Chapter Thirteen
“Melancholy Blues,” performed by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven: Music of Earth
I was so sad. My whole body felt heavy, cement boots, cement clothes, a head of cement.
My mind was a cement cellblock, no escape for the thoughts banging around it.
Some part of me still had the will to escape, though, because I texted Addy.
She and Priya and Maddie came over to break me out of my sorrowful, heavy prison.
They forced me up and out, made me go shopping, even though I usually don’t like to do it much anyway.
I needed a new outfit, they insisted. Even though I had some new school clothes ready for next week, a breakup outfit was essential.
Addy and Priya chipped in and got me a flowered top at H feeling cute helped.
Cute was tiny power, but whatever worked.
I met a new girl in AP Lit, Sujia, who’d moved from Oregon and was hilarious, and the photography elective I thought I’d gotten stuck with was turning out to be really cool, and Addy and Liam had my same lunch, so we got to sit together, at least. Even if we now ate with Liam’s friends at the largest, most crowded table, with people like Severin Gyles and Ramone and Gwynyth James, who never really talked to us, or even noticed we were there, way down at the end of the table.
I ate my Tater Tots and thought of you—you loved those.
I chose the blue cheese dressing, because it was your favorite.
It made me feel less lonely and more lonely at the same time.
I had so much homework again that I jammed my mind with AP Government and AP Physics and AP Statistics until there was no room for you, except at two a.m., when you’d sneak in.
There was your skin on mine, or your laugh, or your eyelashes when they got wet, or the sweet way you said my name, or how you’d crack yourself up with a joke, which was so much funnier than the joke.
But I’d think about that day with your mom, too.
And that afternoon when you gave me the leaf.
The infinity sign over your shoulder. Meaningless now, right? Right?
When I checked in with my body, though, as Winnifred Evans suggested I do, concentrated on where my heart was, I actually felt an ache. Why right there? Why in that exact spot of my chest?
It had a long history, I understood. Heartbreak. I mean, going back to the time when the word was first invented. People back then felt this exact thing; people had been feeling this forever. A broken heart should be on the Golden Record, too.
“Neumos again, huh?” I said to Maurice. “Maybe I’ll come.
” Solar Flare had a website now, and an account on Snapshot, their favorite photo-sharing app, that I followed.
A growing number of fans did, too. A number big enough that it seemed both impressive and surprising.
I mean, they had no idea that Maurice was a quiet dork, basically.
Our quiet dork, who happened to play drums really well.
But fans. Wow. It was weird. I wanted to tell them that he sometimes wore the same shirt, like, for a week.
He ate ketchup with his eggs, which I’m convinced is a crime against humanity, or against food, at least.
We were hanging out at his place. It was getting more and more rare, for it to be just us two, or having time together at all like this.
School, work, and Maurice with work and the band and Sandrine.
He was zooming Baby Luigi around in an airplane, and I was zooming Baby Rosalina, from Arthur’s old Mario Kart from a hundred years ago.
We didn’t really play video games, aside from this one.
George used to be Mario. Arthur, being the oldest, didn’t even play with us very much, but when he did, he was Bowser.
The paper wrappings from our Subway sandwiches lay open, splattered with lettuce bits and discarded pickles, the wavy kind.
Maurice lifted his eyebrows all suspicious in answer.
“What?” I tried to sound innocent, but he knew me too well.
“He probably won’t be there.”
“Why?” The information door opened a crack, and I intended to kick it down.
“There’s no why. He probably just won’t.”
Oh. “Maybe I just want to come see you play,” I said. Maurice was beating me, bad. Baby Luigi was so far ahead that there was no hope for Baby Rosalina.
“Right.”
“I do!”
“Well, come, then.” Winner. “Ha! Kicked your ass!” Maurice did an uncharacteristic victory shimmy, fists up.
“Fine,” I said.
I’d debated about asking Addy and Liam, or Priya and Maddie, or even my new friend Sujia, but I went alone. What if Maurice was wrong, and you did come? I wanted to be free to fully embarrass myself.
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” Maurice asked. He didn’t believe I’d really show up and just hang out on my own, and now he was worried that I had.
“I’ll be great! Are you kidding?” I was already watching the doors, hoping so hard for your beautiful curly hair on your beautiful head to appear.
“MG…”
“What?”
“Don’t get your hopes up. Come on.”
“My hopes aren’t up. They’re not even hopes.”
They opened with “Seeing You, Seeing Me,” and the crowd shrieked and whistled and clapped.
When they moved on to “Infinity,” someone shouted, “We love you, Sandrine!” And she smiled, all shy.
But she wasn’t shy, not at all. She was quiet power, a firelight, in that shimmery orange dress, her hair in two braids.
The room hushed, and the words washed over me and squeezed my heart.
Maybe going there was a bad idea. A really bad idea.
Emotion rose up, threatening to drown me.