Fic: Tilting at Windmills (Chris/Greta, pre-Bob/Darren; The Hush Sound, loads of others; part 1/3)
Tilting at Windmills
Band(s): The Hush Sound (with guest appearances by Charlotte Sometimes, Paramore, Gym Class Heroes, The Cab, Forgive Durden, Panic at the Disco, and a few others)
Pairing(s): Chris/Greta, pre-Bob/Darren
Word Count: 26,035
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Note: Betaed by the incomparable wordscomekinda who has done everything to see this thing finished short of writing it herself. Thank you for putting up with me, bb. You pretty much deserve a medal. Also Emily was the tour manager for The Hush Sound at one point (I believe this is her) and Ani was someone Greta blogged about coming on tour with them.
Summary: Greta and Darren have been best friends since the day Greta's family moved next door, until high school and new friends and a few misunderstandings mess everything up.
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | or read it on DreamWidth.org in one part
Bonus Tracks/Enhanced Content
Fanart:
She pulled her hair back, holding it behind her head in a messy bun. She raised herself on her tip toes as though she were wearing heels and she turned to the side to look at her silhouette, considering. by nasssty_slyth
Fanmix:
Fanmix by contrariangie
Greta was standing in the back of a big yellow truck she had driven over in with her dad, dancing back and forth in the space slowly becoming devoid of boxes and jumping up to see the rim of her piano just peaking over the tops of them. "It hasn't gone anywhere, Greta," her dad told her tersely. "It'll come out faster if you help carry boxes inside."
"I'm helping," she insisted. She illustrated her point by handing her dad the box marked "sheat musick!" in lime green Sharpie and her own imprecise and sloppy handwriting.
"Greta," he started; his voice was getting louder. She frowned.
"Ben," her mom said sharply. Greta startled. She hadn’t seen her coming. "Don't." He turned back toward their new house grumbling. To Greta she asked more softly, "Will you hand me a box, please?" Greta nodded, once, and chewed on her lip considering the boxes in front of her. She pulled at one that said "Greta's movies (and recitals)" in her mom's red Sharpie and perfect round letters. "Excellent choice," she said sincerely. Greta grinned back.
She turned to pace the plywood again, considering whether or not her dad would appreciate it if she gave him the box marked "Ben's books" in sharp black lines next when she spotted movement out of the corner of her eye. She could see the curtain moving in the front window of the house next door. At the same time, she saw her dad marching along the stone walkway from the front door back to the truck. Greta gripped the box of books on either side and pulled it toward the edge of the truck.
At least that was the idea. The box was a lot heavier than she anticipated, the cardboard slipped from between her palms without budging and she stumbled backward. Her dad's hands were around her waist, lifting her down from the truck bed and setting her on the pavement. "That's it," he said. "Go play somewhere."
"But where?" she asked, scowling. There was no swing set in the backyard and all of her things were in the truck.
"I don't care, somewhere you won't get hurt." He picked up a box--the wrong box--and hefted it over her head when she tried to point it out, marching back into the house and ignoring her.
She made faces at his back until she saw the curtain next door move again. That time she saw a boy's face in the window before it was covered again.
"Honey," her mom said, "Why don't you look for your jump rope in the boxes in the garage?"
"But I don't want to."
"Daddy's stressed." That meant "please stay out of his way."
"Fine." Greta pouted at the ground. Her mom's hand was on her shoulder steering her toward the open garage, and she let herself be moved.
---
Ben Salpeter stepped out on the back porch, smacking his pack of cigarettes against his palm. There was a loud, metallic noise from the left, his head snapped around to locate it, but it was just the neighbor on his own porch. Ben stuck a cigarette between his lips and lit it, letting out his first drag of smoke in a relieved sigh. The neighbor didn't notice him, he was too engrossed in--Ben squinted to get a better look--the toys he had laid out on the table. “Weirdo,” he muttered under his breath. He wouldn't have drawn the neighbor’s attention to him, except the sight of the dolls he was arranging on a table made something ping in his memory.
"Hey there," Ben called, leaning on his forearms against the railing closest to the other house.
The other guy looked up, startled. "Oh. Hello there."
"Ben Salpeter. We're just moving in, my wife Veronica and my girl Greta."
"Roger Wilson," the other man said. "My son Darren should be around here somewhere."
That was what Ben thought he remembered. "The Ways mentioned you had a kid around my daughter's age. Do you think he would maybe come out and play with Greta? She keeps getting under foot."
"Well, sure," Roger said. He looked a little confused. Ben tried not to roll his eyes. "I guess I'll send Darren over."
---
The part that Greta knew about meeting the boy next door was when her dad called her attention away from the box of car magazines she was rifling though. He wasn't alone. She had to squint to see the boy who was with him through the sunlight right over their heads. The boy was all hands and feet attached like an afterthought to his skinny limbs. His shoulders were sharp angles under his t-shirt and his hair was sticking up from his forehead only by accident.
"Greta, this is Darren," he dad was saying. "He lives next door."
"Hi," Greta said.
Darren waved before shoving his hands back in his pocket.
"Why don't the two of you go play?" her dad prompted.
Greta frowned. "I can't find any toys."
"I have a swing set," Darren volunteered.
"Really?" Greta asked, perking up.
"Why don't you go over to Darren's house and play on his swing set?"
"But my piano." Her face fell again.
"I'll holler for you when the boys get here and we're ready to move it."
Greta scowled thoughtfully. On the one hand, she was concerned for her piano. On the other, the promise of a swing set was far more appealing than more moving. Eventually she nodded and followed Darren through their front lawns and the door in the side of his chain link fence, up to the swing set in the middle of his backyard.
"You have a piano?" Darren asked when he was hanging upside down by his knees from the crossbar on his swing set.
"Uh-huh," Greta nodded enthusiastically. "I'm a concert pianist." She said it with a grand flourish from the top of the arc she was swinging in. She had her second ever recital the weekend before, Ms. Deborah said that made her one and Greta was very proud of it. Dad said she couldn't take lessons from Ms. Deborah anymore, though, it was too far across town; it made her very sad.
"I have a drum," Darren announced. His face was beet red from being upside down so long.
"Really?" Greta stopped pumping her legs. "Can I see?"
Darren nodded eagerly. He grabbed the chains of the swings on either side of him, making her arc wildly to one side and forcing her to bring her legs up to stop herself from crashing into the post of the swing set. When she was still enough he fell on his knees in a somewhat graceful flip. Greta was impressed. He ran up the porch steps past his dad, who was playing with dolls on the table, and disappeared through the sliding glass door. Greta began moving her legs again, hoping to get so high all she could see was blue, blue sky by the time he got back.
She was almost there when she spied him through the door again. Her legs stopped at the sight. In front of him was a big drum as wide as him and almost as tall.
"Do you need a hand?" Mr. Wilson asked.
Darren shook his head. He had his arms through ropes that were crisscrossed on the side of the drum and he was pulling it very carefully down the stairs. By the time he brought it over, Greta's swing was mostly still.
"That is a very wonderful drum," Greta told him solemnly. Her eyes were huge, taking in the dark wood and the bright, rough rope on the side. She wondered what it would sound like. Her fingers itched to find out.
"I know," Darren smiled proudly. "Come on." He carried it to the ladder up to the slide and sat on the steps, demonstrating how the sound changed when he hit the top in different spots with different parts of his hands. Greta climbed up the side of the ladder to be able to hit it as well.
"Kids," Mr. Wilson called eventually. "Why don't you play that up here so both of you can stand on chairs."
That night, after the truck was unloaded and Greta's piano made it safely into the living room ("You'll get the best light in here," her mom said, "It will be even better than before"), she sat on the carpet between her mom and dad telling them all about Darren and his drum over pizza.
"His dad's weird," her dad grumbled when she took a breath.
"Ben," her mom scolded just as Greta frowned and said, "He is not."
"He was playing with dolls."
"He was staging a battle scene from Beowulf," Greta told him. "He read it to us. It was cool." After the first time he read through Beowulf fighting Grendel, he and Greta moved the dolls in cues from the story while Darren played along on his drum, slow and creepy when Grendel sneaked up on the sleeping hall, louder when he snatched up the men, fast and wild when Beowulf struck. It was so cool, just like watching a movie, except better because the three of them were making it themselves.
"Whatever," her dad said, cramming his last bite into his mouth. "I'm going to unpack a towel."
Greta scowled at her pizza, picking at the crust with her blunt fingers.
"Don't listen to him, sweetie," her mom said. "I'm glad you had fun today. Darren sounds nice. You should invite him over soon."
"Can we play tomorrow?"
"If Darren's dad says it's okay." She combed her fingers through Greta's long hair. "How about if after you finish your pizza and clean up, we play something on the piano together?" It made Greta brighten up. She loved playing with her mom, there usually wasn't enough time for it.
Two days after meeting Darren, the bright sunlight was streaming in through the Salpeter's living room and catching on the white piano and white walls and white carpet only to make the room so bright that she pretended all the angles blended together except for the black keys and Darren's dark drum and the two of them themselves. "We are best friends," Greta declared grandly.
"All right," Darren nodded. "Listen to this," he said, tapping out a rhythm so complicated that his hands tripped over themselves once making it work.
On the morning of her last day of eighth grade, Greta sat at the kitchen table steadfastly ignoring her mother.
Her mom sighed at her. "Greta, it's the arts magnet school. It will be the best fit for you. Besides, didn't you say your friend Charlotte is going there?"
Greta made a face. "She's not really my friend, Mom. Darren is my friend. I want to go to school with him." She hadn't ever gone to school with Darren.
"Honey," her mom sighed. "I really think this program is the best fit for you. And if you aren't thriving there after a year, we'll reevaluate. Darren’s a year ahead of you anyway, FBR is such a big school that you probably wouldn’t see each other much.”
“Well we definitely won’t see each other now,” she grumbled.
Her mom gave her an arch look. “You should get going before you're late for school."
