Blowin' My Mind Like a Summer Breeze, page 20
“Thanks for the tape,” he says at lunch. But he doesn’t say much else.
A few days later, the day of our first show, I’m talking to Mr. Larson over green tea during one of our check-ins.
“How’s your dad doing?”
I’ve told him all about Dad’s stage fright, about the breakdown while my mom was on tour. Mr. Larson is a really good listener.
“A little better.”
“But not great?”
I shrug. I don’t even know what great would be anymore when it comes to my dad.
“And your mom?”
I shrug again.
“I think she blames me more than Dad at this point for the way things have turned out.”
“I doubt that, Rainey.”
“She barely talks to me.”
He gives me a Dum Dum and takes one for himself. Mr. Larson seems so relaxed all the time, as if he has no doubts about who he is. He talks and moves through life’s moments with confidence and ease. Like he never worries about how to act or what to say. I wonder if I’ll ever feel like that.
“What about your social life?”
“What social life?”
“I see you with Evan Becker a lot.”
“God, not you too. We’re just friends. We may not even be that anymore.”
“Sorry, sorry,” he says, holding up his hands. “Forget I said anything.”
Mr. Larson has this little rock garden on his desk, and he lets me re-arrange the rocks while we talk.
“What if you hadn’t known?” I ask, stacking three small, smooth stones atop one another, taking care to make them perfectly balanced.
“Known what?”
I look around, inch my chair a tad closer to Mr. Larson, and lower my voice.
“You said you always knew, but what if you hadn’t known? What if you were confused about it? What if some days it felt like you were and other days it didn’t?”
“I think that would have been okay, too. It’s complicated and very personal. There’s no blueprint for what any of us is going to feel. And the truth is that we don’t have much control over how our hearts work.” He bites into his Dum Dum, and I can smell green apple on his breath. “Do you feel confused about stuff like that?”
I shrug. “Sometimes.”
He waits. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
He nods. Mr. Larson is good like that. He doesn’t push things.
“You know, Rainey, life is pretty confusing a lot of the time. And I’m sorry to have to say it, but the confusion never really goes away. In fact, in a lot of ways, life gets more complicated as you get older, not less. The challenge is to figure out how to be happy anyway.”
“That seems really hard.”
“It gets easier.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
“Pretty sure? That’s not very reassuring.”
“Hey, don’t blame me, that’s life.”
I laugh. I feel a little better.
Track Sixteen
This is a Song I Wrote
We’re playing fourth, and last, at Club 182. I’m dressed for battle. Black jeans, black T-shirt, black boots, flannel tied around my waist, hair down, bright purple lipstick.
“That’s what you’re wearing?” my mom asks.
Before we play, we have to listen to Brontosaurus, then Petty Thieves, then Eraser Cap, followed by Rainey Cobb. I look at my name on the sandwich board on the sidewalk for a long time. I want to hate the sight of it, but I don’t. Maybe Rainey is kind of a cool name.
“What’s going on with you and Evan?” River asks as we’re standing off to the side of the stage, listening to Petty Thieves play a cover of “Blister in the Sun.” Evan is in the bathroom again. He’s really nervous, I think. And he’s avoiding me.
“Nothing.”
“Yeah right.”
“We had a fight.”
“Can I guess?”
“Guess what?”
“He confessed his undying love, and you broke his heart into a million little pieces?”
“Shut up.”
“I thought so.”
Club 182 isn’t packed, but the crowd is bigger than I expected. I’ve gotten good at estimating crowds over the years, and I’m guessing there’s close to a hundred people here. The room is humid and smells like sweat and ginger ale, which they sell in paper cups for fifty cents at the bar, along with candy bars and popcorn. I recognize lots of faces from school, kids from the musical. The Pena twins. I scan the crowd, looking for my family, who I couldn’t convince not to come.
“You’d sooner stop the hands of time then keep your mother away,” my dad said.
I finally see my parents and Walden way in the back, tucked into a corner. Not far from them, I see Mary Hanson talking to an older looking guy with a beard and glasses.
Great.
Feeling rattled, I go to the bathroom and push open one of the stalls. I sit down, not to pee or anything. Just for a moment alone. It hits me that a lot of these people are here to listen to me, and suddenly this moment feels really important in a way I hadn’t thought about. I want to remember it. I want to get it right. For some reason, I wonder how many gigs I’ve played over the years. After some quick math, I guess it’s close to six or seven hundred.
You’re fifteen, Juliet said to me. You’re fifteen, I say to me.
On the stall door someone has carved my heart is a thousand years old, I am not like other people.
When Eraser Cap is almost done with their set, I pull Evan aside. He still isn’t really talking to me and I’m worried.
“Look,” I say. “I know you hate me right now, but can we just play our best anyway? We worked really hard.”
“Whatever you say, boss,” he says.
Good talk.
Our turn. I stand behind my keyboard, adjust the microphone. The crowd presses forward.
“Hi,” I say. “We’re, uh…I’m Rainey. That’s Evan and River. Thanks for coming. This is a song I wrote.”
