The Way It Hurts

by Patty Blount

  This was never going to work. Not a prayer. “Yeah. Okay. Is there anything else?”

  She thought about that for a minute. “Just one thing. I want my song to start out soft and slow, like a ballad. And then I want you guys to add in all that anger and punch.”

  I could work with that. “Is that the mood you’re going for—anger?”

  “Yeah. Your music makes me angry. And anger’s what I’m feeling now.”

  I flinched at that but nodded. “I’ll work on some melodies for you.”

  She nodded. “I’ll start on lyrics.”

  I didn’t tell her I’d already started those too. I got the feeling she wouldn’t appreciate it a bit.

  A gust of wind blew her hair forward again. I brushed it out of her eyes, and she immediately pulled away, blue eyes cold and full of suspicion. I let my hand drop. I worked hard to earn my Bad Boy of Rock reputation, to give the band’s lead singer the right image, the one people expected. Maybe even admired.

  I never expected it to hurt me.

  12

  Kristen

  @Mikey_T

  RT @Ride_Out: Wanna hear her scream! #CatCall

  RETWEETS 644 FAVORITES 313

  @Tomtom

  Whoa, baby! Rock out! #CatCall #KrisVsEli

  @djJiggs

  @Ride_Out @kristencartwright That voice is better than Evanescence! #KrisVsEli #CatCall

  @Rosebud

  @Ride_Out @kristencartwright Go Kristen! School that boy! Rock girlz rule. #KrisVsEli #CatCall

  @Rawr4Fems

  @Ride_Out @kristencartwright Who’s raising these boys to be so disrespectful? #entitlement #CatCall Why do you put up with it?

  @Mikey_T

  I made @kristencartwright scream! #CatCall #KrisVsEliVsMikey3way bit.ly/2lDS6Lxtr

  @Rawr4Fems

  Are you serious right now, @Mikey_T? Do you not get how disgustingly insulting this is? That’s a person! #KrisVsEli #CatCall

  @MadisonKellyLI

  Is #CatCall and #KrisVsEli just boys being boys or indicative of the pervasiveness of #rapeculture?

  Um. Yeah. Wow.

  I stared at the image some troll named Mikey T probably spent hours photoshopping just so he could feel like one of the cool kids on Twitter. It was one of me in my Cats costume. I’m on my knees at Elijah’s feet while he holds a mic out to face a crowd, smirking his lead singer smirk. There is a wet spot on his jeans…right by my face.

  I blocked the little turd on Twitter, shoved aside the plate of blueberry muffins Mom had just put in front of me, and tried to remember Etta’s favorite saying—there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

  “Not hungry?” Mom raised both eyebrows over the rim of her favorite World’s Best Mom coffee cup.

  I shook my head, unable to think up a convincing lie, and kept scrolling through Twitter. My stats weren’t just up—they were hitting the stratosphere now. Too bad half the tweets were gross—full of photoshopped images like that one…images of me in my Cats costume with exaggerated breasts, images of me with my mouth open, and images of me in various poses—most of which are on my knees. The other half of my tweets were from outraged feminists wondering why I wasn’t fighting back.

  How the hell was I supposed to do that? Everybody knows if you feed the trolls, they just multiply. So how was I supposed to express my outrage without giving all these trolls the attention they feed off of? I thought about blocking and reporting them, but there were so many, and I’m just one person. I should put Elijah to work. It was his fault the trolls even found me.

  “Got plans today?” Mom asked, putting one of the muffins in front of me in a not-so-subtle suggestion to eat something.

  “Yeah. Think I’ll go for a bike ride. Now that the show is over, I feel like I’m going to lose all the muscle tone in my legs if I don’t do something.” I didn’t want my parents or my brothers to know about Ride Out. Mom would consider it beneath me. Dad would obsess over me hanging out with three guys. Dylan and Gordon would go all Neanderthal and try to protect me from Elijah’s bad boy rep. I frowned at my muffin. Since I didn’t have long, glossy, dark hair like what’s-her-face from last night, it was clear I wouldn’t need brotherly protection.

