Lock and Key (17 page)

As we got closer to the house, I heard the music. At first, it was just a guitar, strumming, but then another instrument came in, more melodic. “All right,” someone said over the strumming. “Here’s an old favorite.”

I put Roscoe on the ground, then stepped closer to the assembled crowd. As a guy in a leather jacket standing in front of me shifted to the left, I saw it was Jamie who had spoken. He was sitting on one of the kitchen chairs, playing a guitar, a beer at his feet, a guy with a banjo nodding beside him as they went into an acoustic version of Led Zeppelin’s “Misty Mountain Hop.” His voice, I realized, was not bad, and his playing was actually pretty impressive. So strange how my brother-in-law kept surprising me: his incredible career, his passion for ponds, and now, this music. All things I might never have known had I found that gate the first night.

“Having fun?”

I turned around to see Denise, Cora’s friend, standing beside me. “Yeah,” I said. “It’s a big party.”

“They always are,” she said cheerfully, taking a sip of the beer in her hand. “That’s what happens when you’re overwhelmingly social. You accumulate a lot of people.”

“Jamie does seem kind of magnetic that way.”

“Oh, I meant Cora,” she replied as the song wrapped up, the crowd breaking into spontaneous applause. “But he is, too, you’re right.”

“Cora?” I asked.

She looked at me, clearly surprised. “Well . . . yeah,” she said. “You know how she is. Total den-mother type, always taking someone under her wing. Drop her in a roomful of strangers, and she’ll know everyone in ten minutes. Or less.”

“Really,” I said.

“Oh, yeah,” she replied. “She’s just really good with people, you know? Empathetic. I personally couldn’t have survived my last breakup without her. Or any of my breakups, really.”

I considered this as Denise took another sip of her beer, nodding to a guy in a baseball cap as he pushed past us. “I guess I don’t really know that side of her,” I said. “I mean, we’ve been out of touch for a while.”

“I know,” she said. Then she quickly added, “I mean, she talked about you a lot in college.”

“She did?”

“Oh, yeah. Like, all the time,” she said, emphatic. “She really—”

“Denise!” someone yelled, and she turned, looking over the shoulder of the guy beside us. “I need to get that number from you, remember?”

“Right,” she said, then smiled at me apologetically. “One sec. I’ll be right back. . . .”

I nodded as she walked away, wondering what she’d been about to say. Thinking this, I scanned the crowd until I spotted Cora standing just outside the kitchen door with Charlotte. She was smiling, looking much happier than the last time I’d seen her. At some point she’d pulled her hair back, making her look even younger, and she had on a soft-looking sweater, a glass of wine in her hand. Here I’d just assumed all these people were here because of Jamie, but of course my sister could have changed in the years we’d been apart.
She has her own life now
, my mom had told me again and again. This was it, and I wondered what that must be like, to actually get to start again, forget the world you knew before and leave everything behind. Maybe it had even been easy.

Easy. I had a flash of myself, just a week earlier, coming home from a long night at Commercial to the darkness of the yellow house. How much had I thought about it—my home or my school or anything from before—in the last few days? Not as much as I should have. All this time, I’d been so angry Cora had forgotten me, just wiped our shared slate clean, but now I was doing the same thing. Where
was
my mother? Was it really this easy, once you escaped, to just not care?

I suddenly felt tired, overwhelmed, everything that had happened in the last week hitting me at once. I stepped back from the crowd, slipping inside. As I climbed the stairs, I was glad for the enclosed space of my room, even if it, too, was temporary like everything else.

I just need to sleep, I told myself, kicking off my shoes and sinking down onto the bed. I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the singing, doing all I could to push myself into the darkness and stay there until morning.

When I woke up, I wasn’t sure how long I’d been asleep, hours or just minutes. My mouth was dry, my arm cramped from where I’d been lying on it. As I rolled over, stretching out, my only thought was to go back to the dream I’d been having, which I couldn’t remember, other than it had been good, in that distant, hopeful way unreal things can be. I was closing my eyes, trying to will myself back, when I heard some laughter and clapping from outside. The party was still going on.

