Between the Notes (6 page)

T
uesday. Lakeside, day four. I contemplated carving hash marks on the wall of my room, but didn’t want to make the place feel any more like a prison sentence than it already did. I left the apartment five minutes earlier so James wouldn’t see me bug-faced and shrub-hiding again, so Lennie wouldn’t walk in with me, so the Witches wouldn’t pounce. So, so, so many reasons. My hair was tied back. No looking like a possessed sea anemone today.

I went into our backyard to get my bike but stopped short when I saw a white plastic bag in the basket. If my parents had noticed the bike, they hadn’t said anything. Maybe they assumed it was Carla’s. But somebody had found it.

I poked at the roundish shape, then lifted it far enough to see the blue-and-green Ike’s Bikes logo. My dad had taken us to get our custom bicycles there. It was a nice shop. Expensive. I reached in and pulled out a bicycle helmet. Had my parents . . . ? No. They definitely would’ve said something.

A light went on over at Lazarski’s house. I saw a shadow pass in front of the window. Then a light in another room. My eyes went back to the helmet in my hands. I started to get that nervous feeling like when you think someone’s following you on a dark street.

You should really wear a helmet, you know,
Lennie had said.

I dropped it into the basket as if it was scalding hot. Why would he buy me this? What did he want from me? I couldn’t wear it. Absolutely not.

But the cars did whiz by really fast.

I picked the helmet up again and turned it over in my hands. It was gorgeous, and that is not a word that usually appears in the same sentence as “bike helmet.” The surface was smooth and cream colored, with pale gray-and-white flowers screen-printed on the side.

I hated that he’d paid for this . . .
if
he’d paid for this. I’d be indebted to him. Maybe I could wear the helmet until I had a chance to buy one of my own. Then I’d give it back to him. I wouldn’t owe him a thing. I flipped the helmet onto my head and snapped the buckle under my chin.

It fit perfectly.

When I got to my locker, relatively nonsweaty in the fresh shirt I had packed, Reesa was waiting. She waved a sheet of paper in my face. “This is the answer to your problem. Right here.”

“Which problem?” I said, pushing it aside to get to my locker. “I have several, you know.”

“Your cash flow problem.”

I took the flyer. The country club her parents belonged to was looking for someone to play piano and sing in their hoity-toity bar and restaurant, and to perform “light background music” at dinners and receptions. I pushed the sheet back into Reesa’s hands. “I don’t think so.”

“What? It pays fifty dollars an hour. Plus tips.”

“A, everyone we know goes to that country club; and B, I can’t sing.” I turned back to my locker.

“Yeah, and Adele totally sucks, too.” Reesa was the one person, outside my family, who had ever heard me sing. And only because she was sneaky and had a key to our house.

“I can sing at home. That’s it.” And I couldn’t even manage to do that anymore.

Reesa slapped the flyer on top of the books I had pulled from my locker. “Come on. People will start noticing if you never have spending money. And this isn’t like a
job
job. You could totally do this.”

A graceful arm swept over her shoulder and snatched the flyer. “Do what?”

I tried to grab it back, but Willow held it out of my reach as she read. “You sing?”

“No,” I said, but Reesa drowned me out with a loud, “Yes! She sings.”

Willow looked at us like we were crazy, which we probably were. “Like, in the shower?”

“Yeah. Something like that.” I grabbed the flyer and shoved it into my backpack while giving Reesa a don’t-say-another-word-under-penalty-of-death stare.

“God, Ivy. It’s been six years,” Reesa muttered. “Get over it.”

Air hissed out between my teeth. She might as well have stuck a knife in my chest. I knew how ridiculous it must seem that I hadn’t gotten over my stage fright from that stupid talent show yet. It should’ve been ancient history by now, but the further away I got from that day, the darker and more frightening its shadow became.

“Thanks.” I stared daggers at Reesa. “Thanks a lot.”

Willow tilted her head to the side and tapped her dangly earring. “Wait,” she said. “Are you talking about . . . Oh, my God. I forgot all about that!”

I groaned.

“What was that song you were supposed to sing? Something about summer from the perspective of a butterfly?” She giggled and nudged me like I was in on the joke, not the butt of it.

“Summerfly,” I mumbled.

“Awww.” She pushed out her bottom lip, then her face brightened. “I won that talent show, remember? I danced Clara’s solo from
The Nutcracker
.”

“Yes.” I gave a weak smile. “I remember.” She hadn’t actually witnessed my humiliation, thankfully. She’d been off somewhere
“getting into character” or stretching her foot behind her head.

“Didn’t some kid have to drag you off the stage because you froze up?”

