Song of Summer (26 page)

It's an hour before the organist is done playing. The vibrations resonate in my chest one last time and I feel them echo in the outer parts of my body until the air stops flowing through the pipes. I open my eyes, which had been closed. I start to thank Lenny one more time, but he's asleep, snoring against the railing. I carefully exit the room and run back to my house.

For the first time in weeks I have a purpose. I can't just let her go. I need to give it another chance. I dig through the pile of stuff on my once-tidy dresser, looking for a card…

I find it and visit the website. “Asaph the Flutecrafter,” scrolls across the screen. I click on “Contact Us” and see that the store is located in Finleyville—about a half hour away.

I pound down the stairs and into the living room, where Mom looks up from her book at me with a question in her eyes.

“Where are you off to in such a rush?” she asks.

“I have to buy something!” I sign.

“What thing? Are you okay?”

“An instrument! For Robin!”

Her face turns guarded. “I don't know if that's a good idea, Carter. She hurt you pretty bad.”

“I know! But it doesn't have to end like that.”

What I don't say is that maybe I touched her soul the first time she saw me. Like she touched mine. Maybe the music will stir her like it stirred me.

Mom looks away and sighs, shaking her head slightly. I wave my hand to get her attention.

“Please, Mom! Please. Can I take the bike out?”

At that, she sets her jaw. “No, Carter. We've talked about this. You're grounded from the bike.”

“But it's important!” I sign. “So important!”

“I'm sorry, Carter. No bike.”

My mind races. “Then can I take the car? Or can you give me a ride? It's not far!”

I see her thinking about it.

“Please,” I sign. “Please, Mom.”

She looks at me, face grim, and I see her answer before she gives it. “No,” she signs. “I can't. I don't think it's a good decision and I won't help you make what I think is a bad decision.”

“Please!” I sign. “You always say that you want us to make mistakes and learn from them! Let me make this mistake!”

She shakes her head again. “You made your mistake. You kept the bike out past dark without telling me. That was your mistake. I hope you learn from it.”

My mother is immovable. I clench my jaw.

“Fine,” I sign. I stiffen, turning toward the stairs, keeping everything under wraps until I shut my door. Then I throw myself on my bed and punch the pillow. Barry's out of town for the week. I can't use his car. It's no use asking Dad. My parents are fanatics about being “on the same team.” It's hopeless.

Unless…

I drag myself back to the computer, where “Asaph, the Flutecrafter”'s page is still on the screen. I scroll through the inventory. Robin's flute is called a “pennywhistle,” I discover. I scroll through until I find the little brass whistle that had Robin so entranced. I choose an engraving: “Songbird,” in script. I choose a bag: navy blue velvet. I choose a case: teak box with brass fittings. The whole thing takes about an hour and sets me back a good bit; about half the money from Barry's ASL lessons. I know better than to ask my parents for the cash. But it's worth every penny. I'll have it sent to her house. I just wish I could see her face when she opens it. I find the FAQ section and read through it. Yes, everything on the website is in stock. Engraving only takes one day. It should ship the next day. After choosing two-day shipping, I know she should get it by the end of the week, when I leave for home.

I'm just about to hit Send when I change my mind; I mail it to myself.

Robin

“Robin? You up there?”

I'm lying on my bed with my feet up against the wall, playing blues riffs. “No!” I yell. “Someone else is in my room playing B. B. King!” Blues is not always my thing, but it's great for technique and super fun to jam to.

Jenni pokes her head around the door frame. “Ha-ha. Glad I caught you. Just stopped by to drop something off. Can't stay too long.”

I make a face and sing, still upside down. “Ba-bananaNA. I have a buddy… Ba-bananaNA. And she's so cool… Ba-bananaNA. We are both seniors… and we're almost back to school! I got the
bluuuuuues
…”

Jenni joins in. “I got the ‘my-rich-guy-summer-fling-is-going-back-to-Albany-'cause-it's-almost-time-for-school' blues.”

