Our Song (7 page)

Click.

The dusky room suddenly filled with fluorescent light.

“Hmmm,” Mrs. Teagle murmured on the other side of the door. She paused for a long,
long
moment, then whispered, “Ears playing tricks on me.”

Click
went the light back off.

Swoosh
went the door—closed again.

Jacob took a quick step out of the corner and whirled to stare at me.

“Did we seriously just get away with that?” he whispered.

Equally dumbfounded, I grinned and nodded.

At least, I tried to nod. But I found that I couldn't. A sudden pain on the back of my head made me yelp.

“My hair!” I whispered. “It's stuck!”

I'd been so wedged into the corner that a hank of my hair had clearly snaked between the open door and its frame. When Mrs. Teagle had closed it, she'd inadvertently trapped me.

Jacob held a finger in the air.
Wait a minute.

Stupidly, I tried to nod again, then gritted my teeth as my hair got another painful yank. Of course, Jacob was right. Only once Mrs. Teagle had left the hallway could we open the door and release me.

We waited a long beat during which even breathing seemed to pull at my scalp.

Finally Jacob reached for the knob.

But before he could turn it, Mrs. Teagle's voice rang out from the hallway.

“What is this?”

I felt a tug on my hair. Clearly, Mrs. Teagle had spotted it tufting through the door frame.

The door swooped open, releasing me and banging into me all at once.

“Ow!” I groaned as light flooded the room once again.

“
What
is going on in here?”

Mrs. Teagle's throaty voice still reminded me of a mama robin's. But now she was a bird in a rage, flappy and cawing.

Jacob's face went pale, and red splotches burst out on his neck.

That's when I realized just how bad this looked. It looked bad enough to get us both kicked out of Camden. I couldn't let that happen to Jacob. He was so excited to study with Nanny, and he'd only gotten one day with her.

“Mrs. Teagle, wait!” I cried, jumping out from behind the door. “This isn't Jacob's fault.”

“I don't see how that's possible, young lady,” Mrs. Teagle said. “He's trespassing as much as you are.”

“But Jacob is only here for me!” I said, desperately. To prove it, I thrust my oozy hand toward Mrs. Teagle's face. “I got burned today in blacksmithing class. I didn't want anyone to know, so I just thought I'd sneak in here and help myself to some bandages and stuff.”

“Well, that's the silliest thing I ever heard!” Mrs. Teagle sputtered.

“Not if you know how badly Nell wants to learn blacksmithing,” Jacob piped up. “She doesn't want her grandma or Coach to make her quit just because she made a mistake.”

I shot him a grateful glance, but Mrs. Teagle was clearly less moved than I was by Jacob's little speech.

“Burning yourself is a forgivable mistake,” she said. She pointed dramatically at the open door. “
That
is not.”

“I promise, Mrs. Teagle,” I said. “I just wanted a little Neosporin.”

Mrs. Teagle squinted at me and then at Jacob. As she looked back at me, I saw something shift and soften in her eyes.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, I see.”

Jacob and I glanced at each other.
What
did she see?

Mrs. Teagle actually smiled a little bit as she closed the door. Then she motioned for me to sit on the infirmary's examining table while she bustled around, gathering medical supplies from drawers and cabinets. While Jacob hovered nervously by the wall, Mrs. Teagle grabbed my arm and started swabbing at my burn with disinfectant.

“Ooofffff!” I grunted in pain. Strangely, this seemed to make Mrs. Teagle even more cheery.

“You know, I was a nurse before I had my children,” she chirped. “Even though they're all grown now, I still remember all my training.”

She squirted some ointment onto my burn, slapped on some gauze, and wrapped my hand in medical tape. Then, after piling more bandages and ointment packets into my arms, Mrs. Teagle shooed me and Jacob out of the infirmary like a farmwife herding her backyard chickens.

“Thanks so much, Mrs. Teagle,” I said. “I promise, nothing like this will ever happen again.”

“Absolutely,” Jacob agreed.

“Oh, I know that, sweethearts,” Mrs. Teagle said with a smile. “But we're not finished yet. Come with me.”

Jacob and I exchanged another glance as Mrs. Teagle led us a few steps down the hallway and into the kitchen. A trio of staffers in damp white aprons were scrubbing at countertops and putting tools away with a loud clatter. Mrs. Teagle had so quickly reverted to her sweet, mama-bird self that for a delusional instant, I thought she was going to give us milk and cookies.

“I reckon you'll need about three days for that burn to heal enough,” Mrs. Teagle said, crossing her arms over her bosom and grinning at us. “Then you can both start.”

“Start . . . what?” Jacob asked.

Mrs. Teagle pointed at the industrial-size sink, which was brimming with dirty pots and pans. Next to it was a short stack of soiled dinner plates. It was only short because tray after tray of the plates had already been sent through a loudly churning dishwasher. One of the workers was stacking the hot plates onto a cart, her face pink and sweaty from the steam.

“Betty,” Mrs. Teagle called, “I got you some little elves to help. They'll do the after-dinner shift starting Thursday, all right? That'll free you up to make those scones you've been nagging me about. They'll be here for three days.”

As Ms. Betty grinned and gave us all a thumbs-up, Mrs. Teagle turned to me and Jacob.

“Me, I like a classic old biscuit, but Betty watched too much Food Network over the winter, and she's gotten all fancy on us,” she said. Then, without breaking her sweet smile, she added,
“I trust you'll take this punishment over telling your Nanny or Coach what
really
happened?”

“Yes, ma'am,” I said. “But Mrs. Teagle, you really shouldn't punish Jacob, too. This is all my fault.”

“No, no,” Jacob jumped in to say. “I did pop the lock. I deserve this just as much.”

