update! 12/23/09
I could lie and pretend this was a purposeful Christmas-Eve-Eve present to the internet, but this is just when it happened to get finished. But I hope you all have lovely holidays anyway. ♥
Master Post
(If you'd like to read this in context, you can do that over here.)
____________
Theoretically, a guitar case was supposed to lend the person carrying it a kind of mystique, an aura of fascinating and untouchable coolness. In reality, it just prompted a lot of stupid questions. Kris had agreed to meet Megan in the music wing after school on Tuesday so they could practice the song together, which meant he had to bring his guitar to school. Which meant trying to cram his viola into his backpack (it didn't really fit, so he had to leave his backpack partially unzipped) and carrying his guitar case on the bus and through the halls, which would have been annoying enough, but everyone Kris had ever met suddenly wanted to ask him things like "is that your guitar?" or "oh, you play guitar?" He felt bad about snapping "No, I'm just carrying it around so people will ask me about it," at Marissa the second chair oboe player, but only a little bad.
"Why do you have your guitar?" Katy asked him when he met her at her locker, and the fact that this was a relevant question was a complete relief.
"Megan needed someone to play for her at an open mic on Friday, so we're going to practice after school."
"Really?" Katy gave him a one-armed hug with the arm that wasn't holding her history textbook. "That's amazing! It's so cool that she asked you."
"Yeah," Kris said, and he couldn't help smiling hugely. In some way, this whole thing only seemed real now that he was telling her. "Do you want to go to an open mic on Friday? It's at that Pony Espresso place. Adam says they make good...some kind of tea."
"What time is it?"
"I think it starts at seven."
"I'm supposed to babysit on Friday night," Katy said. "Starting at six. This sucks, I want to see you play guitar."
"You see me play guitar all the time," Kris said.
"This is different," she said, which was true, but he didn't want to agree out loud and make her feel worse about it. "Are you going to carry that all day?" she said, gesturing at his guitar case.
Kris sighed. "I really don't want to, but it won't fit in my locker."
"Why don't you ask Mr. Shapiro if you can leave it in his office or something? Or maybe there's a spare cello locker."
"You are a genius," Kris said, and kissed her on the cheek. "I'm going to see if I can find him before homeroom."
Mr. Shapiro, the orchestra director, sent him over to Mrs. Durand, who directed the jazz choir and jazz band, and she let him leave his guitar with the jazz band instruments. (Adam was right about the jazz band's stash of guitars, they had three or four different ones that Kris was hoping would be left unattended after school so he could try them out.) Knowing his guitar was in the building, even locked in a storage closet in the music wing, was amazingly distracting. Kris found himself fidgeting all day, tapping his pen on his notebook or kicking the heel of his sneaker against the legs of his chair, hearing the chords of "Big Yellow Taxi" over and over in his head, so vividly that it almost felt like a hallucination. He thought about asking Katy if she wanted to eat lunch in the music wing, but he didn't want to bother Mrs. Durand about opening the closet again, so he let himself get distracted by the sweet, low-key spectacle of Katy getting her hair french braided by some girl from the lacrosse team.
By the end of the day, the sight of his guitar case leaned up against the wall of the jazz band closet was such a relief Kris thought it should probably be levitating, bathed in an unreal golden glow and soundtracked by a celestial choir like a cartoon Holy Grail. Its weight dangling from his hand was welcome for once while he stood around in the hall waiting for Megan. Two more people asked him if he played guitar, but he felt much less annoyed about it than he had this morning. Megan rushed over to him, the flapping tails of her fabric headband giving the impression that she was flying.
"Hi," she said, a little breathless. "I thought we could go to the choir room, no one's using it today."
"Sure," Kris said. "I was thinking we should do it along with the CD a couple times, just to make sure the tempo is right and everything. They have a CD player in there, right?"
"Yeah," Megan said. "And thank you for doing this. You rock."
"Don't thank me yet."
Megan punched him on the arm, lightly. "Shut up, this is going to be awesome."
And it actually was. They started with a few bumpy run-throughs during which both of them stopped a lot and apologized to each other, both of them obviously feeling self-conscious, and people who were in the music wing for whatever reason kept leaning into the choir room to see what was going on, saying they were sorry for interrupting, and ducking out again.
"Maybe we should sit with our backs to the door," Megan said. "That way we won't see them so they won't interrupt us."
They spun their chairs around and started again, and at some point, Kris just...got comfortable with being there. He forgot that he was at school with people wandering by in the hallway, that the longest conversation he'd had with Megan before this afternoon had been not very long and about cupcakes, that he was sort of in trouble for not doing part of his math homework. Everything that wasn't the two of them and this song faded into background noise, and the process of figuring out what worked, what didn't work, how to fix it, and listening to it come together better the next time lit up the inside of his head like a string of Christmas lights. He wanted to sing along, he could feel the melody of the song coiled up in his throat, waiting. He liked Megan's voice, it was big somehow, and quirky and bright and fun, and she swayed and smiled while she sang, and Kris swayed and smiled back, and he had a blindingly bright moment of wishing that Katy was a singer, because he couldn't even imagine what it would be like to share this with someone he was already more familiar with, more connected to. He thought of Adam, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel and saying we should have a band.
"I don't know if I should sing that line about DDT," Megan said, collapsing into the chair next to Kris. "It's sort of...irrelevant. Didn't they stop using DDT in the 60s or something?"
