“No! Fine, I’ll do it.” I shoved my phone in my pocket and banged out the back door. I didn’t want to take the trash to the curb, but I also didn’t want to look lazy in comparison. Having siblings really keeps you on your chore game, apparently.
“Thank y—Nattie!” Mom clicked her tongue at me as I came back inside. “It’s freezing outside!”
“And?” I hopped back up on the stool.
“Why on earth aren’t you wearing shoes? Robert, why isn’t your daughter wearing shoes?” She shook her onion-chopping knife at Dad, who had just come downstairs after changing out of his work clothes. He glanced down at my feet, which were, admittedly, bare. I just hated having to dig my sneakers out of the shoe basket every time I wanted to go outside. It was such a hassle.
“I didn’t feel like it,” I said simply. Mom sighed, and Dad shook his head.
“Nattie, you have to wear shoes, for Pete’s sake,” Dad said.
“Aren’t you cold?” Sam Huang said. He had on a pair of flip-flops, and not even smooshed-flat, last-summer flip-flops, but nice new ones, untainted by dirt or toe crud.
“No,” I said. “I’m fine.”
“Your feet are going to turn into hooves,” Mom said.
“So what? Maybe I’m part hobbit.” I pulled my phone back out. It totally didn’t count as stalking if I was just refreshing the home feed over and over. That was normal. It only got weird if I went to Sebastian’s personal photo stream. If I was just browsing, as one does with social media, any Sebastian-related insights would be totally incidental. Justifiable. Not creepy.
When I looked up, all three of them were staring at me.
“What?” I said.
Mom sighed and went into the pantry for something. Dad chuckled and shook his head.
“You’re a rare bird, Nattie G.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’re special.” He ruffled my hair, which I hate, and I pulled away.
“You’re special just means you’re weird,” I said. “It’s not a compliment.”
“Is too,” Dad said. “Trust me. I’m a dad. You’re special means you’re special, okay?”
“But that doesn’t mean you can go barefoot in October!” Mom called from the pantry, followed by what sounded like an avalanche of cans.
“I’m okay,” she said, a moment later. “Dammit.”
Sensing a pause in the activity of the evening, Dad rubbed his hands together.
“Well! Anyone want to help with a project while we’re waiting for dinner?”
“Nope,” I said.
“I’m already helping with a project.” Mom emerged from the pantry with a box of bow-tie pasta. “It’s called trying to feed our family. And it’s reducing me to tears.”
Dad sighed. “Looks like it’s just you and me, Sammy.”
“Okay.” Sam Huang went over to the shoe basket and pulled out a pair of his sneakers and started to lace them up. I gritted my teeth.
“His name’s Sam, Dad,” I said. “I mean, not his name name, but—”
“Actually, the name I picked was Samuel,” Sam Huang said. “But Anne and Robert just started calling me Sam.”
“Oh, Sam—Samuel, we’re so sorry,” Mom said with an oniony sniff.
“Would you like us to call you Samuel?” Dad said.
From the floor by the shoe basket, Sam Huang shrugged.
“I don’t really mind,” he said. “What do you need to do on the yurt?”
“Guys!” I interrupted. “You can’t have a nickname for a nickname.”
“That’s just how we do it in this family, Nattie Gann. Worked for you.” Dad grinned and gave my shoulder a little squeeze. “Come on. Help me and Sam with the yurt.”
I ignored him and jabbed at my phone, perhaps accidentally landing on a specific person’s account page. “I’m, um, busy.”
“Doesn’t look like it,” Dad said.
Sebastian’s feed had not changed since that afternoon: guitar, lime-flavored can of Hypr, a bridge all lit up for the night, guitar again, sunset over a bunch of buildings. Dude was very into bridges.
“Well, I am,” I said, and idly tapped the most recent photo (“tool of the trade”). “I’m busy being . . . morose.”
I wasn’t actually feeling morose at all, but it was the first word that came into my head. Morose had kept us from bugging Zach about Mia too much. Well, us except for me, I guess. And morose seemed quicker than explaining that I was procrastinating writing what could be a life-altering Pixstagram message to a rock star–in-training on the other side of the country. Not that I was going to tell Dad that, either.
