by Phoebe North
And then I found out that she’d been cheating on me the whole time. Or that, actually, I was the person she was cheating on her boyfriend with, which felt even shittier, because I didn’t even come first, not chronologically, and not in her heart, either. I should have known something was up when she refused to tell her parents I was anything more than a friend, and when she made a thousand excuses about my parents meeting hers, but I thought that was just a gay thing, not an our-whole-romance-is-a-lie thing. (Later, I found out that the Gemini poem was about him. She sang it to him, using the melody I wrote. Of course Theo was an actual, real-life Gemini. I mean, fuck me, you know?)
So I’m alone again, all the way into the end of tenth grade, but I don’t mind. That summer, my parents send me to rock camp and I don’t make out with anybody and I don’t really mind that, either. I hide inside my music, which comes naturally to me, because I’ve been doing it for years. At least here, I’m not the only one. At that point, I’ve almost entirely forgotten about James, unless someone asks. And at rock camp, nobody knows me as The Girl Whose Boyfriend Disappeared, so no one asks at all. I’m just Vee, master of a thousand string instruments, lover of J.R.R. Tolkien and Brian Wilson. You know. Me.
Then comes eleventh grade. The week before it starts, when I haven’t even unpacked my bag from rock camp, Dad comes into my room without knocking.
“Privacy!” I shout, out of habit, but he talks right over me.
“I have something for you,” he says, and I look up from my phone and see that he’s holding a shoebox between his hands like it’s sacred.
“Why?” I ask, grinning, and he grins back at me, because, like, why not? Nanaji and Naniji are always going on about how spoiled I am because I’m an only child, and maybe they’re right. I scooch so Dad can sit down next to me on the bed.
“Eleventh grade was a special time for me,” he says.
I roll my eyes. Here we go.
“What!” he says. “It was. That was the year I went from a total dork to totally cool.”
“You’re still a dork,” I tell him, but I’m grinning when I say it so he just kind of blushes. I mean, it’s true. My dad is a dork. But a cool dork. The kind of dork who can tell you everything about John Peel, and it sounds boring at first but then you realize that it’s all totally fucking magical because John Peel was one of the most important people in music ever.
“Fair,” he says. “But, you know, that’s when I dropped out of marching band and started a real band. The Plastic Elastics. And that’s—”
“How you met Mom,” I say, finishing the sentence for him. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard the story. How her roommate dragged her to his show because she said my mom didn’t get out enough, how Mom couldn’t stand their music but couldn’t take her eyes off the bassist. The Plastic Elastics only lasted another couple years, but their relationship has lasted fucking forever. It’s epic. To them, at least.
“That’s right,” he says. He leans over and presses a kiss into my temple. He smells like slightly stale coffee, like he always does. “That was the beginning of the whole dang story.”
“Dang,” I say softly, giggling.
It’s Dad’s turn to roll his eyes. He shoves the box into my hands. “Here,” he says, faux-offended. “You’re welcome.”
“Thank you,” I tell him, opening it up. There’s a pair of purple Converse All Stars inside. High-tops. Not the low-tops. They’re perfect. I don’t know how Dad knew they would be perfect—it’s not like I would have asked him for a pair of purple Chucks—but they are.
I’m just kind of looking at them, quiet, because they’re gorgeous and I can’t wait to wear them on the first day of school.
“You hate them?”
“Oh!” I say, and I look at my dad and realize he’s actually kind of nervous about this. “No! They’re great. Really great.”
Dad looks like he’s about to cry, and I die a little bit inside—mostly because I feel like I’m about to cry, too. “Try them on,” he says.
So I do. After they’re all laced up, I stand in front of the mirror on my closet door, turning my feet this way and that way. And they’re perfect. Magic shoes.
“I had a pair just like them,” he says. “In eleventh grade. When the whole dang story began.”
“Purple?” I say in surprise, turning to look at dopey old wonderful Dad, who is still sitting on my unmade bed.
“Yeah, purple,” he says with a laugh. “I’m comfortable with my masculinity.”
He laughs, and I laugh, too, and it’s a magic moment. That’s when I know that eleventh grade is going to be fan-fucking-tastic. The start of the whole dang story.
