“May I?” Krista asked, hesitating at the door.
A very polite drug addict.
“Of course. Come in.” Carmen waved her in the door. “You sleep okay?”
Krista nodded. “Thanks. Do you happen to know the time?” she asked.
Carmen turned to her clock radio. “Five thirty. My mom will be home in a little while.”
Krista nodded. She looked tentative in her postnap disorientation. “Do you think this will be okay with her?”
“‘This’ meaning you?”
Krista nodded. Her eyes got big the way they used to last summer whenever Carmen cursed.
“Yeah. Don’t worry.” Carmen led her into the kitchen and poured a glass of orange juice for each of them. “So … hey. Do you feel at all like maybe … calling your mom?”
“I’d rather not.” Krista shook her head. “She’ll be furious at me.”
“She’s probably long past furious. She’s probably really worried. You know what I mean? You could just tell her that you’re safe and everything.”
Krista looked partway convinced. Carmen remembered her being malleable. “Maybe I will … call her tomorrow?”
Carmen nodded. She could understand that. If you were going to make a stand, you had to hold out twenty-four hours, at least.
Krista drank her juice in silence for a while.
“So you and your mom had a big fight, huh?” Carmen asked, keeping her voice gentle.
Krista nodded. “We fight a lot lately. She says I’m rude. She hates everything I wear. She can’t stand it when I raise my voice.” Krista swiped a frazzled blond strand behind her ear. Carmen was amazed to hear the hard little fiber of anger in Krista’s voice. “She wants everything quiet and perfect in her house. I don’t feel like being quiet and perfect anymore.”
Carmen knew she had trailed poison through Lydia’s orderly little world last summer, but she hadn’t known Krista was eating it. “I don’t blame you,” Carmen said.
Krista touched the rim of her orange-juice glass. Clearly she longed to confide in Carmen. “If I act the way she wants me to act, I’m just invisible.” Her voice was plaintive. “If I act the way I want, she says I’m ruining her life.”
Krista appeared to be searching Carmen’s face for some kind of wisdom. “What would you do?”
Carmen considered this position of responsibility into which she had been thrust.
What would she do? What would she, Carmen, do?
Whine, resist, complain. Throw rocks through the window of her father and stepmother’s house. Run away like a coward. Torment her mother. Act like a selfish brat. Destroy Christina’s happiness.
Carmen opened her mouth to try to give some advice. She closed it again.
There was a word for this. It started with an h. It not only indicated you were a horrible waste of a person but also somehow seemed to indicate that you were fat.
What was it?
Oh, yeah. Hypocrite.
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
—Charlie Brown
Tibby laid the stack of CDs on the counter. “It wasn’t any of these,” she said. “The one I’m looking for, it wasn’t just piano. It had other instruments too.”
The man nodded. He was in his forties, she guessed. He wore Hush Puppies on his feet and had the haircut of a person who didn’t care about his hair.
“Piano and other instruments?” he asked her.
“Yes.”
“It was a concerto.”
Tibby’s eyes lit up. “Yes. I think you’re right.”
“You’re sure it’s Beethoven.”
“I think so.”
“You think so.” He looked as though he needed a cup of coffee.
“Pretty much totally sure,” she added quickly.
“Okay, well, if it’s Beethoven, there are five of them. Probably the best known is the Emperor Concerto,” he explained patiently.
Tibby was grateful. This man had already spent a good deal of time on her problem. Luckily there wasn’t much doing in the classical section at ten forty-five in the morning.
“Can I listen to it?”
“I have a listening copy of it here somewhere. It might take me a few minutes to find. Do you want to come back later?” He looked hopeful.
She didn’t want to come back. She needed it now. “Can I wait? I really, really need it.” She had nine days and so, so much work to do.
She watched him search too slowly. “Can I help you look?”
Reluctantly he allowed her to come behind the counter and search through a box.
“Here,” he said at last, triumphantly holding up a CD.
“Yay!” she called. She grabbed it and hurried over to the listening place.
She knew after just a few seconds. “This is it!” she practically shouted at him.
“All right!” he said, nearly as excited as she was.
She honestly felt like hugging him. “Thank you. Thank you so, so much.”
“You’re welcome,” he said happily. “It’s rare I have an emergency in this job.”
Back in her dorm room, she faced the computer. In one hand was the DVD with all the precious video she had copied from her equipment at home. In the other was the Emperor piano concerto.
She stuck the CD in the slot and stared at the blank screen. She let it play over and around her. She didn’t move. She couldn’t do it yet. She put her hand on the DVD and took it away again.
This was hard. She hadn’t looked at any of it since last summer. She wasn’t ready, she had told herself. But maybe she would never be ready. Maybe she just had to make herself do it.
She took the DVD out of its plastic case. She put it down on her desk. The music swooped and soared. Her heart was beating fast.
There was a knock on her door. Her head snapped up. She turned the music down. She cleared her throat. “Hello?” It came out rusty.
The door pushed open. It was Alex.
“Hey,” he said. His face was more tentative than usual. “You’re back. Where’ve you been?”
She kicked the wall under her desk. “I just had to go home for a while and take care of a couple things.”
He nodded. He gestured toward her computer. “You working on the movie?”
She considered him. “Not the one you’re thinking of. Not the one about my mom.”
“No?”
“I’m not doing it anymore.” She had wanted to throw the movie down the sewer, but she had forced herself to keep it around as punishment.
“What are you going to do for your term project?”
“I’m doing a new movie.”
“You’re starting a new one? Now?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh. You think you can do it in a few days?”
“I hope so.”
He acted so aloof all the time, but he obviously took this pretty seriously. She was beginning to see how it was with him. He could mock and smirk all he liked, but he also wanted to get into Brown. He was a fake risk-taker, a phony rebel. It took one to know one.
“What’s it about?”
She looked protectively at her DVD. She couldn’t let Alex into this. This was a lot harder and more dangerous than taking cheap, nasty shots at her mother.
“I don’t even know yet.”
She turned back to her desk. He turned to leave.
“What are you listening to?”
For a moment she seriously considered disavowing the music she had spent more than an hour trying to find. Pretending she had tuned the radio to the wrong station.
“It’s Beethoven,” she said instead. “It’s called the Emperor Concerto.”
He looked at her a little strangely. He turned to go again. Her heart was beating fast. “Hey, Alex?” she said.
“Yeah?”
“You know that guy Brian? Who didn’t like my movie?”