The Sound of Letting Go (12 page)

I can’t bring myself to go home at three o’clock.

Instead, I find Dave

sitting on the bleachers behind the school,

a lighter in one hand, burning tiny bits of paper,

watching smoke rise toward the clouds.

I ignore the tick-ticking of my watch

counting down the minutes to yoga.

I bury the humiliation I still feel from our last parting

beneath the horror of last night.

I reach for the lighter.

He lets go, surprised but not unyielding.

Watches as I take from my backpack

the sheet music to “Adeste Fideles”

and set it ablaze.

The pages are dry, curling quickly to brown ash.

I squeal, drop the burning sheaves

onto the gravel at our feet,

desperately try to stomp out the forest fire

I see in my imagination.

He laughs.

“Don’t laugh!” My back is to him, feet still stamping.

“Why’re you burning stuff you might need?”

He’s taken the lighter back now,

flicking again and again, small, harmless flames,

no longer touching them to paper.

“I don’t owe you an explanation.”

I can’t decide whether I’m staying or going, so I lean

against the dented silver metal of the bleacher bench,

feel a ridge of cool press into my backside,

try to look righteously angry.

“You’re something, Daisy Meehan.” He chuckles.

“Something else.”

“And you’re not?”

(Sometimes I say the absolutely dumbest things.)

“I dunno.

You didn’t seem to think much of me the other day.”

“That wasn’t . . . I didn’t . . .”

I feel my face burning,

bend away from the cool bench, reach down

to pick up a wayward chunk of scorched sheet music.

“You going to The Movie House tonight?”

Dave flicks the lighter even faster,

little flames like hopes being lit and dashed

in fractions of seconds.

“Nah,” he says. Nothing more. Just flames.

My mind turns white.

I cannot figure out why I am standing here before Dave;

I just know I am angry

and it feels like Dave, with his leather and tousle,

his carelessness and fire,

is someone I could be angry with, HBO-style.

The phone in the back pocket of my jeans starts to buzz:

a “hurry up” text from Mom

that makes me want to linger.

“Remember when we were in kindergarten, Dave?”

I point past the bleachers,

past the fence to the park swings just beyond.

“We used to play space explorers over on those swings.”

“You always had to be ship captain.”

He grins. “Still do, I guess.”

I am overwhelmed with longing to touch him,

to tell him what’s going on in my house,

to ask him why we stopped being friends and when, exactly,

those seams came undone,

to ask him about his dad and his little half-sisters,

for the details of the things I have heard about his life

from the small-town grapevine

that twists around us.

“I wish we were little again.”

I turn my shoulder,

don’t want him to see my eyes grow wet.

“Sometimes . . . ,” he says. “Sometimes I do, too.”

“But we’re not.

And I’ve gotta go home and watch my brother.”

“Deadlines Amuse Me,”

says a yellow handmade ceramic tile

relaxing on an embellished wire plate stand

on the kitchen counter.

“You’re late.” Mom is pacing before the fridge,

the carefree quotation at her back,

her soft pastel yoga clothes

belied by the frown lines around her mouth,

the creases by her eyes,

the way she attacks the dishes in the sink.

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

I turn to Steven, who’s already got Blokus open,

nothing left of his cookies but crumbs.

“Want to play, Steven?”

He keeps laying out game pieces as if I haven’t spoken,

neat, even lines of plastic, getting ready.

But there’s an edge to his order,

his rhythm just slightly faster than it should be.

If it were an ordinary day, I’d be on eggshells already,

waiting for the explosion.

Now, I almost want the dam to burst.

“When are you going to tell him?” I ask Mom.

“How are you going to explain . . . ?”

She hangs her apron on the hook by the pantry door,

smooths her T-shirt over her flat stomach.

I count the rises and falls

of her pronounced collarbones.

“Careful,” she says.

We both look at Steven.

The game is ready. Now he waits.

“I’ll play,” I say to no one in particular.

“Dad is working late. He’ll be home in time to put—”

“I know.”

I nudge the first blue piece toward Steven’s hand,

hear the door close softly behind our mother.

I fumble to answer the ten thirty ring of my cell.

“You will not believe this!”

Justine’s shriek practically explodes the phone.

There are no rules about quiet after dark

in her just-mom-and-me household.

“Won’t believe what?”

“Ned Hoffman just asked me on a date for tomorrow night.

