The Fourth Child by Jessica Winter (best classic novels TXT) 📕

length of a class period, if you didn’t count the long silence and then the secret thrashing song that came after it. The song woke Lauren up if she didn’t remember to switch off the CD player at night. If she ran each song through her head before she allowed herself to unlock the stall, that would buy her forty minutes. She would sing every word, hum every guitar line, tap out every beat, but quietly, quietly, she’d have to listen out in case someone came in and heard her, and by the time she got to the end everyone would have gone home. Rehearsal had run late as it was, she wouldn’t have to face them again until tomorrow. She pressed her fingers against her eyelids and watched the bluish-reddish shapes pump and drift, an amoebic wash of strange living things buoyed and eddied by the submerged guitar lines.

“Memoria,” she whispered to herself. “Memoria.” The chorus of the second single, the one that sounded like it was recorded underwater. She didn’t know what it meant. Memory-ah.She made up what it meant, to help pass the time: the memory of Maria, the phantom of an Italian mob widow who lived longago, who only wore black mourning garb, black lace and veil, after her husband was killed with a pistol—by her own hand, peoplewhispered, but she always denied it, blaming the local Black Hand, as anyone would. Memoria was the word you used, three times fast, to ward against her vengeful ghost. Maria dropped the gun in the ocean, off thecoast of Sicily. Lauren would recite this story to Paula, tell her it was the origin of the song, that she’d read about itin one of the music magazines.

Lauren had gotten to the second-to-last song—I’m on a plain, I can’t complain—when Carl, the school custodian, called out from the doorway to the bathroom and said whoever was in there had to leave.He sounded apologetic; he probably thought she was having woman problems.

Lauren could hear Stitch’s skateboard before she pushed open the side doors to the Bethune parking lot. She saw he was aloneand exhaled. It was cold and wet and the light was thinning out, down to a bruisish purple.

“Hey,” he said, looking down as he flipped his skateboard. It spun twice, spiked the ground on one corner. He watched it rollout of his reach, not moving after it. “I was wondering where you went. I was waiting.”

“I didn’t ask you to wait for me,” she said.

“I wanted to ask if you liked the last tape I made you,” he said, his hands in the pockets of the red buffalo-plaid jackethe wore every day.

Lauren stared at him. “Are you kidding me?” she asked.

“No. The Replacements. Did you like it?”

He watched her patiently. His eyes always seemed faintly rheumy, as if he used special drops that unlocked a blurry fourthdimension, visible just over her shoulder.

“You waited an hour in the parking lot to ask me if I like the Replacements?”

“It hasn’t been an hour,” he said. He shrugged and skip-hopped toward his skateboard. “I’m just practicing,” he said, rollingback toward her.

“You aren’t—you’re making fun of me, right? I don’t get it.”

“What?” asked Stitch. He stopped pushing the wheels forward and back with one foot and squinted at her. Mouth open like noone was watching, like he was alone with himself. “I’m not making fun of you. If you get a chance to listen to it, let meknow what you think.”

“Okay. I’m sorry,” Lauren said. Her tongue and lips were numb and slow, like she’d been out in the cold for too long. “I didlisten to it.”

“What did you think?”

“I liked it. It feels very—close. Like they’re playing live.”

“Like you mean the production?”

“They leave in the mistakes, the missed notes. But in a good way, like they’re excited to be playing for a crowd. Like theypracticed, but they’re nervous.”

Stitch nodded. Both of them were looking at the ground. “The drums speed up and slow down sometimes.”

“I like the singer’s voice.”

“Paul Westerberg,” Stitch said.

“Yes—and I liked—I liked how I feel like I’m in the room with them. And the singer is talking to someone he knows very well.Like, sometimes the other person is there, and sometimes he’s pretending they’re there, like he’s getting up his nerve totalk to them later. And sometimes he’s mad at them, and sometimes he’s mad at himself and taking it out on the other person.”

“Why are you crying?” Stitch asked.

Lauren wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her coat. “Why are you asking me that?! You were there! At rehearsal! You know—you saw what happened.”

Stitch shrugged and said nothing.

“God, it was so embarrassing,” she said.

“Don’t pay attention to them,” Stitch said.

“How can I not pay attention to them?”

“I don’t. It’s a waste of time.”

“They’re your friends.”

“Just because I’m around them doesn’t mean they’re my friends.”

“What do they say about me when I’m not around?”

“Probably nothing, because they can’t hurt you when you can’t hear what they’re saying.”

Lauren laughed and wiped her nose with her other sleeve. “That’s clever.”

“I didn’t say it to be clever.”

“Please don’t feel sorry for me.”

“I do a little bit. I’ll try not to. Are you sure you don’t want me to walk you home?”

Lauren nodded at the ground.

“Suit yourself. I hope you feel better. See you, Lauren.” He began to turn away.

“Hey—why did you—that one time, why did you call me and act like you didn’t?” Lauren asked. Her sadness had given her permissionto be a brat, a middle schooler.

Stitch stopped and looked back. “I didn’t call you,” he said. “Do you want me to call you?”

Lauren shrugged. “Yeah. I mean, do what you want.”

“Okay. I’ll call you later.”

The skateboard faded out, and Lauren was alone, still staring at the ground. Her body rotating like a drill, pounding likea jackhammer through the top line of tar into the roadbed, into the stones, down to the earth, until she hit water, untilshe could hear the submerged guitar from the memoria song again and she could know