Page 42 of August Lane

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A ugust finally had the house to herself.

Birdie and Jojo had gone to the church picnic, and she’d volunteered to do chores while they were gone.

She played Rumours at high volume as she cleaned, starting with “Dreams” because it had the strongest hook on the album.

She’d been studying song structure and had learned that a hook could be anything: a line, a riff, an instrument, whatever made you stop and listen.

In “Dreams,” she’d initially assumed it was the repeated lyric about losing love.

But after replaying it a few times, she decided it was the warning about loneliness.

August was singing along to the second verse when Jojo’s voice joined in with a dramatic flourish. Her mother danced into the room, waving her arms in a way that evoked Stevie Nicks’s witchy persona. She motioned for August to keep going.

They had sung together before. Birthday songs.

Church hymns. All situations where pitch was irrelevant, and an off-key clash matched the moment.

This was different. Jojo’s voice shimmered, her soprano soaring in a crisp, deliberate key.

August couldn’t match that, so she sang beneath it, harmonizing with Jojo by using a smoother version of her real voice, the one she’d only shared with Luke.

At the end, August closed her eyes, lost herself in the music, and it wasn’t until the last line that she realized Jojo had stopped singing and was now watching her with a dazed expression, as if she’d driven the wrong way down a one-way street.

“Do you always sound like that?”

August said “Yes” even though it wasn’t true. Sometimes she sounded better. “I was copying you, though. Trying to harmonize.”

“At first, maybe. The last bit was something else.”

August turned down the volume on the CD player. “You sounded different,” she said. “Is it the new voice coach?”

“Hell no. Voice lessons make me radio friendly. Sand down all the edges.” Jojo tapped her nails on the table while she spoke, a nervous habit.

The sound was more muffled than usual. She’d gotten a manicure, and they’d been filed into blunt, red squares.

“I don’t think anyone could do that with you. Take that away. Wouldn’t be much left.”

August hadn’t thought about that before. Songwriting was her main focus. But what if Jojo was right? What if her voice wasn’t “radio friendly” enough for anyone to want to hear them?

“I should have stayed with you instead of going to that picnic.” Jojo propped her feet up on another chair. “It’s too hot to be outside. And I never ate those damn fish sandwiches when I was little. Sure don’t want ’em now.”

August pictured the buffalo fish served with mustard and a single slice of Wonder Bread. “Why are they called sandwiches? The fish has bones in it.”

Jojo sighed. “You’ve always been like this. My little why-child. Never accepting things at face value.”

“Is that bad?”

“No. But sometimes it’s easier.” Jojo stared at her for a beat. “Where do you go after school?”

August had answered this question enough times that her response was robotic. “The library. With Mavis.”

“What are you studying?”

“Math?”

“Are you asking or telling me?”

“It’s a good excuse to get out of the house.”

Jojo tapped her nails again. “Are you sneaking off with that boy Birdie doesn’t know about?”

Not sneaking off with but sneaking off to . Luke had been recovering from his injuries at Delta Blue for a week now. Birdie knew where August was going but had kept her promise not to tell Jojo. “Your mama can’t handle any kind of violence. Just hearing about it will send her running out the door.”

There’d been no sign of Ava. Luke refused to talk about her, so August avoided the subject.

Between songwriting sessions, they talked about everything but what happened to him—worst books, best movies, which cafeteria worker composed the most balanced lunch trays.

After school, she brought him takeout from King’s Kitchen, and they’d eat salty catfish baskets with Silas’s records playing in the background.

Luke seemed happy, more content than he’d ever been.

And August slowly realized why he couldn’t write a love song on his own.

No one is born knowing how to love. You learn from parents, grandparents, friends.

If all they taught you was how dangerous loving was, or the ways it could hurt, you’d never learn how to do it properly.

So how could he write about it? He didn’t have the vocabulary.

All he had was emotion, big feelings he captured in melodies.

August was his transcriptionist, trying to craft verses strong enough to contain them.

“I’m failing chemistry,” August told Jojo. “Mavis tutors me at the library, that’s all.”

Jojo’s phone rang, rescuing August from the interrogation.

She started to stand, but Jojo motioned for her to stay.

“I’m talking to my daughter,” she said, instead of her usual cheerful greeting.

