Another Little Piece of My Heart Read online

  As I pull onto the highway, April sticks her bare feet on the Miata’s dashboard, and I swat at her leg. “Get them off there.”

  She lowers her sunglasses my way. “Please, as soon as I get my license, this car becomes ours. Our car. My feet.” She wiggles her pink-painted toes.

  “The license plate still has my name on it.”

  “That can be changed.” April crosses her arms. “You have to share.”

  The emphasis she places on the last word is evidence that she’s still bitter that she’s no longer getting her own car when she turns sixteen. It’s one of the reasons my dad opted not to sell the Miata. He doesn’t want to have to chauffeur April or I anywhere, and heaven forbid his younger daughter should have to take the bus to school. That would be beneath us.

  Appearances have always been way too important to my parents, and my dad in particular. He can pretend the house is too big for the three of us, and that he’d only bought the boat to make my mom happy, but getting rid of the Miata or his Mercedes would look too bad. As for me and my lack of college in the fall, my dad likes to wax poetic to his friends about how I’m taking a year off to explore the world, broaden my horizons and deepen my piano studies.

  Right.

  I grit my teeth. “We’ll share. Until then, feet down. Now. You’re smudging the windshield and blocking my view.”

  April groans and lowers her feet. “This sucks. Why New Hampshire? I didn’t even know they had beaches there.”

  I turn on the radio because if April is going to complain the whole time, this is going to be an even longer drive than I feared. “Yes, darn Aunt Anita for not growing up somewhere more fashionable, like Martha’s Vineyard.”

  “I don’t care where she grew up. I just don’t understand why she has to go to the beach in that state. Why not Florida or the Caribbean?” Her phone sounds with a text, and suddenly I’m being ignored in favor of the friends she’s leaving behind.

  That’s fine. I turn the radio tuner, considering whether I should put on some of the music I brought instead, when I land on a classic rock station. Janis Joplin is belting out “Piece of My Heart” in that scratchy but powerful voice of hers, and it’s like an anthem that calls to my blood. The memories this song brings to the surface aren’t ones I want to relive, but I can’t make myself change the station, either.

  This was my song. After the first time I heard “Daddy’s Girl,” I blasted Janis from the car’s speakers and just drove and drove and drove because I had to get away from the mess Jared created of my heart. So hearing this song now? It’s so appropriate as I leave behind Connecticut and every place I ever visited with him. For the first time since my dad told me that college had to be deferred, I feel hopeful. Like maybe this summer won’t completely suck.

  I crank the volume and press down on the accelerator.

  As the music washes over me, I’m fifteen again, at Michelle Rosenberg’s party the September of my sophomore year. Michelle doesn’t go to my school, but some of my friends know her from summer camp. They’re invited and take me along.

  It’s my first real party. The music is loud and bad and mostly I wander around Michelle’s house, trying to act like I’m having more fun than I am.

  At last I enter a new room that looks just like all the other rooms with its beige walls, muted carpets and overstuffed furniture suffering under the weight of drunk high school students. Except in this particular room a guy sits on one of those overstuffed couches, and the beige fades away until he’s all I see.

  His hair hangs almost to his shoulders, the same mousy brown as my own, but his has these golden streaks running through it, like he spent a lot of time in the sun over the summer. There’s something so right about him that my chest feels as though it’s constricting. Then he turns and catches my eye and grins, revealing a perfect dimple on his left cheek.

  The burning shocks me. Kristen develops a new crush almost every month, and each one, she swears, is the best guy ever. Not me. I’m not some romantic who believes in love at first sight or anything, but I have to talk to this guy. I have to find out who he is.

  My feet move, taking that huge grin of his as an invitation. So even though I’m never so forward, I plop down on the sofa next to him. “I’m Claire.”

  “Jared,” he tells me, resting his head against the sofa and looking me up and down. This close, his eyes are an amazing shade of clear blue. He starts to say something else, then a song by this new group, The Frantics, comes on the stereo, a very popular—very annoying—cover of the Beatles’ “She Loves You.”

  Jared sighs. “Lennon and McCartney must be rolling over in their graves.”

  Whoa. He’s gorgeous, and he knows of the awesomeness that was Lennon and McCartney? I might swoon. “Really? You hate this song, too? I thought I was the only one.” I bounce in my seat a bit. “Though I’m pretty sure Paul McCartney is still alive.”

  Jared shakes his head. “After what he did with Wings? He’s dead to me. So are you a Beatles fan? What’s your favorite album?”

  We debate the merits of Abbey Road versus the “White Album” versus Revolver. Soon enough I know Jared’s a junior at one of the nearby public schools, and he’s been playing guitar since he was twelve and writes his own songs. I’ve been wanting to teach myself guitar ever since my piano teacher introduced me to sixties rock, and I have to stop myself from drooling.

  We discuss our favorite modern bands and movies. Then somehow the conversation changes to things I never talk about with my friends—politics and religion and weirder stuff, like what if all those ancient gods were actually aliens doing experiments on humanity.

  Maybe it’s the pot smoke that clings to the air, but it’s the most fun conversation I’ve ever had. Before I know it, the party’s dying, and my friends are ready to leave. Jared and I have talked for three hours.

