Fireworks

by Katie Cotugno

  “That’s a girl,” Guy said, nodding in approval. “That’s what you gotta do in this business, just push through. Lucky your friend was here to pep-talk you, huh?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” I protested, but Guy had already turned his attention elsewhere, glad-handing the DJ and his producer while Juliet rounded up the boys. When I turned to Olivia, she looked like she’d just run a marathon, like it was taking every last ounce of her energy just to stay upright.

  “You did it,” I told her, taking a step forward to hug her before I could stop myself, then freezing abruptly halfway through the motion. We looked at each other for a moment. I lowered my arms again.

  Olivia nodded just once, vaguely. “Let’s go” was all she said.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Guy gave us the rest of the day off after the radio station performance. Olivia collapsed face-first on the couch and immediately fell asleep, Charla waking her up periodically to feed her cold medicine and tea. I spent the afternoon napping, too, sprawled on Alex’s bed, listening to the sound of his heartbeat tapping steadily away through his shirt. I liked how he smelled, soap and clean bedding and the faint sourness of sleep underneath it. I wished it could always be like this.

  Olivia was still sleeping when I got back to the apartment. Charla and I ate dinner quietly, neither one of us wanting to wake her. I was lying on the bed listening to a tape of the songs Hurricane State had recorded when Olivia appeared in the doorway. Her color was better, though there were still dark rings under her eyes. “How you feeling?” I asked, pulling my headphones off.

  “Better,” she said. She was wearing her pajamas, a pair of workout shorts and her Jessell Jaguars gym shirt, which surprised me. I hadn’t even realized she’d brought it. Olivia hated gym: last year she’d been late to dress so many times that Ms. Farano made her come after eighth period to do wall sits every day for a week to make up the time. “Hey,” she said now, leaning against the jamb with her thin arms crossed. Her dark, glossy hair hung in a fishtail braid over one sharp shoulder. “You did amazing today,” she said, not quite looking at me. “I just wanted to tell you that.”

  I looked up at her, surprised and also feeling like a jerk. “You did amazing, too,” I said softly. “I love that song Guy has you doing, with the chorus that’s like, rise rise rise.”

  Olivia shook her head. “It’s almost out of my range.”

  “It’s not,” I told her earnestly. “It’s perfect.”

  Olivia smiled. “Okay,” she said. “Well. Thanks.” She hovered in the doorway for another half second, and as she turned to go, a hot, briny panic rose in the back of my throat. Suddenly it felt like maybe I’d never see her again.

  “I hate this,” I blurted before I could think better of it. “I hate fighting with you.”

  Olivia stopped in the doorway, turned around. “I hate it, too,” she said.

  “You do?”

  “Of course I do!” Olivia’s eyes widened; she came back into the room then, perched on the edge of my bed. It was the closest we’d been to each other in weeks. “You’re my best friend.”

  “You’re my best friend!” I told her. “You know that. And I feel weird and crappy that me coming here is what started it. Like, if I had stayed back in Jessell obviously I’d miss you, but maybe it would be better to miss you if you were far away instead of, like, right down the hall.”

  “You coming here didn’t start it,” Olivia told me, pulling her knees up onto the mattress and settling in. “I loved having you here, are you kidding?”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah!” Olivia said. “What started it was everybody here pitting us against each other like we’re on American Gladiators or something.”

  I wasn’t sure if that was what had started it, actually; I worried it was deeper than that, some deep fissure in our friendship that dated back longer than we knew. Still, she was smiling at me, and I wanted things to be better. “Next thing you know they’re going to try to make us fight each other with those giant Q-tip things,” I joked.

  Then, because I wanted to be honest with her, because talking to her at all felt like a gift and I didn’t want to waste it: “I know I was dragging you down at the beginning,” I said slowly. “You weren’t wrong to be pissed at me.”

  “I was wrong to be a massive bitch about it, though.” Olivia shook her head. “But you’ve come so crazy far since we got here, you know that? Guy totally knew what he was doing when he picked you. You’re amazing to watch.”