Greta pressed her lips together in a thin, displeased line, but she grabbed her backpack and headed for the door anyway. Outside was like walking into a wall of building humidity; the lazy breeze did nothing but muss her hair and plaid skirt and shove the morning chill out of the air. It made her starchy dress shirt feel even more constricting than usual. The rest of the All Holy Names kids from her neighborhood were already at the corner waiting for the bus.
Thomas nodded at her when she sat next to him on Mr. Harris' retaining wall. They were well away from the rest of the kids, especially from Andy, Jesse, and Thomas Hunter. It made Greta roll her eyes, but Thomas offered her an earbud. He switched the song to something she didn't immediately recognize, something electronic with sharp keyboards. She closed her eyes to try to parse out the notes but something about the distortion made it difficult.
A honking made her jump, just a little. The rest of the kids were on the bus and the driver was giving them the hairy eyeball. Greta scrambled up the stairs, ignoring the way the rest of the kids already seated were laughing. She and Thomas slouched into the first empty seat she found and the bus was rumbling forward.
Thomas shoved his backpack between his legs and twisted the cord to his earbuds between his fingers. He was staring at it like the way he made his fingertips change colors was fascinating. "Hey," Greta said finally. "What's up?"
"It's freaking hot in here already," Thomas complained.
She rolled her eyes but she had to agree, so she sat on her knees and dropped the window as far as it would go. She settled back around on the bench and tried to keep her hair from whipping up in the wind. "Now you don't have that to whine about. Are you going to tell me what's wrong or are we going to spend all day with you sulking?"
"I'm not sulking," Thomas insisted indignantly.
She gave him her best approximation of her mom's BS Detector raised eyebrow. It was only slightly ruined by the bus jerking to an unexpected stop, crashing her face into the back of the next seat before she caught herself, because he snorted but Thomas said, "They still aren't speaking to me."
"Maybe if you apologized for being a tremendous jerkface they would stop giving you the stink eye."
Thomas gaped at her for a second before sticking his tongue out at her. She rolled her eyes. They settled back in their seats when the bus started up again, the wind pulling at her hair again. She gathered it at the base of her neck and tamed it with the hair tie from her wrist.
"Have you decided what high school you're going to?" he asked.
"My mom said I'm going to the arts magnet school."
"Awesome! Maybe we'll have classes together." Thomas offered her an earbud again. That time, it was playing something she recognized as Oscar Peterson. She grinned and played air piano along with it, completely unable to keep up with Oscar even in her mind's eye.
She said goodbye to Thomas when the bus parked in front of the school and headed toward the church still humming the melody, trying to decipher all the notes she could remember. She swept past the rows left open for community members and took her seat between Ani and Emily sitting at the edge of the pews assigned to their homeroom.
"What are you doing this weekend?" Emily asked when she sat. "I met this really cool guy."
"Seriously?" Ani was somewhat skeptical.
"No, no not like that," Emily defended. "He's my brother's friend and he's totally in to music, you should hear him." Greta and Ani looked at each other before turning to Emily with skeptical expressions. Emily flushed. "He knows Charlotte! And I'm going over to her house on Saturday to watch a movie and he might be there and I thought you might want to go with, but if you're both going to be such horrible friends then--"
Father Alastair cleared his throat from the pulpit. "Please bow your heads," he said in a way that made it absolutely clear that it wasn't a suggestion. His voice was frail and withered, but it boomed throughout the chapel like it had since Greta started attending All Holy Names, like it probably had for ever. His sermon echoed through the nave like the clerestory was amplifying it, then sucking up the words when he began a new prayer as though it would hold on to them forever.
After lunch they were given the choice between sports in the field, a movie in the gym, or messing around in the music room.
It was really no contest in Greta's mind where she wanted to spend the rest of her last day at All Holy Names.
Most of the band and choir kids were already horsing around in the music room when she got there. Thomas was sitting in the back bent over a notebook, too obviously oblivious to Hunter, Andy, and Jesse messing around with maracas to actually be oblivious of them.
She dropped her backpack on the ground and flopped down beside him. "You could always apologize," she suggested over the noise.
"You could always be on my side," he suggested right back. "Seeing as how you're my friend and all."
"Just because I'm your friend doesn't mean I'm going to let your asshattery go uncalled."
"Oh whatever. What do you think about this?" He pointed to his notebook with the nub of his eraser.
She let him get away with the change of subject because the lyrics he pointed out actually had potential. "How are you going to sing it?"
By the time Mrs. Montgomery was getting misty-eyed telling them that it was a pleasure to conduct them over the year and it was time they clean out their lockers, the only conclusion Greta and Thomas had come to over any of their respective songs was that the other was always wrong rather than how it could be fixed. The lopsidedness of their discussions was always enough to set Greta's frustrations to the point where she rolled her eyes more often than she looked straight on at something.
That time, the frustration carried her right to her locker, making her slam the door against Nick Santino's quite a bit more violently than was actually necessary.
"Uh, Greta?" Nick asked. "You okay?"
"I'm fine," she grated.
"Then could you, like, not slam your locker on my arm again?"
She flushed. "Sorry."
"No problem." Nick grinned with genuine good-nature. She'd had a locker next to him since they were in fifth grade and moved over to the older kids' wing of the building. Whenever she thought of it, she thought Nick seemed like a nice guy with brave taste in accessories, someone she meant to get to know.
Except they never did more than say hi to each other.
"Hey, Nick, are you going to FBR High or St. John's?" she asked him.
"St. John's." He made a face. "Where are you going?"
She shrugged. "DD I guess."
His jaw dropped. "Dude, seriously? I kind of hate you. I couldn't convince my parents that I don't actually need to go to any more Catholic school ever."
Greta shrugged, again, at a loss for what else to say. Someone called from down the hall, "Nick, come on my sister's here!" and Nick was slamming his empty locker shut and shouldering his backpack. "Nice being locker buddies, I guess." He waved and walked toward the main doors. Greta was left staring at the year's worth of crumpled notes and loose pieces of sheet music. She couldn't decide if she felt like she was missing out on something or not.
"Hey, Greta," Emily called. "Hurry up, you don't want to miss the buses. I'll call you about this weekend!"
Greta waved at Emily and Ani as they walked toward the bus line up and got busy shoving the contents of her locker into her backpack.
She sat next to Thomas on the way home mainly because he moved his backpack when she walked by and looked up at her so hopefully. She huffed out a frustrated sigh after she sat that set her bangs flying. "If you're going to keep being such a jerk, you might want to learn how to apologize." He offered her an earbud and held out his iPod so she had control over the wheel with a hopeful look. "With, like, words. Not just gestures." But she took the earbud.
Thomas might have muttered a "sorry" but the bus's engine rumbled to life then, radio blaring in the middle of "Hotel California" which proved too loud to tell for sure.
"Thank you," Greta said back. She settled on an old Beach Boys song.
When they got off at their stop, the rest of the neighborhood kids ran off waving their ties and shedding their blazers. Thomas and Greta lingered in the wake of the bus.
Greta kicked at a dandelion. "We're gonna be starting high school next year," she told him. "With, like, no one we know."
"I know, I know. We're starting DD in like three months." He sighed, dreamier than Greta felt. "At least we'll have each other, though, right?"
"Yeah," she agreed.
"You wanna--you have my number, right?" Thomas asked, scratching at his hair. "You should call me and we'll hang out or something. I mean, I know you spend all summer attached to that Darren kid's hip, but if you want to hang out... we should."
"Cool," Greta agreed. "Have a good summer."
"You, too."
They both went down opposite sides of the block.
After Greta shed her uniform in favor of shorts and a t-shirt; she ran back out the front door and across their lawns to bang on Darren's door. She turned the knob without waiting for an answer, kicked off her slip-ons, and yelled, "Hi!" She could hear the sound of Darren's drums faintly.
"Hello, Greta," Mr. Wilson called from the study. "Darren's in the garage."
She shouted, "Thanks, Mr. Wilson," and followed the hallway past what was the dining room in her house but was the largest study she'd ever seen in the Wilson's. She waved at Mr. Wilson as she passed before crossing into the kitchen and throwing the garage door open. Darren was behind his kit playing with manic energy. He grinned at her without faltering his rhythm, not stopping until he was at the end of his song.
"Hey," he said over the resonating of the ride cymbal. "Summer break!" he crowed triumphantly. "It's gonna be awesome! Dad said we can have celebratory pizza tonight, you in?"
"Sure.” She could feel the beginnings of a pout cross her face, she forced her expression to settle into a more mature frown. “I need something to save my day."
"It's the last day of school,” Darren pointed out. “How does that need saving?"
She sat at the keyboard she rescued from a neighbor's garage sale years before and her shoulders slumped; she turned it on and listlessly played her scales. "Mom said I have to go to DD," she informed him sullenly. "Nine years of Catholic school and I was supposed to pick where I went to high school, but nooo, she has to use that to piss off my dad, too."
A frown deeply creased Darren's face, his mouth dropped open and an offended noise escaped. "That seriously blows. She won't listen to you?"
"No." She crushed the keys under her palms; it made a loud, ugly sound but when she cut it off a second later she felt a little better.
"But we were going to be at the same school." Darren looked as crestfallen about it as she felt.
It made her feel better.
She huffed out a sigh of frustration. "Let's just practice, okay?"
"Do you want to play my kit when we're done?"
Greta grinned in spite of her mood. Darren was her favorite best friend ever. "Sure!" They would actually have time for it, too. It was Friday night, with a whole summer of Friday nights ahead of them.
Greta nudged Darren with her shoulder against the sharp jut of his when the movie was at an infinitely boring point of exposition that just barely made sense even when she was paying attention. "Huh?" Darren grunted without taking his eyes from the screen.
"What are we doing this weekend?" she asked with renewed determination. Whaling on Darren's kit until Mr. Wilson declared it time for pizza and for the sticks to be put away before Mrs. Hunter called to complain (again) and settling in front of the television for movie night made everything begin to look up. Plus, "First weekend of freedom!"
