Bookishly Ever After

by Isabel Bandeira

  I looked down and played with the practice cork plugs in my keys. One popped out and went bouncing under Em’s seat, but I didn’t dare move. Em, though, blinked innocently up at Osoba. “I was just asking Phoebe about the counts for our duet. I need to know where I can breathe before we have to hit that high G.”

  Osoba scrutinized me and I tried to look as guiltless as Em. I did not need another hour long after school detention cleaning out the instrument room. “I told her I breathe right, um, before the phrase starts. But I have big lungs.” Another practice plug went sliding down the inside of my flute, probably straight into Em’s purse. My toes were crossed inside my boots.

  She stared at us another second more and then, with an unconvinced frown, went up to her podium. “Okay, again from the top.” She pointed glanced at us. “Your section had better be perfect, or the two of you will be cleaning the loaner tubas this afternoon.”

  “Crap,” Em whispered. But before hitting the first note, she murmured over the top of her mouthpiece. “And don’t look now, but he’s been checking you out this whole time.”

  I couldn’t help it. I tilted my head at an unnatural angle so I could see the clarinet section. Hazel eyes met mine. My throat clenched and my fingers slipped on the keys. I quickly turned back to my stand and just tried to focus on the music. I didn’t like him. And watching him watch me was not worth wiping up rotten tuba spit. Still, it took every bit of willpower to keep from checking if those eyes were still looking my way.

  13

  “I broke up with Wilhelm.” Em declared, dropping Alec’s box of Copic markers on the table like it was the exclamation point on her words.

  “You might want to go back and try telling him that a little more slowly, because I don’t think he knows,” Alec said, failing at hiding his smile.

  “See, that’s the whole reason we had to break up. Miscommunication.”

  “You do talk really fast sometimes,” I pointed out.

  She shot me a LOOK. “It was really nice while it lasted, but it’s for the best. He’s going back to Germany at the end of the year and I’d be left behind, brokenhearted…”

  “Overdramatically brokenhearted,” Alec added, his smile morphing into a grin.

  “Very overdramatically.” I mirrored Alec’s grin and went back to flipping through the sketches he’d handed to me. It was the second time Em had “broken up” with Wilhelm this week. She’d be back with him in about an hour. “These are awesome, Alec. It kind of reminds me of Lord of the Rings. Really Tolkien-ish.” I moved my finger from box to box, following the story he’d outlined in neat pencil sketches.

  Alec dropped onto the couch next to me. “You think? It’s not too derivative, though, is it?”

  “No, you’re good. I like the steampunk thing and I really like the story between Liliel and Aladir. It’s epic in a nondepressing way.”

  “Fine, you two, ignore me in my hour of need.”

  Alec grabbed her arm and pulled her down onto the couch next to him. “You’ll be fine.”

  “You two are completely useless when it comes to interpersonal stuff.” She slumped into the sofa like she was annoyed with us, but her lips twitched up ever so slightly. “It’s like you’re permanently stunted when it comes to romantic relationships.”

  I shared an amused look with Alec. “You’re totally right. So,” I reached over Alec and handed her his storyboard, “what do you think of these?”

  “Heartless.” Em took the notebook and lodged her tongue in the side of her cheek as she flipped through it. “That’s a lot of detail. Do you think you’ll be able to animate all this?”

  “I can try. Think of how cool all those gears will look on screen.”

  “Like whenever Liliel extends her parasol-gun?” I bounced excitedly next to him. “This is going to be the best game ever.”

  “Oooh, I like the idea of hiding the steam-powered rocket thrusters in her bustle. I bet you can even have the support hoops and her corset stays light up whenever she powers up.” She handed the notebook back to him and shook her head. “As awesome as it looks, you’re going to be stuck behind a screen for the rest of your life working on this.”

  “Making a cane cannon come to life will definitely be worth it.”

  She arched her brows. “As your unofficial big sister—”

  “By a month,” Alec said under his breath.

  “I think you need to balance your gaming stuff with, you know, real life? And I don’t mean just hanging with the guys or us.”

