Audrey, Wait!

by Robin Benway

  The lights finally went out and the crowd started whistling and clapping. Next to me, Victoria was grinning and wriggling around. She lives for this moment at shows, when the lights are cut and all you can see is the dim outline of a stage and empty mics waiting to be picked up and abused. When the Do-Gooders came out, shaggy and skinny with their heads down, the applause got louder. Even I let out a few whistles.

  “Here comes trouble,” Jonah muttered behind me when Evan came out, and I could see Victoria plow her elbow into his ribs from the corner of my eye.

  My resolve took a little nosedive when I saw Evan. God, he was cute. Not even cute: hot. H-A-W-T, hot. His hair was shining under the stage lights and he was wearing his beat-up shoes, the ones that looked horrible and smelled worse. I could see him looking out at the crowd and I didn’t know if I was supposed to make eye contact with him or smile or pretend that I couldn’t see him.

  Was Evan looking for me, though? His eyes scanned across stage left and never stopped, and I didn’t wave. Next to me, Victoria reached down and squeezed my hand twice.

  Seriously, I love her.

  “Hi, we’re the Do-Gooders,” Evan said into the mic, and you could hear some girls giggle and swoon. I had never been jealous of them before, but now I felt a small twist in my stomach. Just get this over with, I begged silently. “The name’s ironic.” Ha ha, hee hee. Oh, Evan, you’re a riot. Please. Stop. My sides.

  They played through six songs and the crowd danced and sweated on each other and the bass shook the floors under our feet and the roof over our heads. The Jukebox was approximately the size of my parents’ kitchen and the walls would get slick from the humidity of too many people too close together. Onstage, Evan kept shaking his head back and forth in time to the music, his hair pinwheeling and sending little blue drops of sweat toward Bob, the rhythm guitarist, and Daniel, their bassist.

  Here’s something you don’t know about Evan: He used to practice that move in front of the mirror. I’m just saying.

  Between songs, I finally saw the A&R guy standing next to Steve. Steve had this big, dopey grin on his face (totally high) and the guy next to him was wearing really expensive jeans and enough product in his hair to make it crunchier than celery, and was texting someone. Was he interested? Was he just returning a favor by coming out to see the band? I nudged Victoria and pointed him out, and she looked back at me and twirled one piece of hair around her finger. “Product!” she mouthed over the crowd noise, then wrinkled her nose. Not that Victoria’s hair is naturally spiky or anything, she was just anti-gel for men. Jonah avoided this problem by shaving his head every month or so, which Victoria greatly appreciated.

  Evan’s voice pulled me back toward the stage. “This is usually the point where we go backstage and you clap and we do our encore, but we’re gonna skip that middle part tonight and get straight to the music.”

  One more song, I told myself. One more song and then I can go to the In-N-Out drive-thru with Victoria and Jonah and get a grilled cheese and a chocolate shake and blast music until my ears want to fall off and Jonah takes me home. One more song and then I can be a normal, average girl without a boyfriend.

  “This is a new song for us; I wrote it tonight.”

  A new song? Everyone in the crowd was talking a little. The Do-Gooders hadn’t written a new song in at least four months, and we already knew all the words to their stuff. The encore was usually just a cover of Oasis’s “Don’t Go Away,” and I already wasn’t looking forward to watching Evan go all emo with the lyrics.

  But new song? This wasn’t in my grilled-cheese-and-loud-music plan.

  Victoria, I should point out here, is very smart. Sometimes she’s smarter than me. “Uh-oh,” I heard her say, but before I could turn my head to see what “uh-oh” was about, Evan kept speaking.

  “My girlfriend Audrey broke up with me today and—”

  Uh-oh.

  You know how in movies, the room will be really crowded and noisy and someone will say something that causes everyone’s heads to whip around and stare at that person? Let me tell you something: That happens in real life, too. And it happened to me when Evan said that. Two hundred people in the room, four hundred eyes (actually 399— Jake Myers lost one in a fishing accident when he was six), and all of them were burning into me.

