“Stop.”
“Stop what?” Jules said. “Being honest?”
“You know what I mean,” Autumn said. “I’m asking you a question.”
“Does it matter to me?” Jules said. “I don’t think so. Maybe you’re gay. Maybe you’re bi. Maybe you’re something else entirely. But you’re still you, right?”
Autumn pulled at a purple curl and smiled. “I guess.”
“Okay.” Jules smiled back at her.
“I think I’m a little nervous,” Autumn said quietly. “That’s all. Your first kiss is supposed to be fun, right, not send you spiraling into slight existential crisis. Not that it wasn’t fun,” she added quickly. “Because it was. So much fun.”
Jules smiled slyly. “I try.”
“Shut up.” Autumn moved her hand to Jules’s knee, playing with those fraying threads, and the palm of her hand brushed the bare patch of skin and Jules’s entire body felt warm. “Would it be okay if we—went slow?”
“What kind of slow?” Jules said carefully. The last thing she wanted was to go backward, for this to turn into what she’d had with Delaney—all hidden and cold and more fighting than fun—but she also didn’t want to give up on this the way she had with that. She put her hand on top of Autumn’s and raised her eyebrows again. “Like, would it be okay if I . . . asked you for an official second date?”
“Hmm, let me think. . . .” Autumn’s eyes sparkled. “Yes.”
“And if I wanted to kiss you on that date?”
“That would be a definite yes.”
Jules grinned. “And if I wanted to come see you on your break tomorrow with the best brownie you’ll ever eat in your life?”
“Like I’m going to say no,” Autumn said, and she turned her hand over underneath Jules’s, threaded their fingers together. “You’re good at this.”
“What?”
“Talking.” Autumn scrunched her nose up as a bee buzzed past. “I like that.”
“You can talk to me about anything you want,” Jules said. “I mean it.”
“Wanna walk?” Autumn said, turning to admire the flowers. “I never come here. It’s really pretty.”
Jules reached over and pushed Autumn’s hair behind her ear. “What if I wanted to kiss you now?”
Autumn smiled, half visible to Jules. “We can do that, too.”
“C’mere.” She and Autumn had just had a serious talk about serious things and it hadn’t involved any sniping or snapping or deliberately poking sensitive topics. It had been honest and real and—this was what it was supposed to be like, wasn’t it? This might be a healthy, respectful, real relationship.
She kissed Autumn on the cheek first, where her skin smelled like lemon. Maybe it was magic or maybe it was luck. Either way, she was not giving up.
Dia
They fell into a pattern: practice in Hanna’s garage, go to work, practice again, live their lives for an hour or two here and there. Dia found herself exhausted from staying up late, playing in the living room while Lex slept, then getting up early to get to the bakery. Sometimes her dad passed by her, going out or coming in from his shift, and he’d stop and listen as Dia played him something, nodding or giving a suggestion. “That’s good,” he’d say. “What about the chorus?”
But for Dia, the exhaustion was worth it every time they played, every time she opened her mouth to let their words slip out, when they ended practice aching and sweating. And she looked forward to practice now—for the music, and for the fact that it no longer felt like a battle between her and Hanna. She wasn’t sure, but she thought they were kind of . . . becoming friends? Ish? In these time-pushed circumstances, it was hard for her to hold on to the grudge, to remind herself again and again why she’d cut Hanna out.
Because, more than anything else, this Hanna seemed entirely different to Dia now. Different from both the person she’d been when she was drinking, and even the person she’d been before that. This Hanna was someone who Dia found smart and a little tough and, truthfully, intimidating.
They were at the Golden Music Supply Store, a little over a week out from round two now, walking the aisles. Dia had Lex in the stroller, occupied with her phone, and Jules and Hanna followed behind her, talking over each other.
“I’m saying, we sound better when we slow the end down,” Hanna said. “Otherwise it all gets rushed and all the detail gets lost.”
“We just don’t have it yet,” Jules said.