  Alec snorted and his eyes met mine. I rolled my eyes in sympathy.

  Em didn’t even notice. “Look at how good things are going with Phoebe. I can totally do the same for you…”

  I frowned over at Em. “Things are going good?” I tugged at my turtleneck for the millionth time, trying to breathe and wishing I’d stopped at home to change instead of coming straight to Alec’s house. I’d knit it out of incredibly soft bronze-y merino from the store’s remnant bin, but it always suffocated me. Grace had dug it out of my knits drawer and declared it a perfect fit and color, but apparently, perfect meant a size too small.

  “Yes, like that adorable flirt-fest between the two of you the other day in English? Alec, you know Dev. He’s totally into Feebs, isn’t he?”

  “Whoa.” He put his hand up in the “stop” position. “I’m Switzerland. I’m not getting involved. You already dragged Grace into whatever insane plan you have going on—don’t pull me into it, too.” They stared each other down and he added, “And no, I don’t want you to set me up with anyone, either.”

  “Fine.” She crossed her arms and fake-pouted. “Keep cultivating your reclusive nerd aura in your goal to become the next Howard Hughes.”

  Alec suppressed a smile as he deliberately grabbed a tissue and, in imitation of the famous recluse, used it as a barrier between his hand and her arm as he gave her a shove. “Working on it. The only thing I need now is a couple million dollars.”

  I let out a snort, which set off Em’s stifled laughter. She looked from him to me and shook her head. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with the two of you.”

  “Why do you have to do anything with us?” I asked.

  She leaned into Alec and reached over him to squeeze my arm. “Because you’re both so stinkingly talented and awesome and fun and I want the rest of the world to see that.”

  Alec narrowed his eyes at her. “I’m not sure how getting set up by you does that.”

  “It’s a good first step.” She looked from me to Alec. “Trust me.”

  Alec stuffed the tissue between her arm and his in one last Howard Hughes imitation. “Pass.”

  She twisted her lips and shoved Alec so we were in a big heap on my side of the couch. “Good thing I love you both enough to ignore your wishes and do what’s best for you, anyway. You’re lucky I’m so selfless.”

  Alec and I shared a glance over Em and he rolled his eyes while I held back another laugh.

  I practically danced off the bus. My handknit Maeveinspired shawl wrapped me in cozy, sparkly, merino silk goodness. One of the few seniors who still rode the bus had dropped into the seat opposite me and fawned over it the entire ride. And it was a perfect shawl day—foggy, autumn-y, and breezy. Just like the day Maeve first entered the Otherland.

  Today was one of those days when everything seemed to come together, like I had woken up in a Disney movie. It wasn’t going to last, but I basked in it while I could. And

  I had to fight to keep from skipping down the hall to my locker with my shawl swirling around me, or running while singing out to the hill behind the football field like Belle in Beauty and the Beast.

  Grace stood at her locker and I whacked her with the edge of my shawl as I passed. She looked up and watched me with an unreadable expression as I twirled the combo and opened my locker.

  “Please don’t tell me you’re planning to wear that today.”

  Okay. Not that unreadable. “Yes, I am.” I gripped the locke
r door until the metal cut into my palm. Buh-bye Disney movie mood. “I wore skinny jeans today. I haven’t worn anything comfortable for almost a week. I took an hour this morning to curl my hair. I’m wearing eyeliner, for frak’s sake. Let me have my wool.” My patience had suddenly worn as thin as lace weight mohair.

  Grace blinked, taking a step back. “Moody much? God, if it means that much to you, keep the damn thing. I quit as your stylist.”

  Someone stepped between us and I backed up a bit to see Grace. “Oh, come on. I read Teen Vogue. Knitwear is all over the runways.”

  “Quit. As. Stylist.” Grace said, but then closed her locker and walked over to tug at my shawl. “Fine. One day a week, you get a pass to dress like my grandmom. But Monday, I’m bringing an eyelash curler.” Before I could protest, she waved and headed for her homeroom. “Later.”

