Not Another Love Song Page 7

  She grips the hand I’ve curled into my lap and gives it a slight squeeze. “Baby, you can’t hide out when something’s bothering you.”

  “Did Dad used to do that? Hide?”

  Her fingers go slack, and then she releases my hand and stands. “He had other methods of getting rid of stress.”

  She walks over to the sink, opens the faucet, and lets the water run. I’m not sure why she turned the tap on, because she doesn’t rinse her bowl of cereal or the juicer she used to press oranges. She just stands there, gripping the edge of the sink.

  “Like what?”

  “You’re going to be late,” she says way too long after I asked. She finally pulls the juicer apart with jerky movements, then sponges each piece of black plastic vigorously.

  Not much ruffles Mom.

  Just Dad and music. Why?

  Pulse skittering with perplexity, I plop my bowl into the sink, then give my mother a quick hug, because I sense she needs one.

  On my way to school, I listen to my peppiest playlist, but it does little to lighten my sullenness. My mood worsens when I spot a black Range Rover driving parallel to me.

  As I peer through the window, my bike swerves a little. It’s not Tennessee at the wheel, though, just some mom with two kids strapped into the backseat. Relieved, I straighten my trajectory, concentrating on not getting myself run over, even though I wouldn’t have to go to school if I did.

  As I turn into Reedwood’s parking lot, I scan the rows of cars for Ten’s. I don’t see it. Maybe he asked to transfer to another school. Or maybe he begged his dad to stay home too, and his father—unlike my mother—showed some compassion.

  I snatch my notebook from my locker just as the second bell rings, and Mrs. Larue’s plucky voice crackles from the PA system. “When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.”

  Ha! Take that, Ten.

  My suspicions about Mrs. Larue being a spy strengthen as I enter the classroom. The table I share with Ten is empty. I sink into my cold, hard chair, then dig through my tote for my homework sheet. Legs appear in front of me. Long legs. Clad in jeans. I follow the legs up to a white T-shirt with red lettering that reads I SPEAK FRENCH, then to the sharp Adam’s apple and the jaw coated by dark scruff.

  I don’t look any higher. Instead, I shift on my chair, then pull my elastic off my ponytail and let my hair settle around my face like a privacy screen. I try to focus on the lecture, but it’s like trying to focus on a conversation during a concert.

  I tap my foot, jiggle my knee.

  This is torture. Just torture.

  I’m about to stick my hand up to be excused to go to the infirmary when a large hand claps my knee. Stills it.

  I jerk my face toward Tennessee.

  “Please stop,” he murmurs, pulling his hand away.

  Without doing it on purpose, I go back to bouncing my knee. I can feel him glaring at it throughout class, probably tempted to pin it down.

  A scrap of paper lands on my sheet of homework. What’s wrong?

  Is he serious? Has he forgotten how weird he acted toward me at the mall? I avert my gaze from the note and feign great interest in the equation written on the whiteboard.

  He filches his note back and scribbles: Is it because I lied about hating music?

  I shake my head.

  Then what? he writes.

  You looked at me as though I was a nutcase in that shop.

  You’re mad at me because of the way I looked at you?

  Now that I see it in writing, it does seem a little silly. Forget it.

  New words appear on the piece of paper: How much has Jade told you about my family?

  She hasn’t told me anything. Just that your dad is an entertainment lawyer. Why? Frowning, I finally glance up at him.

  Ten’s cheek dimples. He must be biting it, because he doesn’t have dimples.

  It hits me then that Jeff Dylan must be a huge country star or something, that his name and job are just covers. Unless he’s not into music at all. Maybe he’s part of the Mafia or a runaway dignitary from another country.

  Is your dad really a lawyer? I write.

  Ten’s eyebrows pinch together. He reaches over and writes: He is.

  Would he tell me the truth?

  Ten goes back to listening to the lecture until the end of class. As I walk to my next class, I google Jeff Dylan. I get two hits. One is a thin-faced actor in his early twenties—obviously not Ten’s father—and the other is a man who survived a faulty parachute even though most of his bones didn’t. Neither man is a lawyer. I add lawyer after Jeff Dylan’s name, but find nothing about a lawyer named Jeff Dylan.

