The Victoria in My Head

by Janelle Milanes

  “I don’t get it,” she says with a shrug.

  The thing is, fifth-grade Annie would have gotten it. The fifth-grade Annie who played Iron Maiden and hated salads and had stained red lips from overdosing on strawberry ice pops.

  “I thought it could be interesting,” I say, taking a giant bite of pizza. It’s so stupid, but all of a sudden I feel seconds away from crying. I shake myself out of it. It’s too early in the month for me to be getting so premenstrual.

  “I didn’t know you wanted to sing,” Annie says.

  “I don’t. I mean, maybe.”

  “If you want to sing, you should totally join the choir. You get to sing and it’ll look good on your college apps.”

  “Or, my life doesn’t have to revolve around what a college admissions committee thinks.”

  “But it does, Vi. Do you know what Harvard applicants are like? They’re superhuman. Not to mention you’re going for a scholarship, which is like—”

  “Okay, Annie,” I cut her off. “You’re right. It was a stupid idea.”

  Annie flicks a blade of grass off her skirt. “I didn’t say stupid. I’m just saying you have a lot going on and I don’t see the point of joining a band on top of it all.”

  “The point is to have fun. Remember fun?”

  “There will be time for fun after Harvard,” she replies, completing her transformation into my mother.

  Right. Because life only gets more fun when you’re an adult who’s saddled with a spouse and kids and a mortgage and car payments.

  I unbutton my shirt collar and take a gulp of air. It’s gone from warm to suffocating out here.

  “Vi?” Annie asks. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” This is my mantra. I’m fine, always. Not ecstatic, not depressed. Just fine.

  Her voice softens. “Hey. I’m sorry. If you think it’d be fun to join the band, you should audition. I’ll help you!”

  “Nah . . . I don’t think I will.”

  “I didn’t mean to freak you out.”

  “It’s not you, it’s . . . I don’t know. Things have been weird.”

  “They’ll get back to normal.”

  Annie means to be reassuring, but she only seals my sense of doom. That’s the point. I’m tired of normal. I want the ups and downs. Normal means not feeling anything. Normal is boring and claustrophobic.

  Annie checks the time on her watch. “We’re going to be late.”

  And life continues to be normal.

  * * *

  Coach Bridget is pure evil, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at her, because she is the human incarnation of Barbie. Blond, with long, shapely legs and liquid blue eyes. There’s a reason why our school has one of the largest male cross-country teams in New York.

  Somehow I’m the fastest girl on the cross-country team, but Coach B named Rachel Levine captain because Rachel’s a senior. I’m happy to let Rachel have the honor. I don’t have the motivation or the pep to lead our team. I’m only here because Mr. Adams, my college counselor, told me to “Think GAAS” when I asked him what colleges wanted.

  “Gas?” I repeated. I thought it was a joke, but his face was pinched tight.

  “G-A-A-S. Colleges want a well-rounded applicant. Someone Giving, Artistic, Athletic, and Smart.”

  I told him sports aren’t really my thing. In gym class I dodge every ball in the vicinity because I’m deathly afraid of one knocking out my teeth. I’ve had nightmares about it, actually. Annie says it represents a fear of growing up. I think it represents an entirely reasonable fear of objects hurtling toward my face.

  “So play a sport without a ball,” Mr. Adams suggested simply. “Cross-country in the fall, track and field in the spring.”

  “You want me to run?” I asked, raising my eyebrows sky high.

  “It’s putting one foot in front of the other, Victoria. That’s all.”

  Like it’s so simple. Like it’s not misery incarnate.

  Mr. Adams fed me a line about how running would give me a personal feeling of accomplishment, and begrudgingly I signed up for the team. I have yet to get that feeling of accomplishment, but from the first practice, Coach B wouldn’t let up.

  “You have the perfect runner’s body,” she gushed. Translation: I’m skinny and flat chested. No bouncing boobs to interfere with my momentum. “You won’t believe your own potential.”

  She was right, in a way—I’m pretty good at running, which is annoying because it sucks to be good at something you hate. It’s the constant monotony of it that gets to me. I have enough monotony in my life.

