Better Than Perfect
Page 23
He started shaking his head, slowly at first, then more violently. “That is not true,” he said. And then he said it again. “That is not true. Juliet, I love you no matter what you do. I’d love you if you killed a person.”
“But that would never happen!” I shouted in frustration. “It’s easy to say because it would never happen.”
My dad slid his chair back and came around to the side of the table where I was sitting. He knelt down by my chair. “Juliet, I love you. I love that you are so determined and hardworking and I love that you go for what you want. And if what you want is to not go to college next year, then I love you for pursuing that.”
For a minute, we were both quiet.
“I miss you, Daddy,” I said finally, staring at the tabletop. My throat felt tight, and my eyes stung. “I miss not having to think about our relationship.”
He reached forward and tucked the hair that covered my face behind my ear. “I miss that too.” He hesitated before he continued. “But maybe—maybe it’s better to have to think about something. Maybe it’s hard but it’s better.”
I wanted to believe him, but I didn’t. Not completely.
Not yet.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Are we okay?”
I nodded again.
“Are you ever going to say anything?” He’d bent forward so he could see my face, and now he was staring at me with his eyes humorously wide.
I was tired of talking about all of this. I wanted to say something that was clear and true and that I wouldn’t have to explain once I’d said it. I took a deep breath. “I want a dumpling.”
My dad hesitated, like maybe he wanted to force me to continue our conversation. But all he said was, “Well, let’s get you a dumpling, then.” Then he walked back around the table and sat down. He held the container of dumplings toward me. I took one out and put it on my plate. He passed me the dumpling sauce. We sat there, eating but not talking, for several minutes.
And it was really okay.
33
The Battle of the Bands was completely sold out, and the lobby was packed. Since Jason and I had broken up, Elise had been obsessed with Friday nights being girls’ night, so I was there with Elise, Margaret, and Sofia but without George and Lucas. Lucas had wanted to come with us, and I’d said that was fine, but Elise had acted like Sofia had violated some ancient code of sisterhood, and so Sofia had told Lucas maybe they could do something after the show.
“Thanks a lot,” she’d said after she’d texted him.
“Don’t blame me. You’re the one who’s listening to Elise.”
She rolled her eyes and put her phone back in her bag. “Eighteen years old and still succumbing to peer pressure. When will it end?”
The lobby was crowded. There were band posters up everywhere, and I stared for a minute at the Clovers’. It was a new photo; Danny’s drums were set up on a fire escape and Declan was on the ladder above him while Sinead smiled out an apartment window, wearing a dress with a scooped neck and watering a pot of flowers. Sitting on the fire escape next to Declan was a kid I didn’t know, but I’d heard he was the new bass player. Seeing him in the photo where Sean should have been made me miss Sean in a weird way. But maybe I wasn’t missing Sean so much as I was missing the band I’d been in. I pulled my eyes away from the poster, sadder to see the smiling new Clovers than I would have expected.
Across the lobby from where I stood were the carpeted platforms of the senior lounge. Technically it was only for seniors—the other three grades were supposed to hang out in the student center around the corner—but nobody really minded unless underclassmen sat on the top platform, which was definitely seniors-only territory. Right now, for example, Jason and George were on the highest square, looking out over the crowd like two kings surveying their subjects. George had on a pair of jeans and a Hawaiian shirt, and Jason was wearing a pair of cargo pants and a blue sweater his mom had given him for Christmas two years ago. He’d been wearing it the day I’d gotten home from Connecticut after being at my grandparents’.
How bizarre that you could know someone so well and love him so much and then not have him in your life anymore. Jason’s eyes circled around the lobby and finally they came to rest on me. I kept looking at him, but either he didn’t see or he pretended not to see, and he went back to talking to George. I had a sudden flash forward to two years from now. We’d be at Harvard. He’d be a sophomore and I’d be a freshman, and we’d pass each other on the quad, both of us rushing to a class. We’d say hello. Maybe chat for a second. And then one of us would have to go, and after we’d separated, the friend he was walking with would say, “Who was that?” and Jason would say, “Just a girl I used to go out with.”
