The Sound of Your Voice, Only Really Far Away (5 page)

“Hey, Kate,” Flannery said, and Kate turned around. She was surprised by Flannery’s sympathetic expression. “You know that the Matthew Hollers of the world always make better friends than boyfriends, right?”

Kate nodded, though she wasn’t sure she
knew that at all. “I need to go try out now,” she said in a flat voice.

The walk back to the front row took Kate approximately five hundred years. Maybe it was because her legs had turned into rubber. Maybe it was because time had slowed down until every clock in the world barely budged. Maybe, she thought, it was because when you realize that you’re nothing, nobody, nada, just a silly girl who thought she might be someone somebody else could fall in love with, then it occurs to you that there’s no reason to get any place anytime soon.

When she finally reached her seat, Lorna leaned over and said, “What’s wrong? Your face is totally white. You look like a ghost.”

“I am a ghost,” Kate told her, and then Mr. Periello called her name, so she stood back up and walked to the stage, where she sang an old Joni Mitchell song her mom liked a lot called “Both Sides Now.” When she finished, everybody in the audience clapped and stomped their feet, and a few people whistled. Mr. Periello looked at her a long time before saying, “That
was beautiful, Kate. I had no idea you could sing like that.”

The funny thing was, Kate couldn’t really sing like that. Or at least she’d never sung like that before. But then again, she’d never had a broken heart before. Maybe that’s what had to happen to you before you could really sing, before your song was more than just a collection of notes and words that came out of your mouth.

When Kate got back to her seat, Flannery was sitting in it. Kate sat down beside her and stared straight ahead. When Lorna leaned toward Kate to say something, Kate held up her hand and said, “I can’t talk right now.”

Flannery worked a few stitches of her sweater, which was beginning to resemble a piece of Swiss cheese. Then she laid her knitting on her lap and, without looking directly at Kate, said, “If I had to guess, I would say he really does like you. The problem is, it doesn’t matter.”

Kate nodded. She thought about kissing Matthew Holler behind her garage. She knew he’d really meant it, even if he didn’t act like it
now. She wondered how a person could do that, feel one way and act another. Kate couldn’t. Her dad said she had no poker face, and it was true. If she was mad, she growled, and if she was happy, she laughed. Maybe she just didn’t have any interest in faking her life, or maybe she was just too stupid to figure out how to pretend like she didn’t care.

Although, hadn’t she been pretending the last two weeks like she didn’t care?

The kiss behind the garage. They’d been writing songs together at Matthew’s house, and when Kate said she had to go home, Matthew offered to walk her. A light snow had started falling when they were halfway to Kate’s house, and Matthew had launched into a loud rendition of “Let it Snow.”

“That’s a Christmas carol,” Kate had admonished him. “You can’t sing Christmas carols in January!”

“What does ‘Let it Snow’ have to do with Christmas?” Matthew had asked. “It’s totally about the weather. It’s a weather song, like ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ or ‘Blowin’ in the Wind.’ ”

Kate had cracked up. “ ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ isn’t a weather song. It’s a protest song.”

Matthew had slung his arm around Kate’s shoulder. “That’s what I like about you, Faber. I don’t know any other girl who would know that.”

“Lots of girls know that,” Kate had insisted, although she was secretly proud that among all the girls she personally knew, she was the only one who had a clue to what “Blowin’ in the Wind” was about. “Girls are as into music as guys are. At least some girls. And not all guys are into music. My dad is a total music dork. His big claim to fame is that he saw Bon Jovi three times when he was in college. But you know what’s cool? My mom saw the Clash. Twice.”

“Not to one-up you or anything, but my mom toured with the Clash.”

Kate had stopped in her tracks. “No way!”

“Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But she was friends with some sound guy’s girlfriend, and so when the Clash toured the Eastern Seaboard, my mom went with them for a few shows.”

