Rival (12 page)

“Well, how about I check out until it's over? I could use an eight-month nap.”

“I'd miss you,” he says, taking the check from our waitress before I have the chance to grab it. “Besides, I've always liked having you to myself.”

 

Today the headache is worse. All morning I'm a dizzy, nauseated mess, and to top it all off, when I get to choir I find a CPR manual for lifeguards in my folder.
YOU CAN SAVE SOMEONE FROM DROWNING
! it says. I'm dying to go home, but Ms. Burke has an Anatomy study session scheduled for after school, so I take three aspirin, sleep in my car through sixth period, and then go on to the lab.

“You okay?” The concern in John Moorehouse's voice tells me exactly how out of it I must seem.

“Honestly?” I say. “Not really.”

“Hm…” He studies me, and I can see faint smudges of black under his eyes from the football practice he had to leave in order to make it here on time. “Your left eye looks like it's stuck in a permawince. Your pupils are dilated, and you're hunching like it hurts to move your neck. I diagnose a migraine.”

“Is it that obvious?” I squeeze my eye shut and then
open it again—now that he's mentioned it I guess I really have been wincing all day.

“I get them, too,” John says. “Does it feel like somebody's blowing up a balloon—right here?” He touches his fingers lightly, first to the spot where my eye meets the bridge of my nose, and then to my temple. It should probably make me uncomfortable, but his fingertips are cool, and the places where they've been are actually pain-free for a moment.

“That's exactly what it's like,” I tell him.

“Yeah,” he replies. “I don't think it's all in your head.”

“Oh, I know I'm not imagining it.”

“No, I mean you've got so much going on right now.” He waves his scalpel over our pig, then in a bigger circle, at everything around us. “I know
I'm
maxing out on the recommended daily dosage of Excedrin before I even make it to football every day.”

“That sucks,” I say.

He shrugs. “I guess that's our reward for being over-achievers.” He turns back to our pig and points at a muscle in the leg. “Now what's this? The semitendinosus or the semimembranosus?”

“Ummm…I don't know. Let me see.”

I go to the textbook and start flipping pages; when I look up, a piece of paper is tacked to the muscle in question with one of the pins that Ms. Burke uses to hold
back skin so we can identify the organs underneath.

Want to go to Homecoming?
it says.

“What's this?” I ask.

“What?” says John.

“This.” I point to the piece of paper.

“Oh, that! Well, that's a question. Do you want to go?”

“With you?”

He looks around. “Um, yeah! Who else?”

I wait for his smile to turn into a sneer. John may be one of the few people I know who understands the agonies of a migraine, but he's also an A-lister.

His smile begins to falter.

“You're serious?” I say.

“I wouldn't have asked if I wasn't.” He unpins the note and crumples it. “But it's cool if you don't want to. I just thought…”

“No, it's just…” I pause; last year was the first time I had a real Homecoming date, and I've mostly blocked that out, because who wants to remember one of the most humiliating nights of their life?

“Don't act too excited or anything,” John says. He looks truly hurt now, and I remember just last night, complaining about how nobody wanted to go with me. Now, one of the best-looking guys at school is asking me out.

Why is he asking me out?

“No!” I say. “I mean, yes. I'm excited. Just ignore me. I'm not feeling well, remember?”

“Does that mean you'll go?”

“Yes,” I say, because his uncertain eyes with those black smudges underneath them truly are adorable and because, after the water toys and the notes and the worry about Brooke on top of everything else, it feels good to be wanted.

“Great.” He looks relieved. “We'll meet up after the game, go to the dance, maybe get something to eat after that. It'll be fun.”

It does sound nice; and for the first time in what seems like weeks, I smile and really mean it.

“That's more like it,” he says. He points at a long muscle inside the pig's thigh. “Now, what is this damned thing?”

“The semimembranosus,” I say. It turns out I didn't have to look it up after all.

“
ALL RIGHT NOW, NICE AND
easy. Start here and slide up the octave, then back down, keeping the tone resonant in your nasal cavity. Let's do it softly, and…”

I'm standing in the crook of Hildy Shultz's piano, warming up at the start of my voice lesson. She gives me the beginning note, and I open my mouth to do the exercise. Nothing comes out. I put in a bit more breath and get a tone. But it's hoarse. Like I've got a cold.

