“Can I pick something to listen to?”
“What?” Zach said.
I grabbed the volume knob and twisted it down a bit. I didn’t want to be rude, but after fifteen minutes of ear-shattering screams and guitar sounds, I also didn’t want to suffer a punk-rock-induced migraine.
“Oh, sure,” Zach said. “Go crazy.”
“Thanks.” I started clicking through the selection on Zach’s phone, which was chipped and scarred and had to be at least fifty years old. All of his music seemed to be bands with misspelled or otherwise incomprehensible names, not one of which I recognized.
“Ew,” I said out loud. “Butthole Surfers.”
Zach shrugged. “It’s punk.”
I tried again.
“Dead Kennedys.”
“Punk.”
“The Exploited.”
“Punk.”
“Operation Ivy?”
“Ska punk.”
“Nofficks?”
“NOFX,” Zach said, pronouncing it “no ef ex.” “It’s punk.”
I groaned. “Do you have anything I would like?”
Zach shrugged again.
“Nothing by the Young Guns, sorry.”
Young Lungs, I almost said, but then didn’t. The kitchen went silent, except for Bacon’s wheezy breathing.
“How was that show, by the way?” Zach darted a glance at me, but I couldn’t quite tell what he meant. So I just nodded.
“Tess made me dance, but I survived.”
Zach laughed, a single syllable. “Yeah, I’ve heard those indie mosh pits can get brutal. All that standing and swaying.”
“People were dancing,” I said. “I don’t think it was a mosh pit.”
“If you’re not getting kicked in the chest, it’s not a mosh pit. Trust me.”
“Has that ever happened to you?”
“Once.”
“Really?”
“I survived.”
“Thanks for your shirt,” I said suddenly. “I’ll, um, get it back to you soon. And for driving us.”
Zach said nothing at first, then shrugged.
“You’re welcome.” Zach gave the dough another turn, then stopped. “Did Sebastian live up to all his hype?”
“Uh,” I said. “Why do you ask?”
Perfect. That was a totally unsuspicious thing to say.
Zach was very intently scraping the spoon on the side of the bowl. “Because, like . . . didn’t you have a crush on him or something?”
Pause. Silence. Except for the thrashing sound of guitars.
“Or not,” Zach said at last. “Never mind. Sorry.”
“Uh,” I said. “Uh, yes. I mean, yes, it’s a no. I mean, I kind of . . .” Don’t say I don’t know. Don’t say I don’t know. “Nope. Never. Not at all.”
“Okay.” Zach glanced at me for a whole millisecond before going back to cookie dough. “Okay, cool. I mean, not to imply that anything happened, or anything.”
“Yeah.” Had I just lied? Did face-touching and thumb-lip-mushing count as . . . anything? I hadn’t even spoken to Sebastian since the show. But we didn’t normally talk. Well, we did when we were in the same place, but not otherwise. Or did we? Suddenly nothing about any part of human interaction made any sense, at least as it pertained to Sebastian.
Surreptitiously, as Zach hunted for cinnamon, I propped my phone under my Catullus notebook, and, after a meditative breath and some quick mental calculus, opened my Pixstagram inbox.
“I’m not that into the band in particular or anything,” I said. True. “I mean, I barely even know them.” Sort of. “It was Tess’s idea.” Not really. “I’m actually just trying to . . . get into music a little bit. Um, more.” Not at all even remotely true until the moment I said it.
Zach looked away for a split second, and I tapped into my Sent folder, just to make sure it had gone through.
To: sebdel
hows sit going?
“Really?” Zach was back at attention.
“Kind of,” I said. Shoot. Shoot shoot shoot. Hows sit going wasn’t even English. “I mean, yeah. I’m listening to a lot more music these days.”
That part was at least true. Zach nodded at me—or rather, at his phone, which was still in my hands.
“Here. Put on the Flaming Lips. You’ll like it.”
I hid my phone under my notebook, then swiped through Zach’s phone until I found it. Guitar sounds came out of the speakers, but now it sounded less like a jackhammer and more like a rubber band, if that made sense. A spacey-sounding voice started singing about a girl making toast.
