Our Song (7 page)

I see your face all over the place

Like a haunting from above

The only way for this to pass

Is to let go of your love.

All the pent-up emotion trapped in the melody came pouring out in the lyrics, his voice hanging on to each word like it might be his last. Combined—the tune, the words, the voice—it added up to something that seemed to match the mood of the boy hurling balls into oblivion, like it was his anthem as much as mine.

And it was the first time I wanted to hear more.

• • •

Later that night, once my mother was in bed, I snuck out to the sunroom. Noah was long asleep and even though it was Sunday, my dad had gone to the office after dinner. It was the first chance I’d had all day to use the computer in private. My mother was already home by the time I walked back from the club, having ditched the rest of the Easter activities to keep a close eye on me. She didn’t even trust me enough to be alone in the house anymore, and hovered nearby like a swarm of wasps for the rest of the day.

As the screen flickered to life, I went straight to Google and typed the lyrics into the search field. There was something about the way they danced in my head that made the melody not only bearable, but uplifting. It was like this mysterious voice, sweet as honey, was an organizing principle, turning the random chaos into something intelligible, something seductive.

I scanned the results, turning the white dimpled golf ball,
which I’d held on to all afternoon, around in my hand like it was a crystal ball. There were over five million hits in total. Yet not a single one yielded an exact match, or anything close to it. I clicked through the first few links. They led me to a bunch of random, unrelated websites. I tried to narrow down the results by inserting quotation marks and adding the term “song lyrics” to the search. When that didn’t help, I retyped every combination of those four lines I could think of, just in case I was remembering them wrong. But I knew I wasn’t. It was the only thing I was sure of. The voice was the clearest thing I’d heard since everything happened. Still, nothing came up, like the song didn’t want to be found. Like it didn’t exist.

Maybe I really was going crazy.

I gave up on the search and clicked over to Facebook. I didn’t even bother checking my page and went directly to Derek’s. I’d been stalking it daily since I’d been back, but there was nothing new. I logged on to iChat next and stared at the shadow of his name on my offline buddy list, like I could will him to appear, like the chime of him coming online would sound any second just because I wanted it to.

I rolled the golf ball under my palm, as the lyrics echoed in my head. The image of the boy standing on the Jaguar flashed through my mind, sending the same rousing shock through my body as when I first saw him, and I wondered if I’d ever see him again.

Tucking the ball into my pocket, I went out to the garden.

A HIGH-PITCHED VOICE
pierced through the music. It took a second to remember where I was: third period English. Lifting my head from the desk, I could make out the silhouette of Miss Porter looming over me. Her lips were moving but I didn’t hear a word she was saying.

She tapped my shoulder and motioned for me to remove my headphones. I took out the left earbud and let it dangle against my hair, like a long, white, plastic earring. I forgot I was even still wearing them. I was listening to a new playlist I had put together last night. I had stayed up for hours scouring the Internet, trying to find the song, even though I knew it didn’t exist, that it was a figment of my imagination. That’s what led me to discover all these other songs. Music was usually just something I had on in the background, something I used to fill the silence. But last night, for the first time, I really listened to each song and what it was about—love and loss and heartache. Maybe it took getting your own heart broken to really understand the true power of music—and why people wrote it.

“Are you all right?” Miss Porter whispered, crouching down so that we were on the same level. The rest of the class was busily writing in their notebooks.

“I know I’m behind.” I pulled my mother’s tattered copy of
Mrs. Dalloway
from my bag. At least I remembered to bring it.

“I’m not worried about that,” she said, smoothing over the front cover of my book. It was bent from being stuck between two others on the bookshelf in my parents’ room for so many years. “I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

She was the first teacher to come close to broaching the subject of my absence, like she was breaking some collective pact.

“I’m fine,” I snapped. I knew she was only trying to be nice, that besides Annie, she was probably the only one in this entire building who was on my side. But her attention only made things worse.

