Everything You Are(54)
Chapter Twenty
ALLIE
School is a nightmare, as Allie knew it would be.
She can’t think, can barely manage to hold herself together. She wants to go back to bed, to bury herself under the covers and seek oblivion. Waking to find her father playing the cello last night, playing like he’d never damaged his hands, like he’d never left her, was worse in a way than the phone call about Mom and Trey.
For just a moment, she’d believed that music had come home with her father, and that the accident was all a dream.
Instead, she now knows once and for all that he never loved her, that he’s a hypocrite and a monster, and that everything her mother ever said about him was true.
How she used to love him, adore and idolize him. She never believed what her mother had said, that he was faking about his hands. Why would he do that? But now there’s proof.
An uneasy twist in her belly reminds her of the expression on his face, of the sound he made after he woke, but she dismisses it. She saw the bottle in the kitchen trash. He was drinking again last night and has no right to get on her case for doing what he does all the time.
Forcing her to go to school today was just cruel. Her head hurts, the nausea is creeping back in. Curious gazes and whispers follow her. People will be talking about last night. They’ll be talking about her father walking her to school.
She searches the crowded hallway for a glimpse of Ethan with equal parts hope that he’ll be here and that he won’t. He was meant to be an escape, and now he’s another complication. There’s no sign of him, and the press of kids propels her forward.
The buzzer rings for class just as she walks through the door into English. Steph, always the optimist, has saved her a desk. When she sees Allie, her face lights up in a smile and then goes straight to a frown.
“I thought maybe you were dead,” she whispers when Allie slides into the seat and starts digging in her backpack for her books.
“I lost my phone,” Allie says. “Don’t be mad.”
“It’s been over a week! How hard would it have been to let me know? I worried.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just—”
“Girls, if I could have your attention,” Mrs. Gardner cuts in. “Nice that you could join us, Allie,” she adds, without even a hint of irony, as if it’s normal for a kid with perfect attendance to skip a ton of school. Maybe it is normal, given the circumstances.
Mrs. G. doesn’t create a scene, doesn’t offer sympathy or give the others time to stare at her with pity. She just starts right in, asking questions about Hamlet, and it turns out Allie is up to speed after all, because she read the play the first week it was assigned, all in one sitting.
Her relief freezes in her chest when the discussion ends and the class begins taking turns reading lines out loud:
Gertrude: Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
Do not for ever with thy vailed lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust.
Thou know’st ’tis common. All that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
Hamlet: Ay, madam, it is common.
Gertrude: If it be,
Why seems it so particular with thee?
The next line is Allie’s, and she can barely find her voice to read, “‘Seems? I know not seems . . .’”
Heat rises in her cheeks, the walls start closing in. Her heart rattles against her ribs. She’s going to choke.
“Sorry,” she mumbles, grabbing up her backpack and her book. “I’m sorry.” She flees the classroom, tripping over somebody’s foot and almost falling. Once in the hall, she puts her back against a wall and bends over, trying to catch her breath.
A hand on her shoulder. A familiar voice. “Allie? Are you okay?”
Mr. Collins, her orchestra teacher. Three weeks ago, she would have welcomed him. Would have been in his office telling him all about everything. Now he is the last person at school she wants to see.
“I’m okay,” she manages. “Just had a moment.”
“Not surprising. I’m glad to see you. We’ve missed you at orchestra.”
“Sorry.”
She straightens up, drags her sleeve across her watering eyes. Takes a breath and then another.
“Nothing to be sorry about. We managed. Are you ready to come back?”
“I’m not coming back.” She glances up at his face, expecting disappointment, surprised to see understanding.
“I get it.”
“You do?”
“Sure. Music makes us vulnerable. You’re not ready for that in a group setting right now.”
He has the vulnerability part right, the rest all wrong.
“I’m not playing at all,” she confesses, and he nods, as if he understands this, too.
“You will. It will come back.”
His words catch her off guard. Not the lecture she was expecting. Not a grilling. It’s like he’s looked right into her soul and sees everything except the guilt.
She shakes her head, denying. “No. I won’t. Not now, not ever.”
“Oh, Allie. I can’t imagine how hard this is for you. But music . . .” His face is so full of sympathy and kindness, it’s going to make her cry in a minute, and that would suck. “It will make you feel, yes, but it also heals.”