by Eric Smith
“I’ll just . . .” Rod says, taking out his own phone. He writes a quick thread, subtweeting the crap out of them, and it makes me love him more than I already do.
I retweet the whole thing immediately, adding a reply that reads, “More like IndieGarbageFire” with a GIF of a dumpster engulfed in flames that makes Rod and Kima laugh.
“Speaking of IndieTrash,” Kima says, “I need your help.” She’s looking at me, but it’s Rod who answers.
“Kima, babe. Can it wait? We’re in the middle of rehearsing,” he says, pulling me up onstage with him. “Raven wrote this great song, but it’s not quite right and —”
“What do you need?” I ask her. I’m halfway back down the stage steps before I can stop myself. Because as much as Kima’s clove-scented hair makes my heart ache, something about the girl pulls at me like a magnet.
“Photos. Simone got the flu, and there’s no one else I can count on to take good action shots the night of the show for the paper,” Kima says. Simone is the staff photographer for the school paper. Kima’s been the editor since she epically ousted Perry Franz by popular vote last semester even though Kima was the new girl.
“But you know I’m performing,” I say, looking back at Rod.
“I know, but you guys are only playing for like ten minutes, right? Just take a few pics before you go on and after. I’ll take care of everything else.”
Rod throws his hands in the air because he knows he can’t stop either of us from doing whatever we decide.
“The Battle issue of the paper could be my big break, Rave. It could get me in the door at IndieTrash.”
“You still want to work there, even after what they posted this morning?” Rod asks her from behind me.
“That’s even more of a reason they need someone like her, Rod,” I say. “If they had some smart, creative ‘flavor’ on staff, maybe stuff like that wouldn’t slip through the cracks.”
“Exactly,” Kima says. “See? Rave just gets it.” I love that she calls me Rave instead of Raven. It makes me feel like a party instead of a girl.
Kima flips her hair, and since my eyes are still turned in Rod’s direction, I only know because that spicy scent of hers wafts over everything.
And with a single, shallow inhale, I’m back at the show where we met this summer.
Boys Behaving Badly was playing, and me and my sister showed up a little late to the show. We didn’t want to see the opener, who we’d heard were awful, but once BBB came on, we were screaming our heads off nonstop. Black girls at shows like that one stand out, especially in our small college town in the middle of Jersey. So the second I saw Kima and she saw me and my sister, we locked eyes and an unexplainable understanding passed between us.
You like this music, too, our eyes seemed to say. And before I could process what was happening, she was right beside us. Three brown-skinned girls screaming at the top of our lungs. One smelling of seasonal baked goods.
She spent the rest of the show next to me like we’d come together, and we got closer and closer as the hour got later and later. Between songs, she told me that she was half Japanese, that she was “into” my indigo hair, that she was from California and hated almost everything about Jersey except the music scene. I thought I was going to pass out when she touched my mouth and then smeared my lipstick onto her own lips while asking me the name of the purplish color I — we — were wearing. I told her I loved her dimple piercings and asked where she’d gotten her denim shirt. But I was definitely “into” more than just her outfit.
When my sister went to the bathroom, “You Found Me,” my favorite BBB song, came on, and when I told Kima it was my song, she insisted we push our way closer to the stage. We did, and as the chorus ramped up, we locked eyes, and kissing was basically inevitable.
She was the only thing between me and the lead singer of Boys Behaving Badly, and we were surrounded on all sides by people singing: “You found me when no one else could. You saw me when no one else would.” And that’s how I felt as her soft lips covered mine: lost and then found. Invisible but suddenly seen so clearly. We made out until the song ended, and then we joined the rest of the crowd, screaming for more.
Then she disappeared. I couldn’t find her anywhere after the show, anywhere online, anywhere at all. I’d never kissed a girl before, and I wondered if liking it meant something about who I thought was, or who I’d always been. Just as quickly I decided I didn’t care.
I wanted to kiss her again. But I didn’t even know her name.