“Stop,” says Hildy after I've tried a few more times. “Brooke, are you feeling all right?”

I tell her I am. It's the truth. I don't feel sick, even though I sound like I'm trying to sing through a nasty sore throat. It's like my voice box is swollen. The sound is having trouble getting out.

“Try this,” Hildy says. She leads me through some vocalises that go from what should be my lowest tone
to what should be my highest. I can only get the middle register out. And even those notes sound forced.

“Okay, stop. Open.” Hildy stands up, leaning over so she can examine the back of my mouth. She pulls back and glares at me. “I admire your dedication, Brooke, but you need to let up a bit. You're abusing your voice.”

“I'm being careful,” I tell her. “I don't scream or sing outside my range or anything like that.”

“But how often are you singing? In addition to your regular practicing, are you having extra rehearsals in choir?” She can tell by the look on my face what my answers are. The look on her face tells me she doesn't like it. “I'm stopping this lesson right here,” she says. “There's no point in going on if you don't have a voice, plus you need to take a break.” She pulls a sheet of paper from a pad on her music stand and writes down a phone number. “This is for Dr. Dunne. He's the ear, nose, and throat specialist who sees all the students here. Get an appointment as soon as you can and
take it easy
for a few days. Let's hope you haven't given yourself polyps. Or nodes, God forbid.”

Leaving her office feels like getting kicked out. Nodes are a singer's worst fear. They're bumps that form on your vocal cords when you abuse them, like blisters or calluses, and they keep the folds of muscle from vibrating together right. Nodes can ruin your career. A lot of
times the only way to get rid of them is surgery. But that can damage your voice even more.

Now I'm really freaked out, and I have no idea what to do with myself. I don't want to go home. The place is too quiet with Mom working late all the time, and if I can't practice, then I don't really want to be there. But if I call Chloe, then we'll end up someplace like Pomodori's or a party, and I'll have to yell over the noise, which will only make my voice worse.

Bang, bang, bang…
Out in the atrium, they've put up tape around the entrance to the new hall where the Blackmore is supposed to take place. Inside, construction workers are banging around under utility lamps. I step over the tape and peek around the corner. There's no way it'll be finished in time. The theater looks like I feel—ripped up and totally unprepared.

I walk across the atrium and up the stairs to the second floor, where the practice rooms are lined up in one long hallway. It sounds like an orchestra warming up—lots of people singing and playing instruments, everybody working on something different. The rooms are supposed to be soundproof, but you can hear a lot through the doors. Like the soprano three rooms down.

I walk up closer, trying to tune out the other noises. The voice is sweet but powerful. So clear and focused I can hear every word, even through the practice room door.

It's Kathryn. Has to be.

The piece she's working on is fast, with lots of high notes jumping around, and she's having trouble with it. She starts a passage, stops, then starts again. She skips to another spot in the song, but that part is hard, too. She tries it out a few times, and then there's silence. I go up to the door and put my ear close. Behind the thick wood I can hear a sniffle, then soft crying.

I should be happy she's upset. But what I really feel is a tired kind of sympathy. I step away from the door and leave her alone.

Back downstairs, on the other side of the music wing, I test the door to the theater where the opera workshop rehearses. It's unlocked. So I go inside and sit in the back row where nobody will see me. They're working on
The Turn of the Screw
, which is based on the book about a nanny and two possessed children. I shut my eyes and listen like I've done so many times before, trying to see if there's anything I can learn. But all I can think of is that the singers I'm hearing are stuck. Because if you really want to make a career out of this you don't come to Lake Champion, Minnesota. You come here if you want to teach or maybe direct choirs, but not if you're serious about singing. For that you go to a big city. Ian Buxton Blackmore must have realized that. Everybody talks about the Blackmore like he started it so people
could come and hear all of the great singers in Lake Champion. I think he really created it so singers like me could get
out
.

The door on the other side of the theater opens and somebody comes in. The person sits down against the far wall. Even though it's dark I can tell from the outline of her ponytail that it's Kathryn. She looks tinier than ever, and just as lost as me.

