Our Song (17 page)

“Are you serious?” I wondered if the alcohol was slurring his thoughts. He didn’t sound anything like the person standing right in front of me, also known as my father. I had no idea that he’d ever written
anything
, much less that he was apparently good at it. “How long were you gone?”

“Almost two months. I drove across the country, mainly through the South. I’d stop in towns along the way whenever I
ran out of money, which was every couple of days. I picked up odd jobs here and there, bussing tables, milking cows. Whatever I could get to make ends meet and get me to the next town.” He sat back down and stared out the window again, like his mind was somewhere else, maybe back in one of those towns.

I couldn’t picture my dad pulling on a cow’s udder. Every time I tried, he was wearing a three-piece suit. “Why’d you come back?”

“My parents eventually tracked me down with the help of a private investigator. They threatened to cut me off if I wasn’t back in time to start college.” He paused to finish off his drink. “And your mother was waiting for me. We were married by the end of that year.”

“What if they never found you? What would have happened?” My breath stuck in my chest, like I had suddenly been plunged under water. I knew what would have happened. He wouldn’t have married my mother. I wouldn’t exist.

“I don’t ask myself those kinds of questions. It was too long ago.”

For the first time in my life, I felt sorry for my father. For being forced to come back, for believing that a book could really change his life forever. Even I knew that it took something much bigger than that.

“I like your hair like that.” He swept a stray piece out of my face. It reminded me of when he used to tuck me in at night back when I was little. He’d always make sure to pull my hair out from under me and fan it out on my pillow so it wouldn’t get tangled while I slept. “Is it the new style?”

“Not exactly.” I reached back and felt for the bald patch around the wound, but it was no longer bald. Wispy strands had grown in around the ridge of uneven skin. It was practically long enough to pull into a ponytail again. “Mom hates it.”

“Did she say that?”

“She doesn’t have to.”

He let out a deep sigh and closed his eyes for so long I thought he might have fallen asleep. “I’m sure she’ll come around.”

I didn’t believe him. My mom had barely been able to look at me since the accident. At least not in the way she used to. With pride.

“And she means well,” he added after a long pause, like he was trying to convince himself more than me. His voice was heavy and he looked tired. The etchings of deep wrinkles settled across his forehead in a permanent state of concern. His hair had even started to whiten on the sides. “It’s probably best we keep this conversation between us.”

Yeah, obviously
. “Okay.”

He stood up, the chair scraping loudly behind him. He headed for the door and turned around. “You coming?”

“Not yet.” I tightened my grip around my phone. Just thinking of Nick holding it a few minutes ago sent a tremor of excitement through my body. “I’m going to grab a snack.”

“All right, but don’t stay up too much later. You have to be up for school in a few hours.”

I let out a wry smile. Little did he know that I had been staying up long after him for weeks. After he left I turned out the lights, sat in his vacated seat, and stared out the window into the
garden. I reached for the almost empty glass he had left on the table. It was wet from condensation and contained mostly melted ice. When I took a sip, it had the vague and acrid taste of poison. My dad’s confession had made me realize that my dad was really just a person, like me. That he also had a life he wanted to escape.

As I stood to leave, my father’s suit jacket slipped off the back of the chair. A piece of paper from the front pocket fell to the floor. There was just enough moonlight streaming in to make out what it was—a receipt for the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. From tonight, check-in at 7:13
P.M.
, check-out at 12:48
A.M.
I waited for confusion or anger or even guilt for finding it to wash over me. But if anything, I felt relieved that I wasn’t the only one in this house keeping secrets. Even if his secret could destroy our family, or whatever was left of it.

I picked up the receipt, crumpled it in my hand, and went out to the garden.

My throat tightened as I passed the greenhouse.

