I shake my head, trying to convince myself that there’s nothing to tell because my mother hasn’t made up her mind. She and Dirk are still together, but she put the brakes on the LA plan. I still feel like it would trash my life to leave Union before my senior year, but what about her life? Is it more important that I get to spend senior year here, or that she gets to get the hell out of Union and be with the man she….
Nope. Can’t say it yet.
“Steph, my hair!” Angelo cries out from across the room where he’s staring at himself in a mirror. His hair looks exactly the way it always does as far as I can tell.
“I can’t be in two places at once, sugar. You want me to finish with Rosie first, or come over there?”
“Her. Finish her first. How she looks is more important,” he says as if reminding himself. I decide to ignore the fact that he’s talking about me in the third person like I’m not five feet away from him.
When I first met Angelo, he used to wear metal-head T-shirts to school every day—without washing them—and his hair was super long and definitely on the greasy side. Things have really changed.
“Ooh, what if we do get signed tonight, and we don’t even get to graduate because we’re on the road. That would be awesome!” Steph says. She finishes lining my eyes, putting the final touches on the black wings that go out way farther than I would ever draw them on myself.
“There’s no way my mother wouldn’t let me graduate high school. Not a chance in hell,” I tell her.
“She might if we’re going to be, like, the next Paramore or something.”
“Steph! Less talkin’, more fixin’, or whatever you’re doin’. Make her hair bigger,” he says, demonstrating by waving his hands around above his head.
“You know I’m sitting right here, right?” I snap.
Angelo, still waving his hands around, looks confused.
“Sugar?” Steph waits until he stops gesturing. “Leave. Rosie. Alone.” He nods obediently and turns back to the mirror to examine his hair again. She caps the black liner, grabs a glitter pen and adds sparkle over the black.
Maybe the sparkle will make up for my playing.
Steph is leaning in so close to me that I can see her pores—or rather, the fact that she doesn’t seem to have any pores. I try not to get caught up in the fact that she’s a perfect Amazonian specimen and is probably going to end up modeling at some point. Average girls with above-average friends have to train themselves not to compare.
The greenroom door opens and the sound guy sticks his head in. “Angelo, you guys are up. Ready?”
Angelo looks at Steph in a panic. Steph quickly finishes with me and runs over to him. She grabs some hairspray he doesn’t need and “fixes” his hair, giving me a wink over his head.
Jamie and my mother follow us to the tiny backstage area where the floor is disturbingly sticky. Mom tells me to break a leg, Jamie gives me a wink and a nod and then suddenly, Angelo and Steph and I are standing in front of an audience. I get no more than a glimpse of them before the spotlight comes on and I can only see 5 feet in front of me, but unlike before, they now look monstrous, like they want to devour us as they shout to each other and gulp drinks. I blink a few times, trying to get used to being blinded by white-hot light. The sound guy intros us over the PA, Angelo counts off and we start. I’m not supposed to say anything to the audience until we’re done—we only have three songs to make an impression.
Right away something’s wrong. I can’t hear myself in the monitors that face me at the front of the stage—all I can hear are Angelo’s bass and my guitar. For some reason, Steph’s percussion is setting my teeth on edge. All my energy goes into trying to stay in tune and I mess up the guitar part more times than I can count. I’m not even moving around like I usually do because dancing just makes it harder to hear what I’m doing. I know I’m being boring—Angelo keeps jutting his chin at me every time I look at him, telling me to move my ass, but I’m basically frozen. In between songs two and three, he yells offstage to the sound guy to turn me up in the monitors—I should have thought of that earlier—but nothing changes, as far as I can tell.
We’re in the middle of our last song when I get lost. Angelo calls out a few chords to get me back on track, and I can see murder in his eyes. Then I realize I can also see the audience—the spotlight is no longer blinding me. I look over my shoulder, confused, and there’s Steph, singing her heart out and shaking it like a pro. Whoever is running the lights took the spotlight off the lead singer and put it on the backup singer because she’s actually performing, unlike the lead singer, who is lost. Steph catches me looking at her and furrows her brow, confused—she has no idea what’s going on. I turn back to my mic.
It’s over in a blur and we’re in the greenroom again before I realize that I forgot to say what I was supposed to say at the end. People from the other bands waiting to go on congratulate us, but I know Angelo wants to wrap his hands around my throat and squeeze. Instead, he grabs my shoulders and says, as calmly as he is physically able to in this situation, “What the fuck, Sweater?”
My mother winces across the room.
“Angelo,” Jamie says.
Angelo looks at Jamie, who tilts his head to indicate my mother standing right next to him. Angelo gets red in the face. “Sorry, Mrs. Z,” he says, and then turns back to me. “But what the F?!”
“I couldn’t hear myself!” I sound totally defensive, but it’s the truth—I couldn’t.
“Well, ya sure as shit could hear me. Why weren’t ya movin’ around? And ya forgot the chords on the bridge—did ya even practice? You promised ya’d practice!”
“I totally practiced!” I lie. “But if I can’t hear myself, I can’t stay in tune. And if I can’t stay in tune, how am I supposed to play and do all that stuff?”
