The Sound of Us Read online

  I half-read her messages while trying to concentrate on the video of a robust soprano in a red gown.

  “He’s all pissed at me for not having a job yet, and he keeps ranting about you being at camp and spending more of their money on stuff you won’t follow through on.”

  “I always follow through,” I say.

  “You quit guitar, knitting, dollhouse furniture making, golf. The list goes on.”

  “I’m not quitting this.”

  “I’m just saying, you’d better not because Dad is expecting you to.”

  “Like I need more pressure, thanks.”

  I open up the video again.

  She sends me another text. “You making friends?”

  “Who has the time?” I send that message, but keep typing. “I’ve got to learn this song in two days to stay in camp and not be a quitter.”

  “Go hang out, Kiki. You’re not just there to sing. You’re also there to improve your social situation.”

  I groan. I need to work hard and get the scholarship. I need to socialize and make friends. More urgently, I need to memorize this song so that I don’t get kicked out of camp in the first week. It’s all too much. I feel an intense desire to hide under my covers and binge watch Gilmore Girls or something.

  As if she can read my mind, Tina texts back, “Remember. Being a hermit cost you your friendship with Beth.”

  I stab my phone with angry fingers as I type, “That’s not what ended my friendship with Beth.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t the explosion that officially blew you guys up, but it was the kindling.”

  I shove my phone in my bag. I don’t want to read any more.

  I stay in the practice room a bit longer, pretending to look at the German lyrics but actually playing out the Norman situation in my head. Will everyone think it’s weird if I just show up by myself? Will they be all, “Why is she here?” Will they be nice, but secretly think I was out of line for having the gall to show up? And what is Euchre anyway? Is it a drinking game? A sex cult? After about a half hour, I land on sex cult.

  Back at the dorm, I stand at the end of the first floor, staring toward the end of the hall, toward Unit Six, the hallway that houses all the male campers for the summer, the place where Norman and whoever else are probably doing whatever sexy things Euchre requires you to do.

  I should go. Everyone is in the same boat as me anyway. It’s our first night at camp. No one knows anyone. No one here knows that I have no friends back in Chicago. This is my chance to be the cool, social girl I can’t be at home because they already know me as the nerdy TV freak with no friends.

  But “Vergebliches Ständchen.”

  Is that just another excuse, though? Just like TV has been the excuse for most of my life? Is Tina right? Was my dedication to television and my Twitter friends what really killed my friendship with Beth?

  I shake my head. No. She was jealous that I made it into opera camp when she didn’t. She set me up for public embarrassment, and she stole the guy I liked. She’s evil, straight up. I’m positive that she would’ve done what she did even if I had spent the past decade in a TV-free vacuum. This is, after all, the girl who used to carry around a list ranking her best friends, moving me up and down as she saw fit, just to keep my ego in check.

  But the thing is, and I hate to admit it, Beth got me to come out of my shell way more than I ever would have on my own. My first instinct has always been to stay shut up in my little TV cocoon. It’s easy there, safe. Were it not for Beth, I would’ve spent all of my time alone in my room, hiding out. When I was too chicken-shit to audition for the school musical freshman year, Beth dragged me along with her.

  “You’re talented, Kiki,” she said as she physically pulled me through the hallway to the auditorium. “I’m going to make you see that. You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

  I auditioned. I got to play a boy in the chorus of Anything Goes, while Beth was cast as one of Reno Sweeney’s dancers. She introduced me to everyone. She brought me to cast parties. She gave me a life.

  She was my tether to the outside world, and I’m not sure how to do this social thing without her.

  I duck into the stairwell, hiding from Norman and Unit Six. I take a deep breath and stick one toe out the door for half a second before pulling it back in. I can’t do this. Norman doesn’t actually want to be my friend. I think of Beth’s words. You don’t give yourself enough credit. I sigh. She’s right.

  I decide to compromise. I’ll go to Norman’s, but first I need a minute. I decide to do a lap down in the basement before heading up to Unit Six. It’ll give me some time to calm myself.

