I’m surprised. “You do?”
But he clearly doesn’t want to talk about it. “Girl I used to date. We’re still friends, so.”
I’m weirdly stunned. I wouldn’t’ve thought, from what I’ve heard, that any girl Benji went out with would want to be his friend after, or vice versa. But then again, now that I know him, maybe it doesn’t seem that far-fetched.
I grab the sleeve of his army jacket. “Come meet my friends.”
“It’s cool; I’ll just hang out—”
“They’re not going to bite you, dummy. Come on.”
I lead Benji back to the table and introduce him to everyone. Fabian gives me a curious little brow furrow as we shift our stools around to make space. Within seconds, Benji is at ease with everyone. Seated beside two pretty girls (well, one pretty girl and one formidably cool one), he flirts and flatters into oblivion. At first I’m mad, a little, that he doesn’t act even half into me, but then it’s hilarious, his efforts, since neither Taryn nor Sylvia would be interested in him even if he were a girl. Fabian and I trade amused little looks, and at one point my knee bumps against his under the table. When he doesn’t move away, I don’t either.
After a few deadpan looks, Benji eventually figures out that Taryn and Sylvia aren’t going to flirt back, so he switches to telling stories. He cracks Taryn up so bad she almost falls off her stool. And this, somehow, gets Sylvia into a joking mood too. Her wild laughing is something else.
After another round of “Hooo boys” from Sylvia, Taryn grabs me and Benji by the wrists. “The band!” she cries. “You have to see them! Come on! They’re so fun!”
I remember that I am intensely curious to see this ex-girlfriend of Benji’s, so we follow Taryn down to the dance floor, where—she’s right—the band is good. It’s a different sound than the group playing last weekend: better. They’ve got about seven members, all with different instruments, and they all rock. When a surprisingly muscled girl with a tattoo of a dragon wrapped around her shaved skull steps up to take the mic, Benji points. “That’s her.”
I look at her, then him, then her again.
“I can see why she dumped you.” I try to sound funny.
The briefest wince crosses his face. “She didn’t want anything serious.”
I realize Benji might’ve actually been hurt by this girl, and it makes me immediately dislike her, no matter how righteous she is sounding right now.
So I change the subject, though I have to say it loud over the music: “You still friends enough with her to ask her how I can get Sad Jackal up on that stage?”
A crafty twinkle glimmers in his eyes. “Only if you pretend to be my girlfriend.”
I laugh, glad to see him back to his joking self. “Guess she’d better see us dancing out here first, huh?”
“You said it!” he shouts, and starts thrashing around like a whacko.
I jump up and down alongside him. Taryn bounces closer, pulling Fabian over. We all smile and flail, inspired by Benji and the intensity of the band. They switch singers again—Benji’s ex falls back to pick up a flute—and the new song rises around us. Swept up in the pulsing, I grab Fabian on the shoulder.
“This is fantastic!” I shout into his ear.
He squeezes my hand. And we stay dancing like that for the rest of the night.
“You mean you didn’t kiss him again?” Darby groans at the end of my bed when I get home.
I yank a brush through my knotty hair. “Not everything has to be all hoochie and gross.”
“Not everything has to be all old-fashioned and boring, either. What’s his deal? Is he gay?”
I level my gaze at her through the mirror. “He is not gay. If he were, he’d’ve asked Oliver out and not me. And maybe I didn’t even want him to kiss me at that point—did you think about that?”
“Maybe because you really like Benji instead.”
“Benji and I are just friends.”
“That’s your problem, Char. You’re friends with all these boys . . .”
I put down my brush. “Stop telling me what my problem is all the time. And besides, Fabian and I are more than friends.”
“Oh yeah? Says who?”
“It just feels like more than friends,” I rush. “I don’t care what you think. When we look at each other, I just know. And I like that we’re moving slowly. It’s more romantic.”
Darby makes a disgusted noise from deep in her throat.
“We’re in the band together,” I excuse. “It makes sense that he’s being a little cautious. How would it be if we broke up?” Though really, I hope this doesn’t prevent our hooking up for too much longer.
