Free This Song Is (Not) for You by Laura Nowlin

Sam.)

Sam
    I knew this day would come, so it was easy to pretend that I didn’t mind. I knew that someday, someone would see Ramona the way I do.
    I knew there would be someone who she wanted too.
    I’m not saying that this doesn’t hurt like hell.
    Because it does hurt like hell.
    It hurts like hell.
    There we were, sitting on the floor of my garage as if it were an ordinary Thursday, listening to the final mix on our best song. It’s the most professional-sounding thing we’ve ever done.
    Tom sat cross-legged and lamented our earlier and loooonger winter break. We’ll be off three days before him, but we go back to school only two days before him.
    Ramona had her hand on his knee.
    And it’s amazing how this simple fact changed everything.
    Her hand was so still.
    Still in a way that Ramona never is, never is with me.
    Her fingers draped over his kneecap and rested on the denim of his jeans.
    At school today she said, “Tom and I are together now.”
    And I said, “Cool,” as if it was, and then we talked about other things. Apparently Emmalyn has been ignoring Ramona, which she thinks is grand. But this was all I could think about: how later I would be sitting here. Sitting here with them.
    Ramona’s fingers had chipped nail polish on them.
    She never paints her nails. She must have done it last night (for him), but of course the polish was already chipped.
    I thought about her hand on my knee—a soft, quiet weight telling me that she’s mine. Now that I could see her with Tom, the picture was there in my mind, with me in his place.
    “Guys, this song is amazing,” she said to us. Her fingertips pressed into his knee, not mine. “We’re a real band now. Not just kids fooling around in a garage.”
    I guess that’s how she thought of us before Tom.
    April and the Rain.
    Just kids.
    In a garage.
    And maybe the band is much better now.
    And maybe I really like Tom.
    But right now I wish we’d never met him.

Tom
    Another girl who wants something from me that I don’t know how to give.
    Another friend I’m terrified to lose.
    Another girlfriend.
    But maybe this time it’ll be different.
    Maybe I’ll be different.
    Maybe this time I’ll feel what everyone else seems to know how to feel.
    Maybe this time I won’t screw everything up.
    And maybe Sam won’t hate me for “stealing” Ramona.
    ’Cause that’s another thing I have to worry about.
    This is why sex seems like a big waste of energy to me.
    • • •
    The afternoon before Thanksgiving, we drive to Soulard together in my car, with Sam in the backseat. I’ve got the handheld recorder that has allowed me to capture everything from rain on the porch roof to my mother cooking bacon. We’re planning on walking around and asking different people what they’re thankful for and recording their answers. I’m gonna run some effects on the voices, and Ramona and Sam are gonna make the music to play under it.
    We park at Grift Craft because I know Teddy won’t mind. Teddy is the owner. As soon as I learned to drive, I became such a regular customer that Teddy and I got to talking. And talking led to long discussions about music and art, and now he gives me work on the weekends for cash under the table. I haven’t mentioned that I have a job to Ramona or Sam yet because I already feel so outclassed by them.
    (I know that’s dumb, and they aren’t snobby types at all, but emotions aren’t logical, okay? Plus, they might disapprove of me stocking yarn on the black market.)
    It’s a gorgeous autumn day, crisp and bright. The gold leaves glow against the redbrick buildings. College students back home and mingling with their high school friends are parking their cars and walking to the bars that fill the gentrified neighborhood.
    They are ripe pickings for our picking. Recording. (Whatever.)
    We do a few test takes to make sure the recorder is working, and then I jump in front of the first twentysomething I see.
    “What are you thankful for?” I