  Evan hadn’t shut up yet. “Yeah, she broke up with me right before the biggest night of my life—”

  “Harsh,” whispered a voice behind me. Guess who.

  “And I always said I’d write a song about her and, well, I hope it’s not too late. This one is called ‘Audrey, Wait!’”

  Have you ever had brain freeze? That’s what it felt like when I heard the title of the song. I remembered walking down Evan’s staircase, pretending I didn’t hear him. I had made a huge fucking mistake. I hadn’t listened then, so he was making sure I was listening now.

  (Okay, so I also have to admit, I was a little disappointed the song wasn’t titled “Audrey, the Hottest Girl I Ever Met,” or “Audrey, That Time Upstairs at the Party (Was Amazing)” or something like that.)

  The bass drum pounded hard, just like my heart, and a thin guitar line sizzled up and sliced through the stage, setting the whole band off. It was like nothing they had ever played before. Evan was changing chords so fast and I thought for the briefest moment, Is that how he loved me? Did he really love me like this? I began imagining our reconciliation scene, making out after the show and giggling about how stupid I was for breaking up with him and—

  He started singing.

  “You said your piece and now I’ve got to say mine! I had you and you strung me on the liiiiiinnnnneeeeee!”

  What?

  “We said we loved and it was a lie! I touched your hair and watched you die! You crucified my heart, took every part, and hung them out to drrrrryyyyyyy!”

  Oh. My. God.

  “’It’s all good!’ you always say! But save it for another day! ‘Cause now I’m watching you walk awaaaaayyyyyy!”

  Here’s the worst part: The song was good. I mean, you obviously know that by now—I’m not revealing some big secret or anything. But at the time, the whole crowd was about to have a collective heart attack, they were dancing so hard. Even the bartenders, the mean bartenders who are bitter about life and water down the Cokes, had stopped pouring and were drumming their fingers on the bar top. Even the kids who don’t dance, the ones who refuse to show any emotion about anything but still show up at the Jukebox just for something to do, they were nodding their heads to the beat like they were issuing a mob hit. I could see the A&R guy tapping his foot and watching the stage, hungry. Steve was completely bug-eyed and gaping—he’d had no idea this band could produce this song.

  Neither had I.

  And then the chorus started. Sing along if you want.

  “Audrey, wait! Audrey, wait! You walked out the door and I want you to see me slam it shut! Audrey, wait! Audrey, wait! You can say all you want, but I want you to know that this is the cruelest cut!”

  I swear, if that song hadn’t been about me, if I had never met Evan, I would’ve been on that stage shaking what my momma gave me, it was that addictive. But instead I was rooted to the floor and my jaw was somewhere around my knees. Victoria was next to me, her eyes wide, and Jonah was bopping around behind us, a little unaware of how dire the situation was. I mean, Evan was standing on the stage and singing about me in front of our entire school! If I had been quicker, I would’ve run up onstage and yanked the wires out of the amp, and while I was at it, body-slammed Evan or knocked over the drum kit or something. But I couldn’t move; I couldn’t cry or cheer or talk. Really, it was like being buried alive, the weight of everything in the world crushing my chest, and Evan had the shovel.

  “Audrey, wait! Audrey, wait!”

  Now people behind us were singing along, and Evan was totally getting off on the crowd interaction. He used to talk about these kinds of moments sometimes, when we were in his bed underneath his Californi
a Angels sheets, the afternoon sun peeking in through the shades. “I want to hold the crowd in my hand,” he whispered, and I had giggled and said, “One day you will,” but I mean, come on. The Do-Gooders had only written three songs by that point. Evan wasn’t exactly at the front of the Rock God line.

  Until now.

  I finally turned my head to look at Victoria, who kept glancing from Evan to me. “Holy fuck,” her mouth was saying again and again. But even her foot was tapping the floor. She saw me looking and stopped. I was trying to send her messages with my eyes, like, “I think I’m going to die and I want to leave now, please,” but she wasn’t getting it. The place was too dark and too loud. Damn those speakers. Why couldn’t we listen in the back? Why couldn’t I have broken up with Evan tomorrow? Why couldn’t I be a procrastinator like Victoria?

