vici. Veni, vidi, vici.
The words tumbled around in my head, poetic and sharp. A whole minute passed before I actually thought about what he meant.

When I finally did, my head swiveled back to him in an instant.

“You and Jeremy . . . ?”

He rested an elbow on the open window, the fingertips of just one hand delicately directing the wheel.

“Does that surprise you?” he asked.

“No. I guess not. I just thought you said . . .”

He cut me off with a laugh.

“I'm kidding, Frannie. I didn't do anything with Jeremy. I
didn't even talk to him. But you're right. He's cute. I might keep my eye on him.”

He turned the volume up high, higher, all the way to the max, as we drove north. We were headed for a nice part of town, just on the city's border. We sped along, lashed by the wind, deaf from rock 'n' roll, while I admired how easily he piloted our beast of a car.

Tru drove fast, took turns smoothly.

Sparrow's aunt lived in a pretty but tiny stand-alone house with pink and white flowers out front, plus a newly planted tree, held up by splints. A Bartlett pear. The car in the driveway was shiny clean, a hybrid with bumper stickers about peace and recycling.

“My god,” Tru said, as we pulled in. “They're hippies. Frannie, this woman is going to serve us kale chips and soy milk.”

In fact, she offered us hummus with pita and diet soda. She wasn't beautiful exactly, but striking, with hair sheared close to her scalp.

She introduced herself as Regina, not Mrs. Jewell, and asked sweet, thoughtful questions about us. When she heard that I was going to the science and engineering school, she put out her fist for me to bump. She told me she was a public-health professor who did research and fieldwork with water. I longed for something intelligent to ask, but could only nod, impressed.

She told us we could go on downstairs, and as we headed in that direction I heard a guitar being plucked, a cymbal shimmering. Tru went first and I followed. We walked slowly down
creaky steps into a half-finished basement. The walls were rough stone, the floor painted an industrial gray. One half of it was filled with a soaring set of shelves stuffed to the bursting point with textbooks. There was a desk with a computer and papers stacked to dangerous heights. A photo on the wall showed Regina somewhere stark and dusty. She stood next to a well and was surrounded by children with big smiles and dingy clothes.

In the other half of the basement was the band.

I had expected a minicrowd that I could disappear into, but it looked like we were the crowd. Or rather, us and Sparrow. She bounded over and greeted both of us with hugs. Her hair was under a handkerchief and she wore thick black glasses, yoga pants, and a too-big T-shirt that hung off her shoulder. Looking at her, I could imagine for a moment what it would be like to be in love—to be bewitched by someone in all their forms.

Sparrow led us over to the other side of the basement. A busted couch and pilled carpet sat in front of the band's practice space: a ten-foot-by-ten-foot square that was a tangle of microphones, amps, instruments, and boys.

There were three of them. Sparrow introduced each with a flourish.

Winston was the drummer, a pudgy beanbag of a kid with a shaved head and glasses, sweet brown eyes, and light brown skin. His gaze tended downward, shyly. He was the one who went to my school.

On bass was P.J. Tall and gawky and white, with overly styled emo hair, twitchy fingers, and a manic grin. I felt his eyes on
me, assessing. His hands began to work more nervously on the strings.

And then finally Sparrow's cousin, Devon. Oh my god, Devon. Yes, he was kind of short, shorter than me for sure, but he had this white, white smile against dark, dark skin, set inside a perfect face. The kind of face that belonged on the front of a college brochure. Fresh and all-American. His hair was done in those little twisty things that probably had a name, but one I didn't know. What I did know was that he was cool
.
I could tell just by the way he was standing, the easy way his instrument hung down from his shoulders. He played guitar and was the singer, too, of course.

“So this is definitely a dry run, you know?” Devon told us. “We're not, like,
ready
ready yet.”

“Devon,” Sparrow said. “They don't mind.”

“We don't mind,” Tru echoed and elbowed me.

