Between the Notes Page 7

  “What’s all that?” I asked.

  “Nothing.” She shoved it all into one of those brown accordion folders. “Just paperwork.”

  “Bills?”

  She smiled. “Nothing for you to worry about.”

  My stomach twisted. That was what she’d been saying for months. I knew better than to believe her now.

  “Mom—”

  “How was your day?” she asked brightly.

  I told her what she wanted to hear. “It was great, Mom. Really great.”

  She sighed as if the weight of the world had lifted. “I’m so glad to hear that. Things have a way of working out, don’t they?”

  She disappeared into her bedroom with the papers, and I wondered what bad news they might contain. We’d already lost our house and most of our possessions. How much worse could it get?

  The next morning I gazed longingly at some of my cute skirts and dresses and boots but again chose a more cycling-friendly outfit instead: a pair of skinny jeans, my Converse sneaks, a vintage T-shirt, and hoodie. My new uniform.

  Mom and Dad were already in the kitchen when I went down, arguing in hushed tones. I stopped and stood on the middle stair.

  “Please tell me we didn’t lose everything for . . . for nothing,” said Mom.

  “If we get the university contract, we’ll be fine,” said Dad.

  “And if we don’t?”

  “Something will turn up.”

  My mother was making coffee, noisily slamming the pot into place. “You’ve been saying that for weeks, Mark. And look what turned up.”

  The step I was standing on suddenly creaked, and their conversation came to a halt. When I arrived in the kitchen, it was all sunshine and roses again.

  “Hey, princess.” Dad smiled in his usual way, but I could see the sadness in it now. I wondered how long he’d been hiding it.

  “Hey, Daddy,” I said, snarfing down the jelly toast Mom offered. “Gotta go!” I left before the twins were up. Another sign my parents were distracted by their financial woes? They hadn’t even noticed how obscenely early I was leaving for school.

  It was my third day on the Schwinn, and everything was going okay until one mile into my ride, a car zoomed past so close I swore it brushed my arm. Someone thrust a hand out the window and gestured at me with an angry fist. Jerks. Like it would kill them to share the road with my elbow, which was the only part of me that might have crossed the white line. I gripped the handlebars tighter and veered to the side, leaving plenty of room between me and the car lane. But the loose, gravelly surface of the shoulder sent my wheels skittering and sliding. I swerved back onto the smooth road to get control of the bike.

  Another car came up behind me, and I slowed to let it pass. Black BMW. What were the chances James took this road to school? Small, I told myself. Minuscule. He had to live in Westside Falls. Still, watching it go up the hill in front of me was enough to take my eyes off the road long enough that I didn’t notice the rainwater drainage grate coming up in front of me. And when I did, it was too late.

  My front tire dropped through the metal slats to a jarring halt, slamming me into the handlebars. I toppled forward and landed smack on the top of my head in a grassy ditch, then flipped onto my backpack like a turtle.

  I lay there for a minute, the wind knocked out of me. My ears were ringing, and then rumbling.

  No, that was a car.

  I scrambled to right myself and discovered one of my shoes was missing.

  “Looking for this?” Lennie sauntered up with my pink Converse dangling from his fingertips.

  I nodded, and he tossed it to me. My fingers fumbled the laces as I tried to tie them. I was shaken up but uninjured—as far as I could tell—if you didn’t count my pride. I stood and brushed myself off.

  Lennie lifted my bike from the ditch. “Chain’s off,” he said, pointing to how it dangled loosely. Before I could think what to do about that, he had the whole thing flipped upside down, balanced on its seat and handles. I watched numbly as he returned the chain to its gears and slowly rotated the pedal until it was running on track.

  “Should be okay now.” He set the bike upright and rolled it over to me. “Are you?”

  I nodded again and walked toward him, took the handlebars in my shaky fingers.

  He didn’t let go. “Could you say something so I know you’re not brain damaged?”

  “Something,” I murmured.

  Lennie pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. I was officially the only person in our entire school without my own functioning cell phone. He swiped his finger across the screen. “Want me to call someone?”

