My Only (5 page)

It was probably some girl wanting to talk to Aaron, so I sat at the table debating whether to even answer the door. The knocking persisted, fol owed by a sounding of the doorbel which might wake Dad up if it rang again. He was usual y a heavy sleeper, but there was something about the doorbel that must have been similar to his alarm clock. He’d never wake on the first ring, it always took another time before he’d grumble and get up.

Knowing that my dad already didn’t get enough sleep, I hurried to the door, ready to tel whoever it was that my brother wasn’t home. But when the door swung open, Olivia Cartwright was standing in front of me.

“I thought maybe you weren’t home, even though your lights are on.” Olivia didn’t wait to be invited in. She just strol ed on in, her light floral scent nearly smacking me in the face as she breezed by me.

“Um,” I said intel igently. “Hi?”

When she turned around to face me, her hair swung around, creating the same curtain effect as when I watched her dance in her room. “What’s up?”

“Um, nothing.” My facial muscles tighten as my mind raced as to why she was here. “Aaron’s not here.”

“Ooookay.” Her brow creased and she tilted her head to the side. “Is he supposed to be?” I was lost. I was drowning. I felt stupid. She wasn’t here to see Aaron, but why was she here? I figured I was supposed to know, but I couldn’t recal anything from our conversation. She must’ve seen the deer-in-headlights look I was giving her because she said, “You’re tutoring me tonight, remember?”

“Oh.” Crap. Tutoring. I didn’t remember, but I didn’t want to come out and say it. Taking her up the stairs, once we were in my room, I had no idea why I’d brought her up here. I was paralyzed.

I was suddenly hyperaware of my living space. Al of the things in my room had been placed there by me because I liked them, but now, as she swept her eyes around the room, taking it al in, I didn’t know how I felt about the most simple of things. How did I
really
feel about my poster of
Dune
? Did I like the movie enough to advertise it to anyone setting foot in here? I’d never thought about it before. No one but my family or already-established friends had ever come in here. Now Olivia was in here—an outsider whose opinion mattered to me for reasons I didn’t understand.

What about how my bed was so neatly made? What would a girl who danced in front of an open window as if no one in the world was watching, think about the crisp hospital corners of my covers? Was it dorky to keep a clean room? Was there something inherently cool about the mess of Aaron’s?

On the top of my dresser were stacks of
Magic: The Gathering
cards. Next to them was the basebal bank my grandparents had given me when I was four. They gave an identical one to Aaron. Why did I stil have that babyish thing lying around? I looked back over to my bed—to the table next to it and the Little Boy Blue lamp.

I wished I had paid attention yesterday when she’d asked if she could come over. I could’ve made my room better—cooler, instead of it being a mismatched mash-up of childhood and nerd. I felt so stupid having her in my room. My heart was beating hard, sweat was starting to bead up on my forehead, and my mouth had gone dry. I just hoped that she would be kind and not ask about my Night Elf poster. I wasn’t ashamed that I played
World of Warcraft
, but I didn’t think I’d be able to speak if she asked me about the image of the girl with the big ears and barely covered chest.

“Oh my God, those are awesome!” I jumped a little and immediately looked to where she was pointing. “Obviously, you play the drums.” My voice was nothing but a whisper, “Yeah.”

She crossed the room to where al of them were lined up and she ran her hand over my tenor drums.

“You play
all
of these?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing came out, so I cleared my throat and tried again. “Yes.” She picked up a drumstick and quietly tapped it against my snare drum, then picked up a mal et and thumped one of the tenor drums. “Marching band?”

I nodded.

“Very cool. Drums are pretty badass.”

She thought marching band was cool? She thought being in the drumline was badass? I swal owed hard as she turned back around. Replacing the mal et, she slapped her right hand on the conga next, and then picked up my bongos. “Can I?” I nodded then bit my lip as she sat down on my bed. She folded her legs on top of it and then placed the drums on her thighs. Olivia tapped out an experimental beat. It was quiet at first, but then it grew louder as she became more confident. It was a good rhythm, and I couldn’t help but nod my head to it.

