The Hardest Part Is Letting Go of Your Dreams

When my ambulance gets to the nearest hospital—not the one in my hometown but a small local place that looks more like an old-age home than a medical center—the medics rush me inside. “ I think we’ve got a collapsed lung. Get a chest tube in him and move her out!” the nice red-haired medic screams as she passes me off to a team of nurses and doctors.

“ Where’s the rest? ” asks a bearded guy in scrubs.

“Other driver suffering mild concussions, being treated at the scene. Parents DOA. Boy, approximately seven years old, just behind us. ”

I let out a huge exhale, as though I've been holding my breath for the last twenty minutes. After seeing myself in that ditch, I had not been able to look for Mikey. If he were like Mom and Dad, like me, I . . . I didn't want to even think about it. But he isn't. He is alive.

They take me into a small room with bright lights. A doctor dabs some orange stuff onto the side of my chest and then rams a small plastic tube in me. Another doctor shines a flashlight into my eye. “ Non responsive, ” he tells the nurse. “ The chopper’s here. Get him to Trauma. Now! ”

They rush me out of the ER and into the elevator. I have to jog to keep up. Right before the doors close, I notice that Willow is here. Which is odd.
We were meant to be visiting her and Henry and the baby at home. Did she get called in because of the snow? Because of us? She rushes around the hospital hall, her face a mask of concentration. I don’t think she even knows it is us yet. Maybe she even tried to call, left a message on Mom’s cell phone, apologizing that there’d been an emergency and she wouldn’t be home for our visit.
The elevator opens right onto the roof. A helicopter, its blades swooshing the air, sits in the middle of a big red circle.
I’ve never been in a helicopter before. My best friend, Lindsey, has. She went on an aerial flight over Mount St. Helens once with her uncle, a big-shot photographer for National Geographic.

“ There he was, talking about the post-volcanic flora and I puked right on him, ” Lindsey told me in homeroom the next day. She still looked a little green from the experience.
Lindsey is on yearbook and has hopes of becoming a photographer. Her uncle had taken her on this trip as a favor, to nurture her budding talent. “ I even got some on his cameras, ” Lindsey lamented. “ I’ll never be a photographer now. ”

“ There are all kinds of different photographers, ” I told her. “ You don’t necessarily need to go flying around in helicopters. ”

Lindsey laughed. “ That’s good. Because I’m never going on a helicopter again—and don’t you, either! ”

I want to tell Lindsey that sometimes you don’t have a choice in the matter.

The hatch in the helicopter is opened, and my stretcher with all its tubes and lines is loaded in. I climb in behind it. A medic bounds in next to me, still pumping the little plastic bulb that is apparently breathing for me. Once we lift off, I understand why Lindsey got so queasy. A helicopter is not like an airplane, a smooth fast bullet. A helicopter is more like a hockey puck, bounced through the sky. Up and down, side to side. I have no idea how these people can work on me, can read the small computer printouts, can drive this thing while they communicate about me through headsets, how they can do any of it with the chopper chopping around.
The helicopter hits an air pocket and by all rights it should make me queasy. But I don’t feel anything, at least the me who’s a bystander here does not. And the me on the stretcher doesn’t seem to feel anything, either. Again I have to wonder if I’m dead but then I tell myself no. They would not have loaded me on this helicopter, would not be flying me across the lush forests if I were dead.
Also, if I were dead, I like to think Mom and Dad would've come for me by now.
I can see the time on the control panel. It’s 10:37.
I wonder what’s happening back down on the ground. Has Willow figured out who the emergency is? Has anyone phoned my grandparents? They live one town over from us, and I was looking forward to dinner with them. Gramps fishes and he smokes his own salmon and oysters, and we would've probably eaten that with Gran’s homemade thick brown beer bread. Then Gran would've taken Mikey over to the giant recycling bins in town and let him swim around for magazines. Lately, he’s had a thing for Reader’s Digest. He likes to cut out the cartoons and make collages.
I wonder about Lindsey. There’s no school today. I probably won’t be in school tomorrow. She’ll probably think I’m absent because I stayed out late listening to Frank and Shooting Star.