“We don't mind,” I agreed, voice squeaking.

P.J. was still looking at me, and his grin was now practically exploding.

Tru took a seat in the middle of the couch and patted either side. Sparrow and I squeezed in. It was more of a love seat, not really big enough, and the three of us wove ourselves into a cocoon, bare arms warm against one another. I huddled down, feeling heated and alive as Winston beat a four count with his drumsticks and the music began.

As we walked with the boys to a nearby park, my ears were still ringing from the hour we'd spent in the basement. Their set wasn't at all what I'd expected. They played a bunch of old songs converted into throbbing, happy pop-punk. They did the Beatles and a bunch of Motown, but they played everything fast, hard, hopped up with energy, beat pounding. Winston's pudgy arms flew in the background, almost a blur. P.J. ran all over the place, climbing speakers, dropping to his knees. Devon stayed planted under the microphone, belting from somewhere deep down inside. . . .

I loved it. I loved every single song.

We walked down a gravel path that ran through the trees, passing a fancy playground. The equipment was bright and looked brand-new, the ground covered with some kind of high-tech, cushiony foam. It was mostly empty, probably since dinnertime
was fast approaching. There was just one dad with his two toddlers and a big, woolly dog.

Devon was in front, and he took us farther down the path, to a shadier corner of the park, where the old, unused equipment lingered. A rusty graveyard of abandoned playthings. This was apparently where the band came after practice to smoke their cigarettes.

The three of them took seats on a group of rocking animals: a sea horse, a dolphin, and a killer whale. The springs were squeaky and the dolphin was missing a fin. I leaned against the ladder for the monkey bars. Tru and Sparrow took side-by-side swings.

I was keenly aware of being the youngest person there, having discovered on the walk that the three boys were all a year ahead of me. Meanwhile, my fear of being the new white girl at school had temporarily vanished, pounded into oblivion by the music in the basement, by watching Devon and P.J. and Winston. I told myself that Jimmy was wrong. Mary Beth and the other girls were wrong. They were backward and behind, stuck at small-minded St. Sebastian's, where everyone was alike. I started to think that next year, among the smart and sophisticated, things would be different. Come September I'd be laughing that I ever did that Google search. I'd scoff that I'd spent nights worrying.

When the pack of cigarettes came to me, I passed it on without taking one, too afraid of coughing and looking like a loser. With nothing to occupy my hands, I looked nervously down at my feet, tracing circles in the wood chips with the tips of my sneakers.

“So why haven't you told us your band name?” Tru asked.

Sparrow laughed. “Probably because they don't have one yet.”

“Whoa, now!” P.J. said. “We have
ideas.
Good ideas.” He started an antsy rocking on the sea horse. His fingers tapped nonstop against the handles.

Tru leaned forward expectantly. “And those ideas are . . . ?”

P.J. took a deep breath and his eyes got wide, but Devon, looking slightly embarrassed, jumped in first.

“Well, we have three that we're thinking about. The first one is The Penny Dreadfuls. The second one is Chuck Darwin. The third one is Thunderface.”

Tru choked on a puff of smoke.

“The last one,” he said. “You gotta go with the last one.”

Sparrow pushed her swing to the side, knocking into Tru's.

“Don't listen to him,” she said. “He's too cool to like anything.”

“Hey, hey,” Tru said, acting offended. “I was impressed. Look, I know music, and you guys are good musicians.”

Devon gave a little nod in thanks, while P.J. performed an exaggerated and awkward bow from where he sat hunched over on the sea horse.

“Tru does know music,” Sparrow chimed in. “He sings like an angel.”

“An angel?”
Tru almost choked again. “No one has ever, ever said that. Ever. But these guys are good. I like them.”

He hopped out of the swing, took a drag, exhaled dramatically.

“So,” he said with a smile, “I'm
not
too cool to like anything. Suck it, Sparrow.”