  At first, I don’t find much down in the dungeons of Chandler Hall, just the laundry room and some vending machines. But at the end of the floor, next to the utility closet, I peek through the window of a closed door labeled “Lounge.” I step in and fumble for a light switch. It’s a sitting room, about the size of my dorm room. Two mismatched plaid couches form an “L” behind a coffee table in one of the far corners, and in the other far corner, between two poles wrapped in Berber carpeting, sits an old upright piano.

  I run my fingers over the chipped, yellow piano keys and allow my index finger to press down on one of them—the D below middle C. The solitude of the sitting room is comforting, familiar, less pressurized than the practice rooms.

  Back at my parents’ house when I’m home alone, which isn’t often enough, I like to put on concerts in the living room. Because Dana’s constantly listening to empowering female music on Project Earth, my iPod library reads like a Lilith Fair set list (Lilith Fair was an all-female concert back in the ‘90s where, according to @Windry87, the women wore a lot of overalls and Birkenstocks).

  First I got into the Indigo Girls, then Ani DiFranco and Tori Amos, and then I started finding even more artists I’d never heard of before: Emiliana Torini and Sinead Lohan and Stars and Over the Rhine and all kinds of other musicians. This music has become my life, my religion. More than any other music I’ve ever heard, these songs speak to me, give me hope for a more interesting life, a life where I might have occasion to tell someone to admit he’s an asshole or that he’s a mistake I’d like to make.

  All my music is sorted into playlists, from “Sad Love Songs” to “Fun Car Songs” to “Angry Political Rants.” I even taught myself to play some of the music on piano, rearranging the accompaniments to fit the keyboard and my level of ability. Though I only took lessons for a few years, I love playing piano, especially when I’m pretending to be Fiona Apple. In my living room, belting out an Aimee Mann song, I’m no longer a pathetic loser with straw-like hair who wears baggy, ironic T-shirts to hide her stomach paunch. I’m someone with a voice and passion and talent. I’m someone people might want to know. I allow my fingers to press a couple keys on the piano and then a few more, and suddenly I’m playing “Northern Lad” by Tori Amos.

  This song always gets to me in a way that makes me feel mature as hell. I mean, I have no idea, personally, why a girl would need to leave a guy once she realizes she’s wet because of the rain and not because of…other reasons, but just by virtue of singing that song, I feel like I am that girl. I am that strong woman who is all, “I do not need you, sir, who no longer fulfills my sexual and emotional needs.” Also, this song is just fun to sing, soaring up into a high falsetto before swooping down to the depths of my register.

  I imagine myself up on stage (in a fancy gown, of course, possibly with a tiara), singing in front of hundreds of fans (it’s an intimate venue). Beth is there, and Davis, her boyfriend, and they’re watching me with the same kind of intensity as the rest of the audience, but with a mix of awe and regret and jealousy, but I barely even notice because I’m in the zone. I’m singing my heart out, except I still notice the guy in the front row, the guy who has his eyes on me. Well, everyone has his eyes on me, but this guy is special. This guy is—

  Someone coughs. My eyes dart up to find a guy in khaki pants, a polo shirt, and gl
asses leaning against the doorjamb and eating a Nutty Bar, a backpack slung over one shoulder. He could be one of the preppy guys from my high school, the rich athletes, the guys who would never go out of their way to speak to me. But this guy does speak to me. “Is that the song from when Dana and Ethan hook up the first time?”

  “Um…” I stare at my hands, which are still positioned over the keys. Is this a test? Tina also advised me to cool it on the Project Earth talk. That’s why I left all my stuff at home. She thinks I sound “crazy” whenever I wax poetic about the show.

  “Project Earth?” The Nutty Bar guy shakes his head. “Do you not watch the show?”

  Forget it. Forget Tina. A boy is talking to me. “I do,” I say. “Of course I do.”

  He smiles. It’s a nice smile, friendly, but mischievous. He’s solid and sturdy and reminds me of Bumper from Pitch Perfect, but with blond hair and glasses. His eyes get small and squinty behind his dark plastic frames. “Do you know any Barenaked Ladies?”

  “Excuse me?”

  He points to the piano with the remnants of his snack. “The band. You know, they use a lot of their songs on the show…Bobby Krakow likes them…?”