"I have to go to my dad's faculty party on Saturday." Darren made a face.
“Movie marathon after practice on Sunday?”
Darren tore his eyes away from the screen with a delighted grin reflecting the blue light from the TV. "I have in my possession a previously unwatched copy of Christopher Lambert in an incredibly atrocious retelling of Beowulf."
Greta's eyes lit up with the awesomeness of it. "Your dad got his new class approved?"
Darren nodded, the blue light from the TV casting deeper shadows under his eyes and adding something malicious to his joy. "He said we can catalog the different representations of Beowulf in popular media with him. He'll pay us in tacos."
Greta slugged him in the back of his bony shoulder.
“Hey, what was that for?”
"I can't believe you didn't tell me that right away! Darren, Darren this summer is going to be awesome!"
"It totally will be," Darren replied, and Greta heard a promise in it that made up for the knowledge that come September they would be at different schools again.
September was three months away, and they had things to do before that.
By the time the hero had stolen his last car and driven off into the sunset, the phone rang and Mr. Wilson called, "Greta, your mother would like you to come home now."
Greta made a face. To Darren she said, "Any chance of getting out of it early on Saturday?"
"No. We have to stay for the whole thing since Dad's on some committee now. Sunday, though." He grinned broadly, most likely in anticipation of how awesome their Sunday would be. "I promise we won't start the movie without you."
"Work on beats for our new song?" Greta suggested.
"Yeah, definitely."
"Bye, Mr. Wilson!" Greta yelled when she was on her way out. Mr. Wilson poked his head out of the kitchen when she was almost through the hallway and said, "Goodnight, Greta. Say hello to your mother for us." He had a stripe of flour down his face that made his cheeks seem even redder.
She said, "Sure," and slipped on her shoes. She ran through the cloud of gnats halfway between their front yards and the too-long grass that tickled at her ankles, and threw open the door. "Hi, Mom," she called. Then dutifully, "Mr. Wilson said to say hello from him and Darren."
Greta's mom looked up from her book and smiled pleasantly. "Such a nice man. Did you eat something other than popcorn?"
"We had celebratory pizza." Greta flopped down on the couch next to her mom. "Also, really bad action movies. I need to think of something atrocious to inflict on Darren for that."
"Maybe on my next day off," she suggested conspiratorially, "we can go to the library and see if they've gotten any new Lifetime movies."
Greta grinned, broadly. She might be completely unfair in her dictation of Greta's scholastic career, but sometimes, Greta had the coolest mom ever.
"Emily called while you were at Darren's. She said it's absolutely dire that you call her back regardless of the time. Are you two making plans for the weekend?
"Kind of. She wants to go to a movie at Charlotte's house or something, there's this guy she likes who's supposed to be there."
"Any guys you'll like there?"
"No, I wouldn't even know anyone there other than Emily, Ani, and Charlotte probably, but Darren's dad has this faculty thing on Saturday Darren has to go to."
"You should go," her mom said. "Maybe some kids from school will be there." The 'maybe some kids from your new school that I'm going to send you to against your will even though I pinkie promised you in fifth grade that you could go to public high school with Darren' was left implied. Greta made a face and muttered, "yeah, whatever."
"Come on. I'll give you my cell phone and if it's totally lame, you can call me and I'll come pick you up."
"Mom, no one says 'totally lame.' That's--" Greta had to bite her tongue from finishing that it was ‘totally lame.’
Her mom let it roll off her, though. She just said, "Well excuse me. But you should still go, at least to hang out with Charlotte and Emily and Ani for awhile."
Greta’s shoulders jerked up around her ears, all good feeling suddenly gone.
She flopped on her bed and found the phone by the feel of the stickers she covered it with when she was younger among the clothes on her floor. She dialed Emily's number and sprawled back while it rang, twisting the cord in her fingers while she waited.
"Greta, thank fuck," Emily whispered fervently when she picked up the phone. "Please come? Please, please, please, please? You can bring that Darren kid with you!"
Greta rolled her eyes at the Harry Potter poster on her ceiling as if it would sympathize. "Darren's going to be busy."
"Does that mean you won't be?" Emily's voice sounded hopeful.
“I could stand to not stay at home tomorrow. Besides,” Greta sighed the put-upon sigh of the long suffering friend. "Someone has to make sure you don't do anything stupid, I guess."
"Shut up, jerk, that's totally my job. Also, thank you. Seriously, you need to see this guy. He's so cool and his hair is just...awesome."
"Whatever, you're giving me a ride. When are you picking me up?"
---
Darren wandered into the kitchen after he put his movie away. He jerked the refrigerator door open and pawed through the leftovers for a Mountain Dew from the back. "You don't need any more pop," his dad said. Darren looked over his shoulder, but his dad hadn't looked away from whatever he was mixing in the bowl. He rolled his eyes but put the can back where he found it and grabbed a Capri Sun instead. Some pictures of him and his dad from when Darren was a kid fluttered free from their magnets when he let the door shut. He bent to pick them up and shoved them back on the door before he hoisted himself up on the counter next to his dad. "What are you making?" he asked.
"I," his dad started grandly, Darren rolled his eyes. "Am attempting to recreate a typical bread recipe from which seventh century monks would likely have created pretiola."
Darren craned his neck to look at the twisted dough on the cookie sheet on the stove. He made an interested sound in the back of his throat. "They look like pretzels. Kind of."
His dad grinned at him. "That's exactly what they are. The shape is meant to resemble praying children, as a reward for those who knew their prayers."
"Huh. Can I eat one?"
"Do you remember your prayers?"
Darren bit down on a grin and held his palms together in front of him. "O merciful flying spaghetti monster," he intoned solemnly.
His dad laughed and handed him a cooked pretzel. “Have the two of you planned out the whole summer yet?”
Darren shrugged. “I just want to do band stuff.” He bit into the pretzel and made a face. “This tastes weird,” he said around his mouthful. He quickly washed it down with most of his Capri Sun.
“I didn’t say it was a very good reward.”
“No, it tastes weird for an actual pretzel.” He broke off a piece for his dad.
“That’s because it’s a pretiola,” he grumbled good naturedly as he took it. “Completely different. Somewhat.” He popped the piece in his mouth and his face immediately changed. “Oh. I may have added too much salt?”
“May?”
His dad swatted him with the towel from over his shoulder. “Everyone’s a critic. We should pick up your summer book list this weekend. What do you have to read?”
“I just need to read Don Quixote and Great Expectations for World Lit.”
“Don Quixote, now there’s a novel I think you’ll enjoy. I had a professor once who insisted one could not be considered an intelligent individual until one had read the adventures of the great Don three times.”
Darren shrugged and flattened the straw of his juice with his molars. Around it he said, “I only need to read it the once for class.”
His dad laughed. “Of course. I’m sure I have a copy out in the study. Why don’t you look for it and get an early start?”
Darren rolled his eyes. “You’re the only person who can find anything in there.”
His dad gave him an exaggeratedly scandalized look. “Are you telling me my filing system is nonsensical?”
Darren rolled his eyes again, this time so vigorously that it hurt. “Whatever. I’m going upstairs.” He hopped down from the counter and tossed his Capri Sun in the trash.
---
On Saturday, Greta, armed with her mom's cell phone, a crisp twenty folded in the pocket of her shorts, and her best unimpressed look, crammed into the back seat of Emily's mom's Beetle between Emily and Ani for the fifteen minutes it took to get to Charlotte's house.
Charlotte opened the front door with a flourish when they rang the doorbell, keeping her dog from lunging out the door with one gracefully held out foot. "Excellent. I so thought you were never going to make it." She looked at Ani and Greta, a little surprised but welcoming. "I thought you weren't coming?"
"And miss Emily making an idiot of herself over a guy?" Ani said with a smile suggesting the travesty in such a thing. "Never."
Charlotte laughed and led them through the house, picking up the largest bowl of popcorn Greta had ever seen on the way through the kitchen. "It's going to be totally awesome," she agreed. "Hey, Greta, I heard the good news."
"What?" Greta frowned, genuinely uncomprehending.
"About DD? Wouldn't it be awesome to have some classes together?"
Greta shrugged. "Yeah, I guess."
Charlotte stopped in her tracks. Emily was following so closely that she bumped into her back and popcorn spilled on the floor; Charlotte's dog crashed into their feet in his rush to eat it up. "Aren't you excited?"
"She's crushed about going to the one school the rest of us would kill to get to go to because Darren won't be there." Ani rolled her eyes.
"Shut up," Greta muttered. "You don't even know how it is."
"Her life," Ani sighed theatrically. "So hard."
"Shut up," Greta told her again, that time she dug her hand into the popcorn bowl for something to throw at her for emphasis.
Ani stuck her tongue out and jumped back on one foot so Charlotte’s dog could eat the popcorn without getting her toes in the process.
"That's a waste of good popcorn," a guy Greta doesn't recognize sitting on the couch Charlotte was leading them to said. He shook his head gravely as if mourning the loss of a dear, unfortunate comrade.
"In war," Greta responded solemnly, "sometimes sacrifices must be made."
The guy tilted his head in acknowledgment. There was a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
"That's Bob," she told them, pointing to the redhead who had conceded defeat. "He goes to DD." She gave Greta a pointed look before pointing at the brunet with hair falling artfully in his eyes. "That's Chris." She pointed at the girl with vibrantly orange hair sitting beside him. "That's Hayley." She pointed to the guy sitting on the floor against their feet with long, brown curls. "And that's Drew." She pointed to each of them in turn, "This is Emily, Greta, and Ani."
"Hey," Emily said with suspiciously casual nonchalance. She moved past Charlotte to sit within arm's reach of Drew. Ani and Greta shared a smirk and took up the empty loveseat.
"What do we want to watch?" Charlotte asked.
"Monsters Inc.," Hayley declared.
"No," Chris whined, but Charlotte was already pulling the case from the shelf.
On the floor, Emily asked Drew with a casual flick of her hair, "Do you like this movie?"