I told Rod about her, the girl at the concert, and by the end of August we’d started referring to her as #GhostHottie. By September I’d convinced myself I’d dreamed her and refocused my energy on the band, and Rod. Which was when I started to notice him: his (normally) clean-cut style, his smooth brown skin, the unique quality of his voice. I started to like-like him. But he was too busy texting with some mystery girl he’d met at Atomic Records, the store where he worked, to notice.
When school started, she reappeared like magic. She was just sitting there when I walked into homeroom, like I hadn’t spent a solid three weeks scouring the world for her and coming up empty.
“Hey,” she’d said. “You found me.”
“Holy shit,” I said, and she laughed. I knew she meant the song, and that she had no clue how hard I’d been looking for her, but it felt like a sign. Then at lunch, right before I was about to tell Rod that I’d found #GhostHottie, he walked into the cafeteria holding Kima’s hand.
“Um,” I said, frowning.
“This is who I’ve been texting with for the last three weeks,” Rod said, grinning. “Kima, meet my best friend, Raven.”
“Hi,” Kima said. I said hi back. And without really talking about it, we decided it would be better for everyone to never tell Rod about Boys Behaving Badly.
They’re in love with each other. I’m in love with them both. Which is why I’ve quit this band twice since they started going out.
And now here we are.
“I’ll do it,” I say to Kima, who claps and lets out an adorable “Yay!”
When she grins, the studs in her pierced cheeks sparkle like lights in the city skyline. She hugs me, and then kisses Rodney, and I don’t know when I’ll learn to stop catching feelings for people I can’t have.
I look at Rod and his eyes are still turned to me, his lips ready to sing my song.
I take a deep breath, and all I smell is that intoxicating spice.
It feels a little like I’m drowning.
I head to Kima’s house after I finish rehearsing with Rod. I begged him to come, too, because the only thing worse than how overwhelming it is to be with both of them is the way it feels when I’m alone with one of them.
But he had to get home, and I had to come here, and I’m going to have to keep it together.
“So here’s what I’m thinking,” Kima says, sliding a glass of lemonade to me across her kitchen counter.
She shows me a list of all the bands performing in the Battle in the order they’ll go on. “You take the highlighted ones, which should give you plenty of time before and after your set for sound check and breakdown with Rod. And I’ll do the rest. It’ll be easy,” she says, lifting her dark eyes from the paper to my face. I ignore her impossibly long lashes.
“This looks doable,” I say. I pick up the paper and run my finger down the list. “What if more bands get added in the next couple days?” I ask, because people always crash the lineup late. “Will the add-ons be mine or yours?”
“You think Rod is pissed?” Kima says instead of answering my question.
“About you asking me for help?” I ask.
She nods.
“Oh, maybe a little. He just always takes music-related stuff so seriously,” I tell her. “And he thinks this will change his parents’ minds about music being a viable career choice. But, you know, only if we win.”
“Maybe,” she agrees. “But I also think he’s jealous.”
�
��Jealous?” I ask. “Of what?”
Kima pulls down a bag of chips from the cabinet beside her fridge and plops it between us. “The music stuff has always been your thing. Like your thing with him. I think he’s jealous you’ll be spending time with me, too — that he won’t have you all to himself for the night.”
I laugh and shake my head. “No way,” I say at the same time as she says, “I see the way he looks at you, Rave.”
I swallow hard. We are always trying to balance all the things between us.
Me and her. Her and him. Him and me.
“Music is our thing for now,” I say, because we’re all seniors and everything about this year seems impermanent. Time seems insubstantial and hard to hold on to. So many things are about to change.
Kima breaks a chip in half. “Are you . . . really thinking about going solo?”
“What?”
“Rod thinks you’re going to leave the band again . . . that you’re working on songs without him because you want to go solo and that this time you won’t come back.”
“Is that why his clothes are a wreck this week? He thinks I’m going to leave Safe & Sound for good?”
“Maybe?” she says. She chomps down hard on her chip.