  I stuck my tongue out at her, but quickly hid behind my locker door when Kris turned down into the hallway. My face grew warm and I resisted the urge to press it against the cool metal. “Crud, crud, crud,” I said under my breath.

  “Hey Phoebe,” Kris called out as he passed, but I didn’t turn around, hoping he hadn’t seen the tongue thing. Of course. The one morning he actually noticed me was the morning I acted like a two year old.

  As soon as I thought I was safe, I peeked around my locker door to watch him. His hair was getting longish, curling in dark waves above the collar of his jacket just like Aedan’s would. I caught his profile as he turned to walk into his homeroom and caught the hint of a smile as one of his friends said, “Man, I don’t know what happened, but she got hotter.” Right before they disappeared through the door.

  I was not one of those girls who cared about appearances, but maybe Grace was right about the skinny jeans. I clutched my shawl and floated down the hallway to my homeroom.

  14

  Late fall home football games meant huddling in ridiculously cold weather in clumps of woodwinds and brass on the metal bleachers, trying to keep at least slightly warm between fight songs. I was wrapped in enough woolen goodness to make a sheep jealous, from my hand-knit tam to the matching scarf and fingerless gloves, all in Pine Central’s signature red and orange, but my nail beds were still a purplish-blue color. I rubbed at my fingers and went back to knitting.

  Before starting my next row, I glanced up and frowned at the figures on the field. I still knew nothing about football, but if the players were closer to the goal post and one person wasn’t getting jumped on, chances were good we’d have to play.

  “Touchdown!” One of the few of us who actually understood the game yelled, and we all scrambled for our instruments.

  “Crud.” I dropped my knitting in my lap and grabbed my piccolo, bringing it up to my lips and hitting the opening, ear-piercing notes of the Victory March. After a frenzied minute of music, it was back to status quo and I picked up all of the dropped stitches in my shawl. Maneuvering a piccolo and knitting took skill. I had to be more careful next time.

  My fingers fumbled on the needles. “It’s so cold I can barely purl,” I complained.

  “So, stop knitting.” Dev turned around and nudged my boot with the end of his clarinet. “Or is it physically impossible for you not to?”

  I made a face and kicked so he had to move fast to save his clarinet.

  “Physically impossible,” Em said. Her fingers were wrapped around little pocket heat packs, her flute perched precariously on her knees. “You have to admit, at least it’s better than reading. Osoba docked her a bunch of participation points after last week’s game because she missed all the cues.”

  “Wait, you actually lost points? I didn’t think it was possible to lose points in band.”

  I ignored him and squinted my eyes in a sideways look at Em. “The person who once made us all miss our cue has no right to make fun of me for missing a touchdown thingy once in three years of this.” I waved at the field full of guys in tight pants and helmets basically smashing into each other.

  “Like Susan B. Anthony said, `Cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation or social standards can never bring about reform.’ I was trying to bring about reform to this whole stupid making nonmarchers a part of the pep band. You were just reading.”

  “I don’t think Susan B. Anthony meant trying to get out of playing at football games by standing up and pretending to stab yourself with your flute while quoting Shakespeare.”

  A wide smile spread across Em’s face. “I’ll have you know that was my best Macbeth soliloquy. It was worth all the tuba cleaning and the B that marking period.”

  “It was pretty awesome,” Dev said over his shoulder. He glanced at the field and, apparently satisfied that nothing was going to happen any time soon, turned to face us again. “Speaking of theatre, we need to start figuring out costumes for zombie Phantom.”

  “You know, Phoebe’s sister is this amazing costume designer. Maybe she could do it.” Em tugged my sleeve and nodded, like she was agreeing with her own idea. “You should talk Trixie into helping us out.”

  “Right. She’ll definitely drive down from New York and take time from her class projects to make costumes for a high school musical. Don’t you guys have, I don’t know, a whole theatre club full of people to do that? Isn’t that the wardrobe master’s job?”

