“But it’s not ready,” Hanna said.
Dia shook her head. “And it’s not right for this.”
Jules looked between the two of them and exhaled. Well, mark this day. Hanna and Dia, agreeing.
This was like a miracle.
Without Jules really noticing, things had changed. At the very least, Dia and Hanna weren’t fighting, only bickering, picking at each other with sharp barbs.
Jules had seen worse from them, much worse.
And now things seemed to be going okay. Better than okay. Good.
She drummed on her knees. “Fine,” Jules said. “‘Pretty Baby’ is technically good and I love it, but ‘Bones’ shows us off more. And the lyrics are on another level.”
Dia nodded once. “Okay, then. ‘Bones.’”
The door that led into Hanna’s house opened then, and Molly poked her head out of it. “Hanna!” she said, sounding breathless. “Mom’s going to be home in twenty minutes.”
“Shit.” Hanna stood, suddenly jittery, shoving her sticks in her back pocket. “Okay, we have to go. Or, you have to go, I mean.”
Dia crossed her arms and stared at Hanna. “Hold on,” she said. “What?”
“My parents don’t exactly know about any of this,” Hanna said. “So—”
“So what?” Jules said. “We used to practice here all the time.”
Hanna screwed up her face. “Yeah, and that was before I went to rehab, and now the rules are different. I can’t do whatever I want anymore, so—”
“So you’re lying to your parents?” Dia said.
Hanna took a too-long pause. “It’s not a lie,” she said eventually. “They just don’t know. Yet.”
“Hanna! Are you kidding me?” Dia shook her head even as she got up. “Of course not. I should have known. Look, I don’t want to tell you how to live your life—”
“Okay,” Hanna said sharply. “So don’t.”
Jules unplugged the cables and lifted her bass over her head. “It’s fine,” she said loudly, to fill the sudden silence between them all. Had she jinxed it by thinking about them getting along? “She knows what she’s doing. Right, Han?”
Hanna pursed her lips. “Right.”
“And Dia is not trying to be overbearing, only watching out for you,” Jules said. “Right?”
“Sure,” Dia said, more as a sigh than anything else.
“Excellent,” Jules said. She flipped the catches on her case closed and gave them both a sharp look. “So, we’ll pick this up tomorrow. Yes?”
Dia did this exaggerated head roll but when she looked at Jules again the annoyance was gone. “Yeah,” she said. “Okay.”
“All right,” Jules said. “Get your stuff and let’s go.”
Hanna grabbed one of the amps and moved it to the back corner, pulling a blue sheet over it. “Tomorrow,” she said, “twelve?”
“Yeah,” Jules said, waiting as Dia got all her stuff. “We’ll be here.”
Dia looked over at Hanna. “So you know,” Dia said, “this is a bad idea. You should really—”
Jules took Dia by the elbow and yanked the door open, waving back at Hanna as she steered Dia outside. “Okay, we’re done. Bye, Hanna!”
Dia pulled herself out of Jules’s grip as the door crashed shut behind them. “Ow! You are, like, annoyingly strong.”
“It’s carting all those frozen peas,” Jules said, flexing. “Truth.”
Dia looked back at the house. “I don’t like this,” she said.
“What?” Jules said. “You think we’re gonna get her in trouble?”
“I think she’s going to get herself in trouble,” Dia said. “Like always.”
“She’s not such a pushover now, is she? She does what she wants.” Jules looked at Dia. “Reminds me of someone.”
“Shut up,” Dia said, but without any meaning. “I don’t lie to people.”
“Oh, really? I don’t think you want to hear what I have to say about your boy Jesse.” Jules swung her case over her shoulder. “Let’s give her a break. Maybe she really does know what she’s doing.” Jules wanted to believe that, but the doubt in her voice was clear.
Still, she turned away from the house and began walking to the bus stop. “We’re not in charge of her,” she called back to Dia. “It’s her life.”
Jules went home, up to her room, where she propped her guitar against the wall and stood in front of her closet, shaking off the feeling of practice and Hanna’s panic.