“The assignment is on the board,” she said, straightening up. “Just do the best you can, even if you haven’t finished the book yet.”

I copied the question into my notebook—
Describe how nature is an important theme in the novel and how it relates to Clarissa
Dalloway
. Without having read a single page of the book, it was all nonsense to me. English was normally my best subject and it was my only AP class. Derek said I would have been better off taking economics or government. He said English was a big waste of time since novels were all just a bunch of made up stories that had nothing to do with the real world. I was beginning to realize that maybe he was right. If only I had listened to him. About this class, and about everything else.

Without my playlist to distract me, the velvety voice erupted in my head. It was deeper, huskier now, like footsteps walking over a gravel path. The lyrics came out haltingly, like candies pried from a child’s hand, as if the singer didn’t want to let them go, each word a part of himself he was reluctantly setting free. There was something brave, hypnotic even, about how vulnerable he sounded. It wasn’t until there was a knock at the classroom door that I realized I had drifted off once again.

Miss Porter opened the door, where the hall monitor stood on the other side. He handed Miss Porter a small envelope with the school logo printed in the corner. I glanced up at the clock. There were still thirty-five minutes until the bell. But when the hall monitor interrupted class with a note, it always signaled news that couldn’t wait—urgent news. Bad news. Like when the hall monitor delivered Amy Ming a similar envelope in the middle of chemistry sophomore year, and it turned out her father had had a heart attack.

Miss Porter read the name on the envelope, then glanced up at me. I could tell she was trying to be discreet, but it was too late. Everyone turned around all at once. That was my cue. I slid my books into my bag, pushed my chair back, and got up. Even with my head down, I could still feel the collective gaze of the class tracking me as I zigzagged my way around their desks to the front. I don’t think I could have felt more exposed, even if I were naked.

“I didn’t get a chance to finish,” I said to Miss Porter, who was waiting by the door.

“That’s okay,” she said, handing me the envelope.

I turned my back and pulled out the neatly folded slip of paper. It was from Dr. Green. I was requested in her office. Immediately.

A blunt pain penetrated my gut. Dr. Green was the school guidance counselor. Only the druggies and the seriously disturbed kids were forced to see her. No one ever went voluntarily.

Her office was on the ground floor, next to the language lab. I had passed it many times over the last four years, but I had never been inside. I walked into the waiting area and stood next to a rotating rack filled with self-help pamphlets, absentmindedly spinning it around and around.

“Olive?” Dr. Green appeared in the doorway. I nodded. “Come on in.”

Her office was small but orderly. The soft glow of a standing lamp replaced the institutional fluorescent lights, and a Persian rug covered half the vinyl floor. But with the cinderblock walls and the standard-issue paneled ceiling, there was no masking the fact that we were still in school.

She gestured toward the nubbly brown couch. I perched on the edge. I wasn’t planning on staying long.

“I don’t believe we’ve formally met,” she said, settling into the armchair facing me. “I’m Dr. Green.”

“I know.” I shifted on the couch.

She crossed her legs and peered at me through her red horn-rimmed glasses. They were the same color as her shoes and skirt. She was famous for coordinating her eyewear with her outfits. “How’s your day going so far?”

I glanced up at the clock, wishing I were anywhere but here. “Have I done something wrong?”

“Of course not. I just wanted to have a chat to see how you’re faring.”

“I’m fine,” I said evenly, trying to control the tremor in my voice.

“You’ve been through…an ordeal. It’s a lot to process in such a short period of time.”

“But I’m okay now.” It may have seemed short to her, but to me it felt like forever. “My doctor said so, too. I can get him to write you a note if you want.” Everything in high school was taken more seriously when you had a note.

Dr. Green removed her glasses and leaned forward, as if she was letting me in on a secret. “I understand that your body has healed, Olive, but sometimes it takes the mind a little longer to process a trauma.”

