Chapter 3 #2
Amanda shepherds me into the band room. In the back right corner, particleboard walls give the cubicle of the band director’s office semi-privacy, so she deposits me in the deep-cushioned armchair there.
I only notice how shaky my legs are after I sit down.
Is it because I hit my skull or because this may have been the third time I’ve seen a ghost?
Mr. Leary pops his head in, his face open, looking hopeful he might have something else to think about other than his dead son.
I wonder briefly if he could have seen Mason in the hallway as well, but he looks too calm.
“Oh, hi, Mr. Leary,” Amanda says, seeming to enjoy her newest role as ER doctor. “Hattie just bumped her head. Do you have an ice pack, by chance?”
“Of course. brB,” he says with a wink, clearly trying out something he thinks might be cutting edge.
Amanda turns back to me, about to do some more mothering. I look at her, thinking about the tally I was keeping in the bathroom. I’m going to have to add “nurturing” to her column and “hot mess” to mine, which does not help my case at all. Before she can put my feet up or some shit, I stop her.
“Okay, thanks, Amanda, I’m good,” I say. “I’m sure they’re all waiting for you. You better get back in there.”
She looks at me doubtfully. “You sure?” She is really milking this.
“Positive.”
She and Mr. Leary pass each other outside the door. He hands me the ice pack and clucks. “That’s a doozy.”
I put the ice pack on the bump, more to cover up the evidence of my embarrassment than to bring down the swelling.
“Thanks for the help, Mr. L.” I think about saying something real; I haven’t said anything to Mr. Leary since before the funeral. But saying something about Mason seems inappropriate, and talking about anything else is absurd. “I’m going to pause here for a bit.”
“Take your time,” he says, smiling. He stands for one more beat, like he’s also considering whether to talk about something bigger. But instead he settles on, “Just relax.” Then he’s gone.
Mr. Leary’s voice is always so smooth, so even.
I guess it’s because he’s a singer. I melt into the soft armchair, my head throbbing.
Actually, maybe it has nothing to do with singing.
Maybe Mr. Leary is calm because he’s had so much practice handling intense shit like Mason’s seizures.
Because to me, if you can stay cool during one of those, you might as well get a job defusing bombs, deciding whether to clip the red wire or the blue wire.
The day that Mason’s epilepsy became more to me than just a word they wrote on all his permission slips is still burned in my brain.
We were talking on the phone, and Mason was hassling me, as usual.
This time it was about Dan Ludwick, the senior who sat in front of me in precalc.
Before class that day, Dan had inexplicably raised his shirt to expose his nipple to me while asking, “Jealous?” Jealous that he had a nipple?
The moment had completely mystified me, so I had made the mistake of telling Mason.
He hated dicks like Dan, and was relishing examining his idiocy from every angle, but for some reason it was starting to make me feel like the idiot.
“I think it was actually his way of proposing, Murph. Don’t dismiss it. You should consider building a life with someone with such superior nipples.”
“He wishes,” I said, trying to blow it off.
“I mean, he was literally baring his heart to you. Under the nipple, that is. Don’t be so cold.”
“If you say the word nipple one more time—”
“Face it, Nipple Ludwick is a catch. I mean, Dan Nipple.”
There was no winning when he was like this. I tried to cut through it, to be straightforward. Sometimes that worked.
“I don’t like this conversation anymore, Mason. Be nice or I’m hanging up.”
“All right, all right, Hatts. Don’t make me suffer the deprivation of your company.”
That was better. “Just behave,” I said.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “So what do you want me to talk about then if I can’t talk about the sexual politics of America’s youth? The weather?”
“Are you going to go to Mia’s party on Saturday? She’s having it out in the big barn on their property. It sounds like she invited the whole grade. Asha said the last time Mia had a party her parents actually hired a guy to do a real fireworks show. We should definitely go.”
He didn’t respond. It sounded like he was rubbing his phone against his sweater. There were all these muffled bumping sounds.
“Mason, what the hell? Are you trying to pretend you’re jacking off or some shit? Quit.”
Nothing.
“Mason, seriously.”
“Mason? Mason, are you there?”
Suddenly, Mrs. Leary’s voice was on the line. “Mason can’t talk now.” Click. Something in his mom’s voice made me not call back.
The next day he wasn’t in school. Lucia told us that her parents had talked to his parents and it turned out that he’d had a seizure. He was fine, just tired and worn out.
It was awful. I couldn’t believe I was so insensitive that I’d accused him of masturbating while he was having a seizure.
Had he heard me? Had his mom heard me? I really hoped not.
But when I’d called that afternoon because I wanted to, no, more than that, I needed to see him, his mom just said he couldn’t have visitors that day. Not a good sign.
I must have been dozing through the memory, because now I reenter the world to hear everyone streaming out of the auditorium into the hallway.
Rehearsal is over. Not surprisingly, adults in performing arts education aren’t exactly EMTs, because they just let me take a nap after I hit my head.
I guess we’re assuming I don’t have a concussion.
My mother would throw a fit if she knew.
But it appears the only damage done is a little drool on my shirt.
Speaking of my mom, I need to catch my ride. I return to the auditorium, carefully sidestepping that pole like it’s white hot, and grab my jacket. I pull it on and am flipping my hair out of the collar when my fingers brush against a pair of hands coming to rest on my shoulders.
“How’s our patient?” Richard says in my ear.
Wow. Unbelievably, he seems unfazed by my humiliation in the doorway. I try to summon whatever mysterious allure I have left after becoming a human hammer and then taking a nap with my mouth open.
“I might need some tending to,” I say. “Maybe even a sponge bath.” Yikes. I have a bad habit of going overboard when the flirting has a time clock like this.
He turns me toward him and holds me at arm’s length, lips pursed, assessing me. “Yes, you’re definitely dirty.” Then he grins, and my breath catches.
Amanda appears, looking windblown from outside. “R-dubya, you want a ride or not?” She spins her key chain on the end of her finger.
“Yes, please, Miss Mandy.” He salutes and starts jogging in her direction.
She has a car now? And she’s driving him home?
And they have nicknames for each other? This is entirely too much information to discover at once.
I think for the millionth time how my sixteenth birthday can’t come fast enough and how the second I have my license I’m going to get a key chain that I can start spinning on the end of my finger.
But no matter how hard I want it, all my car dreams are still weeks away and I’ve got to do something about this situation right now. I’ve got to log some hours with Richard, solidify our relationship before it’s too late and he has kids and a dog and a picket fence with—barf—Mandy.
“Richard?” I blurt. “Want to come by my house Thursday? Help me with the blocking I missed tonight?”
He stops on a dime, turns, and bows. “It would be my pleasure.” And they’re gone.
I can’t believe it. The moment I have been daydreaming about to the detriment of my class participation grades is actually going to happen.
An opportunity to be completely alone with Richard.
For, like, hours. We’ll move past the flimsy flirty stuff and talk for real, and we’ll find out how overlapping our hopes and dreams are, how we understand each other on a level of the soul.
And then I’ll fall into his arms, and it won’t be forced at all, it will be totally natural because it’s meant to be.
God, deep breaths. Don’t get ahead of yourself, Hattie.
What are the chances this giant bump on my head will be gone by Thursday?