Drew shrugged absently. "Yeah, sure."
Ani snorted, making Greta have to hide a giggle behind her hand. Emily threw them a glare before looking back to Drew. Charlotte settled sideways in the recliner next to Hayley's arm of the couch and pressed play on the remote, disregarding the one sided conversation from the floor in favor of turning up the volume enough to drown it out.
When the alarm went off on screen and Sully started his work out, Chris said, "This scene would be more epic with 'Eye of the Tiger' in the background."
"'Eye of the Tiger' is overrated," Greta dismissed with a flick of her wrist.
Ani added, "Give me a training montage with '99 Luftballons' or something more unexpected."
"It's an uplifting training montage, not a jazzercise video," Chris argued.
Greta snorted. “Aren’t they basically the same thing?”
“You know what would be unexpected?” Bob observed thoughtfully. “If ‘Eye of the Tiger’ was rapped instead.” He started the chorus as if to prove it, complete with scratching and Chris impersonating a beat box until they couldn’t keep from laughing along with the rest of them anymore. Chris lost it first.
"Come on, time to go," Emily announced after she pocketed her cell phone, barely covering her disappointment.
Greta looked up from the conversation she and Bob had been having about the underappreciated genius of Brian Wilson. The credits on the movie were ending, final peels of music dying off. Ani had abandoned her for Charlotte and Hayley at some point, and Chris had taken her seat.
She shrugged. "Later."
"It was good seeing you again," Drew called after them as they left. Emily's face immediately started to turn bright red. She didn't look back to shout in response, "Yeah, totally."
"Did you girls have fun?" Emily's mom asked when they slid in the back seat.
"Emily and Greta did," Ani said teasingly.
Emily's mom arched an eyebrow in the rear view mirror. "Oh?" Emily's face managed to get even redder.
"Not like that." Greta shrugged. "Bob was nice. He plays guitar. We talked about our bands." An idea was already formulating in the back of her mind.
---
Darren followed sluggishly behind his dad as they made their way up the street to the Elephant Bar. His dad waved at some of the people standing in the patio as they got closer; Darren's hands stayed balled in his pockets, one around his iPod as he tried to think of how he could sneak it. "Just come say hello, then you can go find the other kids."
Darren rolled his eyes. "Sure, Dad."
His dad stopped just inside the door of the restaurant. He leveled a steady stare at Darren and said, "I know you don't want to be here, but please make the best of this. It's important to me."
"Yeah, Dad," he muttered.
Satisfied enough, his dad turned and led the way to where the hostess indicated. One corner of the dining room was packed with people from the college. Darren followed dutifully at his dad’s elbow through the throng of faculty.
“Roger! Speak of the devil!” an older woman called.
“Hello, Teresa. Darren, come here.” His dad’s hand came down on Darren’s shoulder to push him closer to the table. “You remember Dr. LeBlanc and Dr. Mrotek, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Hi.” He waved. Dr. LeBlanc was a slight woman wearing a sweater despite the June heat. She leaned over the table with her hands clasped in front of her and a warm smile. Dr. Mrotek was closer to Darren’s dad’s age; he waved back with a welcoming smile.
“My goodness, Darren,” Dr. LeBlanc said. “You’re so much taller! How old are you now?”
“I’m almost 16.”
“How time flies!” She laughed pleasantly and turned to the younger woman sitting at her other elbow. “When Roger here first joined our department Darren was just a baby--he wasn’t more than two or three, was he, Roger? And, poor thing, he got so very sick on the day of Roger’s first class--”
“Oh, god,” Darren groaned to himself. He covered his face like that would make the story stop.
“The daycare wouldn’t take him in case he gave the rest of the kids whatever he had,” his dad added.
“--so I took pity on the poor boys and agreed to watch him while Roger was in class. Poor Darren got so upset when Roger left him in my office that he vomited, all over the lecture notes I was working on!”
The woman laughed, slapping her hand over her mouth. “Oh my god, what did you do?”
“Took over Roger’s desk until the stench cleared, of course.”
“We’re lucky she didn’t fire me on the spot,” his dad said as he ruffled Darren’s hair before Darren could jerk his head out of the way.
“Oh how rude of us,” Dr. LeBlanc said. “Here we are telling embarrassing stories about Darren to someone he hasn’t even been introduced to. Darren, this is Eden Reynolds. She’s an assistant professor.”
“It’s nice to finally meet you,” she said, holding out her hand across the table. Darren shook it, awkwardly.
Dr. LeBlanc said, “Do you remember my grandson Mike? I believe he and the other children are in the arcade in back.”
Darren looked to his dad hopefully. His dad gave him a nod of permission, and Darren took off for the buffet table en route to the arcade.
He stood by the entrance of the arcade eating a slice of pizza. He surveyed the handful of games, all crowed with other kids. He recognized most of them from years previous, even some from school. His other hand slid into the pocket with his iPod and he changed tactic, looking for an escape to somewhere he could listen to it instead.
Someone shoved into Darren from the side. He lurched over, he would’ve hit his head on the wall but a solid hand caught him around the arm and held him upright. “Shit, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he mumbled.
“Are you sure?” the guy asked. There was a concerned look on his face. His hand was still on Darren’s arm, warm and strong. He shuffled closer. “Dude, did you hit your head?” He was shorter than Darren, but older. His shirt was unbuttoned low enough that Darren could see a peel of tan, tan skin end at a bright swirl of color. He dropped his eyes to the floor. The tips of their dirty Converses were practically touching.
Darren shook off his hand, in the process brushing the guy’s arm. He didn’t think he was imagining the contour of muscle under his fingers. He jerked back, smacking into the wall and feeling his face flame up. Darren winced and cupped the back of his head where it hit.
The guy looked at him like Darren said he was thinking about growing two heads. “Are you--”
“I’m fine!” he said, feeling like an idiot for how high and awkward his voice sounded when he did. He slid past the guy to try and lose himself in the crowd. He glanced around the room from his eyelashes to try and figure out if everyone else was paying attention to him.
Darren spotted Mike in front of the Mortal Combat game at the back of the room. He made a beeline for it. “Hey, dude.”
Mike darted a look at Darren before looking back at the screen. “Darren. Sup?” he asked.
“Nothing--dude look out!” He gestured at the screen just as Mike’s character was killed.
Mike slapped the joystick. “Damn.” The screen switched to the ‘game over’ menu. “Wanna play?”
---
On Sunday morning Greta was craning her neck over her keyboard to look at the clock through the open door of the Wilson's garage. The second hand was taunting them, inching its way toward noon extra slowly. She could hear Darren's foot tapping against the concrete rushing the beat of the clock like that would speed it up. The second hand swept past the nine, the ten. As it leisured its way past the eleven Darren counted them in, their first notes clashed with the chime for twelve, and loud and fast and barely in tune with each other in the excitement. Darren grinned at her over his ride cymbal and she laughed back, nodding with his beat until their cacophony evened into a song.
"From the top," she called to him over the expanse of garage between them as he played the refrain again. He nodded with the last measure of it and they began again. It wasn't perfect yet--her fingers stumbled over some of the notes and the insubstantial clicks of his sticks sometimes clanging together over a drum roll were distracting, but when the song was finished clapping erupted from the doorway.
"That's really coming along well," Mr. Wilson complimented. "That's the NOFX song, right?"
"Yeah, Dad," Darren answered with just a hint of exasperated embarrassment.
Greta made a face at him. To Mr. Wilson she said, "Thank you."
He inclined his head and twirled his hand in a regal almost-bow, it made Greta laugh. "I've got to go to my office for a few hours of research. Will you two be all right by yourselves?"
"Yes, Dad." Greta didn't need to see him to know that Darren was rolling his eyes. "Oh," he started with less attitude. "Is this for the modern Beowulf thing? Greta said she'd help watch the movies."
"I thought you might enjoy that. We could do with a refresher on the story--"
"--oh, can we stage it again?" Greta asked excitedly.
"Please?" Darren added.
"Of course," Mr. Wilson assured. "Just decide when you want to start."
"My mom has an overnight shift next week," Greta suggested.
"Perfect. Leftover pizza is in the fridge, I should be home before dinner--Greta, do you think you'll be staying over?"
"No, my mom's having a 'friend' over, I have to meet him."
A beat later Mr. Wilson said, "Ah, well then. I'll be home in a bit. Listen for the phone." He waved.
"Bye, Dad."
"Bye, Mr. Wilson." She rifled through the music on her stand. To Darren she said, "Do you want to play 'Bohemian Rhapsody' next?”
“Your reading might go faster if you turned off the TV,” his dad suggested.
“Uh huh.” He was watching the screen above the edge of his book and reading on commercial breaks.
“What chapter are you on?”
Darren sighed and tore his eyes away from the TV. He flipped back a couple of pages and read, “‘Chapter eight, of the good fortune which the valiant Don Quixote had in the terrible and undreamt-of adventure of the windmills, with other occurrences worthy to be fitly recorded.’”
“Ah, the most famous episode. What do you think so far?”
“It’s dumb. He’s seeing things that aren’t there and Sancho’s just going along with it. Why?”
His dad laughed. “It wouldn’t be much of a story if he didn’t.”
“That’s not a good excuse!”
His dad waved him off. “You’re missing the point, Darren. The story is about trying to hold on to the way things were in the face of changing times.”
Darren persisted. “The story is about Don Quixote losing his mind.”
His dad laughed. “Yes, that too.”
“You know, I’m pretty sure we’re only supposed to read the abridged version.”
“You have the whole summer ahead of you, it’ll do you good.” Darren made a face at the thick, battered book in his hands. “Do you have any plans today?”
“Nah, Greta’s at her dad’s.”
“Oh good,” his dad said, swooping in to grab the remote from beside Darren. “You’ll have plenty of time to warm up to the Don.” He settled in the La-Z-boy and changed the channel. “You’ll find it easier if you read without other distraction.”
“You suck,” Darren muttered mutinously as he slammed his book shut and stomped out of the room. His dad’s laughter followed him out.
