Pretend She's Here(80)

“Because he switched allegiances,” I said. “Because he pretended to be one way, but he switched sides, fighting against his neighbors and country for Britain. He burned New London, a city he must have known well. It was the ultimate … going to the dark side. Hating. Abusing everyone’s trust.”

“That’s good, Emily,” Ms. Fowle said.

My mind reverberated, just as if I’d been in an intellectual earthquake. Trust, pretending to be one way, going to the dark side: the Porters. I struggled not to squirm, not to think about anything but this class.

“In any war, with all battles, there are legends,” Ms. Fowle said. “Accounts written, passed down through word of mouth. Some battles inspired poetry. At the centennial of the Battle of Groton Heights, they read a poem by New Haven poet Leonard Woolsey Bacon. Here’s a line: Where the foe had entered the fort, Lay Ledyard, gallant knight, His bosom gored by his own brave sword.”

I heard the word gored, and my whole body hurt.

“What does that sound like to you?” she asked.

“They killed him with his own sword,” Marty Lambert said. “Benedict Arnold did.”

A horrible gasp filled the classroom. Whose voice was that? I looked around, along with everyone else, then saw that the entire class turned to look at me.

“Great,” I said, to Jeff, trying to laugh.

“Yeah,” he said. “Your first class back, and the subject is stabbing.”

I made it through the rest of the class without making a sound, and I am pretty sure I kept a smile on my face, even at the kids who kept staring at me. It made me sad. They didn’t get it. They didn’t get me.

*

Home, even though it still didn’t quite feel like home, was my refuge.

The guitar began to feel right in my hands. I got used to the rhythm of strumming, and the strings started to sound melodic instead of discordant. Holding the guitar made me feel as if I was embracing something, someone, alive. The wood was fine and contained warmth. The shape curved into my body. When I played, I’d feel a slight, comforting vibration, almost like a heart beating against mine.

“Do you have schoolwork?” my mother asked, poking her head into my room before dinner.

“A little,” I said, fingerpicking the strings.

“I know you’ll get to it,” she said.

“I will,” I said.

She smiled. “You sound good.”

I smiled back. “Thanks,” I said.

Our words were mother-daughter normal. So were our smiles. But so much had changed. The song I had in my head was full of mourning and anger. I had no idea those two emotions ever went together.

The song was about a ghost girl, but that spirit was me—the ghost of my old self. I half wanted to sing it to my mother, but I held the words inside and just focused on the notes.

*

That night Casey and I FaceTimed. He sat in the living room of his house in Royston, surrounded by his father’s instruments. I sat on my bed. He held his mandolin; I held the guitar.

At first, we just stared at each other. It was such a relief to see him. I reached toward the screen as if I could touch his face. He was bundled up in a down vest with a plaid scarf around his neck. I saw and heard the fire crackling behind him.

“You look cold,” I said.

“You look beautiful,” he said.

I blushed and shook my head. “I’ve been practicing,” I said, lifting the guitar.

“Let’s hear you,” he said.

Of course I felt nervous as soon as he said that, but I started off with an A chord, then E, then D, and next thing I knew, he was playing with me. I made a lot of mistakes, but he was slow and patient. After a while, I sounded better. Playing with him lifted me up—both my spirit and my ability.

“Do you have lyrics to that song?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Want to teach me?” he asked.

A huge bang and crash startled both of us. Casey’s phone moved, and the camera showed that the front window had cracked open—the curtains were blowing wildly.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Another shutter came off in the wind,” he said. “Smashed into the glass.”

I watched as he ran over, out the door, and I heard him on the porch and saw him trying to get the shutter back into place. With no pane, the icy air had to be howling through the house. He returned a few minutes later, shivering, holding his upper arms.

“Can you fix it?” I asked.

“My dad’s on his way back from a gig,” he said. “We’ll get it replaced then. Man, this house needs work. I might have to become something other than a musician to get it repaired right.”

“It’s too cold for you to stay tonight,” I said. “Can you go to Mark’s?”

He shook his head. “No, I have to stay here to make sure the pipes don’t freeze. They did last winter, and that was a mess, and it cost a fortune to fix. You know what’s weird?”

“What?”

“Chloe helped me last year. My dad was playing a show in Washington, and I was alone here. See, the water inside the metal pipes expands when it freezes, and if I didn’t melt it somehow, the pipes would burst—and leak once it thawed. So I missed school because I had to open all the cabinets under the sinks, literally light candles in the small spaces to try to heat the pipes enough to keep a trickle of water running through them.”