  Now I’m puffing away on mile four, listening to the steady smack of my sneakers against the pavement. As usual, I play a song in my head to get my mind off the remaining miles to go. I picture myself auditioning for the band from the flyer, and my stomach somersaults at the thought.

  Annie’s right. It makes no sense to audition when I need to focus on getting into Harvard. So instead, I audition in my head, because in my head it’s always the best possible outcome.

  Sometimes it feels like I’m living an alternate life in there. I can do all of the things I want without any of the repercussions. In my head I’m performing live, effortlessly hitting high notes and thrashing around onstage. The Victoria in my head has purple streaks in her hair and a fearless attitude. She doesn’t care about pleasing anyone.

  Of course, the real me would probably have a coronary onstage. I would stand there, motionless, with the spotlight glowing on my frizzy mud-brown hair, because my parents would never let me dye it. (Mom: What would your teachers think? They’d never recommend a girl with purple hair for Harvard.)

  The real Victoria remains a loser. Not lead singer material.

  But if I did audition . . . which is totally out of the question and purely hypothetical . . . what’s the worst that could happen? I’m not a terrible singer. At the very least, I’m on-key. My voice is deep with a hint of chain-smoker rasp even though I’ve never touched a cigarette.

  I shake my head to clear my thoughts. I need to stop humoring myself. I’m not actually doing this.

  “You’re almost there!” Coach B chirps as she rolls up beside me. She’s sitting primly on a red bicycle, her cheeks glowing. If I snapped a picture of her this second, she’d be model-ready for the cover of a fitness magazine. There isn’t a drop of sweat on her, while my cotton T-shirt is soaked through. It’s like she’s trying to give me an inferiority complex.

  “Open up your stride, Victoria! There, that’s it!” She flashes a toothpaste-commercial smile at me as she pedals to join some of the boys running ahead.

  “Why don’t you get off your bike and try it yourself,” I mutter when she’s out of earshot, but it doesn’t sound tough when I’m struggling to get the words out through panted breaths.

  Behind me I hear my teammates talking and laughing, perfectly content to spend an hour of their lives running in circles. My irritation grows with every labored step. Isn’t running supposed to make me feel at peace with the world? Where are those famous endorphins everyone raves about? I flip back to the movie in my mind, and for the last mile I imagine myself crowd surfing, weightless and euphoric, connected to everyone in the room.

  Chapter Four

  “BETRAYED BY BONES”

  —HELLOGOODBYE

  Hi Victoria,

  We all loved your Lady Gaga video (lol) and want to invite you to our auditions next Saturday at the Jackson Tavern on Bleecker. Everyone auditioning is singing “Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppelin. You’re slotted for 12 p.m. Let us know if you can make it!

  Best,

  Levi

  I stare at my laptop screen until it goes black. My smudgy reflection looks back at me, petrified and confused. I tap my finger on the touchpad and reread Levi’s e-mail for the sixth time, my eyes flitting through the words, searching for meaning. Lady Gaga. Auditions. Led Zeppelin. No matter how many times I try to decipher it, none of it makes sense.

  How? How has Levi
Schuster e-mailed me about a video I never sent him? I may actually be losing my mind. Yes, I have a tendency to sleepwalk through my life, but this? E-MAILING LEVI SCHUSTER, an event that has the potential to ruin my life? This I would remember.

  Sure enough, when I check my sent e-mails folder, there’s one from me to Levi. In it, I gush about my love of music, strong work ethic, and interpersonal skills. It doesn’t even sound like me. It sounds like this shrill, uptight . . .

  Wait.

  I lunge toward my blazer and snatch my cell phone from its pocket, knocking against the leg of my desk in the process.

  “Dammit!” I hiss, rubbing the blotchy red spot that begins to form on my knee. With my other hand, I call Annie.

  She picks up on the first ring. “Hi, Vi.”

  “What did you do, Annie?”

  “I’m fine, how are you?” I can picture her, sitting at her kitchen table, cradling her cell between her shoulder and her ear as she does her homework.

  “Annie, I’m not joking. What did you do?”

  “I did you a favor.”

