by Roan Parrish
In the chorus her voice soared and she visibly relaxed, head bobbing and foot tapping the rhythm.
At the bar, Felix was smiling a fond, proud smile it was hard to look away from. Theo was watching Sofia with excited eyes, head bobbing to her rhythm. Coco had begun listening with raised eyebrows and arms crossed over her chest. Now, though, her lips were parted and she was staring at Sofia intently.
When Sofia hit the final note and gentled it slowly to silence, she opened her eyes and took a step back, as if to give Coco room to judge her.
Felix looked at me and grinned, like we were sharing a secret, and my heart beat faster.
“Damn,” Theo said, finally, breaking the silence. “That was fucking awesome!” He glanced at Coco. “Right?”
Coco nodded.
“Okay, look, if Riven isn’t into you, then you should a hundred percent use my studio to cut an album, jeez,” Theo said.
“Thank you, I really appreciate that,” Sofia said, smiling at him.
Coco was still staring at her, but it was unclear whether she was angry or impressed. Sofia waited patiently for her verdict.
Finally, Coco nodded.
“I’d like you to come in and audition with the band,” she said, and Sofia’s face lit up.
“Yeah?” she said, looking slightly less than confident for the first time since walking in. “That would be amazing!”
“No promises,” Coco said. “But your voice is a good fit for us, and you’ve got great energy. And I can’t say I wouldn’t love to have another woman in the band. Do you write songs?”
“Yes,” Sofia said. “I can come prepared with a few if you want?”
“Yeah, okay,” Coco said. She shook her head and turned to Felix. “You’re fucking lucky your sister really could sing. Don’t pull any shit like this again.” She flicked her fingers at him.
“I’m really sorry, again,” Felix said.
“Okay, okay, I gotta jet,” Coco said. She took Sofia’s contact info and gave Theo another hug. “Nice to meet you,” she called to me as she walked out the door.
A little of the tension went out of the room, and Theo smiled.
“That was seriously awesome,” he told Sofia. “They’d be nuts not to hire you.”
“Damn, thanks,” she said.
“I gotta run too,” Theo said. Then he turned to me. “Call Caleb about Thursday?”
I nodded but stayed behind the bar.
“ ’Kay. It was great to meet you both. I feel like I’ll probably see you again.”
“Hey, Theo?” Felix said. “I wasn’t lying before. About being a huge fan. I didn’t want you to think I just said that because of the audition. I think your music is amazing.”
Theo ducked his head self-consciously and thanked him again.
“Theo,” I said, as he started to walk away, and held up his sunglasses.
“Oh, oops, thanks.” He grinned at me, waved at us all, and loped out the door.
There was a beat of silence after the door closed, then Felix and Sofia shrieked and ran to each other, talking at the same time and clutching at one another, any semblance of cool completely evaporated.
I put the dirty glasses on a tray under the bar and toweled away the rings of condensation they’d left behind. I wiped slow circles over the wood until it shined a blobby reflection of myself back at me, then looked up.
“Hi again,” Sofia said to me. “Thanks for everything.”
I shrugged. I hadn’t done anything.
“Glad it worked out,” I said.
Felix lingered for a moment and I thought he might strike up a conversation again. But all he said was “What do I owe you?” as he fumbled his wallet out.
I waved him away and he murmured thanks.
“It was…nice talking to you a little,” he said finally, shoving his hands in his pockets. I nodded. “Well…bye, then…”
Sofia hooked her arm through his and started talking excitedly before they even hit the door.
“Bye,” I breathed as the door closed behind them, leaving the bar silent and empty in their wake.
Chapter 2
Felix
I was vibrating with energy as we left the bar, a cocktail of anxiety, relief, and exhilaration far more potent than the gin and tonic I’d downed. Sofia had my arm clamped in hers and as she pulled me away from the building, I looked back just once. Through a shaded strip of window I could just see Huey’s large form silhouetted where we’d left him. His hands were braced on the bar top, powerful arms and shoulders tensed, head hung between them.
“Holy shit!” Sofia yelled, dragging me away from thoughts of the mysterious man. “I can’t believe that just happened. I can’t believe we just met Theo Decker and Coco Swift and oh my God I sang for them!”
It rushed over me then that my plan—my swing-for-the-fences, Hail-Mary, other-risky-sports-metaphor-y plan—had actually worked. And it had been big. Bigger than when I’d talked Mr. Musgrave, my little brother Adrian’s algebra teacher, into letting him redo half the semester’s homework with a tutor so he wouldn’t fail—never mind that Sofia and I had been the tutor, and the reason he’d been failing was he couldn’t decide which he hated more: algebra or Mr. Musgrave.
Bigger than talking my way into a job at the diner when I was fifteen and acting like I thought it was perfectly normal to be paid in envelopes of crumpled cash.
Bigger even than crashing in Sofia’s dorm room for her whole freshman year.
We dissolved into the kind of hysterical laughter that happens when things take a sudden turn and you end up somewhere unfathomable. I welcomed the glee that replaced the adrenaline that had coursed through me during the whole charade.