  “So I was giving your summer some thought,” Mom began, pausing to take another sip of coffee. “I think you should consider volunteering. You could call the music chairperson at the two high schools and maybe even the middle schools, offer to run your own summer theater program.”

  I stopped chewing, my mouth full of blueberry muffin I hardly remembered biting into, and thought about that for a moment. It was a good idea. Actually, it was a totally amazing idea. I could contact Mrs. Reynolds from middle school and see if she had any interest in working with me. “That could look even better on my applications than Tisch.” And possibly, singing in a rock band. Then I could put Elijah and his stupid brunette Barbie doll groupie, these disgusting tweets, and the feminist cops out of my mind.

  Mom smiled. “Exactly. Do you want me to help?”

  I shook my head, getting excited about the idea. “No. I’ll email my middle school teacher and see what she says.” I grabbed my muffin, popped another bite into my mouth, and kissed Mom’s cheek. “Thanks, Mom.”

  Upstairs in my room, I typed out a fast email to Mrs. Reynolds and noticed my inbox was full of auto-generated messages from the Beat.

  I’d gotten so pissed off about Twitter, I’d never even checked the Beat. I squared my shoulders and braced myself, gasping out loud when I saw the list. Oh my God, this was insane! Dozens and dozens of comments on my mall debut with Ride Out. Even better, they were all relatively positive, if you didn’t count the ones about my breast size, my clothes, or my hair. The tweets weren’t all bad. Some were pretty flattering.

  This one liked my voice. And one loved the “banter” between Elijah and me.

  Just then, my cell phone buzzed.

  Glenn: Hi! Busy today? Wanna grab some breakfast?

  I frowned. I should never have given him my number, and I’m not sure why I did. That stupid groupie just pissed me off. Elijah had been clear—our arrangement was just about the music, so he was free to tangle tongues with anybody he wanted.

  But did he have to want that?

  Glenn wasn’t bad. He was cute, he was nice, and he obviously liked me. Shouldn’t I want that?

  “Ugh!” I curled my hands into fists and pounded my bed. Then I called Rachel.

  “Hey. Glenn texted me,” I informed her when she answered. “He wants to go out. What do I do?”

  “Forget Glenn. Did you see Twitter?” Rachel’s voice was a whole octave higher. “This is so totally amazing! Half the Internet is watching your whole battle of the sexes thing! Even if they don’t actually care about music, they’re following the hashtag because they’re pissed off about Elijah’s comments. There’s even one here from Madison Kelly from Channel Twelve’s morning show. She said, Is #CatCall just boys being boys or indicative of the pervasiveness of #rapeculture? You need to reply, like, immediately. Oooh, maybe she’ll do some kind of report on you or interview you.”

  “Yeah, right.” I rolled my eyes.

  “What? If she’s tweeting about you, she sees a story. You should totally tweet her back or at least favorite the tweet.”

  “I guess.” Looked like Etta was right. The bad publicity was leading decent publicity my way. “I do want to keep the Kris versus Eli thing going.”

  “Okay, so what are you gonna tweet?”

  I gave that some thought. The Internet was the biggest stage there was, and on that stage, two shows were performing at the same time. One was Elijah’s stupid “catcall” thing, starting with that disgusting comment about making me scream. The other was the “Kris versus Eli” battle of the sexes thing, as Rachel called it. I just wanted to sit back and watch them play out. “Sam
was pretty pissed last night. I don’t want to make things uncomfortable for Nick or Elijah.”

  “You have to, Kristen! You have to keep this going. It’s Sam’s problem if he can’t handle it. People want to know what’s next. What is next anyway?”

  What’s next? I thought about that for a moment. I’d really hoped Elijah and me could… Well, no sense obsessing over the not-in-this-lifetime stuff. “We have two more mall gigs. They liked us so much, they invited us back.”

  “That’s what you need to tweet. Let it be known that the band’s success is from you.”

  That’s just what Etta would say.

  And that is why Elijah invited me to sing with them in the first place—to give his band the edge they hadn’t been able to find by themselves. Rachel was right—too bad, so sad.