  I grinned at that, ducking my head kind of shyly even as I wanted her to say lots more. Olivia’s opinion meant more to me than anyone else’s; even more than Alex, she was the person I’d wanted to impress all these weeks.

  “I’m sorry about Alex,” I told her, as long as we were apologizing. I’d said it before, but it was important to me that she knew I’d never meant to steal him out from under her, that our friendship was worth more to me than that and I knew I’d been wrong to do what I did. “The whole thing was fucked up of me. I should have stayed away from him to begin with, or at least talked to you about it right up front.”

  Olivia shook her head, twisting the end of her braid around her fingers. “I didn’t even really like Alex that much, honestly. I was mostly just mad because I felt like you were keeping secrets to punish me, or pulling away on purpose, or something.”

  I chafed at that a little. “You were off being best friends with Kristin and Ashley!”

  Olivia scoffed. “I was never going to be best friends with Kristin and Ashley,” she assured me. “I tried to make them watch Junia with me when they were still here, did you know that?” She made a sheepish face. “Shockingly, they were not as into her as we are.”

  I laughed. “Well, sad but true, not everyone has impeccable taste like you and me. Did you teach them the dance?”

  “I tried to, like, explain the dance?” Olivia shook her head. “They were not buying.”

  “Really?” I hopped up off the bed and struck the first pose with great drama, my arms in a big, exaggerated V over my head. “This didn’t entice them?”

  Olivia scrambled up and hit the same pose. “I can’t imagine why.”

  We did the dance in goofy, overblown synchronization—both of us singing the Junia theme song at the top of our voices, purposefully off-key, hitting all our made-up dance moves with a verve that would have made Charla proud until we were laughing too hysterically to finish. Finally, we collapsed into a helpless pile on the bed, still giggling so hard I thought I might actually barf. I hadn’t laughed like that all summer. Olivia was the only person I ever did it with.

  Eventually we caught our breath again, lying side by side on the mattress, both of us quiet except for the odd hiccup. Even breathing felt better now, like there’d been a hair elastic wrapped around my lungs the last couple of weeks and it had finally snapped.

  “So, you and Alex,” Olivia said, still staring at the ceiling. “Have you guys . . . ?” She trailed off.

  I smirked. “Have we what, exactly?”

  Olivia rolled over, fixed me with a look. “You know what.”

  I hesitated a moment, and then I nodded. “When we got back from Jessell,” I told her. “That first night.”

  Olivia nodded slowly. “What was it like?” she asked.

  I thought about that for a moment. “Good,” I told her. “You know, new, but good.”

  “Good,” Olivia repeated. She scooted down on the mattress then, laid her head in my lap. “Can I tell you something weird?” she asked, peering up at me. Her eyes looked very bright. “It makes me kind of sad, honestly. Like, not that you guys did it, but I guess I just always assumed that as soon as one of us did it, the other one would know right away.”

  My heart broke a little at that, an ache in my chest I could actually feel. “I wanted to tell you,” I promised her, reaching down and tugging the end of her braid, just lightly. “It’s like it wasn’t even real until I did.”

  “Oh, it was re
al,” Olivia said, wiggling her eyebrows like a pervert.

  That made me laugh. “Okay,” I admitted, “it was real. But you know what I mean.”

  “I do,” Olivia agreed. Then: “I missed you, jerk.”

  I grinned down at her. “I missed you, too.” It was like I hadn’t even let myself feel how much until then: like there’d been a part of me that had gone quiet since we hadn’t been speaking, some vital slice of who I was. She needs you, Olivia’s mom had told me. I needed Olivia, too. We needed each other.

  I took a deep breath, cautious. “Can I ask you something without you getting mad?”

  Olivia looked up at me curiously. “Uh-huh,” she said. “Of course.”

  “What’s going on with eating stuff?”

  Olivia waved her hand, dismissive. “I told you,” she said, “I’m handling that.”