Darby raps her knuckles on my forehead. “How would it be if you even got together first?”
I swat her away.
“It will be great,” I tell her. “I know it’s going to be just great.”
Chapter Twelve
The week before the dance is both vomitously exciting and vomitously nerve-racking.
Monday after school, every single car in both the upper and lower lots has got a flyer tucked under its windshield, advertising the Halloween dance. The name of the DJ is bigger than ours, but we’re still on there, making everything incredibly real.
At rehearsal that afternoon, we spend almost half an hour buzzing about the publicity, but once we start practicing, we nail every single song. We decide on the final lineup, then go through it, serious.
The whole time, even when I’m not singing, there’s a thread between Fabian and me—flowing through the music and binding us together. It feels so strong, I wonder if the other guys can see it. They definitely seem affected by some kind of excited magic. By the end of the first run-through, Eli is high-fiving Oliver and Abe, who are both arm-punching each other with pride. Fabian and Eli squeeze each other in a hug, and Abe does some kind of robot move that ends in a salute to me. We go through the set again, twice. At the end of practice, I leap up and hug all of them around the neck. But Fabian gets—and gives—the biggest hug of all.
Wednesday at lunch, I’m walking out to Oliver’s car to hang with the guys when Lish and her friends drive past in a stupid hulking SUV. I see Bronwyn in the back, wearing these giant sunglasses that are identical to the ones Lish has on in the passenger’s seat. I don’t know if Lish sees me. I don’t know if she cares. And I don’t know if I care. I also don’t know, climbing up to take a seat on the hood of Oliver’s car, whether it’s cool or weird that she doesn’t know I’m really in Sad Jackal now and not just managing. She’ll find out at the dance on Friday, I suppose. My stomach twists, unsure what she’ll think. And why I’m wondering about it at all.
Late Thursday night, right after our last amazing rehearsal, a text shows up from Trip. Good luck 2mrw, it says. And I’m hit by how foreign it is, hearing from Trip, how not hearing from him has become my new normal. I text back Thx, and then wait. Nothing else. I decide, if he’s not going to say any more, then neither am I.
It’s Friday after school when the panic hits me.
“Gretchen, I need the car this afternoon,” I tell her as she drives us home.
“Why?”
“Or take us over to Urban Outfitters. Please. I have, like, nothing to wear tonight.” Darby claps her hands and squeals. “Charlotte makeover, here we come!”
“I was going to go—” Gretchen starts.
I lean forward, grabbing the back of her seat. “Please, Gretchen, I’m begging you. I’ll do all your chores for a week.”
“Two weeks.”
“Two weeks is no fair. But I’ll—” I calculate exactly how much allowance I have stored away. “I’ll get you whatever you want if we go. Under a hundred dollars,” I say fast, because otherwise she’d pull out some two-hundred-dollar jacket she doesn’t even need.
“Fine,” she grudges, though I know she loves shopping.
Twenty minutes later we’re at Urban Outfitters. And of course everything is awful and stupidly expensive.
“Here,
Charlotte.” Darby holds up some flowered thing.
“You must be joking,” I growl at her.
I find some jeans I think might work, but when I try them on they are totally no way. Gretchen already has four different things that look awesome on her, and Darby’s found this killer dress that’s way on sale. I hate myself. I want to cry.
At the register, Darby’s shocked. “You’re not getting anything?”
“Whatever. I’ll just be myself, right?” This is so incredibly depressing.
While I pay for Gretchen’s stuff, I hear them murmuring together behind me. Yeah, I know. Somebody just take me out into a field and shoot me.
Maybe, I think, I can find something in our closet that Jilly didn’t take with her to college. But the idea of wearing Jilly’s rejects onstage is almost worse.
“Come on,” Gretchen says when I hand off her bag. She hooks her arm in mine, and Darby takes the other side.
“Where are we going?”
“You’re gonna be a rock star, sister. We’ve got to make sure you look like one.”