I start playing the opening chords of “Ordinary Girl.”
And we’re off to the races.
Track Seventeen
What Did I Do Wrong?
“Chamomile,” Mom says, putting a steaming mug in front of me, “with milk and honey.”
“Thanks.”
She sets down a plate of shortbread, and a box of Kleenex. I wipe my eyes, then dunk a shortbread into my tea, the cookie turning to sugary cereal in my mouth.
We’ve been home from Club 182 for almost an hour. Walden went to bed, and Dad wandered off to the studio, but Mom said she wanted to stay up with me, if it was okay.
“It’s okay.”
Her eyes are full of concern. They’re a little puffy, too, and wrinkled at the corners. I know she hasn’t been sleeping very well.
I used to idolize my mom. People always tell me I’m such a natural at playing music. That I was born with a gift. Like even if I’d been born on a desert island, I’d have eventually started banging two coconuts together. I hear them say “gifted” and “special” and “talented,” which, by the way, are about the worst things you can call a kid because they actually make them feel shitty and they don’t account for hard work and passion. But people don’t know that the real reason I wanted to play music in the first place was because, like everybody else, I wanted to be Tracy Cobb.
When I was still too young to play in the band, I’d sit on the side of the stage with huge protective earphones on and watch her play. She was so beautiful and perfect, and when she opened her mouth pure magic came out. A voice so full of good feeling and soul it would send shivers down your spine and make you feel like everything was going to be okay. I’d think to myself, that’s what I’m going to do. People love my mom because of the way she makes them feel, and I got to feel that way all the time.
I felt that from the crowd tonight while I played. Next to kissing Juliet, it was the best feeling I’ve ever had. In some ways, it was even better because for the first time ever, it was my music making them feel that way. My songs. I never knew that feeling until tonight.
And then Evan blew up at me after the show. We got in a huge fight, and I came crashing back down to Earth.
Usually, Mom has to fill every second, but right now she waits for me.
“Evan quit the band,” I say and take a careful slurp of chamomile.
“Oh honey, I’m so sorry,” Mom says. “What happened?”
“He wants us to be more than friends, but I don’t, and apparently that’s some kind of a crime that makes me the worst person in the world.” I eat another shortbread, replaying Evan’s words in my mind. I didn’t think he was capable of being so mad.
Mom taps her fingers on the tabletop.
“He said that I’ve known forever how much he liked me, that I’ve known since we first met, but that I didn’t tell him because I wanted to hurt him more. He called me a tease. That’s not true! I mean, I did sort of know that he liked me, but I kind of hoped he would change his mind. I didn’t want to hurt him at all. I didn’t want this to happen. I really do like him as a friend. He’s one of the best friends I’ve ever had. Maybe the best.”
I look up at Mom.
“What did I do wrong?”
“Nothing,” she says, reaching out and taking my hand. Hers is warm from holding her mug. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Nothing at all.”
“I just wish things could go back to how they were,” I say.
After Mom goes to bed, I put on my boots and slip into the back yard. My breath blooms in the near-freezing air like puffs of smoke. A bright half-moon smiles down, lightly obscuring a billion stars.
I go up to the tree house and switch on the lantern, shielding my eyes from its harsh yellow glow. I wish I could talk to Juliet, or at least write her a letter. She broke my heart, but she’s still the person I want to be around the most. And now Evan’s gone too.
I guess I’m doomed to have to figure everything out on my own.
I put Blowin’ My Mind Like a Summer Breeze into the boom box, rewind to the beginning of side A and turn the volume way down, so that Bjork’s voice comes out as only a whisper. I click off the lantern and lie back on the loveseat, listening in the dark, wondering what the hell I’m going to do.
Track Eighteen
They’re Worse Than Girls
I wait a few days before trying to make up with Evan, who, instead of accepting my apology, begins a rigorous campaign of ignoring me like his life depends on it. He looks down when we pass in the hallway, flat out ignores me when I try to talk to him. Changes his seat in study hall so that it’s the maximum possible distance from mine.
The only good thing about losing Evan is I get the Pena twins back at lunch.
“Boys are so immature,” Clara says through a mouthful of turkey sandwich after I finally tell them the gist of what had happened.
“So immature,” Rachel agrees, eating her own identical sandwich on heavy-looking whole grain bread.
“They don’t know how to separate love and friendship, but it’s not that hard if you ask me,” says Clara. “People can talk and chew gum at the same time, you know. And I’m not saying that I’m a lesbo or anything, because that’s totally gross and I would never, but I’ll bet that if I liked a girl who didn’t like me back, I’d still be able to be friends with her anyway. That’s what I mean. You know?”
I’m a little bit offended by this, and given my experience with Juliet, totally disagree, but sometimes when the twins are on a roll, it’s better just to let them go.
“What you should be more worried about than stupid Evan Becker,” Rachel continues, opening and swigging from a carton of chocolate milk, “is all the boys who are drooling every time you walk down the hallway and want to get some of your sweet bootie since your show.”
“Whatever, they do not!”
“Girl, you need to open your eyes and take your pick,” Clara says. “This is your moment.”