So Hanna’s parents didn’t know. Hanna obviously had a plan and knew what she was doing.
Or, that was what Jules was choosing to believe.
Instead of that, she tried to focus on what she was going to wear for the movies with Autumn. She stood in front of her small closet for ten minutes, black on black on black looking back out at her. Not like Autumn, with her rainbow of dresses and lip gloss in a thousand shades of Kiss Me. Jules tugged at the hem of a worn-out jersey and wrinkled her nose. But you know what? Autumn saw her all the time at work and if she liked Jules in her Callahan’s apron, she should like her in anything, even band practice clothes.
So instead of changing, Jules pulled her braids up into a high pony, put on more deodorant, and switched her flip-flops for high-tops.
Down in the kitchen she saw the remains of her dad’s best pasta, roses in a tall vase, and two notes on the refrigerator. From Danny: Out w/people, back by 10. And from her parents: Gone for dessert, don’t wait up!
Jules smiled and plucked one of the flowers out of the vase to smell. Sometimes they were so cute it hurt.
She wrote her own note and slipped it under a strawberry magnet: Movies, see you in the morning!
She left and hopped on the bus again, and it didn’t take long to get there, but when Jules walked up to the theater somehow Autumn had beaten her there. “Hey!”
Autumn looked up from her phone and her face broke into this beaming, beautiful smile. “Hi.” Today her dress was orange and off her shoulders, revealing the faintest swimsuit tan line, and her lips were the same purple as her hair.
Jules closed the distance between them. “Hey,” she echoed. “How was your day?”
“Same old,” Autumn said, catching a strand of her hair before it got stuck in her gloss. “Yours? Did you have a good band practice?”
“Yeah, it was good,” Jules said. She kept her face neutral so as not to give away her secret.
The more they practiced, the better she felt about their chances of winning, and that meant she was getting closer and closer to her fantasy of telling Autumn all about it.
Autumn smiled with shiny white teeth. “Could be worse,” she said. “Ready?”
“Ready,” Jules said, and without thinking about it too much, she reached for Autumn’s hand, her own warm fingers wrapping around Autumn’s cool ones.
But only for the briefest of seconds, before Autumn snatched her hand away, leaving Jules holding nothing but air.
Jules looked at her and Autumn was already shaking her head, her mouth this small smile. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to do that. Here, let’s go.”
Autumn held out her hand, but Jules didn’t take it this time. “You didn’t mean to do what?” Jules said, and her voice came out louder than she intended, and her face was hot. “What? You don’t want to hold my hand?”
“No,” Autumn said, looking confused. “I mean, yes. I mean—Jules. I think it was just a reflex.”
A reflex? “Really?” Jules said. “What, so your instinct is to not want to touch me?”
“I didn’t say that.” Now Autumn’s eyebrows drew together and she looked up at Jules like she wasn’t sure what was happening. “I’m not used to it, is all.”
Jules shook her head. “You know, if you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to. I’m not interested in making you be with me if you don’t care.”
“Jules!” Autumn’s mouth dropped open. “When did I say I didn’t care? All that happened was that I took my hand away, and I didn’t eve
n do that on purpose, okay? I want to be with you and I want to hold your hand, so will you let me now or do you want to stand here and fight all night?”
A girl passing them by gave Jules an odd look, and Jules folded her arms across her chest, looking at her feet. “Stand here and fight,” she said to the sidewalk. That’s what she and Delaney would have done.
But Autumn was not Delaney.
“Oh, stop,” Autumn said. “I’m not fighting with you, silly girl. Okay?”
Jules fought a smile and looked up at Autumn. “Okay.”
“You are trouble,” Autumn said. “Let’s go in.”
Neither of them attempted anything this time—they just went into the theater and bought their tickets and food, and then found their seats.
Halfway through the movie, Autumn placed her hand, palm up, on the armrest between them. And Jules took the invitation, laced her fingers through Autumn’s. Her heart moved out of her throat and settled in its rightful place.
But this small voice in the back of her head whispered to her. This is all you’re good for. In the dark. Who’s going to claim you out there, in the real world?
