Sparrow Read online

  2

  “Oh my God, Dad, I’m begging you. Put on some shoes.”

  “What? You told me I had beautiful feet! I thought I’d show them off to your date. So we’ll get off on the right foot. Get it?”

  “I told you that when I was six! Sophie! Come in here! Dad’s going to ruin it!”

  My father is standing in the living room, holding a double Scotch on the rocks. Tannhäuser, the German opera he can sing by heart, is playing softly in the background. He’s dressed in cargo pants and a faded blue UVA Law sweatshirt. His long, pale feet are bare.

  I’ve grown up watching him pace back and forth in the dusky twilight, still in his suit and tie, phone pressed to his ear, bare feet sinking into the grass. Unless there’s snow on the ground, he does this every weekday when he comes home from work. I’ve never asked him about it, because it seems private. Maybe it’s just a space between work and home, a moment when he can feel the earth beneath him and muffle the drumbeat of his days. I’ve always loved the barefoot thing. Until tonight.

  Sophie rushes in, bracelets and earrings jingling, her red curls falling down her back. She sounds like wind chimes.

  “Avery, what the hell? Go put on some shoes for God’s sake! I told you not to embarrass her, and Tristan will be here any minute. Move your butt, or I’ll spit in your Scotch.”

  “You women will be the death of me,” my father says. “Can’t a man be shoeless in his own home?”

  “No!” Sophie and I shout.

  “All right, all right,” he grumbles, walking down the hall toward the back porch.

  When the doorbell rings, my stomach drops to my feet. I clench my hands together and tap my right index finger against my left hand, barely moving it so Sophie won’t see, but enough so I can still feel it. Nine times, three groups of three. I do it three times, until my breathing slows.

  Sophie walks over to where my feet have practically rooted themselves into the hardwood floor. She pats my cheek and smiles. “Your father’s just teasing you, honey. And by the way, you look gorgeous.”

  I’m wearing my favorite skinny jeans, black suede boots, and a high-necked ivory lace shirt under my black bolero jacket. I don’t feel gorgeous. I feel queasy. “Really? You think so?”

  “I know so, baby girl. Now go answer the door.”

  Tristan is standing on the front porch in a leather bomber jacket, black jeans, and a cobalt-blue sweater. His long blond hair is brushed back from his face, showing off his widow’s peak. He looks like a rock star.

  I introduce him to Sophie, who shakes his hand and invites him in.

  “Tristan,” she says, holding his hand in both of hers. “It’s so nice to meet you. Sparrow told me how you guys met the other day. It was like something out of a movie!”

  Tristan looks at me and smiles.

  “It was a first for me, ma’am, that’s for sure,” he says. “Kind of an unusual way to get a date, right? Running a girl down with your car? I’m just glad Sparrow gave me a second chance. Though maybe it was a third chance, since apparently I was a real jerk in fifth grade.”

  Sophie laughs. “Well, you’ll have to come have dinner with us sometime soon. I make a killer lasagna.”

  “I’d love that, Ms. Rose. Thank you.”

  “Please, call me Sophie. Everyone does.”

  I’m winding my pink-and-white scarf around my neck when my father comes clomping down the hall. He’s put on his lime-green rubber boots, the ones he wears to spread mulch in the garden. He actually winks at me, like I’m in on the joke.

  He strolls into the foyer like there’s nothing in the world wrong with this picture and shakes Tristan’s hand. I can tell that he’s crushing it, because his knuckles are white. Tristan doesn’t flinch, never breaks eye contact.

  “Tristan King,” my dad says. “I know your father.”

  “He knows you, too, sir. He respects your work.”

  “That’s kind of you to say. Where are you taking Sparrow tonight?”

  “I thought we’d go to La Serenissima for dinner, then maybe take a walk down Main Street if it’s not too cold.”

  “You are aware that her curfew is ten o’clock?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll have her home on time.”

  “There will be no drinking this evening, am I clear?”

  “Of course, sir. My father would kill me.”

  “A man after my own heart. Good for him.”

  “Dad, come on,” I say. “Enough.”

  He ignores me.