Trailing my hand along the glass, I walked around to the south-facing side, where a string of plants sat perched on a shelf. All the orchids were headless, brown, and seemingly dead, except for the one on the end, which was in full bloom. As I examined the three small, delicate petals blossoming from its stem, the lecture my mother gave Derek the time she walked in on us in the greenhouse came rushing back to me. “Every flower has three sepals,” she had explained, pointing them each out. “And this one here is the labellum.” She had tickled the petal at the base of the flower, like it was a pet, adding, “It’s also sometimes called the lip.”

“I thought your mom was going to have an orgasm in there,” Derek had said later that night when I walked him to his car. “I can’t wait to touch your labellum.” I had stood motionless on the sidewalk, mortified by how humiliating my mother could be, as he patted my behind and pecked me on the cheek before driving off. But now, something angry bubbled up inside me. Without thinking, I picked up a pebble and whipped it against the window, nicking the corner. It was barely visible, but making a crack in the glass house somehow made me feel better.

I ran to the back of the garden, away from the greenhouse, and held my breath as I waited for a light to go on in the house. The stone had made such a loud pinging sound when it bounced off the glass that I was sure my dad, who was still awake, or my mom, who had supersonic hearing, would have noticed. But nothing happened.

Lying down on the ground, I inhaled the sweet smell of freshly cut grass. Spears of moonlight poked through the dangling leaves overhead. It was hard to believe I had been staring up at the same night sky with Nick just an hour earlier. I thought of him sprawled out on the cool, desert ground. Of how much further his legs stretched out than mine, the curve of his uneven nose in profile, the flash of his intense eyes, and the face of his broken watch. The images whirled and collided, as if I was viewing him through a kaleidoscope.

I swept my arm across the empty patch of grass to my right, half expecting Nick to still be there next to me. The song whistled back in like it was being carried by a distant wind. I closed my eyes and listened carefully when the notes took a sudden,
unexpected turn. They sounded rushed, more urgent, lost even, until his voice broke through.

Your voice is like an angel

I can hear without sound.

They were new lyrics. I sat up and strained my ears to hear more, imagining they were Nick’s words, that he was the one singing to me.

My leaden heart starts floating

Whenever you’re around
.

His voice rose above the roiling notes, reaching a breathy pitch that was simultaneously confident and vulnerable, like it encompassed the span of human experience.

I released my grip and smoothed out the wrinkled hotel receipt. A silent gust blew in and lifted the tissue-thin paper up into the sky. I lay back down and watched it recede into the blackness, like a kite without a string, when I felt my necklace snag on my hair. Lurching myself to my knees, I leaned forward and began to dig into the ground at the base of the tree, rustling free earthworms and stray stones caked in moist earth. I didn’t stop until I’d carved out a perfect hole. The next thing I did was unclasp the chain, drop it into the ground, and fill it back up, burying the gold heart until there was no sign that it ever existed.

“YOU HAVE TEN
minutes left,” Miss Porter announced. She was observing us from her desk at the front of the class.

I stared down at my blue booklet, then back up at the question written out on the board.

Virginia Woolf created Septimus Warren Smith as a double for Clarissa Dalloway. In what ways are they similar? In what ways are they different?

I still hadn’t made it past page ten of
Mrs. Dalloway
, so I had no idea who Septimus was or what the question even meant.

I chewed on the end of my pen, watching everyone else busily writing away. Some people had even filled up the entire blue book and were almost through their second. I used to be like them. But now, my booklet was empty.

It was midterm week. I’d managed to scrape by the exams in my other classes, especially the ones that were mostly multiple choice, like American history and bio. But there was no faking an essay based on a book I’d never read.

Miss Porter’s chair scraped against the linoleum floor as she
stood up. With her hands clasped behind her back, she walked up and down the aisles, peering at our progress.

“You should start wrapping it up now,” she said, glancing over students’ shoulders.

