Love Songs & Other Lies(5)
Ginny stays for another hour, telling Evelyn all about her week. Her band, The Melon Ballers, got a gig at a local bar in two weeks. She’s excited about it, but they still need to find a new guitarist to take the place of someone who moved over the summer.
Playing at a bar. She’s obviously older.
She’s excited for school to start tomorrow.
Maybe not.
A lot of the conversation is about music. One of her favorite bands, The Icarus Account, is playing a concert a few hours away, but she can’t afford tickets. I’ve never even heard of them. How expensive could tickets possibly be? It’s quiet for a minute, and then I hear acoustic guitars. The music is faint at first—probably playing on her phone. The four of us sit in silence as the singer joins in, describing a girl who “always wears yellow on days when she feels like herself.” It’s one of those songs that sounds happy and sad all at once, and when it’s done I find myself hoping she’ll play another. She doesn’t.
“I’ll see you Friday for the big First Week of School Recap. Same place, same time, Nonni.” The door squeaks open, and the hallway sounds infiltrate our quiet room. “But I’ll be on time. Promise!”
I’ll see you then, I silently reply.
With a final click of the door, I know she’s gone. It feels like that moment when the end credits run at a movie, and you wish there were just a few more minutes left before you have to dump your popcorn in the trash. A few more moments before you return to your real life, leaving the imaginary world and characters of the movie behind, trading them in for your own reality.
VIRGINIA
Mom pushes a sticky yellow puddle of eggs around the pan, eyeing me hopefully as I sit across from her on the kitchen island with my glass of orange juice. “You want some?”
I shake my granola bar in front of me. “I’m good.”
“I’ll just pretend like I didn’t see your car missing this morning.” She’s looking at me the way most moms probably would, if they were about to launch into a full-fledged Gitmo-style interrogation of their seventeen-year-old daughter. Except my mom isn’t most mothers, so she just cracks a smile and keeps stirring.
My mom only wishes there was a story of wild adolescent rebellion attached to the disappearance of my green Ford Focus. While she doesn’t outright say it, deep down I think my mom, like my Nonni, wishes I had followed in her free-spirited, “try anything once,” leather-bound sandal footsteps. Instead of my father’s more practical loafers. It’s hard to complain. I have a ridiculous amount of freedom. I rarely use it, but it’s there. And she isn’t one of those weird, incompetent moms who think they’re an overgrown teenager, either. She’s just got a lot of things to worry about, so I try to make sure I’m not one of them.
“I really don’t ask for much, Virginia, just—”
That you come home drunk once.
Get your heart broken.
That you be more like me when I was your age.
“Full disclosure.” I say it with a cheesy grin, in my most mocking voice.
“Yes.” She’s pointing the spatula at me like it’s a weapon, but she’s smiling. “And I don’t think that’s so much to ask.” She still has her light blue scrubs on, and there are tiny flecks of color on them. I wonder if it’s the result of a meal tray malfunction, or some sort of bodily fluid.
Gross.
“Nothing to tell. Steve got wasted at band practice. Again.” I sigh. “I left my car at Logan’s so I could drive him home. So I’m stuck with his car. Case closed, Detective Miller.” I think I can actually hear my mother’s hopes fall with each boring word out of my mouth.
“So Logan’s picking you up for school?”
“Like usual.” My best friend Logan has picked me up for school every day since before he could actually drive. All through middle school Logan’s older brother Drew forced us to sit in the backseat and drove us chauffeur-style. Logan should actually be here by now.
“I haven’t seen him around much lately. Everything okay?”
I nod. “Must be running late.” Because of Labor Day, school starts on a Tuesday, and Logan and I have a two-year-long Tuesday ritual. Donut Day. He shows up at my house way too early in the morning and we drive to Bunn’s—Riverton’s only bakery. We fill a box with donuts of the jelly-filled, twisted, glazed, and sprinkle-dunked varieties. We’re basically the donut-saviors of our first-period class. But today—the first day of the third year of our donut-buying ritual—there is no red Honda honking in my driveway five minutes too early. No answer to my seven phone calls and fifteen texts.
It’s official. I’m nervous.
“Do you need a ride?” My mom works third shift at Lake Terrace Assisted Living, where my Nonni lives, and she gets home every morning just in time to make me breakfast. I know she’d rather listen to her residents sing show-tune karaoke than stay up longer than she has to, but she still insists on breakfast with me. Even though I only eat a few bites of whatever she makes. It’s one of the few times we actually cross paths during the week.
“I’m set, Mom, you don’t have to worry about it. I can drive Steve’s car if I need to.” Please, please, please don’t let me need to. “When will Dad be home?”