“You sang for them and Coco wants you to audition!”
“I can’t freak out about that until I’m done freaking out about this!”
Sofia grinned at me, a bright smile that revealed the incisor she chipped when she was twelve and I was fourteen and she tripped playing with our little brother Lucas in the park.
“Thanks, bro. You always come through for me.”
The familiar satisfaction of looking out for my family washed over me, and I grinned back. We kept our arms hooked as we headed for the subway, and the midday sun made the pavement glow.
When our train came, we settled into the comfortable silence of the ride. Sofia, still buzzing with excitement, put her earbuds in, and I knew she was probably listening to Riven, as she had been nonstop since we left karaoke night and I told her about the strange, intimidating bartender and the improbable phone call with Theo Decker. I closed my eyes and strained to hear the familiar melodies over the din of the train, shoulder pressed comfortingly against my sister’s.
Sofia was my best friend and my roommate; when we were growing up she was also my co-captain. With three younger siblings and our mom working long hours, it took both of us pitching in to keep the family system running.
I was the oldest and Sofia was a year and a half younger than me. There were a couple of years when it had been just me in charge, but Sof became my partner in all things around the time she turned fourteen. After that, we were in charge. Of putting together dinner when my mom was working; of making sure Adrian, Ramona, and Lucas had their lunches and backpacks and had done their homework; of cleaning up and making sure the kids hadn’t hidden yet another “pet” in their room. (After I found three desiccated frogs in a shoe box under Ramona’s bed, I began checking regularly.)
Though I was interested in learning, school itself was never my thing, so I was always willing to be the one who skipped out on last period to pick up an extra shift at the diner, or miss first period when one of the kids inevitably forgot a necessary piece of their day and needed it brought to them.
But Sofia was s
mart and good at the rigmarole of academics, so college was on her horizon from the time she started high school. She saw it as her way out of New Brunswick and into a new set of opportunities, and she went after it the way she went after everything she wanted: with total confidence and single-minded attention.
College didn’t seem like an option for me since I hadn’t put much effort into my grades in high school, so when I graduated the year before Sof, I took on most of the responsibilities around the house when I wasn’t working at the diner so that she could concentrate more on her senior year and college applications.
It was a long year of getting all the kids up and fed and off to school when my mom worked early, running straight from a shift at the diner to scrape together dinner when she worked late, and making sure their homework was done and their arguments didn’t get bloody. Through it all, Sof had studied for school, studied for the SATs, worked on her applications, and sung in the choir. My mom would get home, exhausted from the double shifts she nearly always worked at the hotel to make up for Sofia quitting her job that year, and smile at me when I handed her a bowl of food. We’d talk while she ate, and then I’d shoo her to bed and clean up the mess of the day.
It wasn’t sustainable, long-term, but for that year Sofia, my mom, and I ran on caffeine, adrenaline, and leftover French fries.
And though I’d been exhausted and stressed, it felt so good to be able to take care of my family. My whole childhood I’d wished I could erase the tightness around my mom’s eyes that came from being tired and worried, and that year I made promises to myself: That someday I’d do even more. Someday I’d be able to make her life easier.
When Sof got into Fordham, I’d been as elated and proud as if it’d been me who got in. I hadn’t realized it until the moment she held the acceptance letter in her hand, but somewhere along the line, I’d begun imagining getting out of New Brunswick too. I didn’t usually let myself dwell on it, because leaving my mom and the kids made my throat feel tight and my heart race. But the notion of what my life would look like five years down the line if I stayed there…it was grim.
What would I be doing? Still working at the diner, living at my mom’s to save money and keep helping out, but never able to really contribute as much as I wanted. My best friend gone, no social life except for a wave at a casual acquaintance from high school when we saw each other in the grocery store. The loneliness of that life was something I staved off with busyness, with work, with escaping into fantasy worlds in my head.
We’d hatched the plan together as we’d hatched so many. I’d move to New York with Sofia when she began her freshman year. I’d stay in her dorm room so I didn’t have to pay rent, and I’d get a job so that we could save money. Even with her financial aid package and work study, living in the city was hella expensive, and I could work full time while she was in school. With Adrian old enough to get a job and start helping out in our absence, and two fewer people for my mom to support, it was the right time to go.
Sure, we hadn’t thought through the details. How could we know about ID swiping to get into the dorms or the way that many people living on top of each other didn’t allow for any secrets? But we’d worked it out. By the end of the first month, we’d developed a near balletic coordination of ID handoffs, Tupperware in the dining halls, cheese platters at lectures, lost-and-found boxes, and the windfalls of garbage days.
By the end of the semester, we’d charmed the people on her hall into being invested in my continued presence there—turned out a shocking number of college students didn’t know how to do their laundry and were very grateful for assistance—and had fallen into the easy rhythm we’d had at home, evolving the envelopes-of-cash system we’d used as kids into an online banking model.
Sofia had gotten a job working in the admissions office at Fordham after she graduated two years ago, which she was holding onto with both hands even as she looked for other things because it gave her access to the school library, gym, and computer labs.
