Page 30 of Heart Strings

“How did it go?” Zoe and Maggie asked in unison when I walked into the house.

I shrugged, confident and terrified at the same time. “I did what I could and I think I played well. I’ve just got to wait now, I guess.”

Waiting turned out to be the hardest part. I knew they would contact me by phone, so I kept the device on me at all times with the volume turned up as loud as it could go. Every time it dinged, rang, or buzzed, I leaped on it like a cat that had been waiting for hours at a mousehole. I tossed and turned at night, and I checked my phone constantly during the day.

My friends helped distract me, just like they had helped distract me from Al. Sometimes, though, I felt like they were playing a sort of cat-and-mouse game - spending time with me, but keeping secrets. Like they didn’t want to tell me what they had planned next because they were afraid I would refuse or something. I didn’t have the energy to tell them that whatever they planned for us to do was fine. Instead, I let them have their whispered conversations and muted giggles and welcomed the distraction from my thoughts - and from my silent phone.

Finally, two days before the graduation ceremony, I got the call. Maggie and Zoe watched me answer it, my eyes filled with hope and sparkling with adrenaline fueled by the end of this interminable wait.

They also watched as my eyes froze, my face fell and my lips stammered into the phone, “O-oh. T-thank you for…thank you for taking the time to tell me.”

“So…” Maggie spoke first, but she knew. And Zoe knew. And more than anyone, I knew.

“I didn’t get it,” I said slowly, the words falling like lengths of lead. “I didn’t…get the position.”

Zoe gave me a hug. Maggie hugged us both. My arms just hung limply.

“I didn’t get it,” I said again, this time talking to someone else - someone who was here only in spirit. “How…how could I not get it? It doesn’t make sense…” My eyes stayed completely dry. Simply put, my entire being was stuck onI don’t understand.“It’s my fate.”

“Fate’s a tricky thing,” Zoe said, looking like she might cry for me herself. “If this didn’t work out, it means that it wasn’t really your fate, doesn’t it?”

I shook my head. Not at Zoe. Just at life. At the life that had brought me here, laughed at my hard work and hung me out to dry.

“Hey, buck up,” Maggie told me, eyes wide. She actually looked scared for me. Or scared of me… What I would do next. She didn’t need to be, though. I really just didn’t feel anything except the deepest of confusions right now. “Let’s just watch a movie like we had planned, and then Zoe and I have a surprise for you. Okay?”

“Whatever.” I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want to watch a movie. I didn’t want to be with my friends. Everything I had ever wanted had been taken away from me, so I was afraid to want anything again.

My state of incomprehension continued throughout the movie. By the end of it, I had gotten nowhere mentally except to wonder if I had heard the voice over the phone correctly.Maybe I should call back.

Zoe and Maggie must have put in another movie at some point, but I hadn’t noticed. I only noticed now because a knock at the door roused Zoe from the couch.

Maggie paused the movie. She had a really weird look on her face, but I doubted it meant anything I cared about right now.

Then, the door creaked open, and I heard the only sound in this entire world that could have snapped me out of my fugue state.

“Hola.”

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