I nodded, though “drag” was a bit of an exaggeration. There was a boy who gently took my arm and led me off. At least, that’s what my mother told me. All I noticed were the bright lights and the front few rows of faces staring at me.

Willow pulled me into an awkward hug, my books pressed between us. Then someone down the hall behind me caught her attention. “Ooh, gotta go.” She waved and sashayed off.

“Well, that was fun,” I said.

Reesa grimaced. “I’m sorry.”

I shrugged.

“I’m really, really sorry. You know I just want the rest of the world to hear your amazing voice. And for you to have spending money so we can have fun.” She pressed her palms together, fingertips to her lips as if in prayer. “Forgive me? Please?”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re forgiven. Just promise you won’t throw me under the Willow bus again, okay?”

“I promise,” she said.

We started down the hall, walking shoulder to shoulder and swerving to miss people without breaking contact. It was something we’d started in middle school as our own secret good-luck charm. If we made it to class without separating, we’d get whatever we were wishing for that day. As we approached the stairway, Willow twirled away from her locker and pushed
straight between us with a laugh. We stopped and glared at her back.

“I hate her,” Reesa growled. “Remind me why we’re friends with her?”

“Must’ve done something awful in a past life.”

“We’re such losers,” said Reesa. “It’s sad, really.”

“Really sad.”

“Lame.”

“Pathetic.”

We went on like that all the way down the hall, belittling ourselves, turning it all into a joke. But as I sat down in homeroom, I wondered why we let her rule over us the way we did. It was just as much our fault as hers, I suppose. We were all complicit in the state of inertia that governed our friendship. It was just easier to keep going along the way it was than to change direction.

When we got to AP English, James Wickerton had not yet arrived and Reesa took the opportunity to scoot her desk closer to his. She did it casually, like she was just trying to get her things situated and comfy.

“Seriously?” I shook my head.

“What?” She smoothed all her hair to one side of her neck and adjusted the collar of her blouse so it displayed her décolletage.

I slouched a few inches lower in my chair and let my hair fall around my face like blinders. Reesa was an accomplished flirt,
but I didn’t like to watch. It made me feel like a third wheel.

The room got a little quieter when James walked in. Reesa waggled her fingers at him, and his face brightened with recognition as he walked toward the desk she’d saved for him.

“Good morning, James,” she practically sang.

“Hey.” He gave a quick smile and sat down.

“I’m Reesa.”

James nodded, his eyes darting from her to me.

“Oh, and this is Ivy.” Reesa leaned back so there was a clear line of sight between him and me.

“Yes,” he said, “We’ve . . .”

“Nice to meet you,” I said quickly, before he could reveal that we’d already met. He frowned, confused, but I ignored him and opened my notebook, paging through it like I was in search of some very important notes. I could still see them out the corner of my eye, though.

Reesa leaned over to rest her hand on James’s arm. “If you need, like, help finding a classroom or the library or something, don’t hesitate,” she said. “You can ask me anything.”

“Oh, uh. Thanks,” he said.

We suffered through the remaining recitations of
The Canterbury Tales
, the words sounding like mush by the time we were done. Mr. Eli made one more attempt to get James to recite, but he politely declined.

And when class was over, I darted. I didn’t want James to mention the bike, the bushes, or the bugs in front of Reesa. She
wouldn’t understand why I was keeping secrets from her. I didn’t understand it myself, except it was all so embarrassing.

As soon as I reached my locker, I realized I’d forgotten my hoodie. I quickly swapped my English book for chemistry and hurried back, hoping Mr. Eli hadn’t left for his free period yet.

I was relieved to find the door ajar. But someone was in there with him, so I hesitated before waltzing in.

“. . . smale foweles maken melodye, that slepen al the nyght with open ye . . .”

It was a deep, rich voice that managed to put feeling into the words that had lost all meaning coming out of the rest of our mouths. I listened as if transported to fourteenth-century England, where my now-favorite poet was whispering the melodious verses into my ear.

“. . . The hooly blisful martir for to seke, that hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.”

When the poem ended, a shiver shot down my spine, jarring me back to the present. I peeked through the narrow slit but could see only Mr. Eli, tilting back in his desk chair.

“Excellent,” he said, looking more than a little astonished. “I wonder why you didn’t want to do it for the class.”

James?

“I don’t know. Nervous, I guess. I’m not very good at public speaking.”

“Our Shakespeare section should help with that. We’ll be reading from various plays,” said Mr. Eli. “If you want full
credit, I’ll expect you to participate.”

“Yes, sir.”