“Stop worrying, David. If a half hour is all we’ve got, then we’ll kill ’em for thirty minutes. Let it go.”

She hung up and said, “He’s in love with me. I pretend not to know, but it’s obvious.” She gestured toward August. “Look at me telling the truth. See how easy that was?”

August pictured David Henry’s slick smile and flint-colored eyes. She couldn’t imagine her mother’s manager pining for anyone. “Do you love him, too?”

“He’s married. Plus, he’s a drinker. They’ll slap you around when they can’t get hard. Not worth the hassle.” Jojo stood and straightened her shirt. “You hungry? Let’s make waffles.”

August nodded, but then, with her feelings for Luke burning bright in her mind, she asked, “What do you think he’d do if you told him?”

“Told him what?”

“How you felt?”

“I never said—” She stopped when August rolled her eyes. “Fine. He’d be happy. Probably file for divorce. Then he’d make a bunch of promises and break every single one.”

Luke used up all his unexcused absences.

On his first day back at school, he wore long sleeves to hide most of his bandage, even though it was still hot enough for shorts.

His cheeks were leaner, and his eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep.

Everything he’d hidden for years—his messed-up family, the abuse—was clear on his face.

Silas had let him borrow a car and Luke drove into town slowly, with his stomach cramping in protest. He parked in the back of the school lot so no one would see him. The stomach cramps became dry heaves the minute he opened the door.

The second tardy bell rang before he made it to class.

His teacher looked irritated by his lateness, but softened when she noticed his arm.

“Take a seat,” she whispered, with enough pity to smother him.

Shane, who he hadn’t heard from since being suspended from football, raised a brow and mumbled, “Where the hell you been?”

It hadn’t occurred to Luke to come up with a good lie.

He didn’t want people making up wild stories that reached some teacher or administrator who would then immediately call his mother.

The image of Ava barreling through the doors in an oxy-fueled rage had him eyeing the exits and plotting an escape.

He skipped his next class. Instead, he went to the theater dressing room and left the lights off. The darkness was soothing, and he focused on slowing his breath.

A few minutes later, the door swung open and filled the room with light. He blinked until Jessica’s face came into focus. It had been a month since they’d spoken. Everything about her was softer. Her shirt was pale pink, her hair a cloud of spirals, and she smelled like an apple orchard.

“Knew I’d find you here.” She sat in a chair. “Tell August that rehearsals for the fall play are starting soon. She’ll have to say goodbye to your sex den.”

“We eat lunch here. That’s it.”

“Someone’s definitely eating something.” She eyed a pile of velvet pillows. “I don’t see the appeal.”

“How did you know? Did you see us walk in, or…” All that time they thought they were hiding. Did the entire school think they were having quickies during lunch?

“Calm down. I knew this was August’s hideout a long time ago. When you disappeared from our lunch table and she started bringing two brown bags every day, I figured it out.” She tilted her head. “That’s really sweet. Her feeding you.”

“Knock it off.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re always so uptight. Like a hot Quaker. I kind of miss it.” She pointed to his arm. “Did Ava do that?”

Luke was thrown by the question. Ava loved Jessica and had fawned over her the few times he’d brought her home. “Why would you ask?”

Jessica gave him an impatient look, like this was a race and he needed to catch up. “She called my dad and told him you were running around with Silas King.”

It never occurred to Luke that staying at Delta Blue would put Silas in Ava’s crosshairs. She was probably afraid he knew what she’d done. Luke could imagine her spinning some sob story about her troubled son in case there was a police report. “What did your dad say?”

“He asked if I had seen you. I said yes, you were fine.” She picked a loose thread in her jeans. “I also said Ava was paranoid, and that you were probably staying at Shane’s to get away from her.” She paused. “Have you really been hanging out with Silas King?”

Luke thought of Silas’s Cadillac, currently sitting in the parking lot. It was damning evidence. “I’m staying with him,” he admitted. “Ava and I got into it. I can’t go back.”

She looked at his arm again. “I knew she was awful. Even though she was nice to me, with some people, you can tell.”

Luke didn’t respond. Despite everything, agreeing with Jessica felt like a betrayal. Ava was his mother. Nothing would change that. “Thank you for covering for me. Especially with how we left things.”