“Morose?” Dad frowned. “Who are you, and what have you done with Nattie G? Did something happen to you?”
“Ha ha ha,” I said dryly. But inside, a shot of panic lanced through my heart, and I clicked my phone screen off as Dad headed past me with Sam Huang in tow. Could he tell? Could anyone tell? Maybe I hadn’t done as good a job of burying my weird little Sebastian secret within me as I thought. Maybe I should be more careful not to act too different.
I cleared my throat. “What are you doing tonight?” I asked tentatively.
“Tonight,” Dad said grandly, “we’ve gotta bolt together the sections of khana into a continuous wall.”
That sounded incredibly boring.
“That sounds incredibly boring,” I said, at the same time as Sam Huang said, “What should I do?”
I bit my tongue and went back to my phone. Sebastian had a particular fondness for filters that made everything look all jagged and high-contrast, like a photocopy of a ransom note. And he didn’t use any capital letters, and he spelled you with a single letter, and he typed out emoticons instead of using emoji. I made a mental note to do those things in my reply, too.
“You,” Dad said, “can help twist the bolts into place. There’s over a hundred of ’em! I got 1.25-inch instead of 1-inch, which is a little too long, but it’ll work. And—and this is the cool thing—once they’re in place inside, we can use them as coat hooks.”
“Cool,” Sam Huang said, sounding way more interested than any normal person would about bolts. “That’s convenient.”
“I know!” Dad said, and held open the door for Sam Huang to go out with him. “Hopefully I’ll be able to start actual construction before it gets too cold.”
“It’s almost November,” Mom yelled out to the backyard. “It’s already too cold.”
“All the more reason to have a nice toasty yurt in the backyard, darling wife,” Dad called back.
I was only half listening, because I was being fake-morose to cover up some medium-to-heavy pre-message-composition soul-searching. My first instinct, of course, had been to tell Tess, because like any best friend, she was skilled in the art of text-message divination and could squeeze a paragraph’s worth of meaning out of a simple “k.” But by the time last period had rolled around, and I’d reread those three lines so many times I’d drained my phone battery to 6 percent, I realized I kind of . . . didn’t want to show her. Something about the messages felt special, private. Sebastian had sent them just to me, after all. He totally could’ve posted that photograph publicly, too, but he didn’t. He was opening up, and inviting someone else to analyze felt like a betrayal.
On the other hand, just ignoring something this big would probably cause repressed feelings to squeeze out of me in unfortunate and unusual ways, like volunteering to do anything related to the yurt. I had to say something back to Sebastian eventually. Soon, even. But not too soon. What I really needed to do was craft an image. Update my feed. Send out some cool visual/textual hints that, even when Sebastian wasn’t around, I was having an interesting life full of meaningful activity.
With a deep, courageous breath, I hit the New Post button.
Unfortunately, there did not seem to be one single thing on my camera roll worth posting: a picture of an extra-long French fry I’d gotten in the cafeteria, a couple accidental screenshots because
I didn’t know how to turn my phone off, a bunch of unflattering selfies I’d taken in my bedroom when I was attempting to do something interesting with my hair. Just a series of visual testaments to my undying weirdness. I scrolled back further, past the oodles of Acronympho group shots we’d taken over the summer and the picture Tess had taken of me looking uncomfortable in my pre–Meredith White’s–party regalia, all the way back to the video from the Talent Show Incident.
My stomach did a little flip. That would be something interesting to post, if it wouldn’t mean admitting to my total creeperdom. I thought about watching it, but Mom was right there and would have heard everything, and also a six billionth viewing wouldn’t reveal anything that I didn’t already know about that night. Or Sebastian.
Which was . . . what, exactly?
“Nattie?” Mom blinked and gestured at a cabinet with her shoulder. “Would you get me the big pot?”
“Sure.” I opened the door and extracted the pot with one hand while closing Pixstagram with the other. So much for curating my image. Maybe I just needed to do some good, old-fashioned internet stalking first. I typed “Sebastian Delacroix Young Lungs” into Google, and the first result was a fresh, unclicked video link—Young Lungs live @ Ruby’s philly Sebastian Delacroix solo. I tapped it open just as Sam Huang swung in through the back door.