  Is he such a private person that he isn’t even listed on the internet, or did Ten and my mother lie to me?

  16

  The Chicken with the Bad Timing

  Because I can’t leave well enough alone, I drop my tray down on Ten’s table at lunch. “He’s not a lawyer, is he?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your dad. I looked him up. I didn’t get a single hit for a lawyer named Jeff Dylan.”

  His features shift, composing and recomposing into several different expressions. Finally, he shakes his head. “You googled my dad?” His tone is all at once aggressive and defensive. “He is a lawyer, Angie.”

  Why is he still lying to me?

  “You’d find him if I gave you our real last name.”

  I freeze.

  “But we don’t give it out because it’s brought a lot of creeps into our lives. So there, satisfied?”

  His confession both fans and douses the fire burning within me. It explains a hell of a lot but also fills me with questions.

  Who are the Dylans?

  I swallow, but my throat feels as tight as the straw poking from my apple juice.

  Ten’s gaze slides around the cafeteria. “If you could keep this conversation between us, I’d really appreciate it.”

  I nod, then leave, but double back for my tray. I set it down at my usual table, which is empty today, because Rae and Laney are helping out with homecoming decorations and Mel’s sitting with the jocks.

  I pick at my food but don’t eat. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Ten gather up his tray and shove it onto one of the racks. And then he leaves the cafeteria. I’m tempted to leave too, but I don’t want people to think I’m following him, so I stay seated. Sticking my earbuds in, I listen to music and do a bunch of homework.

  The day slides by so slowly it feels like it’s going backward. When I get home, I sit at the piano and play until my fingers ache and the sun has set.

  “A new song you wrote?” Mom asks, startling me.

  I was so concentrated on the music I didn’t even hear the front door.

  I lift my fingers off the keys and curl them in my lap. “It’s one of Dad’s. I’ve just slowed the tempo.” I swivel on the bench. “I know you’re not allowed to talk about the Dylans, but are they good or bad people?”

  She jerks her head, and the sunglasses resting on top of her hair topple onto the rug. “What?”

  “Ten told me his family changed their last name.”

  She crouches to pick up her glasses. “Baby, I can’t talk about them.”

  “I’m not asking you to tell me who they are. All I’m asking is, are they criminals or not?”

  She stares at me and then at the propped lid of the piano. “They’re not.”

  A lump grows inside my throat, invades it. The Dylans, or whoever they are, are good people. Even though a part of me still wonders who they could be, another part is telling me to stop meddling.

  When Mom leaves to get dinner ready, I plod upstairs to my bedroom, take my cell phone out of my pocket, and tap on Ten’s contact. I write a thousand different things. I erase nine hundred ninety-nine of them. In the end, I send: I’m sorry.

  A short while later, hair damp from the shower, I return downstairs and set the table as Mom closes the oven door on something that already smells di
vine.

  “The chicken’ll be ready in a minute. Just crisping up the skin.” She takes a seat at the table, then pats the chair next to her. “Baby, come sit. I want us to talk.”

  About the Dylans? Is she finally going to confide in me?

  “I don’t feel like I see enough of you these days,” Mom says, nursing a glass of white wine between her palms. “And I’m sorry, because it’s entirely my fault. I’m always runnin’ from one construction site to the next.” She sighs. “I’ve become that mother. The one who spends more time with people who shouldn’t matter, instead of with the only person who truly matters.”

  I’m about to tell her that working doesn’t make her any less of a mother, that if anything I’m proud of her. I think I can even use this as the perfect segue into the contest.

  Before I can open my mouth, she asks, “So what’s happening in your life? Have you started on your college applications? Have you written an essay yet? If you have, I’d love to read it.”

  I trail one finger down my glass of water, creating a path through the condensation. Water beads on the glass tabletop. “I’ve started looking into schools”—I haven’t, but considering how every senior in Reedwood is chattering on about college, I’ve picked up some details I can use to substantiate my lie—“and everything else is fine.”

