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

  “So, then maybe you could work on the audio-lab proposal? I mean, at least help? Please?” Matthew made a face like a little kid pleading. “My mom makes killer garlic bread.”

  Kate found herself nodding. “Yeah, okay. Sure. I mean, the garden was really Lorna’s idea. She can submit that proposal. They’re both great ideas.”

  “They’re both awesome ideas,” Matthew agreed. “Too bad they both can’t win.”

  Yeah, too bad, Kate thought, and then she thought how mad Lorna was going to be at her. How betrayed she was going to feel.

  And then she thought about garlic bread, and how it was on her top ten list of reasons to live. Number one? Well, he was sitting on that chair over there, grinning at her.

  Really, how could Kate say no?

  “You’re doing what?”

  Lorna stared at Kate from across the cafeteria table. Her face was the shade of a homegrown tomato.

  “I’m going to help Matthew with his proposal,” Kate repeated. She reached into her backpack and handed Lorna the school garden proposal. “I worked on ours, and now I’m going to work on his. Just give him a little help. He wants to get some new equipment for the audio lab.”

  Lorna grabbed the proposal out of Kate’s hand. “Oh! More stuff for the audio lab! Which already has everything! Which already sucks up all the school’s extra money! And which maybe ten people use!”

  “That’s not true,” Kate argued. “Everyone uses it. I had at least two audio-lab projects I had to do last fall.”

  “Yeah, that you had to do. People only use the audio lab when they have to.” Lorna rolled up the school garden proposal into a tube and smacked it against the table. “I’ve got a great idea—why don’t we split the money between new cheerleading uniforms and new sound equipment for the audio lab? That way we ensure the fewest number of kids will benefit. I love that idea! It’s the best idea ever.”

  Kate didn’t even have to look up to know that people were staring at them. “Could you maybe turn the volume down to, like, nine? And could you quit destroying my proposal? I worked really hard on that.”

  “You worked hard on it, so now you’re going to work hard on another proposal to compete against it?” Lorna asked in an only slightly quieter voice.

  “They’re two totally different things. They won’t be competing against each other. If you’re the kind of person who wants a school garden, you wouldn’t even think about voting for the audio lab. It would be like the audio lab didn’t even exist.”

  Lorna started packing up her lunch bag. “Do you even hear yourself? You sound like—I don’t know, a politician.”

  “Matthew’s my friend!” Kate protested. “You’re my friend. I just want to help my friends.”

  Lorna stood up and leaned across the table toward Kate. “I can’t believe you don’t get how much cooler a garden is than the audio lab! It’s something a lot of people could be part of. Not just the kids who work in the garden, but the kids who would want to hang out there because it was a peaceful place. Or the artists, who could decorate it. It would be a place where people could play guitar or flute or whatever. Toss a ball around. It could be this great space in the middle of this crummy school. Not everybody would want to work in it or hang out there, but a lot more kids would want to hang out there than in the audio lab.”

  “Well, then, I guess everyone’s going to vote for it, won’t they?” Kate said in a tone of voice her mom would definitely call snotty. “So you don’t have anything to worry about.”

  “No, I don’t,” Lorna said, and started to walk away. She got only a few feet before she turned back around. “But you do. Because you are turning into the kind of person I’d bet a million dollars you don’t want to be. Or maybe you do, which would be really sad. Really sad, Kate.”

  Kate watched Lorna stomp out of the cafeteria. She tried to remember why she was even friends with her. Maybe Lorna was jealous because Kate had a lot of friends and she didn’t. All Lorna had besides Kate was her stupid World of Warcraft buddies, who weren’t even real friends, they were online friends, which were just one step up from imaginary friends, in Kate’s opinion. Kate couldn’t help it if she was friends with Matthew and Flannery and Marylin—although maybe not with Marylin right that very second.

  Whatever. Kate had friends, and she couldn’t act like one friend was the most important, which was what Lorna wanted her to do. She wanted Kate to act like Lorna was the most important person in the world, and Kate couldn’t. Sorry, but that’s how it was.

