Fireworks

by Katie Cotugno

  The apartment was empty; I paced around for a while, trying to figure out where Olivia and Charla might have gone. Girl Cat meowed at the open door, but I shooed her back outside. I looked at Olivia’s empty bedroom again, the bed she made so neatly every morning, everything in its place.

  Somehow, that was when I knew.

  I got back in the car and drove back to the studio, stepping on the gas with a heavy foot, not stopping to turn on the AC. I was sweating by the time I turned into the lot. I didn’t bother with a real parking spot, just left the keys in the ignition and threw the driver’s side door open. Charla was coming out as I was walking in.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, and I knew Guy had told her.

  “Where’s Olivia?” I asked, and it came out more hysterical than I meant.

  Charla shook her head. “I don’t understand you at all, Dana,” she said. “All the hard work you did all summer, the distance you covered. And you didn’t even want it?”

  I ignored her, headed for the studio. “I need to talk to Olivia.”

  “You shouldn’t go in there,” she called after me, but I wasn’t listening. I took the concrete steps two at a time, and made it into the cool, dark hallway just in time to see Olivia walk out of Guy’s office with Juliet and Lucas, the tour binder—my tour binder—in her hands.

  My stomach lurched. I felt like I was seeing something that physically didn’t make sense, like the damn Loch Ness monster rising up out of some watery depths. “Oh, no,” I said uselessly, shaking my head. I turned around and walked down the hall toward the exit, slamming at the push bar so hard the door crashed into the side of the building. Olivia hurried after me, calling my name.

  “Dana, stop,” she said finally, grabbing my arm in the parking lot, but I shrugged her off hard enough that she took a step back. It was hot out here; it was too impossibly humid. I couldn’t get any air in at all.

  “Olivia.” My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else entirely. “What the hell are you doing?”

  She took a deep breath, but of course I knew even before the words came out. “I’m going on tour,” she said.

  “He offered it to you?” I asked, though of course I’d already known that, had known it since I’d gotten back to the empty apartment, had known since I’d turned it down. “And you’re taking it?”

  “I’m sorry,” Olivia said. “I know we promised each other—”

  “He offered it to me first, you know that, right?” I asked immediately. I wanted to hurt her. I wanted to be as mean as I possibly could. “You know you’re taking my sloppy seconds.”

  “I know he did,” Olivia said, very voice quavering a little. “And honestly, you’re probably the better performer. But—”

  “You’re the one who wanted to make that stupid pact to begin with!” A thought occurred to me then, black and terrible. “Did you set me up?” I demanded. “Is that what you were doing when you said it would be both of us or nobody?”

  “No, of course not.” Olivia shook her head. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Then what was it like, Olivia?” I was yelling now, making a spectacle of both of us in the middle of the parking lot; Guy and the others had stayed inside, but I could see some of the workers from the shipping place watching us with interest. Let them watch, I thought. Let everybody. This was Olivia, the person I’d loved longest out of anyone in the world. I’d thought that meant something. I’d thought we were in this together.

  “Please just try to understand what it’s been like for me here,” Olivia said, reaching for my arm again; I jerked away. “I’ve wanted this since I was two.”

  “And I had the chance to get out of my shitty life, but I picked you!” My voice cracked at that. “I picked you, Olivia. We’re supposed to be a team.”

  “We are a team.”

  “We are clearly not a fucking team!”

  Olivia’s eyes welled up, too. “Dana,” she said, and she was pleading now. “Come on. You could be anything. You could do anything. This is the one thing I’m good at.”

  “And I’m not fucking good at anything, Olivia, but I made this work because it was my one chance to get the hell out of Jessell! We were supposed to make this work together!”

  Olivia shook her head again. “You’re stronger than me, okay? You’ve always been stronger than me. And that’s how I know you’re gonna be okay.”