  I shook my head. “No, that’s okay.”

  He studied me for a minute, his eyes slowly scanning my body from top to bottom, then settling on my face. He gestured back toward his Jeep. “Sure you don’t want that ride? I could throw your bike in the back.”

  I shook my head again. “No, I’m fine.”

  “Of course.” He snorted and backed away. “Wouldn’t want anyone to see you with me, huh?”

  It was true, I couldn’t deny it. I stood there and watched him walk back to his Jeep. Before he got in, he turned back to me.

  “Good thing you were wearing a helmet.” He knocked on his head, then got in and peeled away, leaving me in the dust for a second time that week.

  I arrived at school without further incident, hid my bike, and checked myself. No scratches, no blood. The bruises would show up later, no doubt. I’d given myself a complete pat down in search of rips or holes, and found none. Unfortunately, I wasn’t contortionist enough to see my own rear end, so I didn’t realize it was one gigantic grass stain.

  Willow kindly alerted me to the situation at a decibel level roughly equivalent to the blast of a foghorn when I walked past her in the hall. “I-vy! What the hell is all over your ass?”

  I instinctively went into defensive mode and leaned my back against the wall. Wynn scurried over to spin me around. “Oh, my God!”

  “What?” I said, twisting myself backward to see what everyone was looking at. For one terrifying moment I worried that I’d landed in dog shit. “What is it?”

  Molly Palmer stopped to observe the commotion. Molly had been one of “us” until she and Willow had a huge falling-out freshman year. I secretly envied Molly for standing up to Willow. It had cost her nearly all her friends, but she didn’t seem to care. She walked over now, looked at my butt, and shook her head. “It’s just a grass stain,” she said. “Haven’t you nitwits ever seen a grass stain before?”

  “Who asked you?” said Willow.

  Molly snorted. “Like I need your permission to speak?” She pulled a sweater out of her backpack and handed it to me. “You can borrow this, if you want. To cover up.”

  “Thanks,” I said, clutching it to my stomach.

  Willow snatched it out of my hands and threw it at Molly. “She doesn’t want your ugly sweater.”

  Molly shrugged and pushed the sweater back into her backpack. She glanced over at me before she walked away. “Don’t be such a sheep,” she said.

  I watched her disappear into the crowd that continued to stare. At me. Reesa came pushing her way through. “Nothing to see here! Move along. Move along.” She took one look at me and went into crisis mode.

  “What happened?” she said.

  My eyes started to water. It was too much to explain. “I fell.”

  Willow and Wynn were suddenly all “Poor Ivy, are you okay?” Neither one of them objected when Reesa handed me a sweater from her locker. “Here,” she said. “Tie this around your waist.”

  I hoped she could read the gratitude in my eyes, because I was finding it difficult to speak. She helped me position the sweater to conceal the damage.

  “Can’t you call your mom and ask her to bring you something?” said Wynn.

  I gave her a withering look. Her own mother was never home to bring a change of clothes. But she had the nanny. “I’m just going to use the bathroom,” I
said.

  Reesa followed, as I knew she would. As soon as we were alone, she whispered, “What really happened?”

  “I fell off my bike.” I didn’t mention that Lennie had helped pick me up.

  “What bike?”

  “The one I’ve been riding to school.”

  Her eyes widened. “I thought your mom was driving you.”

  I shook my head. “We only have one car now.” And the complication of getting both of my parents to their jobs was difficult enough without adding me into the equation. Even if I had my license—I was still on the six-month learner’s permit I got when I turned sixteen—we didn’t have a second car I could drive, anyway.

  Reesa’s eyes went all “poor you” and she touched her fingers to my arm. “As soon as I get my license, I’ll pick you up, okay? It’s only three more months.”

  That was a lifetime. But I gave a quick nod and busied myself, pretending to fix my hair. Reesa fiddled with the sweater around my waist, trying to tuck in the sleeves, then giving up when she couldn’t make it look like something it wasn’t.

