by Amy Spalding
Weirdly enough, though, I don’t feel left out, or out of place, or any of what I would have worried about. It’s enough just sitting here, listening to everyone else, chiming in occasionally.
It’s such a great night I don’t even freak out when I let myself into the house and walk in on my mother and Brad making out. (Okay, in my head of course I freak out. In person I pretend to laugh along with them before making a quick escape to my room.) And I feel—well, actually happy as I change into my pajamas and get into bed.
“Hey.” My mother leans into the room. “So sorry. We lost track of time and— You don’t want to hear this. How was the show?”
“Fun,” I say because she definitely does not want to hear a bunch of my thoughts about Stephen Sondheim and musical theatre, so I’ll leave it at that. “How was the event?”
She walks into the room and sits down on the edge of my bed. I think about the billion times I had trouble falling asleep as a kid and wished my mother were there to read me a story or say the right comforting thing. “It wasn’t too boring and no one ordered a drink from me. I’m calling it a victory.”
“What did Brad’s ex-girlfriend wear?” I ask, because I want to know, but then I realize I’ve asked something insanely intrusive and I want to disappear. “I’m sorry, that’s totally none of my business.”
“Oh, please, I brought it up yesterday. Something red and sparkly. She looked beautiful; I looked like me.” She shrugs. “But I don’t mind looking like me.”
I can’t explain why but it makes me so happy she feels like that.
“I’ll let you get some sleep,” she says. “Good night, kid.”
Chapter Eight
Things I know about Reece Malcolm:
21. She has no idea how to dress for anything.
22. She actually is insecure about things, like Brad’s ex-girlfriend, despite all opposing evidence.
Next week we have official notice of auditions on Thursday. You can feel this sense of terror and stress in my choir classes and in the hallways of the Music Building, but for me it’s like everything is finally happening. This is what I live for. A million things about life might scare me but this will never be one of them.
By lunch on Wednesday all anyone is talking about is tomorrow’s auditions. Sai’s not at our table today—it’s a popular table day for him—and so that means I feel a lot like the odd person out, because everyone else has been through this before, specifically at this school. Also Mira just has this magical way of directing conversation around but not including me. It’s fine, because I’m getting used to it, and it’s basically being invisible, which, again, I’m great at.
A foot taps my shin, and I assume it’s a mistake until it happens again, taptap this time. I glance up and Elijah grins at me with a sideways look to Mira like she’s nuts. I don’t mean to but I laugh aloud.
“What?” Mira turns to look at me, then Elijah. “What’s funny?”
“You’re not the comedy police,” Travis says, then goes back to whatever he was saying about him being suited for both leads equally. It’s funny how I can tell we all think he’s crazy for saying that but no one—not even Mira—corrects him.
When the bell rings, I trail everyone inside, but today Elijah does the same. I sort of expect he’ll say something about not worrying too much about Mira. But he doesn’t say anything, just grins at me.
“You got me in trouble,” I say.
“That’s me,” he says. “Trouble-getter.”
“Troublemaker,” I correct.
He laughs. “Both, really.”
We have show choir rehearsal after school that day. A lot of people would obviously rather take a night off to get ready for auditions, but I’m happy to be here. Working to perfect vocals and choreography is probably the best thing we could be doing the day before anyway. Plus I love rehearsal, especially because this is by far the best show choir I’ve ever been in. Not only is everyone a totally high-caliber singer, but Mr. Deans is smart about picking show tunes the whole world hasn’t already sung to death (like we’re currently working on “New Music” from Ragtime, which isn’t super well-known but a really beautiful song) and mixing them up with standards and random stuff, like pop songs from the eighties and nineties.
After rehearsal, even though I’m still not nervous about the imminent auditions, I just kind of want to get out of school and shut myself in my room alone with my sheet music. If I’m totally prepared, I’ll have no reason to get nervous even in the moment. And the moment is what matters most. But someone stops me on my way outside. The good news is that it’s Sai.
“Hey.” He rests his hand on my arm as we walk outside. Too much to hope he’s about to declare his love for me? “How are you doing with your monologue for Acting?” Uh, yes. “I’ve gotta read mine tomorrow and I was gonna see if you wanted to work on it with me. Kinda worried that with auditions and all I won’t focus on it enough otherwise.”
“Um, totally, yeah.” I nod toward the curb in front of the school, where my mother’s BMW is parked. “Like, now? My mom’s here to pick me up.”
“We could go to your house, if that’s okay,” he says. “Mine sucks anyway, since we just moved in and all.”
“Yeah, um, let me ask.” I walk up to the car and open the passenger door. “Hey, so, um, Sai and I were going to work on our monologues for acting class; he said he could come over, is that okay? If not it’s totally fine, I just—”
“Of course it’s fine,” she says. “Hey, Sai.”
“Hey, Ms. Malcolm,” he says. “Can you wait so I can just follow you?” He points across the parking lot, where a blue Audi is parked. “I’m right there.”
“I can handle that,” my mother says. “Devan, go with him in case he gets cut off from me so he won’t be lost.”