"But it rhymes with 'bees' and 'please,'" Kris said, "So unless you want to rewrite the whole verse..."
"Oh my god, I really don't," she said, slouching down further in her chair. "I'm sorry for making you play the same song for like, ever, by the way. I hope you're not bored."
"How do you think I learned how to play guitar?" Kris said, strumming an E quietly. His fingertips hurt, and for a second he was there again, thirteen and miserable and trying to play Green Day's "Good Riddance" until he fell asleep holding the guitar, so he let his hands fall into his lap. "It doesn't bother me. It's...I've never really accompanied anyone before. It makes it different. Good-different," he added as an afterthought.
Whatever Megan was about to say next was lost in a wall of piano-noise. Once he got over the initial startling-ness, Kris recognized it as part of "Great Balls of Fire."
"You are so obnoxious," Megan said, addressing this to whoever was playing. She got up and walked to the front of the piano. Kris followed her, swinging his guitar around so it was resting against his back.
"You love it," said the guy sitting at the piano, who had curly hair in a semi-mohawk.
"There are at least two other pianos in this school," she said, leaning against the lower half of the keyboard and creating a dissonant smash of notes.
"But this one is my favourite," the guy said, punctuating it by playing a fluttery trill in the piano's upper register.
"Kris, this is Matt," Megan said, sitting down on the edge of the piano bench. "He'll be there on Friday, too. Matt, this is Kris, he's playing---"
"Harpsichord, right?" Matt interrupted. "I can tell because he's holding a guitar."
Megan shoulder-checked him, hard enough that he slid a few inches to the right on the bench. "Go away," she said. "I can't sing over your Jerry Lee Lewis greatest hits collection."
"Are you taking the bus?"
"Yeah, why---oh, shit," Megan said, looking up at the clock next to the door. Kris looked up too, and he wasn't really surprised to see that it was already 2:50. The after school buses left around three. "I guess I can't sing anymore right now, period."
Matt stood up and cracked his knuckles. "I'll see you on the bus, I have to go to my locker first," he said, tugging one of the tails of Megan's headband. "I can't wait to hear your harpsichord masterpiece, man," he said to Kris.
"It will blow your mind," Megan said, her eyes wide and dramatic.
"I'm like a harpsichord prodigy," Kris said, trying to look serious about it. "The guitar is just a side thing."
"Very cool," Matt said, and left the room. Kris went to put his guitar back in its case.
"So should we meet here again tomorrow?" he said.
"Definitely," Megan said. "Or---wait, tomorrow is the GSA meeting."
"Right, tomorrow is Wednesday," Kris said, putting on his jacket. "But I have an orchestra thing on Thursday." The orchestra thing was the viola section rehearsal, for which Kris had done zero practicing so far.
"What if we met here, practiced for a while, and if we have enough time we can stop by the meeting and say hi to everyone?"
"That works." Kris shrugged his backpack on, and winced as he felt his books and his viola case shift around against his back. "Can you make sure my viola isn't going to fall out of my bag?"
"Sure," Megan said, throwing her own bag over her shoulder and fiddling with the zippers on Kris's backpack. "There, I think you're good. Sorry to make you carry around two instruments. I didn't even think about that---I'd make Adam give you a ride so you don't have to have all this stuff on the bus, but he already went home."
"It's okay," Kris said as they headed out the door and down the hall. "The after school bus is less crowded anyway. If I really played the harpsichord, then I'd be screwed."
When he got home, he left his guitar in the living room and forced himself to do homework and play viola. Trying to do non-guitar stuff was easier now than it had been all day at school, so he had time after dinner to run through "Big Yellow Taxi" with his dad a couple of times and see if he had any suggestions. His parents both seemed pleased, if also a little bit confused, about his playing for Megan on Friday. Daniel just wanted to know if Megan was the hot girl with the short dreadlocks. (She wasn't, obviously. Kris was pretty sure Daniel was talking about Katy's friend Jess, but he feigned cluelessness.)
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Waking up and going to school on a Wednesday when he knew he'd be missing the GSA meeting (or most of it, anyway) was strange and slightly disappointing. Kris hadn't realized how much his Wednesdays hinged on the meetings, how many times he sort of thought yay, it's Wednesday and happily imagined sitting around room 215 at the end of the day, eating Cheez-Its and offering his semi-serious opinion about forks or cinnamon rolls or whether playing the entirety of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon was a good idea at a Wizard of Oz themed dance. And he had the same nagging feeling, every time he thought yay, it's Wednesday and remembered he wasn't going to the meeting, that he'd had on Monday morning when he hadn't been able to stop by the bake sale again, the feeling that he was standing Adam up. However comfortable Kris felt with Adam (and he was comfortable enough with Adam that he kept forgetting they'd only officially met a couple months ago), they weren't friends the way he was friends with Charles, they didn't have any classes together or hang out on weekends, so the GSA meetings were the only time they reliably saw each other. He momentarily considered seeing if he could leave his study hall early and going to meet Adam in the music wing again, but that seemed sort of crazy, especially once he realized that that Megan and Adam were friends like Kris and Charles were friends and Megan must have told him they were practicing again today. So there was really no reason to go find him and be all oh, hey, just stalking you to let you know I won't be there today when there was every chance Adam would just blink at him and say ...yeah, I know.