“Done so soon?” Mom flicked on the tap and wiped her hands on a dish towel. “Is everything okay?”
“I got a splinter.” Sam Huang held up a hand. “It’s fine, but—”
“Sam!” Mom leaped to his side and yanked his hand into the light. “Oh, God, you’re bleeding. And that’s your guitar hand!”
“You play the guitar with both hands, Mom,” I pointed out.
“It’s really fine,” Sam Huang said. “I just—”
“Stay right there,” Mom commanded. “I’ll get disinfectant. Nattie, where’s the—”
“Second-floor bathroom cabinet,” I said, full-screening the video. “Next to the bath bombs.”
“Right.” Mom pointed at Sam Huang. “Don’t move.”
She grabbed the now-full pot, stuck it on the stove, and ran upstairs, muttering something about not dashing Sam’s hopes for Julliard.
“Should I tell her I’m not applying to Julliard?” Sam Huang asked.
“Let her have her moment,” I said, from behind my phone. Sam Huang peered over my shoulder.
“What are you watching? Guitar?”
“Oh, I . . .” I tried to click off my phone, but it was too late. Sam Huang grabbed it away from me with his nonsplintered hand. The video played on, tinny riffs pushing the limits of my phone’s puny speakers, and Sam listened, thoughtfully. Thoughtfully and kind of making a face.
“Is it bad?” I asked, anxious in spite of myself. “Do you not like it?”
“It’s not bad,” Sam said mildly.
“Sam Huang!” I cried. “You are lying.”
“It’s not! It’s just . . . different from what I’m used to.”
Sam was not much of a liar. I gave him a hard look. “What’s wrong with it?”
“His technique. The way he has his wrist underneath . . .” Sam demonstrated in the air, on an invisible fretboard. “It can give you tendinitis, if you’re not careful.”
It didn’t look like there was anything wrong. And it didn’t sound that way, either.
“Well, not everyone’s a classically trained guitarist,” I said. “He’s self-taught.”
“Self-taught? You know him?” Sam tilted my phone in his hand, frowning. “Wait. This is called ‘Natalie’?”
“Yes,” I said, way too loudly. “I mean, um, no, I don’t really know . . . but the song, um, I guess I found it by accident when I was Googling myself.”
My traitorous face felt hot enough to melt metal. Sam, meanwhile, did not look at all like he bought it. He just blinked. Then, slowly, he smiled.
“You like him.”
“What?!” I practically fell off the stool. “No, I don’t. I totally don’t at all. Shut up!”
Sam grinned. “You like him!”
“Sam!” I cried. “Shut up, Sam. Give me that.” I grabbed my phone back just as the final chords crashed into place.
“It’s good,” he said slowly. “For pop.”
“Indie rock,” I corrected. “And I thought everyone in A Cappella had to like pop.”
Sam Huang ignored me. “Who is he? Where did you meet him? Can I watch it again?”
He was almost gleeful, trying to get this out of me, and I, having no practice navigating young siblings, wasn’t sure how mean I was allowed to be. Fortunately, sort of, Mom chose that exact moment to tumble back into the kitchen, toting a battered-looking first aid kit.
“I think this gauze is from before you were born, Nattie,” she said, examining a sealed packet from inside the little plastic chest. “But it’s probably still fine, right? How long does gauze stay sterile?”
I gave a noncommittal shrug-grunt just as Sam snatched my phone out of my hand.
“Hey!”
The strains of “Natalie” started again as Mom set about doctoring Sam’s finger, which ended up wrapped in so much gauze it resembled an old-timey cartoon glove.
“Mom,” I said. “Stop. You’re going to cut off his circulation.”
“Is that too much?” Mom frowned at Sam’s swaddled hand. “Well, you can be a mummy for Halloween, I guess.”
Sam tested his newly bandaged hand, still holding my phone. Which buzzed. I took advantage of Sam’s injury and swiped my phone out of his grasp, but when I unlocked it, it was just a text from Tall Zach.