  I bet he lied about flossing, too.

  “Audrey, wait! Audrey, wait! Audrey, wait!” The music had stopped now—it was just Evan and a roomful of his new friends, screaming the words at the top of their lungs. The rest of the band was watching the crowd surge back and forth with the kind of look little kids gave Jonah when he took a part-time job as Santa Claus last Christmas. Are you really real? (Side note: Jonah in a Santa costume = Best Christmas Ever.)

  “Thank you, we’re the Do-Gooders!” Evan shouted, putting his fist in the air as he pulled his guitar off. The rest of the band walked offstage, but Evan? I swear to God, he strutted. Just like a chicken.

  “Is this really happening?” I grabbed Victoria’s hand and held it in front of me. “Is this a dream? Am I dreaming? Are you about to turn into a Cadillac or is a unicorn gonna run through the room?”

  “No, you’re awake.”

  I closed my eyes and then opened them wide. “Could you please just lie to me?”

  Victoria, without taking her eyes off me, pulled on Jonah’s sleeve. “Uh, you might wanna start leading us out of here, sweetie.”

  “Is Jonah dreaming? Am I in Jonah’s dream, maybe?” Jonah was holding on to Victoria’s hand, and she had mine, and we were making a little train through the crowd of people.

  “No, you’re having a meltdown. You’re going Chernobyl on me. And make your eyes normal—you look like a fish.”

  “Is it a bad thing that I can’t feel my feet?”

  “Now you’re just being dramatic.”

  “Um, excuse me, did you not just see what happened?!”

  “Hey, Aud, that was an awesome song!” Kids waved at me as if I’d written The Song. As if I would write it!

  “Good thing you broke up with him!”

  “Audrey, wait! Audrey, wait!”

  I heard that one every time I took a step. Everyone was flushed and excited, like they had just come out of a revival and been saved and had to go tell five friends about what they had seen.

  “I’m going to kill them,” I told Victoria.

  “No, you’re not.” Jonah tugged her to the left and I zigzagged behind them.

  “You’re right,” I agreed. “I’m not going to kill them. I’m going to kill Evan.”

  “That would make a fantastic college entrance essay. ‘I Killed My Boyfriend and Still Managed to Maintain a 4.2 GPA and the Lead in the Spring Musical.’”

  “Audrey, wait! Audrey, wait!”

  “Fuck off, Pete, you asshole!”

  “You would never write a song about me, would you, Victoria?”

  “I wouldn’t write a song like that about you, that’s for sure.”

  “The spring musical?” I was momentarily pulled back from the edge. “When have I ever starred in the spring musical?”

  “Fuck if I know. Do we even have a spring musical?”

  “They did South Pacific last April.”

  Victoria laughed through her nose. “I don’t think I had to be there to know how it went.”

  By the time Jonah got us back to the car, I had pulled my hair over my shoulders so that it hung toward my stomach and hid my face. “Buckle up, Cousin Itt,” Jonah said into the rearview mirror.

  “Now would be a good time to engage those sensitivity controls again, Jonah.”

  “Got it.”

  Victoria climbed into the backseat with me and we sat facing each other. “So do I kill myself now, or do I wait and do it in front of Evan so he feels really, really, really bad?”

  “You’re not going to kill yourself. Remember in health class, when they talked about how adolescents drink to mask pain? That’s what you’re gonna do.”

  “Did they talk about dismembering ex-boyfriends, too?”

  “I don’t think we’ll get to that until anatomy next year.”

  I laughed as the car lurched forward into traffic. Everyone was looking into our windows and then turning to each other in their cars. I could practically hear what they were saying: “There’s the girl who broke up with Evan! Her, right there!”

  “Look,” Jonah said from the front seat. “Don’t worry about this, Aud. It’s just some song. It’s not like those people weren’t gonna find out you broke up, anyway.”

  “Listen to the man,” Victoria agreed. “He speaks the truth.”

