I know I look weird sitting here all by myself, but I’m very close to finishing some lyrics that I think will make Gavin cry. I could go sit by the adults, but I can’t listen to Mom talk about Costa Rica one more time. Sometimes I don’t want to be a kid, but I don’t want to be an adult either.
Even if I weren’t working on my song right now, I’d probably still want to sit here by myself. Harper will always be one of my best friends, even though her family moved out here to the suburbs a few years ago, but some of the new girls she hangs out with are tough to be around. If I don’t know a certain word, like chiffon, they’ll look at me like I’m brain-dead, but if they don’t know my kind of word, like staccato, then I’m a show-off or a know-it-all.
Harper calls out to me from across the pool. “Time’s up, rock star.”
She knows I like it when she calls me a rock star even though I pretend I don’t. I wrap my journal safely in my towel and finally jump in.
I swim away from the girls and straight to Harper. “What word rhymes with husband?”
She pulls her wet hair into her mouth and starts chewing it. That’s how she does her best thinking. “That’s a tough one.”
“It doesn’t have to be a perfect rhyme,” I say. “It just has to be close.”
“How much money do you get if you win this thing?”
“It’s not that kind of contest. I just want everyone to hear my song and know my name.”
“Boring,” she says, splashing water at me.
My best friends love me and my strange memory, but even they don’t understand why I get so crazy about being forgotten. I guess we all have our own things to worry about. Harper stresses out about getting one wrong answer on a test, and Wyatt prays that the new Star Wars movie will be more like the books, and Naveyah gets totally depressed when the Giants lose a game. I suppose it just depends on what sorts of things you notice, because I didn’t even know there were books for Star Wars.
I dunk my head under and come back up when I’m out of air. “Did you hear about that actor?”
“What actor?” Harper says.
“He’s on a show called The Long Arm. He was on the news because he made a big fire in his backyard.”
“I didn’t hear about it.”
“He’s really famous.”
“What’s his name?”
I tell her Gavin’s name and she promises to search for him on her new phone. She doesn’t keep any songs on her new phone because she says there’s no point when you have the Internet, but I’m hoping she’ll at least put my song on her phone when it’s finished.
She spits the hair out of her mouth and says, “Almond.”
“What?”
“A rhyme for husband.”
“It doesn’t really work,” I say.
Harper drops her lips to the top of the water and starts blowing bubbles. “It would help if I knew what the song was about.”
That’s one thing I love about her: If you give her a puzzle, she won’t quit until she solves it. I decide to give her a clue even though I know she’s going to make fun of me.
“The song is about remembering.”
It’s hard to hear her, because her mouth is halfway in the pool, but I’m pretty sure she says, “Of course it is.”
I’m ready to make Gavin cry but he’s not in his bedroom or in the bathroom or in the studio. I peek into the courtyard and see the back of his head with Dad’s studio headphones covering his ears. He’s sitting at the table, staring down at his phone.
I grab the Gibson and step outside and tap Gavin on the shoulder. He whips his head around and grabs his chest. I think I frightened him.
I wiggle my walrus finger tusks.
“Oh,” Gavin says and he flaps his blackbird wings, but only once. He looks back down at his phone. “What was the exact date that Sydney came in January?”
“He got here on the twenty-fifth. Why?”
He doesn’t answer because he’s busy typing. It seems like he’s writing a book because he’s typing so many words. He finally finishes and puts the phone on the table. “Sorry,” he says, taking off his headphones. “What’s up?”
It’s time to get down to business, which means it’s time to talk about what I want to talk about. “I thought about what you said about the song and I think I fixed it.”
The other day when I showed Gavin the drawing of Sydney and I saw how sad he looked, I knew I should write the lyrics about Sydney. If these lyrics don’t make Gavin cry, I don’t know what will.
We were together, you and I
Our love reached up to the sky
When you left, my heart sank deep
Now I skip dinner so I can sleep
I think about the times we had
When we kissed I was so glad
I thought one day you’d be my husband
I can’t believe what has happened
I can’t go home ’cause you’re not there
I’m all alone and really scared
All I have is a memory
A memory
I keep breathing but I have no air
I keep crying ’cause it isn’t fair
All I have is a memory
A memory
I leave the last chord ringing and I wait for the clapping but there isn’t any. His eyes look annoyingly dry. “You’re not crying.”
“You want me to be honest?” Gavin looks at me a long time and it makes me change the way I’m sitting in my chair. “The verses seem pretty generic. I would stay away from the clichés. They make the lyrics feel disingenuous.”
“You’re dissing generous.”
“Sorry. I’m not saying it right. What I mean is I don’t hear you in that song. You’re singing about kissing and having a husband. I’m not sure what that’s about.”
“It’s hard to find a rhyme for husband.”
“I think the chorus is pretty sweet,” Gavin says. “The way the lyrics work with the melody and it feels personal, you know, because you’re talking about memories. I think you should keep going with that.”
I’m pretty sure he just gave me a compliment, which is my favorite thing to get. But there’s one problem. “Are you sure you didn’t cry?”
“Joan, I think you should forget about the whole crying thing.”
I hate when people tell me to forget about things because it shows me that they really don’t know me at all. But Gavin is giving me a friendly smile so I force myself not to be mad at him.
“How did you used to write your lyrics?” I say.
He picks up a pebble from the concrete and bounces it in his hand. He makes his palm into a tennis racket and swats the pebble against the brick wall. “I never played any instruments like you do, so it was different. Ollie and the band would give me the music and I’d just wander around with my Walkman.”
I know what a Walkman is because Dad has one and that’s how I listen to Grandma Joan sing her song.
“I would just keep listening to the music until something came to me,” Gavin says.
“What if it took a really long time for something to come to you?”