Tuesday & Max

9

OH I AM YOUNG BUT I HAVE AGED

WAITED LONG TO SEIZE THE DAY

ALL THINGS SAID AND PLENTY DONE

LIFE IS SHORT

After Tuesday's outburst at the dinner table, Julia avoids her, conversing only in short sentences punctuated with hurt. It's with a slightly heavy heart that Tuesday goes to college the next day.

She wiles away the time between classes in a recreational area, wishing she'd picked up a quick shift at The Bean, and stuffs herself onto a sofa behind a bookcase to hide from the yelling of other students using the pool tables and games machines. As she sketches out the millionth plan for the millionth dress she hasn't gotten around to making, Jon Sabbatini pins something up at the community message board.

She can't see what it is from here, but she's immediately intrigued. Jon is rough, abrasive, uncouth. He isn't the kind of guy who promotes clubs and societies or offers to tutor other students. There's a reason his father never let him work at the bakery.

Tuesday hasn't seen him since they caught the same train together on the first day of college a month ago. He's starting to get the dark shadow of stubble on his olive-skinned chin and his hair – curly, wild, unruly and undeniably Italian – is longer. He keeps it pushed back now so it doesn't get in his eyes.

"You should join this," he advises her bluntly, catching her blatantly staring.

Nerves jump in her chest, but it's OK. It's only Jon. They were friends, in primary school.

"What is it?" she asks, putting her notebook and pencil on the arm of the sofa and getting up to join him.

The flier he's pinned up is a vector graphic; round, cartoonish green hills, white clouds, and the unmistakable silhouette of Maria.

"The Sound of Music?" Tuesday says before she even reads the ballooned-out writing across the top. Her eyes flick to the small print at the bottom of the paper. BCC Drama Society, it says. This must be the summer musical.

A sense of longing aches in Tuesday's chest, of Christmases singing along on the sofa, wrapped in blankets and stuffed with ginger biscuits; of belting favourite tracks as her mother cooked; of studying herself in the mirror as she sang, wishing fervently that she had one-tenth of a voice as beautiful as Julie Andrews. In another world, she'd audition.

"You're in this?" Tuesday asks.

Jon rolls his eyes. "Kind of. They wanted a sound designer but not enough guys auditioned so they ended up giving me the role of the Dad guy too. His song is alright though so it's fine."

Tuesday hums it absently. "Edelweiss."

"That's the one."

"I didn't know you could sing. You don't seem the type for all this drama stuff."

"I ain't." Jon shrugs. "But I'm friends with Candice and she asked me, so. And I sound alright when I sing it."

Tuesday admires his self-confidence. It somehow manages to avoid coming off as arrogance because she doesn't get the sense that he's saying any of it to impress her, or to make himself look good. He says it because it simply is so.

"So it's been cast?" She doesn't know why she's asking, but she can't help herself.

"Yeah. We still need understudies though, if you want. Can you sing?"