SOMETIMES IT TAKES A LITTLE SADNESS
Two nights later, I was eating dinner with my parents when our home phone rang.
My mom and dad looked at each other, since no one ever really called the house except for people trying to sell us stuff. In fact, my parents had been talking recently about getting rid of the home phone altogether.
I got up to look at the caller ID. BLOCKED. I hesitated for a second, then picked up the phone. “Hello?”
“Is this Katie?”
“Yes?”
“This is Kit St. Claire.”
It took me a minute to process this. Kit St. Claire? I remembered meeting a Kit. Then it hit me. KIT.
“Kit?”
“Yup. You remember me, right? I work for Jane.”
“Oh. Uh … Oh, yes. I remember you.” It was hard to hear myself—or anything—over the pounding of my heart.
“Do you have a minute to talk with Jane?”
I had a year to talk with Jane. “Um … Of course! Yes.”
“Great! Hold on a sec.”
As I waited, my parents looked at me with puzzled expressions on their faces. I’d told them about meeting Jane backstage, but nothing about her asking me to write a song and send it to her. I hadn’t told them about that, because it seemed so ridiculous to think that anything would come from it.
But now, it seemed like something might.
“It’s a long story,” I whispered to my parents.
“That’s okay, we’ve got time,” said my dad.
I rolled my eyes at him and waited. And waited.
And waited some more.
After about two full minutes, with my parents staring at me the whole time, I decided to come clean. “Jane Plantero from Plain Jane is calling me, I think about a song I wrote,” I told them, trying to make it sound as normal as possible. “I’m waiting for her to come to the phone.”
My parents stared at me. Finally my mom said, “You write songs?”
“I do now, I guess,” I said. On the word guess I heard a sudden fumbling on the other end of the line, a familiar voice yelling, “Not if I can help it!” at someone, and then a huge, quick laugh.
It was definitely her—Jane, of Plain Jane.
On the phone.
Calling me.
If only life were recorded, I would play that moment over and over and over again.
“Hey, Flattery Girl, what’s going on?”
“Um … Well, I can’t believe you’re calling me.”
Another loud, rock-and-roll laugh. “Yeah, well, here I am!”
I tried to laugh too, but I think I was hyperventilating, so I’m not sure any noise came out.
“Katie, I have a question for you. Did you really write those lyrics Pops Ramdal sent me?”
I nodded, but then realized you can’t hear a nod over the phone, so I said, “Yeah.”
“Well, they’re good,” said my favorite songwriter ever. “They’re really good.” Then she yelled off the phone, “Right, Kit?” Then back to me: “Kit thinks so, too.”
“This is unbelievable,” I said.
Jane laughed again, and said, “Yup, it is kind of unbelievable. I was reading this song, and I was thinking about this girl in middle school, feeling these intense feelings, feeling a little trapped by them, and not quite knowing what to do with them, and then finally realizing that writing is the way out. Writing is freedom.”
I was shocked that she could get inside my head so accurately. “Wow,” I said. “That’s amazing. You totally know exactly how I was feeling.”
Jane laughed softly. “I wasn’t talking about you,” she said. “I was talking about me.”
Neither of us spoke for a few seconds after that.
“Well, I was feeling sad,” I said, finally. “When I wrote it, I mean.”
“Ah. Well, sometimes it takes a little sadness to let the art out.”
I nodded again, but this time I felt she knew I was nodding, so I didn’t say anything.
“So listen, sweetie,” Jane continued. “We’re taking a break from the road, and I’ve got a little time on my hands. So how would you like to come down to my studio tomorrow afternoon and have a look around? We’ll talk about these lyrics of yours, figure out how to turn it into a real song. You game?”
You know how you have the moment when you say to yourself, “My life is changing forever, right now,” but you don’t really believe it, or you don’t really trust it, even though you’re hearing it with your own two ears?
I was having that moment.
“I would absolutely love to come to your studio,” I somehow managed to say into the phone. I glanced at my parents, whose eyes were going wide. “I would be totally honored.”
“Great! I gotta run, so I’m going to put Kit back on the phone. She’ll talk it over with your folks, work everything out. Sound like a plan?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “Thank you so, so much!”
Jane laughed again. “No, thank you,” she said. “The world needs people who can write. Turns out you’re one of ’em. It’s a gift, and I’m here to make sure you don’t waste it. See you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow,” I said, but she was already gone.
I handed the phone to my mom and sat down at the kitchen table, trying to get a handle on the most amazing five minutes of my life. One thing kept running through my head: This fantastic thing that was happening to me was all because of a boy whose heart I had just broken.
Life is really weird sometimes.