Considering we only live five minutes away, I’m pretty sure my mother is just trying to get me alone in a car with Sai. Is that a normal mom thing to do? (Okay, who cares if it’s a normal mom thing to do? It’s an amazing mom thing to do.)
“Your car’s really nice,” I say, because it is, but also because I figure guys who drive cars like this want to hear it.
“It’s blackmail, but it’s fine,” he says as he opens the passenger door for me. I must look kind of shocked at that, so he laughs really quickly—but in this obviously fake tone. “Just kidding.”
I don’t say anything to that, just buckle in as he squeals out of his parking space to pull up behind the BMW. Even if it took weird meddling from my mother, it’s a highlight of my life to be speeding down Ventura Boulevard in a hot boy’s car.
Sai pulls into our driveway. “Your mom seems cool.”
“Sure,” I say. I still haven’t figured out how to talk about her without saying everything. Saying nothing is much safer.
“How was school?” my mother asks as the three of us walk into the house together. As if it’s normal to have Sai along with us.
“Fine,” I say. “Show choir was mostly for the guys today, but it was still fun.”
Sometimes I honestly kind of forget about my classes besides choir and acting when I’m thinking about my day.
“Deans is really good,” Sai says. “Ten times better than my last director.”
“Oh, you’re in the Nation, too?” My mother looks more than a little surprised. Yeah, I want to say, you’re not wrong. He’s way too hot for show choir.
“Yeah, it’s awesome,” he says.
In my head I say, Show choir is many things, but it’s not awesome, but I’m so bad at trying to be snarky or whatever that I stay silent.
“I’ll leave you guys to your monologues,” my mother says. And then she sits down in the living room with her computer, which I guess means I’m supposed to take Sai up to my room. So even though that feels wrong for a million reasons? I totally do.
“Awesome room,” he says right away, of course, because what doesn’t Sai think is awesome? “So ya like it here compared to St. Louis? Or is it rough
with your dad gone?”
“No, I like it,” I say. “I didn’t think I would, but L.A.’s not what I thought it would be like.”
“So you hadn’t been before?” he asks. “Even though your mom lives here?”
“I meant like full-time,” I say, which is only sort of a lie. I don’t want to lie to him but I don’t want him to know the truth, either. So it’s my best compromise.
“Oh, yeah, okay,” he says. “I came here on vacation, sort of, when I was a kid, did the whole Disneyland thing. So I didn’t know what it was gonna be like.”
“Why did you move?” I ask. “I mean, if you don’t mind . . . ”
He shrugs, sitting down on the edge of my bed, tapping his black Vans on the rug. “My parents are getting divorced. Kind of a long story.”
“Sorry, I—”
“No, it’s okay. Yours, too, I guess.”
I shake my head. “No, they were never . . . Anyway. Sorry about your parents.”
“Sorry about your dad,” he says.
“Thanks.” I sit down next to him and page through my Fuddy Meers script to find the monologue I highlighted.
“Were you and your dad close?” he asks, looking very directly at me.
“Totally not,” I say, even though that makes me seem like a terrible person. “Not lately, at least.”
“Yeah, me neither, with mine,” he says. “And now it’s just us. Awesome.”
“That sucks,” I say.
“A lot. Yeah.” He leans forward to take a well-worn The Glass Menagerie script out of his back pocket. “Things good here at least for you? Yeah?”
I nod, because it’s true. I want a lot more than I have: answers, explanations, understanding. But there’s seriously no denying things are better.
“Okay, you wanna go first? Or should I?”
“You can go first.” I pull my feet up and hug my arms around myself while Sai paces the room a couple times before launching into Tom’s monologue about writing poetry on his warehouse shifts. I’ve watched Sai enough in class to know he’s good, but Sai is good. He’s instantly someone else, fully dedicated to the character, like he isn’t in my room with me. It’s hard to do that, to completely let go of who you are, even for only a few minutes. I’m not even completely sure of who I am sometimes and I still find myself hanging on to me when I act. It takes this combination of bravery and openness I just don’t possess.
“So?” he asks when he finishes, shoving the script back into his pocket.
“It’s, like, perfect,” I say, then slightly regret my gushy choice of words. Even though it is. “If you can do it like that tomorrow, you’ll get an A for sure.”
“Man, thanks. You wanna go?”
I would honestly rather stand in front of an auditorium full of strangers than a few inches from Sai in my freaking bedroom, but I try my best to put him out of my mind and focus like I always would. And I guess it’s okay because I get two awesomes and some applause.
“You ready for tomorrow?” he asks, and I guess it’s weird we haven’t brought it up yet.
“As much as I can be, yeah.” I hope I don’t sound over-confident or anything. But I know the talent level in The New City Nation—which at our school is the best of the best—and I guess I feel really pretty good about my chances, even here.
Sai gets up and examines my bookshelf, as my mother leans into the room. “Hey, Ms. Malcolm.”
“Hey, Sai.” She grins at me like we’re sharing a joke. (I assume the joke is that for such a hot guy he’s also a dorky goofball.) “Are you guys hungry? I thought we could have Brad pick up dinner on his way home.”
“Dinner would be awesome,” Sai says. “I’m not intruding or anything?”
“Definitely not. Burgers from In-N-Out all right with you?”