The thought of his saying that made me feel strange, almost as if I were disappearing, and I turned to Sofia. “I need to get some air.”
“Seriously?” she asked. “They’re about to open the doors.”
“I’ll meet you inside.”
“You want me to come with?”
“I’m okay.”
She gave me a look but she let me go. I pushed through the crowded lobby, the voices and the laughter and the heat of the bodies overwhelming me.
Outside, the night shimmered with cold. A car pulled into the traffic circle at the front of the building, and a bunch of kids piled out of a minivan. I heard the mom yell, “Text me when it’s over,” and the kid who’d gotten out of the passenger seat yelled back, “I will,” and then he hustled to catch up to his friends.
As I watched them walk into the building, I thought, I bet this is their first Battle of the Bands.
And then I thought, This is my last Battle of the Bands.
I hopped onto the low brick wall and looked up at the sky, the planets and stars overhead glistening in the freezing air. It was stupid to think about running into Jason on the Harvard quad in two years. Maybe after all this I wouldn’t even go to Harvard. Maybe I’d move to China. Or to Europe. Maybe I’d never go to college. Maybe I’d stay in Milltown and see Elizabeth Bennet once a week until I knew enough about what I wanted to write it down on a piece of paper.
Anything could happen. And maybe that was okay too.
Behind me I heard voices, and then Lucas and this guy Justin Frank walked by. I thought maybe Lucas would ask me where Sofia was, but he and Justin just nodded at me and kept walking. I nodded back at them but didn’t say anything. Then I went back to staring at the stars.
“Hey!”
I turned around. Emerging from the shadows was Declan. He was carrying a guitar case and wearing his black suit and his white shirt. I thought about how much had happened since I’d first seen him in it at the Milltown Country Club. It was crazy that he’d been there the night everything with my mother had started.
“Hey,” I said back.
He glanced up at the sky. “See anything suspicious?”
“Nope. Everything looks pretty solid up there.”
“That’s a relief.” He switched his guitar case to the other hand. “I had the strangest dream last night. It was the Battle of the Bands, and you were there, and you and Sinead sang ‘I Got You Babe.’ And we won.”
“That is a strange dream,” I agreed. “I’m supposed to start seeing a therapist in March. Maybe I’ll see if she can analyze it for you.”
“Are you going to see her because when you refused to go out with me you realized you must be going crazy?”
I burst out laughing.
“Ouch! Laughed at.” He shook his head. “That’s harsh, Jules.”
We stood there, not saying anything, and then I hopped off the wall. “I should go inside. They’re starting soon.”
“They can’t start without this.” Declan indicated his guitar. “Or this.” He pointed at himself.
“Who’s to say?” I gestured toward the lobby with my thumb. “Maybe Sinead’s inside getting a new lead guitarist as we speak.”
“Maybe
she is,” Declan acknowledged. “And maybe I’m out here talking to our secret weapon. The girl who’s going to win us the Battle of the Bands tonight.”
“What are you going to do, call me up onstage in front of everyone and make me sing?” I rolled my eyes at the implausibility of it.
But Declan didn’t crack a smile. “I might.”
“Oh, please.” I stared at him. He didn’t say anything. “You’re serious.”
“Totally.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “So, what are you saying? That you’re going to force me to sing ‘I Got You Babe’?”
“I’m not going to force you,” said Declan, his voice calm. “I’m simply going to call your name in front of a thousand people. If you choose to ignore me, that’s your right.”
My voice was calm as well. “And what if I choose not to go to the show at all?” I scooted back up onto the wall. “What if I just sit here all night? Or get in my car and drive home?”
Declan shrugged. “If that’s your choice, that’s your choice.”
His calm was starting to irritate me. “So my choice is between going inside and singing with the Clovers or making you all look like assholes because you call me up as your special guest and I’m not even there?”
“Au contraire.” Declan tapped my knee lightly with the narrow end of his guitar case. “Your choice is between going in and not going in. Whether or not we are judged to be assholes for calling up an absentee special guest is entirely up to the audience. And now, I must go.” He tilted his head at me in a formal gesture of farewell and started to head into the building.