When I went out onto my balcony, I saw the crowd had dwindled to about twenty people or so. The banjo player was gone, and just Jamie remained, plucking a few notes as people chatted around him.

“It’s getting late,” Charlotte, who’d put on a sweater over her dress, said. She stifled a yawn with her hand. “Some of us have to be up early tomorrow.”

“It’s Sunday,” Denise, sitting beside her, said. “Who doesn’t sleep in on Sunday?”

“One last song,” Jamie said. He glanced around, looking behind him to a place I couldn’t see from my vantage point. “What do you think?” he said. “One song?”

“Come on,” Denise pleaded. “Just one.”

Jamie smiled, then began to play. It was cold outside, at least to me, and I turned back to my room, feeling a yawn of my own rising up, ready to go back to bed. But then I realized there was something familiar about what he was playing; it was like it was tugging at some part of me, faint but persistent, a melody I thought was mine alone.

" ’I am an old woman, named after my mother....’”

The voice was strong and clear, and also familiar, but in a distant way. Similar to the one I knew, and yet different—prettier and not as harsh around the edges.

"’My old man is another child that’s grown old....’”

It was Cora. Cora, her voice pure and beautiful as it worked its way along the notes we’d both heard so many times, the song more than any other that made me think of my mother. I thought of how strange I’d felt earlier, thinking we’d both just forgotten everything. But this was scary, too, to be so suddenly connected, prompting a stream of memories—us in our nightgowns, her reaching out for me, listening to her breathing, steady and soothing, from across a dark room—rushing back too fast to stop.

I felt a lump rise in my throat, raw and throbbing, but even as the tears came I wasn’t sure who I was crying for. Cora, my mom, or maybe, just me.

Chapter Six

I could not prove it scientifically. But I was pretty sure Gervais Miller was the most annoying person on the planet.

First, there was the voice. Flat and nasal with no inflection, it came from the backseat, offering up pronouncements and observations. “Your hair’s matted in the back,” he’d tell me, when I hadn’t had adequate time with the blow-dryer. Or when I pulled a shirt last-minute from the laundry: “You stink like dryer sheets.” Attempts to ignore him by pretending to study only resulted in a running commentary on my academic prowess, or lack thereof. “Intro to Calculus? What are you, stupid?” or “Is that a
B
on that paper?” And so on.

I wanted to punch him. Daily. But of course I couldn’t, for two reasons. First, he was just a kid. Second, between his braces and his headgear, there was really no way to get at him and really make an impact. (The fact that I’d actually thought about it enough to draw this conclusion probably should have worried me. It did not.)

When it all got to be too much, I’d just turn around and shoot him the evil eye, which usually did the trick. He’d quiet down for the rest of the ride, maybe even the next day, as well. In time, though, his obnoxiousness would return, often even stronger than before.

In my more rational moments, I tried to feel empathy for Gervais. It had to be hard to be a prodigy, supersmart but so much younger than everyone else at school. Whenever I saw him in the halls, he was always alone, backpack over both shoulders, walking in his weird, leaning-forward way, as if powering up to head-butt someone in the chest.

Being a kid, though, Gervais also lacked maturity, which meant that he found things like burps and farts
hysterical
, and even funnier when they were his own. Put him in a small, enclosed space with two people every morning, and there was no end to the potential for hilarity. Suffice it to say, we always knew what he’d had for breakfast, and even though it was nearing winter, I often kept my window open, and Nate did the same.

On the Monday after Cora’s party, though, when I got into the car at seven thirty, something just felt different. A moment later, I realized why: the backseat was empty.

“Where’s Gervais?” I asked.

“Doctor’s appointment,” Nate said.

I nodded, then I settled into my seat to enjoy the ride. My relief must have been palpable, because a moment later Nate said, “You know, he’s not so bad.”

“Are you joking?” I asked him.

“I mean,” he said, “I’ll admit he’s not the easiest person to be around.”

“Please.” I rolled my eyes. “He’s
horrible
.”

“Come on.”

“He stinks,” I said, holding up a finger. Then, adding another, I said, “And he’s rude. And his burps could wake the dead. And if he says one more thing about my books or my classes I’m going to—”

It was at about this point that I realized Nate was looking at me like I was crazy. So I shut up, and we just drove in silence.

