Our Song (12 page)

I slammed my locker shut, trying to focus on the fact that soon enough I’d be miles away from everything I was trying to forget, when I came face to face with Derek. He appeared out of nowhere, like he’d dropped out of one of the ceiling panels. He looked up at the exact same moment and just stared at me. It was the first time he had really looked at me since everything happened, without turning his head away or averting his gaze. It was like he really wanted to see me. His lips began to move as he took a step closer. The air became heavy with the odor of chalk and stinky sneakers. It felt like the yellow walls were
closing in on me. I had been desperate for Derek to talk to me, to acknowledge I still existed, for some sign of hope that I could cling to, but now that the moment had actually arrived, I took off in the other direction.

Annie was dancing wildly in the driver’s seat when I got to the car. She lowered the volume when she saw my expression. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I put on my sunglasses and took out my iPhone. “Mind if I plug this in?”

“Be my guest,” she said, detaching hers from the adapter and swapping mine in.

I cued up my play list, turned the volume loud enough that we couldn’t talk, and leaned back in my seat as we drove down Vista, aka Derek Memory Lane. What was he trying to tell me out in the hall? Just thinking about it gave me a queasy stomach.

I rolled down the window and tried to focus on the road ahead. It had been repaved when I was in the hospital. They redid it every year to fill the same potholes that kept coming back. Even though they only appeared on one part of the road, the city applied a fresh layer of asphalt to the whole boulevard, making it into one long, perfect strip, like a tarmac. But the more I stared at the inky surface, with its dotted lines the color of sunshine, the more I saw the gaping holes it was trying to cover.

I rolled the window back up and turned to Annie. “Let’s go into the city early today.”

• • •

When we got to L.A., I asked Annie to show me around her old neighborhood. We had plenty of time to kill, and it was only ten
minutes away from Hollywood. I felt bad about what I’d said earlier about her nonexistent exes. Even if Annie seemed to have forgotten it, I wanted to somehow make it up to her. It got me thinking again about how Derek used to call her a lesbian. It wasn’t just because of her hair, but how she never flirted with, or showed any sign of interest in, boys. I told him he was just full of himself because she never flirted with
him
. But now I was beginning to wonder if Derek had somehow been more perceptive about my best friend than I was.

“This is my old school.” Annie slowed down as we approached a quaint, red brick building. It looked like the kind of school you’d find on the East Coast, surrounded by tall trees and a grassy lawn.

“Wait, this is the infamous Potter School for Girls?” I asked as a group of students came out a side door in matching plaid skirts and white shirts. I recognized the uniform from Annie’s albums.

“The one and only,” she said, with a hint of wistfulness in her voice. Whenever she talked about it, the school always sounded like this magical oasis, where you didn’t have to worry about what to wear or who to impress. It was so small that there weren’t any cliques and everyone was friends, even with their teachers, whom they called by their first names. I wondered if feeling so safe and protected back then is what made Annie so confident and different now. Maybe by looking the same as everyone else on the outside back when she was little, she was free to be different on the inside. There was clearly no one else like her in Vista Valley, but we didn’t have any schools like this.

“This is where you met Jessica, right?” I knew that it was,
but I suddenly wondered if there was more to their friendship than Annie was letting on, not just to me, but maybe even to herself. I glanced at her from the corner of my eye to gauge her reaction. She just nodded and continued driving, until the school was just a red dot in the side view mirror.

We got an early bite at Annie’s favorite diner. It was where she and her parents used to go for Sunday brunch before they moved. She said it was the best place for people watching, a place where young hipsters stumbling home from a Saturday night out in Hollywood and local families like hers intersected. With its torn vinyl booths, old-fashioned jukebox, and tattooed clientele (both young and old), it was a far cry from my family’s Sunday brunch scene at the club. I couldn’t imagine my mother ever setting foot in a place like this.

• • •

“See you back here in an hour?” Annie said, checking her watch. This time we got to the community center with ten minutes to spare.

Flipping down the visor for one last glance in the mirror, I pushed my hair forward so it covered more of my face. I wondered if I’d ever get used to the person who now stared back at me. “Wish me luck,” I said as I hopped out of the car.