The store was this kitschy palace of everything and anything you could ever want for your alternative musical needs. Dia ran her fingers over the top of a display case, peering at the mandolins inside. A poster of Glory Alabama hung above the case, their faces decorated with the swirls of their signatures. “Well, we’ll clean it up,” she said, staring up at the four women’s faces. She’d always been amazed that they’d come from the same place as her: sat in the same classrooms, hung out at the same skate park, bought their strings from this very store. “Messy is not acceptable.”
Hanna made a face that Dia ignored, and Jules said, “I still like ‘Pretty Baby’ best.”
Their writing sessions had been good; so far they’d come up with a handful of skeletons of new songs, and now they were trying to pick which two to focus on. They kept going around in circles, though, bickering over the smallest aspects of each one.
Dia kind of liked it. This was what they used to do, dissect their music into tiny pieces and then put those pieces back together again, a broken puzzle. It was fun.
“I’m starving,” Dia said, turning in the direction of the guitars. “Can we get food when we’re done?”
She headed down the narrow aisle, the others following. “I have a question,” Jules said from behind. “And don’t laugh at me.”
“Shoot,” Dia said.
“What are we going to wear?”
Dia stopped in front of a corkboard layered with flyers and old posters. “We’ll wear whatever we normally wear,” Dia said. “Be us. Y’know?” And then she turned back to look at the two of them, both in ratty cutoffs and sneakers and hair pulled back. She looked down at herself: same cutoffs, flip-flops, a tank that had once upon a time been white. “Okay,” she said. “So, maybe not exactly what we always wear.”
“Wait,” Hanna said, looking offended. “What’s wrong with my clothes?”
“You have a stain on your shirt, for one,” Jules said, and Hanna looked down, screwing her face up.
“It’s bleach,” she said. “Fine, maybe we do need to think about this.”
Dia clapped her hands together loud enough that the other people in the store looked over at them. “I’ll add it to the list,” she said, ignoring the groans from both Hanna and Jules at the mention of it. They did the exact same thing every time Dia got out her notebook to write something else down or check something off that list.
“You two are working my last nerve today,” she said, but only half meant it. “Come on. I need strings and picks and then food.”
“All right, I’m going.” Hanna’s white ponytail almost hit Dia in the eye as she stomped ahead. “Hurry up, Jules.”
Jules looked after Hanna, then at Dia. “She has a real attitude these days,” Jules said. “I like it.”
Dia shoved her toward the accessories. “Go!”
After tacos, Jules left for work, and Dia and Hanna were heading home. “Are you getting the seven?”
“Yeah,” Hanna said.
“Me, too.”
They walked to the bus stop in silence. When they got there Hanna scanned the times and Dia perched on the bench, checking that Lex was still sleeping. Out like a light.
She looked up at Hanna, whose nose ring flashed in the sun. “I’ve been meaning to ask,” Dia said. “When did you get that pierced?”
“What?” Hanna said, and then she touched a hand to her nose. “Oh, that. I think it was six months ago or so . . . January?” She sat down next to Dia and stretched out her legs. “I felt like doing something fun.”
“Did it hurt?”
Hanna nodded emphatically. “Like a bitch,” she said, and then she laughed. “But you’ve given birth, so . . .”
Dia smiled, scraping her shoe on the asphalt. “Yeah, that hurt. I’d rather get a needle shoved through my face than do that again.”
Hanna turned a fraction. “Hey. I, um—I meant to say sorry. For bringing Elliot up last week. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Dia felt that reflexive rush of slight nausea she got whenever Elliot’s name came up. Yeah, it had kind of taken her by surprise when Hanna mentioned him, but it shouldn’t have. Dia had always thought Hanna’s tendency to say whatever came into her brain was a side effect, but clearly it was all Hanna.