He said a
date
, like we were in the 1950s.”

“I haven’t gotten that far in A-PUSH.

Is that what they called the antiquated

one-boy-one-girl-one-meal evening?”

“Better than attack-kissing against a Ford Fiesta, right?”

She can joke because I didn’t—couldn’t—

really tell Justine how it felt,

how much I can’t stop thinking about that afternoon.

I just told her Dave owed me dinner first.

“You’re gonna kiss Ned Hoffman,” I singsong.

“I might,” Justine says. “He’s . . . well, kind of earnest,

but he’s cute enough.”

“And we know he’ll be a gentleman,” I tease back.

“I want a boyfriend.

The Black-and-White Dance isn’t far away.”

“This is preparation for the school formal?”

My giggling shriek almost matches Justine’s.

“Maybe you could ask Dave,” Justine says.

Mom taps at my door,

enters without waiting for permission.

“Daisy, it’s getting a little too loud,” she says.

“Don’t wake up Steven.”

“I’m sorry.”

I watch Mom’s skeleton fingers

slide around the doorknob,

imagine them on Steven’s shoulders,

guiding his guileless form away

from our front door, our home,

forever.

I tune down my voice to a whisper.

“I gotta go, Justine.”

“But we haven’t even talked about what I should wear!

Come over after your trumpet lesson tomorrow

afternoon and help me choose.”

“I will.” My voice, still soft, as deceptively ordinary

as this night.

“Daisy.” Mom sets a glass of juice beside my cereal bowl

at breakfast.

“Your dad and I were wondering . . .

well, you haven’t said how you feel

about our plan for Steven.”

I look at the tumbler, not her face.

It’s safely acrylic, with a tasteful dimpled pattern

that mimics cut crystal. And tinted blue,

which makes the orange juice inside look faintly green.

I slide my hand around to the cup.

The ticking of the watch on my wrist

reaches into my ears, persistent, wiry,

so loud I wonder if Mom can hear it, too.

“I guess I haven’t,” I say, drawing my lip to the rim,

gulping the liquid to prevent more words

from spilling out.

Should I care

that Mom never offers to toast me a waffle

like she does for Steven every day?

We’re a house of three parents, one child.

I think Mom and Dad have seen it this way

for a long time. Me too, I guess.

But right now, I wish someone would tie my shoes,

cut my food,

not ask for my consent

to this enormous, terrifying choice they have made.

I have no idea

if I should build them some bridge to acquiescence,

offer some way for this to be right.

Like I carry my parents’ history,

I carry this future plan—

a crippling weight

that seems to have slowed the beat of my heart.

I am walking eternally through a kitchen of quicksand

littered with brochures

for Alternatives Academy, Regis House

photo-illustrated with the scrubbed-clean faces,

brushed-back hair

of oversize, well-kept, eternal children

setting a table, folding clothes,

glancing up from a small bed of garden soil.

My smartphone registers an e-mail from

Overton Academy,

letting me know that my recommendation

has been received,

my application is complete.

I hit “delete,”

collect my stuff for Youth Orchestra,

wave to Dad behind his paper, Mom at her sink,

Steven, my only brother.

Youth Orchestra is easy for me.

Sixty-odd familiar faces, just a few

as musically accomplished as I am, just a few

boys whose faces my eyes linger on, just a few

friends I’ve made in the years we’ve shared

Saturday mornings together.

We are concert comrades,

connecting only outside the realms

of our private and academic lives,

though there is one other girl from my school:

Shelby, who’s in my math class

but doesn’t play in any ensembles at Evergreen.

She’s sat in the NHSYA flute second chair

as long as I’ve been first trumpet,

yet we’ve never carpooled or crushed on the same boy,

barely ever spoken

despite our common school, our years together.

Shelby the Asperger’s girl

(though I think they might not call it that anymore):

diligent, distant, somehow different.

I used to wince, watching her attempts to befriend,

as if her “mainstream” classmates would let her in,

as if we—or she—really understood the emotion

behind our rejections.

I’d sigh with relief that Steven was safely out of the mainstream,

would never have to endure this kind of floating

through a world politely tolerating, never really trying

to know him.

Now, I wish, wish,
wish

Shelby’s life

for my brother.

I smile at her

as I disassemble my trumpet, wipe it down.

Her eyes startle behind her glasses before

she smiles back.