I take a swig of lemonade. “Okay, look. I don’t want to go solo. It’s just getting harder and harder to . . .” Pretend I don’t love you both. “It doesn’t matter. It’s senior year. It’s our last Battle of the Bands. Who knows what’s going to happen? And anyway,” I add, looking back up at her, “it was really more your idea than mine for me to write that song.”
Kima laughs. “Was not. I just said, as good as you and Rodney are together, you could really shine on your own. Rave, you’re so good. Not just at singing. It’s your writing, too.” She licks her lips and leans closer to me. “How can a heart be split in two? Half loves him and half loves you? I know you wrote that, not Rod.”
I can smell her hair. I bite my lip and look away.
“Do you ever think about the Boys Behaving Badly show?” Kima asks next, and I almost fall out of my chair. When I look back at her, she’s leaning against the counter. Her cheeks are resting on her fists, and her fat black curls are pooling in front of her elbows.
“What?” I say.
“The concert this past summer. The one where we met. I know you know what I’m talking about. Do you ever think about it?”
I notice I’m still holding the band list. I put the paper down.
“Um. Yeah. Sometimes.” All the time.
“Me too,” Kima says. “Every time I hear ‘You Found Me.’”
She’s staring at me like something’s on my face, which is to say she’s looking very hard in my direction. Without warning she reaches out and dips her finger into the hollow of my throat where the charm of my necklace sits (a tiny guitar on a thin silver chain that Rod got me last year for my birthday), and the heat of her finger there, on that delicate part of me, makes me pull out my phone just for somewhere to look, for something to do with my hands so my fingers don’t betray me and float up to touch her back.
“It doesn’t matter,” I mutter. “How good of a writer I am, I mean. I can’t go solo.”
Kima pulls her hand away.
“I couldn’t do that to him,” I continue, shaking my head and maybe talking about more than just music. “I wouldn’t be able to bear it.”
We fix the hook.
We’re in Rod’s spotless bedroom, and the neatness of the room just throws his messy clothes into sharper focus. I’m staring sidelong at the droopy beanie Rod’s got pulled down over his hair when Mr. Lockhart pokes his head into the room. “Keep this door open, son. Raven, hon, how are you?”
“I’m good, Mr. Lockhart. Real good.” I tuck a few of my dreadlocks behind my ear and strum my guitar a little. It doesn’t matter how many times Rod tells his parents we’re just friends (he’s been saying it for five years now); they still pop in to check on us whenever I’m over. Maybe they can feel all the things we never say.
“And then, I think you should sing this part of the line on your own. I won’t come in until here, right before the chorus, okay?” Rod says, ignoring his father’s presence.
“Mm-hmm,” I say, looking now at Rod’s untucked shirt, his baggy sweatpants. Whatever is going on with him is getting worse, not better.
“Rod, you sure you’re good?” I ask him after his dad leaves. He doesn’t answer. “I’m not going to quit, so if that’s what you’re worried about, you don’t have to be.”
He frowns. “That’s not what I’m worried about,” he says, and just keeps playing around with the ending of the song. I put my guitar down and tug on the pocket of his pants so he’ll turn toward me, and when I notice that his shoes — all-white Chuck Taylors — are scuffed in a half dozen spots, I unplug his keyboard.
“Hey!” he whines. “The Battle is in less than twenty-four hours, Raven. We don’t have time for this.”
“Hey, guys.” It’s Mrs. Lockhart this time. “How’s it going in here?”
“We’re fine, Mom,” Rod says. “Raven’s just being annoying. As usual.”
I smile sweetly, and Mrs. Lockhart shakes her head. “You two,” she says before walking back down the hall.
I wrap the keyboard cord around my wrist and put my arm behind my back. “Less than twenty-four hours, huh? Then you better hurry up and tell me what’s going on with you. Your shoes. Are scuffed.”
Rod looks down like he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. Then his eyes widen, and he licks his thumb and tries to wipe away the marks on the rubber toe and sole.
“Okay, fine. But you can’t say a word.”
