Page 75 of The Summer List

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to follow up that masterpiece we all just witnessed,” she says with a grin. “I really hope we’re at the point of officially being friends, Shal, because I’m about to brag to this whole bar and tell them you’re my friend.”

A laugh rolls through the crowd. I glance around and see she’s already got the whole room falling under her spell. She was so nervous she couldn’t even drink her ginger ale a few minutes ago, but up on stage, there’s an ease to her you can’t help but sink into yourself.

“Of course we’re friends, bitch,” Shal yells with her hands cupped around her mouth.

The laughter gets even louder. Andrea chuckles into the mic.

“Spoken like the truest of friends.” She shifts her guitar on her lap and gets her fingers set up on the fret board before looking out at the crowd again. “I have a dedication to make too. This song is…for a girl.”

Someone wolf whistles at the same time my heart jumps into my throat.

“It’s for a girl I’m…” She trails off and clears her throat. “A girl I’m really gonna miss. So yeah, this is a song by Neutral Milk Hotel called ‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.’”

My hands fly up to cover my mouth as Andrea strums the familiar chords of the song. I might have only heard it for the first time less than a week ago, but I’ve replayed the original version enough since then to have every word memorized.

Andrea’s fingers move up and down the fret board without hesitation, and my chest tightens when I remember she hadn’t heard the song before our date either. She could have played any song she wanted tonight, but she must have spent the past few days learning the one we danced to.

She learned this song so she could play it for me.

I drop one of my hands from my mouth to press my palm to my chest instead, right over the desperate thump of my heart under my shirt. My heart feels like it’s trying to beat its way out of me so it can get to her. My feet twitch with the urge to jump up and run to her, to stop this whole performance and tell her she doesn’t have to miss me because this doesn’t have to end.

Not if we don’t want it to.

She gets to the end of the song’s intro, and the only thing that stops me from actually going off the rails and careening through the bar towards her is the sound of her voice.

I didn’t know she sang.

The first lyric about finding a beautiful face in a beautiful place reverberates through the bar like a magic spell that keeps every eye locked on her. Her singing voice is higher than I would have expected. If I had to guess, I’d have said she’d have one of those rich and raspy rock goddess voices tinged with smoke and flames, but instead, the sound is clear and fresh like sweet rain water trickling down a windowpane.

It’s a voice that comes from those slow and still parts of her I’ve caught glimpses of from time to time, like when I found her out on the deck a few nights ago. It’s a voice that tells the world who she really is.

She gets to the chorus and falters for a moment, her eyes squeezing shut, and I realize that voice can’t hide the fear she’s always running from. The loneliness. The heartache. The dark things lurking over her shoulder that tell her she’s not good enough.

I’ve spent most of my life letting my own shadows do exactly the same thing to me. I’ve let doubt, shame, and fear keep me in the dark for way too long.

When I met Andrea, I saw a girl who shone like a summer sunrise, so bright it almost hurt to look at her. I tried to hide from that light, to watch it from the shadows like I always do, but she turned the sun on me full blast and decided what she found was not too small or scared or weird or pathetic for someone like her.

She helped me start to believe that maybe I’m not too small for anyone. Maybe I never have been.

And maybe what she needs is for someone to finally reflect her own light back at her and let her see the same thing about herself.

So when she finishes her song to resounding applause and comes back to our table, I ignore the lurch in my stomach when the MC calls my name.

I ignore the way my skin gets hot and itchy as the whole crowd watches me walk to the stage.

I ignore the way my vision swims and my throat goes dry when I’m finally facing a crowd full of people all waiting for me to do the one thing that’s scared me the most my entire life: speak.

I ignore every ‘what if’ that tells me I can’t do this and replace them with, ‘What if I can?’

CHAPTER 20

Andrea

By the time I sit back down at the table, I’m shaking so much I can barely get my guitar case zipped up while we wait for Naomi to replace me on stage. I couldn’t look at her after I’d finished my song, not when every chord I played and every word I sang was steeped with the one thing I haven’t been able to bring myself to say to her yet: goodbye.

My year is up, and maybe my mom is cutting it a couple weeks short with the flight, but it’s not like it matters at this point. If I was going to have some grand revelation about what I’m actually good for in life, it would have happened by now. I would have come up with more than ‘fun at parties’ and ‘can get anyone to sing along to the guitar.’ I’d have something worthwhile enough to justify turning my back on everything my mom has built for me.

I’d have something a girl like Naomi could be proud of, not just entertained by for a summer.

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