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

  Benjamin smiled at Marguerite. “Be prepared to do a lot of minutes-taking on Monday. It’s going to be a long meeting.”

  “My mom’s letting me bring her laptop,” Marguerite told him. “I might audio-record, too, just to make sure I don’t miss anything.”

  While Benjamin and Marguerite discussed what was on the agenda for Monday night’s Student Government meeting, Marylin looked around the cafeteria. When she’d sat with the cheerleaders, she’d never looked around. Cheerleaders didn’t look; they were looked at. It was sort of more interesting to look, Marylin thought now. You could learn a lot about the social world of Brenner P. Dunn Middle School by observing life in the cafeteria. The athletes and cheerleaders sat at the centermost tables. The geeks and losers and outcasts were dotted around the edges in groups of one, two, and three. Marylin looked around for Kate and Lorna, but they’d already left, probably to go to the audio lab. Marylin didn’t know how she’d classify them. They weren’t geeks and they weren’t losers. What was that phrase her mom had used the other night at dinner, when they’d been talking about life without computers or electricity? Off the grid. Kate and Lorna were off the grid.

  Marylin shivered. She would never want to be off the grid. But sitting here with Benjamin and Marguerite, two smart, friendly people who actually cared about doing some good in the world, well, it wasn’t so bad. If the cafeteria was like a tree stump and you counted rings, Marylin’s table would be in the third ring from the center. Looking around, Marylin took note of the other third-ringers. There were more Student Government reps, some chorus kids, a table of cross-country runners. Lots of band kids. People talked and laughed as they ate. Some kids were studying, and three tuba players were good-naturedly throwing food at one another.

  It’s not so bad here, Marylin thought as she dipped her spoon into her hummus. The question was, could she live here? Would people still think she was special and important?

  “Do you need a ride Monday night, Marylin?” Marguerite asked. “Because I don’t think I live that far from you. I remember from when I had to enter in everybody’s addresses for the official Student Government record.”

  “That would be really nice,” Marylin told her. “That way my mom wouldn’t have to drag my little brother along when she dropped me off. He gets really cranky about having to come with us when my mom drops me off places. He thinks he’s old enough to stay home by himself.”

  “My mom still won’t let me stay home by myself,” Marguerite said. “It’s embarrassing, especially since I’m the oldest.”

  “I’m the oldest too, and my mom makes me babysit whenever she has to drive someone somewhere,” Benjamin told them. “I’ve got four brothers and sisters, and it takes forever to load everyone into the van.”

  “My little brother backed our van down the driveway yesterday!” Marguerite exclaimed, laughing. “He’s only three!”

  They spent the rest of the lunch telling stories about dumb things their brothers and sisters had done over the years. As they stood up to take their leftover stuff to the trash, Marylin suddenly had a strange feeling. She couldn’t put her finger on it. It was a butterfly sort of feeling, a spring morning kind of thing.

  And then it hit her: She’d gotten all the way through lunch without crying. Not only that, but she actually felt sort of happy, like maybe her life wasn’t falling apart after all.

  She looked out the cafeteria window, where there were a few kids hanging out on the benches in the student commons. Turning toward Benjamin, she said, “I think a school garden’s a good idea. You’re right, it wouldn’t take much money to get it started.”

  Benjamin grinned at her. “Seeds are cheap.”

  The three of them walked toward the exit. “You know, Marguerite, if we did an Alice in Wonderland theme, my parents could help us,” Marylin said, this brilliant idea suddenly occurring to her. “My dad used to be this big theater guy in college, and my mom loves painting stuff.”

  “I was wondering, do you think we should do The Wizard of Oz instead?” Marguerite asked. “Or is that too creepy?”

  “Too creepy,” Marylin and Benjamin answered in unison, and then they both laughed, and Benjamin bumped Marylin with his shoulder, and she bumped him back.

  Walking down the hall with her friends, Marylin thought that if they ever did have a dance with a Wizard of Oz theme, Mazie would make a great Wicked Witch of the West. And the rest of the cheerleaders? Flying monkeys. She thought they would make excellent flying monkeys.

