The Sound of Your Voice, Only Really Far Away (14 page)

Not a big deal, Kate told herself as she turned around and headed out the door. In fact, it was good that Emily had been there and that Matthew had acted like Kate wasn’t anybody special. It made it that much easier to give him up. And the fact that she sort of felt like crying? Well, that was going to happen, wasn’t it? Just because she wanted to stop caring about Matthew Holler didn’t mean it would happen automatically. It would take practice. She just had to keep practicing.

Kate decided she would go work on painting sets for
Guys and Dolls
with Lorna. Maybe she could even get Ms. South, the drama teacher, to give her a pass to get out of fourth period. The only question was, should she tell Lorna about finding Emily in the audio lab, or her decision to get over Matthew? Kate shoved her hands in her pockets. For some reason they were shaking a little. The decision. She should definitely talk about the decision first. Emily was beside the point.

When she got to the auditorium, she found Lorna and Flannery painting the Save-A-Soul Mission storefront. Over the last few weeks, Lorna and Flannery had gotten to be friends. It had a lot to do with the amazing snacks Lorna brought to rehearsal and the fact that Flannery wasn’t half so cranky if you fed her.

“Pick up a paintbrush,” Lorna called when she saw Kate. “We’ve got ten minutes before break’s over.”

“Yeah, Ms. South wants this finished and all the way dry by rehearsal this afternoon,” Flannery added.

It was interesting to see Flannery so involved, Kate thought. Flannery was not known for being an overachiever when it came to activities. The other day she’d told Kate and Lorna that the only other times she’d after stayed after school were for detention. “This show is the first time I’ve voluntarily stayed at school one second longer that I absolutely had to.”

“Doesn’t your mom care about extracurriculars?” Lorna had asked. “Because my mom has a total bug up her butt about them.”

Kate had noticed that the longer Lorna hung out with Flannery, the more she was using phrases like “bug up her butt.” Flannery was the sort of person who could have that kind of effect on your vocabulary.

“Mostly my mom just cares that I get out of middle school without a police record,” Flannery had informed them. “Not that I actually do anything all that bad. I guess I just have potential when it comes to a life of nonviolent crime.”

“You look weird, Kate,” Lorna said now as Kate picked up a paintbrush and started working on the mission’s front door. “Are you okay? You’re not going to throw up, are you?”

“I’m fine,” Kate said. “I just have some big news that I’m very excited about. I’ve decided I’m done with Matthew Holler.”

Both Lorna and Flannery looked skeptical. “What do you mean by ‘done’?” Lorna asked. “Like you’re going to stop hanging out with him?”

“Or stop obsessing about him?” Flannery added.

Kate scowled. “I don’t obsess about Matthew Holler. That’s dumb.”

Now Lorna and Flannery rolled their eyes in unison. “Kate,” Lorna said, and Kate could tell she was trying to sound gentle, but not trying all that hard. “You spend every free minute of your day hanging out at the audio lab, listening to that awful
World of Noise
project Matthew’s working on. You drop his name into every conversation, like, ‘Oh yeah, when I was hanging out at Matthew’s the other day . . .’ You’re totally obsessed.”

“Well, not anymore,” Kate insisted. “I need to be free. I’m tired of someone else controlling my life.”

Flannery looked at Lorna. “Finally.”

Lorna nodded at Flannery. “It’s about time.”

“Have you guys been talking about me?” Kate clenched her fists. She
hated
when people talked about her! “Like, gossiping about me and Matthew?”

“It’s helped cement our friendship,” Flannery said with a shrug.

“It’s only because we care,” Lorna added.

“Well, I guess now you’re going to have to find something else to talk about,” Kate said, sounding huffy. “Because Matthew Holler will no longer be a topic of conversation.” She turned to Lorna. “So what kind of snacks did you bring today?”

“You’re just using me for food,” Lorna said, but she sounded happy about it. Lorna loved being famous for her cooking.

What if all Kate was famous for was being that girl who hung out with Matthew Holler? If she got hit by a truck this afternoon, was that how people would remember her?
Oh yeah, Kate Faber—she was the one who had that thing for Matthew. She was the one who followed Matthew Holler around like a puppy.

Kate felt her face go red. How had she become that sort of person?

Well, she wasn’t that sort of person anymore. From now on, she was the sort of person who wore what she felt like wearing, said what she felt like saying, and did what she felt like doing. She was the sort of person who was known for being independent and outspoken.
That Kate Faber,
people would say,
she doesn’t care what anybody thinks. She just does exactly what she wants.

Yep, that’s me, Kate thought, taking a swipe at the mission door with her paintbrush. Free as a bird. Free as a comet. Free as the Fourth of July.

Kate was sitting on her bed that night, writing in her poetry notebook, when her dad came to the door, the phone in his hand. “Matthew called when you were in the bathroom earlier. He said to call him back when you got a chance.”

“When I was in the bathroom? Like, thirty minutes ago? And you’re just telling me now?”

Mr. Faber nodded. “I was on the phone with a client. I tried to ignore the call-waiting beep, but it kept going off until I finally couldn’t stand it anymore.”

“You know, if you’d let me get a cell phone, we wouldn’t be having these problems,” Kate pointed out. Her dad was totally against his children having cell phones. He had a folder full of articles about how cell phones gave you
brain cancer. It was in his file cabinet, right next to the folder where he kept all his clipped newspaper articles about teenagers dying in drunk-driving accidents.

“Not going to happen, Katie. We’ll just have to keep living like primitives.” Mr. Faber held up the phone like he was about to toss it to her. “You want to call him back? I’m done with my business.”