Two
I WEAR THOSE SNEAKERS FOR the first time on the first day, and even though they’re stiff and the backs rub my heels a little, I like how the laces look—all white and perfect. The weather is gross still and so I wear a pair of shorts—knee length is as short as my mom will let me get away with—and a sloppy purple T-shirt with it. I am the total opposite of eighth-grade Vidya. These days, the only black I wear is my bra, hidden beneath all that cotton.
As I climb onto the bus, a memory of him comes back to me. The first day of ninth grade, how he found me at my locker and pressed a note into my hand, his smile small and secret. He was always the kind of guy who would slip you a note folded into a fortune-teller or an origami frog. It almost didn’t matter what the words inside said. It was more about the fact that he’d written something down with a pen, in his own hand, and then made the paper itself into something beautiful. Like, art. Sure, we texted and all that. But I lost those when my parents confiscated my phone. All those notes folded into tiny animals? They’re still in a shoebox in the back of my closet. I saved every one.
Ugh. Not that it means anything. Because I didn’t really love James, right? What fourteen-year-old understands a thing about love? No, no, we were just dumb kids, and it was over before high school really began. Not even worth thinking about anymore. It hurts, but I push the memory away. Instead, on the bus with my earbuds in, I listen to Jan and Dean, and I think about what’s to come. Maybe this year, I’ll finally join jazz band to make my dad shut up about it, or to find other kids for the band I’ve wanted to start for years, because the girls I’m friends with are all too shy and the boys are too scared to play with a girl who is better than they are, and maybe this year, I’ll finally make honor roll, and maybe this year, I’ll finally fall in love for real.
It seems like everything is a possibility. Lunch with the emo kids, cracking jokes, the boys looking at me like I’m casting some sort of spell over them. The new textbooks in Honors Trig, and the way the spine cracks when I open mine and write my name inside the cover. And then I add my secret symbol in Tengwar after it: vilya esse, for Vidya Emerson, like I always do.
Okay, so, there’s probably something you should know about me. Way back in the day, in fifth and sixth grade and even a little into seventh, I was totally obsessed with The Lord of the Rings. At first it was all about the movies, and I spent my spare time writing fanfic about Orlando Bloom and Viggo Mortensen, but then I discovered Dad’s copies of the books in his office and it kind of spiraled out from there. Like, I begged my parents for a mandolin, and dragged Harper to the ren fest, and every night before bed I’d look up at the poster of Middle Earth that used to hang on the wall and recite Elven poetry. I don’t even know why liked it so much, except it made my world feel more exciting and beautiful and rich, and I guess there’s a part of me that will always want magic to be real, even though I know it isn’t.
And I know it’s not. I’m not like those kids who LARP or boff or whatever. I’m not a witch. And I’ve moved on from my ren fest obsession (mostly). I’m into music these days. Sixties and ’70s underground rock. I saved up my allowance for a used powder-blue Fender Jazzmaster that I play every moment I’m not at school, until I see chord charts in my sleep. I learned to talk about that instead, and about records, which the kids at school th
ink is a little weird but also cool—respectable. It’s not like I’m ashamed, exactly, about loving all that fantasy stuff I used to love, but I learned pretty quickly that most people don’t want to hear about it, or will think you’re weird for talking about it. And I like having friends and being able to get along with everybody. Don’t get me wrong—my close friends were always cool. Harper liked wearing a bodice at the ren fest and eating turkey legs and shouting “Huzzah!” But she made it clear that it was my thing, not hers, and that it always would be. But now, for the most part, I understand that magic belongs in the margins of my notebooks. It’s not something I can share with other kids, like music. It’s just for me.
I guess in retrospect, that’s kind of half of what I liked about James back in the day. Because he was a secret dork, too, when you got down to it, and an even bigger one than me—not just reading fantasy but writing it. And he’d learned to cover it up even better than I had, because you know that the stoner guys he spent his time with, Neal Harriman and all of them, definitely wouldn’t understand. But I did, and he understood me, and it was kind of a relief sometimes to be a pair of secret dorks together.