It was weird, but not bad.
“Not bad,” I said.
“Yeah?” Zach said.
“But not really punk.”
“Nope.”
“Kind of weird.”
“Yeah,” Zach said again. “They’re like that.”
The song kept going, and Zach kept stirring, and I wondered if the girl who used Vaseline instead of jelly on her toast was a real person. Because if I were her, that would be a pretty embarrassing facet of my personality to have immortalized in—
My phone buzzed.
“Shoot!” I yelped.
“Are you okay?” Zach said.
From: Dad
Sure thing NG. Take 5:17 train n I’ll pick you up from station on way from work. —Dad
“Fine,” I said. Only Dad would sign a text message coming from his own phone. “Just my dad.”
Zach nodded. “Hey, can you do me a favor?”
I shoved my phone away, terrified that he’d seen something. “Sure,” I said, voice about a dozen octaves too high. “Anything.”
Anything except elaborate the nature of my confusing and ever-evolving feelings about Sebastian Delacroix.
“Can you add the pumpkin?”
I stared.
“The what?”
“Pumpkin?” he repeated. “The traditional flavor of Halloween-related baked goods.”
“I know what pumpkin is,” I said. “I just forgot it was almost Halloween.”
Zach shook his head in disappointment and dumped a can of pumpkin purée into the bowl.
“I’ve been busy!” I cried. “I’ve had treasurer duties and French homework and . . .” I faltered. “Stuff. To do.”
Stuff like Pixstagram stalking and listening to “Natalie” obsessively. But whatever.
“You want to do the scooping honors?”
“Do you want me to? What if I make them the wrong size, or something?”
“We have ways of making them the right size.” He handed me a miniature ice cream scoop, and I rolled my eyes.
“Of course.”
Zach grabbed a melon baller and worked in from the opposite side, and in a few minutes we’d filled two sheets. Zach slid them into the oven and clicked a timer shaped like a chicken to the ten-minute mark.
I was about to say something to head off any weird silences from the get-go, but Zach just whistled for Bacon and nodded toward the little set of stairs that led from the kitchen down into the family room, which was on kind of a mezzanine on the way to the basement.
“Lifetime?” Zach said. “While we’re waiting?”
“Sure.”
I followed him downstairs to the room full of plump leather couches and heavy coffee-table books—the very same venue of the I Don’t Know Incident—where Zach proceeded to root around for the remote. I sat on the floor, because I assumed Zach would want the sofa, seeing as it was his house and all, but when the TV was on, he sat next to me.
“Let’s see,” he said. “Heroic suburban mom exacts revenge after her husband’s affair with the town yoga teacher, or heroic suburban mom goes undercover to save her son from the grips of video-game addiction?”
I thought about it. “Option two,” I said.
“A Dangerous Game: The Karen Clearwater Story it is,” Zach said.
As the opening credits rolled over shots of a sunny, cathedral-sized kitchen—Lifetime moms always
have really big kitchens—I snuck a sideways glance at Zach. He looked relaxed. Not that I wasn’t relaxed, of course. It was just Zach. We were just hanging out like we always had, sort of. Actually, post–freshman year, most of the time I’d spent with Zach West had been with Tess and Tall Zach, doing stuff like going to the movies en masse or driving around Wister late at night looking for restaurants that were still open. We hadn’t had so much as a conversation one-on-one since the fateful night of the I don’t know. Which, come to think of it, seemed kind of messed up, considering we were supposed to be friends. I could blame it on the fact that he’d until recently been dating Mia and was busy, but really, it was because things were just . . . weird between us.
Well, not just weird. Weird because I’d made them that way.
But that was a long time ago. We were more mature now. I was more mature now. Sort of.
Zach’s hands, also, were right there on the floor. Close to mine again.
Bzzt.
“Was that the timer?”
Zach pulled his hand away and checked his phone.
“Oh, um, I think it was the movie.” As luck would have it, Karen Clearwater was at that moment picking up her son’s pinging phone, but judging by the hum I felt in my pocket, I had also gotten a message. But as soon as I saw who had messaged me, I shoved the phone even deeper into my jeans.