  When the doorbell rang Monday night, Marylin was still in her room getting ready. She checked the clock and saw that it was only six thirty. Marguerite and her mom weren’t supposed to be there until six forty-five, though Marylin guessed she wasn’t surprised that Marguerite was the sort of person who got places a few minutes early.

  But when she opened the front door, it wasn’t Marguerite. In fact, at first Marylin had no idea who it was. The pretty girl who stood on her front porch had reddish-brown hair in a cute pixie cut that made her brown eyes look enormous. She was wearing jeans and silver ballet flats, and a gray wool jacket over a pink sweater.

  Marylin took a step back. And then she took two steps forward. “Rhetta? Is that you?”

  Rhetta blushed. “Don’t have a heart attack or anything.”

  Marylin started hopping up and down and clapping her hands. “I can’t believe it! You look amazing! What happened?”

  “Hmm, I think it’s possible to take that question the wrong way,” Rhetta said, jamming her hands into her pockets. “Just maybe.”

  “You know what I mean,” Marylin said, pulling Rhetta inside. “What did you do?”

  Rhetta glanced behind her toward the street. “My mom’s waiting in the car, so I can only stay a second. We’re on our way to bowling league, but she said I could stop by really quick so you could see my hair.”

  Marylin couldn’t help herself. She pulled Rhetta into a huge hug. “You look so amazing! Sorry! Sorry! But you do! Tell me what happened!”

  Rhetta broke away and sat down on the stairs. “Okay, okay! Let me catch my breath! Well, here’s the thing. I’ve been really worried about you.”

  “So you cut your hair?”

  “Sort of, yeah,” Rhetta said, nodding. “See, where I used to live, in sixth grade, there was this girl at our church, Lacey Griffins, who got cancer. She had to go through six months of chemotherapy and lost all her hair. So all the guys in the youth group shaved their heads, to show solidarity, and two of the girls did too.”

  Marylin sat down next to Rhetta on the stairs. “That’s awesome,” she said. “But I still don’t get why you cut your hair.”

  “Okay, so maybe you don’t have cancer,” Rhetta said, turning to look at Marylin. “But things have been really terrible for you. Not just cheerleading, but your parents getting divorced and you having to go back and forth all the time between their houses, all that stuff. Things just seem so hard for you. I was talking to my mom about it, and she asked me what kind of friend you needed me to be right now. And suddenly I got this idea. I thought you needed me to be—” Rhetta’s voice caught, like she was about to cry.

  “What do I need you to be?” Marylin asked. “Tell me.”

  “You need me to be normal,” Rhetta said, and now she was crying for real. “You need me to be less of a weirdo for a little while.”

  Now Marylin was crying. “You are not a weirdo! Don’t say that!”

  Rhetta grinned through her tears. “I’m sort of a weirdo. I mean, I am in a bowling league. You can’t get around that fact. But in a lot of ways I’m also a pretty normal person.”

  “I know you are,” Marylin said, nodding vigorously. “I’ve always known you were. You were just hiding it.”

  “Well, anyway,” Rhetta continued, wiping her eyes and sniffling. “When I told my mom, she just went nuts, she was so happy. She took me clothes shopping, and we went to her favorite Christian hairdresser—”

  “There are Christian haird
ressers?”

  “Oh, yeah, there’s Christian everything,” Rhetta told her. “Anyway, believe it or not, this is pretty close to my natural hair color. I’d sort of forgotten, but my mom brought pictures.”

  “You didn’t have to do this for me,” Marylin said, leaning into Rhetta. “I always thought you were great.”

  “That’s why I did it,” Rhetta said, leaning into Marylin. “You’re the first friend I’ve ever had who always thought I was great, even when you thought I was weird.”

  Outside, a horn honked. “That’s my mom,” Rhetta said, standing. “I’ve got to run. But believe me, you’re going to love what I’m wearing tomorrow. More pink!”

  Marylin watched as Rhetta headed down the sidewalk. “Hey, Rhetta,” she called after her friend. “You know what?”