The warning bell for second period rang and I didn’t want to be late. But I didn’t want James to think I was stalking him, either. My hand was poised over the door handle when he pulled it inward. He caught me in an awkward, about-to-steal-a-cookie pose.

“Oh, hi,” I squeaked, sounding like a helium addict. I withdrew my fingers from the handle and we did a little you-first, no-you-first dance in the doorway.

He laughed and stepped aside. “After you.”

“I, uh, forgot my jacket.” I pointed to where it was draped over the back of my chair.

He took three long strides back to my desk and snatched it up, and then held it out by the shoulders to help me put it on.

Mr. Eli cleared his throat. “Don’t you have somewhere to be? I know I do.”

The bell rang for second period. “Can I get a pass?” I asked Mr. Eli.

He nodded and I went to his desk. When I looked back at the door, James was gone. Mr. Eli scribbled out a pass for me and I hurried off. The hall was empty, except for a lone figure approaching the far end, messenger bag slung over his shoulder and a huge book under the other arm. I watched as he opened a door near the stairs and slipped inside.

Though chemistry was in the opposite direction, I followed
the path James had taken to see which class he was in. But when I arrived at the door I was certain he’d entered, it wasn’t a classroom. It was the same unmarked door that led to my secret room. I put my hand on the knob and turned.

It was locked.

W
hen I returned to the supply room at the end of the day to wait out the after-school rush, the door was unlocked. It hadn’t occurred to me to lock it before, but James had done it, so I pressed the button to make sure nobody walked in on me. Then I quickly found my way to the secret room and switched on the lamp.

Everything was just as I’d left it, but my tattered copy of
The Great Gatsby
was no longer the only item on the shelf. It was now dwarfed by a three-inch-thick hardbound book. I pulled it down to read the cover:
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

Not my first choice of reading material. But James was proving to be not-your-average cute boy. I sat and thumbed through the book. Almost every page had something highlighted, with notes scribbled in the margin. Words defined, explanations of what was really going on. I flipped to the front cover to see if James had signed his named, but found only the initials J.A.R.

I closed it tenderly and returned it to the shelf, gathering my
stuff to go. But something called me back. I don’t know if it was the secret feeling of the room or my new life of secrets, but I wanted to know more about the owner of that book. I took out a pencil and scrawled a note under the initials.

I smiled as I closed the book again and left. I avoided the stairwell where I’d seen Lennie yesterday, got my bike, and pedaled home as close to happy as I’d been all week.

Mom was sitting on the living room floor with papers spread out around her and all over the coffee table. She looked up as if she hadn’t been expecting me and quickly scooped everything into a pile.

“What’s all that?” I asked.

“Nothing.” She shoved it all into one of those brown accordion folders. “Just paperwork.”

“Bills?”

She smiled. “Nothing for you to worry about.”

My stomach twisted. That was what she’d been saying for months. I knew better than to believe her now.

“Mom—”

“How was your day?” she asked brightly.

I told her what
she
wanted to hear. “It was great, Mom. Really great.”

She sighed as if the weight of the world had lifted. “I’m so glad
to hear that. Things have a way of working out, don’t they?”

She disappeared into her bedroom with the papers, and I wondered what bad news they might contain. We’d already lost our house and most of our possessions. How much worse could it get?

The next morning I gazed longingly at some of my cute skirts and dresses and boots but again chose a more cycling-friendly outfit instead: a pair of skinny jeans, my Converse sneaks, a vintage T-shirt, and hoodie. My new uniform.

Mom and Dad were already in the kitchen when I went down, arguing in hushed tones. I stopped and stood on the middle stair.

“Please tell me we didn’t lose everything for . . . for nothing,” said Mom.

“If we get the university contract, we’ll be fine,” said Dad.

“And if we don’t?”

“Something will turn up.”

My mother was making coffee, noisily slamming the pot into place. “You’ve been saying that for weeks, Mark. And look what turned up.”

The step I was standing on suddenly creaked, and their conversation came to a halt. When I arrived in the kitchen, it was all sunshine and roses again.

“Hey, princess.” Dad smiled in his usual way, but I could see the sadness in it now. I wondered how long he’d been hiding it.

“Hey, Daddy,” I said, snarfing down the jelly toast Mom offered. “Gotta go!” I left before the twins were up. Another sign my parents were distracted by their financial woes? They hadn’t even noticed how obscenely early I was leaving for school.

It was my third day on the Schwinn, and everything was going okay until one mile into my ride, a car zoomed past so close I swore it brushed my arm. Someone thrust a hand out the window and gestured at me with an angry fist.
Jerks.
Like it would kill them to share the road with my elbow, which was the only part of me that might have crossed the white line. I gripped the handlebars tighter and veered to the side, leaving plenty of room between me and the car lane. But the loose, gravelly surface of the shoulder sent my wheels skittering and sliding. I swerved back onto the smooth road to get control of the bike.

