Cheers, a wave of applause as the MC handed over the mic to the other woman. “Hi!” she said, moving to center stage and laughing as the crowd erupted again. Jules let out a yell, too; she couldn’t stop herself.
When the noise died down a little she spoke again. “I’m Astrid Parker”—more yells—“and on behalf of all of Glory Alabama, I want to say how impressed we are with the talent we’ve seen and how glad we are that we decided to do this. You have blown us away and we’re so stoked to know that Golden Grove is still producing amazing musicians. So—”
“Get to the point,” Dia’s whisper came, and Jules shook her head. She was both nervous and not, because if they lost, nothing would change, except everything that they had changed for themselves already.
But if they won—
“I can’t take it,” Jules said, and her shoulders bumped up against Dia on one side, Hanna on the other. “This is too much.”
She rose up on her toes, and the crowd was getting loud again, impatient, hungry. “Okay, okay,” Astrid said, laughing, and the rest of Glory Alabama joined her onstage, waving at the audience. “We’ll put you out of your misery.”
Dia reached for her hand, and Jules reached for Hanna, and the three of them took the same breath.
And Jules looked at her friends, new from old, and the girl she had fallen in love with, and the world around them that she had longed so hard to know again, and she exhaled.
Epilogue
It’s sunny when Dia gets out of class.
She slips her biology textbook into her bag and makes her way across the courtyard, over to the parking lot. There’s a party she’s invited to tonight, but Dia has gone to exactly two parties in the entire first year of college, and both of them were a bust. Besides, she has other places to be, better things to do.
Jules is already there, leaning against the driver side of the dark-red Jetta that she calls her baby. “What took you so long?” she says, holding her hands out. “We’re on a tight schedule.”
“It was my last final,” Dia says. “What was I supposed to do, get up and leave?”
Jules opens the car. “Get in,” she says. “Come on!”
They drive across town, Jhené Aiko playing out of the slightly crackly car speakers. Dia rolls the window down and lets her hand float in the wind as they pass through the Nice Side of Town. She checks her phone: eta? also do you want the red cups or blue? the first message says, and the second: also the doctor took my cast off finally so want to come watch me ride tomorrow?
“Jesus Christ,” Dia says under her breath. He’s trying to irritate her on purpose, she knows, but he’s so very good at it.
It’s okay. She’s spent almost a year with him. He gets hurt, he gets better. She helps him change bandages or clean cuts, sees the way his body heals. And she doesn’t get those bad dreams anymore.
“Jesse?” Jules swings a left.
“He wants to know, do we want red cups or blue?”
“Red,” Jules says. “Definitely.”
Dia replies to him and then puts her phone away, propping her feet up on the dash. “So Ciara’s in charge of food, and Jesse’s getting the other stuff, and Hanna’s setting up at their place already. What else?”
“Once we get the cake, we’re set,” Jules says.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“What?”
“My child?”
“Oh, shit.” Jules makes it through a yellow light and glances at Dia. “Okay, I did not forget, it momentarily slipped my mind.”
Dia laughs. “Relax,” she says. “Let’s go get her.”
At day care Lex comes running out, her hair bouncing off her shoulders. “Hi, Mommy!”
“Hi, Lala!” Dia holds her hand out for her daughter to take. “Ready for the party?”
“Is there gonna be pizza?”
“Oh, yeah,” Dia says as the cross the parking lot. “So much pizza. More pizza than you can imagine.”
“Nuh-uh,” Lex says, her eyes wide. “Really?”
“Really really.” Dia clips her into the car seat and then gets in the front. “All done.”
They go to the Flour Shop to pick up Autumn’s birthday cake, and then they drive over to Hanna and Ciara’s new place—or, not so new; Dia keeps calling it that, even though they moved in eight months ago. Hanna’s out in the yard, setting out blankets and chairs and at the end, a makeshift stage formed from cheap pallets. “Me and Molly worked all day on that,” she says, proud, as Lex jumps on top of it. “Tell me how good I am.”
“Very good,” Jules says. “Okay, so, I’m going to get Autumn and we’ll, like, waste some time while people get here and then I’ll text you when we’re coming back.”
“Waste some time?” Dia says, raising her eyebrows. “Jules, you know you can say the actual words, right? We don’t need euphemisms.”
Jules sticks her middle finger up. “I’m going now.”
Dia helps Hanna with the rest of the setting up, and when Ciara comes back they help her unload the car. Dia gives Lex a giant lollipop to occupy her for a little while.
Jesse turns up with the cups and everything else that was on the list Jules gave him. “Hi,” Dia says. “Can you do me a favor?”
“Another one?” Jesse says. “What?”
She touches her lips. “Kiss me right here.”
“Oh, that I can do,” he says, and he does, and Dia thinks she’ll never get tired of him.
When it gets a little later and everything’s ready, people start arriving. Not tons of people—Autumn’s friends from school, a couple of Ciara’s new bandmates, a select number that Jesse rolls around at the skate park with. It was supposed to be a surprise party, except for when Autumn’s mom told Jules that Autumn hates surprise parties, and so now it’s just Autumn’s birthday.
When Autumn walks in they all yell, “Happy birthday!” and she blushes.