  He calls me the next day and we talk for two more, and from that day on, we’re practically conjoined. Jared picks me up after school, which my mom is okay with until she sees his ten-year-old pickup truck with the bumper held on by duct tape. All I can do is hope she never sees his house because then she’ll really flip.

  Jared’s bedroom is the size of my bathroom, no exaggeration. It’s cluttered and messy and comfortable in a way my room with its enormous four-poster bed and white lace duvet cover can never be. Posters of his favorite guitarists line the walls: Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and George Harrison, who Jared claims is so underrated. There’s barely enough room for us to sit between the piles of clothes on the floor and the albums and CD cases because Jared’s a freak about needing to own multiple copies of his favorite music. Yet somehow he clears space and teaches me guitar. He’s an awesome teacher, and it doesn’t hurt that when he helps me position my arms and place my fingers on the frets, his touch sends electric shocks singing through me.

  “You need to relax your right arm,” Jared’s telling me as we sit in the middle of his room, the October afternoon sunlight pouring in through the window. It illuminates the dust that covers his furniture but also coats the room in a surreal honeyed glow.

  Jared takes my upper arm and tries to position it for me. “Don’t tense up your shoulder.”

  How am I supposed to not be tense when he’s touching me?

  I grumble, trying to do as he says. “It’s awkward and uncomfortable that way.” The fingers on my left hand are screaming in agony from pressing down on the steel strings. I’m never going to get the hang of this.

  “That’s because the guitar’s a bit big for you. Here, try this.” He comes around behind me and drapes his arm over mine.

  My heart beats so fast I’m afraid I might pass out. Jared’s face is so close. His breath tickles my ear, faintly peanutty because we’ve been working our way through a bag of Peanut M&M’S, but warm and so sweet. My eyes close inadvertently. Just as I’m starting to fe
el stupid for thinking about his lips instead of my arm position, his grip on my forearm slackens and I feel those lips kiss my ear.

  Arm? What arm?

  He tucks my hair behind my ear and pulls away. “Claire?”

  He sounds adorably nervous about what he did, and I don’t want to know what he wants to tell me. If he’s talking, he’s not kissing me anymore. So I twist around—not easy with the guitar on my lap—and kiss him back before he can say anything else.

  And that ended my music lesson for the day.

  Still, a month later, I’ve made progress amidst all the kissing, and Jared helps me pick out my first guitar. He takes me one day after school. I’ve been to this shop a few times to buy piano music, but I’ve never ventured into the room that’s wall-to-wall guitars. In spite of my lessons, I feel ridiculously out of place, especially since the clerk has blue hair and more piercings than a pin cushion. She also can’t be that many years out of high school herself, and she’s on a first-name basis with Jared.

  While he tells her what we’re looking for, I catch my reflection in a security mirror and wonder what he sees in me. It’s not my looks that bother me, although I have to admit the clerk owns that blue hair in a way I only wish I could. As a result I’m feeling really plain as well as absurdly preppy in my hideous school uniform with its sweater vest and pleated skirt. But what really eats away at my insides is that I feel like such a poser. Part of me wants to run over to the keyboards in the next room and bang out some Beethoven just to prove that I have the tiniest bit of talent.

  When Jared adjusts the tuning on one of the guitars then plays one of his own songs, my insecurity reaches new heights. I’m a string ready to snap, tempted to dash out of the store and declare myself a failure before I ever give this playing thing a fair go.

  The clerk totally doesn’t help, either.

  “Isn’t he amazing?” she says, offering me a guitar to try. “Watch for it. This dude is going to be famous one day. I’m calling it now.”

  The guitar she hands me is a better size for me than Jared’s, but it feels awkward and misplaced in my arms anyway. “Yeah, no doubt.”

  Jared just laughs and rolls his eyes. “You’re both crazy. Claire’s the talented one. I can barely read music, but you should hear her on the piano.”

  “It’s hard to totally suck when you’ve been taking lessons as long as I have,” I say. But Jared’s compliment gives me enough confidence that I play a few chords. I still wish the clerk would go away, though, so I can relax.

  She seems to read my mind because she gets up a minute later. “I think I can leave you two at it. Will I be seeing you Saturday?” she asks Jared as she heads to the doorway.

  Saturday? My fingers pause, and I look at Jared curiously. He nods without glancing up.

  After the clerk leaves, I place my thumb back on the strings but my mind is elsewhere, overrun with more insecurities. “What’s Saturday?”

  “It’s nothing, just this thing they do. The owners are partnered with some organization that helps underprivileged kids. I’ve been volunteering with them, giving some of the kids guitar lessons.”

  “Really? That’s awesome.” You’re awesome, is what I think. Why didn’t I know he did that?

  But Jared shrugs. “It’s fun. Some of the kids are really into it. So what do you think of that one?” He motions to the guitar, seeming eager to change the subject.

  “It’s all right. I don’t know. How did you pick yours?”

  He sets down the one he’s been playing with and takes the guitar I have. “Actually, I didn’t. It was my dad’s.”

