The Sound of Letting Go Read online

  STASIA WARD KEHOE

  the

  sound

  of

  letting

  go

  VIKING

  An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA)

  VIKING

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  USA * Canada * UK * Ireland * Australia

  New Zealand * India * South Africa * China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2014

  Copyright © 2014 by Stasia Ward Kehoe

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Ward, S. (Stasia), date–

  The sound of letting go / by Stasia Ward Kehoe.

  pages cm

  Summary: At seventeen, Daisy feels imprisoned by her brother Steven’s autism and its effects and her only escape is through her trumpet into the world of jazz, but when her parents decide to send Steven to an institution she is not ready to let him go.

  ISBN 978-1-101-62655-9

  [1. Novels in verse. 2. Autism—Fiction. 3. Trumpet—Fiction. 4. Jazz—Fiction. 5. High schools—Fiction. 6. Schools—Fiction. 7. Family problems—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.5.W24Sou 2014

  [Fic]—dc23

  2013013098

  Version_1

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Chapter 119

  Chapter 120

  Chapter 121

  Chapter 122

  Chapter 123

  Chapter 124

  Chapter 125

  Chapter 126

  Chapter 127

  Chapter 128

  Chapter 129

  Chapter 130

  Chapter 131

  Chapter 132

  Chapter 133

  Chapter 134

  Chapter 135

  Chapter 136

  Chapter 137

  Chapter 138

  Chapter 139

  Chapter 140

  Chapter 141

  Chapter 142

  Chapter 143

  Chapter 144

  Chapter 145

  Acknowledgments

  For Thomas, Mak, Sam, Jack,

  and Kevin.

  Always.

  1

  Dave Miller grins in my direction.

  At least, I think

  his easy-eyed, right-cheek-dimpled expression

  is meant for me.

  It’s hard to be certain, since we are separated

  by the fingerprinted interior window that divides my band room refuge from the chaotic dissonance of the rest of Evergreen High.

  Dave was my best friend in kindergarten.

  We split jelly (no peanut butter) sandwiches together,

  told our parents that we’d marry

  and build a house, someday, in Dave’s backyard.

  But life isn’t kindergarten, and by now,

  junior year of high school,

  we live on different social planets,

  our orbits rarely intersecting,

  though sometimes, in the morning,

  he’s there outside the band room

  making my stomach flutter,

  making me want a peanut-butter-free jelly sandwich.

  I wonder what sort of smile would telegraph the reply,

  If-you-are-looking-at-me-hey-there-but-if-you-are-not-

  I-don’t-mind.

  Whatever it is, I hope that’s my expression

  as I pack up my trumpet,

  smooth my hand over the once-black case

  now customized with a zillion jazz-musician,

  classic-album, instrument art stickers I’ve made

  using mom’s scrapbooking gadgets

  because my mother keeps things organized.

  Our lives in labele
d albums,

  our showpiece house in designer paint colors

  vacuumed, swept, so pretty that if you just looked

  you might want to come inside.

  But if you listened,

  you’d hear another story:

  incomprehensible wailing,

  shouting, urgent phone calls,

  crying. You’d want to ask if a monster

  lived in our house.

  I am not sure how I’d answer.

  2

  I snap the buckles,

  hoist my backpack over one shoulder,

  slide my trumpet case up onto a band room shelf.

  I’ll retrieve it after school.

  “Busy tonight, Daisy?”

  Dave catches me at the door.

  I resist the instinctive why?

  and say, “Not really.”

  “A bunch of us are going to The Movie House.

  Wanna come?”

  Dave’s golden-brown eyes hold me,

  his hopeful voice a beckoning bell

  silenced by the drum crash of reality.

  Wednesday is one of Mom’s yoga nights.

  A night I watch Steven.

  “I—I think I’ll have too much homework for that.”

  3

  Heart skidding, I walk down the hall to homeroom,

  eyes pointed resolutely forward, resisting

  the urge to glance back, see if Dave is watching.

  I slide my backpack off my shoulder, straighten my spine,

  give my hair a casual, carefree shake, just in case.

  “The Movie House,” I whisper through near-motionless lips.

  I have this habit of sometimes saying words out loud,

  narrating my life as I wish it could be,

  pretending the pounding in my chest is because I am, secretly, a spy girl or mad scientist,

  that my reason for scurrying home, turning down Dave,

  is something more exotic than unpleasant.

  I let my imagination wander to the possibility of yes.

  In my mind, I sit at The Movie House beside Dave

  and he puts his hand gently over mine on the armrest

  that separates us,

  and it doesn’t feel anything like our old sandbox high fives,

  and he isn’t the detention-garnering slacker he’s become

  but the astronaut-engineer-firefighter he used to portray

  when he wore a near-perpetual chocolate-milk mustache

  and hair buzzed short by his dad, like a soldier’s.

  “Wednesday at The Movie House”

  could be the title for an album,

  something brassy, instrumental, full of hope.

  And that makes me smile a little,

  thinking of music inside my head despite my pulsing regret

  for saying no.