  Tell her about the Mona Stone contest. Tell her, Angie. Before playing Dad’s song, I was practicing mine. It sounds better now, more polished. Maybe she’ll like it.

  Before I locate my backbone to fess up, she says, “When you were small, and I would ask you how your day went, you used to give me a play-by-play. Didn’t leave out a single detail. But now, all I get is an everything’s fine? That’s not us, baby. At least, that’s not who I want us to be.” She sets her wineglass down. “Are you and Ten friends? How’s Rae? Who are you going to homecoming with?”

  I slide my lower lip between my teeth. “Ten and I, we’re … I wouldn’t say friends, but sort of friendly? And I’m going with the girls to homecoming. And Rae’s Rae. Sunny, happy, busy Rae. She’s totally into our school’s new quarterback, even though she swore she wouldn’t date another jock.”

  I think of my friend’s senior bucket list and the item she will most definitely not be checking off considering Harrison’s become a constant in our conversations. And then I think of my own bucket list, of the only item on it.

  I inhale a lungful of courage. “Mom—”

  Our fire alarm blares, and she jerks up. Batting away the pale smoke, she grabs an oven mitt, yanks open the oven door, and pulls the chicken out while I crack open the windows.

  It takes a couple of minutes for the smoke to clear and the strident beeping to stop. And then Mom’s on the phone with the fire department, explaining that they needn’t pay us a visit, and then she’s scouring the fridge for something else to make us.

  I glare at the charred bird, thinking that its timing really sucked. If it could only have waited an extra minute before burning up …

  I drop it into the trash can under the sink as though it had intentionally wronged me, but my cowardice is in no way the chicken’s fault.

  I’m the chicken in the story.

  I scrunch up my nose, a bit appalled that I’m comparing myself to a bird.

  After dinner, I check my phone. Ten hasn’t answered, but he’s read my apology—there’s a little check mark next to the chat bubble. I take it he’s still mad. At least I had enough courage to reach out to him.

  If only I’d had enough courage to reach out to Mom …

  17

  The Invisible Stone and the Inflatable Sword

  On Tuesday, I only see Ten during lunch period. I watch him from across the cafeteria, but don’t speak to him. Not even the colorful grass skirts and the Hawaiian-print shirts brighten Tropical Tuesday.

  On Wednesday, I ready myself to face him during afternoon art class. Not that we usually sit together. Usually we sit on opposite sides of the classroom. Today, Miss Bank has us work on projects in twosomes, which screws up the seating arrangement. I try to pair up with Laney, but Brad swoops in and asks her. I’m not sure who’s more startled by his proposition: me or her.

  She accepts Brad’s invitation, then apologizes to me. They move across the room, heads bent together in conversation.

  “Did everyone find a partner?” Miss Bank asks.

  I turn to ask Ron, a quiet overachiever, but someone beats me to him. I swivel around and come nose-to-chest with someone. Readjusting the Minnie Mouse headband I wore for Walt Disney Wednesday, I tip my face up.

  Ten’s clean, soapy scent, overlaid by notes of … sweet dough—did he spend his morning whipping up pancakes?—tickles my nostrils. “Seems like we’re the last ones left.”

  I’m pretty sure two girls asked him to be their partner.

  “Portraits!” Miss Bank announces, clapping. “You’re going to be drawing your partner, costume and all. It can be as abstract as you want. And you are welcome to use whichever medium you’d like.”

  “I have to warn you,” I tell Ten, once I’ve recovered from the realization that we’re partners, “I’m real bad at drawing people.”

  “Good thing Miss Bank said it could be abstract.”

  “Yeah. I even botch abstract art.”

  He drags an easel toward a chair, and I do the same. “I won’t take offense if I end up with a Picasso face.”

  “You’ll be lucky if you end up with a Picasso face.” We walk to the supply closet and grab paintbrushes and tubes of acrylic paint. As we return to our chairs, I ask, “You are aware Walt Disney didn’t come up with Harry Potter, right?”