  Just think about garlic bread, Kate told herself as she finished her sandwich. So she did. She thought about garlic bread and hanging out in Matthew’s family room with his two dogs, Lemonhead and Ralph. Maybe she and Matthew would start hanging out at each other’s houses all the time. One night they could do homework at Matthew’s house, the next night they could do it at Kate’s. Maybe Matthew would invite her along on his family’s vacation next summer, and then he could come to the beach with the Fabers. Maybe they could start a band together and get famous.

  The whole time she was thinking these things, another thought, a thought about kids hanging out in a garden, playing guitar, kept tapping against her brain, calling, Let me in, let me in. Kate shook her head. Nope, not thinking that thought, she told herself. It wasn’t like she was suddenly against the school garden. In fact, she’d be happy if it won. But she couldn’t put an idea in front of a friend, now could she? Matthew was more important to her than a school garden, because Matthew was her friend.

  Kate’s brain was starting to get tired. Who was she arguing with? It felt like she was arguing with somebody, but Lorna wasn’t here anymore, so who could she be arguing with?

  She felt the answer forming itself in the back of her mind, so she shook her head really hard. She didn’t want to think about it anymore. Enough thinking. She needed to start working on Matthew’s proposal. What would make other kids vote for it? Kate looked around the cafeteria, sizing up potential voters. She should definitely go for the creative types and the computer geeks, make them see why the audio lab was the coolest place in the world.

  She saw Marylin across the room at the cheerleaders’ table. Nobody over there would vote for new audio-lab equipment, that was for sure. But just as Kate was about to look someplace else, she realized that Marylin was sitting at the very end of the table, and it almost seemed like she was sitting by herself, the way the other cheerleaders’ chairs were at least two feet away from hers. Poor Marylin, Kate thought, and then she remembered Marylin’s stupid idea for new cheerleading uniforms and decided not to feel sorry for her after all.

  Maybe the audio-lab proposal should be entitled, Vote for the Audio Lab, It’s Better Than New Cheerleading Uniforms. Which it was. Which was why Kate was not going to feel sorry for Marylin at all, even if she did at that very moment look like the loneliest person in the world.

  The next morning on the bus to school, Kate sat as far away from Marylin as she could. Or was it the other way around? Either way, they were definitely ignoring each other. Well, who cared? It wasn’t like what Marylin said or did mattered to her. She wasn’t bothered by Marylin’s silent treatment one bit.

  No biggie. Whatever. Kate ignored the thought that now she was down to one friend. Why would she need more than one, anyway, especially if that friend was Matthew Holler? And so what if Matthew had kind of left the writing of the audio-lab proposal up to her? It made sense, really. Kate had already written one proposal; she knew what she was doing. So last night, she and Matthew had spent ten minutes brainstorming ideas for what Kate could say, and then they spent the rest of the time playing some game called Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep on Matthew’s PSP.

  “I had another idea for your garden proposal,” Kate’s dad had said after she’d gotten home. She was sitting at her desk, putting homework pages into her various binders, and he was standing in her doorway with his iPad in his hand. “Are you still working on it? Or did you have to turn it in already?” />
  “Um, no and no.” Kate had kept her eyes on her paperwork. “Lorna’s sort of finishing it up. It’s due Friday. I’m actually helping another friend with another proposal.”

  “So you’re going to have two proposals competing against each other? Is that such a good idea?”

  “It is what it is, Dad,” Kate had said, sounding more irritated than she’d meant to. “I happened to have two different friends with two different ideas, and I wanted to help both of them. Why is that so horrible?”

  Mr. Faber had walked over to the window and looked out. “It’s not, I guess. I’m curious, though. Which idea are you going to vote for?”

  “Um, I don’t know,” Kate had told him, and she didn’t. She hadn’t even thought about that yet. “They’re both good ideas, but they’re totally different from each other. One’s the school garden, and the other is for money for the audio lab.”

  Mr. Faber had laughed. “Hasn’t enough money been poured into that audio lab? Mac Warner from down the street told me he’s been to professional recording studios that weren’t as nice as your school’s audio lab.”