  “Okay, I’ll do it.” I typed out a tweet, added all of the trending hashtags, and posted it with an exaggerated flair of my fingers. “There. Done.” It was my way of flipping off Sam, who I hoped would freak out when he saw it. If he couldn’t deal with it, not my problem. Elijah, though… Well, I hoped Sam wouldn’t give him a hard time over this.

  “So, a lot of these pictures are really vulgar.”

  I tightened my jaw. “I can handle it.” If it led to more press, I’d have to put up with it.

  “Oh my God, Kristen! The tweet you just sent has been favorited six times so far and retweeted thirteen times.”

  I’d been watching it. “I know. I’m looking now to see who’s sharing it. Huh. Elijah shared it.”

  “This is good, right?”

  Was it good? “Yeah, I guess he’s not mad at me.” I couldn’t be sure with him. Those intense eyes of his guarded much of what he thought…unless he was thinking of girls. Then, they got all dark and swirly, and his lips curled into that smirk, and everyone in a thirty-foot radius could tell exactly what he was thinking. I fanned my face for a moment.

  “Soooo, about Glenn,” Rachel said, changing the subject. “Maybe you should give him a try.”

  My mouth fell open. “Jeez, Rachel. He’s not a pair of jeans. You can’t just try on a guy.”

  “No, not like that!” She giggled. “I mean give him a chance. Maybe, when you get to know him a little better, the sparks will start to fly.”

  Actually, that wasn’t a bad suggestion. “Okay. I’ll call him now. Thanks.”

  “No problem. I’ll see you later. We’re still going shopping, right?”

  Crap, I totally forgot. “Oh, um, sure. Pick me up whenever.”

  “I’ll text you.”

  I stared at my phone for a long moment after Rachel and I ended our call. Finally, I tapped Glenn’s number.

  “Hey!” he said, picking up after the first ring. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing much.”

  Awkward silence.

  “So, um, last night was seriously awesome. I’ve never heard anybody sing like you.”

  Yeah, well, maybe that was because I actually sang instead of wailed into a mic like the guys did. “Yeah, I get that a lot. My teachers always say my voice is unique because I can cover four octaves.”

  “Oh, right! That’s like Mariah Carey, right?”

  “I wish! No, she can do more. I can’t hit the same high notes she can, but I get close.”

  “Yeah? What’s your highest?”

  “Um, let’s see. I can go as high as C-five or maybe six but not consistently.” I shrugged and then remembered he couldn’t see me. “I’m working on it with my voice coach.”

  “You have a coach? That’s so cool. How does it work?”

  “What, voice lessons? Um, well, it takes practice. Lots of practice.”

  “Yeah, but that’s only if you can sing to begin with.”

  “It’s technique. Like any other technique, practice refines it.”

  “Wow. Okay, I’ll take your word for it. So, what are you doing now?” His voice shook a bit, like he was nervous.

  “Uh, just catching up on my social networks.”

  “I guess that’s a lot of work for your band.”

  “Not really. Elijah takes care of most of that,” I admitted.

  “Oh.” His voice went flat. “Are you sure you’re not into him? Elijah, I mean.”

  I sighed heavily. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  “Great!” The life returned to his voice. “Wanna do something? Maybe we could hang out?”

  Yeah, sure. Why not? “Okay. Let’s meet back at the mall.”

  “Okay. I’ll leave right now. See you soon.”

  He ended the call before I could reply. I stared at the silent phone, hating myself for making Glenn feel exactly how Elijah made me feel.

  • • •

  Thirty minutes later, I’d made it to the mall, Rachel in tow. “Thanks for driving, Rach.”

  “No problem. So do you want me to hang out, just in case?”

  I shook my head. “I’ll text you if I need you.”

  “Okay. I’m heading to Forever 21. Have fun!” she said with a grin and a sassy wave of her hand.

  I laughed once and scanned the food court. Tables were now covering the spot where we’d performed last night. I found Glenn sitting alone at one of the tables right where my mic had been. He hadn’t noticed me yet, so I hung back and just watched.