“More importantly, feel like one,” Gretchen adds, squeezing me a little.
They take me to this quiet, old-lady-seeming place in Avondale called Finders Keepers. I’ve never been in here, but Darby is convinced we’re going to find a secret stash of something “truly knockout” that is also still me. The two of them are on a mission, pushing me toward the long-sleeve tops and flanking other racks themselves. When we reconvene, I’m surprised to have found two possibilities: one a dark-green vintage shirt that ties in a big bow at the neck, and the other a long, patchworky top.
Darby takes them out of my hands and places them back, making a face.
“Come with us,” she orders. Both she and Gretchen are carrying huge piles.
It feels like I try on eighty things. Dresses and skirts and layered tops and jackets. Most of the time I think what they’ve chosen is ridiculous, and once I walk out of the dressing room to show them, they agree. But when I put on the sailor pants they found, under a houndstooth minidress, Darby purses her lips and presses her finger to her chin. Gretchen’s brows are drawn together.
“With leggings, you think?” Gretchen says to Darby.
“And boots.”
“Charlotte, take off the pants and go try that jacket on again over the dress. The frayed-up one.”
I am not sure this will look any better than anything else, but I obey.
“Perfect,” Darby says when I come back out. Gretchen is pleased too.
When I’m back in my regular clothes, Gretchen goes through everything and hands Darby the rejects while she takes out the keepers. It’s like I’m hardly there.
“You’ll wear the dress and the jacket, and I’ve got a scarf. Leggings underneath, and your combat boots.”
“I told them I wasn’t wearing a dress.”
Darby looks stricken. “But it’s cute, right? I mean, it’s totally the best one.”
“It is,” I agree. “I didn’t think it would be, but you’re right. It’s just funny, is all. Oliver’s going to croak.”
It takes us almost a half hour to get home in the traffic, which means I don’t have much time to get ready, since we have to be at the school early for sound check. Darby hurries me into the shower and sets up her stuff in my room. While I’m rinsing out my hair, I try not to think about how nervous I feel. Try not to think about Fabian and what will happen between us tonight at the dance, try also not to think about all those people watching me sing, including Trip, there with Lily. It’s weird that he’s not going to be up onstage with us. He should be over at Oliver’s right now, both of them getting ready. But if he were, I probably wouldn’t be singing at all, would still be just a girl in the audience, cheering for her friends.
Once I’m out of the shower, Darby is all over me with her hair dryer, and then the straightening iron and the curling iron, not to mention brushes and blushes and gloss. Because there isn’t time to even argue, I let her do this smoky eye shadow thing on me and consent to some red lipstick. Even this hastily done, it looks pretty good.
“Okay, be awesome,” she says, squeezing me in a hug when Oliver honks out in the driveway. “And for god’s sake, don’t humiliate me.”
She is partly joking, partly serious. I roll my eyes at her and head out the door.
I’ve been to school dances before, but certainly never early. Never when the gym is completely empty and there’s only Mr. Cornell there, plus the school super making sure everything’s unlocked. Picturing it, an hour from now, full of people, my anxiety wells up in me again. I think Oliver, Abe, and Eli are equally nervous, because while I help them bring in their equipment, not one of us says a word.
Fabian breaks the tense feeling in the air when he shows up on his own, doing a little jig step. I go straight to him and grab him in a hug.
“It’s going to be great,” he assures me, patting me on the back.
“You think so?”
“You look awesome,” he says, stepping back. “You should wear dresses more.”
I blush. Oliver said a similar thing (well, all he said was “Niiiiice,” but still). I tell Fabian he looks good, too. We look good. Together. He goes to the stage, and I follow.
The guys fuss around a bit, trying to get the sound right, so I sit on the edge, swinging my legs and watching my knees. I take deep breaths, try to focus on the moment. So much has changed in the last several weeks, it’s almost crazy. I wouldn’t have believed it if someone told me, when school started, that this would be happening. And then the thought of things changing for the better makes me remember something I haven’t thought about in days.