  “Damn straight,” Jonah said. “He’s gonna be so high later that he probably won’t remember the lyrics, anyway.”

  “Amen,” Victoria added. “You wanna go to In-N-Out?”

  I rested my head against her shoulder and nodded. She knows me so well it’s scary. “Yes. But I have no cash.”

  “Neither do I. Jonah, Audrey and I have no cash.”

  “Why aren’t I surprised?” he muttered while merging into the intersection.

  So while we were in the drive-thru line, while Jonah was yelling our order into the teeny-tiny speaker box, while they were making me a strawberry milkshake instead of the chocolate one I ordered, you probably know what Evan was doing. I mean, he’s talked about it in every single interview he’s ever given. The A&R guy came out onto the Jukebox loading dock and shook all their hands and said things like “You guys rocked!” and dropped some names of label heads and invited them to the office on Monday morning. “Get ready,” he told them. “Your lives are about to change.”

  No one told me that my life was about to change, though. They didn’t tell me about paparazzi and magazine editors and publicists and the lawyer my parents would have to hire. They certainly didn’t tell me that all of you people would know my name by the end of the year.

  And that’s all you really know: my name.

  But not anymore, kiddos.

  Here’s my side of the story.

  2 “You can always see it comin’, but you can never stop it.…”

  —Cowboy Junkies, “Bea’s Song (River Song Trilogy: Part II)”

  DESPITE THE INSANITY OF THAT SHOW, things calmed down pretty quickly. It’s like when something horrible happens to you and you wonder, How will I ever live another minute without freaking out about this? And then a minute will go by without you thinking about it, and then an hour, and pretty soon your life goes back to normal and you can’t even remember what had you all upset.

  Apparently, everyone else at that night’s show had the same reaction, too; Evan’s song died down by the time school started, thank God. People weren’t even talking about it by the first day, because Jennifer Epstein threw up in the girl’s bathroom three times before lunch, and people were convinced she was either pregnant or bulimic. Either way, it was exciting, and now when people said, “Audrey, wait!” in the hallway, they meant just that. No irony required. (Oh, and it turns out that Jennifer just had some bad sushi the night before.)

  Evan and the Do-Gooders never showed up to start their senior year, and I heard a bunch of rumors about that. No one said anything to me directly, since Victoria had made it clear that Evan was persona non grata in our little world, but still, you know how rumors are. They slip around corners and slide under doors. Someone said that he and the band had dropped out of school and moved to Japan to record their first CD, and they were already famous there. Others said
that the A&R guy had signed them that night, then dropped them on Monday morning after his free drinks wore off and he came to his senses.

  But the prevailing view was that the band had dropped out of school and were being tutored at home so they could rehearse more. I was curious, I admit, but mostly just relieved that I didn’t have to see Evan in the halls every day. It’s like every breaker-upper’s dream that the other person will just magically disappear so you never have to have an awkward moment with them, and except for that one night and that one song, Evan was gone. (Confession time: I did Google the Do-Gooders a couple of times, but nothing new ever came up besides their outdated MySpace page that Victoria had helped them create.)

  Anyway, I managed to survive the first few months of school with a minimum of drama (save for a stupid computer that managed to delete my entire paper on Death of a Salesman the night before it was due).

  Then the Saturday before Halloween, Victoria came over for two reasons: (1) I was gonna help her dye her hair hot pink. Not the whole head, just a landing strip down the middle of her scalp so it would look like she had a Mohawk. Victoria is brave and awesome and all of that, but shaving part of her head held no appeal for her. Hair dye would have to suffice.

  And (2) it was a year to the day that I had first talked to Evan at Charles Hurty’s Halloween party. I know how Ev likes to explain it in interviews. Everyone and their mother likes to mention it to me when he talks about me in public, which is just wonderful. Like I don’t know what happened in our relationship? But yeah, Evan likes to tell this part:

  “We were at a Halloween party. She was standing in front of me and our eyes met and it was like…wow.”

  Sweet, right? So ideal and romantic and exactly what a million girls are secretly hoping will happen to them one day when they’re the lucky ones to meet Evan.