Guitar Notes (9 page)

The note feels alive in his hands, like a bird with a beating heart. He reads it again, hardly daring to breathe, lingering on the words
sorry
and
dad
. He didn’t even know that he needed to hear these words, but somehow Lyla Marks knew.

He pulls out the guitar. Tomorrow, Lyla will be right here with this guitar in her hands, and instead of practicing scales, she will just play, and maybe that will make her happy. The idea of this makes a song leap out of him: an odd melody bouncing out. He repeats the parts he likes and experiments with the parts that don’t work. He plays
it over and over, shaping it each time. The “Mr. Odd” song.

Deep into it, there’s a thump on the wall and Annie Win yells: “Too loud!”

He laughs and keeps playing. After a while, the bell rings, announcing the end of lunch. Reluctantly, Tripp stops. He wants to leave a note, but he doesn’t have any paper and he doesn’t want to write anything on the note she left for him.

He takes a pen out of his back pocket. On the curve of the guitar, the part that she will see when she is holding it, he tries writing, but the ink smears off. Using his pen like an engraving tool, he scratches two words into the lacquer:
Just play
.

On the way out, his phone buzzes.

Oh joy.

 OCTOBER 14. TUESDAY.

No note tucked between the strings when Lyla opens the guitar case. But when she sets it on her lap, she sees the message scratched into the side—
Just play—
and it lights her up.

She takes a deep breath. She lets her fingers wander around randomly plucking out different combinations of notes until, by accident, she finds something she likes. She repeats it. She plays with it until she has a phrase, the beginning of a melody, and then another phrase and another. She closes her eyes and tries to let the music come through her, when the door opens.

Annie walks in, her violin case in hand, and stares. “What are you doing?”

Lyla’s heart pounds. “It’s an even day. Why are you here?”

“I’m sneaking in so we can practice our duet.”

“That’s against the rules.”

“Jacoby won’t know. He took the beginning orchestra on that field trip. What are you doing?”

Lyla looks down at the guitar in her hands and tries to shrug it off. “It was here and so I just picked it up.” She puts it back in the case. “I don’t think being here is a good idea, Annie. Remember last year when those two girls broke the rule?”

“They were smoking! We’d just be playing music.”

“Rules are rules. Really. I think you should go.” Lyla lowers her voice. “Patricia Kent will tell on us. Seriously. And aren’t you doing that lunchtime tutoring thing?”

“Just once a week.” Annie frowns. “Come on, we need to practice. You didn’t want to sleep over on Friday. You were crabby on Saturday. You never want to practice.”

“I was sick! We have three whole weeks ’til the talent show audition, Annie.”

“You sound like you’re doing me this huge favor by letting me play with you.”

“That is not fair. That’s not what I sound like. Two people are not allowed in practice rooms. I don’t like breaking rules. That’s all.”

“Fine, I’m leaving.” Annie storms out, slamming the door.

Heart pounding, Lyla sits. Why does every interaction with Annie leave her feeling guilty? Is it wrong for her to want some time to herself?

She checks outside to make sure Annie is gone, then she gets the guitar out again. It takes a while for the room to feel like hers again, but slowly she begins to calm down and feel the connection to the music. Once she finds it, she doesn’t want any intrusions. She hears a melody, and a line of lyrics pops into her head.
“All I want is a little room to play …”
she sings. Not bad. She keeps at it until the period ends, too quickly. As she puts away the guitar and walks down the hall, her song keeps playing inside her head.
Now I’ve got myself a little room to play.…

Annie appears around a corner, and Lyla runs over and hugs her. “Don’t be grumpy, Annie!”

Annie pulls away and keeps walking.

“Come on, Annie, we’ve got the talent show duet down—”

“I don’t think you get it, Lyla.” Annie stops, her eyes hot and teary. “It’s easy for you to say, oh, we don’t need to practice. You made the Kennedy Center audition. I didn’t.” She walks on.

“I’m sorry, Annie. On Friday, I’ll come over and we will practice our duet and we will NAIL it.” She grabs Annie’s arm and smiles. “What do you want to wear for the audition?”

Annie smiles reluctantly. “Something new.”

“We can go shopping together,” Lyla says.

“Okay. But not today. We have Sweet Tooth and then we need to study for the physics unit quiz.”

Lyla twirls. “The answer to every question is Force equals Mass times Acceleration. I love science.”

“I can’t believe you like Mr. Sanders. He has hairy arms.”

Lyla laughs.

Annie’s eyes widen. “Lyla, he’s looking at you,” she whispers.

Lyla looks around.

“Don’t look,” Annie whispers. “Tripp Broody.”

Lyla catches a glimpse of Tripp before Annie turns her away. She wants to tell him that she wrote a song, that she
played
. “He’s not looking at me, Annie. He’s walking down the hall.”

“He saw you twirl. What class did you say you have with him?”

Lyla tries to make her voice sound casual. “I don’t have a class with him.”

“Yesterday, he was playing way too loud.”

Lyla laughs.

Annie pushes her. “Why didn’t you say hi just now? Has he left you any more notes?”

“Leave me alone, Annie.”

“I’m glad you didn’t. He’s too weird. I saw his name on the schedule for peer tutoring. Benjamin Fick is tutoring him. I think he might be brain damaged.”

“Annie!”

“
Pardon moi
for telling the truth.” She waves and disappears into the stairwell to go to her next class.

He is not brain damaged, Lyla wants to say. He is … just a bit odd. In a really interesting way.

 OCTOBER 15. WEDNESDAY.

Tripp is in the practice room, convinced that the peer-tutor police will burst onto the scene at any moment with Benjamin Fick and seize him. But how could he possibly concentrate on Newton’s laws or graphing coordinates or calculating the standard deviation from the norm with the little room waiting for him?

When he opens the guitar case, he is disappointed to find no note tucked between the strings. But Ms. Even has left a piece of paper under the guitar: notes for a song.

Inspired, he writes her a message.

Tripp picks up the guitar. Something good is happening. He can feel it in the guitar. He can feel it in the little room. Strands of thought twine themselves together into a decision in his mind. He’ll stop peregrinating and actually write words for a whole song of his own. If she can do it, he can do it. The “Mr. Odd” song. He writes the title in the center of the page and brainstorms everything he can think of that has to do with it.

Then he plays the melody that has been bouncing around in his brain lately and under his breath. He pulls out the parts from his brainstorm that he likes and he experiments.