Part One | Part Two | Part Three
Band(s): The Hush Sound (with guest appearances by Charlotte Sometimes, Paramore, Gym Class Heroes, The Cab, Forgive Durden, Panic at the Disco, and a few others)
Pairing(s): Chris/Greta, pre-Bob/Darren
Word Count: 26,035
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Note: Betaed by the incomparable wordscomekinda who has done everything to see this thing finished short of writing it herself. Thank you for putting up with me, bb. You pretty much deserve a medal. Also Emily was the tour manager for The Hush Sound at one point (I believe this is her) and Ani was someone Greta blogged about coming on tour with them.
Summary: Greta and Darren have been best friends since the day Greta's family moved next door, until high school and new friends and a few misunderstandings mess everything up.
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | or read it on DreamWidth.org in one part
Bonus Tracks/Enhanced Content
Fanart:
She pulled her hair back, holding it behind her head in a messy bun. She raised herself on her tip toes as though she were wearing heels and she turned to the side to look at her silhouette, considering. by nasssty_slyth
Fanmix:
Fanmix by contrariangie
Greta was standing in the back of a big yellow truck she had driven over in with her dad, dancing back and forth in the space slowly becoming devoid of boxes and jumping up to see the rim of her piano just peaking over the tops of them. "It hasn't gone anywhere, Greta," her dad told her tersely. "It'll come out faster if you help carry boxes inside."
"I'm helping," she insisted. She illustrated her point by handing her dad the box marked "sheat musick!" in lime green Sharpie and her own imprecise and sloppy handwriting.
"Greta," he started; his voice was getting louder. She frowned.
"Ben," her mom said sharply. Greta startled. She hadn’t seen her coming. "Don't." He turned back toward their new house grumbling. To Greta she asked more softly, "Will you hand me a box, please?" Greta nodded, once, and chewed on her lip considering the boxes in front of her. She pulled at one that said "Greta's movies (and recitals)" in her mom's red Sharpie and perfect round letters. "Excellent choice," she said sincerely. Greta grinned back.
She turned to pace the plywood again, considering whether or not her dad would appreciate it if she gave him the box marked "Ben's books" in sharp black lines next when she spotted movement out of the corner of her eye. She could see the curtain moving in the front window of the house next door. At the same time, she saw her dad marching along the stone walkway from the front door back to the truck. Greta gripped the box of books on either side and pulled it toward the edge of the truck.
At least that was the idea. The box was a lot heavier than she anticipated, the cardboard slipped from between her palms without budging and she stumbled backward. Her dad's hands were around her waist, lifting her down from the truck bed and setting her on the pavement. "That's it," he said. "Go play somewhere."
"But where?" she asked, scowling. There was no swing set in the backyard and all of her things were in the truck.
"I don't care, somewhere you won't get hurt." He picked up a box--the wrong box--and hefted it over her head when she tried to point it out, marching back into the house and ignoring her.
She made faces at his back until she saw the curtain next door move again. That time she saw a boy's face in the window before it was covered again.
"Honey," her mom said, "Why don't you look for your jump rope in the boxes in the garage?"
"But I don't want to."
"Daddy's stressed." That meant "please stay out of his way."
"Fine." Greta pouted at the ground. Her mom's hand was on her shoulder steering her toward the open garage, and she let herself be moved.
---
Ben Salpeter stepped out on the back porch, smacking his pack of cigarettes against his palm. There was a loud, metallic noise from the left, his head snapped around to locate it, but it was just the neighbor on his own porch. Ben stuck a cigarette between his lips and lit it, letting out his first drag of smoke in a relieved sigh. The neighbor didn't notice him, he was too engrossed in--Ben squinted to get a better look--the toys he had laid out on the table. “Weirdo,” he muttered under his breath. He wouldn't have drawn the neighbor’s attention to him, except the sight of the dolls he was arranging on a table made something ping in his memory.
"Hey there," Ben called, leaning on his forearms against the railing closest to the other house.
The other guy looked up, startled. "Oh. Hello there."
"Ben Salpeter. We're just moving in, my wife Veronica and my girl Greta."
"Roger Wilson," the other man said. "My son Darren should be around here somewhere."
That was what Ben thought he remembered. "The Ways mentioned you had a kid around my daughter's age. Do you think he would maybe come out and play with Greta? She keeps getting under foot."
"Well, sure," Roger said. He looked a little confused. Ben tried not to roll his eyes. "I guess I'll send Darren over."
---
The part that Greta knew about meeting the boy next door was when her dad called her attention away from the box of car magazines she was rifling though. He wasn't alone. She had to squint to see the boy who was with him through the sunlight right over their heads. The boy was all hands and feet attached like an afterthought to his skinny limbs. His shoulders were sharp angles under his t-shirt and his hair was sticking up from his forehead only by accident.
"Greta, this is Darren," he dad was saying. "He lives next door."
"Hi," Greta said.
Darren waved before shoving his hands back in his pocket.
"Why don't the two of you go play?" her dad prompted.
Greta frowned. "I can't find any toys."
"I have a swing set," Darren volunteered.
"Really?" Greta asked, perking up.
"Why don't you go over to Darren's house and play on his swing set?"
"But my piano." Her face fell again.
"I'll holler for you when the boys get here and we're ready to move it."
Greta scowled thoughtfully. On the one hand, she was concerned for her piano. On the other, the promise of a swing set was far more appealing than more moving. Eventually she nodded and followed Darren through their front lawns and the door in the side of his chain link fence, up to the swing set in the middle of his backyard.
"You have a piano?" Darren asked when he was hanging upside down by his knees from the crossbar on his swing set.
"Uh-huh," Greta nodded enthusiastically. "I'm a concert pianist." She said it with a grand flourish from the top of the arc she was swinging in. She had her second ever recital the weekend before, Ms. Deborah said that made her one and Greta was very proud of it. Dad said she couldn't take lessons from Ms. Deborah anymore, though, it was too far across town; it made her very sad.
"I have a drum," Darren announced. His face was beet red from being upside down so long.
"Really?" Greta stopped pumping her legs. "Can I see?"
Darren nodded eagerly. He grabbed the chains of the swings on either side of him, making her arc wildly to one side and forcing her to bring her legs up to stop herself from crashing into the post of the swing set. When she was still enough he fell on his knees in a somewhat graceful flip. Greta was impressed. He ran up the porch steps past his dad, who was playing with dolls on the table, and disappeared through the sliding glass door. Greta began moving her legs again, hoping to get so high all she could see was blue, blue sky by the time he got back.
She was almost there when she spied him through the door again. Her legs stopped at the sight. In front of him was a big drum as wide as him and almost as tall.
"Do you need a hand?" Mr. Wilson asked.
Darren shook his head. He had his arms through ropes that were crisscrossed on the side of the drum and he was pulling it very carefully down the stairs. By the time he brought it over, Greta's swing was mostly still.
"That is a very wonderful drum," Greta told him solemnly. Her eyes were huge, taking in the dark wood and the bright, rough rope on the side. She wondered what it would sound like. Her fingers itched to find out.
"I know," Darren smiled proudly. "Come on." He carried it to the ladder up to the slide and sat on the steps, demonstrating how the sound changed when he hit the top in different spots with different parts of his hands. Greta climbed up the side of the ladder to be able to hit it as well.
"Kids," Mr. Wilson called eventually. "Why don't you play that up here so both of you can stand on chairs."
That night, after the truck was unloaded and Greta's piano made it safely into the living room ("You'll get the best light in here," her mom said, "It will be even better than before"), she sat on the carpet between her mom and dad telling them all about Darren and his drum over pizza.
"His dad's weird," her dad grumbled when she took a breath.
"Ben," her mom scolded just as Greta frowned and said, "He is not."
"He was playing with dolls."
"He was staging a battle scene from Beowulf," Greta told him. "He read it to us. It was cool." After the first time he read through Beowulf fighting Grendel, he and Greta moved the dolls in cues from the story while Darren played along on his drum, slow and creepy when Grendel sneaked up on the sleeping hall, louder when he snatched up the men, fast and wild when Beowulf struck. It was so cool, just like watching a movie, except better because the three of them were making it themselves.
"Whatever," her dad said, cramming his last bite into his mouth. "I'm going to unpack a towel."
Greta scowled at her pizza, picking at the crust with her blunt fingers.
"Don't listen to him, sweetie," her mom said. "I'm glad you had fun today. Darren sounds nice. You should invite him over soon."
"Can we play tomorrow?"
"If Darren's dad says it's okay." She combed her fingers through Greta's long hair. "How about if after you finish your pizza and clean up, we play something on the piano together?" It made Greta brighten up. She loved playing with her mom, there usually wasn't enough time for it.
Two days after meeting Darren, the bright sunlight was streaming in through the Salpeter's living room and catching on the white piano and white walls and white carpet only to make the room so bright that she pretended all the angles blended together except for the black keys and Darren's dark drum and the two of them themselves. "We are best friends," Greta declared grandly.
"All right," Darren nodded. "Listen to this," he said, tapping out a rhythm so complicated that his hands tripped over themselves once making it work.
On the morning of her last day of eighth grade, Greta sat at the kitchen table steadfastly ignoring her mother.
Her mom sighed at her. "Greta, it's the arts magnet school. It will be the best fit for you. Besides, didn't you say your friend Charlotte is going there?"
Greta made a face. "She's not really my friend, Mom. Darren is my friend. I want to go to school with him." She hadn't ever gone to school with Darren.
"Honey," her mom sighed. "I really think this program is the best fit for you. And if you aren't thriving there after a year, we'll reevaluate. Darren’s a year ahead of you anyway, FBR is such a big school that you probably wouldn’t see each other much.”
“Well we definitely won’t see each other now,” she grumbled.
Her mom gave her an arch look. “You should get going before you're late for school."
