Chapter Ten April 13
Chapter Ten
Quarter to four. I’ve been waiting almost fifteen minutes for Mrs. Morales. She’s buzzed into the music room over the intercom three times since I arrived, asking me to hold tight.
Mrs. Morales buzzes into the empty room again. “Lennon?”
I get up and press the speaker button. “Yes?”
“There’s an issue at my son’s daycare. Why don’t you work on that verse some more and we’ll reconvene at lunch tomorrow, okay?”
“Sure.”
I release the button and sigh. I could leave right now, and Mrs. Morales would never know, but I am nothing if not diligent.
And a people pleaser. I pull out the piano bench and sit.
The sheet music is already propped up. Mrs. Morales helped me figure out which notes I needed when I hummed her the tune last week.
I hit middle C before clearing my throat. I hum at first to warm up my voice and because, even in this empty room, I’m afraid to hear myself. When you’re raised to be quiet and obedient, you’re sometimes afraid to be seen or heard.
But if there was ever a place to practice, it’s the music room at school. The acoustics are a dream.
In here, I can forget about almost everything. Behind me is an audience, holding their breath as I captivate them with my song lyrics. A girl can dream.
Sometimes it feels like that’s all I do.
On my thirteenth birthday, I decided to make a concerted effort to stop masking.
I knew it would be risky. I knew it would mean opening myself up to an often unkind and harsh world.
And people. I haven’t been perfect. My default when I meet someone new is still to mask.
I never want to let anyone in until they’ve earned my trust. But sometimes…
sometimes the walls come down faster than I can put them back up.
Without all these conflicting emotions, without those intense yet confusing and sometimes embarrassing interactions with John, I wouldn’t be sitting here, singing my heart out. Scribbling down lyrics to a song that didn’t exist—wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t let John in. Even just a little bit.
I’ve spent the last six months trying to get over him.
Instead, I find myself analyzing every single one of our conversations, which is just so unfair.
While I’m sitting with my feelings, processing, John is out there, living his life.
I don’t even know if I exist in his memory.
Maybe it was all one-sided. I do have an active imagination.
I’m good at pretending. To be somewhere else.
Someone else. Based on how skillfully we’ve managed to avoid one another since that deeply humiliating day in October, one might think we were strangers.
It feels like that’s what we’re becoming.
Of course, a big reason for that is me. I blocked his number as soon as I got in Georgie’s car that day, and at school there may have been a few times where it looked like he wanted to say something, but I’ve always been quick to turn the other way or duck into the bathroom.
I play the final note and exhale, imagining a standing ovation behind me. What I didn’t expect was to hear someone clapping by the open classroom door, the sound ricocheting against the walls. Jolting out of my seat, I almost trip backward in surprise.
“John.”
“That was amazing,” he says, leaning against the doorframe.
“It’s not done yet. It was…I was just messing around,” I say, folding my notebook closed. “What’re you doing here?”
“Avery’s got volleyball practice.”
Feeling my guard go up even further, I grab the sheet music and stuff it into my folder. “Then why aren’t you in the gym?”
John shrugs before standing straighter. “Sports aren’t really my thing.” He closes the door and walks toward me, his steps slow but purposeful. What is he doing?
“How have you been?” he asks, like my dentist who I see twice a year.
“I’ve been existing,” I say with a nod. And then another nod. Why can’t I stop myself from nodding?
Six minutes until my parents arrive to pick me up.
“Okay. Guess you really don’t like small talk.” There’s a slight edge to his voice, enough that it makes me want to scream. What right does he have to have his guard up? “I thought we were friends.”
“I don’t have time to get into this right now,” I say, swallowing down a lump of nerves.
He takes another step so he’s standing across from me. Close enough that I can see the faint scar above his lip. “I’m sorry if my asking you to leave the band practice that day hurt your feelings. I just didn’t think it would look good if you were there when Avery arrived.”
Could he seriously be this clueless? I didn’t imagine it all. He wedged his way into my life. And as soon as I let him, he pulled away.
“It was obvious that my presence wasn’t welcome the second I arrived. Clearly, I’m only good enough to speak to when you feel like it.”
John swallows so hard, his Adam’s apple travels slowly down his neck. He takes a seat on the piano bench, and it pisses me off. He wasn’t invited. No one asked him to stay. This is my territory. Just because he’s a musician in a band doesn’t mean he has any right to just barge in here and—
“I have a girlfriend, Lennon. You can understand that, can’t you?” He says it so condescendingly, I could cry.