  Kate had exhaled sharply. “Whose side are you on, Dad?”

  “I don’t know, Katie,” her dad had said, turning to look at her. “I’d like to be on your side. Which side is that?”

  “I don’t know,” Kate had mumbled. “I like both ideas.”

  Only she didn’t, not really. She’d been telling herself and everybody else that she thought both ideas were great. But that wasn’t true, was it? She thought a school garden was a great idea, and she thought Matthew Holler was a great idea. The audio lab? Sure, she liked it, and she liked that Matthew liked it, but it was just the sonic version of Marylin’s cheerleading uniforms. Ten people would get something out of it, tops.

  And then she remembered that Matthew was her friend, and Kate Faber was all about helping out her friends. After she put her homework binders into her backpack, she pulled out a pad of paper and her Pilot Precise V5 pen from her desk drawer and imagined being interviewed someday when she was a famous writer. “Do you write on a computer?” the interviewer would ask her, and Kate would say, “I always do my first drafts with pen and paper. It makes me slow down, so I can get exactly the right words.” Really, Kate just liked office supplies, and she liked the way the right pen felt on the right paper. Strange but true facts about Kate Faber, she thought, and then she started writing down why the audio lab needed more money to pile on top of all the money that had already been invested in it.

  After Kate had been writing for twenty minutes, she stopped and thought that maybe she should e-mail Lorna and see if everything was okay with the school garden proposal. She put down her pen and pad and opened up her laptop. After she sent the e-mail, she hit the send and receive all button approximately every three minutes, but Lorna never replied.

  She probably went to bed early, Kate thought. She’ll probably e-mail back first thing in the morning. Finally, around eleven, she turned off the computer. She read over what she’d written about getting new equipment for the audio lab. She was surprised by what a convincing case she’d made. It was a little scary, really. Because even though what Kate had written was good, she wasn’t so sure she felt good about it.

  What kind of person am I turning into? she wondered as she turned off her light and got into bed. The kind of person who helps out her friends, that’s who. The kind of person who’s there for the people who need her.

  Sitting on the bus the next morning, ignoring Marylin as she read over her most excellent proposal for new equipment for the audio lab, she wondered if that was true. Was she really there for the people who needed her? And then she thought about going on vacation with Matthew Holler, and how she hoped they wouldn’t go to the beach after all, because she was pretty sure she didn’t want him to see her in a bathing suit.

  To Kate’s surprise, Lorna was sitting at their regular table at lunchtime. “Am I allowed to eat here?” she asked when she reached the table. “I have two pieces of my mom’s famous raspberry pie. It’s a couple of days old, but it’s still good.”

  “It’s a free cafeteria,” Lorna said, sounding like she didn’t care if Kate sat down or not. “It’s not like I own this table.”

  “You never replied to my e-mail,” Kate mentioned as she sat down and started unpacking her lunch. “I mean, even if you’re mad at me, I did work really hard on that proposal.”

  “And it’s really good,” Lorna admitted, even though her voice was still chilly. “But you know what makes me so mad? I bet your proposal for the audio lab is really good too.”

  “I tried to make it less good, if that makes you feel any better,” Kate confessed. “Only I couldn’t. It would be like drawing a great picture and then tearing it up because you didn’t like the person whose face you drew.”

  “It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s not going to win. Neither is a school garden, even if the proposal you wrote is great.”

  “Why not?” Kate said, feeling offended. How could one of her proposals not win?

  Lorna dunked a pita triangle into a container of spinach dip. “Because someone told me that Jared Scott is doing a proposal for a big end-of-the-year pizza party. You know everyone’s going to vote for that. Even if it weren’t Jared Scott’s idea, people would vote for it.”

  Jared Scott was the world’s most popular eighth-grade boy. Lorna was right. Most kids she knew would sell their baby brothers for a pizza party. Not to mention that people would vote for his idea no matter what it was, just because they couldn’t believe somebody as good-looking as Jared Scott sometimes actually smiled at them in the hallway.

