Author's note: Thank you for the encouraging words!

Disclaimer: I do not own Next to Normal.

Chapter Three

Since that morning, Henry and I had been spending a lot of time together. He usually joined my afternoon session, mostly because I told him I actually needed to get things done and to leave me alone in the morning. However, I did know that he still came in the mornings, lurking outside the door, listening to me play. His position was not only a brilliant spot for eavesdropping on my practice, but a brilliant spot where he could familiarize himself with my dictionary of expletives, which I referenced often. As far as I could remember, the worst thing I'd ever done was continue swearing after various authority figures had, on multiple occasions, told me to "watch it." My dad tried to moderate the language I used, but it wasn't like he could really do anything about it, or like we even spent enough time together for him to grasp the full extent to which I swore. After all, he was too busy looking after (and chasing after) my mom. And though I knew it was great that he was such a devoted husband, it would have been an understatement to say I was a little bitter that he couldn't take the time to be a devoted father as well. It especially made my blood boil when he told me to have more compassion for my mother and to stop acting so childish; I wasn't usually the one screaming and crying and setting things ablaze (the Flowers for Algernon essay incident aside). But I digress.

The first afternoon Henry and I hung out at the piano was on the same day of our initial encounter. I was already there when I heard the doorknob turn. For whatever reason, he seemed to lose his nerve and backed away at the last moment. I could hear him pacing outside while I played through the slow movement. Nearing the end of my second run-through, I finally lost patience.

"Are you actually going to come in, or are you just going to cower outside?" I yelled, triplets still pouring quietly from the instrument, the notes blending and clearing as I lightly pressed and released the damper pedal.

The door opened. "Um, yeah." Here we go again. "I mean, hi."

I stopped playing and twisted around to look at him. "Do you know any words other than 'yeah'?"

To Henry's credit, he caught the offending response before it rolled off his tongue. "Of course," he said instead. "But I mean, there's nothing really wrong with 'yeah' and maybe it's the right word for the moment…."

He trailed off as I raised an eyebrow. There was an uncomfortable pause, during which Henry seemed to struggle to recollect his thoughts, and I struggled trying to remember what it was this morning that had prompted me to, basically, ask him to stay.

I turned back to what I knew best: music. People and relationships were complicated, but music was simple. As long as one followed the plan, things typically worked out. (Although, knowing Henry's different taste in genre, I knew I wasn't likely to get pretty melodies.)

"Do you want to play?" I offered.

"Yeah. I mean, yes. Sure. Okay."

I stared at him another moment before standing up from the bench and offering it to him. He was acting ten times more awkward than when we'd previously met, if that were even possible. It didn't escape my notice that he seemed to have paid quite a lot of attention to me over the years—he knew a surprising amount about my routines, and what was it, six years he said we'd been going to school together?—and I knew, logically, that suggested he had some romantic interest in me, though what he saw, who he thought I was, was beyond me.

No worries; it would only be a matter of days before he ran for the hills.

I studied Henry as he sat down, taking in the worn quality of his clothing (I wasn't much concerned with looking stylish, but his shirt really was ugly) and its contrast with the crisp whiteness of his sneakers. His light hair had a just-out-of-bed look, but in his case, it looked organic, unlike the manufactured just-out-of-bed look that you know required ages spent preening in front of the mirror. He was built like a beanpole, but given my own slender figure, I wasn't in a position to criticize that. I did, however, criticized his posture at the keyboard, although felt something close to admiration regarding the casual way he brought up his hands, only briefly glancing at the position of his fingers. Such a simple motion, so easy.

"What's your excuse?" I asked before he began to play.

Henry laughed and turned his head to look at me. "What?"

I gestured to the piano in response. "What makes you do this?"

"I like to play." Henry's expression was somewhere between amused and nonplussed.

"That's sweet," I said, a touch sardonically. Of course, I liked to play as well, but that wasn't the reason I did it—not the only reason, anyway. The idea of doing things "just for fun" always puzzled me; if it wasn't going to get you anywhere, why bother?

It was Henry's turn to stare at me. I allowed it for a few seconds, then gestured again to the piano, this time in a "go on" sort of way.

I tried to listen with an open mind, or at least deluded myself into pretending to try, but I wasn't impressed by Henry's jazz.

"You'd be good if you played classical," I remarked when his music came to an ambiguous end.

"It'd be good if you branched out from classical," he shot back, chuckling again.

And so it began. Somehow, I found myself, every afternoon, practicing jazz improv instead of Mozart and Grieg and Mendelssohn. Though I still made regular disdainful comments:

"There's no point," I said on one occasion. "Jazz is just making shit up."

"Which is also known as the act of creation," he argued.

"You would say that," I snickered, "being one of those pretentious stoner-types."

"That's totally unfair." Henry paused. "I'm not pretentious."

I rolled my eyes as he giggled at his own joke, practically proving my point.

"And I'm definitely not classical," he added, as if "classical" were an unfortunate personality trait. "It's so rigid and structured. There's no room for improvisation; you have to play the notes on the page."

"Right, and what did Mozart know anyway?" I said, deadpan. "He should have just smoked a bowl and jammed to Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star."

