Between the Notes (23 page)

I
t was six thirty in the evening when Lennie pulled his Jeep around the corner near Molly’s house, so my parents wouldn’t see me leaving with him. I jumped in, tucking my bag with Mom’s purple dress on the floor between us. He threw the Jeep into gear and we lurched forward.

As my eyes adjusted to the dimming evening light, I noticed he wasn’t wearing his usual tan work boots but a black pair instead, with dark jeans. And he’d traded his flannel shirt and concert tee for a charcoal-gray button-up and black leather jacket.

He pushed his hair back and it fell forward, brushing his jawline. No ponytail, and the scraggly ends were gone.

“Did you cut your hair?”

He tipped his head down, as if to hide behind what remained. “Carla did it,” he mumbled.

“Looks . . . nice.”

He smiled. “Didn’t want to embarrass you or anything.”

I punched his arm lightly. “I can do that all by myself, thank you very much.”

We rode in silence for a while, watching the headlights and taillights go by. It struck me suddenly that I was about to see James. Finally. But instead of being happy and excited about it, I was terrified. Why hadn’t he just called, let me explain? This performance felt like some kind of weird test. Did I have to risk total humiliation to prove my sincerity?

“You’ll do great.” Lennie reached out to stop my knee from bouncing up and down like a jackhammer. “Don’t worry.”

He’d misread my jitters about James for nerves about singing, which only reminded me how nervous I was about singing.

“You’re pretty confident, considering you’ve never heard me sing,” I said.

He pinched his lips into a smirk, a decidedly guilty one.

“Have you?”

“Eight thirty lullaby. Best concert in town.”

“Lennie!”

“What? I was over at Carla’s one night and heard you singing. You can really sing.”

I shook my head. “But I can’t. Not in front of people. That’s the problem. I freeze up. What if I do that tonight? I’ve done it before.”

“That was a long time ago,” he said. “You were only a kid.”

Wait a minute.
“How do you know? You weren’t there.”

Ignoring me, he reached for the radio to turn it on and dial
past one fuzzy station after another until he found a song he liked. “This okay?”

“Lennie. Were you there? The district talent show?”

He turned to me and held my gaze longer than he probably should’ve while driving on a major highway. “You don’t remember.”

“Remember what?”

He turned back to watch the road. “Nothing,” he said, turning the volume lower. “Hey, I haven’t seen Brady for a few days. How’s he doing?”

“You were, weren’t you? At the talent show.”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Fine. Yeah. I was there.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“What difference does it make? I was there. I saw you.” He shot me a glance and a quick smile. “You don’t want to think about that tonight, anyway. You want to think about getting on that stage and blowing everyone away.”

“Right,” I said.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and I guess Lennie couldn’t, either, because then he said, “You were really beautiful that night, in your butterfly wings, you know.”

His Jeep seemed so quiet then, like all the sounds of the road and the motor had completely disappeared. “Thank you,” I whispered.

He flashed me a quick grin, then reached for the radio and
turned the music up louder. “So, how’s Brady doing?”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “He’s . . . uh . . . he’s having a lot of therapy after school. And, uh, learning to speak in full sentences, dress himself, stuff like that.”

“Must be hard,” said Lennie.

I didn’t know if he meant to ask if it was hard on Brady, or me, or my parents, or Kaya, but in any case, the answer was yes. My mom always said it was okay to admit to that.

“Sometimes I wonder what things would be like if Brady were . . . if he didn’t have his disability. Especially since we moved, I imagine it a lot. We wouldn’t have lost our house. I’d still have my piano.” I paused. This was something I never told anyone. I didn’t even want to admit it to myself. “I’m sorry. I don’t really mean that. I love Brady just the way he is.”

Lennie didn’t react right away, and I figured he was contemplating what a horrible person I was, maybe wishing he’d never agreed to take me to this show.

He reached over and squeezed my hand. “How would you want things to be different?”

I bit my lip, not wanting to say more, but the words kept forcing themselves out. “Maybe everything wouldn’t be about Brady, about how everything affects Brady. We wouldn’t have to be constantly watching him and worrying, and spending all our money on his therapy.” I shook my head. “I’m a horrible person.”

