London - August, 2003

Ivy demanded to be noticed. If not, she’d have escaped my attention entirely on that last sweltering summer day. My mind was decidedly elsewhere. But Ivy didn’t fade into the background.“Play it, again! Play Nina’s song.” She flounced into the room with her usual half-skip and a look I was used to seeing—one that meant she wouldn’t give up on what she wanted.Her friends were outside in the back garden drinking lemonade and soaking up the late summer sun. Nina was definitely among them.“Shut up,” I said. You would think a self-proclaimed poet turned songwriter would have a better retort, but I was still a teen and words came slowly for me.
“Come on!” she said. “It’s so pretty and it’s already perfect. I know you’ll keep working on it forever, but if you play it now, the girls will hear it but only barely.”She got a wistful tone and laid the whole plan out in all its romantic splendor.“The tune will float out on the summer air and drift into their minds. They won’t really notice. You’re always playing something. But then, when you play it for her on purpose, and I know someday you’ll work up the courage, she’ll think she’s heard it before but won’t be able to work out where. And it will feel like… part of her.”“That’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said, and you are regularly ridiculous. Besides, there’s no Nina song.”“Really?”She started humming. She’d been listening to the song I’d been crafting for weeks—bits of melody here and there, lyrics scribbled in my notebook, night after night. And she’d recreated it perfectly.“It’s just a song. I write lots of songs.”“Uh huh…” She flopped backwards onto the sofa, kicking her legs into the air.“She’s 16 this year, you know.”“Mmm…” I said as though I didn’t know exactly when Nina Ash’s birthday was — The 3rd of September, ten days from today, six months before my sister’s.“And you’re starting sixth form, so you won’t see her at school anymore.”“I’m well aware that I’m going to college. Thanks very much.”“But lots of other boys will see her at school.”“Ivy!”“Listen,” she sat up. “I’m doing all I can here to keep her focused on my sweet, older, introverted brother, but I can’t hold back the masses forever, St. John. She’s breathtaking! And half the school is in love with her.”If she was trying to make me feel better, it wasn’t working, but I’m not at all sure that’s what she was trying to do.“You’ve got to get with it while you’ve got time.”“Ivy, I don’t know what…”“Just play it, play her song.”I sighed. There was no arguing with Ivy and to be honest, I didn’t want to. That day, that last day, in my mind, was all about Nina. Because Ivy was right. I’d see her much less this autumn. We’d be at different schools, and I’d drug my feet the whole of last year, thinking it was weird to like your little sister’s best friend. But there was nothing for it—I was completely in love with Nina Ash. At least, as much as an 18-year-old boy knows about being in love. And I had been writing a song for her all summer that I’d planned to play for her birthday. It seemed like a perfect plan at the time, though looking back, the cringe and cliche of the whole thing is legendary. But now, after more years and more life and more pain and more death, I’ve realized it’s just what youth does, flings itself wholeheartedly at a person and says please see me.“She likes you, St. John. But it won’t last forever. Just play.”I did.And it was a relief.Since I’d started writing music to go with my poetry, I’d made Ivy my audience whether she liked it or not. She was unflinchingly honest, brutal even, and it made me better. But I couldn’t play her this. So, I’d worked on it in the corners of my day, hummed it to myself when I could, and it became the soundtrack that played in my mind when Nina would walk into the room. But I didn’t know if it was good till I knew if Ivy liked it.
I played a melody that in retrospect borrowed a lot from early Chris Martin and brimmed over with teen angst. But I felt it deeply and my fingers moved across the keys like that old upright piano was the only thing that mattered in the world.Ivy sighed. “Nina will love it,” she said.“I’ll love what?” Nina said, tossing her bag on the counter and sinking into a chair next to Ivy.I shot my sister a look. Not a word. Not a single, solitary word.“Ice cream!” she said. “Isn’t it a perfect day for ice cream?”“I’m absolutely melting,” Nina said.“Mum will never let you go,” I said roughly, to cover up for the rawness I’d just been feeling. Smudge out the caring.“She will if you take us!” Ivy said.I try to remember what she looked like just then. It might be the last time I looked her full in the face. It’s hard to know for sure. Her brown eyes were mirrors of mine, deep and heavy lashed. Her smile filled her whole face with the surety that I’d do exactly what she wanted. Her dark hair was braided over each shoulder, but not tightly, like when she was little. The older she got the more intentionally messy her hairstyles. But the freckles across her nose were the same as when she’d tugged on my arm and climbed up for piggyback rides. Her determination to get her way was exactly as it had always been.I know that I see Ivy through the soft focus of time, much like the August sun casts a golden glow over the city streets as it dips lower in the sky and spreads its light through bits of dust and dirt. My past was no more perfect than a smog filled sky or broken cobblestones. It’s just that when the sun cuts through debris the light loses its edge, as does our mind as it gazes back through the sediment of time.I know this better than most, as I’ve pushed and prodded the limits of time and the human brain. And yet — the last summer day I spent with Ivy still seeps in through the corners of my mind, winds into my dreams as I sleep, and sifts through the hardscape of to-do lists and daily demands to remind me that things were beautiful once. I had my sister, and all was well. Life was simple and good. Death happened to other people. All my problems could be solved with the piano and a little nerve.I think what I really want is for all that to be real—real then, and real again. So, no matter how harshly I deal with myself when the sentiment creeps in, my mind holds fast to the one thought that pushes me every day: If only Ivy were alive, everything would be okay.If you ask me point-blank if that were true, I’d tell you no. If you could look straight into my heart when I answered, you’d see I was lying.It’s all about Ivy.