Sitting across from each other in the dark, I start to wonder—would it be weird if I went and sat next to her? What would I say? What would she do?

I come close to getting up and going over. But every time, something holds me back. Kathryn and I have been enemies for a year now. How do you fix something like that? And do I even want to after all that happened?

Every time I look at her, it still feels like yesterday.

MOST PEOPLE, IF THEY BECAME
popular overnight, would probably revel in a newfound sense of importance. They'd enjoy the envious glances of those who weren't so lucky, the exclusive parties, the new view from the A-list bench in the commons. For me, the best thing about junior year was the freedom. I soon realized that nothing I did with Brooke or Chloe or Dina would ever go on my transcript. And when my mom and dad asked about all of the time we spent together, I found it surprisingly easy to lie—even when my grades started to slip.

“I'm sure this is an abnormality,” said my Trigonometry teacher, Mr. Boyd, as he handed me yet another D+ test.
Discuss with your parents,
he'd scrawled along the bottom.
Perhaps you need a tutor
.

But I didn't discuss it with them; I hid the exam in my dresser drawer along with two barely passing English
essays. I had better things to think about; things like the Senior Keg.

After weeks of suspense, Miles finally got me an invitation, along with permission to bring one other person. I chose Chloe because Brooke was already going with her brothers, who'd decided to come back just for the party. But Miles couldn't drive us because he had to be there early, so Bill and Brice offered to take everyone instead.

“We'll be the only nonseniors there,” Chloe told me as we waited on the front steps of her house for them to show up. “Except for the college kids, of course. This is practically a college party!” Bouncing with excitement, she tucked a stray hair beneath the brim of the hat that coordinated perfectly with her powder blue ski jacket.

I shivered, pulling my old peacoat closer around my body. “Is it really going to be outside? What do people
do
? It's so cold!”

“Not if you have supplies.” Chloe took a small thermos out of her bag. She unscrewed the cap, took a swig, and then handed it to me. Coffee-scented steam rose from inside, heavy with the rich smell of liquor. “Espresso and Bailey's Irish Crème,” she said as I brought it to my lips. The hot coffee warmed my mouth and throat; the alcohol warmed the rest of me.

Lights appeared at the end of Chloe's driveway. She
put the thermos away as a Jeep drove up with Bill in the driver's seat, Brice sitting next to him and Brooke in the back.

“Tell Monaghan he owes me,” Bill joked as we slid in. “The Dempsey cab service ain't cheap.”

“Actually, I think he owes
me
,” I teased back. “This isn't exactly a limo.”

Bill laughed, and Brice and Chloe did, too. I thought I heard Brooke mutter something under her breath, but the CD player was up too loud.

We were quiet, and for a few songs it was okay; then a melancholy ballad started and my fear of long silences got the best of me.

“So this party is at The Rocks,” I said. “Why do they call it that?”

“You've never been out to The Rocks?” Bill eyed me in the rearview mirror.

“Kathryn's a virgin,” Chloe announced.

“So are you,” said Brooke, making Chloe's know-it-all tone sound downright friendly.

“I've been to The Rocks before,” Chloe said.

“In the afternoon. To lay out. That doesn't really count, does it?”

Chloe fell quiet, pouting, and Brooke glared straight ahead. This had been happening more and more often: She would be closed-lipped and snappish, and when any
body asked what was wrong, she would say “nothing.”

While I prayed for another loud song to come on, Brice turned in his seat. “Brooke,” he said. “Hand me a beer.”

Brooke just sat there with her arms crossed. It was Chloe who finally reached into the cooler behind our seats and brought out bottles for Brice, herself, and me. As I took the first sip, I noticed Brooke glaring at me.

“Do you want one?” I said.

“No,” she replied.

“Are you feeling okay?”

“I feel fine.” She turned to the window, leaving me to stare at her shoulders. Outside, the road grew narrow, winding through trees that loomed up on either side like black spires. Bill rounded a curve, and the trees opened abruptly into a clearing. Parked cars stretched out before us, and beyond them we could see bodies illuminated by random headlights and the glow of a huge bonfire.

We left the Jeep at the edge of the lot and followed the twins to an old pickup where a keg had been set up on the flatbed.

