Sing You Home: A Novel Read online

  On her right wrist is a gauze pad, wrapped with what looks like duct tape.

  Lucy doesn’t make eye contact. She slings herself into a chair, pivots it so that it is facing away from me, and puts her head down on the desk.

  I get up and close the door to the room. “You want to talk about it?” I ask.

  She shakes her head, but doesn’t lift it up.

  “How did you get hurt?”

  Lucy brings her knees up, curling into herself, the smallest ball.

  “You know,” I say, mentally ditching my lesson plan, “maybe we should just listen to some music together. And if you feel like it, you can talk.” I walk toward my iPod, which is hooked up to a portable speaker, and scan through my playlists.

  The first song I play is “Hate on Me,” by Jill Scott. I want to find something that matches Lucy’s mood, that brings her back to me.

  She doesn’t even twitch a response.

  I move on to frenetic songs—the Bangles, Karen O. Spirituals. Even Metallica. When we reach our sixth song—“Love Is a Battlefield” by Pat Benatar—I finally admit defeat. “All right, Lucy. Let’s call it a day.” I hit the Pause button on the iPod.

  “Don’t.”

  Her voice is thin, thready. Her head is still tucked against her knees, her face hidden.

  “What did you say?”

  “Don’t,” Lucy repeats.

  I kneel beside her and wait until she turns and looks at me. “Why not?”

  Her tongue darts out, wets her lips. “That song. It’s how my blood sounds.”

  With its driving bass and insistent percussion, I can see why she’d feel this way. “When I’m pissed off,” I tell her, “this is what I play. Really loud. And I drum along to the beat.”

  “I hate coming here.”

  Her words cut through me. “I’m really sorry to hear—”

  “The special ed room? Seriously? I’m already the school’s biggest freak, and now everyone thinks I’m retarded, too.”

  “Mentally challenged,” I correct automatically, and Lucy gives me the look of death.

  “I think you need to play some percussion,” I announce.

  “And I think you need to go f_____.”

  “That’s enough.” I grab her wrist—the one that isn’t injured—and tug her to a standing position. “We’re going on a field trip.”

  At first I am dragging her, but by the time we are headed down the hallway, she is tagging along willingly. We pass couples plastered to lockers, making out; we skirt four giggling girls who are bent over a phone, staring at the screen; we weave between the overstuffed lacrosse players in their team jerseys.

  The only reason I even know where the cafeteria is, is because Vanessa’s taken me there for coffee other times when I’ve been at the school. It looks like every other school cafeteria I’ve ever seen—a life-size petri dish breeding social discontent, students sorting themselves into individual genuses: the Popular Kids, the Geeks, the Jocks, the Emos. At Wilmington High the hot lunch line and kitchen are tucked behind the tables, so we march right down the center of the caf and up to the woman who is slinging mashed potatoes onto plates. “I’m going to need you to clear this area,” I announce.

  “Oh, you are,” she says, and she raises a brow. “Who died and left you queen?”

  “I’m one of the school therapists.” This is not exactly true. I have no affiliation with the school. Which is why, when I get into trouble for doing this, it won’t really be devastating. “Just a little ten-minute break.”

  “I didn’t get a memo about this—”

  “Look.” I pull her aside and, in my best educator voice, say, “I have a suicidal girl here, and I’m doing some esteem building. Now, last time I checked, this school and every other school in the country had a suicide prevention initiative on the docket. Do you really want the superintendent to find out that you were impeding progress?”

  I am completely bluffing. I don’t even know the name of the superintendent. And Vanessa will either kill me when she hears I did this or congratulate me—I’m just not sure which.

  “I’m going to get the principal,” the woman huffs. Ignoring her, I move behind the counter and begin to grab hanging pots and pans and turn them over on the work surfaces. I gather ladles, spoons, spatulas.

  “You’re going to get reamed,” Lucy says.

  “I don’t work for the school,” I reply, shrugging. “I’m an outsider, too.” I set up two drumming stations—one makeshift high hat (an overturned skillet), a snare (an overturned pot), and leave the metal server door at our feet to be the bass drum. “We’re going to play the drums,” I announce.

  Lucy looks at the kids in the cafeteria—some of whom are watching us, most of whom are simply ignoring us. “Or not.”

  “Lucy, did you or did you not want to get out of that awful special ed room? Get over here and stop arguing with me.”

  To my surprise, she actually does. “On the floor is our kick drum. Four beats, even. Kick it with your left foot, because you’re a lefty.” As I count off, I hit my boot against the metal doors of the serving table. “You try it.”

  “This is really stupid,” Lucy says, but she tentatively kicks the metal, too.

  “Great. That’s four-four time,” I tell her. “Now your snare is at your right hand.” I hand her a metal spoon and point to the overturned pot. “Hit on beats two and four.”

  “For real?” Lucy asks.

  As an answer, I play the next beat—eighth notes on the high hat: one-and-two-and-three-and-four. Lucy keeps up her rhythm, and with her left hand copies what I’m doing. “Don’t stop,” I tell her. “That’s a basic backbeat.” Over the cacophony I pick up two wooden spatulas and do a drum solo.

  By now, the entire cafeteria is watching. A group of kids groove to a makeshift rap.

  Lucy doesn’t notice. She’s pouring herself into the rhythm as it shimmies through her arms and her spine. I start singing “Love Is a Battlefield,” the words raw, like flags ripping in a wind. Lucy can’t take her eyes off me. I sing through one chorus, and then on the second, she joins in.

  No promises. No demands.

  She’s grinning like mad, and I think that surely this breakthrough will be written up in the annals of music therapy—and then the principal walks into the cafeteria, flanked by the lunch lady on one side and Vanessa on the other.

  My spouse doesn’t look particularly happy, I might add.

  I stop singing, stop banging the pots and pans.

  “Zoe,” Vanessa says, “what on earth are you doing?”

  “My job.” I take Lucy’s hand and pull her in front of the serving station. She is absolutely mortified to be caught in the act. I hand the principal the spatula I’ve been drumming with and push past him without saying a word, until Lucy and I are facing the entire room of students. Quickly I raise our joined hands in a rock-band victory moment. “Thank you, Wilmington High!” I yell. “Peace out!”

  Without another word—and with the stares of the principal and Vanessa boring into my back—Lucy and I ride out of the cafeteria to a round of applause and high fives. “Zoe,” she says.

  I drag her through unfamiliar halls of the school, intent on getting as far away from the administration as possible.

  “Zoe—”

  “I’m going to get fired,” I mutter.

  “Zoe,” Lucy says. “Stop.”

  With a sigh, I turn to apologize. “I shouldn’t have put you on the spot like that.”

  But then I see that the flush in her cheeks wasn’t shame but excitement. Her eyes are sparkling, her smile infectious. “Zoe,” she breathes. “Can we do that again?”

  In spite of Wanda’s warning, I am still a little taken aback to open the door of Mr. Docker’s room at Shady Acres and find him shrunken and faded in his bed. Even when he was in one of his quiet, catatonic states before, he was able to be moved to a rocking chair or to the common room, but, according to Wanda, he hasn’t left his bed in the two weeks