Songs Without Words by Ann Packer Page B

Sarabeth knocked softly, then turned the knob. Lauren was still at the window, and now Sarabeth saw that in order to lean out she’d had to kneel on her desk.
    “Hey, you,” she said.
    Lauren looked over her shoulder, then quickly swiveled around and dropped to the floor. She wore jeans and a gray thermal henley, and her hair fell in unbrushed hunks past her shoulders. Not long ago she’d gone in for the slightly slutty junior movie-star look, three inches of below-the-button belly showing, heavy eyeliner and pale lip gloss, but evidently that was a thing of the past.
    “From the patio,” Sarabeth said, “you looked like Juliet, leaning out the window.”
    “Yeah, right,” Lauren said, rolling her eyes.
    They came together for a quick hug.
    “What are you doing up here? Plotting your escape?”
    Lauren smiled, or half smiled, anyway. She seemed spacey—much as she had the last time Sarabeth had seen her. Sarabeth wondered if Lauren had a boyfriend, a Romeo she was mooning over. But Liz would have mentioned that, wouldn’t she?
    “Don’t ask me how school is,” Lauren said.
    “OK, I won’t.”
    Lauren crossed the room and sat on her bed, which was covered by the bedspread she and several friends had made, or doctored, one summer evening when Sarabeth was over. This was two or three years ago: they were sitting around saying how bored they were, as only girls of thirteen could, until finally Sarabeth suggested they take Lauren’s existing bedcover, a plain blue coverlet, and decorate it with colored markers and glitter glue. “Lauren’s bod right here!” one girl had written. “Groovilicious Girl!” said another note. Sarabeth remembered Liz’s initial hesitation at the idea, her own worry that in making the suggestion she’d somehow overstepped.
    “So how
is
school?” she said.
    “Fine.”
    “Amanda?”
    “Fine.”
    “You?”
    “Fine,” Lauren said, smiling at last, though she also flushed a little, her cheeks turning pink.
    “Sorry,” Sarabeth said. “I’m being an asshole. Let’s see. What’ve you been reading?”
    Now Lauren brightened. Long ago, they’d bonded over books:
Harriet the Spy, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.
“Actually,” she said, “my mom said I should ask you for advice.”
    “Please ask me for advice. I love to be useful.”
    “I need a classic novel for an independent reading project. Something good and not too long. Or boring.”
    Sarabeth turned Lauren’s desk chair toward the bed and sat down. She said, “I think I should go into business advising teenagers on what to read. You’re going to pay me, right?”
    Lauren fought a smile, and Sarabeth was struck by how pretty she could be, how her smile had always—since babyhood—been beautiful. She had an almost perfect heart-shaped face, with a sweet wide V of a jawline.
    “I’m just kidding,” Sarabeth said. “Let’s see. You definitely can’t go wrong with Jane Austen.
Pride and Prejudice
?
Emma
? Though if you’re anything like me you’ll end up in a funk, wishing you’d lived back then.”
    “No way.”
    “Way. They had it made. The big decisions were, you know, ‘Upon whom shall we call today?’ I mean, walking around the room counted as doing something.”
    “What?”
    “They’re always in the drawing room after dinner, going, ‘Shall we take a turn around the room?’ ‘Oh, no, I prefer to play the pianoforte.’ ‘I would do my needlework, but I must rest my eyes.’ I mean, think about it. They had it good.”
    “You’re weird,” Lauren said.
    “I know. But how about it?”
    Lauren shrugged. “Half the girls in the class are doing Jane Austen.”
    Sarabeth considered. She remembered struggling with Dickens at Lauren’s age, struggling with Hardy. Perhaps what she’d struggled with was struggle itself.
    “OK,” she said. “I can see this is going to call for deep thinking. What is ‘classic,’ anyway?”
    “Old.”
    “Probably ‘good.’ What did