  I sink into my bed, wishing it could devour me whole. I picture the band watching the video, seeing me at eleven years old. Laughing at me. I vaguely recall wearing my hair in a Princess Leia updo, and oh my God, it was definitely two days after I had gotten my Herbst appliance at the orthodontist, the one that gave me a speech impediment for weeks.

  “Why?” I wrap my fingers tightly around the phone, wishing it were Annie’s throat. “Why would you do this?”

  “Because,” she answers, “you were too scared to do it yourself.”

  I try to get my voice to work, but instead I sputter like a faulty car engine.

  “It’s not a big deal, Vi.”

  The more blasé she becomes, the more out of control I feel. That’s how we work, a yin and yang friendship.

  “How did you even get into my e-mail?” I ask.

  “For starters, you haven’t changed your e-mail password in five years. And I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. Victoria123? You’re pretty much begging to get hacked.”

  “You’re kidding me, right? I mean, you have to be.” The words sound ridiculous, even in my state of panic. Annie doesn’t kid. “I know you’re a control freak, but this is . . . this is a violation of privacy!”

  “That’s not true! Out of respect for your privacy, I didn’t even read your e-mails.”

  Her logic is infuriating.

  “I can’t audition for a band, Annie!”

  “Why not?”

  “Which reason do you want first?”

  “Look,” she sighs. “I know I wasn’t fully on board when you showed me the flyer, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought you could pull it off.”

  My rage subsides at her words. If there’s anyone whose musical opinion I trust, it’s Annie, with her perfect pitch and lifetime of orchestral experience. Besides, she wouldn’t lie to me. She’s told exactly one lie in the eight years I’ve known her, when she denied stealing my ice-cream-cone eraser in the third grade. It took her two minutes to break down in tears and confess to the crime.

  As pissed as I am at Annie, there’s a tug of hope in my chest that I can’t ignore. The hope that maybe Levi Schuster or the blue-eyed boy or whoever watches the video will see something in me, beyond the Victoria that sleepwalks through her life.

  And then it hits me: I actually want this. If I got into this band, it would prove that life doesn’t have to be a series of ordinary events. It would mean that the Victoria in my head has the opportunity to exist in real life.

  What if I’m not a completely terrible singer? What if there’s a chance that Annie’s annoying lack of boundaries can change everything?

  “I gotta go, Vi.” Annie interrupts my mental impasse. “I have violin practice.”

  I can’t do it, though. When I think about auditioning, my stomach clenches like I’m staring down at the street from the height of a rooftop. My breath comes out in short, choppy gasps.

  “Wait!” I screech into the phone. Panic floods my veins. “You have to e-mail Levi back and cancel the audition.”

  “If you really want to cancel the audition,” Annie says, “why don’t you e-mail Levi back yourself?”

  I don’t have an answer for her.

  * * *

  On Friday night we take my grandmother, Abi, to Malecon for dinner. I eat beans and rice with smashed plantains while Abi pinches my waist and tells me, in Spanish, that my vegetarianism will kill me.

  Abi is not like the grandmothers I used to hear about growing up—these quiet, mysterious gray-haired women who sit in rocking chairs and knit scarves. Abi is a blaze of color and life. She wears shiny gold jewelry that jangles when she walks, as if to announce her presence, and she dances to Willy Chirino every morning while she cleans her apartment.

  I can barely fight Abi off as she tries to force-feed me croquetas all night. I can only think of my audition next week. I grow more and more convinced that I’ll bomb it. I’ll bomb it so hard that music will forever be ruined for me.

  I remember Mom once had this self-help book that talked about positive visualization. You have to picture what you want to happen and the universe will manifest it for you. So while I eat my food, I create a detailed movie in my head, imagining myself commanding the spotlight and wowing the band members. The blue-eyed boy, who may or may not be Levi Schuster, makes multiple appearances, and my mental movie ends with us shamelessly making out onstage.

  “Ria?” Dad’s voice interrupts my thoughts. I’m plucked offstage and back inside the restaurant.

  “Uh-huh?” I notice my whole family is standing up, pushing away the empty plates and wads of paper napkins cluttering the table.

