Who's That Girl
Page 11
I gasped. I actually gasped.
“Don’t worry, kids. No one’s getting divorced.” Mom rooted around and produced a corkscrew from the silverware drawer. “I just wish I’d known this was all going to be so complicated before I agreed to it.”
CHAPTER TEN
I spent Tuesday morning in silent terror, mind abuzz with questions as I ate oatmeal and subtly changed Dad’s car stereo from the radio to Joni Mitchell on my phone, just in case. Was a record deal a bad thing? I mean, objectively, it was a good thing, in the sense that Sebastian et al. had taken the first important step toward launching their careers. But personally, to me, Nattie McCullough-Schwartz, it was not a good thing, because a record deal meant there would be a record—or CDs, or MP3s, or whatever—and a record meant that the song would presumably be available to stream or download or even—I shuddered, thinking about it—watch in a music video. Who knew what the Young Lungs had up their artfully rolled flannel sleeves?
Well, one person knew. Sebastian. So after Latin, but before I headed to the cafeteria, I composed a quick message.
To: sebdel
so is this big stuff an album?
Satisfied that I’d hit the right combination of inquisitive and flirtatious, I hit Send, and headed to the inaugural OWPALGBTQIA bake sale with my mind unburdened. Unfortunately, we only made it exactly four minutes into said inaugural bake sale before Tess presented us with terrible news.
“I have terrible news.” Tess collapsed into a chair. “We don’t have a venue.”
“What?” I said. “How is that possible?” The Wister Prep cafeteria was a basement-y room underneath the main building that smelled like fryer grease and lemon-flavored mop water. Usually, everyone ate outside at the picnic tables, but today we were lucky and had a downpour that forced everyone into cramped quarters and caused a run on chicken tenders. I thought longingly of Zach the Anarchist’s cookies and hoped he got there soon.
“Well, okay, we do, but it has to change.” Tess narrowed her eyes. “Do you remember where the Winter Formal is held? I’ll tell you,” she added, before I even could answer. “They rent out a ballroom in the Wister Racquet Club.”
She paused, probably to let the dreadfulness of her words sink in.
“Come on!” Tess frappe-d me on the arm. “The Wister Racquet Club does not allow same-sex couples to become members.”
“So?”
Tess gaped at me. “What do you mean, so?”
“I mean, does that even matter? It’s not like we need memberships. We just need a big room to dance in.”
Tess blinked, hard, twice. “I am not using our Operation BGDP money to line the pockets of bigots. Not that we’re going to make any money, by the way, if this is the way we’re running a bake sale.”
Alison looked up from where she was slumped on her elbows behind our station.
“Um, rude. We’re working really hard.”
Chihiro, who was sitting next to her and looking only slightly less bored, twisted a pink strand of bangs between her black-nailed fingers until Alison jabbed her in the ribs.
“Oh. Yeah!” She beamed and spread a hand over the meager array of cookies, cakes, and promised package of Oreos, all of which seemed largely untouched. They hadn’t had any customers except maybe themselves.
“Oh no.” Tess stuck out a finger. “First of all, this table is a million miles away from the doors, so no one can see us.”
I glanced back at the entrance. If anyone did come in looking for something sugary of the nonprepackaged variety, they would see the tables of the Nature Club, Pep Squad, Wister Wemembers yearbook kids, and—of course—A Cappella, before ours even registered. I tried to wave over at Sam Huang, but if he saw me, he ignored me. Which, fair enough—standing at a deserted table heaped with everything-free baked goods made me pretty much the epitome of “embarrassing older sister.” There was no reason for me to torpedo Sam Huang’s social standing with mine.
“Second of all”—Tess stuck out another finger—“you didn’t even put up a sign to say who we are, and third of all . . .” Here she paused for what I thought was rhetorical effect until the pause kept going.