“Awesome,” said Chloe as Bill shelled out five dollars each for red plastic cups, which he distributed among us. Brooke took one, but while the rest of us held ours under the spigot, she spun around and started walking
toward the bonfire. I saw her drop her cup as we hurried to join her.

“Don't you want any?” I said, ready to share. The air was frigid, and I didn't feel like drinking something cold on top of it.

“No,” she snapped.

“Whatever,” said Chloe as Brooke walked on ahead of us. “She'll be bare-assed by midnight.”

“Really?” I watched as Brooke greeted some seniors around the bonfire; in her leather barn jacket and scarf she looked much older than a junior.

“You mean she hasn't told you about that time at Steak 'n' Shake? Or Dan Hummel and the Mardi Gras beads? Oh my God, Brooke is the queen of getting trashed and nasty.”

Chloe gave me the whole story as we cleared the final feet to the fire's edge. I barely believed it—I'd never seen Brooke so much as take a sip of alcohol, let alone do something as undignified as throwing up or getting naked in public. I envied how good it must feel to be free enough to do things like that, even if they
were
embarrassing.

The seniors moved back as we approached, letting us through. “Hey, Kathryn,” said Nick Zimmerman, and I nearly spilled my beer in surprise. The student council president actually knew my name! I finished my drink,
then let Chloe refill my cup from her thermos. Minutes later somebody new came by, handing out shots of whiskey.

“Careful,” Brooke said as I puckered at my first taste of Jack Daniel's. “You don't have much of a tolerance, I bet.”

The warmth had spread from my stomach to my cheeks, and little sparks of I didn't know what were starting to flash inside of me—excitement and daring and new possibilities. I washed down the whiskey with a chug of spiked coffee.

“I'm okay,” I told her. “You don't have to babysit.”

I meant it to sound like a joke but I think she took it the wrong way, because she said “fine,” and then disappeared into the dark. Stunned and disoriented, I took a few steps backward, nearly tripping as I collided with another body. I turned to see Miles and, next to him, a girl in a duster coat with long blond hair spilling from underneath a knit cap.

“Kathryn! There you are,” he said. “I've been looking everywhere for you.”

But the way he stood with his hands to the fire told me he might have forgotten I was supposed to even be there in the first place.

“I'm Anna,” said the girl in the duster. She held a gloved hand out for me to shake.

“Anna's here studying abroad,” Miles told me. “From Stockholm. She's staying with my uncle in Minneapolis.”

“Oh…,” I said. “Fascinating.” Miles hadn't told me he was bringing somebody else.

Anna nodded, I nodded, and Miles slipped his hand into the pocket of my peacoat, twining his fingers with mine. Chloe and Dina called this “dating” all I knew was that it got more confusing the longer I tried to keep it up.

I untangled my fingers so I could take another drink from Chloe's thermos. Warm numbness now worked its way through my body, replacing confusion with a strange and delicious inability to care. People around us were singing, so I started singing, too. Somebody I didn't know put her arm around me, and we swayed back and forth to music that blared out of one of the parked cars. Chloe laughed, chasing sparks from the fire, and I laughed, too. I couldn't help myself. I felt silly and invincible and gloriously, deliriously free.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said to Miles. “Where do I do that?”

He peered over the crowd, toward where the trees gathered into darkness. I followed his gaze and understood: Peeing was going to be an adventure.

I left them and set off, past groups of partiers, picnic tables, and drums overflowing with garbage. As I got
closer, a group of guys stumbled past. Somewhere in the drowning part of me that still worried about practicalities, I hoped they weren't headed for the same patch of trees I had targeted; I didn't want to have to find some other place to go.

“Because it's there!” one of the guys kept shouting. “Because it's there!”

Chloe rushed up with several others who appeared to be following the guys. “Jason Riley's going to climb down the rocks,” she told me. “He's insane!”

I veered off and chose another spot to enter the woods. Picking my way through branches and brush, I stopped just in time to keep from plunging over a cliff.

A vista lay in front of me, lit by the full moon. Below and out as far as I could see was the lake and, at my feet, a steep drop-off with boulders frozen in a tumble, one over the other until they reached some unseeable bottom.