  “There will be nothing else, either, you get me?”

  “Loud and clear, sir.”

  “How old are you, Tristan?”

  “I’ll be eighteen in September.”

  “You take care with my daughter tonight. She’s seventeen, too, but she’s still younger than you.”

  “I will, sir. I promise.”

  “Sparrow,” says my father. “I’d like to see you a minute before you leave.”

  I roll my eyes. Tristan grins at me.

  “I’ll wait right here. Take your time.”

  I leave him in the foyer with Sophie, who’s making small talk about Italian food. My father and I walk into the kitchen, where a pot of chili is simmering on the stove. Sophie’s put a pan of cornbread in to bake.

  For one panicky minute I think about staying home, right here in this kitchen, where it’s warm and safe and I know the pattern of every day, every night. I think about the moment when I step off the front porch with Tristan, walking into the darkness, into everything unknown. I start tapping my finger against my left hand again. Nine. Nine. It’s always nine.

  “Helloooooo,” my father says. “Earth to Sparrow.”

  Oh right, I forgot. I want to murder my father.

  He puts his arm around my shoulders, pulling me close. “Why on earth did you have to pick such a horrible-looking boy for your first date, my love? He’s absolutely hideous! Sasquatch in a leather jacket! What were you thinking, child? He’s going to horrify all the waiters and patrons of La Serenissima, eating with his hands and chewing with his mouth open.

  “Why don’t you just go out with Lucas? At least that beast is familiar. Since I don’t know much about Tristan, I guess I’ll have to turn my private detectives loose as soon as you leave.”

  I pull away from him. I am not laughing.

  “Dad, you are the actual worst.”

  He smiles and takes out his wallet, pressing a twenty-dollar bill into my hand. I fold it into thirds, unfold it, and fold it again.

  “Sweetie, come on. You know I’m just giving you a hard time. I’m happy for you, Tristan’s horrifying appearance notwithstanding. Maybe you could get him to wear a paper bag over his head or something.”

  “Stop it, Dad. So not funny.”

  “Too much?”

  “Way, way too much.”

  “Okay, love. I really am very happy for you. You’ve been laser focused on ballet ever since you started lessons, and if you ask me, which you didn’t, you’ve always been a little too content to stay at home on weekends. It gladdens my heart to see you getting out into the world, having some fun with a boy who seems nice and will treat you well. Though if you tell him I said so, I’ll ground you for life. Is your phone charged?”

  “Yes, Dad. My phone is charged.”

  “Put that money in your pocket. I’m just going to say this one more obnoxious fatherly thing, so listen hard. You can roll your eyes all you want.

  “If you get to feeling nervous or uncomfortable about anything, you call me. I just…” He takes a deep breath and looks away, out the window over the sink. When he looks back at me, his eyes are sad. “I just want you to know that I’m here. That’s all. Now, pumpkin, you may go in peace.”

  He kisses the top of my head. “Be careful, be safe, and have a good time. I love you.” I give him a quick hug, breathing his bay rum cologne deep into my lungs.

  “Love you too. But you look kind of crazy in those boots.”

  * * *
/>   “Hey, let’s get out of here. It’s only eight thirty, a whole hour and a half before your curfew. Where do you want to go next? Ice cream? Coffee at Nora’s?”

  The candle on the table sputters, sending flickering light over the dessert plates scraped clean of chocolate lava cake. Tristan is pocketing his debit card and leaving a cash tip for the waiter.

  “God, no, thanks,” I say. “I’m completely stuffed. This was wonderful, but you didn’t have to do it, honestly. I’ve already totally forgiven you for almost killing me with your car.”

  He leans across the table and looks into my eyes.

  “You’re amazing and beautiful and I’m lucky to be here with you tonight, especially given my total lack of driving skills. Are you sure you’re ready to go?”

  “I think if we sit here any longer, the back of my head’s going to burst into flames. People are staring at me.”

  He laughs, then stands and takes my hand. “People should stare at you. Here, watch your step. It’s dark in here.”

