Second Life: Dumping the Scum novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Dining Hall

Adalyn reads 'her' lyrics in the dining hall and can't explain them, Emmylou quits the band and moves in, and the dean cancels Kensley's senior recital over an originality complaint.

I watched it three times with my thumb pressed to the screen.

Adalyn turned each page slowly so the camera could read it.

She'd copied my songbook out by hand, line for line, even the cross-outs.

She must have done it in Breckin's van, while my book sat in his guitar case for safekeeping.

By ten the video had three hundred thousand views.

The comments called me a thief, a psycho, a girl who couldn't let go.

Somebody had pulled my photo off the college website and circled my face in red.

Emmylou called before I could put the phone down.

"Do not read the comments."

"I'm reading the comments."

"Stop it. Also, they're doing a reading at lunch. In the dining hall. Adalyn's going to read from 'her journal.'"

"How do you know?"

"There's a poster. With a font."

"What font?"

"The kind with curls. Like a barn wedding."

I put on my gray coat and went to lunch.

The dining hall was packed past the salad bar.

Phones were up at every table.

Adalyn stood on the little open-mic stage in a pale pink dress, holding the notebook against her chest like a hymnal.

Breckin sat at the front table with his chin on his fist, looking brave.

"These are just pages from my journal," Adalyn said. "I never meant for anyone to hear them."

Then she read my grandmother's porch out loud.

She read it soft and breathy.

Paper lanterns from the gutter to the oak.

A screen door that never latched.

A jar of pennies by the door for the ice cream truck.

People clapped after every verse.

A girl at the table next to me whispered, "She's so talented. I'd die."

I walked up the middle aisle between the tables.

The phones swung around to follow me.

Breckin stood up.

"Kenz, don't do this here."

"You did it here," I said. "I'm just showing up for it."

I stopped at the edge of the stage and looked up at Adalyn.

"That's a beautiful journal," I said. "Can I ask you about verse two?"

Her fingers tightened on the notebook.

"The screen door," I said. "Whose door was it?"

"It's a metaphor."

"For what?"

"For leaving. For being open to things."

"Why didn't it latch?"

She looked at Breckin.

Breckin looked at the ceiling.

"It's poetry," Adalyn said. "It doesn't have to make sense."

"It makes sense," I said.

"My granddaddy backed his truck into it and bent the latch."

"He swore he'd fix it that weekend, and he had a stroke that Friday."

"My grandmother never let anybody touch it after that."

"She said as long as it was broken, he still owed her a weekend."

The dining hall had gone completely still.

Somebody's tray clicked down very carefully.

"Your turn," I said to Adalyn. "What color were the lanterns?"

She opened her mouth.

"They were..."

"This is harassment," Breckin said.

"White," I said. "With blue moons painted on them. It's on the next page, if she'd turn it."

Adalyn didn't turn it.

So I reached up, turned it for her, and pointed.

White paper, blue moons, in her careful copied hand.

"You wrote that down," I said, "and never once asked me what it meant."

From the back somebody said, "Oh, damn."

Then a clatter rang out across the tile.

Emmylou had come in from the kitchen side in her bandana and ripped jeans, and she'd dropped her drumsticks right at Breckin's feet.

"I quit," she said.

Breckin stared at the sticks.

"You can't quit. We've got a gig Friday."

"Then play the drums with your mouth," Emmylou said. "You're great at running it."

The table behind him lost it.

Breckin's ears went red.

"You're throwing away everything for her?"

"Everything?" Emmylou said. "I get forty bucks a show and you make me carry the kick drum up the stairs alone."

She turned to me and hooked her arm through mine.

"Also, I'm moving in with you."

"Since when?"

"Since my roommate got a ferret and named it after my ex," she said. "I've been sleeping in my car since Tuesday."

"Emmylou."

"I have a duffel, a snare and no shame. Say yes."

"Yes," I said.

"Great. The ferret's coming too."

"What?"

"Kidding. Mostly."

We walked out together through the middle of the room.

A few people clapped.

Most of them were filming, but they weren't filming me anymore.

Behind us, Adalyn was still standing on the stage with the notebook shut in both hands.

In the hallway outside, Emmylou did a little shuffle in her boots.

"Blue moons," she said. "You ended her with blue moons."

"I didn't end anybody."

"Kenz, she's going to need a new journal. And a new face."

I was laughing when the dean stepped out of the music office in front of us.

He had a white envelope in his hand and the face of a man.

"Miss Cowan," he said. "A word."

Emmylou stopped laughing.

He held out the envelope.

"Your senior recital has been cancelled," he said. "Pending review of an originality complaint."

"A complaint from who?"

He didn't look at the envelope.

He didn't have to.

"Mr. Varnell and Miss Rayburn," he said. "Filed this morning."

My recital was the last thing I needed to graduate.

Without it, I didn't walk in May.

And every publisher on Music Row would hear exactly why.

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