Chapter Nine
IS THIS okay?”
Victor motioned to a corner booth at Sammy’s, opposite the jukebox. Thoughtfully far away from the noisy pinball machines near the entrance and the accompanying crowd of students. The little café was busy, sure, but far less so at the booth Victor selected.
Yes. The word rose from my heart but lodged in my throat.
Because next to that cozy little corner booth, with its red leather seats and Formica tabletop and stained-glass overhead lamp casting a pool of light in the center, and Victor standing there pointing to it .
. . suddenly it felt very much like a date.
Or at least what I’d always imagined a date might feel like.
Victor stared at me, still waiting for me to answer, but I still couldn’t talk, because I didn’t know if he was asking my approval of the booth or the whole thing—this date thing. If, in fact, it was a date.
Either way, though, it was okay. So was the booth.
Words still stuck in my throat, I nodded, and he slid into the farthest seat, his eyes alight and his smile wider.
I made that smile wider. I made those eyes light up.
What a powerful feeling.
“You hungry?” He grabbed two menus from the little holder near the napkin dispenser and handed one of them to me.
Was I? Normally after school I was half starved, but at that moment so many winged insects zoomed around in my stomach that I wasn’t sure there’d be room for even a bite of food. But Sammy’s fries were always delicious.
“I like their fries.” Oh, thank you, God. Finally. Words.
Victor smiled again. “Me too.” Then he just kept smiling. And he didn’t look back at the menu. Nope. His eyes were fixed on me. Why? Did I have something on my face? Did I still have some lunch stuck in my teeth? I’d forgotten to check when I used the restroom earlier.
“What?” Another word popped out.
Victor’s gaze traveled over my face. “The way the sun’s hitting your face right now . . . You have the most incredible blue eyes. And freckles.”
Heat rushed to my cheeks, and I covered my nose with my hand.
Freckles. I’d always hated them. When I was little, I used to scrub with a washcloth until my face turned red, thinking if I just washed enough, they’d come off.
Alas and alack, they never did. But the way light danced in Victor’s eyes and a hint of pink shone in his cheeks as he watched me, maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.
“Oh, don’t cover them up, Iris,” he said. “I think they’re cute.”
I think you’re cute. I wanted to say that, because he really was, in a nerdy kind of way.
But of course I couldn’t. The words stuck in my throat again.
I could only stare at him and feel awkward.
But . . . not bad awkward, like I normally felt.
No, this . . . this was the most beautiful, most delicious kind of awkward.
Uncomfortable . . . and yet not. All at the same time.
“What kind of drink do you like?” Victor peered at the menu. “Coke? Root beer? Lemonade?”
“Coke.” Another word!
“The lady speaks!” Victor used a false British accent, one that drew a giggle from me. “And I like Coke with my fries too.” Then he ditched the accent, sounding once again like any other guy from central Illinois. “I’m beginning to think you and I have quite a lot in common, Iris Wallingford.”
“I think so too.” The voice that came from my lips was quiet, but the voice inside my head was loud. Buzzing almost. Buzzing with thoughts and ideas and plans and dreams and music. So much music. The next line of the melody, in fact.
Oh. Melody. Hello again.
I jerked to my right, where my bag sat next to me. I yanked my notebook of staff paper out and found a pencil. Victor was saying something, but I could barely hear him over the choir in my head.
The melody poured from my head down my arm and into my fingers and into that little stick of yellow wood and gray graphite.
Seemingly encouraged by the fact that I’d found a way to write it down, Melody sped up the pace of her ideas.
If I squinted, I could almost see smoke coming from the pencil lead as I frantically scribbled.
My arm muscles tightened, and my fingers turned white and almost cramped.
Would I even be able to read this later?
I didn’t know, but I still couldn’t stop until Melody did, and then she stopped, and oh thank goodness.
My muscles relaxed. I set the pencil down. The music in my head faded, replaced by some Beatles tune coming from the jukebox.
“Whoa.” Victor stared at me, eyes wide through his glasses. “Did I just give you an idea?”
