The Sound of Letting Go (8 page)

I can feel Justine’s worried eyes boring into the back of

my skull

as I take down history notes with weary deliberation,

go through the motions

of free will.

“Tomorrow, we’ll take a partial practice AP test,”

Mr. Angelli announces, as if that’s some kind of fun.

He closes his notebook.

We all follow suit, me rather loudly.

“Hey there.” I look up to see Cal-for-short

hovering over my desk.

“If you need tutoring, ask Justine,” I sigh.

“Uh, no. Just wanted to be sure you were okay there, after . . .”

A faint pinkness

travels up the back of Cal’s neck to his ears.

“After what?” Justine pipes in behind us.

“Daisy here . . . she, well . . .

she had a rough band practice this mornin’.”

Now his face is a full-blown blush,

redder than Justine’s when she gets angry.

“You can tell her I cried.”

I stand up and grab my books to my chest.

“I just didn’t think I should . . . I mean . . .

It wasn’t mine to tell.”

Justine looks worried, puts her arm around my shoulders, guides me toward the door.

There is no place where I can go to rest, to be free,

so I just let her lead me down the hall.

“What were you crying for, Daisy?”

she asks when we’re outside the French classroom.

“I think my parents might be getting a divorce,”

is what I say, though where the thought came from

is as mysterious

as the question of who truly masterminded

the plot to kill Lincoln.

Divorces are all different.

Dave’s parents’ was the kind of fiasco

that turns one happy-ish upper-middle-class family

into two less happy, poorer ones.

Justine’s family’s was a quiet dissolution

in which she and Shirley, her mom,

stayed in the same house,

repainted thoroughly in lavenders, pinks,

erasing all traces of the man

who had tired of lawns, encumbrances, women,

and simply walked into the sunset, into another life,

leaving a giant chunk of change

and a mountainous lump of bitter disbelief

behind him.

Now that the word
divorce
has escaped my lips,

tied itself to my family, my fears,

Justine is glued to my side.

After school, we hang out in the student commons

until four o’clock,

when she has to leave for her voice lesson.

“You sure you’ll be okay?” she asks as we stand at our

side-by-side lockers.

“Yeah. I’ll be fine,” I answer.

It might be true.

If divorce happened, would things change for the better?

Would I be able to practice music someplace other than

the basement sometimes?

Alone by my locker, I whisper to myself,

“My parents may be getting a divorce,”

draw the
c
out into a long hiss,

find a kind of softness in the word.

Part of me wishes it would happen,

that my parents would shatter something

beyond the toys and dishes Steven breaks.

Maybe it would make me stronger

like Justine, like Dave;

braver, more independent.

I wander up the hall to the library,

determined to fill the hours from now till seven,

to make a point by my absence from home,

as if Mom will ever see me

as a laborer on strike, a slave in rebellion.

I will finish the Overton application today.

For my musical inspiration,

I’ll write about Miles Davis,

about
Kind of Blue
.

I put buds in my ears,

call the tune up on my phone,

and feel that album fill and float my heart

the way it always does.

The egg chair is empty.

With time to burn, I decide on half an hour of listening before I start my essay,

but ensconced in the black leather,

science-fiction-style seat,

I fall asleep.

“Hey, you’re in my chair.”

A boot is kicking my Keds.

It’s dark inside my egg cocoon, and it takes a few minutes

to go from unconscious to vaguely conscious to

“Who in the—?”

“Tired much?” Dave asks, ignoring my hostile greeting.

He smiles his tantalizing smile

into the oval entrance of the egg.

I yank the buds from my ears.

“This chair is damned comfy.”

“Don’t I know it. Move over.”

Without waiting for me to speak or slide,

Dave drops into the chair beside me,

shoving until there’s enough room for us both to be

half-comfortable,

which suddenly becomes awesomely cozy as DAVE

OMG-I-wish-Justine-were-here-to-see-this MILLER

slides his arm over my shoulders and draws me close.

“You okay? Seemed like you were having a shit morning.”

His voice is low. His breath tickles my ear.

“I’m okay.” I let my head loll against his shoulder,

close my eyes, wonder at how a morning of sobs

can morph into my own unbelievable,

real-life HBO movie moment.

I hear the second hand of my old-school Swatch watch

tick-tick-tick
around its giant plastic dial.

Dave leans back, closes his eyes,

and just sits with me.

I try to stop the million thoughts—

fantasy, fear, what-is-happening-here,

wish-I-could-tell-someone,

I-should-be-writing-the-Overton-application—

racing through my brain

and let myself be silent

like Dave.

A few minutes before six,

the librarian starts her gentle tour,

quietly letting the few remaining students in the study carrels, around the stacks,

know that it’s time to close up.

Her eyes open a little wider

when she gets to the egg chair,

but she just taps our two pairs of knees and says,

“Time to go.”

Embarrassed, I leap up,

almost smack my head on the upper lip of the egg.

Dave is slower, unashamed.

“Wanna grab a bite somewhere?” he asks.

“Somewhere quick, I guess. I’ve gotta be home by seven.”

“I’ll drive you.”

“But my car is in the parking lot.”

“I’ll bring you back here then,” he says.

I nod, follow him to his vintage (well, late nineties)

Ford Fiesta in the corner of the parking lot.

“You’ve got a gorgeous mouth, Daisy-brains.”

He pushes me with gentle roughness

against the car door.

I know what’s coming, close my eyes,

but still I gasp when his lips hit mine,

a little hard, a little hungry,

nothing like the tentative kisses I’ve traded

with boys from youth orchestra,

Or the silly, innocent pecks exchanged

In the semi-public of summer night bonfire parties by

the lake.

His hands don’t go to my shoulders, my hair.

Instead his left arm encircles my ribs,

just under my arms;

he draws me in, kissing so powerfully my head bounces against the driver’s side window.

I feel his tongue pushing my lips apart . . .

HBO warnings start flashing in my mind:

A blurry AC—adult content—

and the threat of encroaching N—nudity—

blink in sleek yellow letters

against the gray-black screen of my eyelid interiors.

I squirm out from under his fierce embrace.

“I should get going. I’m . . . I’m not hungry.”

I don’t look back as I trot across the lot to my beige Subaru.

I try to ignore Dave’s car,

right behind mine as I turn onto Main;

try not to look at his half-amused,

half-annoyed expression haunting my rearview mirror.

I feel a whoosh of relief when he goes left at Broad Street

and I keep going straight.

A ring around my ribs still vibrates

with the memory-sensation of Dave Miller’s grasp.

My mind fills with wonder, yearning

for whatever might have happened next,

yet I can’t understand—

beyond our baby-days romance,

why would Dave Miller be drawn to me,

the trumpet girl?

Maybe it’s all those jokes about buzzing lips

and what that power might be good for

inside a boy’s jeans.

I know that sometimes there’s a bit of bragging

where my classmates tell their friends how our high school has the All-State number one brass player,

how I’ve won competitions

from New England down to Florida.

I’m a feather in their cap

even if my lips never move south of there.

Stupid jokes—being a trumpet girl, I’ve heard ’em all.

But somewhere in there, is there the why,

the logic that could connect the dots

between Dave Miller and me?