  “That’s a bummer,” Kate said, feeling suddenly like a halfway-deflated balloon. “Because a school garden’s a truly awesome idea. I’m still going to vote for it.”

  Lorna stared at her. “You’re not going to vote for the audio lab? Even though Matthew Holler would love you forever if you did?”

  “Well, for one thing, it’s a secret ballot,” Kate said. “So he won’t know what I voted for. And for another thing, I don’t think he’s going to love me forever. It’s not really his style. And anyway, we’re just friends.”

  “He’s just friends,” Lorna pointed out. “You’re more, well—I guess it just seems like you care more. My mom says I shouldn’t be surprised that you decided to help Matthew. She says a lot of girls do stuff like that to try to get a guy to like them.”

  Kate could feel her face go red. She hated the idea that Lorna and her mom had been talking about her! And that Lorna’s mom thought Kate was like every other girl in the world, not to mention the kind of girl who would do stuff just to get a guy to like her.

  “That’s a really stupid thing to say,” Kate said. “What does your mom even know about me?”

  “She knows enough,” Lorna said with a shrug.

  Kate felt her throat tighten. I’m not going to cry, she told herself, and she focused on breathing slowly through her nose, a stop-crying trick she had come up with in elementary school. “He’s my friend, why don’t you get that?” she hissed at Lorna through clenched teeth. “Why doesn’t anyone get that?”

  Lorna looked at Kate for a long time. “I get it,” she said finally, her voice soft. “But I’m your friend too.” Now Lorna’s eyes shone with tears. “So how do you think it made me feel when you started working on Matthew’s proposal? It made me feel like I was a big, fat zero.”

  Well, there was no way Kate was going to stop herself from crying after that. The tears that rolled down her cheeks were hot, and Kate wondered if tears were always hot, or was it only the tears you cried because you’d been an idiot? A bad friend. The kind of girl who did things to get boys to like her.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  Lorna sniffed and nodded. “Don’t let it happen again.”

  Then they were quiet for a few minutes, until Lorna said, “Didn’t you say something about raspberry pie?”

  Kate laughed in a hic
cupy sort of way and opened her lunch bag. “I even remembered to pack two forks.”

  “Wow, Martha Stewart would be proud,” Lorna said admiringly. And then she said, “Is that Marylin sitting over there by herself? I’ve never seen her alone before. She looks weird all alone. Like she’s missing an arm or something.”

  Kate looked up and sure enough, there was Marylin at a table near the cafeteria exit, sitting by herself and reading a magazine.

  “Should we ask her to join us?” Lorna asked. “You could split your piece of pie with her. I’m keeping mine all to myself.”

  “I don’t know,” Kate said. “Maybe she wants to be alone.”

  Lorna shook her head. “Nobody wants to be alone, Kate. At least not in the cafeteria.”

  Kate thought about this. She knew Lorna was right. She also knew that even if she thought Marylin was dumb for trying to get new uniforms to make Mazie like her, well, wasn’t Kate sort of trying to do the same thing? Make Matthew like her by writing the audio-lab proposal?

  She guessed Marylin wasn’t the only person acting dumb around here.

  Marylin gave her a little cheerleader-like wave when she saw Kate walking over to her table. “Hey! I’m just getting caught up on my reading for my current events journal!” She held up a copy of Time magazine.

  “Why don’t you come sit with me and Lorna?” Kate offered. “We can figure out how to take down Jared Scott. Maybe we could rig the ballot box.”

  Marylin sat very still for a moment, and then she began gathering her things. “You heard about that? Well, you’re probably right—nobody else’s idea has a chance. I guess it doesn’t matter, though. I’m thinking about withdrawing my proposal anyway.”

  “Benjamin still mad at you?”

  Marylin sighed. “Everybody’s mad at me, Kate. Why am I so stupid?”

  “Everybody’s stupid sometimes,” Kate told her. “So let’s go eat some pie.”

  “Did your mom make it?” Marylin asked, looking considerably brighter.