Autumn shifted, leaned her head on Jules’s shoulder, the strawberry of her shampoo so sweet.
This girl, Jules thought, defiant, shutting that voice up. She will.
Dia
The sun beat down on Dia’s shoulders as she sat outside, watching Lex kicking a ball around the yard. She rolled her wrists, hearing the clicking of ligaments, and blew out a sigh between chapped lips. It was a day off from the Flour Shop, but she’d run errands all around town while Lex was at day care, and then gone to Hanna’s for practice. At least her parents were both at work now—it meant that there’d been no one to judge Dia for feeding Lex a Happy Meal for lunch and then planting her in front of cartoons while Dia lay on the couch, staring at the ceiling, asleep with her eyes open. Sometimes the only thing to do was put aside all her worrying about being a Good Mom and settle for being Okay-Ish and Trying Really Hard at It.
Now she watched Lex playing, and when her phone started buzzing on the step beside her, Dia didn’t even raise her head to check the caller, just put it to her ear and answered. “Hello?”
“Dia Valentine,” Jesse’s voice said. “Where the hell are you?”
Dia slipped a hand to the back of her neck and smiled at the concrete. “Home,” she said. “And hi.”
“I didn’t mean now,” Jesse said. “It was more of a figurative where are you, y’know? Because you’ve been completely MIA the last couple weeks, Dee. What’s up with that?”
“I got stuff going on. You know me,” Dia said, watching a lone white cloud scudding across the otherwise unblemished sky.
“Well, forget that and come hang out with me,” he said. “I haven’t seen you in forever, and I’m bored.”
“You only think of me when you’re bored?” Dia said. “Real nice.”
“Not true. I think about you all the time,” Jesse said, and Dia heard it in his voice, how halfway through he realized what he was saying and slowed like he was trying to pull the words back into his mouth. But by then it was too late; they were already out, and they had already wound their way into Dia, catching her breath and her words in her throat.
“We’ll go to the Gardens,” he said now. “You and Alexa and me. What do you think?”
What did she think? Dia pressed one hand to her chest, gazing in Lex’s direction. She thought that he was so good to her, and she missed the way he looked at her, and what better way to spend her afternoon than with this boy and this little girl?
“I think that sounds perfect.”
Dia saw Jesse from the bus, sitting on the wall by the south entrance. They got off and she took her time walking over, because he hadn’t noticed them yet, and when he didn’t know she was looking was when she could really look. He’d cut his hair short again, and his left elbow had a bandage wrapped around it, the white stark against his deep brown skin. For a moment Dia imagined what would happen next if she were his girlfriend: she would walk over and touch his arm, kiss him hello, and he’d smile at her.
What would it be like to kiss Jesse Mackenzie?
That, she’d imagined many, many times before: staring out of the window in school, mindlessly piping cookies at work, with her hand between her legs at night.
“Mama, go,” Lex’s impatient voice said, and Dia shook herself out of it.
“Okay, baby,” she said. “Whatever you say.”
Jesse had seen them now, and he hopped down from the wall, wincing a little as he put pressure on his left arm. He bent down to greet Lex first. “Hey, kiddo,” he said. “Dope hat.”
“Hi,” Lex said. “We going to see the bugs.”
“Well, duh,” Jesse said. “They’re the best thing here.”
He stood and smiled at Dia, heartbreaking as always, those almost-black eyes, his full mouth. “Hi.”
“Hi.” Dia tipped her head to the side. “Let’s walk.”
They followed the long path into the wildflowers; Dia let Lex out of the stroller and she went ahead of them, flitting from flower to flower like a little honeybee. “What happened to your elbow?”
“That? It’s fine,” Jesse said. “A sprain.”
Dia looked sideways at him. A sprain. Like it was nothing at all. “What did you do?”
“It’s nothing, for real,” Jesse said. He put his arm straight up in the air, waving it around. “See? I messed up a landing, got a little bruised. These are the perks of riding.”
Dia sighed. “Sure.”