Kris's guitar, when he went to the jazz band closet to retrieve it at the end of the day, didn't have quite the same Holy Grail quality it had yesterday, but he was still glad to pick it up, meet Megan and settle back in with her and his guitar and the song. It was amazingly good, after another day of sitting around tired and bored and taking notes on things he didn't care about, to do something else, something better, something that meant something to him. The process had lost a tiny bit of yesterday's magic, and they were both ready for a break after twenty minutes or so, so they ran through the catalog of songs to which Kris knew the chords and Megan knew the words. They came up with a bunch of Beatles stuff, so they did "Here Comes the Sun" and some of "Ticket to Ride" and considered trying "Back in the U.S.S.R." (but that needed a piano, and Matt was nowhere to be seen today). Kris sang along this time, because he was absolutely and joyously helpless to resist. ("You didn't tell me you could sing," Megan said. "Next time we're doing a duet." Kris tried to stay noncommittal about that, but it sounded pretty much like the best idea ever, right then.)
They went back to "Big Yellow Taxi" for a bit, and then some of the GSA---Katy, Jess, Marie, and Alicia, who was holding hands with a really tall guy with spiky hair---walked into the choir room around 2:45, when Kris and Megan were sitting around in between run-throughs of the song and talking about what music their parents listened to, for some reason.
"We were going to come find you guys in a little while," Megan said, spinning in a slow circle on the room's sole spinny chair.
"We came to find you instead," Katy said, sitting down next to Kris and offering him an open bag of Goldfish crackers. "We brought snacks."
"And we love you for it," Megan said, leaning over Kris and grabbing a handful of Goldfish.
"We do," Kris said, taking his hand off his guitar strings and winding some of Katy's hair around his fingers before taking some crackers for himself.
"Where's Adam?" Megan said. Kris had been wondering the same thing.
"He was with us..." Katy looked over her shoulder at the door to the choir room. "I guess he's still talking to Rob in the hall."
Kris looked in the direction of the door, and waved to Marie and Jess, who sitting down at the piano. One of them started playing "Für Elise." Alicia and her tall, spiky friend took this as permission to play with the other instruments, and the two of them curled up in the corner with some bongos that Kris hadn't even noticed before, which prompted Megan to go on an ultimately successful search for one of those sticks with jingle bells on it that the percussion section sometimes used for Christmas medleys and join them in their corner. No one was playing loudly, so the collection of sounds was almost pleasant, if odd. Kris watched all of this with amusement and a mouthful of Goldfish.
"How's the song going?" Katy asked.
"Good," he said. "I think we've pretty much got it down."
"Are you still nervous?"
Kris grabbed more crackers and considered this. "A little," he said. "It's stupid. I've played viola solos a million times and this isn't even like that. No one will be paying attention to me. Megan is a really good singer."
"Someone will be paying attention to you," Katy said. "You're so cute when you play guitar."
"Which is obviously why I do it," Kris said, brushing the crumbs off his fingers and striking what he imagined was a parody of a cute guitar-playing pose. Katy threw a cracker at him.
"I'm trying to find someone else to babysit for the Martins on Friday so I can go," she said. "But no luck so far."
"Are you just planning on going to throw more food at me? Because I think we could get banned from Pony Espresso for that." Kris was trying to see where the thrown Goldfish had landed, and when he looked up, Katy was waving at Adam, who had just walked into the room.
"We should meet in here all the time," he said, taking the empty spinny chair next to Kris and looking around the room. Megan waved her bell-stick at him in greeting.
"It might be hard to actually talk about anything," Kris said. He slid his left hand over the neck of his guitar, wanting to play some chords and add to the noise, but Katy was always telling him it was rude to play guitar while someone was trying to talk to him, so he didn't. He had the idea that Adam wouldn't think it was rude, though. Adam looked happy about random piano music (they'd moved on from "Für Elise") accompanied by jingle bells and bongos, after all. He might take Kris's random chords and run with them, turn them into an impromptu song, and Kris wanted that, all of a sudden, it made complete sense in his head, he knew exactly how it would feel, but just like that the moment was past, things were moving on.
"We could become a musical ensemble instead," Adam mused. "Actually, 'Gay-Straight Alliance' isn't a horrible band name. It's better than Sonic Pork Chop, anyway."
"Sonic what?"
"Sonic Pork Chop. They're these three girls from that Catholic school---"
"Saint Isidore's?"
"Yeah. And they have a keyboard, but not a good one, one of those table-top ones from the 90s, it's like this big," Adam held his hands about a foot and a half apart. "And an upright bass, and one girl just keeps hitting a triangle, and they...chant stuff. We're pretty sure they think they're being ironic, but it's really hard to tell. You might get to see them on Friday, actually." Adam looked really excited about all of this, his eyes were bright and he was sort of waving his hands around, and it sunk in for the first time that he would be at the open mic on Friday, maybe sitting next to Kris just like this, telling stories about everyone who was there to perform, and suddenly Kris was excited about Sonic Pork Chop, too, but something kept him from saying so.
"How was the meeting?" he said instead.
"Pretty good," Adam said, and Katy nodded her agreement. "We were missing a lot of people because there's this big meeting for the winter play today, but that was okay."
"You're not in the winter play?"
"Nah, I'm sticking to stuff where I can sing this year. So's Megan---who, by the way, is like, in love with you right now. Not in a romantic way," Adam said hastily, looking at Katy. "Just in a musical way where I think she wants you to follow her around like a wandering minstrel and play guitar all the time."
