Playing by Ear (Country Roads #1) - Chapter 32

Rhonda wasn’t thrilled with me skipping our lunch to go to the choir room with Cameron. She accepted it, but made it clear she didn’t want to give up any more lunches this week.

Things had been a little strange between us since the previous week’s blow-up over my friendship with Kat. She’d backed down and had been overcompensating all week, although not without a few snide comments being thrown in. Not enough to cause another fight but enough to make it clear that she still wasn’t okay with it.

I let it pass. I knew I hadn’t done anything to deserve her jealousy, and confronting her wouldn’t keep her from being upset about it. As long as she didn’t make ultimatums again and didn’t cause problems for Kat, I could take the comments. I did notice she’d skipped my Sunday gig.

Since she’d started coming to see me play, she hadn’t missed a weekend and I’d thought I’d see her on Sunday. She said she was busy, but I was pretty sure she was trying to send a message. Rhonda wasn’t petty exactly, but she did play games from time to time instead of just saying what she wanted to say. It drove me a little crazy, but we’d had enough stress on our relationship over the last week and I didn’t want to add to it. It’s the same reason I didn’t mention what happened with Kat. While I wasn’t sneaking around, since nothing actually happened, I knew it would just cause a fight, and decided it was better to let things be for now.

“Before you go,” she said when she’d finally accepted that I was going to miss our lunchtime. “There’s a party on Saturday, and I want to go to it.”

“Okay,” I said, her tone making me instantly wary.

“I know you’re not going to like it, but I want to go. The football team has their last game this week, and they’re throwing a party afterward, since it doesn’t look like they’re going to qualify for state again.”

“Rhonda, you know …”

“I know you don’t like them and they won’t be the only people there. It’s just the reason the party is happening. The baseball team will be there too, which means Marcus will want to go. If I can get Hanna to go too, will you go? You said relationships didn’t mean the other person gets to control you or whatever, well, you’ve been doing that here. You’ve refused to go to any of the football parties, and I want to go. You know I’m on the JV cheer team, and I need to socialize with the seniors if I’m going to get to varsity next year.”

She had me there, throwing my words about Kat back at me. While I thought I had good reasons for not wanting to be within ten miles of Aaron and his friends, Rhonda had always made it clear she had goals when it came to high school, and this was part of that.

“Fine. Get Hanna to go and I’m in.”

“Great,” she beamed. “See how much happier everyone is when you give in to me.”

I rolled my eyes and gave her a kiss before heading to the choir room, stopping to grab a sack lunch on the way.

“Finally,” Cameron said when I got to the choir room.

“I had to grab lunch and make sure Rhonda didn’t decide to put a hit out on me for skipping our lunches together.”

“So, you ready to start?” he asked, practically bouncing with excitement.

“You understand I haven’t done this before, right? I’m not exactly sure what ‘starting’ means.”

“Ohh, yeah. Sorry. I’ve never gotten to teach anyone before and I’m kinda excited. So, let’s start up with some vocal exercises. Have you done those before?”

“Not really. Normally I just sing.”

“That’s terrible. Your vocal cords are a muscle and have to get stretched and warmed up just like any other muscle.”

“So how do we warm up?”

“Okay, do what I do.”

Warm-ups turned out to be half completely ridiculous and half-familiar. The first part was the ridiculous section as we proceed to make weird noises for five minutes. I felt like an idiot and was positive I’d never do this in front of another person, but I humored Cameron, who was doing them along with me. The second part we sang through several major scales, not that different than how I warmed my fingers up playing guitar.

“Okay, do you recognize these two songs,” he said, setting the lyrics from two songs in front of me.

“Sure,” I said, since both were popular songs currently on the radio.

“Okay, could you sing this section from this song, then pause and sing this section from this song. You know how they go, right?”

It was just lyrics, but I knew the tune for each.

“Yep.”

“Good. I want to get a feel for your range. Start when you’re ready.

I sang both, the same way I would at the club. The first was comfortably in my range. A little lower than I normally went, but I didn’t feel like I was pushing anything. The second one, however, was almost outside of my range, being significantly higher than anything I normally sang. During the last chorus, there was a particularly high note I had to bail on completely. When I finished, I looked over at Cameron.

