The Sound of Your Voice, Only Really Far Away Read online

  Marylin shook her head. She would figure out what to do about Rhetta. Maybe they could just be school friends. They had almost every class together, after all; it wasn’t like they never saw each other. And Marylin’s schedule was about to get very busy with basketball season starting up. She probably wouldn’t have time to hang out with Rhetta after school anyway. And Rhetta would understand.

  No she won’t, whispered Kate’s tiny voice.

  Marylin took a deep breath. Rhetta would understand, she repeated to herself. Maybe she could encourage Rhetta to sign up to do makeup for the spring musical, and then Rhetta would be really busy too.

  That was it. No problem. Marylin smiled at herself in the mirror. Her smile looked fake, but it would have to do. Now all she had left was the problem of Benjamin Huddle. One of his incisor teeth was just a tiny bit crooked in a way that Marylin totally loved. Could she really give that up? Or the lopsided way he grinned at her. Was she willing to sacrifice that grin just to stay popular?

  Sadly, Marylin knew the answer. It made her want to cry, and it probably meant that deep down inside she wasn’t the nice person she thought she was. She was only nice on top.

  It’s because my parents got divorced, Marylin insisted to herself. That’s why I need to be popular. I can’t help it. It’s not my fault.

  Yeah, Kate’s voice said, this time a whole lot louder. Right.

  Marylin wished Kate would just shut up. Her life was hard enough without someone making comments about it all the time, even someone who wasn’t actually in the same room.

  “Tell Ruby not to worry,” she told Mazie, reaching into her back pouch for her lip gloss. “I’m fine. I didn’t really like Benjamin anyway. I just thought if I went to the dance with him, he might help us get funding for new uniforms.”

  A knowing look came over Mazie’s face, and she smiled at Marylin, nodding. “I thought you were up to something,” she said, patting Marylin on the shoulder. “That’s why I stuck up for you when Ruby started asking a lot of questions about your so-called friends. ‘Marylin’s up to something, just you wait,’ is exactly what I told her, and I was right. Wow, I bet Benjamin Huddle has no idea he’s getting played.”

  None, Marylin thought miserably as she followed Mazie out of the bathroom. Absolutely no idea in the world.

  “I’ve got bad news.”

  Rhetta had turned around in her seat and was now leaning toward Marylin. She didn’t look so much like a vampire today. Usually Rhetta was a study in black and white, all black clothes and pale white skin, but today she was actually wearing jeans like a normal person, and although her T-shirt was black, it was a sort of silky-looking V-neck T-shirt that was nice. If only Marylin could make Rhetta see how good she’d look in pink!

  “What is it?” Marylin asked, wondering if somehow Rhetta’s bad news could be that she’d heard about the conversation Marylin had just had with Mazie five minutes ago in the bathroom.

  “I’m grounded,” Rhetta said with a dramatic slump so that her chin was now resting on the back of her chair. “For a month, if you can believe it. Just because I rode with Todd Venable to the Quick-E Mart after youth group Sunday night instead of getting a ride straight home with Samantha Werther like I said I would. Todd brought me home safe and sound, and it’s not like he’s a psycho killer or anything. He plays drums in the praise band!”

  Rhetta’s father was a pastor at a local church that was known for being hip and informal. Still, Marylin supposed a drummer in a band was a drummer in a band, even if the band was singing songs about Jesus.

  “Did your dad kick Todd out of the band?”

  Rhetta shook her head. “No, but he had a long talk with him in his office, which I’m sure was way, way worse. When my dad gives you a lecture, he goes on for, like, ten years.”

  “Well, I’m sorry you’re grounded,” Marylin said. “What does that mean exactly?”

  As it turned out, it meant exactly what Marylin hoped it meant. For the next month, Rhetta was confined to home except for family outings and church on Sunday, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. “Church is going to be the highlight of my social life for thirty days,” Rhetta complained. “How pathetic is that?”

  “It could be worse,” Marylin said. “They could have kept you home from church, too.”

  “Right,” Rhetta said, rolling her eyes. “That’s so not going to happen.”