“It’s one of those things,” he said. “You start riding, you’re going to fall down. It’s worth it, a couple breaks and batterings every once in a while. You still get back on the bike at the end of it all.”
“Hmm.” Dia reached out but stopped short of her fingers grazing his arm. “You scare me, sometimes.” All the time, every second of every day was what she didn’t say.
“It’ll heal,” Jesse said. “You don’t need to worry.”
“I can’t help it,” Dia said, and she looked away, at Lex wandering close. “Not when it comes to you.”
Jesse didn’t say anything, and now Dia was the one wanting to pull the words back out of the air and swallow them down.
Then Jesse said, “When’s Alexa’s birthday?”
“The twenty-second,” she said. They kept walking, Dia making sure Lex was always in their sight. “I wonder about who she’s going to be,” Dia said. “You know? What she’s going to like, what she’s going to want to be.”
“Whatever it is, she’ll be the best,” Jesse said. “With you being her mom? For sure.”
They walked beneath a sickly-sweet arch of flowers. “What did you want to be?” Dia asked. “When you were a kid.”
Jesse blew his cheeks out and began ticking them off on his hands. “First off was astronaut,” he said. “Classic. Then it was soccer player, chef, and I think doctor. Then I landed my first three-sixty whip and I decided I wanted to be a pro rider.” He dropped his hands. “Then I realized I was nowhere near good enough, and so I moved on to architect.”
Dia flexed her fingers on the stroller’s handlebar. “Lex, don’t grab,” she called out. “Gentle, remember?” Lex bounced her head, nodding, and Dia kept an eye on her as she meandered closer.
“Look at her,” Jesse said. “She used to be a tiny thing and now she walks and talks and understands what you say to her. Dee—you’re, like, imparting knowledge to her.”
“With great power,” Dia said, and she almost felt like she could cry. “She’s so amazing.”
“You made her,” Jesse said, and he nudged her shoulder with his. “That’s pretty amazing, too. And one day you’ll have that house with the big yard and all that. Everything you want.”
Dia glanced sideways at him, the most she could bear to look at him right now. “Yeah. We’ll see.” She spotted Lex crouched in the flower beds. “Lala, come this way.”
Jesse cleared his
throat. “You know, I didn’t know if you’d answer when I called,” he said. “Kinda feel like you’ve been avoiding me lately.”
“Avoiding you?” Dia repeated, surprised, and then she thought about it for a second. With practice and work and writing, she had been extra busy. And then there was the fact that Jesse didn’t know about any of it.
“Yeah,” he said, turning so he was walking backward and looking at her. “I go into the Flour Shop, you’re not there. I ask if you wanna hang, you say you’re busy. You know.”
Dia smiled.
Maybe she should tell him now.
Everything was going so well, and the day was nice, and maybe she didn’t need to be so afraid. Maybe she could tell him, and he’d be happy for her, and she’d—
What? Say something she shouldn’t?
Would that be so wrong? What had Hanna said? For all the time we get on this planet, you might as well try being happy for as much of it as you can.
She felt the sun on her shoulders, the music in her head. She felt good, today.
“Okay,” she said. “You want to know the truth?”
Jesse looked at her, uncertainty in his eyes. “Do I?”
She laughed now. “It’s good,” she said. “Me and Jules and Hanna—we entered the Sun City contest. And we got through the first round, so—”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Jesse stopped. “You entered Sun City? You and Jules and Hanna?”
“Yeah.”
“Hanna Adler? Hanna who you don’t talk to?”
“Yes!” Dia said. “Except, I do, now. Talk to her.”
“Okay,” Jesse said. “And that’s where you’ve been, being in a band and entering contests and not telling me about any of it?”
“I guess. . . .”
Jesse took a step back and threw his hands up. “Why didn’t you tell me about any of this? Dee. What, you just give me cookies to shut me up and send me on my merry way without thinking this might be of interest to me? I can’t believe you!”
He sounded so serious and Dia would have fallen for it without the cookie talk and the way he started to laugh at the end. “Shut up,” she said, his laugh infectious. “See, maybe this is why I didn’t tell you, because you always make a big deal of everything.”
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