“Your moment,” Rachel echoes.
“That’s what I’d do.”
“That’s what I’d do.”
They cheers with their milk cartons.
As much as my instinct tells me to reject this notion, I have noticed there’s some strange affliction that seems to have infected the members of the male species since I played at Club 182, marked by awkwardness, staring, and fumbling for words. Only River McRae, who seems not to care about much of anything, treats me with the same cool detachment he reserves for the entire world. Even better, he says he likes playing together and doesn’t mind waiting while we figure out what’s next for the band.
Boys ask me out, and because it seems stupid not to, and that’s what normal kids seem to do, I go on some dates. I go ice skating with Mitch Harris. Bowling on a strange sort of mass date with the Pena twins and three boys. To a movie with Carson Crawford. I’m not really attracted to these boys, but I’m not not attracted either. It’s complicated. I still find myself stealing glances at the pretty girls in my classes, but since acting on my feelings is totally impossible, I try to look at boys in a new way.
It would be easier if they weren’t so big and smelly.
Carson Crawford is quite handsome, though, with deep brown eyes and perfect Ken doll hair, and when he kisses me in his car after the movie, I kiss him back. It’s the first time I’ve kissed a boy, and it’s kind of nice. Not quite as magical as kissing Juliet, but maybe kissing people happens on a continuum, and it’s best to take the experiences one at a time.
When I sit down at lunch with the Pena twins on Monday, though, I’m shocked to find out they know all about me kissing Carson Crawford only two nights earlier.
“How do you know? Who told you?”
I feel flushed and embarrassed. I look around the lunchroom. Clara says she heard it from her friend Pamela. Rachel heard it from her friend Tyson.
Who?
Rachel says that Tyson and Carson are on the soccer team together.
“Be careful,” Clara warns me, wagging her French fry before dipping it in a lake of salty ketchup, “they tell their friends about everything.”
“They do?”
“They’re worse than girls,” Rachel says.
“They are?”
“Way worse.”
“So much worse.”
I take a break from dating.
Mom returns the dress we picked out at T.J. Maxx, and I skip the Fall Formal and watch Pink Panther movies with my dad and Walden instead.
The calendar trudges forward, the passage of time marked not so much by days as holidays. My Aunt Becky and Murph come over for Thanksgiving, then for Christmas.
Dad gives Mom the Christmas album he made for her, and when she listens to it, she looks happier than she has in a long time.
“Oh, Luce,” she says.
My parents curl up together on the couch in front of the wood stove and listen to Dad’s album. Mom puts her head on his shoulder. Looking at them right then, something changes. Like they’ve both been wandering in the dark but have finally found each other.
Sometimes I peek over my shoulder at the life I’ve left behind. A life where my world consisted of only three other people. I feel liberated to have broken free, and now that I’ve started writing and performing my own music, I know I can’t go back to singing my parents’ songs all the time. But I also miss the patterns I knew so well, the easy camaraderie I felt among my people. Instead of feeling more at home and accepted among my peers, I feel less so.
Is that okay?
I wonder what I want out of life. For a long time, all I knew was that I wanted something different, but now that I have it, other questions have emerged.
Questions I Have About my Future
Where does all this lead?
What’s the purpose of school?
Should I go to college?
Can I even afford to go to college if I want to?
Will I ever feel really close to anyone again?
Everyone at school talks about college all the time. They can’t imagine a future without college in it, as if college and the future are one in the same.
Even Mr. Larson is obsessed with college.
“Even if you don’t use it right away, you’re still better off having a degree,” he tells me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The only thing I know for sure that I want is more of what I felt when I was on stage at Club 182. Playing my music. Everything else feels blurry and far away.
January becomes February becomes March.
River and I get together to play music once in a while. I write two new songs. One called “Longest Day of My Life” and another called “Atomic.”
Not surprisingly, they’re both about Juliet.
“Man,” River says when he hears them. “Somebody really did a number on you.”
I write and tear up five different letters to Juliet. Some are angry. Some are pathetic. Some are pleading. All are ones I’m glad I don’t send. I keep trying to hate Juliet, but I can’t for some reason. My heart won’t let me. The emptiness that opened up in me when I read her letter is still there but doesn’t feel so hollow and rotten anymore. But I haven’t gone on any dates since the Carson Crawford debacle.
“That’s cool,” Rachel Pena says. “Lay low for a while.”
“Yeah, lay low for a while,” Clara echoes.
• • •
One day, on a freezing cold afternoon with wind like a whip, I’m standing out in front of school waiting for my mom to pick me up when Mary Hanson walks right up and stands next to me.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey.”
“I was horrible to you at Chris’s party.”
I nod.
“I’m really not a horrible person.”
“It’s okay.”
Is it? I’m not sure. In fact, I’m pretty sure it isn’t okay. But that’s what comes out.
“All I’ve ever wanted to do is be on stage and make it to Broadway, and my whole life everyone’s been feeding me this steady diet of, ‘you’re going to be a star’ and ‘don’t let anyone stand in the way of your dreams.’ Does that make sense?”