  He was taller than I was—taller than Elijah too. He was kind of dressed up today with dark blue jeans and a plaid button-down open over a T-shirt, and his blond hair was gelled into place. He had a soft drink in his hand and, on the table in front of him, a bottle of water. He’d shaved too. My stomach clenched. He was a nice boy—a genuinely nice boy who deserved someone who completely appreciated him.

  Pressing my lips together in a tight smile, I walked across the food court, dodging shoppers and parents with strollers. “Hey.”

  His eyes lifted, and his face split into this huge grin. He stood up and pecked me on the cheek, and I forced myself not to pull away. “You made it!”

  “Yep. Made it.”

  Awkward moment number thirty-four, or was it forty-three? I’d lost count.

  “Oh, um, this is for you. I wasn’t sure if you liked soda, lemonade, iced tea, or whatever, so I just played it safe.” He slid the bottle of water toward me, and I clutched it, grateful for something to do with my hands. I cracked the seal on the cap and swallowed a cool gulp.

  “So you liked the show last night?”

  “Oh, yeah. You guys rocked. I liked your version of ‘Going Under’ a lot.”

  “Cool. Thanks.”

  A shout and laughter from the next table diverted my attention, saving me from awkward moment forty-four.

  “How did you meet Ride Out? Are you guys all good friends or something?”

  A snort fell out of my mouth before I could stop it. “Definitely not. In fact, those guys can hardly stand me.”

  Glenn’s eyebrows shot up, and his eyes popped. “Why the hell not?”

  I lifted my hands and let them fall. “Because I’m good, and it kills them to know I might actually be better at their genre than they are.”

  “Their genre? What do you mean?”

  I shifted on my metal mesh seat. “Rock’s not really my thing. I’m more into musical theater and dance. Elijah—that’s the lead singer—saw me in Cats a few weeks ago and begged me to sing with his band. It sounded fun, so…” I trailed off with another shrug.

  “Smart guy.” Glenn leaned forward with a wide grin. Then he got serious again. “So…you’re like…you know, single?”

  Uh. Whoa. “Yeah. I’m single.” My face flamed.

  Glenn frowned. “I couldn’t be sure. You seemed really into him, and he seemed totally into you, and then he was huddled up laughing with that guy in the suspenders, and after that, it was that girl with the dark hair.” Abruptly, Glenn shook his head, a warm f
lush crawling up his neck. “Hard to tell.”

  Hard to tell. Glenn’s words hit me hard. It shouldn’t be hard to tell at all. And the truth was, I wanted to like Glenn. I really did.

  “Glenn, how do you feel about chocolate-covered strawberries?”

  His eyes went wide. “I adore them!”

  “Me too. Come on. I’ll buy.”

  13

  Elijah

  Ride_On747: Saw the mall show. Am now #TeamKristen #KrisVsEli

  SHARES: 106 LIKES: 212

  “Where you going?” Dad shot me an annoyed look when I walked out the front door and found him trimming hedges in the front yard.

  “Mall. I’ve got a meeting with Brett, the event planner.”

  Dad’s eyebrows rose. “A meeting?”

  “Uh, the mall wants us to play two more gigs—one’s midweek and one’s on a weekend.”

  He blew out a loud sigh. “Fine. Just don’t take my car.”

  Shit. “Mom said I couldn’t take hers.”

  “Why not? Where the hell’s she going today?”

  I lifted my shoulders and bit back a smart-ass comment that would have gotten the car keys confiscated while Dad stomped indoors. “Steph! Where are you going that you need a car?”

  I couldn’t hear Mom’s response. “I can’t stay with her. I’ve got to head over to the garden store and pick up fertilizer. Yes, I did! I told you three times…”

  The rest of his tirade faded away when he walked farther into the house. I glanced at his car parked on the street. I could just take it. I’d probably be back before they stopped arguing. Before I could take a step, the storm door opened. Dad forgot to the shut the front door, and Anna stepped outside.

  “Eli. Music.”

  I hurried toward her before she could take off. “Yes, we’ll play more music later. I have to go in the car now.”

  “Me too.”

  Christ. “Not this time, Anna Banana.”

  “Yes. Shoes.” She held out a foot, and I laughed.