There Will Come a Time Read Free Page A

was supposed to do. But this was different from playing truth or dare with Jessica. I’d only wanted one thing from Jessica last year. This was Hanna. The same Hanna I had been friends with since the fifth grade. The Hanna whom I knew as well as I did my sister. Hanna, who made me feel nervous and safe at the same time.
    I panicked. I hesitated too long and broke the mood, so I pretended like I was just going to give her a hug.
    We sat there all night, not talking, me with my arm around her, even after it started cramping. That’s when I got confused. I started to think I loved, or at least really liked, Hanna, because there was no one else I would sit up with all night long, not even Grace.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    â€œI hope it’s a good year,” Hanna says. “I really need a good year.”
    â€œYou’ll have a great year,” I say.
    â€œOf course.” She pauses and adds, “There’s nothing to fear .”
    I rest the back of my head on the bench. “Depends on what’s near.”
    â€œOr if it’s all clear.”
    Hanna and I play the game that she, Grace, and I started years ago. Grace was usually the best. She had an ear for rhyme. She’d write these amazing poems, so it really wasn’t fair to play with her. It was never stacked in our favor.
    Tonight I win because it’s only Hanna and me now, and I’m the last one awake. I don’t mind that her head has fallen on my shoulder. She smells like Hanna, a little bit of sweat and ivory soap. I put my arm around her and rock us slowly back and forth on the swing. It’s almost morning, but I don’t want to wake her. I want to stay here as long as possible. I listen to her steady breathing and watch the orange glow of dawn creep over us and cover the sky like a blanket.

Four
    T he resonance of the electric bass hums against my body. It’s taken an hour to get here, but now that I’ve worked out the notes on the page, I’m inside the music. This is where I feel the most clarity. I don’t know many holy things, but I know this: Music is holy.
    I’ve always had a thing for music. Dad calls it a gift. He started me on lessons when I was six and let me choose the instrument. I picked the bass because of its low and powerful sound. The bass sets the tempo and the feel. If a jazz band is a person, the bassist is the muscle. The drums are the skeleton. Guitars or keys are the limbs. Vocals add the facial gestures. At school, I alternate between upright and electric depending on the group I’m in.
    I can’t sing, though. Well, I can sing in a crowd, like “Happy Birthday” or to add a little backup, but I’m more comfortable behind an instrument. I have to take music theory at school, which does require some singing. Thankfully I’m not graded on the actual vocal quality, just that I know how to read the music.
    I think I’m one of the few in class who actually enjoys the theory. It’s like studying another language. Maybe I’m good at it because I know English and Tagalog. I’m not super-fluent in Tagalog, but I know more than just how to ask where the bathroom is. Any time I’m around the aunties, Dad’s sisters, they make me practice with them. Tagalog is technically my first language, though I stopped speaking it outside the house in the first grade. It was hard enough when the other kids, mainly white because of the practically all-white suburb we used to live in, would see what Mom had packed Grace and me for lunch.
    â€œ Longanisa ,” I would say, as if they’d never seen sausage before. It’s awesome, even though it makes your breath stink. And you burp it up all day. So I started asking Mom for peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches with the crust cut off, grapes, and a pack of chips.
    After Dad married Jenny and we moved to Eagle Rock, which has a pretty good-size Filipino population, I still