  Mrs. Clewes started to take attendance, so Rhetta turned back around, and Marylin slid back in her seat, filled with relief. She wouldn’t have to make any excuses for a whole month about why she couldn’t hang out with Rhetta after school. And who knew what things would be like in a month? In a month, Rhetta’s dad might decide to become a missionary to China. And yes, okay, Marylin would miss Rhetta if she moved, but that would definitely solve one of her problems.

  And then a thought came to Marylin that was so brilliant she had to stop herself from blurting it out to the whole class. She didn’t have to give up Benjamin Huddle, either! Mazie thought she was using Benjamin to get the cheerleaders new uniforms. So she could hang around Benjamin all she wanted. If anybody asked her about it, she’d just mention how cute those uniforms would be if they could just get the funding for them (wink, wink). Ruby and Mazie would totally be on her side. They’d tell her to hang out with Benjamin as much as she wanted!

  I am a genius, Marylin told herself, taking out her pre-algebra notebook. I’m so smart I scare myself.

  And, much to her amazement, Kate’s little voice didn’t have a thing to say about it.

  In science, Mrs. Patel announced that they would begin the year by studying evolution, and did anyone have a problem with that? Several kids turned and looked at Rhetta because they knew her dad was a pastor, but she just shrugged and said, “Evolution’s cool with me.”

  “Excellent!” Mrs. Patel exclaimed. “I believe seventh grade is a most pertinent time to study Darwin and his ideas about natural selection and the survival of the fittest. Can anyone tell me what that phrase means, ‘survival of the fittest’?”

  Christof Jenner’s hand shot into the air. “Only the strong survive!”

  Mrs. Patel nodded. “More or less, that is the theory. And one way the strong survive is by abandoning the weak. Does that sound at all familiar to you?”

  Everyone nodded, including Marylin. That really summed everything up, as far as she was concerned. To someone like Kate, Marylin might seem shallow or dumb for wanting to be popular, but it was all about survival. Not everyone could be like Kate, surviving outside the herd. And if you lived inside the herd, well, it was better if you stuck with the strong people, right? If you hung out with the weak, unpopular people, you’d get eaten by wolves in no time flat.

  Rhetta raised her hand. “So you’re saying that ‘survival of the fittest’ applies to all animals, even human beings?”

  “Yes, but I think that it’s complicated,” Mrs. Patel said. “Can you tell me what you find troublesome about the idea?”

  Rhetta was quiet for a moment before speaking again. “Well, I guess it would bother me because human beings might be animals, but we’re also—um, human, if you know what I mean. And we have stuff like morality that tells us we’re supposed to protect the weak. Like old people, or disabled people.” Rhetta looked around the room and then back at Mrs. Patel. “Does that make sense?”

  “Perfect sense,” Mrs. Patel confirmed. “And I agree with you. Some people have taken the idea of ‘survival of the fittest’ to extreme and immoral lengths. But we will discuss the idea in terms of evolutionary science and genetics, and I hope you will find it as fascinating as I do. Now, take out your notebooks, please.”

  A few students grumbled as they pulled their pencils and notebooks from their backpacks, and Marylin wondered if they’d hoped Mrs. Patel would spend class talking about popular kids versus unpopular kids. Ever since sixth grade, that seemed to be everybody’s favorite topic in class discussions. If you were talking about the American Revolution in hist
ory, someone would raise their hand and say, “It’s like the colonists were the unpopular kids and the British were the popular kids,” and then someone else would argue it was the other way around, and then someone else would say that King George was a bully, and by the time you’d worked out who was popular and who was unpopular, the period would be over.

  When the bell rang, Marylin followed the herd into the hallway and into the stream of students, where she was jostled and banged into as the faster, more aggressive kids made their way to class. Suddenly she felt an arm draped around her shoulder and looked up to see Will Norton, an eighth-grade football player.

  “Let me be your escort,” he said, looking down at her with a grin. “It’s a jungle out here.”

  “It really is,” Marylin agreed, smiling her best middle-school cheerleader smile, but suddenly she felt nervous, like she had a test she’d forgotten to study for. But that was silly—how could there be a test the first day of the semester? Everything’s fine, she told herself. There’s nothing in the world to worry about.