  He guides me through the restaurant, and heads turn as we walk by. Everyone is looking at him, probably wondering what he’s doing with the brown-haired ballerina instead of his usual shiny girl. Like Larissa, who modeled for the Anthropologie catalog last year, then moved to New York just months after they started dating. Or Jemma, first violinist with the youth symphony. They broke up this Christmas, after only six weeks. He seems to go through girlfriends the way I go through leotards. But tonight I don’t care. Tonight he is with me.

  Outside, on the sidewalk, with the winter evening all around us, breathing promises into the night sky, he gathers me into his arms and buries his face in my hair. His mouth moves against my neck, and it feels more intimate than a kiss. I pull away, but he doesn’t let me get far, throwing his arm around my shoulders as we walk to his car.

  “Your hair smells so good. What is it? Roses? I can’t stop thinking about you, Sparrow. I haven’t been able to concentrate since Thursday.”

  I don’t know what to say. No one’s ever talked to me like this.

  “It’s honeysuckle. Hey, I know where we can go next. Have you ever been to the Honeysuckle Pond?”

  “The what?”

  “Its real name is Aubrey’s Cove, but I call it the Honeysuckle Pond, because there’s wild honeysuckle all over the place, and it smells amazing.”

  I’m babbling. I can hear myself doing it, and I want to slap my own face. I don’t even know how to behave on a date. I should have asked Delaney for advice.

  “You want to go to some random pond? Seriously? Like out in nature? Where it will be cold? You sure you don’t want me to take you up to Harper’s Point? You know, we can look out at the lights, and maybe the windows will get all foggy? I guarantee I’d keep you warm.”

  He opens my car door, but before I get in, he bends and kisses me lightly on the lips. My whole body trembles. I want him to do it again. I want to run home and hide.

  “I’m just kidding, Sparrow. It’s too soon for Harper’s Point, and I would love to take you to your freezing pond where the honeysuckle grows. I’ve never been there.”

  I breathe out a quiet sigh of relief.

  “I can’t believe you’ve never been. It’s up on the Parkway, not far, maybe fifteen minutes.”

  A thin crescent moon is rising over the mountains as we arrive. The sound of the waterfall fills the night, and I lead Tristan over the rocks to my favorite spot, the broad, flat boulder in the middle of the creek. Water rushes all around us, the moon reflected in the rippling surface. Even though it’s still winter, the faint scent of honeysuckle lingers in the air.

  “Wow,” Tristan whispers. “This place is gorgeous.”

  I love that he’s whispering, because I do the same thing when I’m here.

  “It was my mother’s favorite place. You know the story, right?”

  “There’s a story?”

  “Tristan, seriously? I thought everyone in Hollins Creek knew the story. My mother used to tell it to me when she was brushing my hair before bed. When I was little, it was the last thing I heard before I fell asleep, her voice, like music, telling me about Aubrey. Sophie thinks it’s super-depressing, but my mother thought it was tragic and romantic. She loved it.”

  “Your mom was some kind of artist, right? I heard she was a sculptor.”

  “She was a painter. She and my dad met when he was in law school at UVA. She was an art student, and one day he saw her, sitting on the Lawn, under a tree near the Rotunda. It was spring, and she was sketching. He said he fell in love with her stillness.”

  “She died in an accident, am I remembering that right? When you were five?”

  “Do you want to hear the story or not?”

  Tristan smiles and puts his arm around me. “Yes, I want to hear the story.”

  “Okay, so this all happened before the Civil War. You have heard of the Civil War, right?”

  He pulls me closer, so we’re hip to hip on the rock. I can feel the warmth of his body, see his breath making clouds in the cold air.

  I tell him the way my mother always told it to me.

  “Once there was a beautiful young belle named Aubrey O’Meara. She was nineteen years old, and she died here, just under the waterfall. She killed herself, because the married man she loved with all her heart laughed and slammed the door in her face when she told him she was pregnant. He’d lied to her, told her all these sweet things, that he loved her, that he’d always love her, that his wife was cold and cruel, and Aubrey meant everything to him. That day, when she told him she was going to have his baby, he told her she wouldn’t get anything from him, that she should go on home and leave him alone.