  “You know, I read somewhere that downsizing is trending.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “I don’t know. The headline was ‘Hashtag Downsizing’ or something. It was about people going off the grid, making do with less, shopping at thrift stores, using lemon juice instead of deodorant.”

  I crinkled my nose. “People do that?”

  “I totally read that somewhere,” she said. “Citrus has natural deodorizing properties. It’s all very Bohemian.”

  My brain was starting to hurt. Considering how our own high school treated kids from Lakeside—even putting them on their own separate bus—I’d have to say being poor would never be trendy.

  But I was too weary to attempt to set Reesa straight on that particular point. “Let’s just go.”

  “I’ll walk you to homeroom.” She leaned her shoulder to mine as soon as we were out of the bathroom, but separated suddenly and squeezed my arm. “Oh, God. There he is. Should I talk to him? I should. I should talk to him.”

  “Who?” I swiveled my sore neck in time to see James striding toward us. His head was down, though. I did a quick spin-and-drop maneuver, crouching to tie my shoe. Then I dug through my backpack until he passed.

  “Shit, shit, shit.” Reesa stamped her foot on the last shit. “He didn’t even look at me.”

  I stood and returned her “oh, well” shrug, hoping it hid the relief I was feeling. Maybe she’d lose interest in him.

  “He drives a black BMW, you know,” she said. “A really nice one. I saw him pull into the back parking lot. But I couldn’t find any listings for a James Wickerton.”

  “Listings?”

  “Google, Facebook, Twitter. It’s like he doesn’t exist. There’s only one explanation I can think of.”

  “He’s not into social networking?”

  “He’s a vampire,” she said, breaking into a playful smile. “But still, probably loaded. Vampires always have money. Centuries of saving, stealing from their victims. It’s all very lucrative.”

  “You should definitely stay away from him.” I tried to make it sound like I was joking, but Reesa didn’t take it that way.

  “Why?”

  I pretended to flip casually through my notebook in search of something. “He doesn’t seem like your type.”

  Her bottom lip jutted out. “You don’t like him?”

  “No, it’s just . . . I don’t think he’s right for you is all.”

  She gave me a long look, then patted my shoulder. “You must’ve bumped your head in that fall. Because if tall, dreamy, and rich isn’t right for me, then I don’t know what is.”

  When I entered our first-period AP English class, Reesa was twirling her hair at James. “We go into the city a lot. You should come with us sometime.”

  “I’m not much of a city boy, actually.”

  “Not even to visit?” she said, looking slightly aghast.

  He laughed. “Not if I can help it.”

  “Then what do you do for fun?”

  He glanced over to me as I sat down. “I read a lot.”

  Reesa frowned. She loved to read, too, but I don’t think that was exactly what she had in mind with James. What she wanted, I realized, was to ditch me and go to New York with someone who could afford it. So much for “hashtag downsizing.”

  Mr. Eli called us all to attention and launched into a soliloquy on Shakespeare that drew James’s full and rapt attention, and put Reesa into a coma. About halfway through the class, she escaped with the bathroom pass and gave me an unobstructed view of James. I slid my eyes his way and found him looking at me, too.

  He smiled a quick smile.

  I quick-smiled back.

  Mr. Eli gave the class an assignment to do at our desks. “Take five minutes,” he said, “and write whatever comes to mind when you think of Shakespeare’s plays. The characters, the language, the plots . . . What are your impressions? If you completed the eighth grade, you’ve already studied at least one of his plays. What are your perceptions of his work? How does Shakespeare make you feel?”

  Kids started calling things out: “bored,” “confused,” “like slitting my wrists.”

  James frowned and bent over his notebook, writing furiously. I stared at my blank page for a moment, bent over it to write a single word, and held it up to show him.

  Curious.

  He smiled more widely and took out a fresh piece of paper, scribbled something quickly, and held it up to me.

  Alive.

  I put a finger to my lips and shifted my eyes around to look at our classmates.