Anyway, at least I have Madrigals. That always scratches that sparkly-robes-and-castles itch for me even if the rest of my life is pretty ordinary. I’ve been in it for over a year now—Harper, too, because she figured out that the competitions are mostly just an excuse to hook up and party—and it feels like one place that I can actually be myself.
After school, I’m sitting on the risers in the music room we use for Madrigals rehearsal with Harper, paging together through the sheet music and making plans for our first competition in October. She whispers that she’s going to bring vodka. Her brother can get it for us, and she can hide it inside a water bottle. No one will know. And at first, I don’t even notice the girl at the other side of the stands, watching me with owl eyes.
It’s actually Harper who elbows me in the ribs and angles her chin that way. “Vee,” she says, “look who it is.”
As Mrs. Kepler hands out the schedule, I sneak a glance. It’s the eyes that hook me first. I know those eyes. I’ve spent hours staring into eyes just like those. They’re James [Redacted]’s eyes. Only they’re not.
“Annie,” I blurt out, and Harper elbows me again, so I put a hand up over my mouth. But a couple of the guys who are hanging around us glance over.
“Smooth,” Harper says with a snicker. I look down fast at the schedule and pretend that it’s fascinating that we have practice every Tuesday and Thursday, just like we did last year.
“She’s been watching you for like ten minutes,” Harper whispers.
“Shut up,” I say, but when I look up, I see that it’s true. Annie [Redacted] is staring at me and she doesn’t break her gaze even when our eyes lock. It’s weird and I kind of feel like I have to puke. It’s not like I haven’t seen James’s sister around school here and there since he disappeared, but she gave me a wide berth, for the most part, and I gave her one, too. I mean, the last time we spoke it didn’t go so well. She asked where James had gone, as if I had some information and was keeping it from her for . . . what? The world’s worst fucking prank? I told her I didn’t know, and to leave me alone—and she did. It was a relief, after the way her asshole parents had acted toward me. And when I dropped out of chorus last year to join Madrigals, I’d figured it was gonna keep going like that for the rest of high school. Annie living her life. Me living mine. It was for the best.
So why is she staring at me?
The bell for the late bus rings and me and Harper get up to gather our stuff. I’m looking down, and my cheeks are burning red hot. I don’t want to glance over to see if Annie is still watching me or not. I want to pretend that this whole thing isn’t happening.
“She’s still looking at you,” Harper murmurs. “Like she wants to come talk to you and doesn’t know how.”
“Oh God,” I say, cringing. I glance down at my beautiful new Converses with their bright white laces. And notice with a flash of relief that one of them has come undone.
“Just act normal,” I whisper to Harper as I bend over to tie my shoes. So Harper starts talking to me a little too loudly about how she’s not sure if vodka is the right choice, actually, because of how much I puked last time. I laugh, and it’s loud and fake, but it works. When I stand up and glance over toward Annie, she’s not only stopped staring at me—but she’s scurrying from the room, dragging her worn-out backpack behind her.
“Well, that’s a relief,” Harper says. “You okay?”
My best friend reaches out and brushes my hair away from my eyes. I laugh a little, shaky, and nod.
“Sure,” I say.
“So I guess she’s joining Madrigals?”
“I have no idea,” I say. “Let’s get outta here.”
It’s funny, though. When I leave the music room, chatting with Harper about guys and booze and all of our usual, ordinary stuff, I don’t really feel relieved. For some insane reason, I only feel disappointed.
Three
Fuck.
I can’t stop thinking about Annie [Redacted].
Why was she staring at me? What did she want from me? Why was she even coming out for Madrigals? I think I told her she should join up way back when I was in ninth grade—she’d had a perfectly fine voice, and it seemed like it would be her thing—but that was before the world went to shit. When James was still alive, when me and James were still together, when I thought that being nice to my boyfriend’s sister might be the Right Thing to Do. But I thought my last conversation with her sealed it, that she knew better than to bother me, especially after everything her parents had put me through. I’ve been happy to ignore her for the last few years—to ignore the thought of James, of eighth grade in general—and, I thought, she’d been happy to ignore me.
But now, here she was. In Madrigals. Staring at me. With those eyes.