I stop playing the guitar.

“Aw, I'm sorry.”

Jenni shrugs. “It's okay. We both knew it was just a summer thing.” She plops down on my bed, causing the guitar neck to bounce and my hands to fumble. “Anyway, I made my first online sale. Somebody bought two keychains and asked for a vest!”

“Really?” I look up.

“Yeah! Pretty cool. They're paying, like, a ton for the vest.”

“Nice,” I say. “Congrats.”

“Here: catch.” She throws a pile of soft cloth in my face. Once I get past the initial sweet smell of homemade waffle cones, I smell spiced oranges and motorcycle exhaust and Asian food: Carter's house.

After a flood of memories, my right hand takes the pile of sweet-smelling cloth off my face. It's my All-State select choir sweatshirt.

“What's this?” I ask.

“It's your All-State sweatshirt,” says Jenni.

“Thanks. I mean, where did you get it? I've been looking for it for a while.”

“It's been in my car for forever. Trina gave it to me to give to you a couple of days after you guys broke up. Sorry.”

“I'm glad it's not lost.”

“Yeah.” She pauses a minute. “So how are you doing?”

I shrug. “Fine, I guess.” My fingers start to noodle around in the key of A. “Better than last week, you know? Kind of wish I'd known it would just be a summer thing.” I bend a C-sharp until it's a D. “Did you know? That it would only be a summer thing for me and Carter?”

Jenni shrugs. “I didn't know. I guessed, maybe. Just because of logistics and whatever. But it really seemed like the real thing to me.”

I sigh. “Yeah. Yeah, it really did.” My hands stretching, fiddling with the baby E string, going into a range only classical musicians or rock gods can perfect. Jenni makes a face. “I think I could forgive him,” I say for the millionth time, “if he hadn't lied to me for the whole summer.”

Jenni nods.

“Like, if he'd told me that he has an implant but just doesn't want to wear it… I think I could have handled that. But he never told me! He just let me think that he could hear absolutely nothing! That it wasn't even a choice for him to hear my music!”

Jenni looks away, studying my Decemberists poster too intently. Something's up.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she says.

“What?” I ask again. “Come on, Jenni. Tell me. I can take it.”

She begins to play with the split ends in her hair. “I just… I don't know if that's true. Can you imagine somebody that you like—”

“Love—”

“Love… telling you that he
could
listen to your music, he
could
hear it, he just doesn't want to? How crappy would that feel?”

I let that question bounce around in my head and my fingers slow to a stop. “Pretty crappy,” I say finally.

“So… you still think you would have stayed with him if he'd told you?”

“Well, there would have been a chance anyway.”

“You mean there would have been a chance that you could have bugged him enough to put it in and listen to you play so you could blow his mind and fulfill a void he never knew he had!” She swings her arms around in what is supposed to be an imitation of me, then calms down and looks me straight in the eye. “I know you, Robin. You wouldn't have let it rest.”

I shrug. “Maybe… I mean, people change.”

“And that's probably why he didn't tell you. Because he wanted you to like him the way he was. Without him having to change.”

I sigh and roll off of my bed, leaving my guitar lying on it. “Well, he still shouldn't have lied.”

“And I agree with you there. He shouldn't have lied about something so big. But I can see why he did.” She picks up a magazine from off my floor and I get the sense that the conversation is over. We can only rehash this breakup so many times.

I walk over to my computer and she sits next to the guitar on my bed, her back against the wall, engrossed in whatever article she's reading.

“Maybe I'll unblock him.”

“It's up to you.”

“We'll see.” I wiggle the computer mouse and the screen wakes up—YouTube. The videos that are recommended for me are lining the side of my screen. Among all of my favorite music videos I see, “Cochlear Implants: A Simulation.”

I've seen that video recommended for me before—must be from all of the CI activation videos I watched before. I don't know why I haven't watched it. I guess I just thought that it couldn't be that different from hearing the way I hear. After all, Trina's chirpy little voice sounds just like every other nine-year-old I know. How could she be hearing different things from all the rest of us?

