Don't Blame the Music

  But they were open.

  The pickup and the car were gone.

  I stood by the lilacs. How stringy and ugly they looked with no leaves. The road was quiet. Nobody seemed to be home next door, either. I was alone on Iron Mine Road.

  Telling myself not to be fanciful, I walked in by the garage, thinking I’d shut them from the inside and go into the house through the shed door, where the dryer and washing machine were. I pulled the doors closed. They creaked heavily, unwillingly, against the strong breeze. I walked into the shed.

  Ashley was crouching on top of the dryer.

  I gasped.

  “What are you doing here?” she said irritably.

  “Oh, hi,” I said.

  She was reaching for the deep high storage ledge. Pulling down a suitcase. The best one, the only leather one.

  “You cutting class?” said Ashley. “That doesn’t sound like you.” She threw the suitcase to the floor. I jumped out of the way.

  I felt out of kilter. I was the one who had come home to pack. Why was Ashley getting the suitcase? “Are you going somewhere?” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  I digested this. “Where?”

  “Don’t know.”

  She began packing the suitcase. But not with clothing. With the silver teaspoons, the brass candlesticks, the pewter mugs, the collection of silver-handled mirrors. I wondered how much money she could get for all that. I wondered about the open garage doors. Was she expecting someone to come for her? Someone like Bob? Fear prickled my palms and my thighs. “Don’t take that,” I said. “Don’t steal it, Ashley. Please don’t do that.”

  “I need the money. You think Warren is going to give it to me? He gives you anything you want, because you’re a malleable sweet darling little suburbanite. But me—nothing. All he wants is to lock me up.”

  “But he wouldn’t want to lock you up if you didn’t do things like this,” I objected. “Ashley, don’t steal this stuff. Please? Think about what you’re doing.”

  Did I think we were going to open up a can of Campbell’s soup together and sort out our problems over Chicken Noodle? Did I think she would clasp my hand in gratitude for showing her the light?

  “Listen, Saint Susan. I do what I need to do. Don’t get in my way.”

  Don’t get in her way.

  So what was I supposed to do? Go meekly away and pack my clothes while she packed my mother’s treasures? Call the police? Dial 911, tell them last house on the right on Iron Mine Road, robbery in progress?

  She was putting my radio into her suitcase. My good radio. My aunt and uncle bought it for me. The perfect size, the perfect weight. Terrific reception, good sound. “Give me my radio!” I yelled at her.

  “Forget it.”

  I wrenched the radio out of her hands.

  I walked into the kitchen, set it on the table, walked back out to the shed and retrieved an armload of silver. “You’re not taking our things!” I yelled at her.

  She stood there, amazed. I had never been anything but passive before. It shocked her. It was rare for Ash to be the one shocked. I rather liked it. I walked back out for another load. Ashley was holding the gasoline can we use to fill the lawnmower.

  “See this?” she said, flicking the tiny red cap off the opening.

  I froze.

  She pulled out a pack of matches from her sweatshirt pocket. “See this?” she said, in a voice as soft as suffocation.

  “Ash?” I whispered.

  “Well named. You know what makes ashes? Fire does, Saint Susan. Fire.”

  She poured gasoline on my shoes.

  For a time as long as nightmare I stood while my socks soaked up gasoline like a wick.

  Ash struck the match.

  I screamed and ran out of the shed, ripping back the latch on the garage doors. Ash ran after me, grabbing my jacket. She caught me, but the match had gone out. She had to light another one. I yanked open the garage doors and ran.

  I ran down the drive and under the low sweeping branches of the ancient oak and past the stone walls. Past the chrysanthemum gardens and the lawns and the trikes on the grass. I didn’t look back. Ash couldn’t follow. She lacked the physical strength.

  My sister.

  My flesh and blood.

  Ash is also a word from fire and brimstone.

  Hell. Living hell.

  She wanted fame so much she had surrendered everything else: goodness, kindness, decency, and love. They were not left in her soul. No matter how often we pretended and hoped, they were not there.

  I ran and my chest cut like knives and my knees trembled and my calves knotted in cramps and I kept running. A horn honked. I jumped onto the verge to get out of the way, but the horn honked again.