Greta pressed her lips together in a thin, displeased line, but she grabbed her backpack and headed for the door anyway. Outside was like walking into a wall of building humidity; the lazy breeze did nothing but muss her hair and plaid skirt and shove the morning chill out of the air. It made her starchy dress shirt feel even more constricting than usual. The rest of the All Holy Names kids from her neighborhood were already at the corner waiting for the bus.
Thomas nodded at her when she sat next to him on Mr. Harris' retaining wall. They were well away from the rest of the kids, especially from Andy, Jesse, and Thomas Hunter. It made Greta roll her eyes, but Thomas offered her an earbud. He switched the song to something she didn't immediately recognize, something electronic with sharp keyboards. She closed her eyes to try to parse out the notes but something about the distortion made it difficult.
A honking made her jump, just a little. The rest of the kids were on the bus and the driver was giving them the hairy eyeball. Greta scrambled up the stairs, ignoring the way the rest of the kids already seated were laughing. She and Thomas slouched into the first empty seat she found and the bus was rumbling forward.
Thomas shoved his backpack between his legs and twisted the cord to his earbuds between his fingers. He was staring at it like the way he made his fingertips change colors was fascinating. "Hey," Greta said finally. "What's up?"
"It's freaking hot in here already," Thomas complained.
She rolled her eyes but she had to agree, so she sat on her knees and dropped the window as far as it would go. She settled back around on the bench and tried to keep her hair from whipping up in the wind. "Now you don't have that to whine about. Are you going to tell me what's wrong or are we going to spend all day with you sulking?"
"I'm not sulking," Thomas insisted indignantly.
She gave him her best approximation of her mom's BS Detector raised eyebrow. It was only slightly ruined by the bus jerking to an unexpected stop, crashing her face into the back of the next seat before she caught herself, because he snorted but Thomas said, "They still aren't speaking to me."
"Maybe if you apologized for being a tremendous jerkface they would stop giving you the stink eye."
Thomas gaped at her for a second before sticking his tongue out at her. She rolled her eyes. They settled back in their seats when the bus started up again, the wind pulling at her hair again. She gathered it at the base of her neck and tamed it with the hair tie from her wrist.
"Have you decided what high school you're going to?" he asked.
"My mom said I'm going to the arts magnet school."
"Awesome! Maybe we'll have classes together." Thomas offered her an earbud again. That time, it was playing something she recognized as Oscar Peterson. She grinned and played air piano along with it, completely unable to keep up with Oscar even in her mind's eye.
She said goodbye to Thomas when the bus parked in front of the school and headed toward the church still humming the melody, trying to decipher all the notes she could remember. She swept past the rows left open for community members and took her seat between Ani and Emily sitting at the edge of the pews assigned to their homeroom.
"What are you doing this weekend?" Emily asked when she sat. "I met this really cool guy."
"Seriously?" Ani was somewhat skeptical.
"No, no not like that," Emily defended. "He's my brother's friend and he's totally in to music, you should hear him." Greta and Ani looked at each other before turning to Emily with skeptical expressions. Emily flushed. "He knows Charlotte! And I'm going over to her house on Saturday to watch a movie and he might be there and I thought you might want to go with, but if you're both going to be such horrible friends then--"
Father Alastair cleared his throat from the pulpit. "Please bow your heads," he said in a way that made it absolutely clear that it wasn't a suggestion. His voice was frail and withered, but it boomed throughout the chapel like it had since Greta started attending All Holy Names, like it probably had for ever. His sermon echoed through the nave like the clerestory was amplifying it, then sucking up the words when he began a new prayer as though it would hold on to them forever.
After lunch they were given the choice between sports in the field, a movie in the gym, or messing around in the music room.
It was really no contest in Greta's mind where she wanted to spend the rest of her last day at All Holy Names.
Most of the band and choir kids were already horsing around in the music room when she got there. Thomas was sitting in the back bent over a notebook, too obviously oblivious to Hunter, Andy, and Jesse messing around with maracas to actually be oblivious of them.
She dropped her backpack on the ground and flopped down beside him. "You could always apologize," she suggested over the noise.
"You could always be on my side," he suggested right back. "Seeing as how you're my friend and all."
"Just because I'm your friend doesn't mean I'm going to let your asshattery go uncalled."
"Oh whatever. What do you think about this?" He pointed to his notebook with the nub of his eraser.
She let him get away with the change of subject because the lyrics he pointed out actually had potential. "How are you going to sing it?"
By the time Mrs. Montgomery was getting misty-eyed telling them that it was a pleasure to conduct them over the year and it was time they clean out their lockers, the only conclusion Greta and Thomas had come to over any of their respective songs was that the other was always wrong rather than how it could be fixed. The lopsidedness of their discussions was always enough to set Greta's frustrations to the point where she rolled her eyes more often than she looked straight on at something.
That time, the frustration carried her right to her locker, making her slam the door against Nick Santino's quite a bit more violently than was actually necessary.
"Uh, Greta?" Nick asked. "You okay?"
"I'm fine," she grated.
"Then could you, like, not slam your locker on my arm again?"
She flushed. "Sorry."
"No problem." Nick grinned with genuine good-nature. She'd had a locker next to him since they were in fifth grade and moved over to the older kids' wing of the building. Whenever she thought of it, she thought Nick seemed like a nice guy with brave taste in accessories, someone she meant to get to know.
Except they never did more than say hi to each other.
"Hey, Nick, are you going to FBR High or St. John's?" she asked him.
"St. John's." He made a face. "Where are you going?"
She shrugged. "DD I guess."
His jaw dropped. "Dude, seriously? I kind of hate you. I couldn't convince my parents that I don't actually need to go to any more Catholic school ever."
Greta shrugged, again, at a loss for what else to say. Someone called from down the hall, "Nick, come on my sister's here!" and Nick was slamming his empty locker shut and shouldering his backpack. "Nice being locker buddies, I guess." He waved and walked toward the main doors. Greta was left staring at the year's worth of crumpled notes and loose pieces of sheet music. She couldn't decide if she felt like she was missing out on something or not.
"Hey, Greta," Emily called. "Hurry up, you don't want to miss the buses. I'll call you about this weekend!"
Greta waved at Emily and Ani as they walked toward the bus line up and got busy shoving the contents of her locker into her backpack.
She sat next to Thomas on the way home mainly because he moved his backpack when she walked by and looked up at her so hopefully. She huffed out a frustrated sigh after she sat that set her bangs flying. "If you're going to keep being such a jerk, you might want to learn how to apologize." He offered her an earbud and held out his iPod so she had control over the wheel with a hopeful look. "With, like, words. Not just gestures." But she took the earbud.
Thomas might have muttered a "sorry" but the bus's engine rumbled to life then, radio blaring in the middle of "Hotel California" which proved too loud to tell for sure.
"Thank you," Greta said back. She settled on an old Beach Boys song.
When they got off at their stop, the rest of the neighborhood kids ran off waving their ties and shedding their blazers. Thomas and Greta lingered in the wake of the bus.
Greta kicked at a dandelion. "We're gonna be starting high school next year," she told him. "With, like, no one we know."
"I know, I know. We're starting DD in like three months." He sighed, dreamier than Greta felt. "At least we'll have each other, though, right?"
"Yeah," she agreed.
"You wanna--you have my number, right?" Thomas asked, scratching at his hair. "You should call me and we'll hang out or something. I mean, I know you spend all summer attached to that Darren kid's hip, but if you want to hang out... we should."
"Cool," Greta agreed. "Have a good summer."
"You, too."
They both went down opposite sides of the block.
After Greta shed her uniform in favor of shorts and a t-shirt; she ran back out the front door and across their lawns to bang on Darren's door. She turned the knob without waiting for an answer, kicked off her slip-ons, and yelled, "Hi!" She could hear the sound of Darren's drums faintly.
"Hello, Greta," Mr. Wilson called from the study. "Darren's in the garage."
She shouted, "Thanks, Mr. Wilson," and followed the hallway past what was the dining room in her house but was the largest study she'd ever seen in the Wilson's. She waved at Mr. Wilson as she passed before crossing into the kitchen and throwing the garage door open. Darren was behind his kit playing with manic energy. He grinned at her without faltering his rhythm, not stopping until he was at the end of his song.
"Hey," he said over the resonating of the ride cymbal. "Summer break!" he crowed triumphantly. "It's gonna be awesome! Dad said we can have celebratory pizza tonight, you in?"
"Sure.” She could feel the beginnings of a pout cross her face, she forced her expression to settle into a more mature frown. “I need something to save my day."
"It's the last day of school,” Darren pointed out. “How does that need saving?"
She sat at the keyboard she rescued from a neighbor's garage sale years before and her shoulders slumped; she turned it on and listlessly played her scales. "Mom said I have to go to DD," she informed him sullenly. "Nine years of Catholic school and I was supposed to pick where I went to high school, but nooo, she has to use that to piss off my dad, too."
A frown deeply creased Darren's face, his mouth dropped open and an offended noise escaped. "That seriously blows. She won't listen to you?"
"No." She crushed the keys under her palms; it made a loud, ugly sound but when she cut it off a second later she felt a little better.
"But we were going to be at the same school." Darren looked as crestfallen about it as she felt.
It made her feel better.
She huffed out a sigh of frustration. "Let's just practice, okay?"
"Do you want to play my kit when we're done?"
Greta grinned in spite of her mood. Darren was her favorite best friend ever. "Sure!" They would actually have time for it, too. It was Friday night, with a whole summer of Friday nights ahead of them.
Greta nudged Darren with her shoulder against the sharp jut of his when the movie was at an infinitely boring point of exposition that just barely made sense even when she was paying attention. "Huh?" Darren grunted without taking his eyes from the screen.
"What are we doing this weekend?" she asked with renewed determination. Whaling on Darren's kit until Mr. Wilson declared it time for pizza and for the sticks to be put away before Mrs. Hunter called to complain (again) and settling in front of the television for movie night made everything begin to look up. Plus, "First weekend of freedom!"
"I have to go to my dad's faculty party on Saturday." Darren made a face.
