The Taste of

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Julian breathed deeply, trying to circumvent the inevitable tide of negativity and doubt that was beginning to well up inside of her. But it was essentially a lost cause, a flood of adenocoricotropic hormone was already acting as the shrieky violin in a horror movie to Julian's bodily functions. However Julian had  survived the last six years of her life by relying on sheer willpower to overcome the continual choas of the pubescent pituitary gland, and so she was doing her hardest to talk herself down from a hormonal apocalypse.

Julian. Calm down. Julian. Really, just a guy. Not a big deal. Breathe. Breathe. For a reason that Julian could not consciously understand or acknowledge, she found herself drawing a square on her palm over and over again. 

She pressed her back into the cold cinder block wall. She put in her earphones and put her mind to the task at hand. Time to be the Fantine I was yesterday.  Of all the depressing songs that could've played from her playlist, Yesterday began to play which did little to help Julian get into the Victor Hugo state of mind. 

"Now I need a place to hide away"--exactly....wait, what? What am I doing? THIS IS SO STUPID. Walt didn't even do anything. He just didn't do anything. That didn't even make sense. Gah, I hate boys. There are people with real problems. That's what I'm supposed to be thinking about...not, Walter freaking Carrick, Mr. Miss-Agacelli, Earl of mixed signals...king of my heart. What, where did that come from? ... I like him, yes, but it's not like I'd be heartbroken if he didn't like me back. (A panicky aching in Julian's lungs at this precise moment contested otherwise, but Julian had a rebuttal for that too) Just a crush! ugh.

Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" began to play and Julian felt ill. There are different tastes of sadness in this world and Julian Agacelli was experiencing a particularly bad combination. One was the the electrifying sadness of rejection, pure citric sour. The other was the agony of systemic injustice induced by a song about lynching--bitter, crushing, nauseating: the imagined taste of a chicken carcass decomposing in the sun.  

Overwhelming. 

Julian hit the pause button like she was being burned. Really. That's quite enough.  Sombered and chastised, her mind actually let the subject of Walter Carrick drop. Julian flipped to the blessedly wordless music from Band of Brothers.

She felt her anxiety dissipate with the peaceful chords. Remembrance: the ghost taste of talc and perfume that burns the back of your throat when you walk out of the empty home of your grandmother for the last time. 

Twelve minutes later, Julian was doing fantastically. Perhaps even better than she had done the day before. Walt watched from the public anonymity of the dark, but still looked over his shoulder to see if someone could see his flush and his irrepressible grin. He embarrassed himself at his protective sense of relief and possessive sense of pride, even greater in degree than they had been the night before. And like last night, they were also accompanied by three million tiny daggers of self-effacing insults that only clever people have the ability to invent for themselves. But it wasn't the cleverest that bit into his soft fleshy sensitive underbelly (that like most guys Walt tried to protest that he didn't have) of his emotional self the most , it was one word, often used by Webelos at their first cub scout overnight: wuss. 

And there was no counterargument to that sole syllable because frankly, it was true. Walter David Carrick, certified wuss.

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It was 5:04 in the morning, and Kate's stomach felt like a school of minnows trying to flee the grasping hands of 9 year old boys. Somehow, Kate's mother thought an Egg McMuffin would be a great idea to start of the day, hours before it really had the right to start anyway. However, the questionably grease paper wrapped sandwich was functioning pretty well as a handwarmer. 

Ms. Mason looked even more severe than usual, the green-yellow glow of sodium-vapor street lights bounced off the angular cheek bones while leaving her eyes shaded. "Stand as if we were about to sing Mountain!" she commanded. 

The groggy choir did as they were bid, shuffling themselves and their clutched pillows and backpacks into position for "A Mighty Mountain to Our King."

"Now, tenors I want you get on the first bus one per row."

There was faint under breath grumbling as everyone realized that she was going to be assigning seats for the seven and half hour drive. 

"Now altos, sit next to a tenor." 

Kate sighed, this was terrible. Tenors, as a rule, were obnoxious, immature, and arrogant. They hadn't learned how to curse very well, but that didn't stop them from swearing often, yielding sentences that were essentially as coherent as grunting yet always offensive. As Kate hauled herself up the bus steps she heard, "Shut up Jon, why don't you #@$%  @#&*#$##@. @#*!#&%."

"Why don't you &#&^$#@^#&$. You #$$&%*-ing  %$$#@#."

"You're such a $@%$. Just grow a pair!"

Oh joy. Kate shook her head because of course Jon and Blake were smiling as they insulted each other, their mothers, and made references to their privates all in one conversation. 

Kate knew exactly what Ms. Mason was doing. She was assigning babysitters. Altos were like the collies of the choir. Loyal, obedient...would always forgive slights and neglect, and would continually provide an outstanding performance. And none of them would allow the small minority of lecherous tenors make a move on them, which wasn't as universal a sentiment among sopranos. 

Kate looked down the aisle trying to guess which guy would be her ward. And in an unforeseen, and unusual blessing of fate, she plopped down next to Aaron. 

She didn't really know him, but Aaron was actually a decent human being. Probably because he was really a bass, but for "Mountain" was singing tenor because the line was particularly difficult, and Aaron actually read music. Since he was choir president and was one of Ms. Mason's favorites (with cause) and so had had many solos, Kate was in the uncomfortable position of knowing much more about him than he did about her. His first name, for instance.

"It's Jessica right?"

"Kate, actually. Aaron?" Kate made it sound like a question even though she knew he was Aaron Davis, a senior, in his third year in Vermillion, and taking IB Physics. He had sang "Yellow Taxi" in last year's Spring Showcase,  and "Suddenly Seymour" with Lara Meckles the year before. 

"Yeah...."

"I know, you probably get asked this everyday--"

"--I'm 6'3" and I hate basketball. Don't worry about it. I'm used to it by now." And then out of nowhere, "...did you wear a hat to homecoming?"

Kate's minnows nearly swam up her throat. "Yeah."

"It was pretty sweet."

"Thanks."

The bus started to move and they were both quiet. The Hat. Kate searched for something interesting to say feeling like this was some kind of momentous occasion. 

"Have you been to D.C. before?"

"A couple of times, but not in a long time. You?"

"Never."

Aaron nodded his head.

There was silence while Kate hoped that Aaron would ask her a question. But eventually Aaron pulled out his phone and put in his earbuds.

Kate pulled out the only thing worse to eat before 6am than a something fresh from a window marked drive-thru (as if it was pretentious to spell the word the way it appeared in a dictionary), a  partially smashed, 45 minute old Egg McMuffin, cooled down enough so that the grease had re-solidified into a white pox over the sausage patty and washed down with tepid orange juice from concentrate. In all of history it was one of the top 5 most fitting meals to match someone's mood ever eaten. It was the very definition of the taste of disappointed expectations. 

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