Being Henry David

10

Suzanne drops me off on the way to her afternoon shift at Emerson (as in Ralph Waldo, of course) Hospital, and I show up on Hailey’s doorstep, holding Thomas’s guitar in one hand and a small amp in the other.

When Hailey answers the door, I notice she’s wearing jeans and this tight purple shirt. She looks amazing. We’re shy with each other at first, so we don’t say much of anything past hi and come on in. She leads the way through a front hallway and I follow, noticing that she’s not wearing shoes and her socks are two different colors, which reminds me of her unmatched earrings the other day. Either she has a habit of losing socks and earrings or she’s making some kind of quirky fashion statement.

Her house is one of the smaller ones in her neighborhood, which basically means it’s a normal size. The other houses look way too big for one family, like mansions. Even though it’s smaller than the neighbors, it’s decorated really nice, with fancy furniture and paintings and Oriental carpets. She leads me into a room that’s all white. No kidding. White rug, white sofas, white walls, even a white grand piano. I’m afraid to have a dirty thought in this room. Which is difficult, considering the way I’m starting to feel about Hailey.

“Wow, you could hide a polar bear in this room if you wanted to,” I say. Lame, but a smile twitches at the corners of Hailey’s mouth, which is good enough for me.

“My mother likes to do dramatic decorating stuff. It’s just annoying.”

She shows me where I can plug in the amp, then I sit on one of those white sofas and tune up the guitar. Sensing that Hailey is not in the mood for small talk, I let my fingers launch into a random tune, just to warm up and get used to the guitar. It plays real nice. Smooth.

As I’m playing, Hailey finally smiles at me, then shakes her head and bursts out laughing. She has a great laugh.

“Cute,” she says.

I stop playing, fingers suspended above the strings. “What?”

“That song you’re playing.”

I stare at her and blink like a total idiot. “I’m sorry?”

“Come on, Hank. You’re kidding me, right? You’re playing ‘White Room,’ by Cream. My mom is a big Eric Clapton fan too.”

Clapton. Of course. In my real life, I must be a big-time classic rock geek, and this crazy room triggered my muscle memory. I smile at her like, yeah, “White Room.” I meant to do that.

Now that I’ve got Hailey in a good mood, I start in on the song we played in the band room, “Blackbird.” The Beatles. She lets me play the first verse all the way through before she starts singing. Her voice is quiet at first, almost a whisper, but then she clears her throat and allows her voice to rise. Again, that gorgeous, silky alto voice. Funny how just a voice can drive me crazy. I finish the song and we just stare at each other like we’re holding our breath waiting for what comes next.

“Hailey,” I say. “Your voice just blows me away.”

She looks down at her fingernails, picks at some red polish on her thumb, and I figure she’s just being shy. But when she looks back up at me, her eyes have gotten all shimmery.

“Thanks, but it doesn’t do me any good if I’m too scared to get up and sing.”

I stare at her, my eyebrows crunching together in disbelief. “Why would somebody like you ever be scared to sing?”

“Something bad happened. Last year, at the Battle of the Bands.”

“What, like stage fright? Hey, that happens to a lot of people.”

“No. I wish that’s all it was.” Hailey clears her throat, avoids my eyes. “Remember the day we met, when Danielle was bugging me about looking kind of sick?”

“Yeah, I do.” I’d thought of asking her about that, but figured it might still be a sore subject.

“Well, it’s like this. I’m diabetic. My blood sugar was starting to crash after lacrosse practice, so I got a little dizzy. After you left, I had to drink some juice to jolt it back up.”

Diabetic. My damaged memory banks seem to recall what that is. Something about the pancreas and insulin.“Is that what happened at the Battle of the Bands too?”

“Yeah, but it was much, much worse. I was nervous, so I didn’t eat much that day. Didn’t even think about it. By the time I was up on stage, I went into this full-out insulin reaction. I mean, I passed out and started having this seizure, in front of everybody. They had to call an ambulance and everything. It was humiliating.”

Tears stand in her eyes, ready to roll down her cheeks. I wish I could magically say the right thing to make it better. “You couldn’t help that. I’m sure everybody understood.”

“The problem is, almost nobody knew about the diabetes. I’ve had it since I was about nine, but I don’t like to talk about it. Just don’t want to be different, you know? So everybody kind of freaked out, and some people still seem scared to be around me, in case it happens again.”

She wipes at her eyes and tries to smile at me. “Needless to say, I haven’t sung in public since then.”

I shake my head. “That’s so wrong, Hailey. You should do the show this year. Seriously. You have to.”

“I don’t know, Hank. Maybe—”

The doorbell rings.

“Hang on, I gotta get that,” she says. “My parents are still at work.”

She leaves the white room and heads to the front door, so I play around some more with the guitar. It feels so natural, fingers on my left hand flying across the frets, fingers on my right strumming and picking. Like I was born to do this. Like when I’m with Hailey and making music, nothing else matters. The ultimate escape, the best drug ever.

I stop playing when I hear voices arguing.

“I don’t want to, Cam. Can’t you get somebody else?”

I pause with my fingers hovering over the strings and listen. It’s Cameron.

