Out of Blue Comes Green, page 9
“What did you and Libby talk about?”
She thumbs through her book some more. “Like this scene.” She hands it to me.
Not accepting the book, I repeat, “What did you and Libby talk about?”
“Not a lot. She seemed angry about something.” She shoves the book into my hands. “This one.”
I skim a bit of it. The Glass Menagerie. Tom tells his sister about the magician who escapes from a coffin without removing any nails. Tom clearly equates it to going off on his own to live his life, leaving his mother and sister without harming them. Yeah, ’cause that’s possible. Do what you want while not harming your family. Those two things can never exist together.
“Did Libby say anything about me?” I don’t want anyone else to hear me, but I fear even Madi didn’t hear me.
She’s quiet for too long, but finally says, “Have you felt like everyone’s been distracted today? I mean, like, everyone?”
So, she’s not totally blind. I only raise my eyebrows in response.
“It’s like they all know something big is going to happen, but no one told me.” She laughs too loudly and too suddenly. “What should I expect, being new? Who’s going to tell me anything?”
Well not me. I have no intention of telling you what’s going on.
Flipping a few pages in her book, she settles on another definite scene we could do together and hands me the book. This time I have no intention of reading it, so I simply say, “Let’s do someone other than Tennessee Williams.”
My phone vibrates. It’s Libby. After school, she texts.
I only reply, OK, but I close my eyes for a few moments to digest this piece of mercy I’ve received.
When the bell rings, Madi gets out ahead of me, slowing me down so she can talk to me about our unchosen scene. I’d planned to ditch Madi right away to find Libby, but I can’t get around her just yet.
“—that we could definitely find—”
“Yeah, yeah. That’ll work,” I say. I’ve almost gotten past her when she stops to pick up a discarded water bottle. She hangs onto it until we’ve reached a recycling bin and tosses it in. All the while she’s talking about scenes she thinks we could find.
“That sounds great, Madi. Gotta go.” I give her a bit of a wave and speed walk to my locker.
Libby’s there, arms crossed, leaning. She still looks pissed. Usually, after a few hours, we aren’t mad at each other anymore. This time, I stepped over the line.
I wait until we’re side by side before I say, “I didn’t mean to blow up at you.”
Her mouth is clamped shut, her stare severing every ounce of my self-respect.
“Everyone has it out for me today.” My shoulders tense. “It’s that stupid thing at the mall the other night.”
“That stupid thing you never told me about?” Steam would be coming out of her ears if it were possible.
I lower my gaze. “It was so embarrassing.” I hope she hasn’t heard me, but I know she has. “Everyone saw me. Everyone. And Christine was an inch away from me.”
“Why didn’t you text me?”
“I couldn’t. I didn’t want to relive it all.”
A few girls in letter jackets pass by, one whispering to another something I don’t catch other than “… wearing a dress …”
I close my eyes.
Libby punches me in the shoulder. Hard. “That video is not flattering.”
Of course, she’s seen it. Why wouldn’t she have seen it? It shouldn’t embarrass me that Libby has seen it. It shouldn’t. She knows me better than anyone.
“And then Christine wants to give you a makeover.” She shakes her head.
I laugh because I can’t do anything else. “She’s right. I need one.”
Libby keeps herself from laughing. “Just because your life is shit doesn’t mean you can take it out on me.”
“I know that.” I don’t know what she wants me to say. “I’m sorry.” I feel like I need to tell her the whole truth. “Yesterday, when I didn’t come to school …”
She waits.
“I wanted to kill myself.”
“What? Why? Because of a dress and some makeup?”
“No, because … she saw me in that dress and makeup.”
“Christine?”
I nod because I’m tearing up and I don’t want to cry. “I can never erase that from her memory. She’s always going to think of me that way. Even when I’m a boy.”
Libby softens. “You are a boy.” She leans against the wall beside me and pulls my arm down until we’re sitting with our backs against the lockers. Her arm moves around my shoulder. “You don’t have to prove anything to her or anybody else.”
“It’s not just her. It’s not just anybody. It’s everybody. Everybody is going to see me in this way I’ve been fighting not to be seen. Everybody is always going to think of me as female no matter what I do. I can’t have them thinking I’m a fucking girl.”
Libby eases away from me. “And what do you mean by that? Do you think being a girl is the worst thing a person can be?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
She scowls at me. “I think it is. You know, you’re going to have to make up your mind. Are you trying to be something or are you trying not to be something?”
There’s no response to that. I’m trying not to be a girl. Is she saying I’m failing at trying to be a boy? No. Libby wouldn’t say that. “All right,” I say.
That should be it. We should be all better, but the vibe between us isn’t right. Should I apologize again?
“You got time to come over and jam?” She means hanging out in her basement, laying down some tracks on her uncle’s old recording equipment.
For a moment I’m completely psyched, but then I remember her ulterior motive. Prom. I think through the list of songs she gave me earlier. So many revolting options. Songs I can’t believe she’d ever want to play. Popular music neither one of us would ever listen to. Artists I haven’t heard of. “I’m not doing Miley Cyrus.”