  “Liv,” I said. One of the things I’d realized while we weren’t speaking was how dumb and naive it had been of me to think I could solve Olivia’s problems on my own—by watching her eat a sandwich, by forcing French fries on her and watching to make sure her ankles didn’t get too thin. The truth was, this was bigger than me. Possibly it was bigger than both of us. I hadn’t been doing anybody any favors by pretending it wasn’t. “Come on.”

  “You come on,” Olivia said stubbornly.

  But I shook my head. I couldn’t let things go on like they had been. I owed her more than that. “Look,” I said. “I know you haven’t been totally honest with me about what’s going on with you when it comes to that stuff. And part of that is my fault, too, because I was afraid to make it into a big deal, so I never wanted to push it. But it is a big deal, Liv.”

  Olivia rolled her eyes. “It’s really not,” she insisted.

  “It really is, though. And it’s freaking me out, and if it keeps happening I’m going to call your mom. No more screwing around. And maybe that means you’re going to be mad at me again, and I get that, but”—I shrugged—“you’re my best friend, and that’s what best friends do.”

  Olivia was quiet for a minute. “I’m not mad at you.”

  “Okay,” I said. Then, carefully, “So, like. We’re clear? And you won’t, like—keep stuff from me?”

  “Yeah, Dana, we’re clear.” Olivia huffed out a sigh.

  “Good,” I said, though in the back of my head I knew it might not be that easy. “I want to help you, you know? I’m here to help you.”

  “Dana—” she started, but then she just kind of sagged. “I’m working on it,” she promised. “Is that fair? I’m not always perfect, but I’m working on it.”

  I thought about that for a moment. “As long as I’m here, and we’re together,” I decided. “As long as we’re together, it’s okay.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  “What about this one?” Olivia asked, popping out of my closet with a flowered sundress in one hand, waving it in my direction. “Too sweet?”

  I squinted for a moment. We were doing a mall performance the next morning, were supposed to pick our own costumes from the cache of clothes Juliet had given us. We’d been at it for over an hour already, the radio playing on the dresser and a bowl of microwave popcorn on the bed. “Too sweet,” I decided finally.

  “Yeah,” Olivia agreed. “I feel like we should put you in something sexier.”

  I snorted at that. “Because I’m such a sexy individual?”

  “I mean, yes, obviously. But also for, like, brand-recognition purposes.”

  “Ugh,” I said, sitting back on my bed and reaching for a handful of popcorn. “I hate that word, brand. It makes me feel like a sanitary napkin.”

  “Better get used to it, pop star,” Olivia said cheerfully. Then, turning back to the closet and scrutinizing its contents for a moment: “Can I tell you a secret?”

  I leaned forward eagerly. “Always.”

  She whirled and looked at me again, this time holding the infamous forty-dollar T-shirt. “I have to say, these are actually butt-ugly.”

  “Oh, come on! I’m going to kill you,” I told her, but I was laughing. It was hard to get worked up over it anymore, to even remember how far from her I’d felt those past weeks. “They are ugly, right?”

  “Yes!” Olivia nodded. “I should have listened to you to begin with,” she said.

  “That’s a good motto for you to live by all the time, really,” I teased.

  We listened to the nightly countdown on the Top 40 station, settled on jeans and a tank top for Olivia and a faded denim miniskirt for me. “Can I crash in here?” she asked, hovering in the doorway once we’d brushed our teeth.

  “Obviously,” I said. I yanked the comforter off my bed and tossed it over to her, and we settled side by side on the twin mattresses just like we had when we first came here. Of course she could have gone and gotten her own blanket. Of course she could have gone next door to go to sleep. But that wasn’t the point, and both of us knew it.

  Once the light was off Olivia stared up at the ceiling for a while, quiet; I thought she’d just about fallen asleep when she spoke. “What I don’t understand,” she said thoughtfully, rolling over to look at me, “is why Guy doesn’t just keep us both. I feel like that would be the better business move, not cutting one of us. He could brand us differently or something, you know what I mean?”

  I looked over at her, surprised. “I guess,” I said.