“I love how no one in Lifetime movies knows how to text like a normal person,” Zach said. Without putting his hand back.
“Yeah,” I agreed, perhaps too heartily. “Like, we have autocorrect now. It’s way more effort to type just the letter u than y-o-u. Who does that?”
Zach grinned. “They might as well be paging each other.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but something buzzed again, and this time it was the timer. Zach hit Pause and took off for the stairs, and I followed, slowly, unlocking my phone on the stairs on the way up.
to: nmcullz
in LA. big stuff happening
which i probably shouldnt have mentioned
but i can trust u, right?
;)
CHAPTER NINE
The cookies came out perfectly, at least as far as I with my untrained baking skills could tell. Zach even put some in a baggie for me to take on the train, and when I left to head for the station, our good-bye was as not-awkward as it could have been—I just put on my backpack and shoes and Zach walked me to the door and said “Same time next week, I guess?” and we both sort of waved. With Tall Zach, Tess, anyone else, I probably would’ve gone for a hug, even though I’m the world’s most awkward hugger, but with Zach the Anarchist it seemed better not to. Honestly, even thinking about it made my stomach feel a little flippy.
In any case, I arrived at Suburban Station right at five fifteen, and I spent the next twenty minutes reading and rereading Sebastian’s messages. The cookies did not last the ride.
“Hey, kiddo!” Dad’s tired-looking face turned to a smile as I flopped into the front seat of the Volkswagen.
“Hey, Dad.” I tried for the normalest smile I could manage.
“Good day at school?”
“Mhm.”
Big stuff. And Sebastian thought he could trust me. Except he hadn’t actually told me anything. Had he?
I didn’t have long in the car to contemplate, because the Wister train station was so close to the McCullough-Schwartz enclave that driving only saved you about thirty seconds of travel time over walking. In the yard, the pile of yurt parts loomed in the back corner, lit up by headlights when we pulled in.
“Hey, Sam.” Dad snapped on a light switch and the orangey-red walls of the kitchen perked up immediately. Somewhere in the last two hours, between the sun going down and the bumpy gray clouds that had hovered all day, it had gotten really dark.
“Hi, Robert.” Sam Huang waved from his desk. I pulled out my phone and reread all four text bubbles, like I hadn’t already committed them to memory.
Maybe I should respond. But literally any response I could formulate would involve me asking a dumb question about what Sebastian meant. And I didn’t want to have to ask questions. I wanted to just know what he meant. Or at least act like I knew.
“So.” Dad dropped his briefcase by the door and pulled off his trench coat. “Whaddya say, kids?”
I dropped my phone on the counter. “Homework?” That would probably forestall any further discussion, because my parents were definitely not the type to request an itemized statement of our assignments. Sometimes they even forgot to send my vaccination forms.
“Yeah. Homework,” agreed Sam.
“Ah. The usual mundanities of adolescence.” Dad shook his head.
“Sure,” said Sam. “If you say so.”
“Robert?” Mom’s voice glided down to us from somewhere upstairs. “Are you home?”
“Very recently, yes,” Dad called back. He loosened his tie and craned his neck out the window. “Hey, NG, do you think it’s going to rain?”
The radio was playing softly in the corner. In LA. What could possibly happen in LA? All I knew about California was that it was huge and everyone there wore sunglasses all the time. Although Tess had gone to Santa Monica once, and she’d reported that the only major difference was that everyone at Chipotle in California got bowls instead of full burritos to save on bread calories.
“Nattie?”
“Huh?” I whirled around, my train of thought derailed. Dad was down to his shirtsleeves and looking concerned.
“Do you know if it’s going to rain?”
“Robert?” Mom’s voice echoed again.
“I think it’s supposed to,” I said, imperceptibly twitching the radio dial from WPHL to the jazz station. “But I don’t control the weather.”
Dad’s eyes widened.
“What?” I frowned.
“Can you start dinner tonight?” Mom called to Dad.
“The yurt is in danger,” he said.
