The One Thing (19 page)

“I’m
fine
, Dad,” I yelled, totally annoyed now. Groping for purchase of my second casualty of the day, my hands bumped against familiar glassy plastic. An indefinable,
complex emotion socked me in the gut.

My old keyboard.

I sat down hard on the floor, resting a palm on the instrument’s cellar-cooled plastic, where stickers of my favorite bands had been slapped every which way. Though it didn’t look
the part, the keyboard had been the top of its class and I’d practiced it thusly, taking full advantage of all of its features. I’d thrust an arm into Mr. Hawthorne’s pieces,
fishing around in the melody and then jerking out what had interested me, marrying it with the various synthesized effects that the keyboard offered.

I ran a finger along the stickers, seeing them vividly in my mind. Phantom Keys. The Dead Eddies. Drift District. Operation Scarce. A couple of Dad’s bands, too: Led Zeppelin, the Eagles.
Feeling guilty for some reason, I pressed down on a key, which protested momentarily before it gave way with a
tunk
.

I didn’t know why I’d expected a note to sing out in the room. Surely the keyboard was unplugged. I ran an index finger down the flats and sharps until I found middle C. The pads of
my fingers paused over the keys for only a moment, and then I played the song I’d tapped out earlier to Clarissa’s speech, my fingers reacting automatically to the twisty, knotty little
melody that had run through my head while we’d been on the phone.

“Maggie?” Dad’s concern carried down the stairs.

I touched the stickers one last time, staggered to my feet, and then took off for the laundry room, leaving the keyboard exactly where it had fallen.

W
ith Ben’s sudden disappearance from my life, loneliness crept in. Which was oddly reminiscent of my first couple months without my eyesight.
Technically, I
had
lost my sight again—the small sliver I’d recovered, at least. I felt abandoned in some strange way, like life had decided I wasn’t worth the effort,
and in all honesty, I sort of agreed. What’s worse, my parents were hardly ever home. Dad was working on a big case that kept him in the city until late at night, and Mom, in addition to her
regular job, started coaching an evening soccer clinic, which meant that she spent even less time at home. I stayed up late, my bedroom door cracked open, listening for her to return.

Wondering whether she would.

Then on Wednesday afternoon, Clarissa called. At the time, I was in the kitchen with Gramps, trying to locate a slice of leftover pizza. Gramps was giving me the complete lowdown on his prostate
issues, and I was thinking that if I had three wishes, two of them would be for him to stop talking about his prostate and the other one would be for more wishes, and then my phone rang. Plucking
it out of my back pocket, I said hello, and by means of a greeting, Clarissa said, “You’re going to freak because I just found something out about the Big Secret and it’s really
reliable and there’s only one other person out there who knows about it and cripes, Maggie,
cripes
!”

“Cripes!” I yelled, even though I’d never yelled that particular word once in my life. But in my defense, it was the only thing that seemed to fit.

“I have reason to believe there’s a concert
tonight
,” Clarissa said in a rush. “Right now I’m smack in the middle of cake-decorating class—worst
timing ever—so I’m going to hang up and call Dad and ask him to pick me up early and bring me to your house because we have to figure out the Big Secret now. Maggie, we have to figure
it out now now now.” And then she hung up.

Clarissa didn’t knock or anything when she arrived. She just burst through the front door, hollering my name. “Two things,” she said as we hustled down the hallway to my room.
“First off, tell me you’ve downloaded-and-or-made-accessible the video from the last Loose Cannons concert. Please tell me you’ve done this. Please. Time is of the essence here.
Time is tick-tick-ticking.”

“Yes,” I said as we stepped in my room. “I mean, I keep it up on my computer, so yes.”

“Oh thank God,” she breathed. “So the other thing is that if we, by some great miracle, figure out the Big Secret today, we’ll need a ride. To the concert. My dad will be
busy sawing out someone’s organs, so we are rideless unless you can get us a ride.”

“My grandpa can take us.”