“Not bad. Great, actually. You’ve got a really good gravel in your tone at the lower range, but you do the higher stuff smooth and even. You might consider trying to add a little vibrato in at parts, but that’s just personal preference, and you don’t really need it.”

“I’m not sure how smooth the higher stuff was. I completely whiffed on some of those notes.”

“I picked it because of that, actually. Except for some singers who stay mostly in falsetto all the time, this one is higher than most pop songs get. You hit more of it than I expected, except I thought you might switch over to falsetto and go for that one note rather than skipping it.”

“My falsetto isn’t good, so I normally don’t use it.”

“That’s probably why it isn’t good. Your range is wide enough you don’t really need it, but you should still do it in practice so that you have it when you need it. There are times when a good falsetto lets you switch up emotions in a song that you don’t get with chest or head voice. Or at least that’s what my vocal coach says.”

“You keep saying chest and head voice, but I don’t know what that means.”

“I’m guessing you’ve never had any voice lessons, have you?”

“No. I practiced a lot with musicians as a kid, but that was mostly just guitar. Sometimes I sang along with them, but my voice was higher then.”

“God, I hate you sometimes,” he said, although with a smile.

“What?” I asked.

I knew he didn’t mean it as an insult because of the smile, but I wasn’t sure what he was joking about.

“You play the guitar better than most professional musicians and you have this amazing voice without a day of practice. I convinced my dad to get me a vocal coach when I was 8, and I’ve been practicing every day since. All that, and I might be good enough for Broadway, and here you are, straight-up rock star material from birth.”

“Broadway singers are really good.”

“They are, but it’s a different kind of singing. More belting, less nuance, because you have to project out to the whole audience, even on the quiet parts. It’s different. One will, if you’re lucky, keep you employed, the other will make you a household name.”

“Well …” I said, not sure how to respond.

I knew I had a good voice, but I didn’t think about it much. When it came to music, I’d always cared more about the instruments than the singing, and hadn’t really done much outside of the shower until I started playing at the Blue Ridge.

“That doesn’t mean you can just skip practicing though. Just like your guitar, you should be practicing your vocals every day. You have to keep working those muscles, and there is still stuff you can improve on. Eventually, you’re going to need to find a professional, but I can get you started.”

“Fair enough, I will practice. Back to my question, what’s head voice and chest voice?”

“It’s just how we identify the different parts of singing. Your chest voice is when you sing from the chest, usually the bottom part of your range. Your head voice is more from up in your throat and your nose. While that includes falsetto, it mostly means the stuff at the upper end of your register. They’re created using different parts of your throat, and head voice notes tend to be breathier.”

“Okay. I guess that makes sense.”

“Your chest voice is pretty good, but we can work on exercise to extend your upper range and get more body out of your head voice. We also need to work on your breath control a little bit. You’re not bad, but you are letting too much air out in some places, which is shortening the distance you can go before taking a breath.”

“So, air control, head voice, and falsetto.”

“For starters. As I said, I can’t get you where you’re going to want to be eventually, but I can get you started.”

He spent the rest of lunch showing me some exercise I could do to work on my upper range. I think he really enjoyed the teaching, because he tried to talk me into meeting him a couple of times a week at lunch, but I held firm at one day a week. Rhonda wanted me to become a rock star enough to accept that, but I knew I’d have a riot on my hands if I pushed for anything more.

Besides, eating lunch while walking down the halls sucked. The bagged lunches might not be great, but I still preferred to eat them sitting at a table, rather than trying to shove an entire sandwich in my mouth before I got to class.

Wednesday at tutoring, Kat told me she’d heard from Chef, and she was going to talk to his psychologist friend after school. She’d looked terrified and asked if I would go with her. I tried to explain that I’d already be there, since Hanna took me to the Blue Ridge every day so I could train with Chef and I had band practice on Wednesdays, but she was insistent that she wanted me to ride with her. I could imagine the prospect of having a stranger dig around your head would make anyone anxious and I didn’t have the heart to tell her 'no.'

When we got to the parking lot, I redirected us to Hanna’s car, so I could let her know I wouldn’t need a ride that day. Luckily, Hanna was already at the car, which wasn’t normal, since I usually beat her most afternoons. Unluckily, Rhonda was there too. I knew the issue of my friendship with Kat would come up again, but I’d hoped to avoid it a little longer, and preferably without Kat there to overhear the fight.