“Maybe my mom should invite your mom over for coffee,” Kate had said, immediately liking the idea of her family and Matthew’s getting tangled up, making it harder for Matthew to untangle himself from Kate. Of course, if their moms got to be friends, and the Hollers started to feel like family, then Kate and Matthew might start feeling like cousins, which wasn’t the vibe Kate was going for.

I’m such an idiot for thinking like this, she had told herself, sticking out her tongue to catch a snowflake. I mean, get a life.

They’d reached Kate’s house by then. The sky had gotten dark, and there had been a layer of intensely pink clouds on the horizon. Kate had pointed at it and said, “I’m normally not a pink person, but I think that’s beautiful.”

Matthew hadn’t said anything, and for a second Kate had felt really stupid, but she’d stopped feeling stupid when he’d grabbed her hand and pulled her to the side of the Fabers’ garage. Instead of feeling stupid, she’d felt jittery and light-headed, and when Matthew had pulled her toward him and dipped his face
toward hers, she’d thought she might possibly faint.

Matthew had brushed a strand of hair away from Kate’s face and said, “You are totally awesome. You are really, totally awesome.”

And then he’d kissed her, and his lips had been so soft Kate could hardly stand it. She’d put her hand in his hair, the way she’d wanted to ever since she first saw him, tangling her fingers in his reddish-gold curls.

She’d thought it meant something. She’d really thought it meant something, and so she’d tried not to care when he didn’t call the next day, and then on Tuesday back at school when he didn’t act like anything special had happened between them, she tried even harder not to care. And so maybe it wasn’t surprising that all her not caring (which was really caring more than anything in the world) had poured out in the song she’d just sung.

She just couldn’t hold it in anymore.

On Monday, the cast list was posted. Kate and Lorna were both in the chorus. Lorna was
incensed. “You should have gotten the lead!” she told Kate at lunch. “You were awesome.”

Kate had gotten at least ten phone calls over the weekend, some from people she hardly knew, telling her how awesome her singing had been. She’d felt weirdly famous for forty-eight hours.

Now she turned to Lorna and said, “I’m really tired of the word ‘awesome.’ It doesn’t really mean anything. It’s like a blank word that people use when they can’t think of something real to say.”

Lorna frowned. “I’d be offended, except I can tell you’re in a bad mood about something, which probably has to do with Matthew Holler, who is totally
not
awesome, in my opinion. Which is something I think you need to tell him.”

“What are you talking about?” Kate stared at Lorna. “He hasn’t done anything.”

“Exactly my point,” Lorna said, chewing on a piece of biscotti. “He kissed you, and then—nothing.”

“It’s not like he stopped talking to me,” Kate pointed out.

“Really, Kate?
Really?
That’s really going to be your standard of acceptable behavior when it comes to guys?”

Kate shrugged. Maybe. Well, not all guys, but at least when it came to Matthew Holler. She would put up with anything—

And then she stopped. If Marylin had been saying these things to Kate about Benjamin, Kate would have been furious. She would have been telling Marylin to have some self-respect. She, Kate, would have marched right up to Benjamin and yelled at him about how he treated girls and other living creatures, and she might have even kicked him in the shins, although in general Kate preferred to be the nonviolent type.

Kate took a deep breath. She wrapped up her sandwich and put it back in her backpack. “Excuse me,” she said, “but I need to go have a talk with someone.”

“You bet you do,” Lorna agreed.

But when Kate got to the audio lab, she didn’t know what to say. Matthew was sitting in his usual seat, working on a track for a
project he was calling
World of Noise
. He didn’t turn around when Kate walked in, and she thought maybe she wouldn’t say anything at all, maybe she would just throw a pencil at his back and walk out.

Finally she cleared her throat and mumbled, “Hey, Matthew.”

He turned around. “Hey, Kate! You’ve got to listen to the edits I’ve done. Totally awesome.”

And that was what pushed Kate over the edge. Completely, entirely, all the way over the edge.