Once we’re in the unfinished basement where the winter cold still radiates through the cement floor and my shoes freeze my feet, I’m actually impressed by the work Libby has done to persuade me. She has the chords and even tablature for five songs, ones she’s found at different prom song websites. She says this like it’s something I’ll be able to relate to, like we’re both searching prom music in our spare time.
Thankfully, these five are ones I’ve heard, which I assume is why Libby chose them.
Footsteps clomp down the stairs. Gene. He gives me a little wave, then to Libby he says, “Was I going to get an invite to this jam session?”
Libby’s response is to thump each drum in succession, then strike a repeating beat on one cymbal.
He straps on his bass across his Prince t-shirt, but I yell, “Don’t do it. She wants us to play prom music.”
“Oh, hell, no,” he says, immediately removing his instrument from his shoulder.
“Save yourself! It’s too late for me.” I lay my arm across my forehead, poor me.
Libby stops the cymbal. “All right. All right.” Puffs of smoke seem to encircle her head. “Just play a few of these, and tell me what you think.”
Gene plucks up his bass again and thrums a series of notes.
I page through “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” by Aerosmith. D, A, B minor, G, D, E minor. I can do this. Nothing too extreme. F-sharp major is a bit weird but not difficult. I hand the page to Gene so he can at least see the chords. Libby didn’t download anything for him. But, of course, she didn’t; Gene can easily pick up on any song with his bass. He sees the notes in his head or his long fingers have their own intuition.
“Okay. Let’s do it,” I say.
My amp crackles instead of picking up my notes. I chuck my guitar pick at it, which naturally does nothing to the amp, and causes me to have to get up to retrieve it. “I need to fix this stupid amp.” I crouch over it, lay it down, and look over the back panel for screws I could undo.
Gene freaks out. “You don’t want to do that.”
“Why not?” I barely glance at him before I ask Libby for a Phillip’s head.
“What do you know about electricity?” Gene crosses his arms over Prince on his Purple Rain motorcycle.
Nothing. Not one single thing. “I know enough.”
Gene grins. “Okay, then you know it’s not safe to go poking around in there.”
I sit on the cold cement floor.
“The voltage going through that thing is intense. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with your amp.”
I laugh at him. Has he not been paying attention? “Right. The crackling is supposed to be there.”
“Well, on an amp that small, there’s not much more you can expect.” He scratches his chin where five black hairs are attempting to form a tiny beard. “You want to fix your amp problem, you got to get yourself a better amp.”
Libby groans. “Can we just play? No one cares when your amp crackles, Kay. We’re used to it.”
“Fine, fine. Let’s do this one. The Aerosmith one.”
Libby starts us up, but I ruin the end of the first verse, so we play it again. Gene’s got the rhythm down, doesn’t miss a note. We play it through a few more times, then move on to the next song.
“Kay, you gotta be able to play the melody line, not just the rhythm.”
Fine, fine, fine. “I don’t want to miss a thing,” I joke.
Neither of them laughs.
“It’s important. This could be our big break.”
I swear in my head instead of out loud. Libby really wants to hold on to this dream that Bekkah Ingram will talk to her dad about our band. Assuming we even get the gig. Assuming Bekkah even goes to prom. Assuming she’d be impressed by us or even notice we were anything but a cover band.
“Again,” Libby instructs. “Let’s play it again.”
Once I play it through to satisfy the enforcer, she insists on playing the other four before she’ll even consider playing anything that’s not for prom. But I notice that she’s tweaked each of the popular songs in significant ways to suit our style. Blue-ified, she calls it.
We take a hit song from the radio and speed it up, aggressive percussion robbing it of its sweetness, giving it a punk rock flavor. Then the three of us growl the lyrics in the chorus so they’re all but unrecognizable. It’s a tune everyone wants to hear at a dance but with a cool spin. All of this Libby records in her notebook.
All in all, we’re cranking out some great sounds for more than a few hours before I can get her to try the new song I wrote. With Gene there, I don’t want to say the song is for Christine, but I’m pretty sure Libby knows. The final notes of our last tune ring in my ears, though the basement is completely silent while Libby acclimates to my new song.
Libby’s poised to say something—my relationship with Christine is a dead end—but instead she watches Gene’s long fingers pluck out an alternate bass line for the song we just played. It doesn’t matter; there’s not much Libby could say that I haven’t already considered, but she doesn’t get it. Once Christine understands who I am, she’ll think about me completely differently. She’ll stop trying to give me a makeover and accept me as a real guy.
When Libby finally speaks, she doesn’t mention my love interest. “What kind of a beat were you thinking of?”
I’ve laid out my lyrics and chords on the rusted music stand in front of me. Skimming through the first verse, I have a hard time imagining a drumbeat with it. I make the rhythm with the lyrics.
She taps out a few patterns for me, Gene accompanying with notes from my usual key signature.
“Maybe the last one,” I say.
So, we try it. But it’s not right. I can barely focus on singing. I stop before we’ve even gotten to the chorus. “No, it’s got to be different.”