“Hey,” I said, coming up behind them. “Kat needs some help with something today, and she said she’d drop me off at the Blue Ridge afterward, so you’re off the hook today.”

“Hey, Kathrine,” Hanna said, not sounding particularly happy to see her.

“I didn’t know you two knew each other,” I said.

Of course, thinking about it for two seconds, I realized I should have. I knew Kat had been with Aaron since last year and Aaron and Hanna had some kind of history I hadn’t figured out yet, so it made sense they’d know each other. Since Hanna and Aaron’s history wasn’t a good one, it also made sense that Hanna wouldn’t have been a big fan of Kat. I mentally kicked myself. Had I thought about it, I would’ve realized all this ahead of time and gone about this very differently.

“We do,” Hanna said.

“Hi, Hanna,” Kat said, almost in a whisper.

“She’s been helping me with my math and we’ve become friends. You’re okay, right?” I asked Hanna.

“I’m not okay,” Rhonda said, pissed.

“Go wait in your car and wait for me, okay?” I said to Kat before turning back to Rhonda.

Kat nodded and hurried away. Rhonda just looked after her, pissed, but Hanna’s expression changed, like she was trying to figure out what just happened.

“Rhonda, we’ve already done this once. What are you not okay with? I’m helping my friend, that’s it. You can choose to trust me or not, but that’s on you.”

“So you’d be fine with me having guy friends?”

“We’ve been through this too. Yes, because I trust you.”

“Then why do you get pissed when I talk to Aaron.”

“That’s different, and you’re smart enough to know that. Aaron isn’t after you to become friends, he’s looking to get at me, and he’s fine with hurting you to do it. Besides, being friends with someone who hates me is different than just being friends with a guy. You and Kat have no history as far as I know, so why do you care?”

“Why wouldn’t he want to be my friend? You don’t think someone like him would want to be friends with me? What, only you and your little group of rejects are good enough for me?”

“Charlie’s right,” Hanna said. “I know Aaron, and he sees girls as disposable. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him be friendly to a woman if it wasn’t to get something from her.”

“Whatever,” Rhonda said. “Do whatever you want!”

Rhonda stomped off. For a moment I considered chasing after her, but decided against it. For one, she needed to calm down before she was ready to be reasonable. Going after me was one thing, but the ‘rejects’ comment at Hanna was something else entirely. For the other, Kat was still waiting on me and I wanted to make sure Hanna wasn’t also pissed at me.

“Are we okay?” I asked her, finally turning away from Rhonda as she disappeared into the school.

“Why wouldn’t we be? I don’t care who you’re friends with.”

“You would if it was someone you had a bad history with. I honestly didn’t know you and Kat knew each other. If I had, I would have asked you about her before. You’re my best friend, and I want to make sure I’ve always got your back. Do you two have a problem with each other I should know about?”

“No, not really. I was just surprised to see you with her. She was part of Aaron’s group, but she didn’t do anything to me. She never even really talked to me and always seemed terrified more than anything else. What’s going on with her?”

“I’ve been trying to help her out with some personal stuff. I took her to talk to Chef on Sunday, and he arranged for someone else to see her today, so we’re headed up to the Blue Ridge.”

“Chef’s helping her?”

I thought that might help. Hanna thought the world of Chef, and if he thought someone was worth helping, then they couldn’t be all bad.

“Yeah. It’s not my place to say what the problem is, but he agreed she’d needed help.”

“I just find it weird you’re hanging out with her, considering she’s dating Aaron, or whatever.”

“More like he’s taking advantage of her. She’s a good person, she’s just got some issues she needs to address, and they’re partly why she’s with Aaron.”

“You mean she’s a doormat and does whatever anyone tells her.”

“Like I said, it’s not my place to talk about it, but she’s my friend and I want to help her.”

“Okay, okay. We’re fine. You go off and be the white knight; we both know it’s your favorite thing. I’ll be at home, sad that you no longer need me.”

She dramatically threw the back of her hand against her head like she was some kind of old movie star, leaning back like she was going to swoon.

“Bite me. Don’t think I’m not going to still demand rides.”

“Whew, and here I thought I wasn’t needed. Go, your damsel’s waiting on you.”

“Smartass,” I said to her cackle as I walked off towards Kat’s car.