The helicopter pilot keeps talking to Trauma One. Outside the window, I can see the peak of Mount Hood looming. Is Frank already there? He played in Philadelphia last night but he’s always so full of adrenaline after a gig, and driving helps him to come down. The band is normally happy to let him chauffeur while they nap. If he’s already in Jersey, he’s probably still asleep. When he wakes up, will he have coffee? Maybe take a book over to the Garden? That’s what we did the last time I went to Jersey with him, only it was warmer then. Later this afternoon, I know that the band will do a sound check. And then Frank will go outside to await my arrival. At first, he’ll think that I’m late. How is he going to know that I’m actually early? That I got to this morning while the snow was still melting?

“ Have you ever heard of this Yo-Yo Ma band? ” Frank asked me. It was the spring of my sophomore year, which was his junior year. By then, Frank had been watching me practice in the music wing for several months. Our school was public, but one of those progressive ones that always got written up in national magazines because of its emphasis on the arts. We did get a lot of free periods to paint in the studio or practice music. I spent mine in the soundproof booths of the music wing. Frank was there a lot, too, playing guitar. Not the electric guitar he played in his band. Just acoustic melodies.

I rolled my eyes. “ Everyone’s heard of Yo-Yo Ma. ”

Frank grinned. I noticed for the first time that his smile was lopsided, his mouth sloping up on one side. He hooked his ringed thumb out toward the
quad. “ I don’t think you’ll find five people out there who’ve heard of Yo-Yo Ma. And by the way, what kind of name is that? Is it ghetto or something? Yo Mama? ”

“ It’s Chinese. ”

Frank shook his head and laughed. “ I know plenty of Chinese people. They have names like Wei Chin. Or Lee something. Not Yo-Yo Ma. ”

“ You cannot be blaspheming the mastesr, ” I said. But then I laughed in spite of myself. It had taken me a few months to believe that Frank wasn’t taking the piss out of me, and after that we’d started having these little conversations in the corridor.
Still, his attention baffled me. It wasn't that Frank was such a popular guy. He wasn’t a jock or a most-likely-to-succeed sort. But he was cool. Cool in that he played in a band with people who went to the college in town. Cool in that he had his own rockery style, procured from thrift stores and garage sales, not from Urban Outfitters knock-offs. Cool in that he seemed totally happy to sit in the lunchroom absorbed in a book, not just
pretending to read because he didn't have anywhere to sit or anyone to sit with. That wasn’t the case at all. He had a small group of friends and a large group of admirers.

And it wasn't like I was a dork, either. I had friends to sit with at lunch. I had other good friends at the music camp I went to in the summer. People liked me well enough, but they also didn't really know me. I was quiet in class. I didn't raise my hand a lot or sass the
teachers. And I was busy, much of my time spent practicing or taking theory classes at the community college. Kids were nice enough to me, but they tended to treat me as if I were a grown-up. Another teacher. And you don’t flirt with your teachers.

“ What would you say if I said I had tickets to the masters? ” Frank asked me, a glint in his eyes.

“ Shut up. You do not, ” I said, shoving him a little harder than I’d meant to.

Frank pretended to fall against the glass wall. Then he dusted himself off. “ I do. At a place in Philly. I got tickets. A pair. You interested? ”

“ Are you serious? Yes! I was dying to go but they’re like eighty dollars each. Wait, how did you get tickets? ”

“ A friend of the family gave them to my parents, but they can’t go. It’s no big thing,” Frank said quickly. “ Anyhow, it’s Friday night. If you want, I’ll pick you up at five-thirty and we’ll drive together. ”

“ Okay, ” I said, like it was the most natural thing.

By Friday afternoon, though, I was more jittery than when I’d inadvertently drunk a whole pot of Dad’s tar-strong coffee while studying for finals last
winter.

It wasn’t Frank making me nervous. I’d grown comfortable enough around him by now. It was the uncertainty. What was this, exactly? A date? A friendly favor? An act of charity? I didn't like being on soft ground any more than I liked fumbling my way through a new movement. That’s why I practiced so much, so I could rush myself on solid ground and then work out the details from there. I changed my clothes about six times. Mikey, a kindergartner back then, sat in my bedroom, pulling the Calvin and Hobbes books down from the shelves and pretending to read them. He cracked himself up, though I wasn’t sure whether it was Calvin’s high jinks or my own making him so goofy.