“Luck for what?” Annie called out after me, but I pretended I couldn’t hear her and ran through the cracked double doors. If I stopped now, I might never make it inside.

The security guard nodded as I hurried past him to room 109.

There were still a few empty seats as I made my way to the
circle, with most of the people from last week in their same spots. But there was no sign of Nick. What did I expect given how little he seemed to want to be here last time? It was stupid to think that he’d come back just for me. But that didn’t stop me from holding my breath every time the door creaked open. Or from deflating a little more each time it wasn’t him. I had the sinking fear that he wasn’t real, that maybe he was just a figment of my imagination, like the song running through my head.

“Let’s get started,” Stuart said, once all the movement and chair scraping had come to a stop. “We’ll go clockwise tonight, starting with Michael.”

I glanced toward the exit, hoping to see the door swing open, but it didn’t. No one else was coming.

A man two seats over cleared his throat. He looked like he was around my father’s age. He was dressed like my father too, in a suit with a fancy-looking leather briefcase tucked under his chair. I wondered if he had a wife and kids at home just like my dad, if he stayed up late at night drinking scotch while everyone else slept. “Pure bliss,” he said. “That’s the best way I can describe what it was like.”

He closed his eyes and let out a long, deep exhale, like he was reliving the moment right there. I could never imagine those words coming out of my dad’s mouth. I shifted to dislodge my thighs from the sticky plastic seat and wondered if Michael had been more like him before he died.

“I felt this overwhelming sense of cosmic unity,” said the woman to Michael’s left. It was hard to tell how old she was. Her dark hair had silver and white streaks running through
it, but her skin was smooth and wrinkle free. She could easily have been one of those people who turned prematurely gray at thirty or a sixty-year-old health freak.

Now it was my turn. My heart began to race as I glanced around the room. Beads of sweat formed at my temples as all eyes turned to me. It suddenly felt hot and stifling. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t belong here. I was nothing like these people. All I had to do was get up and make it across the room and out the door. Annie would be waiting for me on the other side. But a buzz swarmed into my head. It was so dizzying I wasn’t sure I could get up.

“Olive?” Stuart finally said after a sustained silence.

Just one step at a time
, I told myself as I peeled my legs off the chair. They felt leaden and heavy, like I was stuck in quicksand. Zeroing in on the red letters of the exit sign above the door, I bolted. I kept running down the darkened corridor, like I was stuck in a bad dream that would drag me back if I stopped for even a second.

The dying sunlight filtered in through the mottled double glass doors at the end of the hall. I was almost there. Just a few more steps to go when—

Bang.

I barreled into someone.

“Whoa, are you all right?”

It was Nick.

I doubled over, struggling to take in deep, heaving inhales, but seeing him only made it worse.

I felt his hand on my shoulder. “This way.”

I straightened up as he guided me over to the wall. “Stand here and close your eyes,” he instructed.

I leaned into the wall, my palms outstretched against the cool cement surface. “That’s it,” he said as I bowed my head and closed my eyes.

“Now.” He drew in closer, his lips almost brushing against my ear as he whispered. “I’m going to count to ten and all that matters are the numbers. Nothing else, okay?”

I nodded.

“Good. Here we go.
One. Two. Three…
”

His voice was so soft and commanding that my humiliation started to give way to an overall sense of calm, like he was hypnotizing me.

“
Six. Seven. Eight…
”

I was concentrating so hard on his voice that I realized it was the only thing I was hearing. Miraculously it had taken the place of all the buzzing in my head.

“
Nine. Ten.
”

When I opened my eyes, Nick was standing next to me, wearing the same navy blazer, the same red sneakers, and the same pair of ripped jeans. Seeing him again felt both natural and completely unexpected. It was like an almost-vu, where I almost but couldn’t quite remember experiencing this same feeling before.

“You cut your hair,” he said, studying my face in a way that made me uneasy and excited at the same time. I nodded. “You look more like yourself.”