"I did not say 'wandering minstrel'," Megan said. She and Alicia and Tall Spiky Guy had abandoned their percussion corner and come to join the discussion. "Don't listen to him," she said to Kris. "He's the one who---I mean, I think he's trying to sabotage me."
"Yes," Adam said, "I secretly want to drive you away from the open mic so we can hear more of that sea shanty guy."
"That guy," Megan said, with something like affection. Kris was getting more curious about this open mic every minute.
"...Sea shanty guy?" Katy said. She was obviously curious, too.
"Don't ask," Alicia advised, but it was too late.
"He's great," Megan said. "He sings all these weird songs about working on a ship and sometimes he wears this whole pirate costume..."
Someone knocked on the open door, and Kris turned around to see a couple guys standing in the doorway, dressed for a sports practice.
"Sorry, no one told us it was queer singalong hour," one of them said, and then snickered at his own joke.
"We need to ask someone about moving the choir risers in the auditorium," said the other guy.
"What, you can't figure them out? They have wheels, dumbass. You roll them," Alicia said.
"Mr. Wallace is probably in his office," Adam said, and he sounded sort of sharp, dismissive. It made Kris a little nervous. "You can ask him."
"Thanks," mumbled the second guy, and they left.
"This is clearly the worst singalong ever," Adam said after a moment. "We're not even singing."
"We could be," Marie said, and picked out the melody to the chorus of Ace of Base's "The Sign" on the piano. Adam grinned.
"Why do they need to move the risers?" Alicia asked, and the tone in the room had shifted again, and Kris uncurled his fingers from where they'd been clenched, without his conscious knowledge, around the neck of his guitar.
"They're probably on the track team," Jess said. "When it's raining they use the auditorium."
"They run in the auditorium?"
"No, they practice for pole vault and stuff."
"Oh," Alicia said. "That sounds like a horrible idea. Maybe they'll get injured." She stood up and pulled Tall Spiky Guy---who, to his credit, looked unfazed by all of this---out of his chair. "The bus will be here in a couple minutes."
"Megan, are you coming home with me?" Adam said, standing up and putting his jacket on.
"Yeah, but you have to give Kris a ride, too, because I'm making him carry around his giant guitar case and he shouldn't have to take it on the bus."
"Sure." Adam spun his keyring around on his finger. It had a little black tassel thing attached that wrapped itself around his wrist as he spun it. "Katy, I can take you home, too, if you want?"
"Thanks," Katy said, and grabbed Kris's hand as they left the choir room. They left out the back exit and jogged through the parking lot in the light rain to Adam's car. Kris was trying not to be disappointed that Megan and Katy were there, because when Megan had mentioned Adam driving him home yesterday, he'd pictured it like it had been the first time, just the two of them and Adam's music, and this was going to be different.
"Sorry about the chaos," Adam said, unlocking the passenger doors of his car. "If there's stuff in your way, just toss it behind the seats."
Megan slid the front seat forward so Kris and Katy could climb into the back, and then she handed Kris his guitar case. There were some empty takeout coffee cups and water bottles on the floor, and some jackets on the seats, as well as the box of tapes. Kris draped the jackets over Katy's legs, set his guitar case on the floor, and balanced the box of tapes in his lap, sifting through them again.
"Okay," Adam said, looking over his shoulder at Katy. "I know where Kris lives, but you're going to have to give me directions."
"You can just drop me off at Kris's house," Katy said.
"He can?" Kris said.
"Sure," she said. "We can study for our history test, and my mom can pick me up when she gets home from work."
"Okay," Kris said. "If you want."
"Okay," Adam said, and turned the keys in the ignition. Electronic music blared out of the speakers, but Adam shut it off before Kris could identify the song.
"So I met Spencer," Megan said.
"Kind of cute, I thought," Adam said, making the turn out of the school parking lot.
"...Kind of. And really quiet," said Megan. "Spencer is Alicia's new boy...thing," she said, twisting around in her seat to to talk to Kris and Katy.
"In a movie, they would have met at a punk concert," Adam explained. Kris looked up, and their eyes met for a second in the rearview mirror. "But actually they met at that gas station by the traffic circle that never cards anyone."
"Spencer was there to buy wine coolers," Megan said, her voice all fake-syrupy and her hands clasped over her heart. "And they both wanted the last envelope of strawberry Pop-Rocks."
"It's a love story for the ages," Adam said, with feeling.
"Who got the last thing of Pop-Rocks, though?" Kris asked. Adam met his eyes in the mirror again, and Kris could tell he was smiling even though he couldn't see Adam's mouth.
"He let Alicia have it. Which was sweet."
"He's such a gentleman," Megan cooed, and Adam laughed.
"We shouldn't be mean," he said. "They seem happy. And he's in a band, so that's cool. I think he's even the singer."
"Speaking of," Megan said, untwisting her spine to face Adam. "Did you know Kris can sing?"
"He can?" Adam said. Kris studiously avoided looking up at the rearview mirror this time.
"He totally can," Katy said. She was beaming. "Is he singing with you on Friday?"
"I'm right here," Kris said.
"No," Megan said. "But only because I didn't know he could sing until today and there's no time to rearrange the song. But next time..."
"Hey," Kris said. "Let's talk about something else. How about the weather?"
"I hate the rain," Adam said, "That's why the volume was up so high on the stereo, the rain was seriously so loud this morning I could barely hear."
"Plus it messes up your hair," Megan said, reaching over to further mess up Adam's hair. He swatted her hands away.