“Okay, I don’t have a third.” Tess whipped out her phone, but then seemed to reconsider and shoved it back in a pocket. “And this requires a full-sized keyboard. So here’s the deal: I’m going upstairs to send an email to student council, and then I am going to track down some chicken fingers.”
“They’re out,” I said. Alison looked smug.
Tess threw up her hands. “Ugh. Okay, some kind of food, or else I’m going to murder everyone. Nattie, you’re in charge of fixing everything before I get back.”
“Um?” I said, but Tess was already charging past the yearbook people with an “Out of my way, nerds!”
“I,” Alison said pointedly, “think she needs to chill.”
I ignored her and stooped down to inspect the baked goods.
“What are those?” I prodded the side of a shoe box filled with something puck-like and crumbly-looking.
“They’re sugar cookies,” Alison said. “I made them last night.”
“They look . . . weird.” I snuck my phone out of my pocket: no response. Maybe Sebastian was writing a long response. Or maybe he wasn’t awake yet. It was only . . . I counted time zones backward in my head. Well, it was definitely earlier in California, whatever time it was.
“I still think they look like macaroons,” Chihiro said. “Are you sure they’re not gluten-free?”
“For the last time, they’re not,” Alison snapped. Chihiro looked put out. “They’re just a little crispy, is all.”
She helped herself to an Oreo out of the box. I stared.
“What?” she said through a defensive mouthful of crumbs. “They’re vegan.”
“Good for them.”
Zach the Anarchist had appeared at her side, holding a shoe box and wearing a leather jacket that was dripping rainwater onto the tiles.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “How’s it going?”
Alison rolled her eyes by way of response and gave Chihiro a kind of let’s get out of here head jerk.
“Fine,” she said, even though no one had said anything to her. “You guys can run things, if you’re so smart.”
Chihiro handed me the key to the cashbox. “There’s only like six bucks in there. Oh, and my cake has to stay covered, or else the carob will get all dry,” she said to Zach.
She gestured at a blue plate covered in plastic wrap and what looked like squashed slices of brown, seedy bread.
“Duly noted,” Zach said. Behind her bangs, Chihiro’s face went a matching shade of pink. I resisted snorting, because that would be hypocritical, given my own borderline romantic feelings for Zach. I mean former feelings. And very borderline.
“Nothing worse than dry carob cake,” I said instead. Chihiro blushed deeper and then slipped away. Zach didn’t seem to want to engage with her either way, which was probably for the best considering she was a fifteen-year-old sophomore.
“How’s business?” Zach said.
“I just got here,” I said. “But, well, actually, it’s . . . bad. And Tess wants me to fix everything.”
“What’s everything?”
“You know . . .” I held out my arm, then let it flop in defeat to my side. “Everything. We’re in the middle of cafeteria nowhere.”
“Yeah.” Zach knocked his knuckles against an unfortunately placed pillar that obscured half of our table from view. “Also, the product we’re selling looks barely edible.”
“Yup,” I agreed. “How’d the rest of our cookies turn out?”
Zach shrugged, which was hardly a satisfactory answer, especially when cookies were involved. “My cookies? Probably fine.”
Unable to contain my curiosity, I leaned forward and pulled off the top of his shoe box. The cookies were all the same size, and not too brown around the edges like when I bake anything, and—unlike Alison’s sawdust sugar cookies—sm
elled fantastic. I plucked one out.
“You’re paying for that,” Zach said.
“Quality control.”
“I made them,” Zach said. “There’s nothing wrong with them.”
“We made them,” I said. “And all the more reason for me to eat one.”
“All the more reason for you to pay.”
Zach grabbed the box. I scowled, but Zach did not look like he would budge. Heaving a long-suffering sigh, I fished out my wallet, popped open the cashbox, and put in a crumply single.
“Can you at least make me change?”
“They’re a buck each.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“That’s how we’re going to turn a profit.” Zach narrowed his eyes at me as I chewed the cookie. It was, of course, really good.
“What kind of treasurer are you, that you don’t want us to make money?” he said.