“Movie marathon after practice on Sunday?”
Darren tore his eyes away from the screen with a delighted grin reflecting the blue light from the TV. "I have in my possession a previously unwatched copy of Christopher Lambert in an incredibly atrocious retelling of Beowulf."
Greta's eyes lit up with the awesomeness of it. "Your dad got his new class approved?"
Darren nodded, the blue light from the TV casting deeper shadows under his eyes and adding something malicious to his joy. "He said we can catalog the different representations of Beowulf in popular media with him. He'll pay us in tacos."
Greta slugged him in the back of his bony shoulder.
“Hey, what was that for?”
"I can't believe you didn't tell me that right away! Darren, Darren this summer is going to be awesome!"
"It totally will be," Darren replied, and Greta heard a promise in it that made up for the knowledge that come September they would be at different schools again.
September was three months away, and they had things to do before that.
By the time the hero had stolen his last car and driven off into the sunset, the phone rang and Mr. Wilson called, "Greta, your mother would like you to come home now."
Greta made a face. To Darren she said, "Any chance of getting out of it early on Saturday?"
"No. We have to stay for the whole thing since Dad's on some committee now. Sunday, though." He grinned broadly, most likely in anticipation of how awesome their Sunday would be. "I promise we won't start the movie without you."
"Work on beats for our new song?" Greta suggested.
"Yeah, definitely."
"Bye, Mr. Wilson!" Greta yelled when she was on her way out. Mr. Wilson poked his head out of the kitchen when she was almost through the hallway and said, "Goodnight, Greta. Say hello to your mother for us." He had a stripe of flour down his face that made his cheeks seem even redder.
She said, "Sure," and slipped on her shoes. She ran through the cloud of gnats halfway between their front yards and the too-long grass that tickled at her ankles, and threw open the door. "Hi, Mom," she called. Then dutifully, "Mr. Wilson said to say hello from him and Darren."
Greta's mom looked up from her book and smiled pleasantly. "Such a nice man. Did you eat something other than popcorn?"
"We had celebratory pizza." Greta flopped down on the couch next to her mom. "Also, really bad action movies. I need to think of something atrocious to inflict on Darren for that."
"Maybe on my next day off," she suggested conspiratorially, "we can go to the library and see if they've gotten any new Lifetime movies."
Greta grinned, broadly. She might be completely unfair in her dictation of Greta's scholastic career, but sometimes, Greta had the coolest mom ever.
"Emily called while you were at Darren's. She said it's absolutely dire that you call her back regardless of the time. Are you two making plans for the weekend?
"Kind of. She wants to go to a movie at Charlotte's house or something, there's this guy she likes who's supposed to be there."
"Any guys you'll like there?"
"No, I wouldn't even know anyone there other than Emily, Ani, and Charlotte probably, but Darren's dad has this faculty thing on Saturday Darren has to go to."
"You should go," her mom said. "Maybe some kids from school will be there." The 'maybe some kids from your new school that I'm going to send you to against your will even though I pinkie promised you in fifth grade that you could go to public high school with Darren' was left implied. Greta made a face and muttered, "yeah, whatever."
"Come on. I'll give you my cell phone and if it's totally lame, you can call me and I'll come pick you up."
"Mom, no one says 'totally lame.' That's--" Greta had to bite her tongue from finishing that it was ‘totally lame.’
Her mom let it roll off her, though. She just said, "Well excuse me. But you should still go, at least to hang out with Charlotte and Emily and Ani for awhile."
Greta’s shoulders jerked up around her ears, all good feeling suddenly gone.
She flopped on her bed and found the phone by the feel of the stickers she covered it with when she was younger among the clothes on her floor. She dialed Emily's number and sprawled back while it rang, twisting the cord in her fingers while she waited.
"Greta, thank fuck," Emily whispered fervently when she picked up the phone. "Please come? Please, please, please, please? You can bring that Darren kid with you!"
Greta rolled her eyes at the Harry Potter poster on her ceiling as if it would sympathize. "Darren's going to be busy."
"Does that mean you won't be?" Emily's voice sounded hopeful.
“I could stand to not stay at home tomorrow. Besides,” Greta sighed the put-upon sigh of the long suffering friend. "Someone has to make sure you don't do anything stupid, I guess."
"Shut up, jerk, that's totally my job. Also, thank you. Seriously, you need to see this guy. He's so cool and his hair is just...awesome."
"Whatever, you're giving me a ride. When are you picking me up?"
---
Darren wandered into the kitchen after he put his movie away. He jerked the refrigerator door open and pawed through the leftovers for a Mountain Dew from the back. "You don't need any more pop," his dad said. Darren looked over his shoulder, but his dad hadn't looked away from whatever he was mixing in the bowl. He rolled his eyes but put the can back where he found it and grabbed a Capri Sun instead. Some pictures of him and his dad from when Darren was a kid fluttered free from their magnets when he let the door shut. He bent to pick them up and shoved them back on the door before he hoisted himself up on the counter next to his dad. "What are you making?" he asked.
"I," his dad started grandly, Darren rolled his eyes. "Am attempting to recreate a typical bread recipe from which seventh century monks would likely have created pretiola."
Darren craned his neck to look at the twisted dough on the cookie sheet on the stove. He made an interested sound in the back of his throat. "They look like pretzels. Kind of."
His dad grinned at him. "That's exactly what they are. The shape is meant to resemble praying children, as a reward for those who knew their prayers."
"Huh. Can I eat one?"
"Do you remember your prayers?"
Darren bit down on a grin and held his palms together in front of him. "O merciful flying spaghetti monster," he intoned solemnly.
His dad laughed and handed him a cooked pretzel. “Have the two of you planned out the whole summer yet?”
Darren shrugged. “I just want to do band stuff.” He bit into the pretzel and made a face. “This tastes weird,” he said around his mouthful. He quickly washed it down with most of his Capri Sun.
“I didn’t say it was a very good reward.”
“No, it tastes weird for an actual pretzel.” He broke off a piece for his dad.
“That’s because it’s a pretiola,” he grumbled good naturedly as he took it. “Completely different. Somewhat.” He popped the piece in his mouth and his face immediately changed. “Oh. I may have added too much salt?”
“May?”
His dad swatted him with the towel from over his shoulder. “Everyone’s a critic. We should pick up your summer book list this weekend. What do you have to read?”
“I just need to read Don Quixote and Great Expectations for World Lit.”
“Don Quixote, now there’s a novel I think you’ll enjoy. I had a professor once who insisted one could not be considered an intelligent individual until one had read the adventures of the great Don three times.”
Darren shrugged and flattened the straw of his juice with his molars. Around it he said, “I only need to read it the once for class.”
His dad laughed. “Of course. I’m sure I have a copy out in the study. Why don’t you look for it and get an early start?”
Darren rolled his eyes. “You’re the only person who can find anything in there.”
His dad gave him an exaggeratedly scandalized look. “Are you telling me my filing system is nonsensical?”
Darren rolled his eyes again, this time so vigorously that it hurt. “Whatever. I’m going upstairs.” He hopped down from the counter and tossed his Capri Sun in the trash.
---
On Saturday, Greta, armed with her mom's cell phone, a crisp twenty folded in the pocket of her shorts, and her best unimpressed look, crammed into the back seat of Emily's mom's Beetle between Emily and Ani for the fifteen minutes it took to get to Charlotte's house.
Charlotte opened the front door with a flourish when they rang the doorbell, keeping her dog from lunging out the door with one gracefully held out foot. "Excellent. I so thought you were never going to make it." She looked at Ani and Greta, a little surprised but welcoming. "I thought you weren't coming?"
"And miss Emily making an idiot of herself over a guy?" Ani said with a smile suggesting the travesty in such a thing. "Never."
Charlotte laughed and led them through the house, picking up the largest bowl of popcorn Greta had ever seen on the way through the kitchen. "It's going to be totally awesome," she agreed. "Hey, Greta, I heard the good news."
"What?" Greta frowned, genuinely uncomprehending.
"About DD? Wouldn't it be awesome to have some classes together?"
Greta shrugged. "Yeah, I guess."
Charlotte stopped in her tracks. Emily was following so closely that she bumped into her back and popcorn spilled on the floor; Charlotte's dog crashed into their feet in his rush to eat it up. "Aren't you excited?"
"She's crushed about going to the one school the rest of us would kill to get to go to because Darren won't be there." Ani rolled her eyes.
"Shut up," Greta muttered. "You don't even know how it is."
"Her life," Ani sighed theatrically. "So hard."
"Shut up," Greta told her again, that time she dug her hand into the popcorn bowl for something to throw at her for emphasis.
Ani stuck her tongue out and jumped back on one foot so Charlotte’s dog could eat the popcorn without getting her toes in the process.
"That's a waste of good popcorn," a guy Greta doesn't recognize sitting on the couch Charlotte was leading them to said. He shook his head gravely as if mourning the loss of a dear, unfortunate comrade.
"In war," Greta responded solemnly, "sometimes sacrifices must be made."
The guy tilted his head in acknowledgment. There was a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
"That's Bob," she told them, pointing to the redhead who had conceded defeat. "He goes to DD." She gave Greta a pointed look before pointing at the brunet with hair falling artfully in his eyes. "That's Chris." She pointed at the girl with vibrantly orange hair sitting beside him. "That's Hayley." She pointed to the guy sitting on the floor against their feet with long, brown curls. "And that's Drew." She pointed to each of them in turn, "This is Emily, Greta, and Ani."
"Hey," Emily said with suspiciously casual nonchalance. She moved past Charlotte to sit within arm's reach of Drew. Ani and Greta shared a smirk and took up the empty loveseat.
"What do we want to watch?" Charlotte asked.
"Monsters Inc.," Hayley declared.
"No," Chris whined, but Charlotte was already pulling the case from the shelf.
On the floor, Emily asked Drew with a casual flick of her hair, "Do you like this movie?"
Drew shrugged absently. "Yeah, sure."