And it wasn’t like Hanna hadn’t been there, too—hung out with Elliot at parties, laughed at his awful jokes. She’d sat with Dia in the hospital waiting room. Helped pick out her dress for the funeral. She’d known him; she was allowed to talk about him. “You don’t have to apologize,” she said. “He’s not a banned topic. It’s okay.” She focused on a scar on her knee, tripping her fingers along it, and then looked back at Hanna. “It’s weird. Because we weren’t actually together together. It wasn’t like we’d been dating for two years and he was my first love and everybody knew it. I wonder if that’s what we would have become. Or maybe we would have carried on for a couple more months and then ended. I didn’t know him, really know him. Not beyond that infatuation stage.”
“Right,” Hanna said. “I get it.”
“It’s like . . . me and Jesse, we’re not together,” Dia said. “But I know him so much better than I ever knew Elliot. And I have this everlasting link to this boy who’s gone now and sometimes I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that.”
Hanna nodded. “She’s cute, though,” she said with a smile, holding a hand up to shield her eyes. “Your link. Smart, too.”
Dia exhaled. “Yeah, she is.”
“So . . . ,” Hanna said, and Dia knew exactly what was coming next. “What is the deal with you and Jesse?”
Dia rubbed her thumb on that scar. “When we met I said we could only be friends. Because Lex was so little and getting through school was the most important thing, and it felt weird to start going out with somebody when I was still the Girl Who Had the Baby by the Dead Boy. Sensible, right?” She paused. “But now Lex is almost two and I’m doing okay with her. I graduated. I have an okay job. Every reason I gave him is kind of . . . not a reason anymore.”
Hanna raised her eyebrows. “So . . .”
Dia closed her eyes. “I have this fear,” she said, and it was the first time she’d ever said it aloud. “That something terrible’s going to happen to Jesse. And I don’t think I could deal if it happened all over again. The funeral, the way everyone looks at me, the complete empty space where he’s supposed to be in the world. I wasn’t even in love with Elliot and it was awful. I can’t imagine how it would be with Jesse.”
“Because . . . you’re in love with him?” Hanna said. “I thought he was just, like, the hot guy you keep around to flirt with.”
“He’s that, too,” Dia said. “It’s easier that way.”
“It doesn’t sound easier.”
Dia opened her eyes to look at Hanna. “No,” she said. “It doesn’t, does it?”
“I know it was bad,” Hanna said, “when Elliot died. But it was an accident. What are the odds of Jesse dying, too? Really.”
“I don’t know,” Dia said, and she didn’t know why she was telling any of this to Hanna of all people, either. Maybe because Hanna knew, too, what it was like to feel out of control. To feel like there was something bigger than you that you wanted to run from but could not escape.
Or maybe because Hanna was the one who’d borne the brunt of Dia’s fear, taken the worst of it without ever knowing. And, Dia was seeing now, that hadn’t been fair to her. As much as she’d been trying to protect herself, she’d been hurting Hanna, too, and she’d still done it. Hanna—now, and as the girl she’d been—deserved more than that.
Dia breathed out, focused on their conversation. “I know it seems ridiculous. But there’s nothing in the world that can tell me one hundred percent that he’ll be fine.”
Hanna shrugged. “Everybody dies sometime. You and me, we’ll be gone one day. It is what it is.”
“Reassuring,” Dia said, her palms itchy. Hanna was talking about the gray of life that Dia didn’t ever think of. To her, it was all or nothing: you survived or you didn’t. You were here or you weren’t. It could hurt you, or you could cut yourself off before it even tried.
But deep down she knew Hanna’s version was closer to reality. You hurt and you healed and you felt joy and sorrow in the same breath. That was what Alexa taught her every day.
But it was still hard.
Hanna smiled now. “All I’m saying is—for all the time we get on this planet, you might as well try being happy for as much of it as you can.”
“I am happy.”
“You know what I mean.”
Dia pulled on her curls.
Yeah, she knew.
Dia let a silence develop for a minute, easing the stroller back and forth with her foot, the space between her and Hanna comfortable. Who would have thought, only three weeks ago, that this scene would ever unfold?
“It’s going good, don’t you think?” Dia picked at her scraped-off nail polish, a casualty of her guitar. “The music and everything.”
“Yeah,” Hanna said. “Better than I ever thought. You don’t think so?”
