“So you didn’t have to cut all your hair off,” Jane says as we walk into school. Everyone’s bodies are pushing past us, and my elbow gets knocked by someone when I reach up to touch the place in my sandy-blond hair that used to be sticky.
“Yeah. My mom says peanut butter always works.”
Jane gives a single, short nod. “Good. Even though …” She squints at me and cocks her head. “You would make a very handsome boy.”
“Hey!”
“Want me to draw you as one?”
“No way!” I laugh as we reach our lockers and open them.
Jane pulls out her big black sketchbook, and we walk into class. “Okay. Kate the pretty, pretty princess it is.”
“Don’t you dare,” I say loud enough to draw Sofia’s attention. She watches me take my seat and nods hello.
I nod back.
It’s such a cold, weird way to greet my best friend. I mean, Mom nods hello at strangers while she drives.
All morning, I reach into my sweater pocket to touch the magic hat waiting there. I want to believe Grammy, to believe that it will make that empty, aching silence in my heart go away and bring back the music, but it’s hard to imagine anything can do that, especially a simple hat.
When Miss Reynolds starts going over the list of people we can choose for our poems, I can’t help but take it out to see if I feel anything when I hold it. Maybe just a spark of magic.
“What’s that?” whispers Parker.
I almost jump out of my chair. Parker is getting close to the end of The Hobbit. The way he’s been flipping his pages almost fast enough to rip them out means it’s getting good. He usually never talks when he’s at a good part in a book.
“Oh, it’s just a hat I knitted. Or helped knit. It’s nothing, really.” The girl in front of me, Amy, peeks over her shoulder. I look away from Parker and stuff the hat back in my pocket.
“That’s pretty cool,” Parker whispers. “I wish I could do that.”
“Maybe I can … teach you.” The words almost stick in my throat. I wait for them to burst into flames or something horrible.
“Awesome,” says Parker.
All of a sudden, I think I can ace any presentation. Before we move to work with our partners, I reach into my pocket, pull the hat back out, and stuff it so hard over my head that a few strands of hair pull out.
“Okay, class. Find your partner, grab a laptop, and get to work!”
Jane comes to me this time. She’s holding a silver laptop and sits in the desk Parker just left. “Nice hat!”
I touch it. “Oh, thanks.”
Jane opens the laptop, turns it on, and passes it to me. “So I was thinking we should do our presentation on George Washington. Because I like to draw cherry trees.”
“Isn’t that a myth?”
Jane rolls her eyes. “Does it matter?”
“Probably.” I laugh.
“Okay, fine. Lots of blood and guts then. I’m good at that, too.”
“Eeewww.”
“Hey!” Jane points at me. “You wanted me to stick with the facts. The Revolutionary War wasn’t something from a Monet painting.”
“Okay, fine.”
Jane pulls out her black sketchbook and opens it, slowly, like each page is soaking into her thoughts. Finally, she says, “If you let me draw cherry trees … I won’t make you sing.”
“What?”
Jane shrugs. “I watched you when Miss Reynolds suggested it. And then when Sofia freaked out about it. I could see that you maybe didn’t want to.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Sofia and Marisa pretending to dance in their seats, obviously planning to perform. If I sang too, maybe Sofia would think I was good enough for sleepovers and phone calls again. That hat on my head suddenly feels scratchy and a little tight. Is that what magic feels like? “Well, actually, I think … maybe I could try to sing.”
“Really?” Jane looks up from her sketchbook. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I mean … I haven’t done it in a while. But—” I touch the hat.
“Well, try now,” Jane says with a small clap. “Just really quiet so only I can hear. Ooohhh, we are going to have the best presentation. Maybe I can draw a whole mural. And you … you could put on a mini-musical about his life.”
“What about the poem we have to write for him?”
Jane waves her hands. “Details. We’ll work that in somewhere.”
Jane goes on and on. Her eyes get wider and wider and her ideas grow bigger and bigger, until I think she might decide to sell tickets if I don’t stop her soon.
“Maybe we should just write the poem first.”
Jane stops mid-sentence, her mouth hanging open, then says, “Good idea. After you sing for me.”
I pull the hat down over my ears.
“I promise to give you a standing ovation,” Jane whispers.
“Please don’t.”
“Okay. Sorry.” Jane mimes flipping a switch. “Rainbow Lab turned off.”
I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and wait for the magic.
I try to remember the words to a song. Any song. Instead, all I can think about is Mom sitting at the piano, opening up her music book with the cover falling off from being used so many times.
“What do you feel like singing tonight, Katydid?”
I twisted the knobs on the neck of my guitar, tuning my D string to get it just right. “I don’t know. What do you think, Dad?”
He was sitting on the couch. His eyes flicked up from his phone. “You have such a pretty voice, Katydid. Why don’t you do all the singing tonight?”
My guitar felt a tiny bit heavier.
Mom turned around on the piano bench. “Tony, are you sure?”
He shrugged. Didn’t even look up from his phone.
I pull the hat down tighter over my head and pinch my eyes closed even harder. “Come on. Come on. Come on,” I whisper.
“Come on, Elizabeth,” Dad said, pulling his guitar strap over his head and walking into the kitchen. “I’ve got to play some music today. I’ll go crazy if I don’t.”
Mom held out a letter. “We just got this. You told me you took care of it.”
Dad grabbed the letter and read it. “Oh, I … I forgot.”
“I asked you to do that at least five times.”
“I’ve been tired, okay?”
“And I’m not tired?” Mom snapped.
“Look, I’ll take care of it this time. I promise. Just come play the piano.”
“I can’t,” said Mom. “I have to deal with this because I can’t trust you to do it.”
“I’ll play with you, Dad.” I hopped down from the kitchen counter.
“No,” he said. “I don’t feel like singing anymore.”
A hot weight sinks to the bottom of my stomach. The space behind my eyes burns. A knot forms in my throat. If I open my mouth now, all that’ll come out is a sob. It’s right then that I realize Grammy is a liar. A big, fat, muumuu-wearing, hat-knitting liar. There isn’t a drop of magic in this hat. Not one.
I open my eyes and shake my head.
Jane reaches out her hand like she’s about to touch me and then pulls back. “It’s okay,” she says. “You don’t have to.”
We get to work researching George Washington’s childhood. The cherry tree thing really is a myth, but Jane says she’s still drawing and writing about it since everyone believes it anyway, and “Art isn’t just about things that actually happened.” She says this as she scribbles the words, I’m from a myth.
It turns out George Washington’s dad died when he was eleven. I wonder if maybe George Washington would have been something softer than a soldier if his dad had been around.
“We should talk about that in our poem,” I whisper to Jane. “About his dad dying.”
Jane nods and holds the pen above the paper we’re writing our first draft on. “How do you see or touch death … without being gross?” Jane asks. “Poetry shouldn’t be gross.”
I think about how things felt and sounded after Dad left. “Maybe talk about the sound of his mom crying.”
“Oh, that’s good! And there had to be a grave. Let’s mention that, too.”
Right before the lunch bell rings, Jane gives me her cell phone number so we can talk about our presentation after school. I give her my mom’s number.
“You don’t have your own phone?” Jane asks.
“No,” I say, embarrassed. “My mom says I can’t have one until I turn fourteen.”
“Bummer.” Jane folds the paper with my mom’s phone number on it and puts it in her pocket. “I really do like that hat. It’s cool.”
I forgot I had it on. I take off the magic-less hat and look at the stupid orange stitches. Orange is the only color Jane isn’t wearing today, so I slide the hat across the desk to her. “You can have it, if you want.”
“Really?” She puts it on right away. “How do I look?”
“Colorful.”
Jane grins. “Perfect!”