3. Chapter 3 #2
Carl nods once as if everything is settled. “Consider using that time to do something to take your career here to the next level.” He starts riffling through his papers on his desk again, and I think I’ve been dismissed.
There’s a lump rising in my throat, and I try not to look too dejected as I swallow it and stand to make my way back outside.
The sun doesn’t feel as rejuvenating anymore, but I do my best to shake it off.
I can’t have Devin thinking I’m bringing bad mojo to her track meet, or she’ll blame me if it doesn’t go as well as she hopes.
Thinking about Devin has me checking my phone as I pick up my pace to my car.
Lennon’s marshmallow face is silently lighting up my screen again.
I’m not normally irritated with his calls, but this is getting a bit excessive.
I grit my teeth and answer just as I’m sliding behind the steering wheel of my Honda.
It connects to the speaker system as soon as I start the car.
“Hey, listen, I’m on my way to Devin’s meet—”
“I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for a week,” he interrupts, a bit breathless.
“Sorry,” I say, though I’m not feeling entirely apologetic. “The end of the school year is a little nutty—”
“Yeah. I get it. Do you have a minute right now, though, or…” He trails off.
I grind my teeth at his second interruption.
He could just get to the point, but he’s not going to without my permission, so I say, as brightly as I possibly can, given the circumstances, “I’m on my way to the meet, so I have”—I check the clock on the dashboard—“three minutes. What’s up? ” I back out of my parking space.
He takes a deep breath. “Okay. Before you say no—”
“No,” I jump in.
He’s silent for a moment, and I can feel the smile tugging at my lips as I inch through the intersection and onto the main road outside the campus. Banter with Lennon, I can do. It’s as natural as breathing, and it goes a long way to make me less unbalanced.
“Lark, come on.” He’s trying to sound manly and reasonable, but there’s an unmistakable whiny edge to his voice. He sounds so much like teenage Lennon that my heart skips.
“Sorry,” I say again, and I mean it this time. “Go ahead.”
“I have an idea. A proposal? No. Maybe a proposition.” He’s muttering now, trying to find the right word, but before I can pipe in to tell him to spit it out, he does.
“I have this project. An audiobook. Two narrators. The female narrator had to drop out because she needs her tonsils removed, so I talked to the author and some people, and they’d like you to do it.
Well, to audition. But we’re in a bind, and you said the other day that you wanted to get back into acting.
No, you didn’t say that. You were sad about Devin leaving, but you kind of implied that you wanted to do something else and—”
“Lennon! Good lord, take a breath. You’re making me nervous just listening to you.
” I swing my car around into the only parking space left at the high school.
I can hear the crowd cheering through my closed windows.
A glance at my clock tells me the meet just started, which means I have a little time before Devin’s race.
“Let me get this straight,” I say slowly. “You need a female audiobook narrator because someone is getting their tonsils out?”
“Yes.”
“And you know the author well enough to suggest your high school friend should take on the role?”
“Jessica. Yes. Sort of.”
There’s a puzzle piece sliding into place. The name isn’t familiar, but it sounds like someone Lennon may have spent some horizontal time with.
“Right. So you told Jessica ”—I don’t even try to hide the disdain in my voice—“who I am sure is very young and pretty, that your old hag bestie might be a good fit for this project in some kind of misguided white-knight moment to save me from my own impending empty-nest midlife crisis. Is that about right?”
He’s silent for so long I check to see if he’s hung up. He hasn’t.
“I don’t even know which part of that to respond to first,” he finally admits.
“This is not one of your better ideas,” I say flatly.
“It’s a great idea.” He sounds offended. “You’re not teaching courses this summer. Devin is going to be traipsing around Europe with her friends and then headed to New York. You’ve done some voiceover work before. All you need is a microphone and a closet.”
“You want me to spend my summer in a closet narrating a book. For Jessica.” I am losing my grasp on reality with every minute this conversation carries on, so I turn off my car and press my phone to my ear so I can at least make my way closer to the track.
“I haven’t slept with her, if that’s what you keep implying.”