“No, I do,” Dia said. “Sometimes I think we might actually do it. Win. Get the money and the prize and be back to where we were. But better,” she added, seeing Hanna’s eyebrows raise. “Different.”
“A lot is different,” Hanna said.
“Right.” Dia stared ahead, at the asphalt wavering in the heat. Say it out loud, Dia. She deserves to hear it. “It’s really good, Hanna. That you’re sober.” She looked at Hanna now. “I mean it.”
Hanna’s smile was slight. “Four hundred and forty-four days.”
“You count every day?”
“It works for me,” Hanna said. “I picked it up in rehab.”
Rehab?
Dia tried not to let the shock show on her face, pretty sure she was failing. “You went to rehab?” she said. “I didn’t know.”
“Why would you?” Hanna said, and shrugged. “Last year. Spring break.”
Dia’s mind began to run, trying to understand what more could have possibly happened to push Hanna into rehab. If everything she’d known Hanna to do hadn’t been enough, if choking on a tube down her throat hadn’t been enough? Maybe she’d done something truly terrifying. Maybe her parents forced her to go.
And then she thought: did it really even matter why? Four hundred and forty-four days was a long time. Hanna was sober, and that was not easy. She deserved less of Dia’s skepticism and a lot more respect.
“Well, I’m glad,” she said. “That it helped. And that you went.” She swallowed hard, and said it before she could change her mind. “I’m sorry, you know. For how it all went down back then. It was messed up, the way I . . . cut you off.”
Hanna looked surprised, like she’d never imagined hearing Dia say those words. “Thank you,” Hanna said, and her smile was slight. “But I messed up, too.”
“We all did,” Dia said. “We were young and stupid.” The next part came out without Dia overthinking it, the most real thing she’d said to Hanna in years. “And I was really scared, Hanna. That you were going to end up doing something to yourself that you couldn’t undo.”
Hanna nodded slowly, her eyebrows pulling together as she looked at Dia. “I know,” she said softly. “Me, too.”
Dia felt the air go out of her and all she could say was, “Okay.” And Hanna seemed to understand, nodding again.
And then they sat in silence, waiting for things Dia couldn’t even name.
Jules
&n
bsp; On Monday they were back in Hanna’s garage, running through one of the loose ideas that they’d turned into a third real song. Jules could feel her fingers starting to harden, old calluses coming back to life, and she loved it. She loved the way it felt to play and shout and sing and dance, to feel like there was more to her life than work and school. She stepped onto a plastic crate, pretending it was a riser and she was playing to a crowd of thousands at, like, Coachella or some equally huge festival that Jules would always say was so cliché but would really kill to be at, and howled the last line, closing her eyes. The reverb faded and Jules opened her eyes to the disappointing view of the garage door. She jumped down and wiped the sweat from her forehead. “I like this one,” she said. “Makes me feel like . . . I need to go to a strip club and then maybe kill a guy.”
“FYI,” Dia said, “if you kill somebody please don’t tell me about it. That way I won’t have to lie on the stand.”
Hanna grabbed her crash cymbal to stop it. “Jules, if you kill someone, I will go on every single murder show and talk about how I knew you when you were a good girl.” She held her hands to her heart. “Honestly, she was the sweetest thing. Troubled, though. I’m not surprised she killed him.”
“Make sure they use good pictures of me,” Jules said. “You know you pretty white girls always get your, like, sorority pictures everywhere, not your mugshots. That’s what I want.”
“We’ll make sure to remember that,” Dia said, lifting her guitar over her head. “But can we get back to work now?” She got out the notebook Jules had begun to hate and sat cross-legged on the cement floor. “We have just over a week. We should decide what we’re going to play.”
“I think we should do ‘Bones,’” Hanna said, playing with the end of her braid as she sat on an amp. “I think it shows our growth.”
“But ‘Pretty Baby’ is really good, too,” Dia said. “Intense, and it has some good technical parts in there.”
“What about the one we just did?” Jules asked. “That’s really good.”
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