From: Zach Bitterman
SURPRISE HALLOWEEN PLAN!!!! meet downtown at 22nd and fairmount at 9:30. your events chair has something spoooooky planned
p.s. also nattie i already bought you a ticket so you owe me twenty bucks thx
“Oh God.” I set down my phone, which was still streaming out the sound of Sebastian’s voice, and texted Tall Zach a quick “OK” from the counter.
“What’s wrong now?” Sam said.
“My friend’s planning some kind of Halloween surprise. And I hate surprises.” The song ended again, twanging on the familiar chord, and I jumped. “Especially on Halloween.”
“Hm.” Mom took the lid off the simmering pot. “You did always cry when I tried to put you in that ladybug suit as a baby. Maybe I traumatized you against costume-related holidays.”
“Maybe,” I said, still staring at my now-silent phone. When I looked up again, Mom’s eyes were fixed on me.
“No, I mean, it’s not your fault,” I added quickly.
“You like candy,” Mom said. “That’s a big part of the holiday, if I recall correctly.”
“Candy can be scary,” I said. “Remember that time I accidentally ate a strawberry lollipop when I was six?” It had been my first—and only, so far—trip to the ER.
But Mom was dumping pasta into the boiling water and looking out the back window, to where Dad was bolting together what looked like two giant baby gates. “Still at it.” She shook her head. “Well, Sam, I’m so sorry. We’re terrible host parents. If this yurt puts an end to your music career, you have my personal permission to sue my husband for lost wages.” She turned to me. “Anyway, sweetheart, just bring your EpiPen. And maybe Sam Huang wants to go, too.”
“Thanks,” Sam Huang said. “But I actually have plans. With A Cappella. We’re doing some new arrangements.”
I resisted the urge to sigh. Of course A Cappella was too cool to go out on Halloween; they had to polish up their precious repertoire. Taking advantage of my inattention, Sam reached over one-handedly and propped my phone up with the video on-screen like a little TV, but before he could hit Play again, it buzzed.
“I’ll take that,” I said, and Sam, with only one good hand, was unable to stop me. “Go back to your matching neckties, Sam Huang.”
Sam, unscathed, went back to his computer, and I switched apps and stared at the screen: a new m
essage. Several, actually. And not from Tall Zach.
To: nmccullz
been recording all day actually
adding new songs to the EP
My heart contracted like an accordion, and I immediately flipped my phone facedown on the counter. I glanced at Mom, but she didn’t seem to notice that her daughter was in the clutches of a minor cardiac arrest. Trembling, I tapped back into my inbox and reread the message.
He’d responded without my even having to say anything. It was like he knew I was thinking about him and messaged me anyway. I chewed my pinky nail, pensive. Now I had to reply. I had to reply, I had to come off sophisticated and worldly and like I knew what EP stood for, and most of all, I had to avoid at all costs any mention of my actual, weird life. No yurts, no tendinitis warnings, no deadly food allergies. So after long minutes of deliberation, thumb-typing, and procrastination, I sent back a reply.
To: sebdel
that sounds cool
Okay, not the most original, but maybe it would look like I was being clever instead of stupid. The ball was in Sebastian’s court now. After accidentally taking a screenshot, I turned off my phone, for good this time. And waited.
CHAPTER TWELVE
By Halloween night, I was actually in kind of a good mood, spooky surprise or no. New songs—songs that did not have my name in them—were good news. By the time the Young Lungs’ album came out—and that could take months, I figured—the old stuff wouldn’t be in rotation anymore. They’d write even better stuff and record it in a fancy Los Angeles studio and some guy in sunglasses would push around switches on one of those giant console things to make all of it sound good.
But even better than the promise of new songs was the fact that I, Nattie McCullough-Schwartz, was engaging in clandestine correspondence with Sebastian Delacroix, notable attractive person and soon-to-be rock star. Sure, I hadn’t gotten anything new since that last one, but that in itself was kind of exciting. Not knowing when his next message would come was agonizing and thrilling all at once, like in the one Catullus poem where he talks about feeling both love and hate. You don’t know why it’s happening, but you can feel it, and it’s like being on fire. Or so Catullus says. But if that was what it meant to start falling for someone in secret, I think I got it.
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