“Yeah”, she says, and it isn’t the word itself that catches my attention; common, inconsequential, agreement but only just past ambivalence. What causes me to look up is the way that she leans into the word. It seems pressed upward by thoughts that Hannah only just manages to cap before they emerge. Besides that, there is the look she shoots Addie.
The subject of the discussion tempers my newly aroused suspicion with sadness. The feeling is at least familiar to me at this point. Saturday morning, nestled into the couch with a plate of toast to warm my knees, I had felt a poignant regret seep in with a counteractive coldness at the thought that “they would be boarding the buses about now.” It returned again as a knot in my stomach over the course of the weekend, and each time I had to remind myself that I could go next year. Really, I had borrowed that line of thought from Addie and Hannah.
They were, of course, my first thought when I heard the news. Our music teacher began to explain by telling us that we were being “allowed an opportunity to extend upon the material we were covering in class.” Even before he had lapsed out of this formal way of speaking, the way he does, we were listening. Our material: a mesh of notes and rhythms, chilled metal warmed at our lips, the metamorphosis of black dots on a page. By “extension”, he could only mean exposure to the professionals. So, we were listening even before he told us exactly who would be performing.
Once he did, there was one way for me to look and that was to the clarinet section. The two of them were twisted in their chairs to face one another, brows creased in discussion, instruments dangling, forgotten, between their legs. I couldn’t snag their eyes, but I didn’t mind. I was confident that we would, all three, see Boston that Saturday in all its bustling splendor.
At lunch, though, my suggestion was refused. I proposed ice cream and sundresses at Faneuil Hall. Addie glanced at Hannah, lowering a forkful of sagging salad greens back onto her tray.
“It’s just… such short notice though.”
“I’m busy anyways”
“Yeah, me too. That’s what I meant. If I had known before…”
Addie bent over her food again, seeming satisfied with this resolution. I couldn’t help but protest. “But it’s the Boston Pops! Those guys are supposed to be amazing.” “Sorry”, she murmured. She was speaking to me, but her eyes were shifting covertly to the side, as if seeking affirmation of some kind from Hannah. She delivered, saying, “There’s always next year! I mean, I heard from the sophomores this is a yearly trip, so it’s not like we won’t have another chance”.
This logic could not be argued with, and so seemed to console Addie; it received a vigorous nod from her, and a somewhat more reluctant one from me. I shifted on the mottled plastic bench, the moisture of early summer binding it to my bare leg. The windows weren’t yet opened and there was no breath of relief from the less stagnant outside air. Pacified somewhat by the heat, we gave ourselves up to a moment of silent chewing.
I think then I was somewhat knotted to the moment, holed up in the part of my mind that is entirely internal. My scheme for Saturday was partially a daydream. It had spawned in a hot flash of excitement and was quickly buried beneath a stream of information to be analyzed, memorized, and internalized, beginning immediately with my next class. In short, I was ignorant of all surroundings because they were too much part of reality to be factored into my idealistic plans. It isn’t until now, amidst the trivial banter of a class released from their obligations in anticipation of the bell, that I am able to step back and candidly view those events of last Monday. I scan the faces of my classmates; almost all animated with the universal giddiness that surges up as the end of school approaches. Addie and Hannah are holding each other’s gaze, removed yet still alert, and so separated from the crowd.
The shrill of the bell brings forth a rush of bodies, one of which unbalances my stack of books when he bangs his shin into my desk. I bend to scoop them up from the floor, and join the masses in the hall. Hugging the wall, my eyes are free to sweep the crowd, searching. Finally, I locate them as they reach the bend that will take them to French. From the back I can see, even at this distance, what I had neither opportunity nor reason to notice in class. A swooping French braid runs over Addie’s shoulder. Never able to do this herself, she usually begs me. Hannah must have helped her this morning while I was at my locker.
They bend towards each other in laughter and dissipate down the hall.