Chapter Seven #2
And wait. Sandrine, and Sandrine’s voice…
Oh my God. She was just…You couldn’t take your eyes off her.
I could see, so easily right there, why Maurice fell so hard.
I was falling for her myself, you know, the whole crowd was.
She was tough and sexy and vulnerable and just…
honest. Her voice was. She held us all in the palm of her hand.
Her hair flung around her face when she played guitar, too, a force.
Another guy, Dre, played keyboard, and there was Maurice on drums. Maurice—when did he get so cute?
His hair had grown longer, shaggier, and I hadn’t even noticed.
His eyes were sweet, and you could feel his and Sandrine’s chemistry when they played.
She’d look back at him when she sang, and whoa.
Just whoa—whatever they had, you wanted it.
They played another song, and another. No you.
No you anywhere. If she wrote all these herself, they were incredible.
It got easier to stand there alone in my crushing disappointment, because I got wrapped up in the music, same as everyone else.
The crowd was one big person. I was kind of dancing a little on my own, even.
But I was so bummed, you know, that you weren’t there.
You weren’t coming. Face it, I told myself.
The band took a break. I wanted to go see Maurice and tell him how awesome he was, how awesome they were, but I was in a human traffic jam.
And then…Oh, shit! Severin Gyles was weaving and pushing and maneuvering his way toward me.
He still didn’t know I was that dweeby girl who sat behind him in world history, the one who always finished her tests before everyone else; I was sure.
I turned my back on him. I didn’t want to talk to him.
And then I felt hands on my hips, same as Maurice put his hands on Sandrine, and I whirled around same as she did.
“Hey!” I growled. But it was you! “Heyyyy.” I could probably learn a lot from Sandrine.
“Hey.” You hugged me. It was so good to see you. So good. I suddenly had a place, instead of being there all alone. You felt like an actual place where I had landed.
From a few feet away, Severin glared. You’d cut him off before he got to me, not that you knew it. “Tease,” he mouthed, like an asshole. His story, starring himself, had taken an unexpected turn.
“Who’s that guy?” you asked. Shouted, actually. It was so loud in there, with the crowd all talking during the break.
“Jerk from school,” I shouted back.
“I’m sorry I’m so late!”
“I’m so glad you found me in here!” It seemed like a miracle. Another miracle. “What happened?”
“I got a job! Remember I told you I was looking?”
“Of course.” It felt good, to know things, to remember things. To have a storyline that continued.
“And remember Chester? From the astronomy meetup?”
“Absolutely.” Harley guy.
“He’s in charge down at the Center for Wooden Boats?
” So maybe not a Harley guy. A boat guy.
“I get to work the booth for rentals, and manage the sailing checkouts. It was wild down there! So busy. And then we had to check the boats back in, clean them, get them all ready for tomorrow. Chester started talking…It seemed rude to just bolt, after he gave me the job. And then I had to go home and change. What a day!”
“That place seems really cool.” I’d never been to the Center for Wooden Boats. It’d been there forever, but I never had.
“It is! I love it. How are you?”
“So great. So great.” My heart was lifting.
I felt so excited again. About everything, life in general.
I almost felt like I could do stuff, you know, new and scary things, even.
Like I wanted to experience as many things as possible, which would probably last as long as I was standing there.
Still, I guess I felt happy. If this was what falling in love was like, I could see why there were all those songs and movies and books about it.
“Sandrine is incredible. The whole band is.”
“Right? She’s been singing since she was, like, five.”
“Maurice has been drumming see he was, like, five. Chopsticks on the table. My dad finally let him have a drum set after Maurice bought one and brought it home and begged and cried.”
“Whoa. It took all that?”
I made a face, like You don’t know my dad. “My dad likes people to follow his plans for them.” There was another word for that, but I didn’t say it.
“Here they come.”
Sandrine walked out again, and the crowd began to cheer. She gave a little wave and picked up her guitar. Maurice and Dre took their spots. She played a few chords, and everyone shrieked and got all wild. “They love her,” I said.
“It’s like this everywhere they play.”
“What happened to their old drummer?”
“Sad story.” You really had to shout now.
“Oh, no.”
You nodded. “Gave up playing to study programming. Sandrine didn’t think she could go on. But she could. I’m so glad she could.”
I was, too. For Maurice, for all of us. Her voice was still here, telling us the truth.
Now she was singing a ballad called “Infinity.” The people in the crowd had made circles with the thumb and forefinger of each hand, linked them together, and were waving them over their heads. I looked at you questioningly.
“The infinity sign,” you answered. You made one, too. So did I. We swayed. The song was so beautiful, it made me want to cry. Sandrine closed her eyes when she sang it, chin tilted up, as if she were sending a personal message skyward.
When the song ended, the crowd clapped and hooted, and then the beat picked up. We danced our butts off. God, it was fun, surrounded by all those people and that energy, just in it there with you.
When the show was over, my shirt was practically stuck to my skin with sweat, and so was yours, and it didn’t matter.
In fact, it was great. It was proof of the experience.
Outside, the cool air was like water. We drank it up, waved our shirts in and out, saying, Whew.
My whole spirit, my whole soul, if you believed in that, the deepest parts, you know, were soaring.
It was you, and you, and the music, and the energy, and a feeling of triumph, too—doing this new thing and having a blast. The crowd swarmed to their cars, and everyone seemed so happy that I wondered if Solar Flare was going to be famous.
Oh, man, Maurice was headed for trouble.
In the parking lot, you were dancing in place, all sexy-goofy, and I was shimmying my shoulders and getting the words wrong.
You laughed, and pulled me to you, and—I was going to say you kissed me, but no—we kissed each other.
There was your mouth finally pressing against mine, and your breath and my breath merging into ours.