  “You’re full of shit.” I couldn’t believe this was happening, except for the part that I could: this had been the most important thing to Olivia since we’d gotten here, hadn’t it? This had been the most important thing to her all along. I felt like an idiot. I felt like the worst kind of fool.

  “Just get away from me,” I told her, heading for the car—hers, I realized with a nasty little cackle. Even the car I’d driven here belonged to her. “Have a nice life.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  “You don’t have to do this,” Alex told me the next afternoon. He was sitting on my bed in the room I’d shared with Olivia at the start of the summer, watching me throw balled-up socks into my duffel. It was the first thing either one of us had said in a long time.

  “I mean, I do,” I pointed out a little snottily, checking to make sure I hadn’t left anything in the bureau. “Guy gave my ticket to Olivia.”

  “He’d give it back,” Alex said. “If you went to him and told him you really wanted it.”

  I shook my head, resting one knee on the mattress beside him. “That’s the thing, though. Guy was right. I didn’t want it enough.”

  “Well,” Alex said, threading his fingers through mine in the gesture that would always make me think of him, “what do you want?”

  We kissed for a little bit, his soft mouth and soap-sweat smell, the thrum of the pulse in his neck when I put my tongue there. I pulled my other knee up so that I was sitting in his lap; he groaned and leaned backward, trying to take me with him, but I pushed him gently away.

  “I can’t,” I told him, bumping my forehead against his. “I gotta do this. There’s a car picking me up in an hour.”

  “I’ll be fast,” Alex promised, and I snorted.

  “Perv.”

  Alex grinned, but he let me get up and head for the closet. “When am I gonna see you again?” he asked.

  That stopped me. I hesitated, sitting back down on the mattress beside him.

  “I don’t know,” I said, not meeting his gaze. “You’re going to be the one with the more complicated calendar, I think.”

  “Not that complicated.” Alex shrugged. “The tour comes through Atlanta in a month or so. We’ll see each other then. And maybe you could fly out and meet me before that, in New York or someplace cool like that.”

  I scoffed—I couldn’t help it. “With what money, Alex?”

  He looked hurt, and I felt like a jerk. “I’m sorry,” I said, reaching out for his hand one more time. “I’m being an asshole. But I just—I think it’s better for both of us if we’re honest about what’s going to happen now, you know?”

  Alex’s eyes narrowed at that. “And what’s going to happen, exactly?”

  I took a deep breath. This was the conversation I’d been dreading since yesterday—that I’d been dreading all summer—but I knew we had to have it, and we were running out of time. “I’m not an idiot,” I said. “I know that once you’re on tour, you’re going to meet girls, and have experiences, and—”

  Alex barked a laugh at that, cutting me off. “Experiences?” he asked. “What kind of experiences, exactly? You sound like somebody’s mom.”

  “It’s not funny!” I snapped. I wanted to lash out in every conceivable direction; I wanted him to see what a joke this all was. “Do you realize that until this summer I’d only ever been out of the state of Georgia one time? I’m a hick, Alex. I’m going to go home and live with my drunk mom and wait tables for the foreseeable future, and you’re going on tour with Tulsa fucking MacCreadie.”

  “So what, Dana?” He shook his head. “Who
cares?”

  “I care, Alex! We’re about to have completely different lives, and yours is going to involve girls throwing themselves at you every second, and mine is going to involve scraping leftover burrito off people’s plates.”

  “You chose that,” Alex reminded me. “You could have gone on tour, too. So you don’t get to act like this is my fault now, okay? You don’t get to act like I’m the one leaving you, or like you’re going to break up with me for my own good.” His eyes widened. “Is that what you’re doing?” he asked suddenly, and he sounded so afraid for a second, like the possibility had only just occurred to him. “Are you breaking up with me?”

  I opened my mouth, closed it again; it felt like there were razor blades in my lungs. “I—yeah, Alex,” I heard myself say. “I think maybe I am.”

  Alex visibly flinched, like I’d shoved him. “You’re not serious,” he said.