I looked down at the blank page then back up at Miss Porter. She was one row away. Without thinking, I turned my pen around and started writing. She stopped when she reached my desk. She was standing so close I could smell her perfume. It was a light floral bouquet that didn’t make me want to gag like the sickly sweet perfume my mother doused herself with five times daily. I hunched further over my blue book and tried to cover the page with my forearm. I didn’t want her to see what I was writing. Not now anyway. Not in front of the whole class. To my great relief, she resumed her stroll a few seconds later.

“Please put your pens down and bring your booklets to me.”

There was a series of moans and the typical pleas for just a few more minutes as people started to shuffle toward her desk. I hung back until the line thinned out before adding mine to the neat pile.

I was almost to the door when Miss Porter called me back. “Olive, I’d like to talk to you for a minute.”

My shoulders slumped and I turned around. She lifted my booklet off the stack and opened it to the first page. Apparently she had noticed me, after all.

“Is this a poem?” Miss Porter asked.

I shook my head. They were the lyrics from the song. I was barely aware that I had written them down. They just rolled off
my pen as naturally as air being exhaled from a lung. I was just relieved that I hadn’t scribbled
Olive + Nick
across the page inside little hearts, the way my mother had.

“It’s beautiful.” She closed the book, returning it to the pile. “But it wasn’t the assignment.”

“I know,” I said, looking down at my feet. I thought about my conversation with my father the other night and the stories he had written when he was in high school. I wondered what they were about, and if he still had them.

“Have you even read the book?”

I shook my head again. There was no point lying. It was already patently obvious that I hadn’t, because if I had, I would have been able to fake it enough to fill half a blue book.

“I’m not trying to scare you, Olive, but I need you to be aware of the consequences. If you fail the midterm, you won’t pass this class. And if you don’t pass, it’s highly likely that you won’t get into college. I’m rooting for you, Olive. I want you to succeed. I really do. But you have to try to meet me halfway.”

I used to wonder how the usual problem kids felt when they were called out like this. I always assumed it was shame or humiliation that lurked beneath their blank, defiant expressions, because otherwise how could they live with themselves? But I was starting to see things another way. It was too hard to care about this kind of stuff anymore, even with my future at stake.

“I’m going to give you another chance. You can make up for the exam by writing a ten-page paper on the same topic. You have until the end of the semester to turn it in.”

“Thanks.” I knew it was the right thing to say since she
was being so kind. But I felt so removed, like I was floating on a cloud, looking down at my life. From that vantage point, all this effort to get good grades just to go to college and do the same thing there all over again seemed pointless, like a way to avoid really living. I was starting to realize that I had spent my life trying to make
other
people happy—Derek, my parents, my teachers. But what was the point? If nothing else, surviving death had taught me that, and spending time with Nick confirmed it. He was the first one to show me that there was more to life than what went on within these walls. And he was all I could think about.

• • •

“Can you hear me?”

I was taking a drink from the outdoor water fountain by the front entrance when Derek tapped me on the shoulder. The school day was over and I was waiting for Annie to finish a yearbook meeting.

“What’s that?” Startled, I straightened up and removed an earbud.

“I’m glad to see those things aren’t glued in.” He lifted the loose earbud dangling from my neck and began twirling it around his finger. “I was just saying leave some for the rest of us,” he said, gesturing to the water fountain. He was standing close enough that I could smell his Old Spice deodorant.

“Oh, yeah, sure,” I said, taking a step back so he could take a drink. It felt so strange to be standing here talking to him after such a long silence. Six weeks to be exact. What was even stranger was that I hadn’t thought about him once all day.

“And that was a joke. Are you okay?” He asked it casually, like we still hung out all the time.

“Yeah.” I instinctively reached up for the heart around my neck, forgetting that I had buried it. I dropped my hand back by my side. “Why?”

“You look like you have a headache.”

“What do you mean?”

“You always kind of squint your eyes and get this cute indentation on your forehead when your head hurts. It’s right here,” he said, pressing his finger above my left eye.

I waited to feel some jolt or sense of excitement at his touch, but I didn’t feel anything except confused. “Well, I feel fine.”