The Space in Between (3 page)

It’s a date.

Chapter Two

Christian

When I was a kid and my parents would do the rounds of taking me to see both sets of grandparents, I used to make a point of sitting outside with my dad’s dad, and he’d give me lessons on life while we sipped Grandma’s ice cold lemonade.

Every few months there was a new lesson, but no one as important as the last one he gave me before we picked up and moved to the city.

“Pay attention to the signs, boy.”
He’d said.
“They might not make a lick of sense in the moment, but they’re sure to mean everything when the time’s right.”

I never gave it a whole lot of thought before, but with the way things have been happening since I got here today, I’m pretty sure I’m seeing the point now.

Not paying attention and almost getting run over by a bike could have easily been chalked up to a random occurrence, maybe even the hallway incident too, but sitting here in music class, watching Emery with an acoustic guitar in her hands as her fingers move delicately over the strings as she plays, it’s completely out of the realm of random.

This has got to be a sign.

Emery is a sign for something, and while I’ve got no idea what it could possibly be, with the amount of time I’ve spent with her today, it’s hard to see it any other way.

Sign of new friendship maybe? Or maybe it’s a sign that living here won’t be as bad as I thought when my dad dropped it on me?

Whatever it is, watching her play, taking in the way her eyes seem to dance as she focuses on her finger movements before they close and seem to get lost in the sound from various instruments playing around her, I wish it would make itself apparent already.

“Hey new kid.”

Turning in the direction of the voice, I’m looking up into the face of a giant, or at least one that appears that way with the way he towers over me.

Great. I can’t imagine this is going to be good.

“Yeah?”

“Yorke wants to know what instrument you play.” Looking past me until his eyes land on Emery, he smirks before focusing his attention back. “But I see why you didn’t hear him.”

“It’s not like that.” I try and deflect, my voice steady despite the embarrassment I feel at being caught staring.

“Sure it’s not. Look, if you wanna make it through this class with a passing grade, you might wanna answer Yorke back when he’s talking to you. Also, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to be more subtle about that other stuff too.”

Other stuff.

Yep. He definitely caught me starting at Emery.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. Thanks.”

“No problem. I was the new kid once. Figure you could do with some wisdom.”

“Definitely.”

“Name’s Jonah.”

“Christian.” I give up easily, and looking at Emery with a smile, he turns and slaps me on the back as he starts walking away, motioning to the teacher as he goes.

“Better tell him what you play or he’ll put you on the piccolo.”

Chancing a final look over to where Emery is playing, hoping that with as loud as Jonah had been talking, she hadn’t heard, I’m met with the coolness of her brown eyes as they stare back at me. The ‘I caught you’ smirk on her face all the answer I need.

Turning away quickly and keeping my head down to hide what I’m sure is the blood red shade of utter embarrassment now plastered all over my face, I make my way over to the teacher and force myself to smile as I make eye contact.

“Christian Cayne. Transfer from Port Hope. Played the bass guitar in his own band, the trombone in music class, and has chosen his senior year to move here and grace us with his musical presence.”

How the guy knows that much about me, I’ve got no clue, but smiling weakly, I play along. 

“That’s me, except for the last part.”

“So will you be playing the trombone for us here or would you rather take a chance on another instrument?”

“What else is there?”

“I’m sure you can see by looking that this isn’t your average music class. In here, as long as we have the instruments, anything goes. So pick your poison as they say, Mr. Cayne, but do it quickly. Music waits for no man.”

Eyeing the room as he walks away, I see exactly what I’m looking for in the far right corner of the room. It looks a little worn, the strings definitely in need of replacement, but standing out all the same.

Bass Guitar.

A few months after my mom died, my dad went out and bought me a bass for my birthday. Despite my loathing of it at first, anything that required more than the bare minimum of effort not really being my speed, I eventually picked it up and began teaching myself. It had taken another year after that for me to sound any good, but by that time, I’d been so in love, I didn’t even care. Covering songs, screwing around and coming up with songs of my own, it became my brand of therapy.

A therapy I thought I would have to give up when dad said we were moving, but one that’s now standing only a few feet away from me, waiting for me to pick it up and begin where I left off.

Making my way across the room toward it, reaching out slowly and running my fingers over it before pulling it down and bringing the strap down and over my body, I feel it again.

The words from my grandpa.

This guitar. It’s a sign.

Sensing movement behind me just as the warm gush of heat finds its way across my ear and down over my neck, making the fine hairs stand at attention, I smile. “See, I knew having lunch together would pay off.”

“You told Yorke I played bass?”

“Well, yeah. If I didn’t, I’m pretty sure he’d have stuck you in the back corner and forced you to play triangle.”

“I heard it was the piccolo.”

“Nah. He only does that when he really wants to torture someone.”

“And the triangle isn’t torture?” I ask. “Seems pretty torturous to me.”

“Depends on how you look at it I guess. Playing the triangle freshman year, I happen to think it’s the less torturous of the two.”

“You’re kidding. He made you play it?”

Nodding, she smiles as she turns and points across to the girl now in possession of the very instrument we’re talking about.

“I wasn’t good with anything else, and at the time it was all brass instruments, so triangle saved my life. But when I came back a year later, everything was different. Yorke may come across like a tool, but he’s a pretty awesome one once you get to know him.”

Her depiction of our teacher, I want to argue it since he came across a little staunch before, but the ease at which she held and played the guitar, almost as though she had a deep respect for it, overrides it all. How she got from not being able to play anything to sounding that good while just strumming a few bars of a song, I need to know more.

“I was watching you.” I admit and despite trying not to, my cheeks begin to overheat with the admission. “You play really well.”