  I shake my head. “Oh. Oh! I thought you meant, well, regular, nude women.”

  “Either way.” He shoves the rest of the chocolate bar into his mouth.

  “Sorry, I can’t help you.”

  “Too bad,” he says, mouth full. He tosses his empty Nutty Bar wrapper in the garbage bin next to the door, and walks over to me. He’s taller than I thought, with broad shoulders and strong arms, which are tanned and covered in sun-bleached hair that matches the shock of blond on his head.

  I pull my hands away from the keyboard and fold them in my lap. The Nutty Bar guy stops in front of me, on the other side of the piano, and drums his hands on top. He peers out from behind the dark rims of his glasses, appraising me. “Do you know more songs from Project Earth?”

  “A few.”

  He grins. “Anything that’s not one of Dana’s sappy lady songs?”

  “Yeah? Probably?”

  “Can you keep a secret?”

  I scrunch up my nose. Maybe this basement, and not Euchre, is the sex cult I should’ve been wary of.

  The Nutty Bar guy smiles and holds up an index finger. Then he goes over to the couches and sits down. Opening his backpack, he pulls out a velvet bag and two pristine drumsticks. Then he takes out a magazine, Golf Digest, of all things, and sets it on the coffee table in front of him.

  “Golf Digest?” I ask. “Is the secret that you’re a middle-aged corporate executive?”

  He looks over at me and deadpans, “You caught me. Yes, I am CFO of a Fortune 500 company and I am here pretending to be a high schooler for the summer to conduct top secret market research.”

  I grin. “I figured as much.”

  “Or maybe,” he says, frowning, “I’m just a high school kid who plays golf. But I know that’s much less exciting.”

  “So am I,” I tell him. “I mean, I’m also a high school kid who plays golf. Or I used to, anyway.”

  He assesses, I assume, my obnoxious cat head dress and my artsy glasses. “Shut up.”

  I can’t help but grin. During my two years on the school golf team, I never once spoke to the guys on the boys’ team. Even though we played the same sport, we were so not of the same world. “I quit after sophomore year. When I was a freshman, my school was looking for bodies to fill out the varsity team, so I forced my best friend to join with me.” I stifle a giggle. “She shot 126 at our first match.”

  “That’s not horrible,” he says.

  “On nine holes?”

  “I stand corrected. But enough about golf.” He points to the piano. “You know anything peppy?”

  My mind goes blank. I can’t think of a single song, especially not a peppy one. For some reason “When the Saints Go Marching In” invades my brain. Shut up, brain. Yes, that’s peppy, but you’re an idiot.

  I stare at the Nutty Bar guy, wishing that I’d had the foresight to learn at least one Barenaked Ladies song. How hard would that have been? “You know ‘Romeo and Juliet’ by the Dire Straits? Remember when they played that in the chicken pox episode after Ethan got sick?” I ask.

  “My favorite episode.”

  “That’s everyone’s favorite episode,” I say. “I kind of do a cross between the original version and the one the Indigo Girls did.”

  “So you’ll be singing about being in love with a girl named Juliet?”

  “My music is very fluid on the Kinsey Scale,” I say.

  “All right, then. You start.” He watches me expectantly.

  I glance down at my hands, hands that no longer seem to belong to my body. I feel the Nutty Bar guy staring at me, waiting for me to start the song and, suddenly, I’m not sure if I can. My mind keeps flashing back to that night at Matt Carroll’s house. The night. The night with Beth and Davis and everyone laughing at me. I haven’t played for anyone since then. I shake my head, trying to erase the memories.

  “You okay?” the Nutty Bar guy asks.

  The light in the room reflects off his glasses and hides his eyes, but his mouth is smiling, a kind, friendly, silly smile. This guy isn’t Davis. This guy isn’t mean or vengeful or terrifying, at least he doesn’t seem to be. Besides, he’s asking me to jam. That’s the dream, isn’t it? My shoulders relax. “I’m good.” I take a deep breath and start the introduction.

  I sing and play, the Nutty Bar guy watching, keeping time with his foot. At the start of the song, I worry singing like that in front of another person will actually kill me, but since I’m still alive at the end of the first verse, I sing the chorus. And when I reach the faster segment of the song, the Nutty Bar guy starts drumming along, softly to start, then with more power. I struggle to keep up my end of the musical bargain.