Henry giggled again. "Yeah, let's do that!" He played the basic theme of Twinkle, Twinkle once through, then began riffing off it. When he was done, he managed to nudge me into trying it, too. In fact, Henry managed to talk me into a lot of things I never thought I'd do. He taught me how to disregard traditional playing techniques, and he taught me how to "ride the musical wave." Who knew how he did it, but Henry's care-free personality got to be infectious if one spent enough time with him. Of course, at all other times, I was my usual—to use his word—"uptight" self, but I felt myself loosen in his presence.

Time somehow passed without my noticing. The temperature dropped, the days grew darker quicker, crisp leaves fluttered down from the trees, and then the vibrant colours turned into a dull brown. Family life stayed much the same: My mother visited her psychopharmacologist nearly every week and was always on some complicated combination of pills that gave her side effects which she often talked about, sometimes humorously, sometimes dramatically, sometimes lifelessly; my father was too wrapped up in his work and my mother and her shifting regime of crazy-candies to pay much attention to me (what else was new?); I continued to avoid my parents as much as possible—a greeting in the morning and usually some small-talk over a microwaved dinner; but throughout all of that, I found myself looking forward to my time in the practice room with Henry. I still liked to pretend I wasn't interested in associating with him, although the fact that I hadn't yet told him to go to hell gave the truth away.

Despite the astounding frequency that I would oblige Henry's requests that I try some jazz improv (like every day), we still engaged in banter over the classical vs. jazz issue.

"Oscar Peterson was classically trained."

"Beethoven did cocaine."

"Miles Davis went to Julliard."

"Mozart wrote poems about farts."

I was—miraculously—pretty content with the way things were going. Natalie Goodman had made a friend. Ha! Bet nobody saw that one coming. (If anyone ever noticed me, that is.)

Then one day, Henry asked if I'd come over to his house after school. For what was maybe the first time in god knows how long, I didn't hesitate before saying yes.

To my surprise, Henry's mother didn't object to her teenage son going into his bedroom with a teenage girl and shutting the door. She was mild-mannered and greeted me warmly, although there was a slightly absent quality to her gaze. I didn't meet Henry's father, or the sister who had been mentioned once in passing. I decided not to ask Henry about his family life, mostly to avoid telling him about mine. (And I knew that even when I did reveal the details, I sure as hell was going to keep Gabe a secret; no need to get into the gory bits.)

"Make yourself at home," Henry said as he crossed over to the window and opened it. His second matter of business was to unearth a joint from under his bed and start smoking.

I glanced at the door. Despite it being closed, the stuff had a powerful stench that had to have permeated the entire house. "Your mom is in the next room," I said in disbelief.

"She's in denial." Henry giggled. "It's totally convenient. Dude," he added when I continued to look at him skeptically, "it's therapeutic."

"Right," I scoffed. "It's medical marijuana to treat your ADD."

"Totally!" He took another puff, then looked at me vaguely. "Wait, what?" He held out the pipe in offering.

I shook my head. "I don't put anything in my mouth that's on fire." I said it with an implied "duh" at the end of my sentence.

"I guess that's a good rule." Henry gazed at me with his mouth hanging open. When he started moving forward to kiss me, a combination of shock and uncertainty about the matter kept me in place at first. Then I came to my senses and stood up, forcing him to move back. "Um," I said loudly, moving to put some distance between the two of us. "Okay, look"—I lowered my voice so his mom wouldn't overhear us—"I can't do this. I'm like, one fuck-up away from disaster."

I didn't necessarily not want to do it, but everything about it smacked of being a bad idea.

"Your life is not a disaster." As if he thought it would make me feel better, he began to list the things that were more disastrous than my life. "The environment is a disaster. Sprint is a disaster."

I rolled my eyes. "You're stoned," I pointed out bluntly. "What you say at this moment does not apply to real life."

He ignored me and continued his tirade. "Our planet is poisoned—the oceans, the air—around and beneath and above you."

"All right," I conceded, "that's true, and I totally care."

"I'm trying to tell you I love you."

Wait. "What?"

"The world is at war, filled with death and disease. We dance on the edge of destruction. The globe's getting warmer by deadly degrees." His voice grew louder as he rattled off this things.

"This is one fucked-up seduction," I hissed, motioning for him to keep it down. Deciding that the best course of action would be to leave and let the marijuana wear off, or at least wait for him to be less freshly-stoned, I left the room. To my relief, I didn't encounter any of Henry's family on the way to the front hall, nor did I see them as gathered my coat in my arms and pulled my backpack over my shoulders.

Henry followed me, still listing the reasons that Earth and the human race were fucked beyond repair. He finally changed course when we were halfway down the steps to his house. "I could be perfect for you," he said.

I stopped briefly to look at him, then resumed my attempts to walk away.

"I might be lazy and a loner and a bit of a stoner," he admitted with a tiny shrug, "but I could be perfect for you."

"You've got some nerve, Henry," I said, shaking my head, then privately added, And I'm just all nerves.

He began rambling again, talking about why he'd be perfect for me. When we stood on the street in front of my house, he suddenly grabbed my hands. "I can't fix what's fucked up," he said, "but I know I can be perfect for you."

I looked at our intertwined fingers instead of at his face. "Perfect for you," I echoed softly.

This time, when he leaned down to kiss me, I let him.

The hint of a smile crossed my face.