  “Because it doesn’t make sense for him to be putting these kinds of resources into both of us if one of us is about to get cut,” she continued. “Like, the studio time, sure, he crammed us both in there and didn’t have to pay extra. But paying Lucas and Charla to coach us both, double the media training, the image stuff—that all seems like a waste to me. And Guy’s not wasteful.”

  She had a point there, I thought—after all, Guy keeping us both up to this point meant he thought there was a chance both of us were viable. “Would you want that?” I asked cautiously. “For him to pick us both?”

  Olivia looked at me like I was crazy. “Of course I would,” she said. “If we could take this whole stupid competition out of the equation? That would be amazing.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, smiling into the darkness, feeling like I was finally back where I belonged. “It would be pretty freaking great.”

  I fell asleep easily, deep and dreamless. I didn’t wake up once the whole night through.

  Guy finally bought us all tickets to Disney one hot, humid Saturday—ostensibly to shoot some promo pictures to show how family-friendly we all were, but we also got to skip the lines for Space Mountain and the Tower of Terror, a park employee leading us around and giving all of us personalized Mouse ears for free.

  “That’s it,” the photographer said as I tossed my hair in front of Cinderella’s Castle, the camera clicking away. “America’s gonna love you.”

  “You’re a natural,” Juliet said, eyeing me approvingly, and I grinned.

  We stayed until it got dark and was time for the fireworks, booms so loud I could feel them vibrating in the base of my spine. “Beats watching from the parking lot, huh?” Alex asked. We’d peeled off from the others and were sitting on a bench on Main Street with our heads tipped back to watch the explosions, passing a giant Diet Coke back and forth.

  I nodded. Of course it beat the parking lot, in some ways—after all, just a few weeks ago we couldn’t even afford tickets to get in here, had been stuck on the outside looking in. But when I remembered how it had felt being in the car with him that night, like we were the only two people in the universe—I couldn’t help but wonder if we were losing something, too. The summer was almost over, and both of us were on the precipice of something potentially incredible. What I didn’t know was if we’d be able to make the jump holding hands.

  God, I was being a weirdo. “It’s great,” I said, knocking my forehead against his lightly.

  But Alex must have been able to read my mind. “Come on,” he said, taking my hand with his free one and pulling me to my feet. A firework in the shape
of Minnie Mouse erupted over Cinderella’s Castle, and everyone cheered.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, but Alex didn’t answer, fingers threaded through mine as we wove through the tightly packed throngs, his wavy hair curling up in the heat. We were nearly to the edge of the Magic Kingdom before I figured it out. “Alex,” I said, a slow grin spreading over my face as we pushed through the turnstiles out into the parking lot. “Are we—”

  “View’s better from here anyway,” Alex said, grinning back at me. He held up the keys to the Suburban. I laughed out loud, grabbed his hand.

  “You’re something, you know that?” I asked as we climbed up on the hood—side by side, his body warm and solid next to me.

  “Weird,” Alex said, smiling a little. “I was just about to tell you the same thing.”

  “Oh, were you?” I said, mocking, but Alex turned serious.

  I sat up, suddenly nervous. “I didn’t mean—” I began, then broke off, worried I’d offended him.

  “Dana, I’ve been singing love songs since I was five,” he told me. “But I’ve never really gotten it. Not like I do when I look at you.” He took a breath. “I love you. Whatever else happens, will you just remember that?”

  For a second I only stared at him—the stubborn set of his jaw and his hair falling forward, the resolute truth in his eyes. I felt like I was seeing him clearly for the first time all night.

  “I know,” Alex said, shaking his head, ducking his face as his cheeks turned faintly pink. “I’m corny. But it’s true.”

  “That’s not what I was going to say,” I told him quickly. My heart was a runaway train inside my chest. “It’s not corny. It’s not corny at all.”

  A real smile at that, wide and happy—the pureness of the emotion on his face was shattering, like I was something he’d wanted and wanted but never dreamed he’d get. “No?”

  “No,” I promised, and then I finally said it. “I love you, too.”

  I sat there and looked at him for a moment, wanting to laugh in disbelief and wonder. Wanting to cry and not entirely sure how come. I leaned forward and kissed him. The sky exploded over our heads.