Rhonda was going to be a pain in the ass, but at least Hanna wasn’t pissed at me.

“Sorry about the drama,” I said, getting into Kat’s car.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to make your girlfriend mad at you,” she offered, her voice quivering like she might cry any second.

“Hey, that’s not on you. You’re my friend and that’s not going to change just ‘cause Rhonda gets pissed. You did nothing wrong, at all. Okay?”

Kat just nodded, wiping her eyes.

“Good. Let’s not keep them waiting.”

I babbled on about random things as we drove to the Blue Ridge, just trying to take her mind off being upset. Partly, because I didn’t like seeing anyone upset, but also because I thought it might not be helpful to deliver her to Chef’s psychologist friend crying, when they had other stuff to focus on. By the time we got there, I’d even managed to get Kat to laugh a few times at my stupid jokes. This time we just went in the front door, like I did every day.

Chef’s friend was already up in his apartment, so he put me to work doing warm-ups while he walked her upstairs.

“Okay,” Chef said when he came back downstairs. “I know you have trouble focusing when you’re worried about something, so we’re going to do a little something extra today. At some point in your life, you might have to fight to defend something you care about, and you can’t let your worry get in the way. Losing focus here just gets you yelled at. Losing focus when it counts can get you seriously hurt. Every time I feel like you’re losing focus, I’m going to spend ten minutes doing my best to make you cry from how hard I’m working you. Clear?”

“Clear.”

I’d like to say I managed to keep focus and passed with flying colors, but that would be a lie. While I thought I’d done a good job, twice I missed a move. I’m not sure I agreed it was because I lost focus, since sometimes I just missed a move I was supposed to do, but I knew that arguing would just cause Chef to double down, which I didn’t want.

I could say that I didn’t actually cry, but I wanted to. The first time he had me go through high-intensity leg moves, never letting me stand all the way up, until they were so wobbly that I could barely stand upright. While it was terrible, the worst part was I had to keep going, not missing any moves, after my legs had been exhausted. The second time he did the same thing, but to my arms and shoulders. I honestly felt like quitting at one point, when the pain in my shoulders got bad enough it didn’t seem worth it anymore, but I pushed through it.

“Did you learn your lesson?” Chef asked when we finished up.

“Chef, I’m sorry, but I don’t think you can just beat this out of someone. It’s not something I can just turn off.”

“No one’s asking you to turn it off, you can be worried or concerned or angry or whatever all you want. What I want is for you to not let those things get in the way of your focus.”

“I don’t think that’s possible.”

“It is. Soldiers do it every day. You think they’re not worried? You’re not the first person whose emotions have gotten in the way of their focus. My master had to do the same thing with me, although his punishments weren’t nearly as nice.”

I couldn’t imagine what would have been worse than what Chef had just put me through, short of actually beating me, but I’d take his word for it.

“So how do I do it? It seems impossible.”

“It isn’t. You just have to compartmentalize. You just have to keep practicing at it like anything else, and one day you’ll just be able to do it. We should have started this sooner, but I guess I’ve gotten a little rusty in my teaching.”

“It doesn’t feel rusty.”

“We’ll do this again any time it seems like you’re losing focus, or are distracted by something.”

“I can’t wait,” I said sarcastically.

This was the most exhausted I’d ever felt after one of our workouts. I couldn’t help but laugh at that thought, since I kept having it, only to realize that wasn’t the bottom. I made it to one of the chairs outside the back door and flopped down, drinking down a bottle of water in one go.

“You need the conditioning anyway. You’re getting stronger, but you’re not where you need to be, yet. You know, when I was at the temple, they’d make us just hold horse stance for an hour sometimes. Eventually, it became meditative more than physical, as we learned to turn the pain into a focus point to help clear our minds.”

“You know every time you tell me stories of the temple, it makes me want to see it less and less.”

“Bah, it’s not all bad. They have a very old form of discipline, but some of my best friends are brothers I made at the temple. It made me the man I am today.”

“What, old and crotchety.”

“Yeah, keep up the smart mouth and we’ll see how tired you can get,” he said, laughing as he grabbed the towel I kept in my bag and threw it to me.

“Xie Xie, Shifu,” I said, using the very small amount of Chinese I’d learned from him.

I laughed as he went back inside, mumbling about smartass kids not being worth the effort.