I click Play. It's not really a video; there are no people in it. There aren't even any pictures. It's just a sound bar with words. “Sentence, voiced,” it reads, “1 channel.”

One channel? What does that mean? Evidently not much, because what comes out of my speakers sounds like sandpaper or static.

“What's that?” Jenni looks up from the magazine.

“Some video about cochlear implants,” I say. “This is supposedly what it sounds like to hear with one.”

“It doesn't sound like much,” she says.

“I think it gets better,” I reply as “4 Channels,” scrolls across the screen. But the sounds coming from my speakers still don't sound human, let alone like speech. “8 Channels,” and I can kind of understand a few words. “12 Channels” sounds like words, but I don't know what they are. Finally, “20 channels” comes up. “A cat always lands on its feet,” says a robotic voice that sounds something like a multivoiced chorus of Borg aliens from
Star Trek: The Next Generation
.

“That's it?” Jenni says. “It doesn't really sound human.”

“Yeah… ,” I say.

Then the sentence plays again, just a plain recording of the person. Like every other recording I hear. And what I thought was a Borg chorus is a child's voice.

What?

I shoot a look to Jenni. “Whoa… ,” I say.

I click on Replay Video and listen again. This time I catch the words earlier, at the twelve channels mark, because I know what the kid is saying. But it still doesn't sound like a kid. This time when the kid is done talking, I realize that the video hasn't finished yet.

“Jenni! They're going to play music!”

She puts down the magazine and watches the screen from across the room. “What's it say?” she asks, as text appears on the screen.

“Just that this kind of music is the easiest for CI users to understand. It's a solo instrument that's not too high or too low, with a strong beat.”

But the first track, played on four channels, sounds nothing like that. I laugh. It's not a single-note instrument at all! This song is a rocking industrial piece that sounds like something out of
Stomp
. Poles bang against sheet metal and electronic static distorts the percussion.

I turn around and laugh to Jenni. “This is awesome! Too bad the description's wrong.”

She smiles and nods but avoids my eyes.

Eight channel sounds a lot like four channels. The beats are cleaned up a little, but it's still the same rhythmic industrial piece. The song continues on into twelve channels. If anything, it sounds worse. The beats have developed some deep, strange, sonar-like echo. It sounds like somebody's breathing into a microphone with the pickup turned way too high.

I shoot a confused look at Jenni. “It'll get better,” I say. “It's not at twenty channels yet.”

“How many channels does Carter have?” she asked.

“I don't know. Probably as many as they make. He can afford it, after all.”

I let the music play on to twenty channels. The strong, steady beat gets higher, sounding kind of like a tambourine or a hi-hat. The deep, sonar-like sounds change pitch slightly, but there's still no discernable melody.

“See, that was a little better,” I say to Jenni. “Now it's supposed to play the normal music recording. It'll probably be so close. Like the voice was. Just maybe sound more… unplugged.”

She nods at me, eyebrows creased, but her worry is unwarranted. I mean, it's an electronic industrial piece. How different can it be?

And then a tambourine starts playing, clear as day. My brain barely has time to register its surprise when another instrument starts: a guitar.

This song is folk music. Scandinavian folk music. I would know it anywhere. It's a country dance played by a guitar and a tambourine.

It can't be possible. This song sounds nothing like the cochlear implant translations of it. Tears prick my eyes.

“Robin… ?” Jenni asks. “Are you okay?”

I nod and I replay the whole thing. Yes, the speech makes more sense as more channels are added. But the music? The music through the cochlear implant is nothing like the music that I hear. Nothing. There is almost no comparison.

All I'd ever seen about CIs were the miraculous activations—the people who started crying at hearing their own voice or their mom's voice or their spouse's voice. The little kids who smiled and clapped their hands. I play the video again. I try desperately to hear any inkling of the guitar. I close my eyes. I play it again. I try again.

By the end of the third time through, Jenni is crouching by my side.