“You said you’d do it, Hailey. What else am I supposed to do? Plus, not to be mean or anything, but you owe me.”

“God, Cam. How long am I going to owe you?”

I set the guitar down, lean it against the sofa.

“C’mon, Hailey, you know the deal.”

I walk to the front door and stand behind Hailey like a bodyguard, arms crossed over my chest, hoping it will make my biceps look more substantial than they actually are. “You okay, Hailey?”

He looks surprised, then pissed to see me there with Hailey, at her house. And in spite of my macho stance, I’m praying this isn’t the time he chooses to pick a fight, when I’m still really weak.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Hailey says over her shoulder.

Cameron looks like he wants to take me down, and I’m glad he doesn’t know he could knock me over with one finger if he really tried. But then he starts looking me over from head to toe, shrewd eyes sweeping.

“So, Hank, where did you get that shirt?” he demands.

I look down. Long-sleeved black T-shirt, white words. From the high school lost and found. “I dunno,” I say.

“Why are you so fascinated by my wardrobe, Cam?”

“Because my dad got me a shirt just like it from the Nashville Music Hall of Fame. That’s what it says on the front. I lost that shirt about a week ago. The same time you just happened to appear out of nowhere. Not a shirt you see every day in Concord, Massachusetts, don’t you think?”

Uh-oh.

Hailey rolls her eyes. “So what are you saying, Cam? That Hank stole your shirt?”

“I’m just saying it’s a really weird coincidence.”

“The world is full of really weird coincidences,” I say.

“Look, Cam, I think you should go,” Hailey says. “We’ll talk about that other thing later.”

Cameron glares at both of us, and I almost laugh out loud. He’s trying to look all tough and badass with his scuffed-up black boots and sideways cap. I fight the urge to smack the hat right off his head.

“Yeah, we’ll talk about a lot of things later,” he says. He jabs a finger in the air as he turns and heads back down the front brick steps. “And I want my shirt back, douchebag,” he says.

Hailey closes the door and leans back against it, biting her lip. “Sorry about that,” she says. “Things with Cam and me. They’re kinda complicated.”

“Yeah, I get that.”

She looks like she wants to tell me more, but she shakes her head, pastes on a smile for me. “Forget Cam. Let’s make music, Hank.”

The magic words. And so we do. We play “Blackbird,” and then I mess around with a few more songs my fingers seem to know by heart, and she joins in where she knows the words. Music creates a bond between us, an intimacy. Like touching her with music instead of fingers.

Her red hair and that purple shirt against the white sofa are like a painting or a photograph, like the white room was created just so she could stand out in contrast, in beautiful, amazing color. We finish another song. Taking a break from the music is like coming out of a trance and we can’t seem to break free from the way our eyes are locked together.

If ever there was a time for kissing a girl, this is it. But I hesitate. I have no right to kiss Hailey, to get close to her or let her get close to me. My life is just one huge question mark and it wouldn’t be fair.

I tear my eyes away from her. Time to change the subject, catch my breath, diffuse the moment. “So, Hailey. What’s with the socks and earrings? You have something against things that match?”

Hailey sticks out her feet and wiggles her toes. “They match,” she insists.

“They do not. Look, one sock has black cats, the other one has blue…what are those?” I lean in for a closer look. “Elephants?”

“Hippos. Both socks have animals; therefore, they match.”

I raise an eyebrow. “It’s about a theme, then?” I ask, like we’re having a super-serious discussion.

“Yeah, like I might wear a green striped sock with a pink striped one. Both stripes. Or a star earring in one ear, a moon in the other. Got it?”

“Hmm. So, it’s not just that you’re too lazy to find the ones that go together?”

“Well, okay, it started like that,” she admits, finally cracking a smile. “But, of course, I told everybody I did it on purpose, and it sort of got to be my trademark. It’s not easy to get away with being a nonconformist in Concord, so I do what I can.”

We smile into each other’s eyes, and there’s that thing again, and I’m not even sure what to call it. Magnetism, maybe. Chemistry. Magic.

“I like it,” I say, meaning it. “Symmetry is overrated anyway.”

I want to kiss her, so bad. But I don’t make a move. I can’t. So finally, Hailey does.

Kneeling in front of me without a word, she removes the guitar from my hands and leans it against the couch, and I let her do it. Then she puts her hands on both sides of my face. Her lips are soft and sweet, like cherry candy. I get lost completely in that kiss, the same way I got lost in our music.

“So we’re doing this thing, right?” Her breath is warm in my ear and makes me shiver. With where my mind is heading, I’m taken totally off guard by the question.

“Uh. Doing what?”

“The Battle of the Bands. After we sang together in the band room that day, I actually started thinking I might be able to do it if you’ll help me. Will you, Hank?”

So. Hang on a second. Only a few days ago I realized I can play guitar, and I’m already going to perform in public? Am I crazy out of my mind?

Well. Yeah, I am. For Hailey, I am.

I nod, and she makes this happy squealy sound. Then she kisses me again.

No matter what I’ve done or who I am, it’s clear that this funny, talented, pretty girl really likes me. So maybe, just maybe, when it comes right down to it, I’m not such a bad person after all.