I closed my eyes and enjoyed the slight breeze that was making its way through. I didn’t want to tell Chef, since I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, but most of the worry I’d had about Kat had gone away as we worked. I was still concerned for her, since I knew how scared she got whenever the topic got close to whatever her trauma was, but it wasn’t filling my thoughts like it had when we’d first gotten here.

I had almost fallen asleep, leaning against the wall, when Chef’s apartment door opened. I stood up on my still wobbly legs as a man who might have been in his late forties with dark black hair came down the stairs.

“You’re Charlie, right?” he asked, sticking out his hand.

“Yes, Sir.”

“I’m Sydney Rothstein, Chef’s friend.”

I found it amusing that even this guy, who was apparently a trained psychologist and older than my father, also referred to Chef as Chef.

“Have a seat and let me grab him and then I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes before Kat comes downstairs.”

I sat back down, my worry flooding back. I’d hoped he’d be able to help Kat get a little more control over herself and couldn’t imagine why he’d need to talk to me. He and Chef came back outside, and pulled up chairs across from me so we could all look at each other.

“How much do you know about Kat’s past?”

“Not much. We haven’t actually known each other that long.”

“Why did you want her to come see Chef?”

“She’s been tutoring me, but we have some mutual … friends is the wrong word, but we have acquaintances in common. I noticed she had a problem with people confronting her. After talking to her, I found out it went deeper than that. The moment anyone confronts her or demands something from her, she just caves into them immediately. She’s scared and worried all the time and worse, there are people taking serious advantage of her. Then there was what happened when I finally brought her to Chef.”

“He told me about that. What did you make of it?”

“I don’t know; it shocked me, because up till then, we’d just been friends. I mean, I find her attractive, but there hadn’t been anything like that between us. It was almost like that’s what she thought she was supposed to be doing. Which … I don’t know.”

“Except, I think you do. You’re dancing around what you think the actual problem is.”

“I think she’s being abused,” I said.

I’d actually thought it since that moment in the car, but I hadn’t wanted to say it out loud. I didn’t know how she’d react to the accusation and I sure as hell wasn’t ready to get involved with something like this.

“That’s why this is way out of my ability to deal with,” I added. “Her responses to everything are wrong. Not wrong like it’s not what's normal, but wrong like I don’t think she wants to respond that way, but for whatever reason feels like she has to.”

“You’re actually pretty observant. That’s as good of a way to put it as possible.”

“What I don’t understand is why you’re asking me this. I thought this was why Chef brought you in, so she had a professional to talk to. Hell, I can’t even drive a car until March, let alone deal with this.”

“That’s where we have a problem. I can’t help her. At least not now.”

“Why? What happened?”

“Nothing happened, but she’s a minor Charlie. It’s actually pretty inappropriate for me to have talked to her today without permission from a parent or guardian. She’s made it clear that her father would never agree to it, which puts us in a rough place. I agree she needs help and I think she’s more vulnerable than either of you know, but I can’t be the one to help her.”

“Except, you’re sitting here talking to me, instead of up there talking to her still or headed home.”

“Chef was right, you are really sharp. Yes, we have options, and all of them suck.”

“Okay, what are our options?”

“First, I want to tell you what’s happening with her. She actually asked me to tell you about it, although again, without a guardian and with her condition, that request is tenuous at best. She’s not actually my patient, so we should be okay, but I want you to understand that even here, we’re on very shaky ground. The only reason I’m here at all is because Chef Tang asked me to, and I owe him.”

Didn’t everyone, I thought.

“So you could get in trouble, Chef could get in trouble, or I could get in trouble. Or all three?”

“Not you. You’re a minor and you're not doing anything wrong, so you’re fine. It is possible if someone wanted to, they could cause issues for Chef and me, but I’m willing to take the risk to help out your friend.”

“Okay, I understand. You’re doing your best and already out on a limb, and I shouldn’t try to push you to pick an option that doesn’t involve me,” I said, reading between the lines.

“Smart. Too damn smart,” he said, shaking his head. “You know, at some point you should have your mom come with you to my office and talk to me. Chef Tang also talked to me about your situation, with your father.”

“Let’s focus on one thing at a time, huh, Doc?”