The boys snickered, and Sparrow stuck out her tongue. As it grew quiet, Tru's words echoed in my mind.

“That would be an okay band name,” I said.

Now everyone was looking at me. The monkey-bar ladder pressed hard stripes into my back, and I grabbed one of the rungs until my hands hurt. I hadn't really meant to say that. It just tumbled out.

“What would?” Tru asked, crossing his arms, looking amused.

My face burned. Why had I opened my mouth? Saying nothing was safe, and safe was always better. Always. But everyone was still staring at me, so I had to explain.

“Suck It, Sparrow?” I said it lamely, like a question.

P.J.'s mindless rocking on the sea horse stopped. He looked at Devon. Devon grinned and looked at Winston, who'd said even less than I had all afternoon. From his timid perch on the killer whale, he grinned, too. All three of them looked at me.

“That's good,” Devon said. “That's really good.”

He was still smiling, and I could not stop looking at his perfect, perfect teeth.

Tru tapped Sparrow's shoulder, then pointed at his chest. “You know, technically I came up with it.”

She ignored him and stood up from the swing. Cigarette dangling from her lips, she gave me a long, slow, heartfelt clap.

The clouds charged back in as Tru and I drove home for dinner, and then came the lightning, the thunder, the rain. Another night of canceled fireworks, delivering us from family time. The twins had taken off in the new car, and Mom and Dad were settled on the couch for the evening, eating microwave popcorn
and watching baseball. Tru got on his phone, and the next thing I knew we were back in the van, headed to the movies to meet Sparrow and the band.

Someone had gotten the time wrong, so we were a few minutes late. We scrambled into the theater as the previews were ending, and the lights went out before we could sit. As we slinked in the dark to an empty row, there was an awkward shuffle, some shifting and hesitation that would determine who sat next to who. The boys kept tripping over one another, stalling. There was a tense second . . . two . . . three . . . and then Tru elbowed his way around everyone, made a show of pushing me gently in front of him, guiding me down the aisle to the seat at the end. He settled in next to me, threw a friendly arm across the back of my chair.

“So sorry,” he whispered, almost gleefully, “but I sensed that one of those young men might be trying to sit next to you, and I just didn't feel that was appropriate.”

I felt my face go hot and was thankful for the dark. Everyone else started filing in, and as they dropped into their seats and clicked off their phones, I whispered back to Tru as quietly as possible.

“Thanks so much. You're an A-plus chaperone.”

He laughed so hard that Sparrow told him to shut up. The standard message blared about walking, not running, in case of an emergency. The screen turned bright, and music came in over the first scene, but I barely saw or heard anything. All I could think about was what Tru had just said and what it meant.

He could tell that someone liked me.

Tru put out an empty hand, demanding some of my Sno-Caps.
I poured a pile into his waiting palm as my mind raced through everything that had happened that afternoon. I reviewed every passing look, every expression, every nervous motion that I could remember, but I'd known even before I started who it had to be.

P.J. It must be P.J.

And yes, P.J. was a little hyper and only kind of cute, but in that moment I was flush with the knowledge that somebody wanted me. Somebody who was a year older. Somebody who was in a band.

Nestled in my seat, hidden in the dark, I kept thinking about him. I began to like his hair. I remembered that he had nice eyes. Greenish-brown ones. My head buzzed with happiness and fear. My body glowed.

I felt like I owned some small piece of the world.

The movie was silly and went by fast. When it was over, we converged outside on the sidewalk to chart our next move, only to realize it was time to split up and go home. People had curfews, and Sparrow said she didn't misbehave when she was in charge of Devon, which made both Devon and Tru roll their eyes.

Sparrow popped back inside to use the bathroom, and Winston wandered down the sidewalk to look at the movie posters hanging on the wall outside. That left the four of us. Me, Tru, Devon, and P.J. Tru took out his cell to get Devon's and P.J.'s numbers, making a little jab about how I'd sacrificed my phone to the sewer gods of Baltimore.