“Thanks,” she says. “This is too much!”
Ciara’s hooked up speakers to pipe music into the yard, and Dia sits on the grass with Lex. Summer break’s about to start and she’s going to be busy busy busy, still working at the bakery, and with the band, and the internship she got at a tiny local indie label, thanks to Astrid Parker.
After they’d won, and then later on, after they’d played the most amazing show of their lives opening up for Glory Alabama, Astrid had given Dia her email. “Frontwoman to frontwoman,” she’d said to a dazed Dia. “If I can help you with anything, let me know. You remind me of me.”
All year long they’ve been emailing, Astrid answering all of Dia’s questions about the business, production, marketing, what it really takes to succeed. She even helped Dia get the internship—because as much as Dia still loves playing, now she’s thinking about what kind of career she might be able to make out of all of it, too.
Once Lex has eaten her body weight in pizza and cake and starts falling asleep, Dia calls her parents.
They meet her out front and her dad takes Lex, puts her in the back of the car. “I won’t be super late,” Dia says to her mom.
“It’s fine,” Nina says. “You officially finished freshman year today, it’s Autumn’s birthday, you have fun! We’ll take care of the baby.”
“She’s not a baby,” Max says, and he kisses Dia on the top of her head. “Listen to your mama. Have fun.”
She blows a kiss as they drive away, and walks back into the yard.
The music gets turned down, and the three of them get up on the makeshift stage, and Dia arranges her dress so she’s not flashing everybody while she plays. “Hi,” Jules says. “So, Autumn wanted us to play for her birthday, and I do what she tells me to, so here we are.” That makes people laugh, and Dia shakes her head, the curls she’s pulled around her face fluttering in the breeze. “We’re going to do some songs you’ll hear on our new EP, if you feel like getting it.”
“Come see us next week, too!” Dia says, fishing a pick from her pocket. “You won’t regret it.”
Hanna cracks her fingers, sitting behind the keyboard they got a few months ago and have been experimenting with ever since. “Ready?”
Jules turns so she can see both of them and nods. “Ready.”
Dia looks at their friends, their family, the hungry hearts waiting for them to begin. Her lips are dry and her fingers ache already, in the best way. She closes her eyes for only a second, watches the lights behind her eyelids strobe, and she can almost smell the sticky heat, the sweat of being onstage.
She opens her eyes. Jesse gives her that smile, the one she thinks will never stop breaking her heart, and Ciara holds up her phone, ready to record them. The lights strung up across the fence, around the two spindly trees Hanna so proudly looks after, light up everything in beauty, and Dia fixes her fingers on the fretboard of her new acoustic, a richer sound than she’s been used to. It’s worth getting used to.
She smiles. “Ready.”
Acknowledgments
Everyone says the second book is the hardest, but for me it’s also the most proud I’ve ever been of anything. I loved writing this book, and I hope it finds a way into people’s hearts.
Thank you to my editor extraordinaire, Elizabeth Lynch. You let me write my messy girls and make them a thousand times better.
Thank you to Suzie Townsend for taking me on and supporting TIWIFL so much.
Thank you to Jennifer Johnson-Blalock for everything.
Thank you to everyone at HarperTeen who made this a real book: Renée Cafiero, Claire Caterer, Bess Braswell, Audrey Diestelkamp, Gina Rizzo, Vanessa Nuttry, and especially Michelle Taormina for such a glorious cover.
Thank you to my all my friends: To my UK babes for all the whatsapp procrastination and deep dives on Kristina’s balcony. Thanks especially to Ali Standish and Carlie Sorosiak. To everyone in AMM for several thousand hours of slack chats and making me laugh a ridiculous amount. To all my friends in the 17s, especially Laurie Devore and Kiersi Burkhart. To Rachel Lynn Solomon—thank you for letting me cry in your direction so much. Thank you to Courtney Summers for all your support. And to everyone I couldn’t possibly name who has shared their excitement for this book somewhere—it honestly keeps me going.
Thank you to my sensitivity readers, including Elizabeth Roderick, for giving your time and expertise to help me make this book the best it could be. Any errors in authenticity are mine and mine alone.
Thank you to Pretty Little Liars for keeping me halfway sane during the winter of 2016 while I wrote and rewrote this book. Mona forever.
Thank you to Christina Aguilera, Sufjan Stevens, Kacey Musgraves, Beyoncé, JoJo, and many, many more for keeping me company for so many years.
Thank you to my family for supporting me always.
Thank you to all the women who’ve picked up a guitar and a mic.
About the Author
Courtesy of Rebecca Barrow
REBECCA BARROW writes stories about girls and all the wonders they can be. A lipstick obsessive with the ability to quote the entirety of Mean Girls, she lives in England, where it rains a considerable amount more than in the fictional worlds of her characters. She collects tattoos, cats, and more books than she could ever possibly read. You can visit her online at www.rebecca-barrow.com.
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Copyright
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
THIS IS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE. Copyright © 2018 by Rebecca Barrow. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Front panel photograph by Pete Thompson / Gallery Stock
Cover design by Michelle Taormina
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Digital Edition NOVEMBER 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-249424-5
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-249423-8
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1819202122CG/LSCH 10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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