“Perfect. Yes. That’s absolutely perfect.” All quiet and fast, she whispered, “Okay so here’s the deal: Remember that kid I told you about? Jase? My friend who
knows Mason? Well, I guess Mason butt-dialed Jase today during a rehearsal, and Jase overheard some awfully interesting things.”

I swallowed. Butt-dialed by Mason Milton.

I would not think about Mason’s butt.

I would not.

I would
not
.

Yet, because I was weak and pathetic and generally irresponsible, there it was: the image of Mason’s butt. Followed by another image of Mason’s butt. Followed by another image of
Mason’s butt. And so on and so forth.

I was completely out of control. I needed a padded cell or a straightjacket or some sort of medication that limited the amount of sheer idiocy that my mind produced.

Clarissa was still talking: “So at first the band is just playing, and then after a couple songs, Carlos starts complaining about how “singing the clue is lame” and about how
“everyone is going to figure it out” and about how “tonight they have to be more careful.” She grabbed me by both shoulders and shook me. “You understand what this
means, right? They sneak their clues into their songs. It’s genius.”

Three hours later we were side by side on my desk chair, squashed up against each other, listening to last week’s concert for the third time in a row. We had yet to hear any sort of clue.
Clarissa, too wound up to concentrate any longer, sat next to me and lorded over her wristwatch, yelping about our elapsed time.

“We’re screwed,” I basically whined, my leg spastically bouncing up and down to the music.

She bolted out of the chair. “We must be missing it somehow. Even Cannon Dude said ‘the secret lies with the singer.’”

I massaged my temples. “Look—I know every Loose Cannons song in existence. Mason’s lyrics are Mason’s lyrics are Mason’s lyrics, and none of them were altered
during this concert. And anyway, Cannon Dude was just jerking everyone around when he said ‘the secret lies with the singer.’ He’s a jackass.”

“Okay, so he’s a smidge over the top,” Clarissa admitted, “but probably only because he’s really passionate about the band.” I exhaled, flapping my lips
loudly, and she spoke over me. “No. For real. I’ve been thinking: Cannon Dude totally reminds me of this character in
Star-crossed Bermuda
. This superintense famous-actor guy
who—”

“
Star-crossed Bermuda
?”

“A book I read,” she said dismissively. “Anyway, he’s exactly like this famous actor guy, who initially comes off all conceited and arrogant. The other characters in the
book basically hate him. Especially his costar, Bianca, who—”

“Does this have a point?”

“It offends me that you have to ask,” Clarissa said. She did not sound offended. “Anyway, so Bianca is forced to do this kissing scene with him. They’re on the seashore,
his lips are on hers, and she’s trying to remember how much she hates him but her body is betraying her. She’s realizing how sweet and tender his kisses are—”

“Hold up. Are you reading
beach trash
?”

“It’s quality romance.” Clarissa sniffed. “Anyway, my point here is that right after that scene, you find out that the guy is just misunderstood. Underneath it all,
he’s this passionate, intense performer who rose from the trenches by working as an understudy to—”

I slapped the desk with both hands. “That’s it!” I screamed. The understudy. The guy hovering in the background, waiting for his chance to take the stage. The backup guy.

Mason wasn’t the only person who sang. He had a backup singer: Gavin.

It took us only a couple minutes to find it: Gavin’s splitting off from the lyrics, right in the middle of the very first song. So quiet and yet so unbelievably loud, he sang,
“sunset on the twentieth in the park of Alexander” while Mason sang “all of the things I swear I still remember.”

And I just froze, right there, leaning toward my computer with both palms flat on my desk, because I needed my entire body to process my shock. Finally I whispered, “We have a half hour to
get to Alexander Park.”

The last time I actually saw Alexander Park was a couple years ago. It was fall, the air was crisp, and the place was lit up with leaves dying in brilliant bursts of red and yellow. Mom and I
had been moping around the house all morning, both of us suffering from our own respective losses. I’d just lost a soccer game, and Mom’s star goalie had unexpectedly dropped out of
school. Dad had shooed us out of the house after lunch, preaching the benefits of fresh air and sunshine.