"That, too," he said, and they all actually managed to talk about the weather the rest of the way to Kris's house.
next update >
Master Post
(If you'd like to read this in context, you can do that over here.)
____________
Theoretically, a guitar case was supposed to lend the person carrying it a kind of mystique, an aura of fascinating and untouchable coolness. In reality, it just prompted a lot of stupid questions. Kris had agreed to meet Megan in the music wing after school on Tuesday so they could practice the song together, which meant he had to bring his guitar to school. Which meant trying to cram his viola into his backpack (it didn't really fit, so he had to leave his backpack partially unzipped) and carrying his guitar case on the bus and through the halls, which would have been annoying enough, but everyone Kris had ever met suddenly wanted to ask him things like "is that your guitar?" or "oh, you play guitar?" He felt bad about snapping "No, I'm just carrying it around so people will ask me about it," at Marissa the second chair oboe player, but only a little bad.
"Why do you have your guitar?" Katy asked him when he met her at her locker, and the fact that this was a relevant question was a complete relief.
"Megan needed someone to play for her at an open mic on Friday, so we're going to practice after school."
"Really?" Katy gave him a one-armed hug with the arm that wasn't holding her history textbook. "That's amazing! It's so cool that she asked you."
"Yeah," Kris said, and he couldn't help smiling hugely. In some way, this whole thing only seemed real now that he was telling her. "Do you want to go to an open mic on Friday? It's at that Pony Espresso place. Adam says they make good...some kind of tea."
"What time is it?"
"I think it starts at seven."
"I'm supposed to babysit on Friday night," Katy said. "Starting at six. This sucks, I want to see you play guitar."
"You see me play guitar all the time," Kris said.
"This is different," she said, which was true, but he didn't want to agree out loud and make her feel worse about it. "Are you going to carry that all day?" she said, gesturing at his guitar case.
Kris sighed. "I really don't want to, but it won't fit in my locker."
"Why don't you ask Mr. Shapiro if you can leave it in his office or something? Or maybe there's a spare cello locker."
"You are a genius," Kris said, and kissed her on the cheek. "I'm going to see if I can find him before homeroom."
Mr. Shapiro, the orchestra director, sent him over to Mrs. Durand, who directed the jazz choir and jazz band, and she let him leave his guitar with the jazz band instruments. (Adam was right about the jazz band's stash of guitars, they had three or four different ones that Kris was hoping would be left unattended after school so he could try them out.) Knowing his guitar was in the building, even locked in a storage closet in the music wing, was amazingly distracting. Kris found himself fidgeting all day, tapping his pen on his notebook or kicking the heel of his sneaker against the legs of his chair, hearing the chords of "Big Yellow Taxi" over and over in his head, so vividly that it almost felt like a hallucination. He thought about asking Katy if she wanted to eat lunch in the music wing, but he didn't want to bother Mrs. Durand about opening the closet again, so he let himself get distracted by the sweet, low-key spectacle of Katy getting her hair french braided by some girl from the lacrosse team.
By the end of the day, the sight of his guitar case leaned up against the wall of the jazz band closet was such a relief Kris thought it should probably be levitating, bathed in an unreal golden glow and soundtracked by a celestial choir like a cartoon Holy Grail. Its weight dangling from his hand was welcome for once while he stood around in the hall waiting for Megan. Two more people asked him if he played guitar, but he felt much less annoyed about it than he had this morning. Megan rushed over to him, the flapping tails of her fabric headband giving the impression that she was flying.
"Hi," she said, a little breathless. "I thought we could go to the choir room, no one's using it today."
"Sure," Kris said. "I was thinking we should do it along with the CD a couple times, just to make sure the tempo is right and everything. They have a CD player in there, right?"
"Yeah," Megan said. "And thank you for doing this. You rock."
"Don't thank me yet."
Megan punched him on the arm, lightly. "Shut up, this is going to be awesome."
And it actually was. They started with a few bumpy run-throughs during which both of them stopped a lot and apologized to each other, both of them obviously feeling self-conscious, and people who were in the music wing for whatever reason kept leaning into the choir room to see what was going on, saying they were sorry for interrupting, and ducking out again.
"Maybe we should sit with our backs to the door," Megan said. "That way we won't see them so they won't interrupt us."
They spun their chairs around and started again, and at some point, Kris just...got comfortable with being there. He forgot that he was at school with people wandering by in the hallway, that the longest conversation he'd had with Megan before this afternoon had been not very long and about cupcakes, that he was sort of in trouble for not doing part of his math homework. Everything that wasn't the two of them and this song faded into background noise, and the process of figuring out what worked, what didn't work, how to fix it, and listening to it come together better the next time lit up the inside of his head like a string of Christmas lights. He wanted to sing along, he could feel the melody of the song coiled up in his throat, waiting. He liked Megan's voice, it was big somehow, and quirky and bright and fun, and she swayed and smiled while she sang, and Kris swayed and smiled back, and he had a blindingly bright moment of wishing that Katy was a singer, because he couldn't even imagine what it would be like to share this with someone he was already more familiar with, more connected to. He thought of Adam, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel and saying we should have a band.
"I don't know if I should sing that line about DDT," Megan said, collapsing into the chair next to Kris. "It's sort of...irrelevant. Didn't they stop using DDT in the 60s or something?"
"But it rhymes with 'bees' and 'please,'" Kris said, "So unless you want to rewrite the whole verse..."