Libby taps out something new. Again, though, it’s not right. I stop strumming. “That’s not it.” I can feel pressure tightening like knots behind my eyes.
Gene sits his small frame with impossibly long limbs down on top of his amp, scratching the few hairs on his chin again.
“Look,” Libby says, “let’s just go through the whole thing once so I know where it’s going.”
My temples throb. “Okay.”
“I’ll try some different things.” She twirls a drum stick, a trick she only perfected a few months ago.
Neither of us bothers to check in with Gene; he dutifully follows our lead. He’s only a freshman, after all. He has no rights here.
I strum the intro again while she beats out a slurry of steady notes. My amplifier crackles and I want to stop playing, but I force myself through the song; nothing Libby’s playing is melding with what I’m playing. Gene’s bass line follows Libby’s rhythm and my melody, but strangely can’t seem to bridge us two together. I skip one of the verses to get to the end, to stop my misery.
“That last part felt really good,” she says, crashing the cymbals again.
I stare at the lyrics on the page in front of me. They felt so right the other day. Now, today, something about them is really off. The whole thing just isn’t coming together.
Chapter 13
DR. BEHMANN’S FLESH-COLORED MOLE ON his cheek stays perfectly still as he raises his eyebrows at me. “I’m glad you decided to come back.”
I’d cross my arms if I didn’t know he would interpret it as a sign of my stubbornness. “My mother decided I should come back.”
He only stares.
“I know,” I say. I hate when he does this.
“What is it you know?”
I want my voice to be normal, not aggravated, but he pisses me off so much. “I shouldn’t let her make my decision for me.” I laugh ironically. “But if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here.” Not in this office, maybe not on this Earth.
“Kay, you need to figure out where you’re supposed to be. Maybe it isn’t here.”
My nostrils flare. He’s said this before like he wants me to stop seeing him. I want to storm out. He’s such a contradiction.
“I will say, though, I’m happy to see that you’ve made up your mind.” He gestures to my clothing.
I double check what I’m wearing. Jeans, T-shirt, leather jacket, and I’m definitely bound. “What?”
“This is what your mother doesn’t want.”
“Yeah.” Absently, I flatten the front of my jacket.
He nearly smiles, making a note on his yellow legal pad. “Tell me about the jacket.”
It’s been so long since I had a session with Dr. Behmann that he doesn’t know about the talent show or any of that. Which, of course, means he doesn’t know about Christine. So I tell him all of it. About reinventing myself. About Christine not recognizing me. About JT harassing me. About my argument with my mother.
“That bothers you,” he says.
“Which part?”
“Your mother.”
All of my muscles tense. “That she wants me to wear what she wants, act how she wants?”
“You tell me.”
“I told you. I explained it to her years ago.” I shake my head without wanting to. “I don’t want to talk about her.”
“We need to talk about her.”
“We don’t.” I don’t have to say anything. He can’t make me. If he were any good at his job, he’d be able to get me to talk about what happened at the mall with Christine and why I tried to swallow all the aspirin in the house.
“Remind me how old you’re going to be this year.”
I glare at him until he finally gives himself away with a smirk.
“The point is, you’re about to be an adult. Should you allow your mother to have this kind of power over you?”
He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand how hard it is to let my mother down. The way she manipulates, the expectations.
I could sit in this chair for the next ten years and not get him to see her the way I do. I won’t answer that question.
He doesn’t mind the quiet. He’s made silence his bitch. And here we sit in it where he descends into a pleasant Zen-like state, while I writhe uncontrollably as if in a vat of acid.
“All right,” he gives in. “You need to think about this. It’s good to see that you’ve accepted yourself, and you’re willing to show that to everyone else.”
A shiver goes through me. I don’t want to show anything to anyone else. It’s none of their business.
He’s smiling. “I thought you had made this decision at your last appointment.”
“You mean, when you said I hadn’t spent enough time being a girl yet?”
He’s confused. “That’s not how I phrased it, and I certainly didn’t want that to be your understanding.”
“You said I might want to take more time before I transition.”
His nod is slow as he processes how I took those words and mangled them into something he thinks is vastly different. “I wanted you to evaluate whether you’re ready.”
“I’m ready.” I want to hold out my arms in a melodramatic gesture that makes him see how different I am, but I stop myself.
“You also need to consider that all of the things you struggle with now while you’re viewed as a girl by everyone will not necessarily change once you’re viewed as a boy. Your mother will still be difficult to deal with. Your brother will still be away at college.”
I roll my eyes. “I know, I know, I know. I understand transitioning doesn’t solve all my problems.” But he doesn’t understand all the problems it does solve.
He purses his lips, staring intently at me. “I hope you mean that.” He grabs his laptop, opening the calendar. “We should get back together in a couple weeks.”
“Fine. I’m free—oh.” It occurs to me that I might not be. I have a job. “I might—” Shit. I can’t tell him about the job, or I’d have to tell him about Nathan Ashur, and he’s got a real thing about lying to people when you don’t need to.
“Might what?”
“Nothing.”
We set a date and time. Before I can get out the door, he says, “Next time we’ll talk about taking control of your life away from your mother.”
