Guitar Notes (3 page)

Her phone buzzes. When she sees that it’s Annie calling, her heart pounds even harder.

“Where are you?” Annie asks. “I looked for you after school.”

“At the dentist, remember?” Lyla whispers. “I told you about it yesterday.”

“Are you done? Ask your dad to drop you off here.”

“I’m in the waiting room. I haven’t even gotten in yet.”

“Call me as soon as you’re done.”

“Okay,” Lyla agrees. She tucks the phone into her backpack and hangs it on a hook. Then she takes a deep breath and walks out.

“Great dress,” the photographer says. “Beautiful choice.” He asks her to stand on the cloth, and her dad brings the cello to her.

“This is going to be very easy,” the photographer says, stepping behind the tripod. “Piece of cake. All you have to do is smile.”

Lyla forces a smile.

Click
.

 SEPTEMBER 15. MONDAY.

Tripp isn’t sure where the practice rooms are located. As he turns down the hallway toward the orchestra room, Annie Win passes him, walking in the same direction. Black hair as straight and silky as a doll’s, falling all the way down to the middle of her back. Crisp yellow capris. Matching yellow sandals. Ankles that have never been dirty. He imagines that instead of showering, someone merely brushes her off with a feather duster.

She opens the orchestra room door, and when he follows her in, she looks back and scowls. “What are you doing here? You aren’t in orchestra or band.” Her eyebrows are high and pointed rather than rounded in the
middle. Her voice is like a rapid-fire laser gun.

“I’m installing new carpeting,” he says.

“You are so strange,” she says.

“Yeah. We’re putting it on the walls to dampen the sound. People over in art have been complaining about the violins.”

She makes a face, turns, and gets her violin case from the storage room. He notices the dead-end corridor in the back of the room and, guessing that the practice rooms are there, heads toward it.

She is at his heels. “Seriously. Why are you here?”

“I signed up for a practice room.”

“I saw your name on the sign-up list, but I thought it was a joke. It’s not fair for you to get a room,” she says. “Mr. Jacoby told me and Lyla that we can’t have rooms every day because somebody else wanted one, too. I thought it was an orchestra person.”

He stops and she bumps into him.

“Why isn’t it fair?” he asks.

“These rooms are for
music
.”

“Yeah, well, you band and orchestra people are not the only musicians in the world.”

She stalks into Room A with a slam of the door.

Perfect girls think they own the world.

Tripp walks into Room B and immediately wants to shout with joy. It’s small, but perfect. Blank white walls, a workstation with a computer, an electronic keyboard, and cool recording devices. Way better than he expected.
Go, Rockland School. And there’s the guitar—waiting just for him.

Eagerly, he closes the door, moves the bench to the side, lays the battered case on the floor, and opens it. The sight of the guitar cracks his face into a smile. He runs his fingertips along two big scratches on the front. Four of the six strings are gone; the two that remain are gummy and old. It’s beat-up, but it doesn’t matter. It’s a guitar.

Tripp pulls a packet of strings out of his backpack and gets to work. The minute the guitar is in his hands, his body is pumped with energy. One by one, he changes the strings, and then he uses the keyboard at the workstation to find the right pitch for each string, ignoring the muffled scales of Annie’s violin next door.

Sitting on the floor, he pulls his pick out of his back pocket and strums. He rests his right hand on the body of the guitar, feeling the vibration of the wood, listening to the sound, and something inside him comes alive. It’s as if there are six strings inside him, tuned to the same pitches, and when the guitar is strummed, it causes his strings to ring out, too.

Well, well, well
, he thinks,
the Termite will not be able to devour my entire soul
.

 SEPTEMBER 16. TUESDAY.

“Let’s get out of this oven.” Annie pulls Lyla out of the English room.

“It’s an even day,” Lyla says. “I get the practice room today.”

“Hey, when you see Patricia What’s-Her-Name, ask her to switch days with me, then we can both practice on even days.”

“What?”

