Leila Sales: This Song Will Save Your Life

“I still don’t understand how you didn’t notice her leaving,” Mom said to him.

“She said she was going to bed,” Dad defended himself.

“Didn’t you hear anything? Do you expect me to believe she snuck out of the house absolutely silently?”

“I wasn’t sitting outside of her bedroom all night, preparing to bust in if I heard a single sound other than a snore. I believe kids need a little privacy.”

“She was grounded. How much privacy did she need?”

“So how did you find me?” I interrupted. There’s nothing interesting in my parents’ bickering. I’ve heard it all before.

“This other Web site,” Dad answered. He said the name like it was in quotation marks: “‘Flash Tommy’? You had it open on your computer, and I saw photos of you at a big party. So I headed to the street address given on the site. I didn’t know if you would be there. I was just hoping.”

Thanks a lot, Flash Tommy.

“So you probably want to know what I was doing at that party,” I said dully.

“What we need to know,” Mom said, “is, what is this diary of yours?”

“I didn’t write it,” I told them.

“That’s what I thought,” Dad murmured.

Mom shot him a look.

“What?” he asked. “The girl on this Flash Tommy Web site is not the same girl writing these diary entries. They directly contradict each other. And she’s been at this party a number of times. I saw photos on that site. Sorry to tell you this, Danielle, but your daughter has snuck out of your house before, too. More than once.”

Mom blinked rapidly, but otherwise acted like Dad hadn’t spoken. “So you didn’t set out to kill yourself tonight,” Mom asked me.

“No!”

“And you don’t … hate us?” Mom asked.

I bit my tongue to keep from swearing. “Does that blog say I hate you?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

They both nodded.

“No,” I said. “You’re my parents. I don’t hate you.”

“Then you shouldn’t have been sneaking out of our houses, Elise,” Mom said. “It’s dangerous. Not to mention incredibly disrespectful. Your father and I set rules, and we expect you to follow them. When I tell you that you’re grounded, I need you to take me seriously.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“How many times have you left the house in the middle of the night?” Mom demanded.

“I … don’t know. A lot, I guess.”

“And were you always going to this…” Mom gestured at Dad’s laptop, at a loss for a word to describe Start. “This event space?” she finally said.

“No.” I’d never put this into words before, to explain it to someone else. I didn’t quite know how to begin. “Sometimes I just wanted to walk. I wasn’t trying to hurt you or disrespect you or anything … It had nothing to do with you. I just really love Start. That’s all.”

“Here’s what I want to know,” Dad said, tapping his finger against his computer. “If you don’t write this blog, then who does? And why?”

“I have no idea,” I answered.

“Then that,” said Dad, “is what we really need to figure out.”

When I walked into the kitchen the next morning, my father was not only awake and reading the newspaper, he was dressed in a suit. The last time I saw my dad in a suit was at his own mother’s funeral.

“Let me guess,” I said, grabbing a banana. “You’re pursuing a new career as a real estate broker.”

He raised his eyes over the paper. “I want your school to take me seriously when I go in there and give them hell. Here.” He slid a carefully cut-out newspaper article across the table to me.

It was a brief piece, more of an event listing than an actual story. It just said there was a new indie, new wave, and soul dance party tonight, from the promoters who brought you Start, and it featured up-and-coming DJ wunderkind Elise Dembowski. Above it was a color photograph, small but unmistakably showing me behind the turntables.

This wasn’t the first time I’d appeared in our town paper. Getting into the Glendale Gazette is actually not that competitive. You can accomplish it for far less than DJing a warehouse party. I got mentioned in the paper when I won the eighth grade spelling bee, and before that in fifth grade when I was a youth volunteer on Steve’s friend’s mayoral campaign. I still had those clippings in my desk drawer, cut out for me by my father. This wasn’t the first time.

But it felt the best.

“So that’s why you wanted me to get you DJing equipment, huh?” Dad asked, not looking up from his paper. “Very clever. Now, were you planning to tell me that you’re going out tonight, or were you just going to try your hand at sneaking out again?”

“I…” I rubbed my eyes. “Neither. I was planning not to go.”

“Because your mother would blow a fuse if she knew her underage daughter was at a nightclub?”

“Because … It’s complicated, Dad.”

“Try me,” he said. “I’m a relatively smart guy.”

Yeah, my dad was smart. Smart enough to kill me if I told him I’d been hooking up with a guy who was three and a half years older than me. I said, “Because some people there don’t want me to play. And they have a good point.”

“The thing about being an artist,” Dad said, folding his newspaper and setting it down on the table, “is that there are always going to be people who want to stop you from doing your art. But this usually says more about them and their issues than it does about you and your art. Trust me. I’ve been a musician since I was younger than you. And if I had a penny for every person who has told me the Dukes are dead, we should stop trying to write music, I should do something productive with my life, I’ll never be as good as this other bassist or that other bassist—well, I would be rich enough to buy you something fancy. But those people don’t know me. So I just keep playing my music. That’s what I’ve been doing for forty years, and that’s what’s always worked for me.”

“So you’re saying I should sneak out of the house tonight to DJ a warehouse party?”

Dad gave a little laugh. “You wish. No, Elise, all I’m saying is: don’t let anyone else decide your life for you.” He stood up and straightened his tie. “Let’s go.”

Dad drove me to school. We met Mom in the parking lot, and then we headed to the principal’s office, united.

Of course, the principal wouldn’t see us. The principal never sees anybody; he is way too important for that. We met instead with the vice principal, Mr. Witt, most famous for his masterful handling of the Jordan DiCecca–Chuck Boening iPod Crisis. My parents showed Mr. Witt Elise Dembowski’s Super-Secret Diary and explained what was going on.

“What are you going to do about this?” my dad asked.

Mr. Witt suggested the following things:

1. Most likely, I had actually written this diary, but now that my parents had discovered it, I was just acting like I hadn’t so I wouldn’t get in trouble.

2. Even if somehow I didn’t write this blog, there was no reason to believe that the blogger was a student of Glendale High. It could have been anyone in the world! In fact, the blog might even be referring to a different Elise Dembowski!

3. Glendale High had zero tolerance for bullying, and therefore it was impossible that any one of the school’s 850 angel-faced students was the culprit.

“I hear what you’re saying, Mr. Witt,” Mom said, “but I have to disagree. I would appreciate your conducting a real investigation into this question. This is harassment. This is bullying. We need to know that the school is taking this as seriously as we are.”