“For sure,” Sai says. Really enthusiastically. I can tell my mother is fighting back laughing at him.
“I’ll place our order with Brad,” she says. “And call you guys down when he’s here.”
Sai thanks her before she leaves the room. “Who’s Brad? Your stepdad?”
“Sort of, yeah, her boyfriend. He lives here and everything.”
“Is it weird?” he asks. “It’s still weird to me my parents don’t live together anymore.”
I shrug. “I knew my stepmom like my entire life. So it doesn’t seem weird. Also Brad’s like the nicest person in the world.”
Brad is home before long, and we settle at the kitchen table with the burgers and fries, even though my mother proclaims it pointless to eat fast food in such a proper manner. (I kind of agree, even though I like the whole sitting-at-the-table-like-a-real-family thing a lot.) Brad asks lots of questions about show choir and school in general, and I mostly stay quiet because Sai rambles on forever.
I mean, in a charming way.
He has to go after we eat, which I figure has something to do with the beeps his phone made while we were nearing the end of the meal. And that’s fine. If I were Nicole and capable of commanding the attention of a hot guy, I’d use my powers, too.
My mother gives me A Look as I help her clean up once Sai is gone. “The boy couldn’t keep his eyes off you all night.”
“You’re totally wrong,” I say.
“Yeah? Trust me, I’m unskilled at many, many things, but I know when one person’s into another. Are you going to believe your years of life experience versus mine? Please.”
I giggle, partially because she’s funny but mostly because it’s nice to hear.
“So you’re aware about birth control and protection and everything, yeah?” my mother asks, totally casually, while wiping off the kitchen table.
“Um, what?” I mean, seriously?
“I don’t think sex is anything anyone needs to treat like this big secret. People have it, big deal. I just want to make sure you know how to keep yourself safe.”
I just stare at her.
“Don’t look at me like that.” She laughs. “Take a gorgeous boy up to your room, I’m going to check in. Trust me, it’s worth being embarrassed in front of me now. My mother never talked to me about it, and I ended up ruining my goddamn life.”
That actually means I ended up ruining her goddamn life.
I have to run out of the room because all at once I need to cry, puke, lay down, punch a wall, kick something, anything at all not to feel that sentence over over over. Not that it works. I do cry, and I do feel a little pukey, and I definitely slug the bathroom wall (it seems sturdiest), which hurts (because it’s sturdiest, I decide, not because I’m a huge wimp who’s never punched anything in her life). But I still feel it. Over and over and over and over.
She doesn’t come after me, and I’m not sure if that’s good or not. Clearly she isn’t going to say what I need to feel better (I didn’t mean you, you weren’t responsible at all for ruining my life, I’m sorry I spent so much time away from you, I’ll spend all my time making it up to you, and you should definitely start calling me Mom), so it’s probably for the best. But the silence is hard, too, and it might be an acknowledgment. Right? I’m crying and punching and feeling pukey because what I feared is absolutely true.
Chapter Nine
Things I know about Reece Malcolm:
23. I ruined her life.
As usual, Brad takes me to school the next morning. He’s quieter than normal. It’s a lot scarier than my mother’s silence, which is at least natural. When someone who normally sounds like the blustery leading man in some indie British romantic comedy goes silent, it’s another story completely.
“Do you, um . . . ” I time it so no matter what he answers, we’ll be pulling up at school the second after he responds. “Think you could pick me up today after auditions?”
“What time?” Brad asks, as if my request isn’t weird at all. Maybe it should comfort me, but all I can think is my mother told him enough that he knows neither one of us will want to be around the other.
“Five,” I say. “Sorry, I know you probably ca
n’t because of your job.”
“I think I can manage,” he says. “Don’t panic if I’m a few minutes late, though.”
“I won’t,” I say as he pulls up to New City. “Thanks, Brad.”
“Certainly,” he says.
I start to open the car door, but I can tell Brad’s about to say something.
“I know she isn’t always the easiest person to talk to,” he says. “But you should try.”
I nod, even if I don’t know if that translates over to me or not. Boyfriends are one thing, long-intentionally-lost daughters are another.
“Have a good day, Devan.”
“You, too,” I mumble, and then feel rude, so I clear my throat. “Thanks for the ride.”
Elijah is walking in as I am, and he holds out a bag of Cheetos to me. “Breakfast of champions?”
“It’s too early for anything that orange,” I say. “But thanks.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing.” He kind of cocks his head at me, making his longish spiky blond hair flip around. “You okay? Rough night?”
I shrug. “I guess. Not really.”
“Bad night, you gotta have a Cheeto.” He shoves the bag at me again, and this time I take a handful. Artificial cheesiness is not necessarily a bad way to start the day. “You need to talk?”
I shake my head, imagine saying it to him or anyone else. Hey, I ruined my mother’s entire life. “Thanks, though.”
“Oh, hey.” He unzips his backpack, takes out a piece of bright orange paper. It matches the Cheetos. “My band is playing a gig next weekend, and you should definitely come. It’s all ages. And I can put you on the list so you won’t have to pay or anything.”
“Thanks, I’ll see if I can go.” I look over the flyer. “Which one’s your band?”