He gives me a look. “Looking the way u do. Always acting like ur better than everybody else. All quiet. And all the girls can’t stop talking about u. Don’t act like u don’t know.”
What?
“I don’t know!” I text.
“Christina Beasley? Margot Kingston? Alicia Melanowski?” he types back.
The names tug at my memory—girls from a few summers ago. I saw them hanging out with Barry when their families would come up for a week or so. I wasn’t really part of their group, though. The last time I remember hanging out with them was the summer after eighth grade. Barry and I were having ice cream with them at the Refectory. I had my hearing aids in, trying to catch everything that was going on, but there was too much chatter. Too much eating while they were talking to read lips. The conversation jumped from person to person and I didn’t catch any of it. I left with a headache and made excuses for the rest of summer.
“I couldn’t talk to them!” I text. “How did you feel at dinner, when Trina and I were talking without you? That’s how I felt around them.”
“Well can u talk to this girl?” he texts back.
I shrug. The notebook seemed to be working pretty well. She learned a few letters on her own. Her mouth is a lip-reader’s dream.
“I guess so,” I text.
“Then if u both had a good time and u can talk to her, y stop?”
I look up at him and laugh.
“Why are you so nosy?” I write.
“Maybe she has a cute friend.”
Didn’t she write something about that during our date? “Actually, I think she does.”
Chapter 13
Robin
“Shave and a haircut, two bits!” plays my phone in the middle of church music practice. Everybody looks at me. I turn red and fumble to put down good-enough Bender, wiggling off the stool.
“Sorry!” I say, holding up a hand and running to my stuff. “I totally forgot to turn it off!”
“We can hear that,” Pastor Mark says, and somebody snickers.
I take a peek at the screen before shutting it off, just in case it’s an emergency. It’s not. It’s a text: “Had a great time too. Sorry I’ve been quiet. Wanna hang out?”
It’s from Carter.
I fumble to turn off the ringer and make my way back to my spot, head spinning. Why now? It’s been an entire week! I thought everything went really well, except for that blip with Trent, but we recovered! It was the best date I’d ever been on. And then he disappeared behind the quaint brick walls of Chautauqua.
I get back to my stool and Trent leans over. “What was that about?” he whispers.
I shake my head and turn my attention toward Pastor Mark, who’s saying something about near silence in the second verse.
“It must have been something big,” Trent continues to whisper. “You turned bright red. Is everything okay?”
“Shut up!” I whisper back. “I’m trying to listen! Yes, everything’s okay.”
But instead of thinking about “Wondrous Love” and near silence and the mood blossoming, I mull over the words, “Sorry I’ve been quiet.” Is that a joke? He joked like that a few times. My new fingerpicking patterns are underpracticed, and I haven’t found the right one for this song yet. The music becomes rote, mechanical, going straight from my brain to my fingers without stopping by my heart. As soon as rehearsal is over I pack up Bender and rush to my bag to get my phone. There it is in all its glory: “Had a great time too. Sorry I’ve been quiet. Wanna hang out?” No other new messages—that’s it.
“Ooh, who’s that?” I hear over my shoulder. Trent.
“Nobody…” I try, unsuccessfully, to hide the phone as he grabs it out of my hand.
“‘Had a great time too. Sorry I’ve been quiet. Wanna hang out?’” he reads out loud.
I give him a tight-lipped smile and hold out my hand for my phone.
“Who sent you this?” he asks, waving the phone out of my reach. I cross my arms, refusing to play his little game.
“A person,” I say. “Now give it back.”
“‘Had a great time too…’ Now could this be that deaf guy from the park?”
I shrug.
He laughs. “Could not. Believe that. Did you seriously tell him you had a good time? I can’t imagine Robin Peters having a good time that didn’t involve a guitar and three-part harmony. I guess people change, huh? Priorities change? What used to be the most important is no longer so important?”
It stings a little. I shrug again. “I guess so,” I say to his face. “Some people who used to be so important are no longer so important.”
“Sorry you feel that way. Some of us are coming over to my house to keep jamming. I was going to invite you, but it sounds like you might not be into that anymore.”
I give him a look. “The awesomeness of jamming will overshadow the suckiness of the ones I jam with.”
He gives my phone back, pressing it all warm into my hand and winking at me. “Everyone’ll probably be there until eleven, which is when my mom puts the kibosh on jamming. Come if you want.”
“Maybe,” I say. I stow my phone in my bag and walk out to the parking lot, cool as a cucumber.
Until I get to the car. Then I dig for the phone and call Jenni.
“Hey. You wanna go to a jam session?” I ask.
“No. Where?”
“Trent’s house.”
“Seriously, Robin? Definitely no. Why?”
“He invited me. And I thought maybe you could keep me from doing something stupid.” Jenni sighs, and for a minute I’m afraid she’s not going to say anything, which is worse than saying no. “Please, Jenni, please! I don’t want to go by myself! And it’s not like you have anything to get up for in the morning! We won’t even be out that late—we’re done at eleven!”
“Fine. I’ll go. But you owe me.”
“I owe you! I really do! I’ll be there in five minutes!”
I hang up and head over to Jenni’s house, listening to the first seven seconds of each song on Robin’s Best-Ever Mix VII and finger combing my hair. My heart beats out a staccato rhythm, which my fingers echo on the steering wheel.
Jenni slumps into the front seat and slams the door.
“Thank you so, so, so much! You really and truly are the best,” I say. “And that is the cutest bracelet. It’s new, isn’t it? New… colors?”
“Good try,” she replies. “I’m trying to think of what you owe me.”
“Anything within my power, up to half my kingdom.”
She smiles grudgingly. “You are so weird.”
We’re at Trent’s house in just a couple minutes. We head to the front door, Bender in hand, pennywhistle in pocket, and Mrs. McGovern opens the door. “Robin!” she says. “It’s good to see you again!”
“Hi, Mrs. M,” I say.
She’s soft and squishy, but with Trent’s green eyes. She squeezes me tight. I guess because it’s been a really long time since I’ve seen her. I used to be over almost every day.
“Everybody’s in the basement,” she says, and Jenni and I thank her and wind our way through the hallways to the basement. “Stairway to Heaven” floats up the stairs. It’s disconnected and repetitive. We walk down.
“Look who decided to grace us with her presence!” Trent says from his spot in the beanbag chair, guitar in his lap. The riffs had been coming from him. A couple of his friends are stuck around the room—John’s behind the drum set and Stumpy’s fooling around with Trent’s stand-up bass. A girl is impossibly perched on the back of the beanbag chair, draped across Trent’s shoulders. She holds a microphone loosely in her hand.