“Sure, I’m just putting it out there. Okay, your friend suffers from something called Dependent Personality Disorder, which is an anxiety personality disorder. As you’ve seen, people with this disorder feel helpless or submissive and, in some extreme circumstances, incapable of taking care of most of themselves on a daily basis. People on the far end of this disorder are unable to do things like deciding what to eat, or what clothes to wear on a daily basis without breaking down into panic attacks. Thankfully, Katherine’s condition isn’t that extreme, but she does have a serious case.”

“So she doesn’t want to make decisions?”

“It isn’t a case of what she does or doesn’t want. This isn’t a choice thing. People who suffer from this have a recognized mental illness. When she is pushed to confront someone, state an opposing opinion, or feels like she is going to be abandoned, her anxiety and stress rises to the point where she has fairly extreme panic attacks.”

“Can she learn to ignore the panic attacks?”

“No, because panic attacks aren’t in someone’s head. They’re an actual physical reaction. They cause shortness of breath, chest pain, increased heart rate and blood pressure, nausea and dizziness. They hurt, and they are terrifying for the person experiencing them.”

“She has that every time she has to confront someone?”

“She can, but it doesn’t always happen. Mental illness isn’t a thing with hard lines, since a lot of things go into it. How much anxiety the person is already under, the presence of any mitigating factors, and the source the pressure is coming from can all change the severity of the reaction.”

“You said people with this can have attacks caused by the stuff you listed. Will they all set Kat off?”

“No. Keep in mind disorders like this can evolve, with triggers developing later or disappearing, so what is true today might not be true forever. Also, I’ve only had this one session with her, so there may be some items we don’t know about. From what I’ve seen though, there are three things that set her off. Confrontation, difficulty stating opinions, and fear of abandonment.”

“She can sometimes confront people though. She’s done it plenty of times to me when tutoring me, telling me what I’ve done wrong and when I’m not focused enough.”

“Right, because it’s not the confrontation itself. She’s terrified of upsetting the person she has to confront, afraid of the reaction that confrontation might provoke. If she feels comfortable and knows that the confrontation won’t produce a bad reaction, then she’s fine.”

“So the same is true for giving her opinion, right?”

“Exactly. She can give her opinion, but she’s afraid of people not accepting it or, worse, reacting negatively to it.”

“What about the fear of abandonment thing. I haven’t seen that.”

“She has a very strong need for a support system, and feels lost and scared without one. For her, it doesn’t matter if that system is good or bad, as long as she feels there is someone who is actively taking an interest in her.”

“Which is why she stays with Aaron even when he’s terrible to her.”

“That’s the boy she’s been involved with?”

“Yes. He plays football at school, and he’s terrible to her. He takes advantage of her and I’ve seen him trying to … uhhh … trade her off to his friends,” I said, trying to find a way to say it that didn’t sound so bad.

“She knows this boy’s bad for her, but right now she feels like he’s one of the few people who care what happens to her, and that is enough to keep her from becoming anxious or despondent. She’s terrified that she’s going to be abandoned by everyone, and left to deal with everything on her own.”

“So is there a cure or some kind of medication she can take?”

“No, there is no cure. While there is some debate over what mixture of genetic, environmental, and developmental factors cause DPD, it’s been found that severe cases to the level of Katherine’s are usually the result of childhood trauma or abuse. There is cognitive-behavioral therapy that has had some success teaching people with DPD to handle their triggers and help moderate the severity of the systems, but that therapy takes time. Sometimes antidepressants or anti-anxiety medication can be prescribed to counteract the effects of the panic attacks, but that only treats the symptoms and not the actual disorder.”

“And she can’t do this therapy because she’d have to have her parent sign off on it, and she refuses to talk to her father about it.”

“Yes.”

“So what are her options?”

“Unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of good options. Even CBT is more about helping the patient self-manage symptoms, and it comes with risks. Remember that DPD is Dependent Personality Disorder. People who suffer from it need to be dependent on someone else. There’s a real danger of someone going through therapy becoming dependent on their therapist instead of learning enough self-dependency to function in society. It’s why CBT has to be done under the care of a trained therapist, to avoid trading one attachment for another.”

“So that’s it? She’s just left to the mercy of people willing to take advantage of her.”