“I think ‘the lady doth protest too much.’” I really need to teach something more advanced, if only so I can stop analyzing Shakespeare in Intro to Theater. Just for a semester.
“There was no protesting. I said it one time.”
“I don’t care if you’ve slept with her or not.
It’s just a little weird that you’re asking me to do this.
You’re in LA. Home of starlets and fame-seekers.
Surely there’s someone out there who can do this in a pinch.
” I arrive at the entrance to the track and smile at the security guard on duty. He waves me through.
“Look, you rattled me the other night, Lark. I felt really bad for you. And if we’re being honest, I could use the money from this one. It’s a big project. Bobby got engaged, and it would be a nice cushion in case it takes a while to find another roommate.”
There’s another puzzle piece sliding satisfyingly into place. Two, actually: pity and money.
I sigh heavily, pausing while the announcer’s voice booms over the speakers, ushering in the next event.
“I’m at Devin’s meet, so I have to go. But I don’t think this is in the cards for me, Len.
Even if I got a mic and locked myself in the closet, I live next to a bunch of rentals in a college town.
It’s loud. It’s why I quit voiceover work years ago. ”
The first runner crosses the finish line, and the crowd erupts just as Lennon says, “So come to LA. Do it here.”
I plug my other ear with my finger. “I’m sorry. It sounded like you just said I should come to LA. I can’t hear you over the crowd.”
“I did,” he shouts. “Come out here. I’ve got a room now that Bobby is leaving, and the studio has recording space. You’ve got time off and an empty place.” He pauses as the announcer states the next event. “And I miss you,” he adds once it’s quiet again.
I miss him, too. Desperately, sometimes.
Like the other night when I was lying on my side, pretending he was in bed next to me, giving me a hug I so fiercely needed.
He gives the best hugs. They’re the kind that completely envelop you and make you feel like absolutely nothing can touch you or harm you ever again.
“This is…a lot,” I finally admit. It’s a ridiculous idea.
There’s no need for me to go all the way to LA to record an audiobook.
But I’d be lying if I said I was completely uninterested.
If a little bit of Michigan sunshine in the quad earlier gave me some pep in my step, imagine what sunny Los Angeles could do for me.
Not to mention that recording an audiobook could open more doors in the industry, which might satisfy Carl.
Though based on the slight crack I’m sure I heard in Lennon’s voice when he said he misses me, I don’t think this visit would really be about any of that. It’d be about spending time with my best and oldest friend. The rest of it would be a bonus.
Lennon’s voice scatters my thoughts. “Yeah, of course. Take some time to think about it and call me later, okay?” He sounds nervous, and maybe a little dejected. Knowing him, he had this wild idea and thought it was so amazing there’s no way I could turn it down.
But he knows me as well as I know him, so he should have been prepared for me to have to think it through.
“Okay,” I say.
“Tell Devin she did great,” he adds quickly.
“She hasn’t run yet.”
“I know. Doesn’t matter. Whatever she does will be awesome. Okay, talk later.”
Devin’s event is up next, so I say a hasty goodbye, but for the first time in a long time, I feel like I’m standing at the edge of something really exciting.
And it’s not just the personal best Devin runs while I scream and jump up and down.
Her teammates all rush onto the track at the end of her event, hugging her.
She greets each of them in turn but makes sure to shine her smile up at me in the stands.
I’m so proud of this kid—and proud of myself for doing a good job raising her.
She’ll always need me, and I’ll always be her mom, but right now, I have a chance to be just Lark again.
Not Professor Caspian. Not Mom. Not even Lennon’s Songbird.
And the idea of it is so attractive, I’m having a hard time finding a reason not to go.
For the rest of the meet and long after we get home, eat dinner, celebrate with ice cream, and she retires to her room to call her friends, I try to talk myself out of it.
I even look for flights thinking they’ll be prohibitively expensive, but they’re surprisingly reasonable.
I decide to sleep on it because hasty decisions aren’t my MO.
But as I close my eyes, a giddy sensation washes over me.
I’m going to LA.
And I get to spend a summer with Lennon.