I was still breathing fast from my efforts to get the melody on paper. “I dunno. Maybe.”
Victor’s gaze fell to the table, adorably shy. “Can I see it?”
“Sure.” I slid the paper across to him and watched his face as he studied it. I’d never cared what anyone else thought of my music before . . . but I’d also never shown it to anyone before. And now that I was showing it to Victor, I suddenly cared.
I cared desperately.
He looked at it for a long time—too long—then blew out a breath and turned his gaze to me. “Wow. Iris. This is . . . this is brilliant.”
A smile sprang to my lips. “Thank you.”
“And you had this idea? Just now?” He leaned in closer, which brought another wave of that comfortably uncomfortable feeling.
I nodded.
He shook his head and pushed the paper across the table toward me. “You amaze me, Iris. I’ve never met anyone else who can do that.”
My gaze fell to the scribbled-out melody beneath my hand. “It’s not much. Not yet. Just a melody.”
“Melodies are the hardest part,” Victor said. “At least for me.”
“For me the hard part is knowing what to put underneath the melody,” I replied. “Like, I hear the harmonies, but I can’t quite figure out exactly what notes they are. It’s a lot of trial and error.”
Victor nodded in understanding. “Harmony can be tricky. I’m not great at it myself yet, but I do play some piano, and that helps.
And what we’re learning in theory class, that’ll help too.
” He craned his neck toward my composition again, and a long finger pointed toward the sixth measure.
“But like, right here. What if the harmony did something like this?” He hummed a few notes.
“Is that close to what you’re hearing, Iris? ”
I tilted my head, comparing his version with the version racing through my mind. “Sorta. It’s more like this.” I hummed my own version. It wasn’t quite perfect yet, and my voice didn’t sound great, but hopefully he wouldn’t judge.
“Ohhhh. Okay, yeah, you’re thinking an augmented sixth chord there.”
My eyes jerked open. “A what?”
“You’ll learn about it in theory class. I took a peek at the textbook, though, so if you want to read ahead, it’s in there. But it’s basically this.” He picked up the pencil I’d discarded and made a few marks beneath the measure.
Did he really just do that? Did he really mark on my composition?
Part of me felt violated. But this was the first real-life composer I’d ever met, and I didn’t want to scare him away.
“There.” He shoved the paper back at me, his sketched-out chord structure faint beneath my frantically scribbled melody. “See?”
“Huh.” I heard the notes in my head. Imagined what the harmony would sound like . . . “Yes, that’s it. That’s it exactly.” Somehow he’d managed to capture the notes in my head and put them on that paper. “An augmented sixth. Thank you.”
“An augmented sixth.” Victor’s gaze drifted to his right, and he issued a low chuckle.
A basket of fries perched on the edge of our table. When did they get here? How had I not noticed? Our Cokes had arrived too. Quite a while ago, if the drops of condensation on the outside of the glasses were any indication.
Suddenly I realized how hungry I was, and I reached for a fry. Victor did the same, and our fingertips brushed in the basket.
“Cheers.” He raised his fry to me, a grin on his lips. Giggling, I bumped my fry up against his, and we took a bite together.
It was cold. Sammy’s famous piping-hot fries had gone stone-cold.
Our eyes met and we laughed, our mouths full of cold, mushy potato.
“Well, I can’t say this has ever happened to me before, Iris.” The laughter shimmered in his voice, beautiful music in its own right.
“What? Getting so wrapped up in a conversation you didn’t notice your fries?” I laughed again. “That’s an awfully specific situation, Victor. I’d be surprised if it ever had happened to you before.”
His laughter chimed with mine, a rich harmony. “You’re a funny girl, Iris. I think I’m really going to enjoy getting to know you.”
Then he reached across the table and laid his hand on top of mine. I flinched at first, because I didn’t normally like to be touched. But then I relaxed.
Because Victor’s touch was like nothing I’d ever felt before.
For the first time ever, I felt like maybe, just maybe, another human being understood me.
And that just might have been the best feeling in the whole wide world.