  I looked up. It was Whit.

  No.

  No.

  Not now.

  I had postured in the cafeteria and posed in the halls. Now, when my clothing was torn where I had jerked away from Ashley, when my shoes stank of gasoline and the wind had mangled my hair—now Whit saw me?

  “You take up jogging?” yelled Whit. He was grinning at me. How handsome he was—leaning out of that window, he looked like a television idea of a teenage boy: dark and sexy and terrific.

  My sister tried to murder me, I thought.

  “You cutting class?” yelled Whit. He swung a U turn so he could pull up beside me. Still smiling, like the boy of any girl’s dreams, he leaned over to open the passenger door for me.

  Fifteen

  “CALL THE POLICE.”

  “I can’t do that. She’s my sister.”

  “How else you going to keep her from setting fire to the house? Or the dog? Or your mother?”

  I began crying. Whit pulled me up against him, his arm warm and comforting and heavy. I would not have thought I could sob on the shoulder of the boy I had a crush on. With Anthony I’d have thought only of running mascara. With Whit I didn’t think. I just accepted his comfort.

  “Oh, Whit. We’re living in hell.”

  “No. You aren’t living in hell. Ashley is.”

  His embrace was comforting. “Whit,” I asked, “what hell do you know?”

  He looked at me.

  “You talk as if you’ve been there.”

  “I have in a way.” He looked away from me, down the road, seeing things.

  “What sort of hell? Yours? Or somebody else’s?”

  “Family.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “No,” he said gently.

  “Why not? Because it’s too painful?”

  “Because I don’t know you very well,” he told me. “Maybe someday. Not now.”

  “You know all there is to know about me,” I pointed out. “You even know my own sister wanted to murder me.”

  He smiled. “I know a lot about Ashley. I don’t know much about Susan.”

  Did he want to know? I tried to fathom his expression, but he was right. We didn’t know each other very well.

  “I have the advantage over you,” said Whit. “Nobody is watching the Moroso family. Nobody cares what we do. You’ve got a town lined up to check out Ashley’s progress.”

  “Or lack of it.”

  “Right. But mine is a real secret. Nobody knows.”

  “Does that make it easier?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “No tragedy is easy.” He withdrew his arm, swung another U-ie and began driving back toward my house. Tragedy. What a heavy word. “Where are we going?” I said.

  “Your house. If you don’t want the police, you may want the fire department.”

  “Whit, she’s—she’s—”

  “Truly dangerous. I know. I can handle it.”

  “Don’t hurt her.”

  He said, “I’m a hundred pounds heavier than she is. I don’t need to hurt her. I can just hold her.”

  I looked at the McLeans’ house and I looked at the Boyds’ but I didn’t look at our house.

  Whit said, “Relax, Susan. House is still standing. Do
g’s wandering around the front yard. No neighbors are wringing their hands.”

  I looked.

  We turned into the driveway. The garage doors were open, moving slightly in the breeze.

  My sister was kneeling on the garage floor, right in the oil patch where my mother’s car is usually parked, the gasoline can next to her. Her right hand was on the gas can. Her left hand was over her eyes.

  “Oh, Whit!” I screamed. “She’s got gasoline in her eyes! She’s hurt. Oh, God, call the ambulance.”

  I had long ceased to believe that God was around, but in desperation I was calling upon Him as much as upon Whit. Although I think I had a little more faith in Whit.

  Whit got to my sister before I did. He knelt beside her, tilting her face up to see the damage. “What happened?” he said. His features and voice were expressionless as ever.

  She didn’t answer. She turned and looked at me. She hadn’t gotten anything in her eyes. She had been sobbing. Thin, thin fingers stretched toward me. “Susan,” she whispered. “Susan, I meant it. I was really going to do it. My little sister. Oh, Susan. I was really going to do it.”

  She began shuddering, the palsy of some dreadful disease. “I’m in some old black-and-white film,” she cried. “Full of starts and stops. I can see my whole life out there, flickering, jagged. Susan, hold on to me, please! It’s crushing me.”

