Wild Reckless (Harper Boys #1)(46)

“It’s sort of new, and I don’t quite know how to talk about it yet. Or…do I talk about it? Maybe I do,” I say, my eyes catching a tuft of gray fur in the corner, under a box. My boot!

“I get it,” Willow says. “My parents are divorced. They split up four years ago. It got ugly, but it’s better now.”

“My dad cheated,” I say. “I’m not sure it’s going to get better.”

“Mine too,” she says, tapping out a few short notes on the piano. “But eventually my mom met someone else too, and now they sort of get along.”

“Yeah, well, my dad had an affair with my best friend, so…” I don’t know what makes me just come out and say it like that, but it feels good to say.

“Fuuuuuuuck,” Willow says, her eyebrows stretched up into her hairline and her hands gripping the front of the piano bench.

“Yeah, that’s sort of the reaction I had,” I say, trying to make light of it, as if this will ever be something I can make light of. When she taps out a simple melody on my piano again, it stirs something in me, and I move to sit next to her and splay my fingers out over the keys, pressing down hard to form a minor chord, letting it echo in the empty house.

“I only ever get to hear you play the xylophone. You still practice the piano a lot?” Willow asks, and I press down on the minor chord one more time, this time slowly, so the notes aren’t as loud.

“I haven’t practiced in a few weeks. It was sort of always that thing my dad made me do, and now…” I say, changing one note and playing the chord again.

“Do you hate it now? The piano?” she asks, trying to match the chord I just played. When she presses her hands down, something’s off, so I move one of her fingers and she does it again, this time getting it right.

“No,” I breathe, running my hands over the smoothness of the keys, searching for that comfortable place where they feel home. “I don’t hate it. I love it. But I hate my dad, so I feel like maybe I should hate this too.”

My eyes closed, I let my fingers feel for a few more seconds, and then I slowly let them take over, playing softly at first, but growing stronger and more forceful with every single note—until I’m practically pounding out rhythms, my arms flexed and my fingers typing up and down the keys quickly, running the length of my instrument until I stop abruptly in the middle of the song.

“Well, damn,” Willow says, and I pull my hands back into my lap, curling my fingers, perhaps a little from shame for giving in and playing something my father would have liked. “What was that?”

“Rachmaninoff,” I say. “And I’m never playing it again.”

Willow doesn’t question me or ask me to play something else, and she never asks about my father’s affair. My awful admission though has somehow made us closer, and I’m actually looking forward to the parade and a night with my new friends.

The parking lot at the school is mostly empty, everyone’s car parked along the curb closest to the band room. We’re one of the last people to arrive, and I feel bad because I know it’s my fault we’re late. Willow doesn’t seem to care, though; she steps out and walks a few lengths to Jess’s car, a small blue hatchback that he’s filling with drums and drum carriers.

“Ahhhh there she is,” he says when I slide next to Willow.

“Uh…yeah. Ta da…here I am,” I smile, not quite sure why he’s so happy to see me.

“So here’s the thing,” Jess starts, and I take a small step back on instinct. “You can’t really march with a xylophone, and Joe’s out of town for the weekend so we’re going to need someone to fill in on bass drum…how do you feel about playing bass?”

“I’ve never played drums in my entire life,” I say, shrugging. Before I can get my hands in my pockets, though, Jess is lifting a huge drum harness over my head. “Wait…did you hear me? No, not happening.”

“Yeah, actually, this is totally happening,” he says, resting the heavy metal over my shoulders and handing me two large mallets. “Lean forward and lock into the drum.”

“Jess, I don’t know how to do any of this,” I start to protest, but Willow is smirking behind him. She just heard me fly through one of the hardest pieces of classical composition—from memory—and the small quirk in her lip is her way of challenging me. I let out a heavy sigh, my breath blowing the stray strands of hair in front of my face. “Fine. Just tape the music to the drum.”

“Done,” Jess says, his mouth making a clicking sound when he winks at me. “Thanks, Kens. You’ll be great.”

I lift the heavy drum holster back over my shoulders and set it next to Jess’s car. “Bet this would totally piss your old man off,” Willow whispers in my ear. I smile at the drum, and then laugh lightly, my head tilting back. She’s right. Dean Worth would hate the very idea of this.

“Jess?” I holler out to him, catching him before he’s out of range. “Think I can get some bigger mallets?”

I swing one of them around, twirling it in my fingers for emphasis, and Jess’s body shirks with his laugh as he shakes his head. “I’ll see, Kens. For you? Anything,” he shouts.

I keep the mallets with me, and even though Jess wasn’t able to find any others, I manage to pound the drum loudly with the padded ones he’s given me. For a full mile, our small high school band winds down the dirt road through the orchard, families with strollers and dads with toddlers sitting on their shoulders lining either side. We play the school’s fight song seven times, and the crowd around us claps along the entire way.