I raised my eyebrows at Jacob. Why wouldn't he let me thank him—and apologize to him—by taking the fall by myself?

“And now, won't you join me for the sing-along?” Mrs. Teagle said.

It wasn't a question. We followed her out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the great hall, a lofted room whose exposed beams and slanting ceiling bounced notes around better than any recording studio.

Before I knew it, Mrs. Teagle had thrust a weathered binder full of sheet music into my hands and ushered me into the soprano section. I sat down next to the girl I'd seen the day before, the one who was taking the canning class. She smiled at me and showed me what page to turn to in the binder. As she did, I couldn't help but notice a bandage on her inner arm, a few inches above her wrist.

“Kitchen burn?” I whispered, pointing to her swatch of gauze. Then I held up my hand. “Mine's from blacksmithing.”

“Awesome,” the girl said with a grin. “It's a badge of honor, right?”

Not hardly,
I thought, feeling a fresh wave of guilt wash over me. I craned my neck, searching for Jacob among the tenors.

I wanted to lock eyes with him so I could telegraph how sorry I was.

Or maybe I just wanted to get one more glimpse of his eyes' deep, dark blue.

But Jacob was hidden in the back of the tenor section, and I couldn't see him. My hand had also started to throb again, and I suddenly felt limp with fatigue.

The path of least resistance?

Singing.

The song was “Darling Clementine,” which of course I knew. I slipped into the soprano harmony without even thinking about it.

“Ruby lips above the water,

Blowing bubbles, soft and fine,

But, alas, I was no swimmer,

So I lost my Clementine.”

The usual doom and gloom of the song didn't bother me that much this time. The familiarity of the tune was even a little comforting, like the same twisty stretch I did every morning of my life, no matter what bed I was sleeping in.

That, of course, was karma's cue to make me
un
comfortable.

“All right, folks,” announced the song leader, who peered at us through glasses perched at the end of his nose. “Let's mix it up a little. You're not a
real
harmonizer unless you can do it next
to someone singing a different part. So go on. I want tenors with altos, sopranos with basses, altos with sopranos, whatever crazy combo you can come up with.”

Everybody laughed and murmured as they began to shuffle around the room.

I bit my lip and looked around. Over in the altos, I spotted both Nanny and Annabelle. But something made me skirt them and head over to guys' side of the room.

Specifically, to the tenors.

The chair next to Jacob was empty, and I slipped into it. We barely had time to glance at each other before the leader called out, “Page forty-six!” and blew into a little pitch pipe to give us our starting notes.

And then we were singing.

Everybody in the room sang, of course, but it felt to me like just the two of us—me and Jacob.

His voice, like mine, wasn't the strongest. He was on the low end of tenor, and sometimes he had to strain for the high notes. My voice was a little reedy and scratchy.

But that didn't matter. It also didn't matter that I was too shy to meet his eyes, and that he was white-knuckling the songbook. We still hit just the right notes, our voices swirling together as easily as sugar and soft butter on their way to becoming cake.

Even I was a little excited by this. Perfect harmonizing like that doesn't usually happen on the first try, much less in the midst of dozens of other voices.

When we hit the last stanza, I snuck a glance Jacob's way.

He seemed to feel my gaze and looked at me. Then he lifted one corner of his mouth in a grudging smile.

I didn't have to say sorry or thank you. I didn't have to say anything at all. The music said those things for me, and Jacob forgave me.

Chapter
Seven

B
y Thursday, my burn had
gone from a raw, red blister to a peeling pink welt that was tender, but not unbearable.

Maybe this was because I had other aches and pains to contend with. Arm, back, and neck muscles that I'd never known I had were sore. Several strands of my hair had been singed into wiry crisps before Coach told me to lay off the hair products. And the soles of my feet were tired after standing at the anvil for hours at a time.

At least, unlike my classmate Anthony, I still had my eyebrows. I'd also developed a tiny bit of blacksmith pride. I looked like a real smith (well, a miniature version of one) in knee-length cargo shorts, a pair of old, red Doc Martens, and a ribbed tank top fitted enough to stay clear of fire or swinging hammers.

I'd learned a ton of blacksmithing basics. I now knew the difference between a ball-peen hammer and a cross-peen one. I'd learned to get a fire to that magical temperature that wouldn't leave my iron cold and stiff, but wouldn't turn it into a molten puddle, either.

Most of all, I'd started hammering out some iron knickknacks.

Ugly, misshapen, unusable knickknacks, but hey, it was a start.

A lot of others at the vegetarian table were in the same place as me—that giddy, messy, just-starting-to-get-something phase. At least, that was what I gathered when I slumped into the dining hall on Thursday night.

Marnie and Isabelle, two college girls who were taking quilting together, showed us the needle injuries on their fingertips.

“I swear, I lost a pint of blood!” Isabelle said proudly.

Ronnie, who was working in Camden's organic garden and chicken coop, was telling Jacob, “I never knew compost could be so
fascinating
!”

As he nodded at Ronnie, Jacob put his fist beneath his chin so that his knuckles rested right beneath his nostrils. It was a polite but clear (to me, anyway) odor-blocking move.

I was sitting next to Annabelle and whispered to her, “Poor Jacob. Does Ronnie have no idea that compost might be fascinating but it's also
stinky
?”

“Oh, I'm no one to talk,” Annabelle said, pushing a corkscrew out of her tired eyes. Her fingers were wrinkly after a day
smushing around wet clay. A streak of the stuff was crusted near her hairline. “I probably smell like a root cellar.”

I gave her a sniff.

“A little,” I admitted. “But that's not a bad smell. I mean, who doesn't like a sweet potato? Speaking of which . . .”

Across the table, I made eye contact with Jacob, then smiled and motioned to the bowl of mashed potatoes near his plate.