Out of Tune

Chapter Eighteen

Music should be your escape —Missy Elliot

On the third day in February, Lennon sat alone on a deserted stretch of the Long Beach City Beach.

Though it was warmer than the February's of her New York past, there was still a bite to the air. The sand beneath her body was cold but Lennon embraced the chill. She felt it creep through her jeans as the wind whipped through her hair, blowing tendrils of red around her face.

Lennon watched the waves rolling against the shoreline, each ripple steady and sure.

She had not meant to come here to this beach on this day. It was actually her first time stepping foot on the beach since she'd arrived in California two-and-a-half months earlier. Looking back, it felt as if so much time had passed since her father's death. But the reality was that it hadn't been that long.

And on this day – Lennon actually felt how short it had truly been.

The weight of her father's passing pressed down on her shoulders, bowing them inward. Leaving her a broken shell. Lennon had never experienced grief before her father's death. Her paternal grandparents had died before she was born and her mother's parents were still alive and well in Florida. Truly, the death of Elijah McCormick marked the first time that Lennon had ever lost someone important.

It was a grief she didn't know how to vocalize. From the moment he'd passed in his sleep, Lennon had assumed the role of responsibility. She'd called her father's doctor and made funeral arrangements, she'd packed up their apartment and cancelled the lease, she'd shipped her belongings and bought a plane ticket and said her goodbyes before moving her life to the other side of the country.

But in all of that time, Lennon had never shed a single tear over her father's death. Because she'd had to be the strong one. She couldn't afford to fall to pieces.

Even now, on what would have been father's fortieth birthday, Lennon had not let herself break down.

She'd woken up, fully intending on going to school, but when she'd walked into the kitchen it had been to see her mother drinking a coffee and doing the morning crossword. Her mother had hardly even looked up, spared Lennon only the barest of glances and a thin-lipped 'good-morning' smile before she'd gone back to her breakfast.

In the entire time that Lennon spent near her mother that morning, as she made her own breakfast and prepared a lunch to take to school, Paige Ackerman hadn't said a single word to Lennon about what that day meant. Hadn't acknowledged it or asked how Lennon was doing.

Nothing at all.

They had talked briefly – Paige pressing her daughter about her grades and demanding – quite hotly – if Lennon had sold her guitar yet. Stating again and again and again, in a voice that was dismissive and cool, that music wasn't a career to go down. She had signed Lennon up for a career counselling session and across the table, she'd slid a small collection of college pamphlets for schools with late acceptances.

It had been obvious – so glaringly obvious – that Paige Ackerman had never listened to a word Lennon had told her about taking a year off before evening thinking about college programs. Lennon knew that her musical aspirations were a spot of contention in the house. She and Brad were hardly on speaking terms as he often ridiculed her dreams with snide comments under his breath about the fallibility of the music industry. He was certain that she would be wasting her time and both he and her mother had told Lennon in no uncertain terms would they support a career like that.