So for the better part of the afternoon, Mom and I strolled barefoot across the park’s wide lawns, our long curls joining as one in the wind. Then we lounged in the open-air pavilion,
watching a skinny towheaded girl celebrate her seventh birthday. By the time we left, we were laughing our heads off and poking fun at each other, our troubles insignificant. I’d always
called the place Frito Park in honor of the nearby Frito-Lay factory that blanketed the park’s entire five acres and three city blocks in a near-constant burnt smell. And now charcoal was all
I smelled as Clarissa and I piled out of Gramps’s truck.

Currently, I was incognito. Which was to say that I’d hijacked my dad’s biggest, longest, grayest, homeliest sweatshirt and pulled the hood over my head, yanking the strings to
effectively cover most of my face. Last thing I needed was for Mason to recognize me and cause a scene.

Or kick me out.

As I stepped onto the sidewalk, I forced in a breath and tilted my face to the wind. The afternoon was absolutely gorgeous: breezy and comfortable, without a trace of humidity. One of those
perfect June days that Connecticut had coerced into feeling more like late September. The only sounds were the hum of the Frito factory, the muted traffic coming from the street, and the voices of
two women, fighting like cats in a bag. Their argument was over some guy, naturally. I’d like to say that I wasn’t the type of person to be entertained by the misery of others, but,
well, it was pretty entertaining.

Clarissa clapped her hands once. “All right. We don’t have a lot of time, so I figure we’ll just head straight down the sidewalk until we hear the crowd. My guess is that the
concert will be held at the pavilion. Or else by that big fountain that’s just past the Fifth Street intersection. Okay? Okay.” And I heard her tapping away from me.

I stood completely still.

She stopped. “Maggie? Tight schedule here. Heading toward the fruits of our labor. Let’s
go
.”

I chewed my bottom lip. “Well, the thing is?” I said finally. “I’m not so great with intersections. Or sidewalks, for that matter.”

“For real?”

“For real.”

“No worries,” she said as she clinked her way back to me. “I’ve walked this route a thousand times. My O and M specialist brings me here for picnics all the time. Just
sort of tuck up alongside me and stay half a step behind. And keep your cane in front of you.” And just like that, we took off. The blind leading the blind.

I took wobbly, uncertain steps, clipped to her elbow like a miniature koala bear on a fourth-grade pencil. Trying to distract myself, I cleared my throat and said, “So. What’s going
on with Iced Coffee Guy?”

She snorted. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I mean, I don’t even know what to say to him besides ‘double caramel iced coffee, please.’” I barked a disbelieving
laugh; she seemed to have no problem whatsoever cramming words into
my
ear. “No, for real,” she said, halting for a moment and listening. Not hearing the crowd, we started
walking again. “I’m actually quite shy with boys. A failure in the romance department, just like my dad.”

“Meaning...?”

“Meaning my mom left us when I was two,” she explained in a forced perky tone, picking up the pace a little to yank me through an intersection. “I guess it was too
much—having a blind daughter.”

I swallowed. It had never occurred to me that Clarissa had any real issues or problems, that blindness had stolen something precious from her. “I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

“’S okay,” she said as she jolted to a stop again.

I could hear a hum of voices to my right. We were close.

We cut through a patch of grass and up a knoll, hanging back when our canes tapped ankles. This place had a vastly different vibe than the concert at the Strand. Here, it was all quiet
anticipation and reverence, mixed with the indescribable scent of people gathered together in commonality. My nervousness dissolved into eagerness.
Who cares if Mason recognizes me underneath
this hoodie? Who cares?
It wasn’t as if he could think any less of me.

That wasn’t even possible.

I’d already lied to him for weeks. Puked in his car. Crammed a live hand grenade in his brother’s heart. What was left? And anyway, I could tell by the quiet buzz of conversation in
front of me that there were enough people here to hide my slight frame. So for the first time since we’d arrived, I felt safe. Excited, even. There I was, standing in the middle of Alexander
Park, among the few, waiting to hear the best emerging band of the decade. I just wanted to smile and smile and smile.