You grabbed the back of my head to bring me closer, closer.
Oh, God, Mars. I’d been imagining some quiet moment, somewhere we were all alone, but it happened there, surrounded by people.
In a way, we were still alone, just us. Maybe even more alone, in our private starship, with all the other starships buzzing around us.
Plus, who could wait. All that music, all that feeling, all that energy—it made us want, and want bad.
“Wow,” you said.
“Wow,” I said.
Now I did want to be alone. At least, what I wanted next couldn’t be done in a crowd of people.
We kissed some more as we waited for Sandrine and Maurice.
The crowd thinned. You waved to a guy. You knew someone there, too.
You knew people everywhere. The parking lot quieted.
When Sandrine and Maurice emerged, holding hands, we clapped.
Dre was still inside with the sound guy, making sure all the equipment was packed up. Maurice suddenly looked shy.
“You guys were incredible,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“So much yeah.”
There were a few awkward minutes as everyone said goodbye.
What had happened between you and me with that kiss—I thought we hid it.
We probably didn’t hide it very well, because when I finally got into Maurice’s familiar truck again, he said, “You had a good night, huh?” and laughed.
It wasn’t mean at all, the opposite. He was glad.
It was like he’d played a part in giving me a key that sprang me from prison.
“What?” I pulled down the visor and looked in the mirror. Holy shit. If the rest of me looked as messed up as what I saw in the tiny little rectangle, I’d better pray hard that no one was awake when I got home.
“Us and the cousins.” Maurice started to giggle. Seriously, giggle. I started to giggle. It was really late. We were in hysterics territory.
“Hot cousins,” I said.
He licked his forefinger and made a sizzling sound, set it on the steering wheel like it was a hot pan. It was so silly that we cracked up. We were cracking up so hard, he didn’t notice that the red light had changed.
“It’s green.” I smacked his arm.
“Let’s fucking go,” he said.
When he dropped me off at home, I said, “You’re the best drummer I ever saw.” It helped that maybe I’d only seen the Cars Reunion Band and him, but still.
He smiled. He looked so happy. It was a night I’d never forget. “Night, MG.” His nickname for me.
I tried to shut the truck door really quietly. And open our front door really quietly. I wiggled the key in, but it was unlocked.
Inside, only one light was on. My dad sat in the living room recliner, looking at his phone. He set it down when I walked in.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
“Do you have any idea what time it is?” His voice was calm, but I knew better.
His cheek muscle was all tight. One time, I heard an expression, His face looked like a fist. I’m not sure where, but then I saw it again shortly afterward somewhere else.
I told Winnifred Evans about this. How it can seem like a sign when you “stumble” on things in books or in the world.
It was the perfect description of my dad when he was angry.
And, the thing was, I actually didn’t have any idea what time it was. The clock in Maurice’s truck probably stopped working in the late 1990s, and I hadn’t looked at my phone in hours. Like, who cared about phones when you were having such an amazing time. I shook my head.
“Two-fifteen.” He showed me his phone. He was still reclining. This is hard to explain, but that was maybe more nerve-racking than towering over me. A person who reclined didn’t doubt their power.
“I’m going to bed.” I hadn’t done anything wrong. I didn’t have a curfew. I never went out late enough to need one.
I was walking toward the light, anyway. Literally, I mean. Going past the lamp in the living room. He could see me now. How disheveled I was. The whole me, beyond the tiny mirror in Maurice’s car. Even I didn’t know what he saw entirely. “What the fuck?” he said. “Where have you been?”
“Addison’s. We went to see—”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“A French film, and then—”
“Was that Maurice’s car I heard?”
“No!” And then I added a “God!” to up the ante on my outraged protest.
Bam! The recliner folded upright, and he stood.
“What have you been doing?” His nostrils flared, maybe sniffing for alcohol or something.
Maurice had a period where he drank a lot and got in trouble at school, but he stopped when he started playing with I&I.
It was the opposite of what you’d think with musicians.
His dedication to playing drums straightened him out, not the other way around, but Dad never gave up the idea of him being a screwup. Maurice was so not a screwup.
But the thing was…This might sound weird, but I swear, I smelled like I’d been kissing someone. I smelled different to me, like I’d brought you home with me. Your air and my air, our together air. Plus sweat, plus music, plus night, plus want. It all came home.
My dad was looking straight at it. Everything his little girl might become. But I wasn’t a little girl, and I wasn’t his.
“Nello!” my mom called from upstairs. It was her nickname for him. She didn’t even come down or show herself. “Let it go. Stop. Just stop.”
It was enough to let me pass. I went upstairs.
Closed myself in the bathroom and witnessed my destruction.
Oh, wow, my mascara was smeared and my hair was flat in spots and zinging up in others, and my cheeks were flushed, and my eyes looked bright.
So bright. Starlight bright. What a mess. What a glorious mess.
I heard my parents talking in the other room.
My mother had said, Stop, but she didn’t sound very convincing.
It did the trick for the moment, but it didn’t sound like she meant it.
How passive she was against him—it made me feel furious, as if I were feeling all her rage for her, because come on!
The way she didn’t do anything to defend us…
She left us on our own. She left herself on her own, staying in her all-consuming world of herself and food—the teeny-tiny pieces of cut-up morsels, the endless cups of tea and coffee and water, the meals of two grapes and a few spoons of nonfat yogurt, the crackers hidden in dresser drawers, the excuses of new allergies and I just ate, plus the occasional illnesses, like migraines and mystery pains.
She’d said, Stop, but Maurice had said, Let’s fucking go, and I knew what team I was on. Team Solar Flare, let’s go and go and go. To the moon, to the stars, past. To infinity. We might burn up, but oh, how we’d shine.