  “Crushing you,” I repeated. My eyes met Whit’s. We remembered his tape: the sound of being dashed against impenetrable walls.

  We were watching the tape.

  I held her, as Whit had held me, and the act was the act of sisterhood, of flesh and blood, of love.

  Whit said, “It’s cold here. She’ll freeze.” He scooped her up easily and carried her into the house without noticeable effort. We went into the living room and tucked her on the couch and wrapped afghans around her. “Who is this?” said Ashley.

  “Whit Moroso,” I said.

  “He’s better than that other one,” she said, closing her eyes.

  The side door burst open. My parents came rushing into the house, calling my name, calling Ashley’s, fear and horror in their throats. “Whose car is that?” they screamed. “Who is here? What has she done? Susan, why weren’t you in school? We called and you were gone!”

  “I’m sorry. I—I did a stupid thing.”

  They stood by the couch, trying to assess the situation and failing.

  “Tell them what happened, Susan,” said my sister.

  I told them.

  My mother sagged against Dad. Dad looked twenty years older.

  My sister said, “Cherry Hill. I’ll sign myself in. Call them now before I change my mind.”

  The room trembled with years of emotional history and agony.

  “Quick, Daddy,” said Ashley, smiling the first real smile I had ever seen on her face. “Before I get mad again. You don’t know how quickly I get mad.”

  “I know exactly how quickly you get mad,” said my father dryly, and they both laughed. Real laughs.

  She had called him Daddy. Not Warren.

  I held tight to her hand. It was surprisingly strong and rough. Startled, I glanced down. “I switched with Ashley,” said Whit, grinning at me.

  My mother looked at us strangely. “Uh—I feel a little confused,” she said. “This is—uh—?”

  “Whit Moroso. My friend. He’s been a big help.”

  “It was terribly nice of you to stop,” said my mother formally.

  “Nah. I had an ulterior motive.”

  “Doesn’t everybody?” said Ash.

  Whit grinned at her. “Yeah, but mine was understandable. I was on my way to have a wisdom tooth pulled. This was a piece of cake in comparison.”

  “Me,” said Ashley. “A piece of cake.”

  “Definitely.” Whit stood up. “Got to run along. If I’m really lucky the dentist can still squeeze me in.”

  I walked him to his car.

  “I think it’ll be okay,” he said to me. “Not easy. But okay.”

  I tried to say thank you, but my throat closed.

  Whit paused with one foot in the car. “You know,” he said, “when I’m in the lab, I feel as if music is in there with me. Music the person. Music like the ancient Greeks said: a goddess.”

  He flushed, made a face, and dropped to the driver’s seat. He put his key in the ignition. But he didn’t drive away. He was caught up in a thought and he had to express it. He tried syllable after syllable and discarded them before he spoke, struggling for a way to say what he wanted to say. “Ashley used music instead of loved music,” he said finally. “I guess you can’t get away with that. And she didn’t.”

  I could not believe how well he understood: Whit who had never known or spoken to Ashley.

  But then, Whit had known and spoken to Music.

  I shivered with the intensity of wanting him. This boy who was so handsome behind his dark moodiness, who was not a delinquent at all but a savior for me. I said, “Whit—” but I could not find a way to express myself. I tried to touch him, but I couldn’t quite bear it, because it would mean nothing to him and fire to me, so I tangled my fingers in my own hair, wishing it was his hair, dark and thick and curled on his collar.

  “Susan …” he said slowly.

  I wanted to reach out to him so much. To be in his arms when I could think about his arms, instead of thinking about a sister with hate in her heart.

  An ambulance came up Iron Mine Road. No siren, but red lights flashing. “Hall residence?” queried the driver, stopping by us.

  I gestured at my own house and he turned in the drive.

  Whit pulled me toward him, my face in the window against his, our lips touching and then our hands on each other, hanging on to each other, not gently, but frantically. “I don’t know why this is happening,” said Whit. “I’m not your type.”

  “Let’s try. One date.”

  His lips were still on my skin and my cheek vibrated when he answered. “How will your friends react? You get seen with me and you’re out of the Derek-Anthony-Pammy-Caitlin crowd before you ever get started.”