  “I didn’t know your dad plays.” His parents got divorced when he was young, but so far Jared’s rarely mentioned his dad.

  “Played,” Jared corrects me. “He used to be good enough to get some paying work, supposedly. That was before I was born. Then he quit.”

  “Because of you being born?”

  Jared shakes his head. “Because it wasn’t enough for him. He couldn’t be happy with what he had. It’s one of the reasons he and my mom got divorced. He’d get frustrated and take it out on her, pick fights and run off for days. That sort of thing. He’s an asshole. He threw the guitar away during the divorce. My mom rescued it from the trash and saved it for me.”

  I’m not sure what to say to that so I fall back on the lamest thing possible. “That sucks.”

  Jared scowls. “Hey, it means I got his guitar. It’s the only good thing he ever did for me.”

  I lean over and kiss his cheek to save myself from saying anything else stupid, and he smiles and hands me a different instrument.

  “Try this one. You just need to pick the one you like—one that sounds good and fits comfortably in your arms. Kind of like picking a girlfriend.”

  I poke him and knock the guitar out of tune. “You like me because I sound good?”

  “Sound good, look good, are good.” He returns my kiss on his cheek with a kiss on my ear, and an idiotic grin spreads over my face. The same dumb smile is mirrored on his own. Then he taps the guitar. “Play good, too.”

  I laugh my disagreement because he’s wrong about that part, but his kisses make me giddy and he dares me to believe it. And as the weeks go by, with him at my side, I do get better. By the end of the year, we’re writing songs together. We have great plans. Ridiculous fantasies. One day Steele-Winslow will be the new Lennon-McCartney.

  It’s Jared who takes a part-time job so he can buy me concert tickets for Valentine’s Day. And it’s Jared whose shoulder I cry on when I can’t contain my worries about my mom and the chemo. It’s always him, the first to come through for me on anything. Sometimes we have whole conversations without saying a word because we can read each other’s expressions so well.

  I don’t know when my parents morph from being wary of him to outright disliking him, but their annual Christmas party is a good bet. Such a party is not for the faint of heart under the best of circumstances, but I thought I’d prepped Jared well. He looks good in his borrowed suit, he keeps a respectful distance from me at all times, and he calls Grandma B “ma’am” when she speaks to him. All goes well until my parents ambush us by the tree in the den.

  “So, Jared,” my dad says. His cheeks are Santa-pink, courtesy of the champagne. “You’re a junior, are you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Started looking at colleges yet?”

  Jared squeezes my hand. “No.”

  “No?” My parents exchange glances. “Well, you can’t start that sort of thing too soon. Claire’s a year behind you, and we’re already making plans for which schools she’s going to visit this coming summer.”

  “Oh, come on,” I say. “You’re making a plan. So I can visit Yale.” That’s where my dad went to school, and he has high hopes of me following.

  My dad’s chest puffs with pride. “Because it’s a fine school and ought to be a family tradition. Where did your father go to school, Jared?”

  “Um, he didn’t go to college.” Jared kicks at the carpet, clearly aware that was the wrong answer. So he tries to atone. “But he owns his own business.”

  “Good for him,” my mother says. She seems particularly frail tonight, washed out in her gold gown, and the tree’s twinkling lights reflect off her pale skin, giving her a mottled appearance. “What kind of business?”

  Jared fidgets with the silver ring on his thumb. “A bar in New Haven.”

  “So.” I clear my throat. “That puts him kind of close to Yale, right?” Jared’s caught midway between a smirk and a wince, but my dad gives me a knowing look. “He’s got time, Dad.”

  “Yes, you do,” my mother agrees. “But what are you thinking of studying?”

  Jared’s half smirk vanishes, and my right hand might never recover from the crushing he gives it. His grip isn’t the only thi
ng that’s tight, either. Although his expression never truly changes, I can see how his shoulders have clenched and his eyes have narrowed. I’m going to hear all about how nosy my parents are later. “Um, not sure.”

  Actually, I’m fairly sure that this conversation is the most thought Jared’s ever given to college at all. When we’re not playing and writing songs, I’m often helping him with his schoolwork even though he’s a year ahead of me. It’s not that he isn’t smart, but he doesn’t have much interest in it.

  “Well, what do you want to do?” my dad asks. “Surely, you have some thoughts. A doctor? A lawyer? Lord help you, not a teacher or an accountant, I hope.”

  “I want to be a musician, I guess.”

  “Oh, yes,” my mom says. “You’re teaching Claire guitar, aren’t you. I do love Andrés Segovia. We should hear you play sometime.”

  His wince returns in full force. “Sure, I guess. But I won’t sound anything like Segovia. He plays a classic guitar, and I have a steel-string because I mostly play rock.”

  Given the horror that sweeps across my parents’ faces, this must translate as: my boyfriend aspires to be poor, do drugs and drop out of school.

  “Well, that explains your hair,” says my dad.

  It’s the beginning of the end.

  From that day forward, Jared becomes ever the more obstinate about avoiding my parents. And for their part, my parents become ever the more argumentative whenever Jared’s name comes up. He’s a blemish on the Claire sculpture they’ve tried so hard to mold.