Signal to Noise(7)

“Cheer up. Why don’t we go to my house and bake some cupcakes?”

“The stuff you make in the Easy-Bake oven tastes like ass,” Meche muttered.





MECHE COPIED THE linear equations neatly into her notebook. She was good at math.

Daniela wasn’t. Sebastian sucked even more.

Most students thought math was boring, but math was the foundation for so many things, including music. Music of the stars and all, and hadn’t Kepler...

Meche held her pencil, suspended over the page. She looked at the book again, at the black letters and numbers against the white pages.

Equations. Letters are not letters in equations. They stand for numbers and if you balance them right, you’ll find the right number. What if it was the same for music? Songs stand for something, don’t they? They have a symbolic value. So if you were to somehow balance them... ugh, she was getting herself all into knots.

She heard the door opening and looked up. Her father shuffled in, taking off his coat and putting it on a peg.

“Hey, Meche,” he said, patting her head as he walked by. “Doing homework?”

“Math,” she said.

“What did you eat today?”

“Grandma made green beans. Should I heat them up?”

“Don’t bother. I’ll have some cookies.”

He sat down, poured himself a glass of milk and opened a box of animal crackers. Meche’s dad and her mom had married young and sometimes he still looked like half a kid himself when he sat hunched over a glass of milk, his shoulder-length hair pulled back.

He was the coolest grownup Meche knew. She wanted to be like him when she grew up.

“Does mom have another late shift at the pharmacy?” her dad asked.

“All week,” Meche said, shrugging.

“I don’t remember her telling me.”

“She did.”

“Your grandmother in bed yet?”

“An hour ago.”

Her dad ate a cracker and lit a cigarette, nodding absentmindedly.

“What did you play today?”

“Oh, let me see,” he said. “Miguel Bosé. A bit of Sabina. A bit of everything.”

Ever since Meche had been born her dad had worked as a DJ. He had originally intended to study veterinary medicine but had never cared for the career, which he had been more or less forced into by his family. He eventually dropped it altogether and went to work at a record store, where he’d met Meche’s mom. The radio station was where he was most comfortable. The microphone was his natural prop. Without it he seemed unreal.

He cut a cracker in half and dipped it in the milk.

“Do you believe in magic?”

“What’s your grandma been telling you?” he asked. “I hope you’re not believing any of her kooky stories about putting saints upside down so you can get a boyfriend.”

“No. I mean like serious magic.”

“Nothing serious about magic. Just superstitions.”

“What about music?”

“What about it?”

“I don’t know,” Meche muttered, looking at her equations.

“Cracker?”

Meche nodded, taking a cracker shaped like a lion.

Her dad closed the box and took the glass to the kitchen, leaving it in the sink. Then he grabbed his jacket.

“I’m going out.”

He didn’t have to say he’d be at the bar. Weekdays it was at the bar. Weekends it was the pool hall. Sometimes, when he stayed out too late, her mom had her go pull him out. Meche felt humiliated when this happened.

Her mother was out late tonight, so maybe Meche wouldn’t have to put on the sweater and head there. It wasn’t far. It was just... annoying.

She wished he’d come home early. Otherwise her parents might fight. Again.

“Be careful,” she said.

“Yup. Finish your homework, alright? Don’t skim on the reading. You can’t read, you can’t do shit. No matter how good you are at adding numbers.”

“I’m going to work with computers, dad,” she reminded him.

She had decided this two years before when her parents finally bought her a Commodore 64. She had learned how to program little games on it and thought she could make a go at it as a real career when she grew up.

“You still need to read.”

“Yes, captain.”

“Arrr. Don’t stay up late.”

Meche raised her hand, saluting her dad. She watched him put on his old leather jacket and step out.

She dropped her hand and chewed on her pencil, starring at the numbers.





IT WAS A rainy morning. Meche jumped and tiptoed around puddles to the rhythm of Soda Stereo. She shook her head and snapped her fingers.

A hand grasped her shoulder and she frowned, turning around. Sebastian Soto, lanky and dour, just like every morning of the week, stood with an umbrella under his arm. He was the tallest kid in her class and when he stood like that, grimly looking down at her, Meche had to agree with the kids that teased him: he did resemble Lurch from afar.

“Hey,” he said. “I was thinking about what you said yesterday.”

“And?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we should give it a try.”