The Sound of Letting Go (27 page)

It’s the push to perfect the Christmas carols

for the holiday concert.

I hesitate at the door

as the final round of “Good King Wenceslas” ends

on a long, slow note.

“Nice to see you, Daisy.” Mr. Orson waves his hand.

I put my music on the stand, unpack my trumpet,

grin at the back of Dave’s head,

brown hair mushed against the outside

of the music room window.

It’s like I’ve never left

the only place that feels like it hasn’t changed.

Lunch is chicken burger and kernel corn,

Ned and Justine making out inches from my tray,

Cal, who has joined us,

looking studiously in any other direction.

Cal’s troubles—

Mrs. Ackerman and the threat of returning to Ireland—

are still his secrets,

though I think maybe if he asked Jasper,

the town might reach out to help.

It is hard to know when it’s right to be silent

and when it’s right to make noise.

I chew, muse,

watch prom-queen-purposeful Ashleigh Anderson

taping signs

announcing the upcoming Black-and-White Dance

along the cafeteria walls. As soon as she leaves

to plaster the rest of the halls,

Josh Belden starts pulling the flyers down

with equal enthusiasm.

“Hey, Daisy-brains, comin’ out back?”

It’s Dave, with his tray,

a tantalizing glimmer in his eye.

Beside me,

I half feel, half see Ned and Justine exchange a look.

I’m pushed and pulled,

wanting to bury myself in the timelessness

of Dave’s eager kisses

but tired of not knowing

what’s going on between us,

feeling a little uncertain, a little unsafe,

like I’m driving toward a bend in the road

with no idea of what lies beyond the curve.

In jazz, letting go of the melody,

finding your own way through a tune, feels beautiful,

free;

I want being with Dave to feel the same.

Instead I am jealous of Justine and Ned,

tempted to kiss Cal,

mostly because I’m pretty sure he would kiss me back.

What I want to feel is Dave

clear and for certain—

not like this.

“I really can’t have any more tardies

on my attendance record.”

I try to smile a please-see-through-this-tough-act-and-

tell-me-what-we-are smile,

but that’s a complicated expression

and Dave’s toss of his overgrown bangs,

his straight-backed turn-on-heel,

makes me pretty sure I’ve failed.

The folks at Holland House told Mom

Steven wasn’t settled in enough for a family visit yet,

but she and Dad head out early Wednesday morning

all the same.

“Even,” Mom says, “if all I get to do

is glimpse the back of him through a window.”

I guess everyone has his or her own way of coping.

Some go, some stay.

I managed one day at school,

but two in a row seems impossible.

I picture jazz band, homeroom, A-PUSH,

like Civil War daguerreotypes,

artifacts from an ancient life,

preceding a present I am unable to endure.

Still in my pajamas, I crawl downstairs to the family room,

watch, unseeing, as HBO offers

some happy movie about pioneering teachers.

At ten, the doorbell, already adjusted by Dad

to a Steven-less higher volume, startles me.

I wrap my pajama top tighter around me,

creep to the front door. Skip over formal niceties.

“Shouldn’t you be at school, Cal?”

“Shouldn’t you?”

I step aside to let Cal pass,

see him take in our polished hardwood,

white-painted moldings,

the tufted leather couch in the living room to the right.

“I didn’t mean to be rude,” Cal continues.

“I mean, I heard, o’ course, about your brother.”

“Who hasn’t?” My arms unfurl,

my flannel pajamas flutter loose around my middle.

“Nothing is ever sacred in Jasper.

Sometimes I just hate this town.”

“I dunno. It’s nice when people care.

Everyone’s so proud of your music.

Mrs. Ackerman even showed me a YouTube video

of you playing your trumpet on some PBS program

when you were ten years old.”

He stops, as if re-watching it in his mind.

“Wow.” I try to seem offhanded,

but I think I’m turning as pink as the Irish boy.

“I haven’t heard a compliment in a while.”

He gives a funny little nod, stiff and proper.

“Come in. I’m gonna get dressed.

You can wait here.”

He sits at the kitchen island, watches

while I start some coffee.

Up in my room, I slip into jeans, a sweatshirt,

a pair of yellow Keds

emblazoned with powder-blue quarter notes.

The coffee is brewed when I get back downstairs.

I fill two mugs,

sit in the second wrought-iron barstool at the island.

“Maybe we could work on the Civil War project,”

I suggest.

“I dunno. It seems a waste to do homework since

I doubt I’ll be goin’ to Evergreen High much longer.

Even though the place feels like freedom to me

compared t’ my life in Dublin.”

“Any luck finding a new place to stay?” I ask.

He sips his coffee, shakes his head, expression grim.

“Took ages to get Da to let me come to America

on this exchange program.

Figured, once I got here, I’d find a way to stay . . .”

His watercolor blue eyes are wet with dreams

and sorrows

and maybe a little loneliness—

more emotion, expression,

than a face has borne in my family’s kitchen

for a long, long time.

“
Slavery
’s a complicated word, isn’t it?

You ran away from a kind of slavery.

It’s been only a week since I—

Since my parents and I have been set free

from my brother.”

“Worst thing about coming to America

is missin’ my little brother, Jeremy.

But maybe you understand?”

His expression isn’t nosy, just curious.

And for once, I don’t feel angry.