Suddenly, I was moving over to my drums and tapped her beat on my conga. The fact that Dad was trying to sleep no longer even registered in my conscious mind. I glanced over to her. She was so pretty sitting there, smiling at me like it was Christmas morning and she’d gotten exactly what she’d wanted.

The beat was pretty primal and I imagined how Olivia would dance to it.

It would be sexy, for sure. Hips rocking, arms snaking in the air, torso twisting, hair whipping around her face, chest thrust out. She would be beautiful—just like always.

That aura of freedom seemed so natural. I barely knew her, but I knew she was a free spirit—someone utterly unlike me. I liked routine. I didn’t
hate
new experiences, but I didn’t seek them out either.

She was more like Aaron, free and happy.

A clicking noise brought my focus back to the here and now. Olivia had stopped drumming. Apparently I had as wel . She was snapping the fingers of one hand while waving the others in front of my face.

“Damn, you real y get lost in the music, don’t you?”

Not wanting her to know that I’d real y been lost in thoughts of being different, I answered, “Yeah, I guess.” An awkward silence settled over us until final y I remembered that she was here to get help with school. Stepping away from the conga, I crossed the room and sat down on my desk. She shifted on the bed to fol ow my movement. Her gaze was fixed on my hands as I picked up a mechanical pencil and twirled it like a drumstick.

The quiet was making me nervous again, so I rushed to fil it in with something else. “What’s up with history?” She rol ed her eyes and shrugged. “It’s stupid.”

I studied her. Maybe she wasn’t as smart as I’d hoped she was, but I didn’t want her to one of the girls who made blanket statements like that.

“How is history stupid? Do you mean it’s hard, or do you mean that you just don’t care about what happened in the world before you were born?” She tapped her fingers against the taut hide covering the bongos. No rhythm emerged, but I stil liked the sound. She turned her face up, lips quirking at one side as she thought. “Um, maybe both?” She looked at me again. When I caught her eyes, she seemed in a hurry to explain. “I mean, it’s not like I don’t care about what happened in the past, I just don’t see the point of focusing on it. Shouldn’t we pay more attention to the present so we can make the future what it should be?”

While I couldn’t deny that she had a point, I shook my head. “But how can you know what’s going on in the present without studying what got us here?”

“It doesn’t matter what got us here. We’re here. What are we going to do about it? We can’t change what people did, we can only deal with the aftermath.”

I set the pencil down and scratched the back of my neck. “A part of dealing with the aftermath is understanding the events that brought us to this point. You can’t truly deal with what is if you haven’t even looked at what was.” Olivia was quiet as she got up and replaced the bongos with the rest of my drums, and then wandered around my room. She looked at my books, then the things on top of my dresser. She touched the painted wooden beads of a sloppily made necklace. It cost a dol ar to make at a festival. Aaron and I used to love sitting down on the blankets and stringing the beads as the crowds passed by.

His were long gone—given to the landfil s when he realized stuff like that wasn’t cool. I didn’t know why I stil had a lot of things from my childhood. Things that were now useless. They had no function, and were real y just pieces of junk with some kind of sentiment attached to them.

I watched her as she moved closer to me, final y sitting down on the bed and facing my desk. She kicked off her shoes and sat cross-legged.

Her eyes were trained on the picture hanging low on the wal between my bed and desk. She tucked her hair behind her ears as I thought for a moment if she was going to ask who the woman in the picture was, but maybe she could just tel it was my mother. “I think it’s cool you get so passionate about things.”

My eyebrows rose and she reacted to the cue. When she smiled, I noticed the crinkling of the skin around her eyes—another smal thing that made her seem older than what I knew her to be. She must’ve been able to tel that I needed her to explain what ‘things’ she was talking about because she added, “You know, defending history and playing the drums.”

I wasn’t passionate about anything other than drumming, and even that seemed like a lukewarm fascination. Passion was something pure and indescribable—something one could see without being told. Olivia dancing was passion. Aaron on the footbal field was passion. “I can’t make you like history, but I can help you study it.”