  She saw Mazie and Ashley walking in her direction, waving and smiling, almost as if they were happy to see her, and Marylin was almost happy to see them—members of her pack, the ones who were going to keep her safe from the wolves. But when Mazie cupped her hand over her mouth and whispered something into Ashley’s ear, her eyes trained on Marylin the whole time, Marylin didn’t feel safe at all. In fact, she was pretty sure the wolves were a lot closer than she’d thought.

  from up and down, and still somehow

  Lorna wanted to try out for the spring musical, but Kate wasn’t sure she was the sort of person who tried out for things anymore. She had skipped basketball tryouts in November, because she didn’t think basketball went with her black boots or her guitar. She was sort of sorry about it now, especially since her dad worked with Marcie Grossman’s mom, and Marcie Grossman played power forward. Her dad was always dropping little tidbits of the girls’ basketball team news at dinner, giving Kate pointed looks while he did, like he was saying, This news should be about you.

  Maybe. Kate couldn’t decide. On the one hand, she missed being around other girls who liked to play basketball, and she missed how she felt after a good game. On the other hand, could you really play basketball and write poetry at the same time? Could you really be the kind of person who was a jock and a guitar player? When tryouts came around, Kate had had a hard time putting the two halves of her life together, and so she decided to pass on basketball this year.

  “If we try out for the spring musical, we’ll be expanding our horizons,” Lorna told Kate in Creative Writing Club while they waited for everyone to get there. “At least that’s what my mom says. She’s completely freaked out by my life right now because I don’t have two million friends.”

  “You don’t need two million friends,” Kate said, pulling her poetry notebook out of her backpack. “She knows that, right?”

  “But I only have one friend,” Lorna said. “Well, let me revise that: I only have one friend in real life, which would be you, by the way. I have hundreds of World of Warcraft friends, but to my mom, they don’t count because they’re computer friends.”

  Lorna was obsessed with World of Warcraft and spent most of her Friday and Saturday nights playing it online with ten gajillion other people, although she wasn’t friends with all of them, just the ones in her guild. Kate had tried to get interested, but she just wasn’t a fantasy person. She liked to be involved with stuff that actually happened with real people or people who could be real if they didn’t live in the pages of a book.

  “I just don’t get why it bugs your mom so much that you only have one close friend,” Kate said. “Isn’t that better than having ten so-so friends?”

  “My mom’s deal right now is that all the stuff I like to do is solo—cooking, reading and writing, World of Warcraft,” Lorna explained. “Even though World of Warcraft isn’t solo. But according to my mom it is, because it’s me sitting alone in a room in front of a computer.”

  Kate waved her arm to indicate the whole of the classroom. “But this isn’t solo. Isn’t she glad you’re in a club?”

  Lorna shook her head sadly. “It’s not enough. But if I’m in the musical, that’s at least fifty people. And I have to pick one more activity besides Creative Writing Club or I can’t do World of Warcraft anymore, so I figure the musical is my best bet, especially if you’ll do it with me.”

  “I don’t know,” Kate said, doodling a guitar on her notebook. “Can I think about it?”

  “The auditions are Friday after school,” Lorna told her. “And the sign-up for auditioning ends tomorrow, so you have exactly one day to think about it.”

  “Okay,” Kate said, and then her entire body went electric, which meant that Matthew Holler had entered the room.

  To Kate’s disappointment, Matthew sat down at a desk on the other side of the room. It seemed to Kate that Matthew was always sitting on the other side of something from her—the cafeteria, the audio lab, and now here. She wished they sat together more, like at lunch or on the wall outside the school’s front entrance, where a lot of kids hung out before the first bell or after school waiting for the bus. She knew better than to wish for bigger things, like they’d hold hands when they walked down the hall together. Nobody at Brenner P. Dunn Middle School held hands, not even Marylin and Benjamin, even though everyone knew they were a couple. It was like it was against the law or something.