  His mouth rounds in surprise. “No way!”

  I’m about to say yeah, when his golden eyes spark with … amusement? “You’re not a Harry Potter character, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  I study his red graduation gown and the yellow silk scarf knotted around his neck while he starts painting me. “Are you a wizard?”

  “No.”

  My gaze drops to the inflatable sword hooked into a rope tied around his waist. “The prince in Cinderella?”

  “You think I look like a prince?” he asks without glancing away from his paper.

  My cheeks smolder. “I said the prince—never mind.” I direct my attention to my still-blank paper. I dab red paint on it and swirl the color around until it sort of takes on the shape of a poufy gown.

  “Are you giving up? I didn’t peg you for the type of girl who gave up,” Ten says.

  Our gazes collide. Although several conversations buzz around us, all I can hear is what Ten just said. “About your costume?”

  He returns his attention to his canvas and lifts his paintbrush. “Isn’t that what we were talking about?”

  My heart skitters to a halt inside my rib cage. Is he kidding? Did I just totally misread him? He wants me to guess his alter ego’s identity, but not his actual one? “I didn’t think you wanted me to keep guessing.”

  He looks back at me. The gold flecks in his irises seem to have dimmed. “So you’re giving up?”

  “Honestly, I think it’s better if I do.”

  I jab my paintbrush against the canvas and red paint splatters over my cleavage, which is wedged too tightly into my costume’s sweetheart neckline. I should probably have bought a new dress instead of recycling the one I wore two Halloweens ago.

  I try to wipe the paint away with the heel of my hand but end up smudging it and making it look like I walked off a horror movie set. I head to the sink, where I ball up scratchy paper towel and wet it to clean myself up before I give Miss Bank a heart attack.

  “Arthur from The Sword in the Stone,” Ten says after I return to my easel.

  “I would never have guessed that.”

  For a moment, we look at each other. A long moment. And then I avert my gaze because there’s too much to see in Ten’s face. What’s the point in seeing anything if there’s no way of understanding what I’m looking at?

 
; 18

  Never Have I Ever Felt This Bad

  Fueled by the momentous elation of Reedwood winning the homecoming game, Rae throws a little impromptu party at her parents’ pool house. There are seven of us. Four girls, three boys—me, Jasper, Laney, Brad, Rae, Melody, and Harrison, who was instrumental in demolishing our opponents.

  Jasper kneads Melody’s hand. “We crushed them so bad.”

  I don’t think they’ve hooked up yet, but I think it’s a matter of minutes before it happens.

  While Harrison fiddles with a vintage iPod plugged into an equally vintage stereo, Rae opens a cupboard and whips out a bottle of vodka. A rhythmic beat vibrates against the glass walls. The singer’s voice sounds hoarse, and her words don’t make much sense, but it’s better than the sound of Brad and Laney sucking each other’s faces like leeches.

  I still don’t get what she sees in Brad, but hey, who am I to judge?

  “Who wants to play ‘Never Have I Ever’?” Rae asks.

  Jasper whoops. The others alternate between nervous chuckling and excited head-bobbing.

  “What’s ‘Never Have I Ever’?” I ask.

  Brad pulls away long enough from Laney to guffaw at me. “Who wants to explain the rules to Conrad?”

  The decorative green stripes Melody smeared over her cheeks for team spirit are smudged, giving the impression she’s wearing an avocado mud mask. I don’t think she cares, considering Jasper is still rubbing her hand. “One person says, ‘Never have I ever gone swimming.’ If you have gone swimming, you drink. If you haven’t, you pass.”

  “I found the vodka and suggested the game. I get to start,” Rae says as Harrison sits next to her.

  He sets multicolored plastic cups on the glass coffee table, then pushes his longish black hair off his forehead. I eye him and then I eye Rae. Like humidity thickening the air before a storm, something’s brewing between them.

  Talk about being a fifth wheel. Or seventh in this case.

  Rae pours a finger of alcohol in all the glasses. “So this one’s for Jasper.” She winks at him. “Never have I ever read an entire book.”