Accidental Notes: A Novel

Chapter 26

Chasing Shadows

Not sure what this story is? The synopsis is available here.

Catch up on chapter 25 here.

All I want to do is call my mom. I’ve avoided talking to her about all this long enough. Of course it would be better in person, but talking to her now is more important than seeing her face to face. Except I can’t yet. Dad takes me on a bunch of other errands after Blockbuster. Out to lunch, then to a supply store where we buy some boxes — for the estate sale, I guess — and by the time we get back, it’s almost dark.

As we pull up the driveway, I know I won’t get the chance to call Mom. There are cars everywhere. The house is full of people again, chattering nervously and too loud while the kids wreak havoc of their own.

By the way things drop to silence when Dad and I walk in, I know they were waiting for us, although I don’t know why. Dad looks around and nods, then sets the movie down without ceremony. “Sorry we’re late,” he says.

“The estate sale isn’t until tomorrow,” I say.

“I know.” Dad goes back outside and returns with all the empty boxes we bought. I realize what’s happening in slow motion, as each family takes one, opens it, and starts to wander around the house.

“We’re — taking what we want?”

“Her will was unclear, and there isn’t much of value, so…”

“It’s a free-for-all on her memories. On her life.”

“That’s a harsh way to look at it.”

It isn’t, though. It’s the truth. The only harsh thing I’m thinking about is how I hope they remember the piano is mine. Grandma promised it to me. Every muscle in my back has tensed. “Why sugarcoat something that’s true?” I don’t wait for an answer. Dad believes in sugarcoating everything. “I’m going to Grayson’s.”

For good measure, I grab the sheet music first. I have so much to tell him, not least the note hiding in this music, but also how soon I’m leaving.

The moment I’m outside, I regret my decision. Even with my beanie and winter jacket and gloves on, the storm is picking up, and the flashlight on my phone does nothing but reflect the snow back to me, doubling the storm in front of my eyes until it seems impossible to get there. Until, suddenly, I am.

It’s too dark to see his whole house. Instead, I see a dog barking in a disembodied window, a face pressing against the glass. Then I hear things: a door opening, crunches of boots through snow, a voice nearby. Grayson’s sister. “What are you doing out there?”

“Looking to come in. Grandma’s house is… I don’t belong there right now.”

When we reach the porch light, it’s easy to see the tension in Taylor’s cheeks and jaw. “Maybe now’s not — ”

There’s no way there’s anything worse going on inside than a family fighting over the remains of a loved one. “Anything is better than there.” Taylor doesn’t contradict me, but she shakes her head as she pushes open the door. I kick the snow from my boots once we’re inside, then take them off, unwrapping myself a layer at a time.

Harmony rushes over and throws herself into my lap, covering my face in kisses as I sit on the floor and finish taking off my outerwear. “I missed you, too. Can’t blame you for not braving the storm, but I missed you.”

“Adaya?” His voice enters the room first, but soon Grayson is right here in front of me, his hair messed up, wearing a waffle undershirt and jeans. I forget what I was thinking about before. All I want to think about is him. “What are you — ”

“You started this conversation and it is not over,” Grayson’s mom calls. “Where did you go?”

“I’m sorry,” I say. Our feet are close together, him barefoot, me in bright purple socks, on the blue and white linoleum. “I should’ve realized what Taylor was trying to — ”

“You didn’t know,” he says to me, then turns to shout toward the kitchen. “Adaya is here.”

His mom marches over until I can see her in a patchwork behind Grayson. A swatch of jeans. Hints of her bright knit sweater. All her disappointment carried in shoulders and frown lines. “I didn’t know you were coming over.”

“Neither did I. Neither did Grayson. I — my family — If you need him, I can…” But I don’t know what I should say. Go outside and freeze?

“She can wait,” Grayson says to me. He doesn’t even turn around.

“Grayson — ” his mother warns, but she looks at me, shakes her head, and turns back to the kitchen.

“What was that about?” I ask.

“Not now. Not here. Follow me.” He doesn’t reach for my hand and I don’t take it, but I keep wishing I had. He leads me back into the living room. The tree is fully lit, and we sit on the floor against the staircase, while the lights from the tree and star shimmer on us and make me feel like I’m on a stage even here in a corner with no one to see us.