“Going to make a phone call,” I tell the guys, heading outside.
She doesn’t answer, of course, but I leave a message.
“Hey, Mom, I just wanted to say good luck tonight. Big night for both of us, and I can’t wait to tell you how my show goes and to hear all about yours, too. Call me tomorrow, okay? Bye.”
Outside, on my own, the campus dark all around me but the sky still tinted indigo, I force myself to clear my mind of everything. But even after several deep breaths—after the nervousness subsides—I can’t clear away the glow of being with Fabian tonight. The thought of him is the quiet, flickering spark that lights everything up, just before it all explodes.
Ten minutes until doors open, and we’re trying not to be nervous wrecks. We’ve been hanging around the gym, attempting to not look anxious, all of us jerking our heads up whenever the door opens. We watch girls in the Platinum club come in to set up their ticket-taking table, and then load some other folding tables with soft drinks and two huge watercoolers. Finally, when the DJ arrives, Oliver goes up to shake his hand, tell him we’re ready, but the guy hardly gives Oliver a glance. All he says to us is that he’s going to play for about half an hour, forty-five minutes, to warm things up, and then we’re on.
“You guys can hang out in the greenroom if you want,” he says over his shoulder as he hops up the steps to the stage.
We don’t really know where he’s talking about until Mr. Cornell pauses with his wires and points somewhere back behind the curtains. We thank him and scurry—be cool, be cool—into the fluorescent-lit room, crowded with two couches and a scarred coffee table.
“When do you think we should go back out?” Abe asks Oliver. “Ten minutes? Fifteen?”
“I’m staying back here until we play, man.”
I’m surprised. “But dancing’s our favorite part.”
He twists his mouth, jerks his head in a no. “Afterwards, yeah, but—”
“It’s cooler if we’re revealed,” Eli agrees.
I wasn’t planning on just sitting back here with them, only able to imagine people arriving and dancing. I was kind of relying on having something to do, but oh well. At least Eli has a pack of cards.
Eight o’clock, eight thirty, and we can hear more and more people arriving. Eight forty-five, and the DJ’s still playing a s
teady stream of dance hits, trying to get everyone going. It’s almost nine before Mr. Cornell comes back and tells us that the DJ is going to introduce us in about ten minutes. We’ve been concentrating so hard on playing spades—not talking except to call tricks—that when he comes in we all jump about an inch out of our seats.
“Thanks, Mr. Cornell.” Oliver waves like butter wouldn’t melt within an inch of him, even though his knee is thumping up and down.
“Okay, guys,” Abe breathes, worried eyes glancing at all of us.
We nod back. Under the table, I reach over and grab Fabian’s hand, squeeze it. He squeezes—strong and warm—right back.
Eli stretches, takes a flask out of his jacket. “Time for a good luck toast, then.”
“What’s in it?” Abe wants to know.
“Liquid courage.” Eli hands it to him after taking his own big sip.
“To the beginning.” Oliver takes his turn.
Fabian holds the flask up, toasting all of us, takes a swig.
I don’t really drink alcohol, but I don’t want to jinx our good luck, either. And besides, then my lips will be where Fabian’s were.
“You boys are the best,” I say, my eyes lingering on Fabian’s just a moment before I tip the flask back. I nearly cough it all back up, though, when Taryn suddenly pokes her head around the door, waving like crazy.
“Here they are!” she squeals. She pulls Sylvia into the room, plus a tall, wavy-haired guy with giant black glasses. “We had to sneak around the back to get in here,” she whispers, pretending to tiptoe like a spy. “Very tight security. You must be cool.”
“What are you doing back here?” Fabian’s face is full of delight. He moves right past Taryn, who’s already hugging me. Over her shoulder, I watch as he puts his arms around the new guy. And then kisses him. On the lips.
Mr. Cornell is back in the doorway then. He’s not happy to see the extra people, and I’m not sure Eli gets the flask into his back pocket fast enough. But I only sort of vaguely register this, him saying, “You’re just about on.”
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