“Don’t do it, Declan.”
He spun around. “People make choices, Jules. That’s what life is. Making choices and living with them. So if you want to choose to go home instead of being the special guest of the greatest band Milltown has ever seen, so be it. And if you want to take a chance on being a rock star . . . well, it’s up to you.” He spun back and continued into the building.
“I’m not coming in, Declan. I mean it.”
But he’d already disappeared inside the building.
The lobby lights flicked once to indicate that the show was starting. I stayed where I was as the music—something heavy metalish—filtered out the doors. I didn’t go inside through the whole set, or through the next band, which played a One Direction song I recognized followed by two other songs I didn’t know.
And then, in the still night air, I heard Sinead’s voice. “We’re the Clovers.” The audience exploded, and the band went right into “One Way or Another.”
I imagined the song ending, imagined Declan scanning the audience. “We’d like to invite a special guest to come join us for this next number. Jules? Are you out there?” I imagined the spotlight finding me. Me making my way up to the front of the auditorium. Declan helping me up onstage. Handing me over to the mic. Sinead counting off and the music starting.
Then I imagined not being there when Declan called my name, the circle of light illuminating the empty seat I wasn’t sitting in.
“One Way or Another” was almost over. It was time to make a decision.
Stay? Go?
I slid off the wall and started walking.
Even as I took my first step, I wasn’t sure if I was walking toward the lobby or away from it.
I took another step. Then another. Then a fourth. The unseen audience burst into applause. Their cheers and whistles grew louder as I opened the outer door to the lobby, and by the time I was halfway to the auditorium, they were deafening.
“We’d like to . . . ,” Declan began, but the audience was screaming too loudly for him to continue. He laughed into the mic. “We’d like to invite . . .” The audience started clapping and cheering, and he laughed again. “Guys, give me a chance here.” The whole audience laughed with him and then grew quiet. “We’d like to invite a very special guest up here tonight. I hope you’ll all join me . . .”
Everyone started clapping again, and I quickly crossed the last few feet between me and the door to the auditorium.
I wanted to be in the auditorium when he called my name.
I wanted to choose what would happen next.
Acknowledgments
Rachel Cohn, Rebecca Friedman, Emily Jenkins, Benjamin Gantcher, Bernie Kaplan, Jennifer Klonsky (and the entire Harper family including Catherine Wallace, Christina Colangelo, Kara Brammer, Patty Rosati, Molly Motch, Sandee Roston, Gina Rizzo, Melinda Weigel, Alison Donalty, Alison Klapthor, Sarah Creech, Kate Jackson, Susan Katz, and the entire sales team), Helen Perelman, JillEllyn Riley, Robyn Schneider, the Saint Ann’s faculty and staff . . . how do I love and owe thee? I cannot count the ways.
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About the Author
Photo by Heather Weston
MELISSA KANTOR is the author of Maybe One Day; Confessions of a Not It Girl, an ALA Booklist Best Romance Novel for Youth; If I Have a Wicked Stepmother, Where’s My Prince?, a YALSA Teens Top Ten Pick; The Breakup Bible, an ALA Best Books for Young Adults nominee; Girlfriend Material, a Junior Library Guild selection; and The Darlings Are Forever and The Darlings in Love, a Junior Library Guild selection. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family.
www.melissakantor.com
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Books by Melissa Kantor
Maybe One Day
Confessions of a Not It Girl
If I Have a Wicked Stepmother, Where’s My Prince?
The Breakup Bible
Girlfriend Material
The Darlings Are Forever
The Darlings in Love
Credits
Cover photograph © 2015 by Beowulf Sheehan/ImageBrief.com
Cover design by Sarah Creech
Copyright
HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters and all incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as “real.”
BETTER THAN PERFECT. Copyright © 2015 by Melissa Kantor. 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.
www.epicreads.com
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2014945601
ISBN 978-0-06-227923-1 (trade bdg.)
ISBN 978-0-06-237822-4 (int. ed.)
EPub Edition © January 2015 ISBN 9780062279255
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FIRST EDITION
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