Tempo Change by Barbara Hall Page B

didn’t have the energy to figure out how to raise a daughter differently so Ella was raised as a son and that was why she was the way she was.
    “I’m not gay, though,” she said. “Not that there’s anything wrong with being gay but everyone thinks I am and I’m not.”
    “Grow your hair,” Gigi suggested.
    “I wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
    “I’ll show you. I’m good at it. We’ll do a makeover.”
    “You’d have to come over every day. It’s easier like this.”
    I told her not to change it; the look was good for the band and besides, she’d find someone who liked her because she was different. I had some success with that.
    “You mean like Jeff?” she asked.
    “Jeff’s a friend.”
    “You don’t like him?”
    “He’s a geek and he works in a pizza shop.”
    “You’re holding out for the rock star?” Viv asked.
    “Who isn’t?”
    They both said they weren’t but I thought they were lying.
    I complained some more about Ed the Guitar Guy and how my mother was settling for him. And that’s how we started talking about guitar stores. Viv remembered that Guitar Center was just right down the street from school and suggested we go there.
    “I can’t stand it there,” Gigi said. “My father likes to go in there and look around. It’s loud and there are all these pimply adolescent boys playing bad guitar and the salespeople are jerks and they all look like rejects from some Depeche Mode tribute band.”
    “Sounds great,” Ella said. “Let’s go during lunch.”
    So we did.
    I didn’t think it was my imagination that we all moved a little differently walking down the street to Guitar Center. I could have sworn we were swaggering. Before we were just Laurel Hall kids and we were aware of people looking at usas if something were fundamentally wrong with us because we went to such a joke of a school. (People were probably never thinking that; we were thinking that.) But now we moved like a rock band.
    We went into Guitar Center and it was exactly the way Gigi described. We walked around all the guitars and touched them and played them. We went through the keyboards and banged on them, and Viv sang into one of the mikes and then we went to the drums and Ella played a little, which caused all the guys to look at us, even the salesmen who’d been ignoring us because, since we were girls, they thought we weren’t going to buy anything. But once Ella played, people paid attention and she felt it and blushed.
    I left that scene because it was a good opportunity to slip away and try out a pink Telecaster I had my eye on. I had never imagined myself playing an electric guitar but because this one was pink I felt I was allowed to touch it. It was already plugged in so I picked it up and strummed it and it sounded great, like a chime with some muscle to it, and everything I did on it sounded like a legitimate noise, not like an accident the way the acoustic guitar sometimes sounded. A guy with long hair and a nose ring came over and asked if he could answer any questions and I couldn’t think of any except “How much is it?” And he said it was whatever it was and I didn’t really listen because I knew it wasn’t forty-seven dollars which was how much money I had in my checking account after I’d paid for books and uniforms. I thanked him and he walked away but said over his shoulder, “It looks good on you.”
    I thought about being offended because he should havesaid something about my playing, which was more than most girls knew. Then I thought it wasn’t such a bad thing to say a guitar looked good on a person and I was still thinking about that when the others returned and said we should get back to school.
    If we had left a second earlier. If Ella hadn’t played the drums, if I hadn’t picked up the Telecaster, if we hadn’t gone there at all but used the time instead to study as we usually did. That’s the kind of bargaining you do when you look back at a twist of fate,