Page 4 of What You Left Me
Nope. She is stone-faced. Royal guards would be jealous.
I amp up my effort, hammering the song’s rhythm into my leg and humming louder. I did choir in grade school, so I know I’m nailing my pitches (boy sopranos represent!), but the end of the introduction is nearing, and the magic of the music doesn’t seem to be affecting her. Still, I hit the final majestic synth high notes, burying my head into my neck to give the kind of commitment the song deserves, andsweet-holy-patron-saint-of-Cubs-baseball-Ernie-Banks,I catch sight of movement on the ground.
It’s her foot. Tapping along.
Like David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar and every other random lead singer they’ve had, she comes in for the first line. “Dog it off,” she sings under her breath. The rest comes out as an incoherent mumble.
The lyrics are so wrong I almost keel over and die laughing. I decide to bring my other hand in for a better drum section instead. This is too good to stop. GG takes over the humming, and I pick up the next line of the song (with the correct lyrics, of course) as if we planned it this way all along. We look at each other, her pounding the beat into the grass and me into my legs, and we sing together until we get to the chorus’s lead-in. Graduation Girl hits me with the most ridiculously wrong lyrics of all time, but she is one hundred percent committed to the feeling. When it comes time to speak the line before the chorus, I say it all cool, and then she echoes back the title with perfect timing, shouting it with the exact amount of power and feeling required. She throws her head back and laughs at herself. It’s like an ad for shampoo the way her hair falls over the edge of her chair, all long and curly and flowing.
“Shut up!” the no-longer-sleeping guy on the other side of me whisper-yells.
Graduation Girl and I laugh louder. “My dad loves that song,” she whispers, catching her volume. “We always just make up the words as we go.”
“I can tell,” I say. “My dad loves it too. Official postseason anthem for the 1984 Cubs, baby. Big ups to two of the all-time greats, Rick Sutcliffe and Ryne Sandberg. Love you, Rick and Ryno.” I pat my chest and then blow a kiss to the Rick and Ryne in my head.
Ms. Hornsby pulls her finger to her mouth and gives the loudest shush ever known to man. Graduation Girl straightens up.
• • •
This is outrageous. Four years of high school have come and gone without a single sighting of Martin McGee, now here we are singing our respective fathers’ favorite eighties rock anthem together on the football field. Ms. Hornsby has threatened to remove Martin from the ceremony if he speaks again. He’s mostly obeying. Just nudging me and tapping my foot with his.
I can feel my head getting lighter, pulling me out of my seat and into the clouds, loosening the anchor at the bottom of my stomach. I’m fighting for gravity. Fighting to stop my mind from wandering and wondering about this kid that’s been one name away from me all this time.
Come on, Petra. Stay ahead.
You cannot piss off Ms. Hornsby now.
• • •
I play games on my phone to get Hornsby to leave me alone. I’d love to see her try and kick me out of here, but it’s more entertaining to sit next to Graduation Girl. We communicate through elbow nudges and impatient foot shaking. Sometimes you don’t need to speak to have a conversation.
After a long while, my fingers get so hot from the sun beating down and my phone’s battery working overtime that I put it back in my pocket. Graduation Girl eyes me. It’ll be worth it to get kicked out if I can just get her number. Hell, even her name. “Hey,” I say.
She glares at me.
“I know. I know.” I knock it down to a whisper. “What if we played a game? You give me three letters of the alphabet to guess from, one of which is the first letter of your name. If I get it right in less than thirty tries, you have to come to my party.”
“That sounds like a terrible game.” This girl cuts no corners.
“You’re right. It does.” I nudge her shoulder. “At least I’m not our valedictorian, out here talking about how we’re all baby birds ready to leave the nest.”
“Did you watch his nose when he spoke?” She sounds kind of mischievous when she asks. Clearly, I’ve chosen a solid topic.
“Can’t say I was paying much attention to his nose, no. Why?”
“His nostrils always do this flapping thing every time he breathes.”
It’s not what I’m expecting her to say. I belly laugh. She wraps her hand around my forearm in a vice grip to silence me. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, almost breaking. “How did you even notice that?”
“Steve Taggart is my archnemesis,” she answers in the most deadpan whisper I’ve ever heard. “Knowing everything about him used to be my life’s mission.”
She’s so close I can smell her again; this flowery, honey scent is wafting right up into my nostrils. I’m glad she seems to refuse to ever look at me because I might be doing the Steve Taggart thing too without even knowing it. “I think I need to make it my life’s mission to know more about you.” I say it before realizing how much it sounds like a terrible line. I didn’t mean it to be that way.
More than anything, I want to be her friend. And I want her to wantmeas a friend.
Still, it backfires. She balls up into her seat and starts picking at her nail polish again. The sun becomes so instantly and unbearably hot I have to loosen my tie.
Dammit. I can never get it right when it counts.