“It's cool. I had a supercrappy one until last year,” P.J. said,
waving his, dropping it, and then squatting down to pick it up with a goofy laugh.

“Well,” Tru said, “if you need to get in touch with Frannie, you can always just call me. I'll be happy to find her and put her on the line, or convey any important messages you may have for her, plans you might want to make. Didn't you say something about repeating a science class this summer, P.J.? Because Frannie is
fantastic
at science. Aren't you, Frannie?”

In my head I was screaming at Tru that he was absolutely unbelievable. In reality, all I did was mumble, “Sure,” and then slink away without looking at P.J., escaping before anybody could say anything else. I took a place next to Winston, pretending to care passionately about what movies were coming next month.

We stared at the posters in mutual silence, and behind me, I heard Tru addressing Devon and P.J. in a new hushed tone, saying something about the jump-off that I couldn't quite catch. Then Winston cleared his throat. He spoke a whole sentence for the first time since I met him.

“I don't know if you know anybody at school, since, uh, you're new. So if we have the same lunch next year, you can come find me and my friends. If you want to.”

For a moment I thought I had it wrong, that it wasn't P.J., it was Winston. But no, I peeked at him and could tell right away he wasn't flirting. He was just being kind.

My throat tightened, but I managed a very soft thank-you.

After that it was time to go. The boys and Sparrow piled into her sporty car on one side of the street. Tru and I got into my
parents' van, which was parked on the other side. Our car passed theirs in front of the theater as we headed off in opposite directions. Everyone had their windows down and we shared glances and small waves. Tru put on the Stones, spun the volume high on “You Can't Always Get What You Want.”

“This is a great song, but a terrible message,” Tru told me. “You should always try to get exactly what you want. That's what I do.”

I thought about what I wanted. Or maybe what I needed. This morning, I'd missed my chance to tell Tru what I was thinking. I reached over and turned the music down a little.

“You can't abandon me this summer. I know you're not going to hang out with me every night or whatever, but you can't just abandon me.”

He turned the sound down completely and went into his actor mode, pretending to be shocked and offended.

“Abandon you? Who's abandoning you?”

“You did! At least kind of. You needed help getting into Siren, and then you ignored me until Sparrow happened to call. You can't do that to me. I thought next year was going to be terrible. And now I already met somebody who goes to my school. Don't laugh at me, but that's really important. Today was important.”

“So you need me because I hook you up with cool girls and supercute boys who are in
an actual band
?” He pretended to pout, but he was loving this. “And here
I thought you enjoyed my company and scintillating conversation.”

“I do. When you're not being a dick.”

The light in front of us turned yellow and he slammed
unnecessarily hard on the brakes, jerking both of us forward and bringing an angry honk from behind.

“Frannie!” He looked at me like he was appalled. “That's very harsh. But, frankly, it comes as part of my whole package, so I don't really know what to tell you.”

I thought for a couple of seconds, then shrugged.

“Fine,” I said. “Be a dick. Just don't, you know, ditch me. Please.”

“I won't—I promise. I pinky swear, if that's what you're into. In fact, I was just going to ask you to run an errand with me tomorrow.”

I wondered if I should push him, try to make him be serious, but I decided that this was good enough. At least for now.

“Okay,” I said. “What's the errand?”

“It's a surprise. You'll just have to wait and see. And I promise, I won't abandon you. Who's going to get you into trouble if not me?”

The light turned green, and Tru hit the gas, spun the dial until the Stones were blasting again. He was grinning, and it was one of those times when he looked genuinely happy, not just pleased with himself. I was happy, too. More than that, for the first time in months, I started to think that maybe I was going to be okay. Not just today, but tomorrow, the next day, the next week. Maybe even when I entered the abyss that was the next school year, although I didn't really want to think about that yet. Couldn't even imagine it.

The only thing that mattered now, the only thing that was real, was this summer.