I heard footfalls on the back stairs, and Mom entered stage left just as Dad swept up through the dining room, mumbling something about tarps and weights. Mom stepped in, dressed in a more casual old sweater of Dad’s, and frowned.
“I could have sworn he was just in here,” she said.
“The yurt is in danger,” I said.
“The yurt is in danger,” Mom repeated.
“I think it can’t get wet, or something,” Sam Huang said. Outside, a rumble of thunder growled in agreement.
Mom took a long, deep breath. And then another. And then Dad reappeared in a beat-up pair of cargo pants and a faded Moby Grape T-shirt, carrying a long roll of scratchy blue plastic under one arm.
“Robert,” Mom said, “I was really hoping you could deal with dinner tonight.”
“Anne,” my dad said, his voice deadly serious. “The yurt is in danger.”
Mom tried to sigh again, but it kind of morphed into a laugh on the way out.
“I’m sorry,” Dad went on, “but I need to get everything covered up before the rain hits or else we’ll risk having an unstable foundation.”
“That’s not already a problem?” I asked. I meant it as a joke, but Mom gave me one of those not now, Nattie looks, even though I knew she didn’t really care if the yurt rotted away to nothing overnight.
“Why can’t it get rained on? Isn’t it an outdoor structure?”
The tarp sagged a little under Dad’s arm. “I haven’t gotten around to weatherproofing it yet. That’s the last step.”
“Is that what all those are for?” Sam Huang pointed at the corner of the kitchen, where a stack of cans was crowding the shoe basket out of its place by the mail table.
“Robert!” Mom threw up her hands. “That’s Epifanes brand varnish.”
“I know,” Dad said proudly. “I got the good stuff.”
“The good stuff is fifty dollars a can.”
Probably I didn’t want to ask him about the song right away. I could ask him how the weather was, except that that is the single dumbest thing that
one human being can inquire of another.
Mom was rubbing her forehead now. “Is this yurt going to need any other good stuff? A Murano tile floor? A hand-dyed canvas?”
“A generator,” Sam Huang suggested. Dad’s eyes lit up.
“Now we’re talkin’!”
Another growl of thunder sounded. Mom folded her arms.
“Or not,” Dad said quickly. “This is it, I promise. Except for the foundation.”
“The foundation,” Mom said.
“Just a little concrete!” Dad said, backing out toward the door.
“Concrete?!”
“A weekend project! You won’t even notice it!”
The door slapped shut behind him, and Mom clutched the countertop with a look that was half frustration, half exhaustion, and half astonishment. I’d seen it many times on Tess after a long OWPALGBTQIA meeting.
I snuck another look at my phone, and realized I still had an unread message—the link to that music blog, from Endsignal.
“Are you mad at Robert, Anne?” Sam Huang asked tentatively.
“Yes. No.” Mom shook her head. “I don’t know. No, no. I’m not.”
My browser opened up to reveal the now-familiar colors and coolness of Vivian Violet’s blog, on a post dated a few days ago. I skimmed down past a couple promo shots—Sebastian was standing with a leg up on an amplifier, hands in his pockets, doing his signature expression that made it impossible to tell if he was being serious or messing with you—and looked at what she had to say.
A little bit poppy, a little bit punky, and every bit the ex-NYU kids they so clearly resemble, it’d be easy to write off the Young Lungs as just the latest widget from the Brooklyn indie-rock industrial complex. And while the title track from last year’s five-song EP Breathe was a solid, competent entry into the genre, it didn’t exactly make waves beyond the New York bubble (full disclosure: I am and will always be a part of said bubble, NO APOLOGIES!) and I was seriously bummed that all the cool teens out in flyover country were going to be deprived of this pretty promising pack of popsters.
. . . And that’s why I am really freakin’ delighted to share the news that my favorite Brooklyn-based boy toys, the Young Lungs, have officially signed to Fort Rox Records in Los Angeles!!! You know what that means: a full-length album, a tour, the works. So claim your indie “I liked them before they were big” cred while you can, because mark my incredibly insightful words—everyone’s gonna know about these guys.
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