All through the next two days, I think of Annie and nothing else. I think about her when I’m fucking around on my guitar and I think about her when I’m eating dinner. I should be settling into the new year, organizing my notebooks, practicing piano for my lessons, and avoiding Geoff Ryman, who Harper thinks is going to ask me out. But I’m so spacey and out of it that I accidentally let him sit next to me at lunch on Thursday. When he talks at me about Jack Antonoff, I’m hardly listening. Instead, I’m tapping my fork against the Styrofoam plate, thinking about the way it felt to look into Annie [Redacted]’s eyes.
“God, she doesn’t care, Geoff,” Harper says as she pulls a chair up with her foot and squishes herself into an almost-too-small space between us. “Vee, what’s up? Where are you?”
I glance over my shoulder. Annie’s in my lunch. I saw her on the first day in the lunch line, taking too long to pick, holding everything up. But I can’t see her right now. The cafeteria is too crowded. “I’m right here.”
“Sure,” she says, then adds, “Yeah right.”
I sigh. “Fine. I’m just wondering if Annie’s going to be in Madrigals again today.”
“Wait,” Geoff says. “James [Redacted]’s little sister?”
I nod, and it kind of hurts, because everybody here—at our table and in our school and in our whole damned town—knows all the dirt about me and James. How I acted so utterly, hopelessly hooked on him, and what a hot mess I was after his disappearance, for months. At the time I didn’t care, but I hate feeling like this now—like a side plot in his story.
Sure enough, Geoff just lets out a low whistle between his teeth.
“Oh, shut up, Geoff,” Harper says, and I lean my shoulder into hers, thankful as I always am to have her here for me.
“Even if she is in Madrigals,” Harper tells me in a low voice that’s meant just for me and not for Geoff and the rest of them, even though they’ve started their own conversation now, “you don’t need to talk to her.”
“But,” I say slowly, and my stomach kind of squeezes when I say it, “what if I want to ta
lk to her?”
A pause. Harper’s looking at me, frowning. My cheeks are burning up.
“What?” I say.
“I mean,” Harper begins carefully, picking at the wilted iceberg lettuce and shredded carrots that make up her gross school lunch salad, “if you need, like, closure or something, sure.”
“But?” I ask.
“I just wonder,” she says, taking a bite. Tucking it into her cheek. “If you really, truly want to do that to yourself?”
I stare down at my own tray, and the remnants of the grilled cheese there. I don’t know how to answer Harper’s question. Because what if I do?
By last period, I’ve completely convinced myself that letting Annie talk to me about whatever it is that she wants to talk about is totally the right thing to do. Have you ever convinced yourself to do something that is obviously a terrible idea? Shoplift just to prove you can, smoke something even though you know your parents will lose their minds if they ever find out, kiss someone who you know is bad for you? I mean, I tell myself, it’s not like I’m kissing Annie. I’m just going to be nice to her for five minutes and put an end to whatever this is—this weird tension that’s totally wrecking what should be the beginning of an awesome school year.
Madrigals. Warm-up exercises and “Ah, Robin, Gentle Robin.” And Annie standing there across from me and Harper on the risers in a cluster with the rest of the sopranos. I’m pretty sure she’s not friends with any of them from the way that they all turn away from her to talk to each other between songs. And I can’t really blame them. She sticks out like a sore thumb here, but then, she kind of sticks out everywhere. She’s got bangs, and a bowl cut like a Victorian child laborer that’s gotten a little overgrown, just touching her shoulders, and she’s wearing dark blue jeans and a gray T-shirt, and she’s got ordinary freckles and she’s not super short or super tall or super skinny or super fat. But still, there’s something off about Annie. James stood out, too, but it was a different sort of off. A good sort. He’d give you a crooked smile and you suddenly felt like you lived at the center of a whole new solar system. Annie’s the opposite of that. Some people might call it resting bitch face, but even that isn’t quite right. When she’s looking at the sheet music or singing or glancing over at me for a split second like she doesn’t want to lose track of me in this little half-full room of people, she looks pissed. Like she might burn down the school or something. She’s Goth as fuck, without even trying.