I’d kept the job at Buggy’s Bagels that I’d gotten that first year far longer than I’d ever expected I would, but I’d gotten several raises over the years, got to take home bagels at the end of my shift, and had latte foaming and cream cheese smearing down to a mindless art that left plenty of space to zone out and think about whatever audiobook I was listening to or museum exhibit I wanted to go see.
So, all in all, we did okay. Yeah, it wasn’t enough for saving much money yet, or decent insurance; yeah, we’d be completely wiped out if there was an emergency; yeah, we lived in fear of our rent being raised and having to move. But we did okay. And what more could we really ask for?
* * *
—
“Oh, hey,” Sofia said as we unlocked our front door. “Did Mom leave you a message about Lucas’s play?”
“Yeah. Are we going?”
“Duh! You think I’m gonna miss the chance to give Lucas shit?”
Lucas was fifteen, and his level of teenage self-consciousness and perceived coolness was at an all-time high.
“Maybe he’ll be good,” I said, and we both snorted. Lucas had only auditioned for the play because he had a crush on the stage manager, a girl who, by all accounts, didn’t know he existed.
We kicked our shoes off and flopped onto my bed, which was in the living room of our one-bedroom apartment.
“No way, man. We’ll be lucky if he doesn’t walk off in the middle of the play saying, ‘I’m so over this.’ ”
It was what Lucas had said as a little boy, having overheard Sofia say it. It had been pretty funny when five-year-old Lucas would announce “I’m so over this” and change the channel during a cartoon. Slightly less amusing—to our mother, anyway—had been when ten-year-old Lucas got sent to the principal’s office for standing in the middle of math class and announcing the same thing. It hadn’t lasted past age ten, but as Lucas’s older siblings it was our moral obligation to tease him about it forever.
“Do you think we could convince the stage manager he’s in love with to take him into the lighting booth and start making out with him, and then after a few minutes push him away and say deadass, ‘I’m so over this’?”
“I will pay you one million dollars if you can make that happen,” she said.
“Hey, seems like maybe you’ll actually have the cash to make good on that soon,” I said, bumping her shoulder with mine. Her eyes got big, as if for a moment she’d forgotten what had just happened in the bar.
“Bro,” she said, sitting up, voice serious. “You know that no matter what happens we’re in this together, right? If this Riven thing works out”—she searched for wood to knock, apparently deciding that the particleboard resting on stacks of cinder blocks that made our coffee table counted—“and I actually make any money, it’s still both of ours.”
I nodded, stomach clenching.
“Okay. Sure.”
Sofia flopped back on my bed and when she spoke again, her voice was reverent.
“They were gorgeous, weren’t they?”
I knew she meant Theo and Coco. And they were undeniably gorgeous. But it wasn’t either of them I was thinking about.
Huey wasn’t what you’d call handsome, but he was incredibly hot. Piercing blue eyes that snapped beneath straight, dark eyebrows, strong cheekbones, and a jaw like a superhero out of a fifties comic. His head was neatly shaved—not in a creepy skinhead way, but as if even the unruliness of hair would interrupt his clean control.
He was as immovable as stone, tall and hugely muscled. But he held himself carefully, like he was exquisitely aware of his own strength and what it could do. Even his expression had been carefully controlled. He paid intense attention when I was talking, but he didn’t give any of the typical conversational cues like laughing or smiling or nodding.
And when he’d laid his hand over mine
on the bar, electricity had crackled through me.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “Gorgeous.”
* * *
—
I was desperate to go with Sofia to her Riven audition, but I couldn’t get the day off work, so I rushed home as soon as my shift was over.
“How’d it go, how’d it go?!” I called as soon as I slammed the door, but there was no answer. “Sof?”
I walked through our apartment, but she wasn’t home.
I texted, How’d it go?????
When she didn’t reply, I figured things must’ve run late and she was on the subway. I pulled things from the fridge to start dinner so it would be ready when she got home.
I put my phone in a bowl and pressed play on my audiobook to listen while I cooked. It had all my favorite things—magic and adventure and high school friendships and first kisses—but for some reason I just couldn’t lose myself in it the way I usually did.
I’d started listening to audiobooks in high school. I’d always loved to read, but since I was constantly running from one place to the next or working manual jobs, I never had time to sit down with a book. When I realized I could download books from the library and listen to them as I did other things, it was a revelation. Listening to stories where teenagers like me learned magic or fought epic battles of good and evil or explored underground cities absorbed me completely while I went about my own much less exciting life.
I listened as I walked, on the bus, between classes at school, when I helped clean hotel rooms with my mom, and as I cooked and cleaned around the house. I listened while I did my homework and as I fell asleep.
The narrators’ voices blocked out Adrian’s snores from across the room and the sound of Sofia and Ramona fighting across the hall. They blocked out the sound of my mom and her boyfriends, and of the neighbors’ dogs. They blocked out the condescending and dismissive way people talked to my mom at the hotel and the shit people said to me at school.