Another car came up behind me, and I slowed to let it pass. Black BMW. What were the chances James took this road to school? Small, I told myself. Minuscule. He had to live in Westside Falls. Still, watching it go up the hill in front of me was enough to take my eyes off the road long enough that I didn’t notice the rainwater drainage grate coming up in front of me. And when I did, it was too late.

My front tire dropped through the metal slats to a jarring halt, slamming me into the handlebars. I toppled forward and landed smack on the top of my head in a grassy ditch, then flipped onto my backpack like a turtle.

I lay there for a minute, the wind knocked out of me. My ears
were ringing, and then rumbling.

No, that was a car.

I scrambled to right myself and discovered one of my shoes was missing.

“Looking for this?” Lennie sauntered up with my pink Converse dangling from his fingertips.

I nodded, and he tossed it to me. My fingers fumbled the laces as I tried to tie them. I was shaken up but uninjured—as far as I could tell—if you didn’t count my pride. I stood and brushed myself off.

Lennie lifted my bike from the ditch. “Chain’s off,” he said, pointing to how it dangled loosely. Before I could think what to do about that, he had the whole thing flipped upside down, balanced on its seat and handles. I watched numbly as he returned the chain to its gears and slowly rotated the pedal until it was running on track.

“Should be okay now.” He set the bike upright and rolled it over to me. “Are you?”

I nodded again and walked toward him, took the handlebars in my shaky fingers.

He didn’t let go. “Could you say something so I know you’re not brain damaged?”

“Something,” I murmured.

Lennie pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. I was officially the only person in our entire school without my own functioning cell phone. He swiped his finger across the screen.
“Want me to call someone?”

I shook my head. “No, that’s okay.”

He studied me for a minute, his eyes slowly scanning my body from top to bottom, then settling on my face. He gestured back toward his Jeep. “Sure you don’t want that ride? I could throw your bike in the back.”

I shook my head again. “No, I’m fine.”

“Of course.” He snorted and backed away. “Wouldn’t want anyone to see you with me, huh?”

It was true, I couldn’t deny it. I stood there and watched him walk back to his Jeep. Before he got in, he turned back to me.

“Good thing you were wearing a helmet.” He knocked on his head, then got in and peeled away, leaving me in the dust for a second time that week.

I arrived at school without further incident, hid my bike, and checked myself. No scratches, no blood. The bruises would show up later, no doubt. I’d given myself a complete pat down in search of rips or holes, and found none. Unfortunately, I wasn’t contortionist enough to see my own rear end, so I didn’t realize it was one gigantic grass stain.

Willow kindly alerted me to the situation at a decibel level roughly equivalent to the blast of a foghorn when I walked past her in the hall. “I-vy! What the hell is all over your ass?”

I instinctively went into defensive mode and leaned my back
against the wall. Wynn scurried over to spin me around. “Oh, my God!”

“What?” I said, twisting myself backward to see what everyone was looking at. For one terrifying moment I worried that I’d landed in dog shit. “What is it?”

Molly Palmer stopped to observe the commotion. Molly had been one of “us” until she and Willow had a huge falling-out freshman year. I secretly envied Molly for standing up to Willow. It had cost her nearly all her friends, but she didn’t seem to care. She walked over now, looked at my butt, and shook her head. “It’s just a grass stain,” she said. “Haven’t you nitwits ever seen a grass stain before?”

“Who asked you?” said Willow.

Molly snorted. “Like I need your permission to speak?” She pulled a sweater out of her backpack and handed it to me. “You can borrow this, if you want. To cover up.”

“Thanks,” I said, clutching it to my stomach.

Willow snatched it out of my hands and threw it at Molly. “She doesn’t want your ugly sweater.”

Molly shrugged and pushed the sweater back into her backpack. She glanced over at me before she walked away. “Don’t be such a sheep,” she said.

I watched her disappear into the crowd that continued to stare.
At me.
Reesa came pushing her way through. “Nothing to see here! Move along. Move along.” She took one look at me and went into crisis mode.

“What happened?” she said.

My eyes started to water. It was too much to explain. “I fell.”

Willow and Wynn were suddenly all “Poor Ivy, are you okay?” Neither one of them objected when Reesa handed me a sweater from her locker. “Here,” she said. “Tie this around your waist.”

I hoped she could read the gratitude in my eyes, because I was finding it difficult to speak. She helped me position the sweater to conceal the damage.