“Okay. What happened?” I ask.

“What brought you here?”

I wish he hadn’t changed the subject, but I can sense his mother listening in from the kitchen. “It’s been a long day, and then I came home and all my relatives are just…taking things from Grandma’s house. I was in the way.”

He nods and takes a big breath, eyes on the glow of the Christmas tree lights. “Do you ever feel like… never mind.”

“No, what is it? I want to know.”

He lowers his voice. “Like you’re the only one you have? Like no one else can be trusted to always want what’s actually best for you?”

“All the time.” I pause and look at him. I don’t even hide that I’m staring. “Except you. I trust you.”

“Same. I didn’t mean you.”

Harmony trots over then and snuggles in between us. Grayson and I reach to pet her at the same time and our hands entwine. “I’m going to miss this.”

“At least you still have a few more days. The way I’m counting, we have all year.”

“Very funny.” I grab Grayson’s hand tighter in mine, releasing Harmony from beneath us, and nudge her with my knees until she huffs and walks away. “That’s actually part of what I need to tell you. Mom called and rescheduled my flight. For tomorrow.”

“Seriously? But the concert — ”

“I know. Trust me, I fought with her about it. She had the audacity to call on Christmas to tell me.”

Grayson’s hand leaves mine as suddenly as my plans had changed, but somehow this small thing hurts even more. “After I left?”

I close in on myself. This is the part I was avoiding. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“So instead of telling me we just — ” He glances behind us toward the kitchen. “In the snow.”

“You’re the one who keeps saying it’s a good idea to not plan everything out. To go with the flow of things.”

“We shouldn’t have made plans in the first place. I’m guessing you wrote them down and jinxed it all.”

His words prickle my skin. The Zoe Harris concert was the only thing I’d added to my bullet journal calendar since getting here. “By that logic, nothing I wrote down — ” I can’t finish the sentence. Nothing I’ve written down has gone the way I wanted it to. And all the best things about being here weren’t on my to-do list.

“See? This is why I don’t write things down. Why I don’t go shouting from the rooftop about what I want to do. No one ever disappoints me if I have low enough expectations.” He stands without acknowledging me. With all the lights turned on in this room, shadows chase him in every direction.

“Grayson, please.” I scramble to my feet and follow him. I catch up, and this time I take his hand in mine, squeeze it when he keeps walking, hoping to stop him. Even the tiny bit he slows tells me I have a chance. “The audition changed. The flight changed and I have to be on it. Trust me, this isn’t what I wanted.”

The air between us vibrates like our pulses have jumped from our bodies and taken up residence between us instead. He slips his hand out of mine like an admission of failure. “Right. Exactly. That’s why I’m mad. You know me so well.”

He shrugs and finishes climbing the stairs, disappearing into is room. All I can do is watch until it’s closed. Then I follow and knock on his door. He doesn’t immediately open it, but that’s fine. I can wait. Sure enough, soon he does, and lets me in. Not in the week I’ve been here or as much as we talked in elementary school can I remember his face looking as crestfallen as it does right now. “I’d rather be alone.”

“You never want to be alone.”

“I do now. I doubt anything you have to say will help.”

“Great. I need to say it. I’m sorry.” I close the door behind me. No matter what his parents think, it’s not like anything is going to happen. “Everything all came to a head and I don’t know how to change that. I have to get on that plane. I have to get to my audition. You know that.”

He turns to his chair at the piano and swivels it to face me before sitting down in it. “Remember when we first found the sheet music in Nancy’s storage room?”

I nod. Everything about that moment is ingrained in my memory. How it felt like salvation. How it felt like a relief to not think about my brother anymore. What a joke, now.

“And how I showed you an email?”

“Your mom sent your composition to a contest. And she didn’t even tell you until it was too late.”

“Exactly. I’d been working on that song for months. Nancy taught me how to build themes and improv around them. It was supposed to be for camp. I was saving it. Then Mom went and entered that contest, and I lost both that and the chance to use it for camp.” He stops abruptly and turns around, plays some notes into the piano that neither of us can hear because it isn’t even turned on.

I wait. I don’t have any clue where he’s going with this.

