Love in the Time of Serial Killers(28)

He stayed standing, having used the stool to set his library books on instead. Now he stared up at the ceiling, as if considering what to play, before he started picking out a slow, thoughtful melody on the strings. It sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place what it was, until he played it faster and faster, watching my face for recognition. When it finally hit me, I broke out into a grin.

“?‘Farmer in the Dell’?” I said. “Joke’s on you, dude. That song speaks to me on a cellular level. This cheese has always stood alone.”

“It’s big with the kindergarten set,” Sam said.

“So how long have you taught elementary school music?”

“Five years.”

“Do you enjoy it?”

“Yeah,” he said without hesitating. “I know this sounds obvious, but kids just love music. And not for how cool it is, or how deep the lyrics are, or anything like that. They just like hitting a xylophone with a mallet and hearing whatever sound comes out.”

He was still playing while we were talking, his fingers idly plucking out some random tune. It was the most at ease I’d ever seen him, and that included when he’d been standing in front of me barefoot or when he’d been wearing beach clothes. I hadn’t even realized until now, but there was a tension around Sam, a keeping to himself, that seemed to go away when he picked up the guitar.

“I tried out for fifth grade chorus,” I said. “Only because my friend Alison was going for it, and I thought, why not? I’d always heard that anyone could be in chorus in elementary school. If you didn’t have a great voice, they’d just stick you in the back and tell you to mouth along. But you’ll never guess what happened.”

He smiled, his eyes crinkling in the nicest way. “You didn’t make it.”

“Is your school’s chorus that cutthroat?”

“Not really,” he said. “All the competition is in going out for hall patrol. It’s a campus of narcs.”

I snorted at that. “There was this music teacher in seventh grade, though,” I said. “I never actually had any classes with her because—well, see Exhibit A, my choral rejection. But Alison . . .”

I trailed off as it hit me that all my childhood stories seemed to involve Alison, and also that this one wasn’t exactly a banger. It was my first year going to a Real Junior High that had lockers like all the schools on TV, and I’d gotten it into my rebellious twelve-year-old brain that we needed more than seven minutes to pass between seven classes. I’d drawn up an impassioned petition, with diagrams of a sample route from class to locker to class and everything. I’d distributed it to my classmates and urged them to sign, and apparently even my general loserness could be overcome by a collective fight against the man, because they’d done it. Alison was passing it to another kid in her orchestra class when her teacher caught her, confiscated the petition, and told her I’d have to come collect it in person if I wanted it back.

I’d expected the teacher to be mad, but she wasn’t. Instead, she seemed a little amused. She’d asked if I’d ever considered taking a music class, or joining the chorus. I knew there was no way she was impressed by my musical ability—first of all, since I didn’t have any, and second of all, since she’d have no way of assessing that from a piece of paper with some kids’ names on it, anyway. But she’d said she was impressed with my chutzpah. I’d trotted out my sad-sack story of being rejected in fifth grade, and she’d just laughed and said, “Anyone can be taught.”

When it came to music, I emphatically did not believe this. My parents, brother, and I were all completely tone-deaf. It was practically on our family crest—an eighth note with a giant slash through it or something.

I’d never bothered following up. And the petition ended up being a nonstarter, because it turned out that things like bell schedules were heavily determined by the district and the teachers’ union and there was only so much a budding activist could do.

But that teacher’s words had stayed with me, for some reason. Middle school was a Venn diagram of all seven circles of hell, but that moment had been something to me. It was the feeling of being recognized, being seen as having potential. I hadn’t realized how starved I’d been for it.

Now, Sam was watching me, as if he understood that I’d gone somewhere in the middle of telling that story and was patiently waiting for me to come back. I cleared my throat.

“Anyway,” I said. “Sorry. Should we head out? You agreed to help me with my car and I’m just wasting all your time.”

His gaze dropped to my mouth, and for one wild moment I thought he might kiss me. I blamed it on our close proximity in the small space, the fact that I could smell the detergent he used on those never-ending white shirts, probably something with mountain in the name. I swore I could still feel the imprint where he’d touched me earlier, a chalk outline of the ten seconds where electric current of desire had seemed to run through us before. Here it was again, a spark of awareness that made my breath hitch.

And okay, all jokes aside, there was a very real Guitar Effect that made him about ten times hotter. I swayed a little toward him.

Luckily, he pulled back in time to save me from myself. He unplugged the guitar, lifting it over his head and placing it carefully back in its place on the wall. He switched the amp back off, and if the anticlimactic click of it powering down wasn’t a metaphor.