“There aren’t a lot of good answers here, Charlie. What you can do for her is urge her to talk to her father about getting professional help. Besides that, keep being her friend. You said she acts differently around you, gives her opinions and is able to confront you; that’s good. Be a part of her stable support system, just be careful that she doesn’t become dependent on you, which she will probably try and do.”

I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but I’d hoped for something more than this. I got that he was limited in what he could do without her parent’s permission, but he was basically saying until she managed to confront her father, something he’d just said she was not able to do, she was on her own.

It was disheartening, to say the least.

Kat and I didn’t talk much after the doctor left. She seemed more relaxed, but I knew that was going to be temporary. We didn’t really talk about it and she just took me home. I tried to be reassuring, telling her she should call me if she needed to talk to someone, but I felt helpless in the situation.

Over the last several weeks she’d become my friend and my heart felt for her, knowing Aaron was going to keep taking advantage of her. It was actually worse, since I now knew that the more he took advantage of her, the more dependent she’d become on him, allowing him to take even more advantage, until she got really hurt.

On top of that, Rhonda was still pissed at me. I’d managed to get her to at least talk to me on Thursday, but things felt off the entire time. The only thing that seemed to get things back on track was when I agreed to talk to Hanna about the varsity party on Saturday. As Rhonda predicted, Marcus had asked her to go. As I thought, Hanna had said 'no.' She’d barely been able to go to the baseball team’s party at the beginning of the season, and that had been with people she didn’t hate. Unfortunately, I was in the dog house and this was the only way I could think to get out of it.

“You’re kidding?” Hanna asked that afternoon on the way to the Blue Ridge.

“I know, you hate nearly everyone who’ll be there, but I’m going to have to end up going one way or another. She’s stillpissed about the Kat thing, and she really, really wants this. I know Marcus asked you to go, and I was hoping I’d have at least one person there, besides Rhonda, who didn’t want to beat the crap out of me. It’d be nice to have you and Marcus there as support. Besides, you might have fun.”

“We both know that isn’t true.”

“And yet …?”

“Fine, I’ll go. Marcus has been on me about this for days now, anyway. I can’t take two of you making puppy dog eyes at me.”

I took the opportunity to do just that, and then dodged her hand as she made a swipe at smacking me in the nose. Rhonda was happy with me again once I gave her the news, although we had to make plans to arrive separately. Willie was still out touring and they’d started seeing an increase in traffic again once I started on my own nights, which meant there was no way he was going to let me leave early to go to a party.

Hanna quickly volunteered to stay and take me to the party once we finished up, probably so she could arrive late, but it was fine with me. The only ones really losing out were Rhonda and Marcus, who’d have to spend time there without us, although Rhonda didn’t seem to mind the idea. I think she just liked the idea that she was finally getting to go to some varsity parties, even if it was on Marcus’s coattails, since the invite actually came through him, it turned out. Apparently, he’d been the one to mention it to Rhonda, in hopes that I’d convince Hanna once Rhonda put pressure on me to go. I had to give it to the guy, it was more devious than I expected of him.

The party itself was loud when we finally got there. It had been going for more than an hour already, and half the kids there were already hammered out of their minds. I consoled myself that I at least didn’t have to stay for long, since the cops would probably be breaking everything up.

“I’m going to go find Rhonda. Meet in the kitchen once you’ve found Marcus?”

“Deal,” she said, grimacing at one of the football players that pushed past her to run out into the front yard to puke.

I heard music coming from ahead of me, which was probably where I’d find Rhonda. One of the things she and her friends had discussed at the lunches we still spent with them was who was dancing with whom at these parties. I was glad I’d managed most of them, because while I loved music, I hated dancing. I assumed I’d find her dancing with her friends but what I saw when I pushed through the dance floor stopped me in my tracks.

Swaying together in the center of the room Rhonda had her arms around Aaron’s neck, and he was leaning down, their lips pressed together. It felt like I’d been punched in the gut. I just stood there for what felt like forever, watching the two of them, until Aaron noticed me out of the corner of his eyes. He broke apart from her and just stood there, smirking at me, daring me to take a swing at him.

“Rhonda?” I said, not sure what else I could say.

She looked almost scared for a second, and I thought she was going to run to me, maybe apologize, and then her face hardened.

“Just go,” she said, before reaching up and pulling Aaron back down to her.

I got the message. I turned, and pushing through the crowd, ran out the front door.