This was why they called it The Rocks.

I stepped to the edge of a long, smooth rock, letting cold air fill my lungs. Could I have dreamed, when I got that pink invitation to Brooke's slumber party, that in just a couple of months I would be in this strange place, partying with the most powerful people at school? Who was I? What was I turning into? If I took one more step, could I fly?

I slid my foot backward, moving away from the ledge. I was starting to scare myself. Squatting over a pile of leaves, I quickly emptied my bladder, and then I went to find Brooke.

As I walked back toward the party, I heard a familiar laugh coming from a cluster of picnic tables not far from the bonfire. Brooke sat on one of them with a group of girls who wore swimming letters on their jackets. She had a cup in her hand, and when I sat down next to her I could definitely smell beer.

“You're drunk,” she said. “I told you to be careful.”

“It's hard being careful.” I put my head on her shoulder. “I tried.”

My vision had narrowed to a tiny rectangle in my lap. A hand thrust in, offering another shot of whiskey, and my hand rose instinctively to accept it.

“She's had enough,” Brooke told the owner of the hand. “Thanks.”

“You sound like my mother,” I said.

“Your mother is awesome. I love your mother.”

I lifted my head, then put my feet to the ground and stood up. The movement widened my perspective and I felt as if I could step outside my body for a minute to see—really see—myself. There I stood, my clothes rumpled, my head lolling as I swayed back and forth, trying to keep focused.

“I'm sorry, Brooke,” I said. “I think you might be mad at me.”

“I'm not mad at you.” She fiddled with the zipper of her coat. I couldn't tell if she meant it or not.

“You really are my best friend. You know that?”

“Uh-oh, careful,” said one of the swimmers. “She's got the ‘I love you, man's.”

“I don't have the anything, mans.” I grabbed Brooke's hand; suddenly this was the most important thing in the world. “You are a great singer,” I told her. “You are a great person. And I hope you know how much I appreciate everything you've ever done for me, Brooke. Really!”

For the first time in weeks, I saw a smile play about the corners of her mouth; this time I felt almost positive it was genuine.

“You're a mess,” she said.

“I know. I'm an idiot. About so many things.”

A scream rose from beyond the bonfire. Neither of us paid attention. People screamed a lot at parties, I figured; somebody had probably snuck up on somebody, or someone had spilled beer down someone else's back. I didn't pay attention because, for the first time in what seemed like weeks, Brooke wasn't acting angry or defensive or shut down.

“Where's Miles?” she asked me.

I sighed, feeling something inside of me crumble. I'd been dying to talk with her about this, and maybe now she would let me.

“Miles is making me insane.”

Her face hardened. “Insane how?”

The alcohol made it hard for me to get the problem into words. “Well, like tonight,” I said. “Did you see him here with Ahnn-na?” I drew the name out for dramatic effect.

“I saw him,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “Anna's from a foreign country. He can't just leave her alone out here when she doesn't know anybody.”

I could feel our moment slipping away. I panicked, trying to get it back.

“I know! It's just…” I could not think of a way to make what I wanted to say sound right. “It's just…Miles is…not as great as everybody thinks.”

Brooke reared back in surprise.

“What? Is he not paying enough attention to you or something?”

“Sort of…” When you put it like that, it really did sound petty, and I could tell from the way her eyebrow stayed glued to the top of her forehead that petty was exactly how she had taken it. I opened my mouth to try to explain again but there came another scream, this time too loud to ignore, especially when news began
to ripple through the crowd that something bad had happened.

Nick Zimmerman strode past us with his car keys out.

“The cops are coming,” he said. “Riley fell down the fucking ravine.”

Another guy ran past us, blubbering. “Man, I think he's dead down there. We haven't heard anything in, like, twenty minutes.”

“Shit,” said Brooke. She dumped her beer, got up from the table, and scanned the clearing. She started grabbing people as they ran by, asking, “Where's Bill Dempsey? Have you seen Brice?”

I stood frozen, the alcohol still buzzing in my brain, wondering what it meant. Would we be caught? Would we all get arrested? What would I tell my parents? I couldn't find anybody I recognized in the roiling, panicked crowd.