I listened. It sounded like water to me. “Uh, I don’t think so.”
“It’s there. Mmmmmm. I bet I could find that note if I had a piano here. Music is everywhere. My music teacher told me she once had a student with perfect pitch. He could listen to the second hand on a clock ticking and tell you what note it was.”
“That’s nuts.” I listened again for the hum of the waterfall, but still couldn’t hear it. I believed her though. “So what are your plans this summer? Besides playing at the nursing home?”
“Well, I’m usually at Hilltop noon to five, Monday through Friday. I play the piano and help out with whatever else Candy, the activity director, wants me to do. I got out a little early today so I could stop by,” she added, her cheeks turning the slightest bit pink.
“Cool,” I said, trying to look casually pleased though I was, in fact, absurdly pleased.
Rose continued. “Then on Saturdays my mom drives me up to Naperville, where I have my lessons. My instructor’s teaching me music theory and how to actually read music. I just taught myself by ear until a year ago.”
“By ear? That’s amazing, Rose. I noticed you didn’t use sheet music when I was at Hilltop. So someone shouts out Tom Jones, or whatever, and you can just play it?”
“Usually, as long as I’ve heard it before.”
I shook my head. “That’s crazy.”
“Well, the Hilltoppers do tend to request the same songs over and over again. But I try to play some of my own favorites, too, for a little variety.”
“That first afternoon I walked into Hilltop, you were playing this song. . . . The melody’s been stuck in my head all week.”
“Hum it for me.”
I hesitated, then tentatively began to hmmm-mmm my way through a few bars of the song.
Rose grinned and nodded in recognition. “That one.”
“So what is it? I know I’ve heard it before. It’s driving me crazy.”
“Not telling,” Rose teased.
“Is it by the Beatles?”
“Maybe.”
“Deep cut?”
“Maybe.”
I laughed. “Okay, okay. It’ll come to me eventually.”
“I’ll wait,” Rose said, grinning again.
“You better. So what came before your piano rock-star status? Test pilot? Child ninja?”
“Ha, I wish. I’ve gone through some phases, I guess, but just the usual. I had my video-game phase, my dance phase, my drawing phase. I don’t know. Nothing seemed to stick until piano. What about you? What’s your story?”
And for the next hour we talked. I learned she’d be a senior this year; she learned I’d be a junior. I learned her parents had divorced when she was ten; she learned I’d never met my dad. We talked about Chicago and the universe and the Beatles and my weird plant knowledge. For a while we sat silent and let the sound of the water do the talking for us. I couldn’t believe how well everything was going. Eventually, our conversation circled around to future plans.
“What comes next?” I asked. “You’ll be a senior, so does that mean college in a year?”
Before Rose could answer, the sound of distant chatter floated toward us, quickly turning into the unmistakable roar of screaming children. They descended upon our sanctuary like locusts, at least fifty of them, mud covered and wet. It must have been some sort of summer-camp outing, based on the small number of frazzled twenty-something-year-old chaperones trying to maintain control. The buzzing swarm flew past us up the sandy hill, claiming the land as their own. Rose and I shared a look, shrugged our shoulders, and laughed.
Before long, the horde left, but by then the sun had started to set and our once sunny spot had been overtaken by the growing shadows of the cliff wall. Since the park closed at dusk, we headed back to the car.
As I drove back to town, the sun at our backs and the windows down, I looked over to Rose, whose hair flew wildly in the wind. She stared out her window watching the trees and houses whip by. A low fog had settled over a bean field. Ahead, a half-full moon rose, glowing orange and crimson, mirroring the sunset. When we arrived back in town, the streetlights had turned on, giving the world a luminescent glow.
I’d never felt happier sitting next to someone.
TEN
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, A SATURDAY, I STOOD ON DYLAN RAFFERTY’S doorstep again, salad in hand. A young woman opened the door, his sister, Maggie, no doubt. They shared the same wavy blond hair and chestnut eyes. She held a phone to one ear.
“Hold on a sec,” she said into the phone, then to me, “You must be Zeus, the salad guy. Come on in, just give me a minute to wrap this up.”
I walked into the living room, where Dylan sat on the couch with his guitar. He wore a Foo Fighters T-shirt and cargo shorts, showing off one tan calf, the other white as snow.
“Hey, Shakira, you got your cast off!” I said, pointing to the paler limb.
“Esta ma?ana, my man,” he replied, motioning to an armchair nearby. “Have a seat.”
“Gracias.” I plopped the Save the Kales salad on the coffee table and sank into the chair, grateful for the air-conditioned reprieve.
“Where’s your little sidekick?” Dylan asked. Agatha, who sat at his feet, lifted her head and barked, as if she also wanted to know.
“Grub? Slow day, so my mom let him stay behind at the café. Sorry, Agatha.”
The dog laid her head back down.
Dylan stretched his newly liberated leg. “So how was your Friday night?” he asked. “Do anything fun?”
“Actually, it was pretty great,” I replied.
“Awesome! What’d you do?”
I hesitated before answering, unsure if it would, in fact, sound “pretty great” or “awesome.” “So there’s this girl, Rose, who plays piano at the nursing home—”
“The Filipino girl? Piano prodigy?”
“Yeah, you know her?”
Dylan shrugged. “Just by sight. I’ve never had a class with her, but I’ve seen her at school. She’s the quiet type. I hear she’s got some serious talent though.”
“She does,” I agreed.
“Go on.”
“Right. So I met her at Hilltop on a delivery last week and asked her to stop by the café sometime. She doesn’t show up for days, then all of a sudden she shows up yesterday.”
“Out of nowhere.” Dylan made a poof motion with his hands.
“Yep. So we ended up heading out to Metea State Park to hike. But I’ve never hiked in my life. And I had to drive my mom’s little stick-shift car from the nineties. Not to mention I was sweaty from making deliveries all day.”
“Rough start.”
“Tell me about it. But it ended up going great. She’s really cool. We sat by this waterfall talking for like an hour.”