“Rodney. Who on earth would I tell your secrets to? You and Kima are the only humans I tolerate.”
He presses his lips together.
“Oh. This is about . . . Kima?”
“Yeah. I . . . I think I have to break up with her. And I don’t want to.”
My heart pounds. My head aches. A dozen possibilities flutter through my mind at once. Does he know about this summer and how I feel about Kima? Is he going to say he loves me, too? I don’t know if I’m nervous, excited, or scared. “Why do you think you have to break up with her?”
“I got into the San Francisco Conservatory of Music,” he whispers.
“Oh my God,” I say. Everything else I was thinking about falls away. I grip his shoulders as a slow smile spreads over his face. “OH MY GOD!” I shout. “RODNEY LOCKHART, WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME THIS SOONER??”
“Because I’m kinda devastated?” he says. His eyes get a little watery.
“But Kima is from San Francisco. Her whole family is still there, and she goes back all the time. You don’t have to break up with her.”
“She’s from there, but she wants to be here. Well, in New York. And I mean, what kind of real future could we have anyway? She wants to write, so she needs to be here. I want to make music, so I need to be there. It’s what makes sense. But she’s not the only reason I’m devastated.”
He looks at me in that way of his. And I know he’ll miss me because we’ve been best friends for the last seven years, nearly half our lives. But I’ll miss him because we’re maybe a little more than that, too.
I’ve known I’d be staying right here and going to Rutgers since I got in early action, and I can’t believe I’ll still be in this town without him. Some small part of me wants to leave the band again, right now, before Rod leaves me.
“Don’t you do it,” Rod says, reading my mind. “I know what you’re thinking and I’ll kick your ass if you do it, Raven.”
Somehow I manage to swallow my sadness. This is what he wants, and I’ve only ever wanted him to be happy. I smile.
“Oh, Rod,” I say. I reach out and wrap him in the tightest hug. “You’re going to go. You’re going to shine. And it’s going to be fucking magic.”
“Leave room for the Lord,” I hear Mrs. Lockhart say. She can see us from the laundry room. I laugh and let him go,
and my stomach aches.
“But what about Safe & Sound? What about us?” he asks me.
I look around my best friend’s bedroom, and I know the peeling blue paint, concert posters, and nosy parents right outside will always feel like home. “We’ll sing our hearts out tomorrow and record as much as we can over the summer. We’ll live on as the duo who gave IndieTrash flavor they didn’t know they wanted.”
There are tears in his eyes, but he’s laughing. And even though I’m smiling, too, all I can think about is Kima.
It’s Battle of the Bands day, and I’m running late again. I had to go home between school and the concert because I forgot my camera, and then, while I was tuning my guitar, my E string broke. I’ve already missed two of the bands I was supposed to photograph for Kima, so she’s gonna be pissed. I park, jump out of my car, and rush into the building. The whole school is buzzing. It’s giving me life.
I head straight to the auditorium, and it is packed. Kids from all over Jersey are here to see the Battle. There are scene kids and emo kids, goth kids and metal kids, and a ton of kids like me and Rod and Kima, who don’t quite fit into a box. The great thing about concerts is that once the music starts, it doesn’t matter what you’re wearing or who anyone thinks you are. All that matters is the noise.
I pull out my camera and start taking a bunch of shots of the Marcia, Marcia, Marcias, the band onstage. Kima gave me a lanyard with a badge that reads press in big red letters, so luckily I don’t have to shove my way to the front. I hang out just below the lead singer, then move to the left to get some shots of the girl drummer. I’m kind of obsessed with her. I snap one of the guitarists midair, a photo that I pray will win Kima’s forgiveness for the bands I’ve missed.
Before long, it’s time for me to head backstage. I still haven’t seen Kima, which is surprising. The press-pass area wasn’t crowded, so unless she’s taking behind-the-scenes photos in the green rooms or shots from the middle of the crowd, I should have spotted her by now. I glance around one more time before going to find Rodney.