“Good.” She licked her lips, flipped her hair over her shoulder, and then said, “So, tel me the secrets.” I scanned my room as I thought back to her entering. She’d had nothing with her. “You didn’t bring your notes.” She shook her head even though it wasn’t a question. “Wel , I think the best way to see what’s going on is to review your notebook.”

“I don’t take good notes.” That was usual y the problem with people who got poor grades in history. I tried to lighten my expression in an attempt to let her know that I understood, but it might have come out like a grimace. “I get distracted,” she said. “At my old school I sat by the window and never listened to what my teacher was saying.”

“Do you sit by the window here?” She shook her head. “Then maybe it’l be different.”

“I don’t think so,” Olivia said, and laughed. “I’m real y good a math and science, but that’s figuring things out, you know? Like solving something chal enging. history and English are just . . .”

“It’s a different kind of learning, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be chal enging.” She was looking right at me, paying attention to everything I said. It was a bit nerve-wracking, but I went on. “Actual y, it’s more chal enging considering you’re not intrinsical y good at it.” Again, she laughed. I waited for explanation. God, she was pretty. I couldn’t think about it, or I’d never be able to continue our conversation. She stood up, crossed the room again, and used two fingers to lift up a few slats in the blinds. Her hair came to her mid-back. I wondered if she’d always worn it long. Maybe that was a girly thing to wonder about. My brother said that I must’ve inherited my mother’s girly gene when she died.

“You sound like the counselor at my last school.”

Knowing an opportunity to find out more information when I heard one, I jumped on it. “Where was your last school?” Olivia turned and tapped her finger on my snare. “A little boarding school in Colorado.” That surprised me. The Cartwrights weren’t rich, and boarding schools seemed like they were for the wealthy. “Real y?”

“Yeah,” she said with a sigh. “I wasn’t there for long.”

“What was it like?”

She rol ed her eyes. “Stuffy. It had horses and a lake.”

I’d never been to boarding school, but the fact that those two things were what she told me about struck me as odd. “You don’t like horses and lakes?”

“I like horses, but the school was like . . .” She paused for a long moment and then shrugged. “It was like a therapeutic school. They used the horses to help troubled kids bond with something or whatever.”

I cocked my head to the side. She wasn’t looking at me now. Olivia tucked her hair behind her ears and busied herself with drumsticks and mal ets.

A therapeutic boarding school. Troubled kids. She didn’t seem like a troubled kid who needed therapy. She seemed wel -adjusted and happy.

Wel , at the moment, she looked lost in thought. Not happy, but not overly sad either.

It struck me that I knew so very little about her.

“So what about rock’ n’ rol , man?”

Her voice was brighter than just moments before and the strange juxtaposition confused me for a second. Then my focus narrowed back onto her words, but I was stil confused. “Huh?”

“You have al these drums for marching band, right? So what about rock’ n’ rol ? Do you have a set for rocking out?” I liked the way she spoke. There was no struggle for words. There was no awkward cadence or hesitation. She just spoke.

“My kit’s in the garage,” I said.

She tapped a drumstick against my Dune poster. “So you
do
play some rock?”

“Of course.” I was defensive. She had no way of knowing that I played, so the question wasn’t out of line, but the tone bothered me. “I’m not just some guy that’s good at history and marching band.”

She turned, craning her head in my direction, causing her hair to whip around. It made a ‘ppppfftt’ sound as it hit the poster on the wal . At first her expression was neutral, but then, slowly, a mirthful expression seemed to blossom. Lips upturned, eyes twinkling, she said, “You have fire in you.” With a nod, she added, “I like it.”

I had to look away from her not knowing what she meant. It took a moment, but I final y cleared my throat, and attempted to shift the topic back to tutoring. “I real y need to look at your notes in order to help you with history.” I was stil looking at my carpet when I heard her set the sticks down on my snare. There was a quiet thud on my bed, accompanied by the squeaks of the springs. Glancing up, she was lying on her stomach, her feet up in the air, crossed at the ankle, her head resting on its side on top of her folded arms. “Okay.”

I motioned toward the window. “Do you want to go and get them?”

She sat up, and looked me in the eyes. “Can I ask you something?”

I nodded.

“What’s the point of studying history? I don’t get it.”