  4

  At three fifteen, I haul my feet

  to the parking lot, drag

  my bags along the ground, not caring

  if the rip, tug, pull,

  the bump-scratch of trumpet case

  grazing asphalt

  slows me down.

  It is hard to go home.

  Sometimes I think I’d join any band, rehearse any song,

  for the chance to be away from that place an extra hour.

  If I called Mom, asked,

  she’d probably let me go to The Movie House tonight.

  But I can’t do that to her.

  5

  “I’m back!” I announce not too loudly,

  slipping the house key back into my jeans pocket.

  “Mom?”

  I get no reply, but head to the kitchen anyway.

  As I pass the table, Steven catches my arm

  in a grip that’s gotten tighter,

  rougher, since he turned thirteen.

  His feet keep growing.

  His face is getting pimply.

  He is starting to look like a man.

  “Hi, Daisy.”

  Mom is wearing her “Kiss the Cook” apron

  over a blue-and-white yoga ensemble.

  “Is that new?” I ask

  as I pull my arm from its vice-hold,

  already glad I didn’t disappoint her

  by asking to escape tonight.

  It’s still two hours until yoga

  and she’s already dressed to go.

  6

  “We made chocolate chip cookies.” Mom unties her apron.

  “Would you mind if I left a little early?

  A few other yoga-moms are meeting for tea before class.”

  “Go ahead,” I say,

  sitting down at the kitchen table across from my brother.

  Mom puts a cookie on my paper plate,

  places another in Steven’s hand.

  I do not like warm cookies.

  I prefer to wait until the chocolate chips

  have gotten cool, firm, and the cookie a little crispy.

  But I take a bite.

  Steven taps his cookie against his lips,

  the bottom of his nose,

  then he pushes it into his mouth,

  crumbs dropping onto the table.

  The cookie finished, he settles into a familiar pose—

  head cocked to the left,

  gazing vaguely upward as if the ceiling reveals secrets

  only he can see.

  I watch the energy transfer to Steven’s plump fingers:

  Elbows drawn tight against his belly,

  he moves his forearms slowly,

  not the agile, winglike flapping that stereotypes autistics

  on television

  but a cruel series of arduous passes—

  palm over back of hand . . . palm over back of hand . . .

  His knuckles are calloused, reddish from wear.

  Mom bustles around the kitchen.

  “The casserole should come out at five thirty.

  Dad’s working late again,

  but he’ll be home to put Steven to bed.

  I’ll give him his meds before I go.”

  “Want to go watch TV, Steven?” I ask.

  Nothing.

  I stand up. “TV in the family room, Steven?”

  Beat . . . Beat . . .

  “No-ahhh.” His flat, tuneless half-word/half-moan

  instantly stops Mom’s sweeping.

  “How about Blokus?”

  She pulls the box from the kitchen island,

  slides it before Steven.

  Plastic pieces tumble onto the table.

  I have “played” Blokus with Steven many times;

  our game rule is simply that I watch him

  align the square chips

  in single-colored rows until the board is full.

  Sometimes we do it three times or more,

  Steven’s hands wringing

  as he contemplates the colors, almost never acknowledging

  that I am sitting across from him

  or that he feels any satisfaction in completing a row.

  “There.” Mom nods her head

  as Steven begins to focus on the game.

  “You’ll be fine.”

  “Yeah.”

  I calculate the breadth of Steven’s shoulders,

  now wider than mine;

  count the hours

  between now and Dad coming home to take over;

  and I am only a little afraid

  of the night.

  7

  In the morning,

  the wails are my alarm clock.

  Steven does not like to take a shower, b
rush his teeth.

  Most of all, he hates to put on deodorant.

  I wait under the quilt

  as the sun teases through the slats in the window blinds,

  until thudding footsteps on the stairs report

  the second floor has been emptied of everyone but me.

  Then I haul myself out of bed, tired, as always,

  from a late night of homework and trumpet practice

  that can only begin

  after one of my parents has come home to take over Steven.

  I rub my eyes, trying to remember

  a morning when I woke up feeling rested,

  a day that wasn’t a constant strain of worries,

  a time when I didn’t care

  about time.

  Breakfast is another terse routine of favorite foods,

  Mom’s constant monologue of calming words,

  restating the day’s plan,

  asking Dad random questions about the news, the weather,

  as if we lived in an ordinary house,

  could take pleasure in morning conversation.

  I ghost my way through the kitchen,

  pour cereal from the nearest box to hand

  into a clean bowl, slosh in milk,

  eat at the kitchen island, while Mom, Dad, and Steven

  circle the table with their family farce.

  “Today at school, we’re not going to hit anyone,

  right, Steven?

  We are going to sit nicely in our seat and not hit, right?”

  Mom tries to keep her voice steady.

  Dad lets out a long breath from behind his paper.

  We are living on the verge of Steven’s dismissal

  from his current special-needs public school program,

  where he has begun to smack the teachers almost daily,

  grab at the wrists of his female classmates

  if they pass too closely by his desk.