  I look over at him and he’s staring off into the distance, grinning. This guy in his khaki pants and polo shirt and glasses, who looks like preppy personified, is wailing on his magazine with sticks that are extensions of his arms. He’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. I keep playing and singing, my voice growing stronger and stronger. I get through the next verse and the next chorus and then, during an interlude, I tell the Nutty Bar guy, “You know, you’re pretty good.” He smiles at me and plays harder, faster. I can see a few beads of sweat forming on his brow. Then he stands up and I stop playing.

  “Keep going,” he says. And I do.

  He slides onto the bench next to me and starts drumming on the music stand. His forearm rubs against my elbow and caresses my triceps as his hands pound out the beat. The music is an electric current bouncing between our bodies. His presence gives me courage and mine gives him, well, I’m not sure what exactly.

  The music obliterates every problem, every fear, every concern until all that exists in the world are me, the Nutty Bar guy, the piano, and the sound—our sound, this sound we’ve made—bouncing off of the bare walls around us. His eyes wander over to me during the bridge, and we lock onto each other for a moment. He tears his gaze away to concentrate on his drumming, which grows stronger, more forceful, and my voice follows him as we strive for the climax of the song. We are primal in that moment. We are music.

  The Nutty Bar guy and I finish the song, and I grin as the sound dies out. My heart feels like it’s grown arms and is trying to beat its way out of my chest. Maybe it’s pathetic that the most significant, glorious moment of my entire life involves an out-of-tune piano in a basement with a guy who dresses like a lawyer during a long weekend at Augusta National, but here we are. I stare at the Nutty Bar guy’s hands—his strong, tanned hands—waiting for him to make a move or say something or do anything. What he does is lift his eyes to the wall. He squints at the clock.

  “Almost curfew,” I say, just to make conversation. We high schoolers are supposed to be in our rooms by ten o’clock on weekdays.

  “Yeah, curfew,” he says, before jumping up from the bench, nearly knocki
ng me off it. He stalls a beat and knocks on the top of the piano. “We should do this again sometime. We have to do this again sometime.”

  Yes, I think, we do. But I don’t say it. I’m scared to say it. I don’t want to frighten him away.

  Then he drops his drumsticks and magazine into his backpack before disappearing into the darkness.

  As I stare at the negative space left by the Nutty Bar guy, I realize that the whole time he was here, I never once shoved my arms into my sleeves. I didn’t fidget with my hair. I sang and emoted and put myself out there. For the first time, maybe ever, I didn’t feel like an aunt.

  And, damn it, that felt good.

  chapter four

  Kiki Nichols @kikeronis: <– Craving Nutty Bars.

  The Nutty Bar guy? He’s going to be a problem.

  After he left last night, I went back up to my room—it was too late for Norman’s—and pulled out “Vergebliches Ständchen” again. Brie was already in bed, but not sleeping. She, too, was looking through her music, and she gave me a satisfied nod when she saw I was doing the same thing.

  “Good for you,” she said, “for not giving up.”

  But the German lyrics to “Vergebliches Ständchen” were nothing but blurry waves on the page. My mind was full of the Nutty Bar guy. I even put my music aside for a few minutes to search through lists of Barenaked Ladies songs, trying to find the perfect one for him and me to perform together.

  When I finally fell asleep, which took forever, I dreamed about him. In my fantasy, he wasn’t actually a registered camper. He lived down in the basement as a kind of “Phantom of the Opera,” but he played drums instead of sang, and he risked his safety that one night to reveal himself to me. Inevitably the whole situation turned into some PG-13 porn flick where the Nutty Bar guy ended up grabbing me and kissing me as the piano keys clanked and plunked below us. Obviously.

  This morning, I’m back at Yunker Hall, the building with the practice rooms, for our second round of auditions. I’m trying to focus on what Mr. Bertrand is saying—something about trios and making our sounds blend or I don’t know what—but I can’t stop thinking about how my sound blended with the Nutty Bar guy’s last night and how I’d like other things of mine to blend with his.