“What kind of anarchist are you that you do?”
Touché, me, I thought. Zach rolled his eyes.
“If you guys knew any real anarchists, you wouldn’t think I was one. Besides, this bake sale is barely capitalism. At the rate we’re selling stuff, anyway.”
“Well, I do want us to make money,” I said, crossing my arms. “I just also want to eat cookies.”
“Ooh, brownies.”
By some miracle and/or accident, two skinny freshpeople had skulked over to our table, and Zach gave me a definite shut up, we have a customer look.
“What’s this bake sale for?” one freshperson asked. She flipped a curtain of shiny hair over her shoulder.
“Don’t we have a sign?” Zach said.
“We don’t have a sign,” I said. To the freshpeople, I said, “It’s for the . . .” I took a deep breath and did my best. “Oh-pa-luh-gih-buh-tee-kwee-ah?”
Freshperson two narrowed her eyes. “The what?”
It occurred to me that maybe one of the reasons we didn’t have many members was that our name was borderline unpronounceable.
“Owen Wister Preparatory Academy Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, and Allies,” Zach said.
“There’s only one A at the end,” I said. “It can’t stand for two things.”
“Whatever.”
The freshpeople gave no indication of recognition. Tess was right: we probably could stand to improve notice of our public profile in the school community at large.
“Aren’t you Sam Huang’s host sister?” one of them asked at last.
“Yes,” I said. Finally, a shred of acknowledgment! I nodded, probably too enthusiastically, and swept a hand over our spread. “And I’m here to help raise money for the Winter Formal.”
“Uh, what?”
“Winter Formal,” I said. “It’s the dance that happens in December after—”
“We know what Winter Formal is,” interrupted the one with the hair. The other one eyed Chihiro’s carob cake like it was a pile of rotten mulch. “Are you, like, running it now?”
“Kind of,” I said, wishing I had Tess’s eloquence-slash-forcefulness. “We’re reinventing it.”
Hair Girl gave her friend an impenetrable, mind-meld stare. “Um, thanks anyway.”
“Wait!” Tess would be back any minute, and I was very markedly not fixing everything. “Don’t you want a cookie? They’re vegan!”
Zach shot me a don’t advertise that fact look and tried to cover up for me. “They’re a dollar.”
The freshpeople looked from Zach to me like they were trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I seized the opportunity to take the tiniest, most furtive glance at my phone. The last thing I needed was Zach the Anarchist seeing that I was messaging with Sebastian—or worse, finding out about the song. But I still had to check.
“These are really good, too.” Zach indicated his pumpkin cookies. “If I do say so myself.”
No new messages. The freshpeople shifted their collective weight.
“How much?” one said tentatively.
“A dollar,” Zach said. “Everything’s a dollar.”
The other girl wrinkled her nose. “Why are they orange?”
“They have pumpkin in them,” I explained. “But not in a weird way.”
The girls continued to look uncomfortable, but one reached for her pocket and dropped four quarters into the cashbox. The other one took a brownie, and together they walked away at a speed that suggested they’d only agreed to buy something as the quickest means for escape.
“See?” I rattled the quarters in the cashbox. “Profit.”
“That was weird,” Zach said. “What do you think their problem was?”
“Maybe they hate dances,” I said, rolling a quarter between my fingers. “Or music. Or—”
“Oh yeah. Uh, here.” From the pocket of his jacket, Zach produced a CD in a slim case with “Hard Rockin’ for Nattie” scribbled on it.
“Oh,” I said. “Um, thanks?”
“I mean I wasn’t sure if you were serious or not about getting more into music but I had an extra CD so I burned it for you anyway.” Zach looked at the ground. His eyelashes were long, for a boy.
“No!” I said, because I did want it—though not so much because I cared about getting a schooling in actual cool music. “I just, uh, forgot to bring in your shirt.”
Zach lifted his eyes. “Keep it. If you want it. I have a million like it. It looked nice on you.”