“Explaining autism is like trying to put the way you

hold your lips, your cheeks,

the way you breathe to buzz into the trumpet, into words.

The only true understanding is inside,

once you’ve made the sound yourself.

I can’t explain what living with Steven was like

any more than I will be able to understand

what happens in Steven’s mind,

but I can tell you, even though it was frightening,

having him gone . . . well, it hurts.”

“I wonder,” Cal says. “If we could write about our slave,

the way he misses others from the plantation he fled.

How there was happiness there,

even if it came without freedom.

There was family.”

We don’t work on our project;

just sit in companionable silence, sipping coffee,

letting honesty settle around us,

like the snow that begins to fall outside.

“Look!” I point at the flakes outside the kitchen window.

“Let’s go!”

He follows me out the back door.

Coatless and shivering, we watch fat flakes hit the ground.

This time, I think, it’s going to stick.

This time, I think,

I can make it through two days of jazz band,

maybe three in a row.

I scoop my hand along the patio table, collecting

the thin layer of wet snow that has collected there;

pack it into a ball.

Toss it at Cal, who turns, takes it full on the mouth.

“Hey, no fair!”

“Were there rules?”

I tease, running toward the back fence.

He catches me round the waist, spins me,

rubbing a fistful of snow into my hair.

I am giggling when I see a long shadow

in the corner of our yard.

“Who’s there?” I call out,

joy replaced by horror-movie panic.

I chase the shadow around to the front yard

in time to see a Ford Fiesta veer

backward out of my driveway,

too fast for the unplowed road.

I turn to Cal, who has followed me.

“I’m sorry, I’ve got to . . .”

“I know. You’ve got to go after him.”

I find the Fiesta parked down by the boat dock.

Dave is sitting on the hood, messing with his phone.

“Dave!” I yell,

running down the slippery hillside of frozen grass.

“What you saw, that wasn’t what you think.”

Slowly, slowly, he turns to look at me.

“No? I thought you’d decided to stop mucking up your attendance record.

Instead you cut a whole day of school and . . .”

I stop running.

Dave slides off his car into the muddy sand,

stares at the space in between us.

“After my parents split and we moved across town,

I felt like I didn’t measure up anymore.

Then the babies came.

Dad told me he couldn’t keep saving for my college.

Andy Bouchard doesn’t owe me anything,

even if he does have the cash.

So what was the point of working at school, friendships . . . dreams? I just let go.

Then, last summer, I had to drive my stepmom

and the babies to the pediatrician.

In the waiting room, I saw you: front page of the
Jasper Weekly
in a dorktastic white shirt, black ribbon tie.

You’d been chosen for the Honor Band of America

for the second time. Amazing!

But all my stepmom could talk about

was the gossip she’d heard about Steven.”

The break in his voice makes me tremble

more than the wind whipping my uncombed hair,

drafting through my thin sweatshirt.

“You were so brave, despite everything, playing on.

I realized what I’d lost by giving up.

So I started trying again, learning programming

from YouTube videos and library books.

Got way too familiar with that egg chair.

Then school started and I wanted to be near you,

like it was the next step.”

“This isn’t kindergarten, Dave.

I couldn’t save my brother, my own family.

Can’t even help Cal find a place to stay for next semester.”

He looks up sharply at the name.

“He’s a great musician, Dave, that’s all.

We’re music friends.”

He snorts, but takes a step closer.

“I think he wouldn’t mind if it were more.”

“Stop it! You just need to know

that I can’t fix anything for anybody.

I don’t want people asking me to try.”

“What
do
you want, Daisy-brains?”

I am frozen now but not from cold.

Can I get away with a platitude, something I want

that all of Jasper already knows—

like making Honor Band again?

I look at his cynical eyes: He’s still picturing me

in Cal’s clutches, laughing, spinning.

“I want . . .

a real family.”

He grins, sloshes up the beach to meet me

on the hillside of fall-brown grass,

kicking mud off his Timberland boots

as he reaches my side.

“Don’t we all? And I can’t put one in your life.

But I can show you a pretend one.”

He pulls out his cell phone and hits a few keys.

“It’s an app I built called Fake Happy Families.

See, you can put your family’s faces

into these idyllic settings—

all wearing Santa hats round a tree,

everybody burying Dad in Hawaiian ocean sand . . .”

It’s coolly ironic, badass Dave all around.

I want to try it, except

all our family photos show Mom looking miserable,

Dad angry,

Steven gazing away,

and I know the game might make me cry.

“It’s amazing, Dave.

You really did teach yourself programming.”

“Sometimes you just need someone to inspire you.”

“I’m nobody’s inspiration.

Sometimes I think my heart is as messed up as Steven’s.

I just can’t feel; don’t think I can love.”

“You love to play trumpet,” Dave says.

I nod. I do.

No matter what, I do.

“But you can’t just put your heart in your music

and wait for people to love you.

You have to put it somewhere else, too.

You have to ask for love.”

His voice is tentative.

I think he’s as afraid as I am

to unleash secrets into the chill lakeside air of Jasper.

“I want . . . I am asking you . . .

to help me,” I say.

And he grins and wraps me in his arms

and kisses me, hard, on the lips.

“I’m taking you back to school.”

“Maybe you should come with me.

Maybe show Mr. Angelli that app,” I say.

“Now who’s being parental?” Dave teases.

We leave the Fiesta by the water

and drive together to Evergreen High.