Grayson turns around again and swings his feet up to rest on his bed. “That’s what Mom and I were talking about. How her taking my music ruined the chance of that music getting to where I wanted it to be most.” Grayson’s feet twitch, his eyes on the ceiling like he’s praying for a branch to spawn so he can have this conversation upside down. “Have you even figured out his music well enough to get the job?”

“His music?”

“Your dad. You don’t have his permission to use it for your audition. Didn’t you say he hates it when you play it?”

“You don’t understand.”

“I don’t? I don’t know what it’s like when someone takes my composition and uses it however they want to? Without asking?”

“No — no — no — ” I say, but it isn’t a word; it’s a stutter of too many words. Shut up, Adaya. You’re not helping. But yelling at myself isn’t helping, either. I keep saying, “no” until I can muster enough control to clamp my jaw shut. But then I can’t breathe.

He stands up and walks toward me again, then his fidgeting hands move to my shoulders. The pressure releases me from the trap I set myself, but he speaks first. “Whoever your dad is aside, you’re a decent person. You owe him the decency of getting his permission to use his music.”

“It…isn’t.”

“What?” His hands are still on my shoulders. I exhale.

“Dad’s. The music. It’s Brennan’s.”

“No way. He told you?”

“Of course not.” I put down my backpack and grab the music, explain the bold letters and the message inside it. Not Dad’s music, but a note to him. A suicide note Dad never found.

His fingers trace the bold notes again, like when we found it. “Then you definitely can’t use it.”

“Why not? It’s not like I can ask Brennan for permission.” I take back the music to put it away, letting my fingers brush Grayson’s as I do. His muscles tense. “Plus, I don’t have another plan. Maybe it will bring me closer to him. Help me understand him.”

“Your dad may not have written it, but the note proves it’s his. You shouldn’t use it.”

But I don’t understand it yet. Until I can play it, I don’t see how I can know my brother. “You just want me to give up my audition so I’ll be here for the concert.”

“I didn’t say — ”

“You’re impossible, Grayson. You come into my life again for a few days and suddenly you want me to make decisions based on how they affect you?” I say it, but all I can think is how completely I want to make decisions based on how they affect him. Even though it has only been a week. He’s made me reevaluate everything, and I hate it as much as I crave it.

I take another step toward him and he doesn’t back away, and then we’re together, eye to eye, and my hands are on his shoulders. We ask so much of each other that we have no right to ask. “You think I’m impossible?” Grayson says. “I’d finally convinced myself what we had was just a dumb crush ten-year-olds get and just you being here again has proven it was so much more than that to me, and clearly nothing to you, and — ”

I can’t take his words anymore, but I don’t have any of my own, so I cut him off the only way that comes to mind. My arms slide from his shoulders to his neck and I kiss him again. It’s not so gentle, not so short. Not like our first kiss. Everything I want to say runs through my lips even though I can’t speak. I’ve never kissed like this before — it’s only my second kiss ever — but I know what to do anyway. I make sure he’s kissing me back, then press into him until I don’t feel anything except our bodies together. He wraps an arm around my waist.

But I don’t know how to breathe and kiss at the same time, and neither does he, so we step back, gasping for air, unable to make eye contact.

“Sorry,” I say. “But I had to let you know precisely how wrong you were about how I feel.”

He grins and presses his forehead against mine, but the grin disappears in an instant. “You’re still leaving before our date,” he says. “To use Brennan’s song for your audition.”

There are a hundred different things I need to tell him right now. Like how my heart flew when he called the concert a date, and about how not even the smallest part of me wants to leave him. But the only thing that comes out as our feet dance away from each other is, “I am.”

“I wish you weren’t.” It’s not a plea, though. It’s defeat.

“I know.” I sit down on his bed, as close to the edge as I can manage, because I still don’t feel like I belong there. I’m afraid I might have ruined everything, but I don’t know if it’s with the kissing or the leaving or both.

“But you’re going to do it anyway.”

I can’t even answer him. All I want to do is cry. I can’t cry. “I don’t know how many ways I can tell you I’m sorry.”

“It isn’t an apology I want.”

Well, I can’t give him what he wants, then. So I slide off his bed and walk out the door.

Click here to continue the story!