  “She knew she’d bring everlasting shame to her family, so she spared them the only way she knew how.”

  I stand and pick my way closer to the waterfall, careful not to slip on the mossy rocks. Tristan follows behind me, sure-footed as a mountain goat. The falls are quieter in winter, because the outside edges always turn to ice, but I still have to raise my voice a little.

  “One winter morning, Aubrey filled the pockets of her cloak with stones and threw herself into that pool, right there at the base of the falls.”

  Tristan crouches down and dips his hand into the clear, sparkling water. He winces at the cold and dries his hand on his jeans, looking up at me, waiting for me to continue.

  “The thing that always gets me is that before she jumped, she put her shoes right about here, where I’m standing, along with a silver locket that held a picture of her mother and a curl of her own auburn hair. When her mother died the next year, everyone said it was from a broken heart. They buried Aubrey’s locket with her.”

  Tristan stands and wraps his arms around me, holding me tight. He smooths my hair back from my forehead and kisses my temple. For a second I can’t find the story again. His lips are warm and soft, his arms strong and sure around my shoulders. I feel safe here, with him, even though my mouth is filled with my mother’s words.

  He leads me across the slippery rocks until we’re back on the flat boulder in the middle of the creek.

  “Is there more?” he says.

  “Not much. But it’s the saddest part. Aubrey is supposed to haunt this place. People say you can see her sometimes, standing on the bank right there, near the waterfall. And on the anniversary of her death, if you take a sip of the water from the pool, you can taste the salt of her mother’s tears.”

  We’re quiet for a while, listening to the water, looking up at the moon.

  “Your mom really told you that story when you were little?”

  “Yes.”

  “Kind of creepy.”

  “I guess. I never really thought about it. She was just my beautiful mother, brushing my hair, telling me a bedtime story. Everyone loves when their mother tells stories.”

  I’m lying. I thought about Aubrey all the time. She terrified me.

  “My mother painted her.”

  “Who?”

  �
��Aubrey. Just once or twice. She said the story inspired her.”

  I close my eyes, lost in the memory of the canvases lined up against my father’s bookshelves, drying on easels in the dining room, propped up against the windows in the living room, on the cushions of the window seat at the top of the stairs.

  Aubrey under the water, her mouth open in a silent scream. Aubrey taking off her shoes. Aubrey’s father finding her dead body on the banks of the New River. Aubrey on her knees in front of her lover, begging. Aubrey weeping. Aubrey screaming. Aubrey dying. She was everywhere.

  “What happened to the paintings?”

  “I don’t know. My dad probably put them in the attic after she died.”

  He burned them. Every last one.

  Tristan puts a finger under my chin and tilts my face up to his. His gray eyes fill my sight; with the beautiful night around me, I fall into them.

  “Thank you for telling me,” he whispers, kissing me softly. “It is definitely the saddest story…” Another kiss, longer this time. He puts his hand in my hair.

  “… I’ve ever heard.”

  He lays me back on the rock, runs his thumb down my cheek.

  “You’re so beautiful, Sparrow. My beautiful ballerina.” He kisses me again, so long that I’m afraid I’ll stop breathing. I want to stop breathing. I want him to kiss me forever.

  3

  “So what did you have to eat?” Delaney asks. “What did he have? Where did you sit?”

  Lucas rolls his eyes and throws down his sandwich. “Oh, sweet tap-dancing Jesus, where did she sit? Are you kidding me, Laney? Who gives a crap?”

  “Shut up, Lucas,” Delaney says. “Go over and sit with Brandon and his no-neck brobots if you don’t want to hear it. You know how the football guys love ballet dancers.”

  It’s a cold, dreary Monday, and I’m at lunch with Lucas and Delaney and a bunch of ballet and theater and music people. Caleb from ballet, who looks like he’s flying when he jumps. Israel, tall and lanky, theater nerd and budding playwright. Sam, who loves to sing.

  Luis is the last to arrive, squeezing in beside me. His tray is piled high with his usual: onion bagels spread with Cheez Whiz, three hot dogs, and a mountain of Tater Tots smothered in ketchup.