“I know you were. Jonah isn’t exactly the quietest guy, but even if he was, I can feel when people are watching. I didn’t always play well, though. Yorke saw something in me a couple of years ago and well, here we are.”

“Here we are.” I repeat, unsure of what to say now that again I seem to have stuck my foot in my mouth where this girl is concerned.

“Can I ask you something, Mikey?”

“Sure.”

“You play music, obviously. You talked about it at lunch, but do you write it as well?”

“No. I’m good at reading it, but not so great at composing. Why?”

Before she has the chance to answer back, Mr. Yorke makes his way to the front of the room and claps three times in succession, at which point all of the chatter and music tuning that had been going on comes to a halt and all eyes are directly on him.

Following suit, I watch as he steps forward and announces what the first assignment of the week will be. Making Emery’s question make all the sense in the world.

 “Take a look around you. For the next five months, the people in this room will become as close to you as family. You will work with them, get to know them and create with them. And to begin that journey, I ask you to look to your left, or for those of you with no one to your left, the right. For the next week this will be your musical partner in crime. Between the two of you and your chosen instruments, you will compose a piece to present to the rest of the class. I don’t care what your relationship to this person is outside of the classroom, but when you are here, you will put the music first. Now, enough with the time wasting. Let’s get started.”

“You knew he was going to do that, didn’t you?”

“Sometimes it pays to be a teacher’s pet, Mikey.” She winks. “So how do you want to do this? I write and you play? Or we write together?”

The easy way is to ask her to do the writing, but there’s something about the drawn out way she says together that makes me not want to take the lesser road.

If we’re going to do this, and I’ve got to do it with her, I definitely want to do it as a team.

“Let’s make beautiful music together, Emery Carmichael.”

Emery

This is how a typical lunch goes.

I store all my crap in my locker and head outside. I’m not entirely sure why it is I’m always outside, but if there’s a choice between taking pictures of the depressing sight that is a high school hallway, and the beauty that is the world outside, it’s always going to be nature for me.

When you’re outside, nothing is for certain. The wind may make the trees blow a different way than before, people will make different choices, giving you multiple different shots and angles at which to shoot them from. It’s unknown and most of all, exciting.

For the past four years the unknown has been my constant.

So why I feel the need to act like the school welcoming committee and invite Christian to lunch, thereby throwing my constant into upheaval, is beyond me, but there was just something in the way he mouthed the word date in English class, and me needing to get a shot of him for the paper that screamed at me to do it.

So Emery the one woman welcoming committee I became. And to be honest, it wasn’t all that bad.

It’s actually kind of amazing what you can learn about someone when you step away from the way they look through a lens and actually speak to them. Ask them things about themselves and take in what they’ve said.

By the end of it, I may have even enjoyed myself a little.

But if you ever tell anyone I said that, I’ll have to kill you.

*****

“So you’ve been through two classes and survived. How do you feel?” I jump in and ask when we’ve crossed the one way driving lane to the grass on the other side and made ourselves at home.

“Not sure yet. Still deciding.”

“I take it you weren’t the one that wanted to move?”

“You got it.”

“So what was it that made Christian Cayne leave and come all the way here? Scandalous divorce? House burned down? Running from the law? If I get a choice, I’m going with the last one. I mean you did show up in the back of a cruiser today.”

“Passenger seat, actually, but neither of those.”

I know that my lack of socialization with people, often times choosing a camera over human interaction, is severely lacking, but I was pretty sure with the laugh in my voice and the smile on my face, it was a given that I was joking. The way he looks out and away and his answers seem scripted, make me think he took me too seriously.

“You do know I was kidding, right? I mean, I don’t actually think any of those things are real.”

This gets his attention. He turns back offering up the barest trace of a smile.

“I know, it’s just, I don’t like to talk about why we’re really here.”

“Okay, well, you don’t have to. I was just making conversation. Sorry I suck at it. Usually my best friend is here to buffer.”

“My mom died.” He blurts out. “It took my dad four years to realize that living in the same house she died in was too much, but he finally got a clue.”

Yeah, I could definitely use a little Johnny intervention right about now. I have no idea what to do with this. The only experience I’ve got with losing a parent is my dad taking off when my mom was pregnant. It’s not like my expertise can help here.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. No biggie. I just figured since you’re trying to make conversation it might help if I did it back.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.” He replies, focusing his attention on his backpack and the paper bag lunch he pulls out a few seconds later.

Slipping his sandwich out of the bag, he takes a bite and goes back to surveying the area around us, his eyes taking everything in until they finally fall back on me right at the exact moment I take a sip of soda and he swallows the bite of sandwich.

“I really need to start making my own lunch. I’m pretty sure I just ate sand paper.”

Tossing it down onto the paper bag, he leans back at the same moment I lean forward, handing him my container of yogurt. It’s not much, but at least it’s not sand paper.

“Here, take this.  I’m not gonna eat it anyway. You can have my dairy.”

Bringing his hand forward he slips it around the bottom of the container, the surge from earlier presenting itself again as his fingers lightly brush over mine.

“But what are you going to do without your dairy?”

“Wither away to nothing, I suppose.” Catching the side of his face lift in a grin, I mentally pat myself on the back.

Maybe I don’t need Johnny after all.

“Can’t have that, so here.” He says, grabbing a small clear bag and handing it over. The contents of which, I’ve never been more excited to see.

Chocolate chip cookies.

My absolute favorite.

Snatching the bag out of his hand and pulling one from the bag, I immediately take a bite and moan as the taste hits my tongue.

“Wow…someone really likes cookies.”