What? Did it?
“Oh,” I said, again, with characteristic brilliance. “I mean, thanks. For the CD. And the shirt.”
But before I could fully compute whether or not Zach the Anarchist had paid me a compliment, he’d taken up fidgeting with the lid of his cookie shoe box and talking about a billion words a minute.
“—sure what you’d like so I tried not to put anything too gross or sexist or anything on there but it was hard to narrow down everything to fit on a CD and still be representative of the evolution of punk in America.”
He took a breath.
“Unless you’re interested in the UK stuff, too?” Zach smoothed the back of his hair. “Because, look, like, Sid Vicious couldn’t sing, and he probably murdered his girlfriend, so—”
“No, I’m . . . just interested in our stuff,” I said quickly. “Good old homegrown American rock and/or roll.” I laughed, weirdly. “You know me. Joni Mitchell forever!”
Zach was still holding the CD, and I was definitely protestething too much, or something, in my enthusiasm for folk music.
“I think Joni Mitchell’s Canadian,” he said.
Dang. “No, I know. I just meant . . . you know, classic stuff. Is what I like. I don’t even know any bands that are on the radio right now,” I added, for good measure. But just as the words came out of my mouth, my phone buzzed in my pocket.
Zach’s face cleared. “Yeah. Right. Of course.”
I smiled, in what I hoped was a calm and normal way. Because Zach the Anarchist, who burned custom punk mix CDs and had actual informed opinions about Sid Vicious, who hated corporate anything, especially music, and most of all, who I really wanted to think I was, if not cool, at least worth being friends with, could not find out about anything Sebastian-related. Not the messaging, and definitely not the song.
But I was still dying to look at my phone.
“Excuse me?!” Tess barged her way through the crowds, holding a paper food boat with something on a stick. “I leave for two minutes to go get a corn dog and then work just goes to a standstill?”
“Sorry,” I said, and jumped away from Zach a little for no reason.
“What exactly were you expecting us to do?” Zach said.
“Ugh.” Tess shook her head and took an aggressive bite of corn dog. “You two. Haven’t you done enough music-related flirting for this week, Nattie?”
Corn dog on hand, Tess set about re-neatening the stacks of baked goods. My face went brilliantly hot.
“I don’t . . . ,” I said, just as Zach said, “No, it’s cool.”
“Cool.”
It was cool. And I was excited to listen to it, I was pretty sure.
So why did it feel like I was lying to him?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
That night, while Mom cut onions and swore as she dabbed at her eyes, I slumped at the kitchen counter, refreshing my Pixstagram feed over and over. Because time zones notwithstanding, in some kind of miracle of modern telecommunications, Sebastian had actually written me back.
To: nmccullz
so i guess u saw
secrets out haha
nothing gets past u
Nothing did get past me, I thought, triumphantly. Even better, the messages came with a black-and-white photograph of what looked like the beach at night. At least, I thought it was the beach. There was a dark part at the top and a light-gray part at the bottom, anyway. I guess it could’ve been anything, an abstract painting or a sandwich taken from really close up and then filtered to oblivion. So maybe that part got past me. But other than that, I was a master at this stuff. Except for the whole “writing a response” part.
Even though I’d gotten the message right after lunch, we were now closing in on dinnertime and I still hadn’t responded. Because like any good McCullough-Schwartz, I was procrastinating.
“Shoot.” Mom glanced over her shoulder at the calendar. “Is it trash day? I think it’s trash day. Would you take the trash to the curb, Nattie?”
“Make Sam Huang do it.” I tugged down the stream of pictures on my phone with a little pop. Nothing. Just the same picture Tess had taken of her eye makeup forty-five minutes ago, which I had of course obliged with a “TESSICAAAA” and a whole row of fire emojis.
As if on cue, Sam Huang leaped up from his computer, where he seemed to be browsing a website that sold boldly colored neckties.