“Can’t you call your mom and ask her to bring you something?” said Wynn.

I gave her a withering look. Her own mother was never home to bring a change of clothes. But she had the nanny. “I’m just going to use the bathroom,” I said.

Reesa followed, as I knew she would. As soon as we were alone, she whispered, “What really happened?”

“I fell off my bike.” I didn’t mention that Lennie had helped pick me up.

“What bike?”

“The one I’ve been riding to school.”

Her eyes widened. “I thought your mom was driving you.”

I shook my head. “We only have one car now.” And the complication of getting both of my parents to their jobs was difficult enough without adding me into the equation. Even if I had my license—I was still on the six-month learner’s permit I got when I turned sixteen—we didn’t have a second car I could drive, anyway.

Reesa’s eyes went all “poor you” and she touched her fingers to my arm. “As soon as I get my license, I’ll pick you up, okay? It’s only three more months.”

That was a lifetime. But I gave a quick nod and busied myself, pretending to fix my hair. Reesa fiddled with the sweater around my waist, trying to tuck in the sleeves, then giving up when she couldn’t make it look like something it wasn’t.

“You know, I read somewhere that downsizing is trending.”

“What does that even mean?”

“I don’t know. The headline was ‘Hashtag Downsizing’ or something. It was about people going off the grid, making do with less, shopping at thrift stores, using lemon juice instead of deodorant.”

I crinkled my nose. “People do that?”

“I totally read that somewhere,” she said. “Citrus has natural deodorizing properties. It’s all very Bohemian.”

My brain was starting to hurt. Considering how our own high school treated kids from Lakeside—even putting them on their own separate bus—I’d have to say being poor would never be trendy.

But I was too weary to attempt to set Reesa straight on that particular point. “Let’s just go.”

“I’ll walk you to homeroom.” She leaned her shoulder to mine as soon as we were out of the bathroom, but separated suddenly and squeezed my arm. “Oh, God. There he is. Should I talk to him? I should. I should talk to him.”

“Who?” I swiveled my sore neck in time to see James striding toward us. His head was down, though. I did a quick spin-and-drop maneuver, crouching to tie my shoe. Then I dug through my backpack until he passed.

“Shit, shit, shit.” Reesa stamped her foot on the last shit. “He didn’t even look at me.”

I stood and returned her “oh, well” shrug, hoping it hid the relief I was feeling. Maybe she’d lose interest in him.

“He drives a black BMW, you know,” she said. “A really nice one. I saw him pull into the back parking lot. But I couldn’t find any listings for a James Wickerton.”

“Listings?”

“Google, Facebook, Twitter. It’s like he doesn’t exist. There’s only one explanation I can think of.”

“He’s not into social networking?”

“He’s a vampire,” she said, breaking into a playful smile. “But still, probably loaded. Vampires always have money. Centuries of saving, stealing from their victims. It’s all very lucrative.”

“You should definitely stay away from him.” I tried to make it sound like I was joking, but Reesa didn’t take it that way.

“Why?”

I pretended to flip casually through my notebook in search of something. “He doesn’t seem like your type.”

Her bottom lip jutted out. “You don’t like him?”

“No, it’s just . . . I don’t think he’s right for you is all.”

She gave me a long look, then patted my shoulder. “You
must’ve bumped your head in that fall. Because if tall, dreamy, and rich isn’t right for me, then I don’t know what is.”

When I entered our first-period AP English class, Reesa was twirling her hair at James. “We go into the city a lot. You should come with us sometime.”

“I’m not much of a city boy, actually.”

“Not even to visit?” she said, looking slightly aghast.

He laughed. “Not if I can help it.”

“Then what do you do for fun?”

He glanced over to me as I sat down. “I read a lot.”

Reesa frowned. She loved to read, too, but I don’t think that was exactly what she had in mind with James. What she wanted, I realized, was to ditch me and go to New York with someone who could afford it. So much for “hashtag downsizing.”

Mr. Eli called us all to attention and launched into a soliloquy on Shakespeare that drew James’s full and rapt attention, and put Reesa into a coma. About halfway through the class, she escaped with the bathroom pass and gave me an unobstructed view of James. I slid my eyes his way and found him looking at me, too.

He smiled a quick smile.

I quick-smiled back.

Mr. Eli gave the class an assignment to do at our desks. “Take five minutes,” he said, “and write whatever comes to mind when you think of Shakespeare’s plays. The characters, the language,
the plots . . . What are your impressions? If you completed the eighth grade, you’ve already studied at least one of his plays. What are your perceptions of his work? How does Shakespeare make you feel?”