Page 27 of Fade into You

Ode to My Wicked Stepsister

No, if she ever saw that, I’d feel too guilty. Not thatshecares about hurtingme, but I guess I still care about her feelings.

Ode to Mismatched Bra and Panties,I try. Stupid.

God, I can’t think about writing right now. I close my pencil in the binding. Because what if Charlie found something on Dad?

We have to keep our research secret, because Mom would shut it down immediately. She never talks about what happenedor why he left. She never talks about why she won’t talk about him. I was six. Old enough to remember the way things used to be when he was here. I don’t remember everything, but I remember enough. I remember music. I remember the way he’d take me and Charlie roller-skating and to play softball at the park. I remember him cooking a lot. He’d let me stand on a chair and help. I remember the way he never treated me like I was a little kid. He treated me like I had a brain, like the things I thought mattered.

Mom used to say I learned to read from the hours I spent with him, listening to his old records from the sixties and seventies, following along with the lyrics on the sleeves. His record collection, along with the boxy turntable that’s probably older than me, is one of the few things he left behind. It’s nice to think it was for me, but it’s just as likely that he left so quickly he couldn’t take everything with him.

I started buying some of my favorites on CD, though I don’t usually tell people that more often than not I’d rather be listening to Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell than anyone from today. It’s not something I share with people my own age. I was surprised Jessa didn’t make fun of my Janis Ian.

I catch myself smiling at the thought of Jessa. I have such an urge to call her right now. I have a feeling she’d be awake. I could look up her number in the phone book, but that might be overstepping the parameters of our pseudo-friendship.

I flip the cover of my notebook open for the millionth time. The picture of me and Silas and Kat stares back at me. I look at the time on the stove; it’s after ten now. Only seven on the West Coast, where both Silas and Kat live. I know weekend andevening rates for long-distance calls are less; I don’t know how much less, but maybe I could sneak a call in without it racking up our phone bill too much.

Silas wrote his number in the back of my notebook at some point in the last days of the workshop, with the note:in case you change your mind.

I don’t think I’ve changed my mind about anything. But still… I want to talk to him. It’s that lonely/alone thing again, coming back with a vengeance.

I pick up the receiver on our old rotary phone affixed to the kitchen wall, notebook open to the back cover. The crank and zip and roll of each digit, one number at a time, has my heart racing. Until I reach the last number, and the ringing starts up. Once. Twice. Three times. I’m going to hang up. Four—

“Hello?” a familiar voice says through the light static.

“Silas?” I ask.

“No, hold on,” the voice says.

“Oh. Sorry, I—” I apparently have forgotten how to make a phone call.

“Si!” the voice yells. “Phone!” I remember Silas saying at some point that he had an older brother. Must be him. I hear some rustling on the line, then, “Here he is.” Something muffled, then I distinctly hear the word “girl.”

More static, then, finally, “Hello?”

“Hi, um, it—it’s me,” I say, then realize he probably won’t know whomeis. “Bird,” I add. “Nardino. From the—”

“Jesus, Bird, I think I remember who you are,” he says, but not in a harsh way.

“Oh,” I mutter. “Right. Sorry, I just didn’t want to assume…” But I trail off, not knowing what to say to him now that I have him on the line.

“Unfortunately, you’re not so easy to forget,” he says, and coming from anyone else it would feel like a guilt trip, but not from him. From him, it feels like a kindness. A kindness I’m not sure I deserve. “So… I wasn’t expecting you to call,” he continues, thankfully filling the silence.

“Yeah, I wasn’t either,” I tell him.

He laughs. And I can picture him looking down, pushing his glasses up, the way he always would when he laughed.

“So,” I begin. “How are you?”

“I’m all right. It’s been weird trying to adjust to being back home. Being back in school. Everything feels different after this summer, you know?”

I’m nodding because I do know. He’s right, everything does feel different.

“Bird?”

“Oh, sorry, I’m nodding but obviously you can’t see me.”

“I wish I could,” he says. And now I start to think maybe this was a mistake. But he changes course, just in time, as usual. “So, how areyoudoing?”