Songs Without Words Read Free Page B

morning, when she’d called to tell her Lauren wouldn’t be in Berkeley after all. Lauren and her friends had planned to stop in on Sarabeth if they had time, and Liz hadn’t wanted Sarabeth wondering all day if they would come. “Oh, too bad,” Sarabeth said in response to the news. “I was going to make chocolate meringues.” And Liz had gotten a clear picture of the picture Sarabeth must have had, of Lauren and her friends filling her funky little house with their teenage giggles and intermittent high seriousness. Liz was sorry they’d canceled. She’d call Sarabeth after yoga, see if she could come for dinner sometime soon.
    Chocolate meringues. That was the treat Sarabeth used to make for Lauren and Joe when they were little, when every few months Liz would load them into the car for a pilgrimage across the bay. In anticipation of these visits, Sarabeth would tape giant pieces of butcher paper to her living room floor, and once the meringues were consumed she’d launch the kids on some labor-intensive drawing project—a giant forest, a city of towers—so that for a while at least Liz could sit on her couch and they could talk. What a respite those conversations were: hearing about Sarabeth’s romantic adventures, or learning more about a new project she had going—anything to interrupt the day-in, day-out sameness of life with small children.
I’ll trade you,
Sarabeth used to say.
You couldn’t stand it for more than a day.
Which was true, of course.
             
    The high school was on the north edge of town, across the street from a little shopping center with a Starbucks, a Subway, and a Jamba Juice. Kids weren’t supposed to bring food over from the center, but everyone did, smuggling their Starbucks or Jamba Juice cups into their morning classes. The teachers didn’t care, but it was a rule, and if the vice-principal saw you, you got busted. It was called getting cupped. Lauren had seen a freshman guy get cupped before school today, and it was so obvious he’d done it on purpose. It was probably the highlight of his life, proving what a tough ass he was by getting detention in high school.
    Lauren was in chemistry, hiding inside her conscientious student look. Notebook open, pen in hand, thoughtful expression. It was ridiculously easy. If she felt Mr. Greenway’s eyes on her, she bit her lip as if she were struggling to understand something, then made a mark in her notebook. From far away she would look like she was taking notes, but in fact she was adding details to a picture of a tree she’d drawn yesterday. A Japanese maple. She was terrible at the leaves. In fact, she sucked at drawing. Everyone used to say how good she was, but they were wrong.
    Across the aisle and one desk forward, Amanda twisted her copperred hair around her finger. Her jeans were a little floody, and Lauren saw that she was wearing socks with smiley faces on them, as if she were still in middle school. Amanda could be so weird that way, not caring about stuff.
    They had three classes together this fall. “That’s great,” Lauren’s mom had said when Lauren told her, although it wasn’t, exactly. It was Amanda, and it was great in exact proportion to how it was not so great: it gave Lauren someone to hang out with, and it made it impossible for her to hang out with anyone else.
    “Great.” With Lauren’s mom everything was either “great” or “too bad.”
What would you like me to say?
Lauren imagined her mom asking, and she turned away, then realized that she’d actually turned away, actually moved her head, here in chemistry. She looked at Mr. Greenway, worried that he’d noticed, but he was writing on the board, oblivious. The periodic table hung to his left. Lauren had not meant to look at it, but she’d caught a glimpse—those rows of little boxes, the meaningless letters inside them—and her stomach flipped. It was the middle of October, and she could no longer maintain the pretense that she