"Oh my god, I really don't," she said, slouching down further in her chair. "I'm sorry for making you play the same song for like, ever, by the way. I hope you're not bored."
"How do you think I learned how to play guitar?" Kris said, strumming an E quietly. His fingertips hurt, and for a second he was there again, thirteen and miserable and trying to play Green Day's "Good Riddance" until he fell asleep holding the guitar, so he let his hands fall into his lap. "It doesn't bother me. It's...I've never really accompanied anyone before. It makes it different. Good-different," he added as an afterthought.
Whatever Megan was about to say next was lost in a wall of piano-noise. Once he got over the initial startling-ness, Kris recognized it as part of "Great Balls of Fire."
"You are so obnoxious," Megan said, addressing this to whoever was playing. She got up and walked to the front of the piano. Kris followed her, swinging his guitar around so it was resting against his back.
"You love it," said the guy sitting at the piano, who had curly hair in a semi-mohawk.
"There are at least two other pianos in this school," she said, leaning against the lower half of the keyboard and creating a dissonant smash of notes.
"But this one is my favourite," the guy said, punctuating it by playing a fluttery trill in the piano's upper register.
"Kris, this is Matt," Megan said, sitting down on the edge of the piano bench. "He'll be there on Friday, too. Matt, this is Kris, he's playing---"
"Harpsichord, right?" Matt interrupted. "I can tell because he's holding a guitar."
Megan shoulder-checked him, hard enough that he slid a few inches to the right on the bench. "Go away," she said. "I can't sing over your Jerry Lee Lewis greatest hits collection."
"Are you taking the bus?"
"Yeah, why---oh, shit," Megan said, looking up at the clock next to the door. Kris looked up too, and he wasn't really surprised to see that it was already 2:50. The after school buses left around three. "I guess I can't sing anymore right now, period."
Matt stood up and cracked his knuckles. "I'll see you on the bus, I have to go to my locker first," he said, tugging one of the tails of Megan's headband. "I can't wait to hear your harpsichord masterpiece, man," he said to Kris.
"It will blow your mind," Megan said, her eyes wide and dramatic.
"I'm like a harpsichord prodigy," Kris said, trying to look serious about it. "The guitar is just a side thing."
"Very cool," Matt said, and left the room. Kris went to put his guitar back in its case.
"So should we meet here again tomorrow?" he said.
"Definitely," Megan said. "Or---wait, tomorrow is the GSA meeting."
"Right, tomorrow is Wednesday," Kris said, putting on his jacket. "But I have an orchestra thing on Thursday." The orchestra thing was the viola section rehearsal, for which Kris had done zero practicing so far.
"What if we met here, practiced for a while, and if we have enough time we can stop by the meeting and say hi to everyone?"
"That works." Kris shrugged his backpack on, and winced as he felt his books and his viola case shift around against his back. "Can you make sure my viola isn't going to fall out of my bag?"
"Sure," Megan said, throwing her own bag over her shoulder and fiddling with the zippers on Kris's backpack. "There, I think you're good. Sorry to make you carry around two instruments. I didn't even think about that---I'd make Adam give you a ride so you don't have to have all this stuff on the bus, but he already went home."
"It's okay," Kris said as they headed out the door and down the hall. "The after school bus is less crowded anyway. If I really played the harpsichord, then I'd be screwed."
When he got home, he left his guitar in the living room and forced himself to do homework and play viola. Trying to do non-guitar stuff was easier now than it had been all day at school, so he had time after dinner to run through "Big Yellow Taxi" with his dad a couple of times and see if he had any suggestions. His parents both seemed pleased, if also a little bit confused, about his playing for Megan on Friday. Daniel just wanted to know if Megan was the hot girl with the short dreadlocks. (She wasn't, obviously. Kris was pretty sure Daniel was talking about Katy's friend Jess, but he feigned cluelessness.)
____________
Waking up and going to school on a Wednesday when he knew he'd be missing the GSA meeting (or most of it, anyway) was strange and slightly disappointing. Kris hadn't realized how much his Wednesdays hinged on the meetings, how many times he sort of thought yay, it's Wednesday and happily imagined sitting around room 215 at the end of the day, eating Cheez-Its and offering his semi-serious opinion about forks or cinnamon rolls or whether playing the entirety of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon was a good idea at a Wizard of Oz themed dance. And he had the same nagging feeling, every time he thought yay, it's Wednesday and remembered he wasn't going to the meeting, that he'd had on Monday morning when he hadn't been able to stop by the bake sale again, the feeling that he was standing Adam up. However comfortable Kris felt with Adam (and he was comfortable enough with Adam that he kept forgetting they'd only officially met a couple months ago), they weren't friends the way he was friends with Charles, they didn't have any classes together or hang out on weekends, so the GSA meetings were the only time they reliably saw each other. He momentarily considered seeing if he could leave his study hall early and going to meet Adam in the music wing again, but that seemed sort of crazy, especially once he realized that that Megan and Adam were friends like Kris and Charles were friends and Megan must have told him they were practicing again today. So there was really no reason to go find him and be all oh, hey, just stalking you to let you know I won't be there today when there was every chance Adam would just blink at him and say ...yeah, I know.