  He laughed, and that’s when Reesa walked in. I dragged my gaze away from James to my own paper, but not soon enough. Reesa glared at me when she sat down. She scribbled out a note and tossed it on my desk.

  Thought you didn’t like him.

  I mouthed, “Who?” and gave her the best confused-and-befuddled expression I could muster. A shadow fell over my desk and I looked up to see Mr. Eli hovering there. He plucked the note out of my fingers, tucked it into his shirt pocket, and kept strolling.

  Reesa and I exchanged cringes. I stifled a moan. Mr. Eli told everyone to finish up their work and pass their papers up to him. “We’ll revisit these at the end of our section on Shakespeare,” he said, “and see if anything has changed.”

  Then he pulled Reesa’s note from his pocket and glanced down at it before crinkling it into a tiny ball. “Everything is not as it seems!” he bellowed. “A common theme in Shakespeare’s plays, you’ll find. Right, Ivy?”

  My head snapped up. “Um, right?”

  Mr. Eli chuckled, dropping the note on my desk as he walked past. I scooped it up and kept my head down for the rest of the class. When the bell rang, I darted out, avoiding James but not quite fast enough to escape Reesa, who cornered me at the end of the hall.

  “You like him.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I was just being friendly.”

  Her eyebrows pinched together in the middle. “Promise? Because he’s the first guy I’ve liked in so long. I know this sounds crazy because I’ve hardly spoken to him but . . . I think I’m falling in love.”

  I laughed to myself—Reesa was always dramatic. But I took a deep breath and told her what she wanted to hear, because she was my best friend. I couldn’t afford to lose her. And the lie was easier than the truth.

  “I promise,” I said. “He’s all yours.”

  ELEVEN

  I’d been without my piano for four days now and I was beginning to feel the effects, my hands shaky with unplayed emotions. So, instead of heading to the cafeteria for lunch, I veered off toward the band room.

  It was empty and quiet, except for a set of hi-hat cymbals tinkling against each other as if an invisible drummer had left his foot on the pedal. An upright piano sat facing the wall in the corner, next to the smartboard. I walked to it and let my fingers slide across the keys.

/>   Pressing my thumb to the middle C, I let the sound mingle with the shimmer of the cymbals. I added my middle finger and pinkie, plunked a C chord. The piano was slightly out of tune, but I could feel the soothing vibration all the way up my arm. Playing always calmed me, as long as no one was listening. I slid onto the bench and lifted my left hand to the keys as well and slowly played the ascending chords, key by key, majors then minors. I was drawn to the minor keys today. They matched my mood.

  I let my thoughts mingle with the scales, adding syncopation and rhythm to the notes I played. Why did Reesa assume James was wealthy? Just because he drove a nice car? Maybe he’d worked for it, earned it with his own money. Maybe he was the kind of guy who wouldn’t care whether a girl lived in a mansion or a shoe.

  The notes spilled from my hands, taking me back to the argument between my parents I’d overheard that morning. Low and soft and anxious. Then racing, like my heart had been. Pedaling fast, falling, knocked so numb and senseless, I’d actually been relieved to see Lennie, the fear returning when he sped away, riding shaky and slow—it all came out in a frenzy of sound. Then smiling, a quick and happy note to James and back. A laugh. Alive and curious, two playful melodies coming to an abrupt halt. Then taking it back. My happiness undone.

  If anyone knew how to listen properly, they’d hear all my secrets in the song I played.

  A calm came over me once I finished dumping my day onto the keyboard. I then played something familiar, comforting—one of the lullabies I’d written for the twins. I sang the melody as softly as I could, so nobody would hear me out in the hall.

  “That’s nice.”

  I spun around to see Molly Palmer sitting there, partly hidden by a bass drum, with a clarinet on her lap.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to scare you or spy on you or anything. I just sat down to practice when you walked in. I thought you saw me, but then you started playing and, well . . .”

  “It’s okay.” I quickly closed the lid of the piano and hurried for the door. I had forgotten Molly even played the clarinet. Her dad was a musician, I remembered. They had a little recording studio in their basement.