  The last couple of weeks, Kate had had two main thoughts running through her head: Matthew Holler is my boyfriend! Or else, Is Matthew Holler my boyfriend? She really didn’t know, although sometimes, like after he’d kissed her behind her garage on the last Saturday of winter break, she was sure the answer was yes. But at other times, like now, when he was halfway ignoring her, Kate didn’t know what to think. Was that how a boyfriend was supposed to act? That wasn’t how Benjamin acted around Marylin, as far as Kate could tell. He was always sitting with her or making his way through a crowd to get closer to her. Except for the kiss, Matthew pretty much acted the same way to Kate as he always had, which was to say sometimes he seemed really excited to hang out and talk with her, and other times he acted distracted, even kind of mad, when Kate was around, like she was his little sister or something.

  The only positive thing Kate could say for sure was that Matthew had broken up with Emily right after Christmas. She knew this because Emily had called her approximately five seconds after it happened to say the breakup was Kate’s fault. Since Kate and Emily had only spoken to each other maybe two times in their lives, Kate found this especially weird and sort of stressful, like maybe the next thing Emily was going to do was come over and sock Kate in the face.

  “We were fine until you two started hanging out all the time,” Emily had complained over the phone. “After that, I wasn’t good enough anymore. I didn’t play guitar or know all the right bands like Miss Perfect Kate.”

  Kate had had to choke back laughter. “Are you serious? You think this is me versus you? Is that even possible? Look at you! Look at me!”

  Emily had been quiet for a moment, and then she had said, “Yeah, I know. It’s hard to believe. But what else could explain it?”

  Kate had kept quiet, although she had a long list of things that might explain it, including the fact that from what she knew from Matthew, Emily was pretty boring, talked about herself all the time, and had never heard of Alex Chilton, Kurt Cobain, or Sufjan Stevens, not to mention a thousand other obscure but crucially important figures of the rock world. Kate and Matthew had a running list of who the most important rock-and-roll innovators of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries were. In fact, Kate’s dad told her if she didn’t start reading something besides The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll and Our Band Could Be Your Life, he was going to take away her library card so she couldn’t check them out anymore, which Kate didn’t believe for a second.

  That reminded Kate. She took out a sheet of noteboo
k paper and wrote Quiz on the top of it. Then she wrote out

  Elvis Presley or Buddy Holly?

  The Beatles or the Rolling Stones?

  Nirvana or Pearl Jam?

  Coldplay or the Shins?

  When she was done, she carefully folded the paper into a small rectangle and then wrote Matthew’s name on it. Passing it to the girl beside her, she whispered, “Pass it down, okay?”

  She watched as the note traveled the classroom and landed on Matthew’s desk. Matthew unfolded it with one eyebrow raised, as if he were thinking, Hmm, what could this be? As soon as he started reading, a smile broke out across his face, and he grabbed the pencil that was lodged behind his ear and began circling his answers.

  Kate looked down at her desk and smiled. Her knowledge of music was the thing she had that no one else had, at least no other girl she’d ever met, and not many other guys, either. Matthew could sit on the other side of the room if he wanted, he could act cool and aloof, but the fact was, this stuff mattered to him as much as it did to Kate. He needed her.

  Ms. Vickery rushed into the room. “Sorry to be late! Who brought copies of their work to share?”

  The room suddenly filled with the rustling of paper. Lorna leaned over and tapped her pencil on Kate’s desk. “Think about it, okay? The musical? It’s the only way to save me from my mother.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Kate promised, pulling out a sheaf of poems from her notebook. “I’ll let you know by tomorrow morning.”

  But in her head she was thinking, Radiohead or Green Day? Bruce Springsteen or Elvis Costello? PJ Harvey or Pink?

  She had a million of ’em.

  “Sounds like the boys’ basketball team could take a few lessons from the girls this year,” Kate’s dad said at dinner that night. “The girls’ zone defense is really working out for them.”

  Kate nodded. She’d discovered that if she tried to look interested in her dad’s basketball reports, he’d drop the topic after a minute or two. Once, she’d made the mistake of rolling her eyes, and he’d gone on for fifteen minutes about the importance of girls’ athletics and how girls used to have to wait till high school to play organized sports. Did Kate know that his sister, Tess, had been a great soccer player, which was too bad, since there were no soccer leagues for girls when Tess was growing up?