  That made me mad, like he thought he knew better than I did. “I am,” I insisted, though I could hardly believe I’d spoken the words out loud. Part of me thought maybe I was being unfair, taking my anger at Olivia—at the whole situation—out on him because he was here and he cared about me. But another part knew this was the only way. I’d worried from the very beginning that Alex and I were too different to last, that there was no way we could stay together if I went back to Jessell and he went out on the road. He’d be surrounded by other girls the same way he had been that night at the show in New Orleans; he’d get bored, and tired of me. Eventually, it would end. And if the choice was between hurting now or hurting later—well. I was already hurting now.

  “Look,” Alex said, “I get that you’re upset about what happened—”

  “It’s not about that,” I argued. “It’s about you and me.”

  “You’re doing it again, you realize. You’re pissed and scared and so you’re picking a fight with me—”

  “This is not that.”

  “This is exactly that!”

  “I’m being realistic,” I countered, scrambling up off the bed as my voice broke. I knew if he saw me cry he’d want to comfort me, and if he comforted me I’d never be able to go through with this.

  “So that’s it?” Alex asked behind me, and I could tell he’d stood up, too. Even without turning around I could picture him so clearly—his hands in his pockets, the pain and confusion on his face. It felt like I was spreading my ribs with my own two hands. “I don’t— Dana. How can that just be it?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said into the darkness of the closet. I wiped my wet face with my forearm. “I have to pack.”

  FORTY

  Guy’s driver picked me up at the complex that afternoon, the black car idling in the parking lot as I scanned the apartment to make sure I wasn’t leaving anything behind. It was bizarre to think I’d never be here again, brushing my teeth beside Olivia in the seafoam bathroom or standing in the kitchen griping about Charla’s gross smoothies. This place had become home overnight, the backdrop for every crazy thing that had happened; just as fast, all of it had changed.

  “Here,” Charla said, reaching for my duffel. I was leaving with only what I’d brought with me, right down to the plastic grocery bags holding the overflow. The new clothes, the makeup and designer hair products—all that belonged to Guy. “Let me help you.”

  “I got it,” I said flatly, but I let her hold the door for me anyhow; she followed me down the concrete steps into the parking lot, mid-afternoon sun shimmering on the concrete. The cats lolled in the shade of the building, oblivious.

  “Travel safe,” Charla said once my bags were loaded. She reached out for a moment like she wanted to hug me, then thought better of it. “I’d drive you back myself, but—”

  “But you’re busy with your new star,” I couldn’t help snapping. “I know.”

  Charla sighed. “Dana—”

  “It’s fine,” I said, holding up my hands, wanting more than anything for it to just be over. I’d lost Olivia. I’d lost Alex. I’d lost whatever my future was going to be here. What else was there to say? “Thanks for everything, Charla. Really.”

  Charla nodded. “Good luck, sweetheart.”

  I was about to get into the car when I turned around suddenly, squinting at the glare of the sun overhead. “Look out for Olivia, okay?”

  Charla looked surprised at that, though I couldn’t blame her: it surprised me that I’d said it, too. But Olivia was my best friend—or at least, she had been. And whatever else had happened between us, I wouldn’t be here to protect her anymore. “Of course,” Charla said, looking at me with focus and concentration, like she was trying to work out a tricky combination in her head. “And Dana—look out for yourself.”

  “Sure,” I said, shrugging, turning back to the car. “Whatever.”

  “I’m serious,” she insisted, reaching for my arm and turning me to face her, strong despite her delicate build. “The only person you need to worry about from now on is you, all right? Try to remember that.” She hugged me then, fast and impulsive like she was worried I wasn’t going to let her.

  “Sure,” I said again, turning my head so she wouldn’t see that I was on the verge of crying. I got into the backseat and went home.

  FORTY-ONE

  I came back to Jessell on the hottest day of the summer, the sidewalk burning straight through my sandals, the flowers all dead where they stood. Elvis barked his head off from behind the chain-link fence, as if he’d never seen me before.