“You know,” he said after a moment, “it’s a shame you feel that way. Because I think he likes you.”

I just looked at him. “Did you not hear him tell me I was fat the other day?”

“He didn’t say you were
fat
,” Nate replied. “He said you looked a little rotund.”

“How is that different?”

“You know,” he said, “I think you’re forgetting Gervais is twelve.”

“I assure you I am not.”

“And,” he continued, “boys at twelve aren’t exactly slick with the ladies.”

“‘Slick with the ladies’?” I said. “Are
you
twelve?”

He switched lanes, then slowed for a light. “He teases you,” he said slowly, as if I was stupid, “
because
he likes you.”

“Gervais does not like me,” I said, louder this time.

“Whatever.” The light changed. “But he never talked to Heather when she rode with us.”

“He didn’t?”

“Nope. He just sat back there, passing gas, without comment. ”

“Nice,” I said.

“It really was.” Nate downshifted as we slowed for a red light. “All I’m saying is that maybe he just wants to be friends but doesn’t exactly know how to do it. So he says you smell like trees or calls you rotund. That’s what kids do.”

I rolled my eyes, looking out the window. “Why,” I said, “would Gervais want to be friends with me?”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“Because I’m not a friendly person?” I said.

“You’re not?”

“Are you saying you think I am?”

“I wouldn’t say you’re unfriendly.”

“I would,” I said.

“Really.”

I nodded.

“Huh. Interesting.”

The light changed, and we moved forward.

“Interesting,” I said, “meaning what?”

He shrugged, switching lanes. “Just that I don’t see you that way. I mean, you’re reserved, maybe. Guarded, definitely. But not unfriendly.”

“Maybe you just don’t know me,” I said.

“Maybe,” he agreed. “But unfriendly is usually one of those things you pick up on right away. You know, like B.O. There’s no hiding it if it’s there.”

I considered this as we approached another light. “So when we met that first night,” I said, “by the fence, you thought I was friendly?”

“I didn’t think you weren’t,” he said.

“I wasn’t very nice to you.”

“You were jumping a fence. I didn’t take it personally.”

“I didn’t even thank you for covering for me.”

“So? ”

“So I should have. Or at least not been such a bitch to you the next day.”

Nate shrugged, putting on his blinker. “It’s not a big deal.”

“It is, though,” I said. “You don’t have to be so nice to everyone, you know.”

“Ah,” he said, “but that’s the thing. I do. I’m compulsively friendly.”

Of course he was. And I’d noticed it first thing that night by the fence, because it, too, was something you couldn’t hide. Maybe I could have tried to explain myself more to Nate, that there was a reason I was this way, but he was already reaching forward, turning on the radio and flipping to WCOM, the local community station he listened to in the mornings. The DJ, some girl named Annabel, was announcing the time and temperature. Then she put on a song, something peppy with a bouncy beat. Nate turned it up, and we let it play all the way to school.

When we got out of the car, we walked together to the green, and then I peeled off to my locker, just like always, while he headed to the academic building. After I’d stuffed in a few books and taken out a couple of others, I shut the door, hoisting my bag back over my shoulder. Across the green, I could see Nate approaching his first-period class. Jake Bristol and two other guys were standing around outside. As he walked up, Jake reached out a hand for a high five, while the other two stepped back, waving him through. I was late myself, with other things to think about. But I stayed there and watched as Nate laughed and stepped through the door, and they all fell in, following along behind him, before I turned and walked away.

“All right, people,” Ms. Conyers said, clapping her hands. “Let’s get serious. You’ve got fifteen minutes. Start asking questions.”

The room got noisy, then noisier, as people left their seats and began to move around the room, notebooks in hand. After slogging my way through an extensive test on
David Copperfield
(ten IDs, two essays), all I wanted to do was collapse. Instead, to get us started on our “oral definition” projects, we were supposed to interview our classmates, getting their opinions on what our terms meant. This was good; I figured I needed all the help I could get, considering the way I defined my own family kept changing.