The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker

no.”
    “But it’s not that simple. There were circumstances. It was—”
    “Answer me!”
    “Okay, okay,” she said, sounding defeated. “He did say the words ‘will you marry me.’ Yes. But we’d been fighting for weeks, and he was just trying to make it all go away.”
    “I don’t remember any fights.”
    “Because I didn’t want you involved. I was trying to protect you from my personal problems.”
    I was wavering, but I put my hands on my hips. “What were these fights about?”
    “It doesn’t matter anymore.” Her voice was flat. “The truth is, he only thought he was in love with me. He didn’t even know me. It never would have worked.”
    I felt a little afraid but mainly angry. How could she say this? I’d heard her tell Ben many times that he knew her better than any other man she’d been with. He knew about her song charts and Mom’s accident and how she got Tommy. He knew she liked Diet Coke for breakfast and orange juice before bed. He knew her dress size and her favorite color and even that she liked to have two towels when she took a bath. He knew everything about her that I did.
    Tommy was wailing about the slide and she said she had to go. Before she turned around, she glanced at me. “Are you satisfied now?”
    I looked right in her eyes, but still I said it. I said it loud enough for Tommy to hear. “No, I’m not satisfied,” I said—and then I called her a liar.
    She didn’t defend herself. She winced, but it was only a moment before she recovered enough to tell Tommy they were leaving and to tell me that I still couldn’t go to the dance with Kyle. “It’s my job to protect you,” she said, “even if I am a liar.”
    I stomped into my room, muttering a complaint of how unfair this was, but fighting a sudden wave of panic. She and Tommy had shut the apartment door and gone down the stairs when I realized what was bothering me. I hadn’t told her to drive carefully. I’d forgotten to tell her, for the first time I could remember.
    I always told her. I put friends on hold to say it; I forced myself to look up from the most fascinating movie to say it, I even yelled the two words from behind the door of the bathroom, the first time I got my period and I was nervously trying to read the Tampax directions. It wasn’t that I thought the words were magic, but I did believe the old saying that terrible things happen when you least expect them. So to get them not to happen, I reasoned, what you had to do was keep worrying over them. Most people could say “drive carefully” only in a snow-storm. Or late at night. Or before a long trip. But Mom’s accident was in the middle of July, broad daylight, and just five miles from our house. So I had to say it all the time. I had to expect the terrible thing that most people got to forget about.
    My panic subsided when I realized I was expecting it right now. Even if I hadn’t told her, I was more afraid than ever something would happen to them. And I stayed a little wary, for almost two hours, until Mary Beth and Tommy were back home, safe and sound.
    Then I refused to speak to her, because she wouldn’t let me go to the dance. And because she’d lied. And because she was going about her business, listening to music and talking on the phone to customers as though nothing had happened.
    Later that evening, I called Kyle and told him I couldn’t go. It wasn’t that hard, especially since Denise told me she’d heard a rumor that he was only asking me to make his real girlfriend jealous. But of course I didn’t tell Mary Beth this part, and I didn’t tell her that Kyle seemed even more interested in me afterwards. The next morning, he was at my locker, smiling that cocky smile but whining that I’d broken his heart. All that week, he pressured me to go, and even when the dance was over, he was still flirting with me, reminding me that I hadn’t even given him a chance yet.
    “Come on, Leeann,” he’d say, and wink.