  “Didn’t work out, huh?” my mom asked me, legs crossed on the couch, eyeing me evenly.

  “Nope,” I said too loudly, with a plasticky brightness I didn’t feel. “Didn’t work out.”

  I stood in the doorway of my bedroom, fighting the urge to run. It felt like the site of some bizarre time warp, like maybe the last three months hadn’t happened at all—like maybe I’d made them up entirely, some deluded fantasy I’d constructed to chase my loneliness away. The sheets hadn’t been changed since I’d come home in the middle of the summer. The dress I’d worn to graduation was crumpled on the closet floor. The job applications I’d started after my audition for Guy—retail jobs, waitressing gigs—sat in a dust-filmed stack on the desk, the edges gone slightly yellow. The whole room smelled dank, like the inside of somebody’s gym bag; I flung both the windows open, but that only made it harder to breathe.

  This was it for me, I realized, trying to quell the acrid panic I felt rising in my chest. If not this exact room, then some other room like it. I thought of Olivia, who was off on tour with Tulsa. I thought of Alex, who’d probably already met someone new.

  The worst part was that underneath my bright, shattering anger was a flabby, dull kind of fear: even though Olivia and I had spent so much of the summer fighting, we’d never actually been apart before. I didn’t really know who I was without her. I wasn’t sure I was ready to find out.

  I flopped face-first onto the mattress. I lay there, hot and motionless, until I finally fell asleep.

  I spent the next three days bouncing all over Jessell, applying to every job in the want ads: a babysitting gig that turned out to be for a guinea pig named Lester, a dishwashing shift at a seafood restaurant that reeked of rotting fish. Sure, technically I’d been on Guy’s payroll all summer, but each week he’d held a slice back for expenses—rent in the complex, that expensive studio time—and now I had basically less than I’d had when I’d gone to Orlando. I thought of that flashy red bathing suit I hadn’t bothered to check the price on, and cursed myself for being such a fool.

  It was nearing dusk by the time I got off the bus on the third day, sun sinking behind the low-slung houses and the cicadas already screeching their desperate calls for love. My shirt was sticking to my back, hot and sweaty; the backs of my feet were puffy with blisters from my uncomfortable “hire me” shoes. I let myself in through the screen door, was heading down the hall to shower when my mom called out to me from the living room.

  “Come here a second,” she said, hitting the mute b
utton on the Law & Order rerun she was watching and patting the couch cushion beside her. “You’ve been running around since you got back. I haven’t hardly seen you.”

  That was mostly because she’d been passed out in her bedroom, but I didn’t say that out loud. “I need to find a job,” I reminded her, but I went anyway, sinking into our ancient floral couch and gingerly sliding my feet out of my sandals.

  “You’ll find something,” she said. She smelled like cigarettes and the same raspberry body spray she’d worn since I was a little girl, sweet and fruity and overpowering. A glass of something icy and clear sweated on the coffee table. “I got ice cream at the store today,” my mom continued, looping one slender arm around my shoulders unexpectedly. Normally she wasn’t much for hugs.

  “You did?” I asked, smiling a little, leaning into her a bit. It was nice to be held for a moment, even if I was too big for it.

  “I did,” she said, sounding pleased. She looked so young to me all of a sudden, like she could have been in a girl group herself. “To celebrate you being back at home.”

  “That’s nice,” I said, and I meant it. “Thanks.”

  “I’ll tell you something,” my mom continued, reaching up and pushing my hair back off my forehead, her palm warm against my skin. “It never made any sense to me, what you were doing down there in Orlando.”

  I felt my skin prickle at that, but I tried to keep my face expressionless. “No?” I said. “Why not?”

  I felt her shrug. “It just felt like they were having you put on airs the whole time you were down there, you know what I mean? Tryin’ to make you into something you’re not.”