“If ya can’t hear yourself, ya gotta dance around more! Ya gotta cover for that shit!”
“How am I supposed to know that, Angelo? This is my second gig!”
Angelo gets so mad he starts sputtering and flailing. “How—you—if you’d just practiced, Sweater, like I asked ya to—”
Jamie is across the room in an instant. “Easy, man.”
Just as Angelo’s about to get into it with Jamie, the A&R guy comes into the room. He’s tall with perfect messy hair, a suit jacket over a vintage T-shirt and dark denim without a single crease. Angelo is suddenly all smiles.
“Dude, thanks for comin’. Good to see ya, man.”
“Yeah, man, yeah. The sound system sucked, but it always does in these places.” He looks around the room like he’s afraid to touch anything. “I like your songs, man. You’re a good writer. Hey, I’m Dan,” he says to Steph, reaching past me to shake her hand, his eyes traveling the length of her long body. I look at Angelo to see if he noticed, but he’s too beside himself with joy over the guy’s praise to realize what’s happening. “Nice work on the percussion.”
“Thank you,” Steph says, all business. “This is Rosie,” she adds.
Dan doesn’t shake my hand, barely giving me a nod before turning back to Angelo. I’m sick to my stomach—I can write the script for what’s about to happen. I think Angelo can, too.
I feel Jamie’s eyes on me but I couldn’t look at him right now if someone paid me.
“So listen, man, I think we should work on getting you a publishing deal. And we might be able to come up with some money for a demo if you make some changes.”
Angelo blanches. The last time he went through this, he was on the losing end of the deal.
“Changes,” he repeats warily.
Dan turns to me. “Listen, hon, how old are you—15? 16?”
“Seventeen in May,” I answer.
“Yeah, you’re young. You’ll be fine. I can tell you can sing, but you’re not a guitar player. This isn’t the project for you.”
The next band starts on stage, their sound blasting out of the greenroom monitors. Dan looks annoyed as he reaches up and snaps the monitors o
ff.
“Rosie’s my lead singer,” Angelo insists. “We can get another guitar player.”
Dan’s eyes go to Steph, taking her in again from her red hair to her long legs—I feel like I should go tell her mom. His smile is practically predatory as he says, “Florence + The Machine over here is your ticket, man.”
“But…but…” Steph stutters.
“She’s got the look. She sings and plays percussion. She’ll get you more attention than this one—more attention than you can handle.” He’s talking like Angelo owns us and gets to do with us as he pleases.
I want to go down swinging, but based on the performance I gave tonight, this douchey guy is right. Steph is a better performer than I am. She’s gorgeous, and charismatic. People want to look at her.
I got nothin’ in this fight.
I feel Jamie’s hand in mine, his skin warm and familiar, his voice a reminder that I still exist even if Douchey can’t see me. “Let’s go.”
My mother hands my coat to Jamie and tells me she’ll see me at home later, and then Jamie leads me away from all of it. We go out the back door to the parking lot. The February wind hits me full in the face—freezing, harsh—filling my lungs with raw Valentine’s Day air. Jamie puts my coat over my shoulders and opens the car door for me like always.
Then we just drive away.
“The Bad in Each Other,” Metals, Feist
_______________________
Chapter 13
“You okay?”
We’re in Jamie’s car up at the golf course. The moon is so bright that I can see the manicured grass of the green. The last time Jamie and I were up here was Valentine’s Day two years ago, and there was snow everywhere. This time it’s just freezing cold.
I don’t answer his question. I don’t understand what happened tonight, but at the same time, I understand exactly what happened. I sucked, and I got fired. I deserved it. I’m working hard not to cry. I want to take this on the chin like a pro.
My phone rings for the millionth time. I don’t even bother to look—it’s Angelo. I’ve been ignoring his calls.
“You’re not gonna talk to him?” Jamie asks.
“There’s nothing to say. He’s mad at me for something I couldn’t control. I couldn’t hear myself, and if you can’t hear yourself, you’re screwed. It’s like trying to sing along to the radio with earplugs in. It’s not possible.” Everything I’m saying is true, but I’m leaving out one very important fact: I wasn’t prepared. I just wasn’t. And I still don’t understand why.
“It’s not your fault.”
“That’s not what what’s-his-face thinks.”
“Who cares what that asshole thinks,” Jamie scoffs.
“Well, Angelo, for one.”
“You don’t need him. Do your own thing.” Jamie’s voice is flat when he adds, “You’re gonna get to do whatever you want with your life, so forget what that guy said.”
There’s a delay before I feel the sting of his words. It isn’t until he takes the flask out of his glove compartment that I recognize what’s going on.
I look out the window at the tall pine trees, their branches shifting in the winter wind. I think of Vicky, who I still haven’t called back, who has said to me many times what Jamie just said, only nicer.
Jamie changes when he drinks—I learned that the night I showed up at his house and got a glimpse of not-so-pleasant Jamie. I think about what my brother told me, about how people who are mean when they drink shouldn’t drink. Period.
“What do you want? In the future?” I ask.
He’s either thinking about my question or just not answering me. They look pretty much the same on him.
“You can’t solve this for me,” he finally responds.