  “What?” Rhetta called back as she opened the car door.

  “I think I’m going to quit cheerleadering. At least for now.”

  “Good,” Rhetta said. “They don’t deserve you. See you tomorrow!”

  Marylin hurried back inside to wash her face and fix her hair before Marguerite got there. Just because she wasn’t going to be a cheerleader anymore didn’t mean she wasn’t going to do her best to be pretty. Pretty was part of who she was, even as a soon-to-be civilian.

  Would she tell Marguerite that she was quitting her life as a middle-school cheerleader? Should she announce it at the Student Government meeting? She thought it would be nice to see people’s faces when she told them. She liked the idea that other people would be on her side, that maybe most people were on her side. That she had more friends than she knew.

  Looking in the mirror as she brushed her hair, Marylin wondered if the girl in Rhetta’s church, Lacey, had gotten better. Suddenly it seemed important to her that Lacey was okay. That all those boys and the two girls shaving their heads—well, that it had made a difference. That having friends made a difference.

  Marylin looked at her reflection. Of course having friends who would shave their heads for you would make a difference. How could it not?

  The doorbell rang, and Marylin grabbed her coat and opened the front door. “I’m thinking about cutting my hair,” she told Marguerite as she stepped onto the porch. “What do you think?”

  Marguerite laughed. “I think you’ll look great whatever you do.”

  “My best friend has short hair,” Marylin explained. “That’s what got me thinking about it.”

  She slid into the car and snapped her seat belt into place.

  She felt better already.

  free as a girl with wings

  On Tuesday night, after she’d finished her math homework, Kate turned on the radio and sprawled across her bed, waiting for a song that would change her life. She did this every night after she finished her homework; it had become part of her routine. Some nights she didn’t have any luck at all—heavy metal night in particular offered pretty slim pickings—but Tuesday was the Girls with Guitars show, and the odds were pretty good that she’d hear at least one song that would blast through all the noise in her brain and make her sit up and say, YES! That’s it! That’s exactly it!

  The first two songs the deejay played were pretty lame. One was about how the singer would never meet another guy like the one who’d just dumped her, and even though Kate was only thirteen, she knew there’d be plenty more guys just like the one who got away. Boring. The second song was about baking bread. Now, Kate liked freshly baked bread as much as the next person, and she thought you should be able to write about anything you wanted, but that didn’t mean you could rhyme words like “orange” and “curtain”—words that, frankly, didn’t rhyme at all—and get away with it.

  But the next song was a girl singing about looking for a new life, a life where she could be exactly who she wanted to be, and maybe she’d find that life in another town, maybe in another country, she didn’t know. Listening to the girl sing, Kate thought, YES. That was exactly what she wanted too.

  Not that Kate really wanted to move to another town, at least not right this very minute. Eventually she’d probably move to New York City and live in Greenwich Village, although when she’d mentioned that to her dad, he’d laughed and said she’d better grow up to be a millionaire. Secretly Kate thought that she’d rather go up to New York with only twenty dollars in her pocket. It would make a better story when she became a famous singer-songwriter, or a famous poet, or whatever she ended up being famous for, if she showed up in New York totally broke. She hadn’t said this to her dad, though. He was too practical to like that kind of idea.

  After the song was over, Kate grabbed her notebook and started to write. Free. Free as a girl with wings. Free as the grass that grows without anyone telling it to. Free as a person who gives everything away and keeps on walking.

  Kate was in love with the idea of being free, even if she was having a hard time pinning down exactly what it meant. It had something to do with not caring what other people thought, and she liked that idea a lot. She was tired, for instance, of caring what Matthew Holler thought. She was tired of getting dressed in the morning and wondering if Matthew would like what she was wearing. She hated wondering that! And she hated how, if she didn’t see Matthew in the audio lab or at his locker first thing in the morning, she felt disappointed, like how could her life have meaning if she didn’t see Matthew before first period?