Lennie chuckled. “You know how many times I’ve wondered
what would’ve happened if my dad had been killed when that car fell on him?”

I sucked in my breath. “I don’t want Brady to die.”

“I’m just saying everyone thinks about how their life might’ve been different under different circumstances,” Lennie said quietly. “It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.”

We drove in silence for another minute. My nerves had disappeared, for the moment at least. I felt lighter, saying that stuff about Brady. I’d been holding it in, like water against a dam. Releasing it was a relief.

Then Lennie pointed toward a sign looming ahead and said, “Here’s our exit.” And my nerves came rushing back.

A woman clutching a clipboard guarded the door as musicians arrived with their guitar cases and amps and drum kits. As Lennie and I approached, the woman asked the guy in front of us for his name. She scanned her clipboard and checked him off. “You’ll be on first, so go ahead and set up.”

I froze. We had to sign up? I thought the whole idea of an open mic night was that the mic was open. Lennie took my arm and pulled me toward the woman.

“Name?” She peered at me over a pair of purple reading glasses.

“I, uh . . .”

“It’s Ivy Emerson.” Lennie reached over her clipboard and pointed to a name on the list. “Right there.”

I was right there?

“Looks like you’re our finale tonight. We’ll have you do a quick sound check before we start, though. Why don’t you head up there now? Piano is stage left.”

I nodded and let Lennie lead me toward the stage. James had signed me up? My already-pounding heart did a few extra leaps. Sending the flyer was one thing, but signing me up? I started looking for him, expecting to see him leaning against a wall, thumbs hooked through his belt loops. But nobody in the place was standing still. There was a frenzy of activity—people climbing ladders, adjusting lights, stringing wires, or wheeling things around.

I made my way to the grand piano, catching my reflection in the shiny black top that was propped open. Lennie watched me from backstage. His hands pushed the air in front of him as if physically urging me forward. Seeing him there, in the folds of the curtain, suddenly reminded me of a boy who’d stepped out from the curtains to help me once before.

A boy I remembered only as having dark hair, as pulling me to safety—off the stage that swirled around me. I sucked in a breath.

Lennie?

The memory rolled over me now, how he’d coaxed me to go on, to play. His hands pushing the air forward like they did now. But when I couldn’t, he came to my rescue.
You don’t remember?
It
was
Lennie. He was the one who’d led me off the stage that
horrible time at the talent show, when I’d frozen solid. In my butterfly wings.

I made it through the sound check, barely plunking out a few bars on the piano and a single line of my song before a voice from the darkness said, “We’re good, thanks.”

I waited on a metal folding chair backstage as the first act prepared to go on. The other performers were peeking out to see the audience filling the theater. I didn’t need to torture myself like that. The sound was enough, rumbling louder and louder, like a thunderstorm approaching. Slipping into the dressing room, I pulled the purple dress from my bag and slid it over my head. Amazing how a garment could convey something on the outside so completely opposite to what was inside. I looked smooth, slick, shimmery. I felt rough, sick, shaky. I attempted to tame my hair, dabbed some charcoal eyeliner along my lashes and gave my lips a swipe of gloss. The illusion was complete. Now, if I could only fool myself into believing it.

Lennie had disappeared after my sound check, though I glimpsed him pacing outside when someone had the loading-dock doors open. One hand held his cell phone to his ear and the other kept pushing his hair back. He didn’t see me watching him, though.

Before the show began, a man walked onto the stage and tapped on the microphone. The audience hushed and he cleared
his throat. “I have an exciting announcement to make, and this is the first time our performers are hearing about it as well.”

Everyone backstage moved closer to the edges of the curtains, if they weren’t already there, and a buzz of murmurs went through the crowd.

The man cleared his throat again. “As you know, open mic night is something we hold once a month. It is an opportunity for amateur musicians to share their talent. We don’t pay the performers, and we don’t sell tickets. But tonight, thanks to an anonymous donor, we’ll be awarding a cash prize to one lucky performer.” He paused as we all nearly burst from holding our breath. “And the amount of that prize is . . . five thousand dollars.”