  Em waved her hand dismissively. “He’s useless. What we need are really amazing costumes to go with our really amazing idea, especially when I get cast as Christine. You know that role needs something that stands out on stage.”

  “Oh, so it’s ‘when’ you get Christine?” Dev asked in an amused tone. “We haven’t even auditioned yet.”

  “C’mon, we all know I’ll be her and you’ll be Phantom. Lexie is dying to get Christine but she can’t sing or act her way out of a B in Theatre so she’ll probably just stick to stage manager to boss everyone around again. And there aren’t any guys half as good as you.”

  “And you’re not a diva, no,” I shot at her, stretching the ‘no’ out for emphasis.

  “If I’m a diva, then I need a majorly diva-worthy costume.”

  I shrugged. “I’ll try, but I really doubt Trixie will be interested in this project.”

  “For once it would be nice if you stopped hoarding your sister.” Em blew into her cupped hands, then rubbed and flexed her fingers. She tossed a dark look at Osoba before turning back to us with a grimace. “I think my fingers are going to fall off.”

  She was right—my metal needles were practically freezing to my fingertips. I gave up on knitting and flipped the convertible mitten tops over my fingers so my fingerless gloves were now full mittens. “I think I have an extra pair of gloves in there,” I said with a nod at my knitting bag.

  “Perfect.” She dragged my bag onto her lap and dug past my yarn in a way that made me cringe before pulling out a pair of grey alpaca fingerless gloves. Instead of dropping my bag by my feet right away, though, her brows knit together and she dug a little deeper. “Phoebe Martins, did you lie to Ms. Osoba? I thought you said you didn’t bring a book. She’ll probably fail you if she finds out.”

  “I didn’t.” I could have sworn I’d taken my ‘in case of an emergency’ book out of my bag.

  “Oh, wait, it’s just a notebook,” Em pulled my teal glitter notebook out of the bag and her expression grew even more confused. “Why do you have a notebook in your knitting bag?”

  My whole body froze as if a giant snowball had fallen on top of me. Please don’t open it, please don’t… “It’s my, um, knitting project notebook. You know, lots of boring pattern instructions...”

  Em ignored my silent pleas and grinned as she slowly opened the cover. “You don’t want me to look at this because it probably has plans for our Chris-Yule-akkah presents in it, huh?”

  “She knits presents for you? Now I’m really feeling left out,” Dev said with a mock hurt look, fake pout and all.

  I couldn’t focus on him or even fake a laugh. “Not knitworthy yet,” I said
absently. Wishing I were telepathic like Evie in the Daydreamer books, I stared at Em and added with a frown, “Can you put that away before Osoba sees it?”

  Em’s expression as she flipped through the notebook jumped from confusion to understanding, a little smile spreading across her lips before she snapped the notebook shut. She handed it to me, eyebrows arched and one side of her lips turned up a little higher than the other, like she was stopping herself from grinning. “You’re right. Just a whole bunch of Ks and Ps and YOs. It’s like you knitters have your own language or something.”

  For someone who refused to learn to knit, she must have paid more attention to my patterns in the past than I’d ever realized. “It’s Y.O. for yarnover,” I corrected her, trying to sound light but also shooting her a “please don’t tell anyone” look as I stuffed my reference notebook back into my bag. When she gave a barely visible nod, I let out my breath in a puff of white cloud and squished my bag between my feet where Dev or Em couldn’t go for it.

  “I thought stage directions were weird, but I should have known your hobbies would be weirder. Dev, you need to help me get this girl into this century.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but was interrupted by someone yelling out, “Third down. Louie-Louie!” In a Pavlovian reaction from almost three full seasons of football, we all quickly grabbed our instruments, I flipped back my mitten tops, and we started rattling out the familiar notes.

  An elbow jabbed me in the side midsong and I looked over at Em, who tilted her chin at Dev and winked without skipping a note.

  I “accidentally” poked her in the arm with the end of my piccolo.

  The moment we got into the band room to prep for the halftime performance, Em grabbed my arm and pulled me into one of the soundproof practice rooms. “Is that notebook what I think it is?”