Did Kate want to call Matthew Holler? How was she supposed to answer that question? Of course she wanted to call him! She wanted to call and ask him if he’d heard the new Midtown Dickens song on K-DUCK, the one where somebody played a saw, and how cool was that? She wanted to call and tell him about this book of poems she’d just checked out of the library,
Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle
. She wanted to call and read him a draft of the poem she was working on, which she was calling “Free as a Bird Who Just Discovered It Was Free.”

The only problem was, the poem was sort of about being free from Matthew Holler.

“I’ll see him at school tomorrow,” Kate told her dad. “It probably wasn’t anything important.”

Mr. Faber gave Kate a long look. “Everything okay? Between you and Matthew, I mean?”

“There is no me and Matthew,” Kate insisted. “He’s just a friend. There’s nothing between us. That makes it sound so—I don’t know, just not what it is.”

Her dad leaned down to pull at a piece of tape stuck to the carpet. “I thought maybe he was—you know, your boyfriend.”

Kate thought she might throw up. “Dad! I don’t want to talk about this stuff ! Do you have these kinds of talks with Tracie? Like, about who her boyfriend is?”

“Tracie hasn’t spoken to me in three years,” Mr. Faber said. “Except to ask me for money, or for a ride to the mall. But a substantial conversation about her actual life? Nope. Hasn’t happened.”

Now Kate felt guilty. Why did her dad always make her feel guilty? Like she was a terrible person, just because she didn’t want to play
basketball on Saturday mornings or talk about her love life?

“Maybe you and Mom should have another baby,” Kate said, doodling in her notebook. “Maybe this time you’d get a boy, and you guys could have lots of personal, manly talks about, I don’t know, antifungal cream.”

Mr. Faber snorted. “One, I’m not sure your mom would think that was such a hot idea. Two, even if we have a hundred more babies, I’d still want to know about you, Katie. I know it’s not going to be the way it was when you were five and wanted to tell me every single thing that happened to you. I know you have to have your own life—”

Then, abruptly, he shut up. He rubbed his eyes, and Kate thought her dad might be on the verge of crying. Oh, please don’t let him cry, she begged silently. Please, God or the universe or whoever’s out there, don’t let him cry. Kate was pretty sure that if her dad started crying, she would break into a hundred little pieces and no one would ever be able to put her together again.

“Listen, I know you’re growing up,” Mr. Faber began again. “I get it. And your mom says I should give you a lot of space, which I’m trying to do. I just always thought—”

“Always thought what?” Kate urged, hoping that if her dad kept talking, he’d be less likely to have an emotional breakdown.

Mr. Faber sighed. “That we’d always have a good relationship. That you’d stay my pal.”

Kate tried to make herself say it. She tried to make herself utter the words
I
am
your pal
,
Dad
. But she couldn’t do it. All she could offer was, “I’ll tell you some stuff, okay? Like, I could tell you about play rehearsal. Lots of interesting stuff happens at play rehearsal.”

“That would be great,” Mr. Faber said. He nodded toward her desk chair, as if to ask,
Mind if I take a seat?
Kate gave him a magnanimous wave, as if to say,
Sure, why not?

“You know, I worked on the tech crew for some musicals in high school,” her dad said as he crossed the room. “
Bye Bye Birdie, Fiddler on the Roof
. Never
Guys and Dolls,
though.”

“It’s a lot of fun,” Kate told him. “Well,
except when Ms. South makes us do a song ten million times.”

Mr. Faber was about to sit down when the phone in his hand rang. “Probably Matthew again,” he said, holding out the receiver to Kate. “You want to take it?”

Kate took a deep breath. “No, that’s okay. Let the machine pick it up.”

“Good girl,” her dad told her, and Kate sat back, surprised. The way he said it? It sounded like he knew exactly what she was thinking, that if she took this call, she’d take the next one and the next one and the next one. And if she kept taking Matthew’s calls, she’d never be free. She’d never be the bird in her poem.

“I’m trying,” she told her dad. “It’s hard, but I’m trying.”

Her dad nodded, and Kate realized they’d just had a conversation about her personal life without actually talking about it.

Works for me
,
she thought.

The problem was, Matthew Holler kept waiting for her at her locker. It was funny how now
that she wasn’t going out of her way to hang out with him, he seemed to be waiting around for her a lot more. It sort of made Kate mad, to be honest, like Matthew was playing games with her. She was pretty sure that if she started showing up at the audio lab every morning, Matthew would go back to his old routine, where sometimes he seemed really happy to see her, and other times he acted like he couldn’t care less.

And it was weird that something Kate used to actively wish for on a daily basis—that Matthew would be waiting for her at her locker, which he almost never had been—had turned into something she sort of dreaded. As soon as she saw Matthew at her locker, she felt self-conscious, and she was tired of feeling self-conscious. She was tired of spending 99 percent of her time worrying that she should have flossed after breakfast. She bet that Walt Whitman or Amelia Earhart never worried about that kind of stuff.

“But you like it, too, don’t you?” Flannery asked after Kate complained at play rehearsal
one afternoon. “It’s kind of cool that he’s waiting for you, right?”

“Yeah, sort of,” Kate admitted. “I guess it means he cares.”

But that was the real problem, Kate decided after thinking about it for a while. Matthew Holler cared, even if sometimes he acted like he didn’t. He thought that he and Kate were still friends. And they
were
, only Kate kind of needed a friendship vacation. She needed a few weeks, maybe a month, to practice not caring. To practice thinking her own thoughts without wondering if Matthew had the same sort of thoughts, or if he would think her thoughts were stupid or obvious or uncool.