Kris's guitar, when he went to the jazz band closet to retrieve it at the end of the day, didn't have quite the same Holy Grail quality it had yesterday, but he was still glad to pick it up, meet Megan and settle back in with her and his guitar and the song. It was amazingly good, after another day of sitting around tired and bored and taking notes on things he didn't care about, to do something else, something better, something that meant something to him. The process had lost a tiny bit of yesterday's magic, and they were both ready for a break after twenty minutes or so, so they ran through the catalog of songs to which Kris knew the chords and Megan knew the words. They came up with a bunch of Beatles stuff, so they did "Here Comes the Sun" and some of "Ticket to Ride" and considered trying "Back in the U.S.S.R." (but that needed a piano, and Matt was nowhere to be seen today). Kris sang along this time, because he was absolutely and joyously helpless to resist. ("You didn't tell me you could sing," Megan said. "Next time we're doing a duet." Kris tried to stay noncommittal about that, but it sounded pretty much like the best idea ever, right then.)
They went back to "Big Yellow Taxi" for a bit, and then some of the GSA---Katy, Jess, Marie, and Alicia, who was holding hands with a really tall guy with spiky hair---walked into the choir room around 2:45, when Kris and Megan were sitting around in between run-throughs of the song and talking about what music their parents listened to, for some reason.
"We were going to come find you guys in a little while," Megan said, spinning in a slow circle on the room's sole spinny chair.
"We came to find you instead," Katy said, sitting down next to Kris and offering him an open bag of Goldfish crackers. "We brought snacks."
"And we love you for it," Megan said, leaning over Kris and grabbing a handful of Goldfish.
"We do," Kris said, taking his hand off his guitar strings and winding some of Katy's hair around his fingers before taking some crackers for himself.
"Where's Adam?" Megan said. Kris had been wondering the same thing.
"He was with us..." Katy looked over her shoulder at the door to the choir room. "I guess he's still talking to Rob in the hall."
Kris looked in the direction of the door, and waved to Marie and Jess, who sitting down at the piano. One of them started playing "Für Elise." Alicia and her tall, spiky friend took this as permission to play with the other instruments, and the two of them curled up in the corner with some bongos that Kris hadn't even noticed before, which prompted Megan to go on an ultimately successful search for one of those sticks with jingle bells on it that the percussion section sometimes used for Christmas medleys and join them in their corner. No one was playing loudly, so the collection of sounds was almost pleasant, if odd. Kris watched all of this with amusement and a mouthful of Goldfish.
"How's the song going?" Katy asked.
"Good," he said. "I think we've pretty much got it down."
"Are you still nervous?"
Kris grabbed more crackers and considered this. "A little," he said. "It's stupid. I've played viola solos a million times and this isn't even like that. No one will be paying attention to me. Megan is a really good singer."
"Someone will be paying attention to you," Katy said. "You're so cute when you play guitar."
"Which is obviously why I do it," Kris said, brushing the crumbs off his fingers and striking what he imagined was a parody of a cute guitar-playing pose. Katy threw a cracker at him.
"I'm trying to find someone else to babysit for the Martins on Friday so I can go," she said. "But no luck so far."
"Are you just planning on going to throw more food at me? Because I think we could get banned from Pony Espresso for that." Kris was trying to see where the thrown Goldfish had landed, and when he looked up, Katy was waving at Adam, who had just walked into the room.
"We should meet in here all the time," he said, taking the empty spinny chair next to Kris and looking around the room. Megan waved her bell-stick at him in greeting.
"It might be hard to actually talk about anything," Kris said. He slid his left hand over the neck of his guitar, wanting to play some chords and add to the noise, but Katy was always telling him it was rude to play guitar while someone was trying to talk to him, so he didn't. He had the idea that Adam wouldn't think it was rude, though. Adam looked happy about random piano music (they'd moved on from "Für Elise") accompanied by jingle bells and bongos, after all. He might take Kris's random chords and run with them, turn them into an impromptu song, and Kris wanted that, all of a sudden, it made complete sense in his head, he knew exactly how it would feel, but just like that the moment was past, things were moving on.
"We could become a musical ensemble instead," Adam mused. "Actually, 'Gay-Straight Alliance' isn't a horrible band name. It's better than Sonic Pork Chop, anyway."
"Sonic what?"
"Sonic Pork Chop. They're these three girls from that Catholic school---"
"Saint Isidore's?"
"Yeah. And they have a keyboard, but not a good one, one of those table-top ones from the 90s, it's like this big," Adam held his hands about a foot and a half apart. "And an upright bass, and one girl just keeps hitting a triangle, and they...chant stuff. We're pretty sure they think they're being ironic, but it's really hard to tell. You might get to see them on Friday, actually." Adam looked really excited about all of this, his eyes were bright and he was sort of waving his hands around, and it sunk in for the first time that he would be at the open mic on Friday, maybe sitting next to Kris just like this, telling stories about everyone who was there to perform, and suddenly Kris was excited about Sonic Pork Chop, too, but something kept him from saying so.
"How was the meeting?" he said instead.
"Pretty good," Adam said, and Katy nodded her agreement. "We were missing a lot of people because there's this big meeting for the winter play today, but that was okay."
"You're not in the winter play?"
"Nah, I'm sticking to stuff where I can sing this year. So's Megan---who, by the way, is like, in love with you right now. Not in a romantic way," Adam said hastily, looking at Katy. "Just in a musical way where I think she wants you to follow her around like a wandering minstrel and play guitar all the time."
"I did not say 'wandering minstrel'," Megan said. She and Alicia and Tall Spiky Guy had abandoned their percussion corner and come to join the discussion. "Don't listen to him," she said to Kris. "He's the one who---I mean, I think he's trying to sabotage me."