  “Ashley was right about one thing,” I told him. “Anthony. He is a lightweight.”

  “What am I? A heavyweight?” he teased.

  I gave him back his own words. “I don’t know. I don’t know you very well yet.”

  The ambulance attendants came back out. Ashley was on a stretcher, unmoving beneath white blankets. Perhaps they had sedated her. I saw my father talking to the attendants. I guessed he was arranging to meet the ambulance at the hospital.

  “Don’t cry, Susan,” said Whit. “Every single time I’ve been around you, you’ve cried.”

  “My father calls my mother and me the Wet Duet.”

  Whit burst out laughing. “I don’t date Weeping Singles. You have to promise to smile.”

  “And what do you promise?”

  “I promise to be here Friday at eight.”

  The smile came by itself. Glowing with me, it lifted my heart.

  “Now that’s a smile,” said Whit very softly.

  Crush. It’s a word for something temporary. Something that weights you down and makes it hard to breathe. I don’t have a crush on you now, I thought. I just plain love you. Good old reliable love.

  The ambulance left.

  Whit kissed me once, slowly, and then, very slowly, followed the ambulance. Fifty feet away he stopped, looked back at me, and yelled, “Friday? Eight?”

  “Friday,” I yelled back. “Eight.”

  He disappeared.

  I walked back to the house. It was a long walk. You could have measured it in miles. Or maybe years.

  I looked at my parents again, and I loved them just as much as I ever had. Ashley’s life had been jagged for ten years; mine, for two weeks. But we had all come through. Mistakes and failures—we had managed to stay a family.

  “Are you going to date Whit?” said my mother.

  “Yes. Friday at eight.”


  “You’ll need some new clothes. What will you need?”

  “Everything,” I told her. “I’m going to be dating him for years. Going everywhere together.”

  “I like a girl with faith in herself,” said my father.

  We smiled at one another, and then we hugged.

  I’m at home, I thought. And at peace.

  May Ashley have the same one day.

  A Biography of Caroline B. Cooney

  Caroline B. Cooney is the author of ninety books for teen readers, including the bestselling thriller The Face on the Milk Carton. Her books have won awards and nominations for more than one hundred state reading prizes. They are also on recommended-reading lists from the American Library Association, the New York Public Library, and more. Cooney is best known for her distinctive suspense novels and romances.

  Born in 1947, in Geneva, New York, Cooney grew up in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where she was a library page at the Perrot Memorial Library and became a church organist before she could drive. Music and books have remained staples in her life.

  Cooney has attended lots of colleges, picking up classes wherever she lives. Several years ago, she went to college to relearn her high school Latin and begin ancient Greek, and went to a total of four universities for those subjects alone!

  Her sixth-grade teacher was a huge influence. Mr. Albert taught short story writing, and after his class, Cooney never stopped writing short stories. By the time she was twenty-five, she had written eight novels and countless short stories, none of which were ever published. Her ninth book, Safe as the Grave, a mystery for middle readers, became her first published book in 1979. Her real success began when her agent, Marilyn Marlow, introduced her to editors Ann Reit and Beverly Horowitz.

  Cooney’s books often depict realistic family issues, even in the midst of dramatic adventures and plot twists. Her fondness for her characters comes through in her prose: “I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession. I love all of it, thinking up the plots, getting to know the kids in the story, their parents, backyards, pizza toppings.” Her fast-paced, plot-driven works explore themes of good and evil, love and hatred, right and wrong, and moral ambiguity.

  Among her earliest published work is the Fog, Snow, and Fire trilogy (1989–1992), a series of young adult psychological thrillers set in a boarding school run by an evil, manipulative headmaster. In 1990, Cooney published the award-winning The Face on the Milk Carton, about a girl named Janie who recognizes herself as the missing child on the back of a milk carton. The series continued in Whatever Happened to Janie? (1993), The Voice on the Radio (1996), and What Janie Found (2000). The first two books in the Janie series were adapted for television in 1995. A fifth book, Janie Face to Face, will be released in 2013.