A roar went up backstage and in the audience. My heart, already pounding, thumped harder.
Five thousand dollars?
The man was introducing some people seated in the front row, who would be the judges. I could see them standing and waving but I didn’t hear any of it. All I could hear was the scream in my brain.
Five thousand dollars!

I bent over so my head was between my knees and tried to breathe slowly. In seconds, Lennie was kneeling next to me, his soft voice in my ears. “Don’t think about that,” he was saying, his hand moving in slow circles on my back. “You can do this. It’s just you and your music. Nothing else. Nobody else. Okay?”

I sat up and whispered, “I can’t, you know I can’t. You were there, Lennie. It was you backstage. I remember now. It was you . . . all this time.”

He came around so he was squatting right in front of me, his face level with mine. “I’m right here if you need me. Okay? But you’re not going to need me. You’re going to blow them out of their seats.”

I laughed, then whimpered.
Five thousand dollars.

Lennie grabbed my hands. “Just you and the music.”

He looked into my eyes, and I don’t know if it was the stage lights reflecting off my purple gown or if I simply hadn’t been paying attention all this time, but Lennie’s eyes . . . they were like dark gems that sparkled with a million colors when the light hit them just right.

“You’ll be here, right?” I said. “You’re not going anywhere?”

He steadied his sparkly eyes on mine. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Okay.” I nodded. “I’m good now.”

He gave my hands a final squeeze and slipped away. The show began and I lost myself in the other performances, even the bad ones. Anything was better than focusing on what I was about to do. From backstage I caught a glimpse of a sliver of the audience, and for a second, I thought I saw Reesa. Then someone called my name.

What happened next was like an out-of-body experience. I watched the woman who no longer held a clipboard shuttle me into place. A man with a microphone held his hand out to me. I saw myself walk to him, the purple dress shimmering in the lights as I returned his smile, took his hand. He led me to the piano.

“. . . my pleasure to introduce Ivy Emerson, who will be performing her own original composition, ‘There for Me’ . . .”

Everything was fine until my brain reunited with my body and saw the audience out there . . . rows and rows of people. Clapping at first, now waiting . . . murmuring.

I sat at the piano, hands on my lap. Heart in my throat. Not moving.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Ivy Emerson . . . ,” the man prompted again.

A smattering of nervous applause, then a tiny voice called out, “You can do it, Ivy!”

Brady?

Everyone laughed. My brother was here? My family? I searched for them among the sea of faces, but everyone looked the same from here. Then I remembered the cemetery, and what James had told me about how the dead don’t judge, they just listen quietly. And one by one, I transformed the entire audience into tombstones. Patient, nonjudging, silent tombstones.

And I started to play.

The piano was clear and bright and strong beneath my fingers. When it came time to add my voice, I tried to imagine James out there in the cemetery, and I sang.

I sang about how he was there for me, accepting me for who I was, when everything else in my world had turned into a lie. . . . I sang about his eyes, his laugh . . .

And as I sang, I wondered if it was still James I was singing
about. If he was still there for me.

I continued playing beyond the lyrics, and the song took on a life of its own. My fingers melted into the keys, becoming part of the instrument. The piano became my voice. It breathed for me, it gasped and held its breath. It laughed. It
flew
, like a butterfly. It wasn’t scared anymore. I was the piano, and I was doing it. I was playing for them. For the boy who
was
there for me.

I don’t know how long I played. It was like a beautiful, musical trance. And when I snapped out of it, I played the last chord, and my fingers had stopped but were resting on the piano keys. Shaking. Nobody made a sound at first and I thought I’d dreamed the whole thing. But when I turned, the tombstones came alive, standing and clapping and cheering. The roar of their applause shook me. I clutched the edge of the piano to stand, to bow.

The house lights came up and I could suddenly see the audience. Brady and Kaya jumped around like a pair of pogo sticks. My parents hugged. Carla was there, too, smiling. But Lennie . . . I couldn’t find him. I searched, suddenly desperate to know that he was there.