His hostility is directed at me, like I did something wrong. I’m not in the mood to be treated this way, not after tonight, not after the last few weeks.
“So take the GED again and solve the problem yourself,” I say.
I’m about add that I don’t like failing any more than he does, when he uncaps the flask and drinks. Even though he still has to drive me home. Even though he said he would never put me in danger.
It took me a long time to face my brother’s problem. Am I making the same mistake with Jamie? And if there are two people in my life—two people I love—with addiction issues, does that say something about me?
“Jamie, put that thing away.” He takes his time swallowing, then caps the flask and throws it in the glove compartment, slamming it shut too hard. “You said you wouldn’t drink when you had to drive me somewhere.”
“Yeah, sorry,” he says. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“You drink and drive, don’t you—when I’m not around.”
I’m making him angry, I can feel it.
“I have one drink after my shift,” he answers as if he’s saying no, he doesn’t drink and drive.
“You had more than one that night I was waiting for you at your house.”
“Not since.”
“What about all that wine at the art opening?”
He turns on me. “You’re giving me shit about the art opening?”
There’s an edge to his voice that I don’t like, and I can see that it’s going to be up to me to take things down a notch. I drop the accusatory tone. “I’m just worried about you. When you said before that I’m going to get to do whatever I want with my life, you sounded like you don’t think you will. Failing one stupid test doesn’t define you. Take Camber’s class again, then take the test again. Learning how to take tests is—”
Jamie slams his fist on the steering wheel. “Shut up, Rose!”
I can see our breath in the car. In the silence, there’s only the wind, and a branch tapping my door.
When the shock wears off, I discover that I’m furious. I want to smash my hands on the dashboard and kick and scream and beat the shit out of his car because I know it would hurt him. But I don’t. Instead I say, “Don’t tell me to shut up. Ever.”
After a moment, he turns the heat up.
After another moment, he reaches for my hand.
I pull away. I’ve never felt unsafe around Jamie before, but I do right now. It makes me angry more than scared. I could blame it on the alcohol, but I know that alcohol doesn’t make people do things they don’t want to do, it just gives them permission to do things they’re usually too ashamed or afraid to do.
“You gonna call me a quitter if I don’t take it again?” He’s trying to tease me but I’m not having it, not after everything.
“When I believe in you,” I start, keeping my voice as calm as possible, “you shut me down. Over and over again.” He runs a hand through his hair, and then I see him glance at the glove compartment. “Wow. I literally drive you to drink, huh?”
“Sometimes.” Then he looks at me, and his face softens. “I’m kidding. I’m sorry I said ‘shut up.’ Come here.”
I lean over and let him put his arm around me even though I don’t want to yet. First of all, he’s not apologizing for telling me to stop talking about the GED, he’s just apologizing for saying “shut up.” Second, letting him put his arm around me is a diversion from talking about why thinking of his future makes him want to drink.
I decide it’s time to tell him about LA. Maybe I’ve been wrong about how it will affect him—maybe it’s exactly the escape he needs. LA could help us both out of this failure hole we’re sunk in right now.
“Remember a few weeks ago, the night I was at Dirk’s when the thing with the video happened?” I take a deep breath. “He said that he wants to move us out to LA at the end of this year.”
Jamie doesn’t speak or move. I give him plenty of time to say something. He says nothing. I keep going.
“I don’t know what my mother’s going to decide, especially now that she’s seen how being close to Dirk means having her personal life pried open. It would suck to start over for my senior year. But when I really think about it, there’s only one thing
in Union that I can’t live without.”
I expect him to meet me halfway, but again, nothing.
“Would you…like to know what it is?” I ask, turning a little so I can see his face.
He finally looks at me, his expression unreadable. I reach up and clasp his hand where it rests on my shoulder.
“It’s you, Jamie. You’re the only thing in Union I can’t live without. So I’m not going unless you come too.”
He doesn’t say any of the things I’d be saying to him right now if our positions were reversed, no matter how pathetic they’d seem. Disappointment crashes over me. Did I really think he would beg me to stay? Tell me that he can’t live without me? That he’s madly in love with me?
If so, I was out of my mind. Jamie’s not a guy who expresses himself like that.
But for a moment, I see the gold flare in his eyes, I see him thinking about picking up and driving across the country, starting over in a big city where people don’t know him as the guy who dropped out of high school just as he was about to graduate. My heart catches in my throat.
Then the light of possibility goes out.
After a minute, he kisses my forehead, his lips lingering there as he says, “It’s cool that you want me to go.”
I try to keep it light, laughing a little though I’m struggling to get my words out. “What I just heard was, ‘Good luck in LA, Rose—nice knowing you.’”
“You know I don’t have a say in this.”
“You totally do. I’m not going unless you—”
“Rose—”
“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
He just shakes his head like he does whenever he thinks I’m talking crazy. I exhale in frustration as he pulls me into a hug. “I’m not saying no,” he says.
But he’s not saying yes either.
When he starts kissing my neck, I’m too tired of talking to accuse him of distracting me. Jamie has always known exactly how to kiss me to get me off topic, and even once I figured that out, the tactic kept working.
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