“I’m fine too,” I say.
And my chair smacks the wall as I leave.
Homework waits for me, reliable as ever. I turn on my phone so that I can have some Pachelbel in the background while I work. Everyone else in the world might prefer the Canon, but his Ciaccona in F minor blows it out of the water. Brooke says I only listen to it to be elitist.
I smirk while my phone powers up, thinking about Brooke. I’m sure I’ve got either an apology or a long line of texts from her still trying to convince me she’s Isaac. Instead I get this:
WTF you gave me your #
U want me to txt you or not?
A new one comes in just as I’m about to crack some sass.
Whatever
Brooke may be my best friend, but she knows better than to whatever me, over text or otherwise. My phone shakes in my hands as I consider the alternatives. There aren’t many. Either someone who doesn’t like me is screwing with me—and I’ll admit, that list is long—or this actually is Isaac. Which puts me in an odd place because I have nothing to say to him. I settle for
I think you have the wrong number
Then I mute my phone and fire up the Pachelbel.
Brooke says life is easier in the key of F.
Of course she always adds “you.”
two
School is a process, a series of hoops to be jumped through, set at the appropriate heights for whoever the jumper is. Mine are high, and while there are days that I resent the mental acrobatics necessary for me to clear them, I also realize that they’ve been positioned there for a reason. It has been determined that I am capable of performing at that level. All I have to do is prove it.
Senior year has been no more taxing than the others. Assigned novels are longer and the equations more convoluted, but nothing has set me back yet. Colleges have been courting me since I was a junior, but my sights have been set on Oberlin since I picked up a pamphlet from the band director as a sixth grader. I can get a degree in psychology as well as a performance degree from their conservatory, something that Dad thinks is hilarious. He told me if my goal was to drive people crazy with my constant playing, I’d already accomplished it.
That’s when Mom bought him the earplugs.
Dad tried to steer me toward an economics major, telling me that music might be my passion but I needed to think rationally about employment. He said taxes only sound boring and can provide a reliable income. I sat through an hour lecture about how there’s a sense of calm to be found in columns of integers, and that numbers never lie. So I found a copy of our cell phone bill and highlighted all the calls from his account to an unfamiliar number that always happened right around the time he got off work. I mailed it to his office with a Post-it attached that said, “You’re right, Dad! Numbers don’t lie. Love, Sasha.”
He left me alone after that. Like pretty much all the time.
My fingers fly through my locker combination without thought, my mind idly following the junior high band as they murder our fight song, its agonizing death floating down the hallway. They’ve pounded through the first sixteen measures, and I’m bracing myself for the bridge when my locker is slammed shut, my index finger two inches from losing some length.
“What the hell?”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Isaac Harver says as he leans against the wall.
My heart hits at least a hundred beats per minute as I glance up and down the hall, but there’s hardly anyone here this early. Just me, the sixth-grade morning class using the shared band room, and the only person in the world I know who actually owns a black leather jacket.
And somehow Isaac wears it like it’s any other coat, as if he could take it off and still look like a badass. I glance at the tattoo trailing down his neck into his white T-shirt and the scabs on his knuckles from where—the word is—he punched out Jade McCarren’s dad last week when he shorted him on weed.
Intimidating or not he almost took off one of my fingers, and I need all ten if I’m going to Oberlin.
“Thinking,” I say. “Not your normal mode of operation is it?”
He smiles and I stop breathing for a second, either because he might be about to stab me or because he has dimples.
“So, what?” he says. “You came over to the dark side for a minute when you gave me your number?”
I yank my locker open for the second time. “I did not give you my number,” I say between clenched teeth, and my anger makes him take a step back. People are always surprised when roses have a few thorns, like the girls who wear khakis and live with our natural hair color aren’t ever going to bite.
“Yeah . . .” Isaac’s eyes narrow as he watches me fish a copy of Great Expectations out of my locker, even though I have no idea why I need it, since English isn’t until after lunch. “Except you did.”
It’s my turn to slam the locker, and I’m about to say something nasty when there’s a hand on my shoulder, heavy, cool, and calm.
“Everything okay?” Heath asks, his voice as steady as his pulse.
Isaac doesn’t look at my boyfriend. I can feel his eyes on me even though I’m staring at my locker.
“Yeah, man,” Isaac says. “Everything’s peaches.” Then he flicks a strand of my hair over my shoulder as he walks away.
Heath’s grip on me tightens. “What was that?”
I turn into him, switching my view from the numbers on my locker to the steady, sensible third buttonhole on Heath’s shirt. It’s Tuesday, so he’s wearing his blue oxford.
“Nothing,” I tell him, my eyes slipping slightly upward to the collar of his new tee, crisp and white, barely stretched. I remember that Isaac’s was worn out, with the tiniest drop of rust on the edge that was probably blood.
“Just a psycho being a psycho,” I add, because Heath hasn’t let go of my shoulder, and I can feel the tips of his manicured nails through my sweater.
I head toward the band room, Heath in my wake as the sixth graders spill out to get to their wing before the rest of the high schoolers fill the halls. I swear I can feel the strand of hair that Isaac touched burning right through my clothes.
Which makes no sense because we’ve barely exchanged ten words our entire lives, even in a school this small. The only memory I have of him is from third grade, when he wrote the f-word in red crayon on the bottom of the tube slide, and we all dared each other to go look at it.
He’s at the end of the hall, headed for the back door where smokers sneak one before first period. I watch him take the turn, part of me hoping I never see him again and another part willing him to look back at me. Then he’s gone, and my heart stops.