Chapter Nine
“I’m going home at lunch,” Hannah says when I come down the stairs on Monday morning. “We live close, so it’ll give me at least a half hour to play. It’s not the same as fifty-two minutes in the practice room, but it’s my only option at this point.” She’s cross-legged on the floor working through another calculus problem set and doesn’t look up. “You’ll be okay without me, right?”
Something dark inside me flares.
i can take care of myself
“Don’t be silly,” I say lightly. “I’ll be fine.”
“I don’t want you to think I’m bailing on you,” she says. “I just need the practice time, you know?”
She glances up at me then, and my anger shapeshifts into fear. There’s a bruise under her left eye; a purple crescent moon. A bruise that wasn’t there before. A bruise that screams YOU’RE NOT GETTING BETTER and whispers you might be getting worse.
Sweat behind my knee caps, I stare the bruise down, you’re not real, I’m making you up. It doesn’t budge.
“Jessa?”
“I get it,” I say thickly. “No big deal.”
At lunch I skip the cafeteria and hide out on the bleachers. The lamp in Dad’s guest room, stop calling it the guest room bear it’s your room now, burned out last night, so I went hunting in the living room cabinets for a new bulb and found my dad’s Discman and a stack of old CDs instead. Most of them were eighties hair bands, so dad, but there were a handful of random classical albums mixed in. I took the only one with piano in the title, meant to ask Hannah if it was any good. But I got so distracted by her bruise this morning that I never did.
I don’t want to think about the bruise but I can’t not think about it. I’ve been thinking about it ever since I saw it, trying to convince myself that I didn’t actually see it. That it could’ve been a shadow. Dirt. Blue marker on her face. Anything but an imaginary bruise I invented because my brain is still completely jacked up.
I shove my earbuds in, turn the volume all the way up. The first track starts with banging chords, so loud my earbuds crackle, still not loud enough. I used to do this with Heart of Steel by Manowar on my phone, the only song I owned. Full volume on repeat until the panic in my gut sputtered out. One man on a piano doesn’t really have the same effect, but the repetition of the melody helps. It reminds me of spinning hair, a Circle Road, the same thing over and over again until it’s all there is. I’m halfway through the song when Marshall shows up.
I feel him before I see him, the bleachers rattling beneath his Vans as he climbs to the top.
“So here’s the thing about space,” he says when I pull my earbuds out. “It’s overrated.”
“Says who?”
“Says me,” he says, and sits down right beside me, so close we’re almost touching. He’s warmer than I am, his body heat seeping out through his sweatshirt. “I mean, sure, it keeps chairs from touching and other people from leaking all their weirdness onto you, but what happens to all your own weirdness? Where’s it supposed to go?”
“Nowhere,” I say. “That’s sort of the point.”
“But then you’re stuck with it.”
My gut clenches. I stare at my book.
Marshall shrugs out of his backpack. Our legs are touching now, his baggy jeans rub against mine when he moves. “What’re you listening to?” he asks.
I fish the CD case out of my bag and show it to him.
“Phillip Glass,” he says, sounding surprised. “How elevated.”
“It’s my dad’s, actually. I raided his CD collection last night.”
“Hannah would approve of your dad’s taste,” Marshall says. “She’s less enthusiastic about mine.”
“Which is what?” I ask, remembering what Hannah said about him liking rap and remembering what she told me right after that about his heart. It feels weird to know these two things already.
“Rap, mostly,” Marshall says. “More Kendrick than Kanye.”
“How elevated.”
He grins. “What about you? When you’re not listening to manic piano solos. What’s your jam?”
i used to listen to guns ‘n roses and ac/dc, until my dad left and i broke all of his cds
“You’ll make fun of me,” I say, because Wren always did. “But I mostly just listen to the radio.” except when i’m pounding heavy metal to silence my brain
“The radio. You’re so vintage.”
“Right?”
We smile, both of us, at the exact same time.
“So is that why I’ve never seen you with a phone?” Marshall asks. “You refuse to use anything but a rotary dial?”
I feel my smile fade. you’ve never seen me with a phone because avoidance only works if you go all in. Having a phone, even a new one with a new number, would make it too easy to check in on Wren, to maybe accidentally call him one night. To stalk Alexis Duffy on Instagram, to die all over again when I see pics of her and Wren.
“Something like that,” I say finally. The ease of the prior moment slips away and the space between us is awkward again, crowded with all the things I don’t want to say. I fiddle with the book in my lap.
“How far in are you?” he asks.
“Um. Page four. If you count the first two pages twice.”
“Yeah, the first fifty pages are rough. It gets better when Dorian meets Sibyl. But don’t get too attached because she kills herself a few chapters later. It gets really good after that.”
“I mean, obvi,” I say wryly. “Suicide makes everything better.”
“Not everything,” he says. “But for sure nineteenth century novels and 90210. Tell me it wasn’t supes intense when Jasper jumped off the Hollywood Sign because he was depressed about Annie. That hooked me for another five episodes at least.”
I nod seriously. “Supes.”
“You’re mocking me.”
“A little bit.”
“People say supes!”
“What people?”
“I can’t believe you’re shaming me right now. I’m very sensitive about my use of cool vernacular.”
“Then we’re good. Because you haven’t used any.” I flash a grin.
“Oooh, cool girl L.A., schooling the Denver dork.” He leans all his weight into me. “For that, I’m putting all of my weirdness on you. And p.s., it’s a lot.”
I hear myself laugh and for a few seconds I’m not TBI Barbie or Wren’s jilted girlfriend because Marshall doesn’t know me as either of those things. But then I have the thought he doesn’t know me at all and the sound dies in my throat.
“I should probably at least try to read,” I say awkwardly, scooting away from him. Marshall straightens up, reaches for his backpack. “You don’t have to go,” I say quickly.
Marshall pulls his phone and headphones out of the side pouch of his backpack. “Good,” he says, slipping the headphones over his ears. “I didn’t want to.”
He stays until the bell rings, then walks me to my locker. As we pass other people, they say hi to him, call out his name. It’s different than being with Hannah. No one says anything to her.
“So who else does Hannah hang out with?” I ask as I turn my lock, thinking about what Sophie said on Friday, about her not having any friends.
“My sister hangs out with her piano,” Marshall says. “And sometimes, with other girls in the orchestra. But mostly just her piano. And now you.”
“Does she date?”
“Nope. She decided freshman year that high school relationships were too distracting.”
isn’t that the point?
“So the loner thing, that’s what she wants?”
“I doubt she thinks about it,” Marshall replies. “She’s super independent — always has been. Being alone has never been a big deal for her the way it would be for me.”
“You need a buddy,” I say.
He grins. “Obvi.”
The warning bell rings. We both just stand there. It’s awkward, suddenly, but at the same time I don’t want the moment to end, because when it does I’ll be alone in this hallway, and I need a buddy, too.
“So I have a supes important question for you,” Marshall says. “Which I will ask and then sprint awkwardly to the D hall because if I’m late to drawing one more time our instructor is gonna make me pose for her advanced composition class which means staying after school and being completely still for an hour which I’m pretty sure is the definition of hell.”
“Got it. Go.”
“Cool if I hang out at lunch again tomorrow?” He’s already moving away from me, walking backward down the hall. “There’s a new addition at the Aspie table and there’s a lot of chair touching. I need some space.”
“As long as you don’t bring your weirdness.”
“No promises,” he calls. Then he turns the corner and is gone.