Four minutes.
“What’re you doing here?” he asks as I shoulder my backpack.
“I’m planting a garden,” I respond, my hands gripping the straps of my bag.
John watches me carefully, his eyebrows pinched. “Why’re you being so hostile?”
“The fact that you’re even asking me that makes me wonder…” I trail off. He doesn’t deserve my truth. He never asked for it.
He stands, offering me a tight-lipped smile. “Then I guess I’ll leave.”
I get right in front of him before he can walk away, ignoring the small voice in my head telling me to shut up.
The tips of my toes press against his. “I didn’t ask you to leave,” I say, shaking my head to stop the tears from falling.
“I don’t want you to leave.” My voice cracks as I push the words out.
Words I’ve been dying to say for months. “I want you to stay.”
His face softens, giving me a sliver of hope that I haven’t scared him away. And that he’ll show me, with a kiss. The kind of kiss where he’ll take me by surprise, grabbing my face and pulling me closer to him. The kind of kiss I’ve been fantasizing about since I got off the bus the day we met.
Two minutes.
“I miss you.” The words, quiet and raw, tumble from my lips.
John shuts his eyes so tightly they turn into little slits. When he opens them, I’m filled with regret. No. I’m drowning in it. This isn’t going to go the way I wanted it to.
“I’m not the one who walked away from our friendship,” he says. “I tried to say hi to you in the halls. I even texted. You never responded.”
“You kicked me out of your house.”
His eyes shut slowly, and I can hear the smallest groan leave him. “You’re misreading the situation. You’re making it into something it never was.”
“You telling a girl you want to sing a love song to her is telling her something, whether you want to admit it or not,” I say, fighting back the tears that are begging to come out.
“I take some responsibility here. I do. I let myself believe that there was something…I let myself fall, and that’s on me.
But you played a part in this too, and I think you need to admit it. ”
“You knew I had a girlfriend. I was always upfront about that. I’m not sure what you expected from me.”
I am so tired of him and everyone else bringing up Avery. This isn’t about Avery. If it were, he wouldn’t be here right now. He wouldn’t keep coming back.
“You can lie to yourself, John, if it makes you feel better about what happened…or didn’t happen.
But I was there. I was there too.” I walk past him, willing myself not to cry.
I open the door, but before walking through it, I stop and turn to face him.
“I don’t let my guard down for people easily.
I just…don’t. But I did, for you. I trusted you.
I let myself let you in, and just like that, you made me feel like an idiot. ”
His eyes remain steady on me, even as I unravel in front of him. “That wasn’t my intention,” he says. “Maybe it would be different if you were a guy or had a boyfriend or if we really were just friends,” he says, finally letting the facade crack.
“What do you think we were?”
“I don’t know,” he responds, shoving his hands deep into his pockets.
I nod, taking in his words, or at least trying to. “No one has ever made me feel the way you made me feel.”
John rubs at his forehead. “I don’t…what do you mean? Like, in a good way or…?
A buzz cuts in from the speaker above. “Lennon Hadid, your father is waiting for you in the office.”
“Shit.” I turn to leave, but John gets ahead of me and blocks my path.
“What do you mean?” he repeats.
“My dad is here,” I say, meeting his intense stare.
“He can wait.”
“If I’m not there in sixty seconds, he’ll come looking for me and if he finds me alone in a room with a boy, that’s it. My freedom—the little freedom I do have, will be a distant memory.”
“So this is how we’re going to end it?”
“I guess so,” I say, my heart racing too fast for me to speak more articulately. Not that John deserves more words. Or an explanation. He doesn’t get to decide when that information is worth his time or attention. He doesn’t get closure the second he decides he wants it.
He nods, almost reluctantly as he moves out of my way. Instead of bolting, I remain where I am, grasping for something, anything.
“Lennon.” He says my name, but I can tell he doesn’t know how to follow it up, and I’m not masochistic enough to wait and see if the right words do ever come to him. Because right now, I don’t need words. I need him to show me how he feels and it’s obvious that he doesn’t know.
The way I feel, it can’t be one-sided. It just can’t. “Deal in or walk away. You don’t get to watch the game from your golden perch, deciding when the best time to play is.”
“I can’t,” he responds with a slight lift of his shoulders. Like anything more would be too much effort.
“Neither can I.” Forcing myself not to look back, I walk out of the room. After turning a corner, I pick up my pace. I race past my father who’s waiting in the foyer and get into his running car, slamming the door shut.