The hint of a smirk edged up the corner of Nick’s mouth.
It made him look even cuter, if that were possible. “So, are you going to turn me down twice in a row?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I wasn’t trying to be coy. I just wished I knew what he was really thinking beneath his crooked smile and seductive voice. As much as I wanted to take him at face value, experience taught me that was a mistake.

“There’s only one way to find out,” Nick said, glancing toward the street. It was dusk now, hints of moonlight casting a shadow through the front doors. My heart raced with indecision. I thought about the person I used to be, and the new one—whoever she was—I so desperately wanted to become. The person Nick already seemed to recognize even if I didn’t.

“Fine,” I said, almost in defiance, telling myself this was different. This wasn’t about dating and happily ever after and all the things I was looking for with Derek. This was about adventure; this was about escape. “Let’s go.”

WE HADN’T EVEN
walked one block when I was seized by a nagging discomfort, a feeling that I was doing something very wrong. The guilt took up residence at the base of my gut but I still couldn’t stop, like Nick had cast some spell over me. When he wasn’t looking, I fished my cell out of my bag and sent Annie a text:
Got a ride home. Don’t worry.

The phone was already beeping with her response as I slipped it back in my purse. I ignored it and switched the ringer to vibrate. I hurried to catch up to Nick, who was now a few paces ahead. Without warning, he stepped off the curb and started across the middle of Hollywood Boulevard. Not even the cacophony of honking horns or tires coming to screeching halts made him slow down. He just kept going like he was Moses or something, parting the Red Sea. When he glanced back and saw that I wasn’t right behind him, he put his hands up to stop the traffic and gestured for me to follow.

He pulled a set of keys from his back pocket. Over by the curb, a forest-green Jaguar beeped twice. My eyes widened with
recognition. It was the same car he had been standing on at the club that afternoon. Up close I could see it was scraped and dented all over. Even the parking job (three feet from the curb with the rear, semi-detached bumper jutting out into the street) seemed like an invitation to be hit.

Nick walked around to the passenger side and opened the door for me, but I took a step back. Even though I’d seen him at the club, he was still a stranger, and from what I had to go on so far, a very unpredictable one. Every sensible molecule in my body was telling me not to get in the car. But the part of me that couldn’t sleep, the part that lay awake at night on the damp grass listening to a song in my head, was telling me something completely different.

“We can just stay around here if you want,” he said, reading my hesitation.

“No, it’s okay.” I put my hand out to stop him from closing the door and got in.

As he walked around to the other side of the car, I kept waiting for my senses to kick in, to convince me to get out while I still could. But the only thing I heard was the voice sweetly singing in my ear, telling me to let go.

Nick revved the engine then peeled out into the traffic, igniting another discordant round of honks. His face remained calm and his shoulders relaxed as he expertly weaved in and out of lanes. The only sign of effort was in the fast twitch of his hand as he shifted gears, like a seasoned racecar driver. The further down Hollywood Boulevard we went, the seedier it got. Sleazy lingerie stores, tattoo parlors, and cheap motels lined every
block. The sidewalks were littered with trash and grime, evidence of the thousands or maybe even millions of people that had walked up and down them. There was something about the dirt that made the area seem more alive, like it wasn’t pretending to be something else. Even the street signs and billboards were tagged with colorful graffiti. It looked like it had all been painted by the same person. I pictured the artist scaling the surrounding buildings and street lamps in the middle of the night like a ninja, but instead of a sword tucked into his belt, he had an array of spray paint cans. I had never seen anything like it, except in movies. There was never any graffiti in Vista Valley. The one time it did happen, the whitewashed buildings were scrubbed clean and picture perfect within hours, as if nothing had ever transpired. It was as if filth wasn’t permitted to exist there. My mother was captain of the people who made sure of it.

A few blocks later, Nick took a hard right onto a quieter street. The traffic thinned out and the Jaguar was practically the only car on the road. He tightened his grip on the stick and pressed down harder on the gas pedal. The sudden jolt of speed pushed me back against my seat. Storefronts, billboards, and street lamps whizzed past, blurring together into a Technicolor dream. It felt like we might launch into the air at any minute. I turned to Nick, whose eyes were fixed on the road. “So how do I know you’re not some crazy ax murderer who’s about to kidnap me?”