Ani snorted, making Greta have to hide a giggle behind her hand. Emily threw them a glare before looking back to Drew. Charlotte settled sideways in the recliner next to Hayley's arm of the couch and pressed play on the remote, disregarding the one sided conversation from the floor in favor of turning up the volume enough to drown it out.
When the alarm went off on screen and Sully started his work out, Chris said, "This scene would be more epic with 'Eye of the Tiger' in the background."
"'Eye of the Tiger' is overrated," Greta dismissed with a flick of her wrist.
Ani added, "Give me a training montage with '99 Luftballons' or something more unexpected."
"It's an uplifting training montage, not a jazzercise video," Chris argued.
Greta snorted. “Aren’t they basically the same thing?”
“You know what would be unexpected?” Bob observed thoughtfully. “If ‘Eye of the Tiger’ was rapped instead.” He started the chorus as if to prove it, complete with scratching and Chris impersonating a beat box until they couldn’t keep from laughing along with the rest of them anymore. Chris lost it first.
"Come on, time to go," Emily announced after she pocketed her cell phone, barely covering her disappointment.
Greta looked up from the conversation she and Bob had been having about the underappreciated genius of Brian Wilson. The credits on the movie were ending, final peels of music dying off. Ani had abandoned her for Charlotte and Hayley at some point, and Chris had taken her seat.
She shrugged. "Later."
"It was good seeing you again," Drew called after them as they left. Emily's face immediately started to turn bright red. She didn't look back to shout in response, "Yeah, totally."
"Did you girls have fun?" Emily's mom asked when they slid in the back seat.
"Emily and Greta did," Ani said teasingly.
Emily's mom arched an eyebrow in the rear view mirror. "Oh?" Emily's face managed to get even redder.
"Not like that." Greta shrugged. "Bob was nice. He plays guitar. We talked about our bands." An idea was already formulating in the back of her mind.
---
Darren followed sluggishly behind his dad as they made their way up the street to the Elephant Bar. His dad waved at some of the people standing in the patio as they got closer; Darren's hands stayed balled in his pockets, one around his iPod as he tried to think of how he could sneak it. "Just come say hello, then you can go find the other kids."
Darren rolled his eyes. "Sure, Dad."
His dad stopped just inside the door of the restaurant. He leveled a steady stare at Darren and said, "I know you don't want to be here, but please make the best of this. It's important to me."
"Yeah, Dad," he muttered.
Satisfied enough, his dad turned and led the way to where the hostess indicated. One corner of the dining room was packed with people from the college. Darren followed dutifully at his dad’s elbow through the throng of faculty.
“Roger! Speak of the devil!” an older woman called.
“Hello, Teresa. Darren, come here.” His dad’s hand came down on Darren’s shoulder to push him closer to the table. “You remember Dr. LeBlanc and Dr. Mrotek, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Hi.” He waved. Dr. LeBlanc was a slight woman wearing a sweater despite the June heat. She leaned over the table with her hands clasped in front of her and a warm smile. Dr. Mrotek was closer to Darren’s dad’s age; he waved back with a welcoming smile.
“My goodness, Darren,” Dr. LeBlanc said. “You’re so much taller! How old are you now?”
“I’m almost 16.”
“How time flies!” She laughed pleasantly and turned to the younger woman sitting at her other elbow. “When Roger here first joined our department Darren was just a baby--he wasn’t more than two or three, was he, Roger? And, poor thing, he got so very sick on the day of Roger’s first class--”
“Oh, god,” Darren groaned to himself. He covered his face like that would make the story stop.
“The daycare wouldn’t take him in case he gave the rest of the kids whatever he had,” his dad added.
“--so I took pity on the poor boys and agreed to watch him while Roger was in class. Poor Darren got so upset when Roger left him in my office that he vomited, all over the lecture notes I was working on!”
The woman laughed, slapping her hand over her mouth. “Oh my god, what did you do?”
“Took over Roger’s desk until the stench cleared, of course.”
“We’re lucky she didn’t fire me on the spot,” his dad said as he ruffled Darren’s hair before Darren could jerk his head out of the way.
“Oh how rude of us,” Dr. LeBlanc said. “Here we are telling embarrassing stories about Darren to someone he hasn’t even been introduced to. Darren, this is Eden Reynolds. She’s an assistant professor.”
“It’s nice to finally meet you,” she said, holding out her hand across the table. Darren shook it, awkwardly.
Dr. LeBlanc said, “Do you remember my grandson Mike? I believe he and the other children are in the arcade in back.”
Darren looked to his dad hopefully. His dad gave him a nod of permission, and Darren took off for the buffet table en route to the arcade.
He stood by the entrance of the arcade eating a slice of pizza. He surveyed the handful of games, all crowed with other kids. He recognized most of them from years previous, even some from school. His other hand slid into the pocket with his iPod and he changed tactic, looking for an escape to somewhere he could listen to it instead.
Someone shoved into Darren from the side. He lurched over, he would’ve hit his head on the wall but a solid hand caught him around the arm and held him upright. “Shit, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he mumbled.
“Are you sure?” the guy asked. There was a concerned look on his face. His hand was still on Darren’s arm, warm and strong. He shuffled closer. “Dude, did you hit your head?” He was shorter than Darren, but older. His shirt was unbuttoned low enough that Darren could see a peel of tan, tan skin end at a bright swirl of color. He dropped his eyes to the floor. The tips of their dirty Converses were practically touching.
Darren shook off his hand, in the process brushing the guy’s arm. He didn’t think he was imagining the contour of muscle under his fingers. He jerked back, smacking into the wall and feeling his face flame up. Darren winced and cupped the back of his head where it hit.
The guy looked at him like Darren said he was thinking about growing two heads. “Are you--”
“I’m fine!” he said, feeling like an idiot for how high and awkward his voice sounded when he did. He slid past the guy to try and lose himself in the crowd. He glanced around the room from his eyelashes to try and figure out if everyone else was paying attention to him.
Darren spotted Mike in front of the Mortal Combat game at the back of the room. He made a beeline for it. “Hey, dude.”
Mike darted a look at Darren before looking back at the screen. “Darren. Sup?” he asked.
“Nothing--dude look out!” He gestured at the screen just as Mike’s character was killed.
Mike slapped the joystick. “Damn.” The screen switched to the ‘game over’ menu. “Wanna play?”
---
On Sunday morning Greta was craning her neck over her keyboard to look at the clock through the open door of the Wilson's garage. The second hand was taunting them, inching its way toward noon extra slowly. She could hear Darren's foot tapping against the concrete rushing the beat of the clock like that would speed it up. The second hand swept past the nine, the ten. As it leisured its way past the eleven Darren counted them in, their first notes clashed with the chime for twelve, and loud and fast and barely in tune with each other in the excitement. Darren grinned at her over his ride cymbal and she laughed back, nodding with his beat until their cacophony evened into a song.
"From the top," she called to him over the expanse of garage between them as he played the refrain again. He nodded with the last measure of it and they began again. It wasn't perfect yet--her fingers stumbled over some of the notes and the insubstantial clicks of his sticks sometimes clanging together over a drum roll were distracting, but when the song was finished clapping erupted from the doorway.
"That's really coming along well," Mr. Wilson complimented. "That's the NOFX song, right?"
"Yeah, Dad," Darren answered with just a hint of exasperated embarrassment.
Greta made a face at him. To Mr. Wilson she said, "Thank you."
He inclined his head and twirled his hand in a regal almost-bow, it made Greta laugh. "I've got to go to my office for a few hours of research. Will you two be all right by yourselves?"
"Yes, Dad." Greta didn't need to see him to know that Darren was rolling his eyes. "Oh," he started with less attitude. "Is this for the modern Beowulf thing? Greta said she'd help watch the movies."
"I thought you might enjoy that. We could do with a refresher on the story--"
"--oh, can we stage it again?" Greta asked excitedly.
"Please?" Darren added.
"Of course," Mr. Wilson assured. "Just decide when you want to start."
"My mom has an overnight shift next week," Greta suggested.
"Perfect. Leftover pizza is in the fridge, I should be home before dinner--Greta, do you think you'll be staying over?"
"No, my mom's having a 'friend' over, I have to meet him."
A beat later Mr. Wilson said, "Ah, well then. I'll be home in a bit. Listen for the phone." He waved.
"Bye, Dad."
"Bye, Mr. Wilson." She rifled through the music on her stand. To Darren she said, "Do you want to play 'Bohemian Rhapsody' next?”
“Your reading might go faster if you turned off the TV,” his dad suggested.
“Uh huh.” He was watching the screen above the edge of his book and reading on commercial breaks.
“What chapter are you on?”
Darren sighed and tore his eyes away from the TV. He flipped back a couple of pages and read, “‘Chapter eight, of the good fortune which the valiant Don Quixote had in the terrible and undreamt-of adventure of the windmills, with other occurrences worthy to be fitly recorded.’”
“Ah, the most famous episode. What do you think so far?”
“It’s dumb. He’s seeing things that aren’t there and Sancho’s just going along with it. Why?”
His dad laughed. “It wouldn’t be much of a story if he didn’t.”
“That’s not a good excuse!”
His dad waved him off. “You’re missing the point, Darren. The story is about trying to hold on to the way things were in the face of changing times.”
Darren persisted. “The story is about Don Quixote losing his mind.”
His dad laughed. “Yes, that too.”
“You know, I’m pretty sure we’re only supposed to read the abridged version.”
“You have the whole summer ahead of you, it’ll do you good.” Darren made a face at the thick, battered book in his hands. “Do you have any plans today?”
“Nah, Greta’s at her dad’s.”
“Oh good,” his dad said, swooping in to grab the remote from beside Darren. “You’ll have plenty of time to warm up to the Don.” He settled in the La-Z-boy and changed the channel. “You’ll find it easier if you read without other distraction.”
“You suck,” Darren muttered mutinously as he slammed his book shut and stomped out of the room. His dad’s laughter followed him out.
Part One | Part Two | Part Three