“You will never be a songwriter if you can’t come up with a better adjective than ‘awesome’ to describe things,” she said, and she could feel the tips of her ears turning red, she was so mad. “Songwriters are supposed to find the exact right words. Precise words. Definite words. So quit calling everything ‘awesome,’ and quit calling me ‘awesome’ if you don’t mean it.”

“But I do mean it,” Matthew said, sounding confused. “You’re the most awesome girl I know.”

Kate stomped across the room and stood
two feet in front of Matthew. She pointed her finger at him. “I am not awesome. I am not any adjective you can think of, since you couldn’t think of a decent adjective to save your life. You know why you say I’m totally awesome? Because you don’t have the guts to say anything real.”

She decided that was all that she had to say. What else was there? You kissed me behind the garage, but now you act like you didn’t, and that makes me mad? Stupid. It wasn’t something they could have a debate over.

But it was interesting, Kate had to admit, that Matthew’s face had gone all red, like he was coming down with a sudden case of the flu. Didn’t that mean he at least cared a little bit? His lips seemed to be twitching, like there were words inside his mouth that he was trying very hard not to let out.

But finally the words escaped. “I can’t marry you, okay?” Matthew said, pounding his fists on his knees. “I’m sorry, but that’s just how it is.”

Kate’s eyes widened. Her mouth dropped open as though her jaw had suddenly become
unhinged. “What? What did you just say? Do you think I want to
marry
you? That’s crazy. I’m in seventh grade. You know that, right?”

Matthew waved his hands in front of his face, like he was trying to make what he’d just said disappear. “No! That’s not what I’m saying. What I mean is—man, I don’t know what I mean. It made more sense in my head. Like, you’re my best friend, okay? And if we were thirty or something, we’d probably get married and play guitar every night after dinner, and it would be totally awesome. But we’re not thirty, and I don’t know what to do about you.”

Kate just stood there. She’d always thought that the first time a boy told her he loved her, it would be all romantic, all starlight and birds singing, a voice whispering in her ear. She hadn’t thought the soundtrack would be
World of Noise
.

“Well, quit kissing me, okay?” she said. “Because I can’t deal with you kissing me and then acting like I don’t matter to you.”

Matthew threw his head back and laughed, sounding relieved. “Dude, you’re the
only
person who matters. Get a grip.”

Suddenly the door to the audio lab opened, and Kate turned to find herself face-to-face with Flannery.

“I thought you’d be here,” Flannery said. “You’re not going to believe this, but I made the cut.”

“You did?” Kate was confused. “I didn’t see your name on the cast list.”

“Yeah, well, Audrey Fischer just got suspended for skipping class for the third time this quarter, so I got bumped up. I guess I’m headed for Broadway.” Flannery peered over Kate’s shoulder. “Hey, Matthew, you’re an idiot,” she called out, and then grabbed Kate’s hand. “Come with me to get my script. I don’t think I have any lines, but I should check, just in case.”

Kate didn’t really want to leave. She wanted to spend the rest of the period listening to Matthew tell her she was the only person who mattered to him, even if they wouldn’t be kissing each other anymore. Maybe they could kiss each other again later. Maybe when they were sixteen. She thought it might be nice to spend some more time talking about how great
Matthew thought she was, but she guessed there’d be time for that later. So she followed Flannery out into the hallway.

“Do you really think Matthew’s an idiot?” she asked, interested in Flannery’s opinion. If you’d asked Kate an hour ago whether she thought Matthew Holler was an idiot, she would definitely have said yes, but now she didn’t think so. Now she thought he was possibly extremely brilliant.

Flannery laughed. “Only in the ways that matter.”

They passed by the gym. Inside, a few of the girls from the basketball team were practicing free throws. Kate thought about going in and joining them, just to get that feeling you had after you sent the ball through the hoop without touching the rim. It was like you had control over gravity. It was like you could make anything happen that you felt like.

Flannery grabbed her arm. “Come on, slowpoke, let’s go sing really loud and be stars.”