Mom popped her head in to check on my progress. “ He’s just a guy, Gee, ” she said when she saw me getting worked up.

“ Yeah, but he’s just the first guy I’ve ever gone on a maybe-date with, ” I said. “ So I don’t know whether to wear date clothes or— do people here even dress up for that kind of thing? Or should I just keep it casual, in case it’s not a date? ”

“ I approve.Just wear something you feel good in, ” she suggested. “ That way you’re covered. ” I’m sure Mom would’ve pulled out all the stops had she been me. In the pictures of her and Dad from the early days, she looked like a cross between a 1930's siren and a biker chick, with her pixie haircut, her big blue eyes coated in kohl eyeliner, and her rail-thin body always ensconced in some sexy getup, like a lacy vintage camisole paired with skintight leather pants.

I sighed. I wished I could be so ballsy. In the end, I chose a black tight jeans and a maroon sleeved shirt. Plain and simple. My trademark, I guess.

When Frank showed up in a suit, I realized that this really was a date. Of course, Frank would choose to dress up for the symphony and a 1960's sharkskin suit could just been his cool take on formal, but I knew there was more to it than that. He seemed nervous as he shook hands with my dad and told him that he had his band’s old CD's. “ To use as coasters, I hope, ” Dad said. Frank looked surprised, unused to the parent being more sarcastic than the child, I imagine.

“ Don’t you kids get too crazy. Bad injuries at the last Yo-Yo Ma mosh pit, ” Mom called as we walked down the lawn.

“ Your parents are so cool, ” Frank said, opening the car door for me.

“ I know, ” I replied.

We drove to Philadelphia, making small talk. Frank played me snippets of bands he liked, a Swedish pop trio that sounded monotonous and some old Black Flag, a band that was quite beautiful. We got a little lost downtown and made it to the concert hall with only a few minutes to spare. So we were at the back of the crowd. But you don’t go to Yo-Yo Ma for the view, and the sound was incredible. The guitarist has a way of making it sound like a crying woman one minute, a laughing child the next.
Listening to the band, I’m always reminded of why I started singing in the first place—that there is something so human and expressive about it.

When they started, I peered at Frank out of the corner of my eye. He seemed good-natured enough about the whole thing, but he kept looking around. I worried that he was bored, but after a while I got too caught up in the music to care.

Then, when Yo-Yo Ma played “Grand Tango,” Frank reached over and grasped my hand. In any other context, this would have been cheesy, the old yawn-and-cop-a-feel move. But Frank wasn't looking at me. His eyes were closed and he was swaying slightly in his seat. He was lost in the music, too. I squeezed his hand back and we stayed there like that for the rest of the concert.

Afterward, we bought coffees and doughnuts and walked along the river. It was misting and he took off his suit jacket and draped it over my shoulders.
“ You didn't really get those tickets from a family friend, did you? ” I asked.
I thought he would laugh or throw up his arm in mock surrender like he did when I beat him in an argument. But he looked straight at me, so I could see the green and browns and grays swimming around in his irises. He shook his head. “ That was two weeks of pizza-delivery tips, ” he admitted.

I stopped walking. I could hear the water lapping below. “ Why? ” I asked. “ Why me? ”

“ I’ve never seen anyone get as into music as you do. It’s why I like to watch you practice. You get the cutest crease in your forehead, right there, ”
Frank said, touching me above the bridge of my nose. “ I’m obsessed with music and even I don’t get transported like you do. ”

“ So, what? I’m like a social experiment to you? ” I meant it to be jokey, but it came out sounding bitter.

“ No, you’re not an experiment, ” Frank said. His voice was husky and choked.

I felt the heat flood my neck and I could sense myself blushing. I stared at my shoes. I knew that Frank was looking at me now with as much certainty
as I knew that if I looked up he was going to kiss me. And it took me by surprise how much I wanted to be kissed by him, to realize that I’d thought about it so often that I’d memorized the exact shape of his lips, that I’d imagined running my finger down the cleft of his chin.

My eyes flickered upward. Frank was there waiting for me.

That was how it started.