“Are you really a doctor?” I was never this bold, especially not with authority figures, but I was sick of people sticking their noses where they didn’t belong. Plus, she was using that same tone my mother had adopted since the accident, the one where it sounded like she was talking to a two-year-old, or someone who was mentally challenged.

“I’m not a medical doctor, if that’s what you mean. But yes, I have a doctorate in psychology,” she said, gesturing to the framed diploma behind her. “You can call me Stacy, though, if it makes you more comfortable.”

She wasn’t wearing a wedding band and there wasn’t a single personal item in her office except for the stupid diploma on
the wall. How was she supposed to understand what I was going through? What insight did her “doctorate” give her into my so-called trauma?

“Olive, I have experience dealing with issues like yours.”

I pulled at a loose piece of knotted wool on the couch. “I’m not really sure what you’re talking about,” I said, but I had a good idea I didn’t like where she was going.

“I’m talking about your suicide attempt.”

“I,” I started. “It was…” My breath caught. It felt like all the air had suddenly been suctioned out of the room. By now it was obvious that’s what everyone thought. But it was different being confronted like this, straight to my face, as if it were an undisputed fact.

“You let out a cry for help and I want you to know that it’s been heard.”

She reached for my hand but I jerked it back. “No. It was an accident.”

“I can’t make you talk to me, Olive. That’s not productive for either of us. But you do need to talk about what happened with someone. And more importantly, to talk about
why
it happened so that it doesn’t happen again.” She paused and stared right at me.

Talking about that night with Dr. Green—or anyone else—was definitely not going to help. In fact it was the surest way to guarantee that I’d feel even worse. She reached down and retrieved a glossy orange pamphlet from her desk drawer. The caption on the cover read
DO YOU EVER FEEL ALONE?
in big red letters, above a picture of a teenage girl staring dejectedly out a
window. “There are a number of therapists and support groups listed here,” she said, handing me the pamphlet. “Take a look and discuss the options with your parents.”

I shoved it between the yellowed pages of
Mrs. Dalloway
and left without saying another word.

I thought I’d feel better once I was out in the hall, away from the pitying stare of Dr. Green. But the idea of going back to class made my stomach churn. My classmates’ stares would be judgmental, which was the only thing worse than pitying.

I roamed the empty halls, enjoying a brief moment of anonymity, until I remembered it was Annie’s free period, which meant she was in the darkroom working on the yearbook. The darkroom was completely out of the way, in the basement, next to the music and art studios. I hadn’t been down there in a while. The last artsy class I took was theater, and that was back before I met Derek. When I wanted to take ceramics this fall, he said it was stupid to waste an elective on art, that to college admissions officers, it looked almost as bad as a failing grade.

“Finally,” I said as the darkroom door swung open.

“Get in fast.” Annie cupped her hands around her eyes. “The light’s killing me.”

I followed her down a short, narrow corridor, through another door, and into the darkroom itself. The pungent odor of sulfur and processing chemicals hit me at once. Surprisingly, they didn’t make me feel queasy like everything else these days. If anything, the foreign mix smelled strangely appealing.

“Isn’t it supposed to be completely dark in here?” I asked,
looking up at the dangling red bulb that dimly illuminated the black walls.

“That’s only if you’re printing in color. For black and white you can use a red safelight.”

While the design and layout of the yearbook was all done digitally, Annie was a purist, adamant about preserving the art and romance of photography, and insisted on shooting exclusively on film.

As my eyes adjusted, the objects in the room began to take shape. A sink, beakers, various canisters, and a wide, sunken area carved into the counter containing three large metal trays filled with liquid. It looked more like a science lab than an art studio.

“Why the sudden interest?” she said, placing a blank sheet in the first tray.

“Just curious,” I shrugged. It was the first time I had ever been in here, a fact I was slightly ashamed of given it was basically Annie’s second home. She’d been taking pictures since she got her first camera when she turned twelve. While I loved seeing the finished product, I never thought to see how it was all done.