  “You ready to go?”

  “Um, yeah.” I hastily rise and throw out my trash.

  Abi asks me what I was thinking about, and I shrug.

  “School?” I offer.

  But she knows I’m lying. Abi doesn’t speak English, and my Spanish is severely limited, but we somehow understand each other perfectly well.

  She calls me mijita and tells me not to worry. Then she plants a giant kiss on my cheek, marking me with a bright red lip print. I fleetingly wish Abi could be the one judging me at the audition next week, because Abi thinks everything I do is praiseworthy. I could burp into the microphone and she’d give me a standing ovation.

  I think about the audition the entire walk home, a tense feeling in the pit of my stomach growing so quickly it takes over my limbs, my blood, my bones. By the time I walk into our apartment, my body is hot and cold at the same time, and I’m worried that I’m going to see the remains of Malecon leaving my stomach through my mouth.

  I don’t know why I’ve gotten so worked up over this.

  It’s not too late to cancel. I’m not sure what would be worse, canceling the audition or going through with it and failing. But canceling it would mean more of the same. More cross-country practices, more of Mr. Davis’s pit stains. It would mean being satisfied with normal.

  Chapter Five

  “THE SHADE”

  —METRIC

  I’m physically ill, trying to decide what to do in case I have to puke on the train. There’s nowhere to go, no bathroom to duck into. I can move between the trains and throw up onto the tracks, or I can let it out all over the subway floor. As I contemplate worst-case scenarios, I clutch the railing by my seat. Better yet, I could get off at the next stop, head back north, and forget all about this audition.

  Why am I putting myself through this? The sweaty palms, the shaky stomach . . . each side of my brain engaged in a battle with the other. I should be home in my pajamas, challenging Matty to a round of Super Smash Bros. My treadmill life is okay. All I need to do is keep walking in a straight line. Don’t complicate things.

  I wipe my hands on my miniskirt. It took me an hour to pick this outfit, and I’m still not happy with it. I am so obviously a girl posing as a rock star, wearing her mom
’s red lipstick and purposely ripping a hole in her stockings so they don’t look brand-new (which they are, for two dollars at Rosa Discount Sales).

  I swiped the tube of lipstick off Mom’s dresser. The color is called Ravish Me Red, and she doesn’t wear it for work, only for date nights with Dad. I tried not to think about Dad ravishing her in any way as I carefully spread the color over my lips. The lipstick contrasts sharply with my pale skin, giving me a slightly vampiric appearance. It’s a dramatic departure from the ChapStick I wear on a daily basis. Sometimes when I’m feeling daring, I wear a pale-pink gloss that I bought three years ago for my cousin’s confirmation. I never go for red. It’s much too bold.

  But today calls for bold.

  My hair is twisted into a messy bun. There’s no other way to tame it. I’ve tried gel, but my hair hangs in sticky curls all day. I’ve tried blow-drying it, but my arm aches ten minutes into the process. Since there’s no helping it, I have to conceal as much as I can.

  “This is not Caucasian hair,” a stylist once murmured to me as she fried my waves into submission with a flat iron.

  No shit.

  The subway slows down at Fourteenth Street. I’m one stop away and twenty minutes early. And that’s another thing I’m doing wrong. Shouldn’t lead singers arrive fashionably late? I’m supposed to look like I stumbled out of bed and wandered into the bar as an afterthought. Damn my punctuality.

  I chew on my left pinkie nail before remembering that Annie took a black marker to my nails last night so I’d look more alternative. I quickly check my reflection in the subway mirror to make sure I didn’t stain my lips.

  “This is West Fourth Street,” the conductor announces as the train crawls to a halt.

  This is my stop. The toast I ate for breakfast clogs my intestines as I get up and walk through the sliding doors. My feet slide around in my high-heeled boots and my head feels too light, like it could roll right off my body. One stumble and I’ll topple into the tracks. I walk up the subway steps and the sky opens up to me, gray and drizzly.

  Jackson Tavern sits a block from the subway stop. At the sight of it, my stomach lurches. I swallow, take a few shuddering breaths, and enter the bar.