  So on Tuesday night she decided she was going to give Matthew Holler up. She was going to stop caring about him. Sure, they could be friends, but Kate thought it was time to have other guy friends too, maybe even a boyfriend. There was a guy in pre-algebra named Keller Knowles who seemed pretty cool. He wore cool T-shirts, anyway, and he acted kind of shy, which was a trait Kate thought was nice.

  But would she be free if she had a boyfriend? Kate would have to think about that.

  Wednesday, during morning break, she decided to go to the audio lab one last time. It would be her farewell to Matthew Holler, her hello to freedom. She pushed open the door, feeling strong and powerful, and maybe just a little sad. It was a cool combination of feelings, and she was pretty sure she could write a song about it later.

  And then, when she saw Emily sitting next to Matthew at the control panel, giggling and poking him with her pencil, Kate thought she might be writing a whole different kind of song. Not that Matthew was poking Emily back or acting like he was in love with her. It was just—well, he let Emily sit in Kate’s chair. Like it didn’t matter who was sitting there. Emily? Kate? What was the difference? Who cared?

  As soon he saw Kate, Matthew said, “What’s up?” Kate thought he sounded entirely too nonchalant, like, Oh, is my ex-girlfriend hanging out with me? I hadn’t noticed.

  Emily smirked and said, “I’m helping Matthew with his project. It’s called World of Noise, and it’s really cool.”

  “I know what it’s called,” Kate said, and she waited for Matthew to explain to Emily that Kate had been working on the project with him for two months now, and of course she knew what it was called. But Matthew didn’t say anything. He just kept fiddling with the levers on the control panel.

  Not a big deal, Kate told herself as she turned around and headed out the door. In fact, it was good that Emily had been there and that Matthew had acted like Kate wasn’t anybody special. It made it that much easier to give him up. And the fact that she sort of felt like crying? Well, that was going to happen, wasn’t it? Just because she wanted to stop caring about Matthew Holler didn’t mean it would happen automatically. It would take practice. She just had to keep practicing.

  Kate decided she would go work on painting sets for Guys and Dolls with Lorna. Maybe she could even get Ms. South, the drama teacher, to give her a pass to get out of fourth period. The only question was, should she tell Lorna about finding Emily in the audio lab, or her decision to get over Matthew? Kate shoved her hands in her pockets. For some reason they were shaking a little. The decision. She should definitely talk about the decision first. Emily was besid
e the point.

  When she got to the auditorium, she found Lorna and Flannery painting the Save-A-Soul Mission storefront. Over the last few weeks, Lorna and Flannery had gotten to be friends. It had a lot to do with the amazing snacks Lorna brought to rehearsal and the fact that Flannery wasn’t half so cranky if you fed her.

  “Pick up a paintbrush,” Lorna called when she saw Kate. “We’ve got ten minutes before break’s over.”

  “Yeah, Ms. South wants this finished and all the way dry by rehearsal this afternoon,” Flannery added.

  It was interesting to see Flannery so involved, Kate thought. Flannery was not known for being an overachiever when it came to activities. The other day she’d told Kate and Lorna that the only other times she’d after stayed after school were for detention. “This show is the first time I’ve voluntarily stayed at school one second longer that I absolutely had to.”

  “Doesn’t your mom care about extracurriculars?” Lorna had asked. “Because my mom has a total bug up her butt about them.”

  Kate had noticed that the longer Lorna hung out with Flannery, the more she was using phrases like “bug up her butt.” Flannery was the sort of person who could have that kind of effect on your vocabulary.

  “Mostly my mom just cares that I get out of middle school without a police record,” Flannery had informed them. “Not that I actually do anything all that bad. I guess I just have potential when it comes to a life of nonviolent crime.”

  “You look weird, Kate,” Lorna said now as Kate picked up a paintbrush and started working on the mission’s front door. “Are you okay? You’re not going to throw up, are you?”

  “I’m fine,” Kate said. “I just have some big news that I’m very excited about. I’ve decided I’m done with Matthew Holler.”

  Both Lorna and Flannery looked skeptical. “What do you mean by ‘done’?” Lorna asked. “Like you’re going to stop hanging out with him?”

  “Or stop obsessing about him?” Flannery added.