"Yes," Adam said, "I secretly want to drive you away from the open mic so we can hear more of that sea shanty guy."
"That guy," Megan said, with something like affection. Kris was getting more curious about this open mic every minute.
"...Sea shanty guy?" Katy said. She was obviously curious, too.
"Don't ask," Alicia advised, but it was too late.
"He's great," Megan said. "He sings all these weird songs about working on a ship and sometimes he wears this whole pirate costume..."
Someone knocked on the open door, and Kris turned around to see a couple guys standing in the doorway, dressed for a sports practice.
"Sorry, no one told us it was queer singalong hour," one of them said, and then snickered at his own joke.
"We need to ask someone about moving the choir risers in the auditorium," said the other guy.
"What, you can't figure them out? They have wheels, dumbass. You roll them," Alicia said.
"Mr. Wallace is probably in his office," Adam said, and he sounded sort of sharp, dismissive. It made Kris a little nervous. "You can ask him."
"Thanks," mumbled the second guy, and they left.
"This is clearly the worst singalong ever," Adam said after a moment. "We're not even singing."
"We could be," Marie said, and picked out the melody to the chorus of Ace of Base's "The Sign" on the piano. Adam grinned.
"Why do they need to move the risers?" Alicia asked, and the tone in the room had shifted again, and Kris uncurled his fingers from where they'd been clenched, without his conscious knowledge, around the neck of his guitar.
"They're probably on the track team," Jess said. "When it's raining they use the auditorium."
"They run in the auditorium?"
"No, they practice for pole vault and stuff."
"Oh," Alicia said. "That sounds like a horrible idea. Maybe they'll get injured." She stood up and pulled Tall Spiky Guy---who, to his credit, looked unfazed by all of this---out of his chair. "The bus will be here in a couple minutes."
"Megan, are you coming home with me?" Adam said, standing up and putting his jacket on.
"Yeah, but you have to give Kris a ride, too, because I'm making him carry around his giant guitar case and he shouldn't have to take it on the bus."
"Sure." Adam spun his keyring around on his finger. It had a little black tassel thing attached that wrapped itself around his wrist as he spun it. "Katy, I can take you home, too, if you want?"
"Thanks," Katy said, and grabbed Kris's hand as they left the choir room. They left out the back exit and jogged through the parking lot in the light rain to Adam's car. Kris was trying not to be disappointed that Megan and Katy were there, because when Megan had mentioned Adam driving him home yesterday, he'd pictured it like it had been the first time, just the two of them and Adam's music, and this was going to be different.
"Sorry about the chaos," Adam said, unlocking the passenger doors of his car. "If there's stuff in your way, just toss it behind the seats."
Megan slid the front seat forward so Kris and Katy could climb into the back, and then she handed Kris his guitar case. There were some empty takeout coffee cups and water bottles on the floor, and some jackets on the seats, as well as the box of tapes. Kris draped the jackets over Katy's legs, set his guitar case on the floor, and balanced the box of tapes in his lap, sifting through them again.
"Okay," Adam said, looking over his shoulder at Katy. "I know where Kris lives, but you're going to have to give me directions."
"You can just drop me off at Kris's house," Katy said.
"He can?" Kris said.
"Sure," she said. "We can study for our history test, and my mom can pick me up when she gets home from work."
"Okay," Kris said. "If you want."
"Okay," Adam said, and turned the keys in the ignition. Electronic music blared out of the speakers, but Adam shut it off before Kris could identify the song.
"So I met Spencer," Megan said.
"Kind of cute, I thought," Adam said, making the turn out of the school parking lot.
"...Kind of. And really quiet," said Megan. "Spencer is Alicia's new boy...thing," she said, twisting around in her seat to to talk to Kris and Katy.
"In a movie, they would have met at a punk concert," Adam explained. Kris looked up, and their eyes met for a second in the rearview mirror. "But actually they met at that gas station by the traffic circle that never cards anyone."
"Spencer was there to buy wine coolers," Megan said, her voice all fake-syrupy and her hands clasped over her heart. "And they both wanted the last envelope of strawberry Pop-Rocks."
"It's a love story for the ages," Adam said, with feeling.
"Who got the last thing of Pop-Rocks, though?" Kris asked. Adam met his eyes in the mirror again, and Kris could tell he was smiling even though he couldn't see Adam's mouth.
"He let Alicia have it. Which was sweet."
"He's such a gentleman," Megan cooed, and Adam laughed.
"We shouldn't be mean," he said. "They seem happy. And he's in a band, so that's cool. I think he's even the singer."
"Speaking of," Megan said, untwisting her spine to face Adam. "Did you know Kris can sing?"
"He can?" Adam said. Kris studiously avoided looking up at the rearview mirror this time.
"He totally can," Katy said. She was beaming. "Is he singing with you on Friday?"
"I'm right here," Kris said.
"No," Megan said. "But only because I didn't know he could sing until today and there's no time to rearrange the song. But next time..."
"Hey," Kris said. "Let's talk about something else. How about the weather?"
"I hate the rain," Adam said, "That's why the volume was up so high on the stereo, the rain was seriously so loud this morning I could barely hear."
"Plus it messes up your hair," Megan said, reaching over to further mess up Adam's hair. He swatted her hands away.
"That, too," he said, and they all actually managed to talk about the weather the rest of the way to Kris's house.
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