“That lowly French horn player. She has Room A on even days. Ask her to take it on odd days, and I can take even days with you and we can have the same lunch schedule. We only have morning classes together. It’s not fair.”

The responsibilities of the week are scrolling through Lyla’s mind in a continual loop: the new cello piece for the Coles audition, the U.S. history project, French quiz, the club Annie wants them to join, reading for English, algebra problems, science, Saturday’s Metz Youth Orchestra rehearsal, the Kennedy Center audition … her heart beating faster and louder as the loop goes on.

It’s like the story she read last night for English class. “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe. One man murders another and stuffs the body under the floorboards. When the police come, the murderer believes they can hear the beating heart of the victim and so he confesses, but it’s really his own heart beating in his ears. No! Her life is not like that at all. She didn’t murder anyone. What does she have to feel guilty about? Why is she thinking of that story?

Stay calm
, she tells herself,
and your heart will slow down
.

“Ask her!” Annie repeats.

“Okay,” Lyla says.

Annie scowls as they thread their way through the crowd. “You sound like that’s a bad idea.”

“I said okay.”

“Your voice was weird.”

“It was not, Annie. Why wouldn’t I want us to have the same lunch schedule?”

Annie nods toward a girl down the hall. “Look at Marisse’s calf muscles. She probably exercises in her
sleep. She thinks every guy is always drooling over her. I hate her. She’s in all my afternoon classes.”

They reach the B hallway and say good-bye. Lyla continues past the media center by herself.
Breathe in
.
Breathe out
.

A trio of girls pass by and say hi. Lyla smiles and waves, catching a glimpse of herself in the glass of the trophy case: She is Lyla Marks. Everyone loves her. She is on her way to the music room to practice during lunch because that’s what she does. She is a cellist. This defines her, separates her from others. She is the first-chair cellist.

Breathe in
, she tells herself.
Breathe out
.

After she takes her cello into Practice Room B and closes the door, she gets it out of the case, lays it on the floor, and stares at it for several minutes. She glances up at the ceiling, checking for hidden cameras that she knows are not there. Lately, she’s been feeling as if she’s being watched, even when she knows she’s not.

Breathe in
, she tells herself.
Breathe out
.

Slowly, her heartbeat regulates, the tightness in her chest loosens.

The little room helps. The fact that no one is watching her.

Trash on the music stand catches her eye. The odd-day guy must have left it. Tripp Broody, the guy who criticized her and Annie for being “chipper.” She glances up to check that the rules are still posted there from last year.
NUMBER THREE: DISPOSE OF ALL TRASH IN HALLWAY TRASH
CAN
. It makes her mad when people don’t follow the basic rules.

She breathes and looks at the guitar case. It’s scuffed, one lock unhinged, the handle attached with duct tape—the odd guy’s domain. Even the case looks like him. In contrast, her cello is unblemished and polished, lying on its side on the floor, like a whale that has washed up on the shore. She should pick it up, resuscitate it with her bow. Instead, she calls up her MP3 files of cello music on the computer and plays them so anyone who passes by the room will think she’s practicing. After she is finished eating her lunch, she will practice, she tells herself. She eats her lunch in tiny, tiny bites.

 SEPTEMBER 17. WEDNESDAY.

An odd day, the only kind of day that counts. Tripp barely hangs on to consciousness through Intro to Tech and Spanish, but then he walks through the orchestra room and opens the door of Practice Room B. It’s the energy of the room he loves, this quiet peace that is just waiting to be filled with sound.

Hello, little room.

The room likes him. He can tell. He sets his lunch on the workstation and opens the guitar case. A piece of white paper, folded neatly, is tucked between the strings. An unexpected development.

Lyla Marks has left him a note. He flips the paper over and writes his reply.

He folds it and leaves it on the music stand.

 SEPTEMBER 18. THURSDAY.

Lyla sees the note right away, and as she reads it, her face grows hot.

She was right, and he knows it. She hates people who try to make other people feel stupid just because they choose to follow basic rules of politeness.