Jump A Little Lighter: Chapter 4

Read from the beginning here

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“Are you going to sing with our band later?”

This is where she becomes herself, truly.

“I’d like to play with them if I can, Steve.”

“Well that’s refreshing – I thought you were just a pop singer!”

“Are you suggesting I don’t know my own song?” she says, with a friendly smirk.

Her tone is perfect – she makes a joke out of the assertion, one that puts herself as the punchline whilst reminding the nation that her talent is not fleeting, that she has worked for this.

“I sort of did, didn’t I?”

“Well that sure would have been awkward as I wrote it!”

The audience laughs, The Host laughs… and she laughs, opening her mouth wide in a genuine smile, showing her perfect teeth, looking perfect.

“I can play another song now, if you’ll let me?”

The Host raises his eyebrows and the audience cheers.

***

Chapter 4: June 2017

As the rest of us were cramming for our last few tests, Rosie’s music got more esoteric. I couldn’t go a day without lifting out a headphone from her ear and getting blasted with some dead dude with a guitar and 27 friends who all played keys. Whilst the rest of us had notes for our different school subjects falling out of our bags and strewn on the passenger seats of our cars, Rosie’s notebooks were devoid of anything she’d learned; instead she ruled them full of neat, precise ruler lines drawn in fives and left all the alternate pages blank for lyrics. She couldn’t listen to anything without working out the time signature, tapping two fingers on the table and closing her eyes to bob her head in time. When we go driving in Brett’s car she sits in the back and ignores us totally, singing along to the radio and the few CDs he owns with intense concentration whilst we chat about college applications and eventually move onto other fears. We never touch on the obvious thing we have in common, but it’s reassuring to hear somebody else trying to build a life around it all, stuck in Geneva where everybody knows your most painful secrets and life moves on at the pace of molasses.

Brett was publicly friends with us by now: every day he would swing by our table and eat all the leftovers after his lunchtime practice, and sometimes he even brought other jocks around. He does go back to sit with his homeboys, but I had started to think the food might not be the only reason he hangs any more. He showed all the signs of liking me as much, or more than, Rosalita, and he got the only black member of the swim team with a very smooth and defined chest to ask Britney to the movies, which we all knew was the first step to the prom match of her dreams, and one her momma would approve of.

By June 18th we’re all free, the special kind of freedom that can only occur in those slim weeks when tests are finished but we don’t know our scores yet. Some of the other kids in town have parties, but our little clique is having too much fun going to late-night movies and cheering on Brett from the bleachers to even think of going to the few we’re invited to. Britney does put an appearance at Scott Sinclair’s after Swim Team Elijah asks if he’ll see her there, but she’s back home and on the phone to us before 11 after she gets what she wants – that is, him fetching her a drink – and we sit on the phone on loudspeaker in Rosalita’s bedroom all night until she’s told us every moment. He sounds like a perfect gentleman.

“I still don’t understand why you didn’t stay out until curfew and dance with the boy.”

“With every mean girl in town watching on? No thank you. Besides, I take great pride in always looking fresh for church – no old lady in a hat is going to give me stank eye in the pew, no ma’am. If a boy is interested he can date me the old-fashioned way, with a corsage, and stay sober enough to drive me home.”

“Girl church is like 8 hours away and you’re talking to us.”

“Church is 11 hours away, and I’m sat with my bonnet on doing my skincare. Put down that guitar and look at a watch.”

“I go to church!”

“You go to choir, I go to worship. We are not the same.”

“Does Swim Team Elijah go to church?”

“No boy gets that respectful without a momma who has made him sit still through sermons his whole life. Also, he sings for breath control, so the boy is mu-si-cal too.”

When I wake up in the morning, Rosie is up already, headphones plugged into her keyboard. She smiles when she sees my bleary movement.

“I snuck you up some of mom’s breakfast scones. I think they’re fresh this morning.”

“Eurgh, I love it when Bobby’s home. Are you composing?

“Not well. Piano might be an easier instrument to play than guitar but I can’t imagine it in the same way, and everything sounds prog when I try it on here.”

“I don’t really know what that means but I’m sure it still sounds good. Am I a total bird’s nest?”

“You are 2/3 tumbleweed and 1/3 woman.”

“Can you not be so alert right now please? I need at least two more scones until I can clap back to you in any kind of amusing way.”

“OK well you go shower first, dad’s up and downstairs already and conditioner will help with the bird nest situation.”

“You just want to finish that before we get more scones.”

“Let me ideate!”

So I leave her, cross-legged on her bed, keyboard right in front of her, working on something the rest of the world can’t hear until it’s done.

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PLAYLIST OF SONGS

• [Dave Edmunds, Girls Talk]
• [Rush, Spirit of Radio]
• [Elton John, Rocket Man]
• [Jethro Tull, Locomotive Breath]
• [Yes, I’ve Seen All Good People]
• [Queen, Bicycle Race]
• [Avril Lavigne, Anything But Ordinary]