Out of Tune

Chapter Sixteen

Music has charms to soothe a savage beast, to soften rocks, or to bend a knotted oak -William Congreve

The chair scraping against the floor was the only indication of Spencer's arrival.

Lennon hardly spared him a glance, too busy glaring at the four-cheese ravioli Taylor had placed in front of her fifteen minutes earlier.  She sat at a high-top table in the corner of Quincy's next to an old jukebox that she was pretty sure didn't work.  Lennon stabbed a ravioli angrily, spearing it clean through.

"Woah," said Spencer.  "What'd the pasta ever do to you?"

She popped it in her mouth, not lifting her eyes from the counter.  "What are you doing here, Spence?"

"You didn't show up at rehearsal and since we're performing tomorrow, we were worried about you.  Then, Taylor texted Miles as she was leaving work to say that you came in here looking murderous and that she didn't think it was smart for you to be alone.  She was going to stay but her grandparents are coming over for dinner so she had to head home after her shift."

Lennon didn't have a response for this so she pierced another ravioli but this time it was accompanied by guilt.  She had skipped out on the rehearsal and since their first gig as a weekly openingact was happening the next day, it really wasn't the time for her to pull a disappearing act.

Spencer placed a hand on her arm.  "You want to tell me what's going on?  I mean, you seemed fine at school today.  What happened?"

And she had been mostly fine all day.  She and Bryce were still avoiding each other like the plague in the hallways, which suited Lennon just fine since it meant they didn't have to talk about what had happened, though he and Kyle had taken to speaking in low voices and casting furtive looks at Lennon across the cafeteria.  Katie on the other hand had seemed excessively pleased at the fact that Lennon no longer spent her lunchtime hour with the group.

Taylor had decided that she was boycotting them all together and was now to be spending her lunch sitting with Lennon and the rest of the band.  Well, sitting with the band but conversing mostly with Miles.  If flirting constituted as conversation. 

Then, when school had ended, she'd gone directly home instead of Spencer's house because Colby needed to be looked after until her mom and Brad got home from work.

Not that babysitting Colby had been terrible.  They'd spent most of their afternoon playing games and watching ridiculously boring children's television programs.

Once when watching her brother, Lennon had pulled a bunch of cans from the cupboards to create a makeshift drum kit that she and Colby had banged away on for the better part of a Sunday morning when her mother and Brad had been at couples yoga.  Lennon hadn't repeated the game as it had led to a screaming match with her mother about how music was the last kind of nonsense that Colby needed to be learning.

But despite the uneventful day at school and the fun she'd had with Colby, her evening had been ruined, once again, by her mother.

"What happened," she started irritably, "is that my mother can't find it within herself to stop holding a grudge against my father for choosing music over her so much that she's making my life hell because I'm considering the same career path."

"You guys fought again?"

Lennon barked a laugh.  Without humour.  "We never stopped fighting.  There was just an intermission between acts."

"Do you want to talk about it?  Or do you want to keep sitting here fuming and stabbing pasta like it's your mother's face?"

She did indeed stab another ravioli but then she sighed and set her fork down, the pasta still pieced on the edge of her plate.  Lennon looked up at Spencer.  He was leaning forwards onto his elbows.  Behind his glasses, his eyes were bright and blue and worried.