“Fine,” I say, and then exchange a small nod with Julia. She looks bored, but I get the feeling she typically looks that way.
“Where the fuck did Kel go?” Hunter asks from behind the drums.
Ethan digs into the front pocket of his jeans and brings out a white guitar pick. “Inside to get a drink of water.”
“That was twenty minutes ago.”
“He’s probably in there seducing your mom,” Corey says as he lifts himself off Julia’s lap. When he’s fully upright, Hunter throws an empty water bottle at him. Corey catches it, snickering.
Noelle has claimed the spot next to Julia on the couch, so I sink down on her other side. The moment I’m somewhat comfortable, Hunter pounds out a practice beat that makes me want to cover my ears. Drums are deafening in this small space.
“Do the neighbors ever complain?” I ask Noelle.
“Nope. Hunter’s dad built this thing from the ground up. It’s almost completely soundproof.”
“He built it just for Hunter?”
Her blue eyes crinkle at the corners. “It was either that or let him play in the house, and his mom says it’s not worth the migraines.”
The door opens and sunlight pours in, making us all squint. All I can see is the outline of Kel as he steps inside and heads directly for the red guitar resting on a stand near the drums. He picks it up, attaches a strap, and adjusts it across his chest in one fluid movement. It’s not until he steps up to the mic stand that he finally notices me. His face splits into a grin.
Clearly, even knowing my role in Ethan’s sister’s death isn’t going to deter him from trying to charm me.
The guys confer for a minute, then launch into a song that starts off with a lot of heavy bass. The rhythm is fast and frenetic and so piercingly loud, I can feel the vibration in my bones. After several beats, Kel leans into the mic. His voice is exactly like I imagined—rough and gravelly, yet melodic.
In my peripheral, I see Noelle’s head bobbing slightly to the beat. Julia is still on her phone, oblivious to her surroundings. I’m not oblivious. This isn’t my type of music, but there’s something about it, something pure and unrestrained. The sheer volume and power of it occupies every sense, every thought, until there’s nothing left but sound.
My gaze locks on Ethan. I almost forgot how effortlessly good he is, how connected he seems to whatever music he’s playing. This is one thing that hasn’t changed, even if the boy and the instrument are different. I watch the muscles in his forearms contract as his fingers fly across the strings. I see the raw joy infuse his face as he loses himself in the band’s energy. And I remember again what he told me that day in his car: Music saved me.
I think I get it now.
An hour and five or six songs later, it’s time for a break. Hunter and Noelle step outside for a smoke, and Corey and Julia head to the house to pee. Now it’s just me and Ethan and Kel, who’s lounging on the couch and strumming his unplugged guitar.
“So give me your honest opinion,” Ethan says, unhooking the strap from the end of his guitar and sliding it off. “Do we suck or what?”
“I don’t think so.” I step away from the Metallica poster I’ve been examining and turn to face him. “But I’m not exactly an expert on rock and metal. Pop is more my thing.”
“Yeah, I remember.” He makes an expression of mock disgust, and I can tell he’s thinking of all the times Aubrey and I tortured him with repeated blastings of whatever hit song we happened to be obsessed with at the moment.
“You guys sound good,” I tell him. “Um, what do your parents think about all this?”
“About what? Me trading in my acoustic for an electric or me joining a band?”
“Either.”
A huge smile lights up his face. “They hate it.”
He looks so thoroughly thrilled when he says it, I can’t help but laugh. Our eyes meet and he starts laughing too, and that’s when I feel it. A tiny flutter of . . . something.
“You okay?” he asks when my laughter comes to an abrupt halt.
Luckily, the door swings open and saves me from having to answer. Ethan and I turn toward the sound, blinking against the sudden glare of daylight. At first I think it’s Noelle returning, but as my vision adjusts I realize it’s a different girl, one I haven’t met. She’s pretty, with shoulder-length dark blond hair and full, pouty lips. She’s wearing a denim jacket over a cute floral dress—even though we’re way past summer weather—and her legs are long and shapely.
“Hey, Lacey,” Kel says without looking up from his guitar. “Nice of you to join us.”
I assume she’s with him, one of the many girls he probably invites here to swoon over him while he sings, so naturally I’m surprised when she walks up to Ethan and wraps her arms around his neck.
“Sorry I’m so late, babe,” she says, and then proceeds to stick her tongue down his throat.
I stare. I can’t help it. The way he’s kissing this girl . . . Jesus. Not that I have much experience on this matter, but going by the way her fingers tighten on the back of his T-shirt, it seems his talents might stretch beyond guitar-playing.
Ethan detaches himself from the girl and looks at me as if I haven’t been standing two feet away from him for the past several minutes. Maybe some brain matter leaked out through his mouth along with all that saliva.
“Um, this is Lacey,” he tells me with a trace of embarrassment. “Lacey . . . Dara.”
“Hey,” she says, dabbing her mouth with the sleeve of her jacket. If she has any clue who I am, it doesn’t show on her face. Maybe she thinks I’m one of Kel’s groupies.
“Hi,” I say.
An awkward silence ensues, during which we all look anywhere but at each other. My phone chimes in my pocket, and I almost break a finger diving for it. It’s a text from Mom, asking if I want to invite my new friend over for dinner. Normally I’d be annoyed at the intrusion, but at the moment I’ve never been more grateful for my mother’s hovering in my life.
“I have to go,” I announce to no one in particular.
“Already?” Ethan says. His arm hasn’t moved from Lacey’s tiny waist.
I nod and start toward the door. “Thanks for having me.”
Kel shoots me a knowing grin and I want to kick myself for phrasing it that way. Instead, I lift my hand in a vague wave and book it out of there fast.
Outside, I run into Noelle and Hunter on their way back to the shed.
“Leaving already?” Noelle asks.
“My mom needs me at home,” I tell her. It’s easier to lie than explain to her what just happened inside. I don’t even know for sure.
Noelle nods like she understands even though she doesn’t, not really. I say good-bye to them and continue to the street, already missing the way that loud, rumbling music took over my body, pushing everything else away.
fourteen
Sophomore Year
THOUGH AUBREY AND I HAD BEEN FRIENDS SINCE sixth grade and logged many hours at each other’s houses, her parents and mine never managed to bond. My mother thought her mother was “a piece of work,” and my father thought her father was “high and mighty.” Aubrey and I never discussed it, but I knew her parents thought my parents were “tacky and limited.” So imagine my surprise when my mother came in my room one Sunday afternoon at the end of March to tell me she’d just gotten off the phone with Mrs. McCrae.
“What did she want?” I asked, looking up from the collage I was making for art class. Mom had the small wrinkle between her eyes that meant she was either worried or annoyed.
“She has some concerns about Aubrey.” She sat beside me on the edge of my bed. “Apparently, she’s been sneaking around with some boy behind her parents’ backs.”
My blood froze. Crap. “Um, why does she think that?”
“Because she was driving by the park yesterday and saw them together. Holding hands and kissing.” Her eyes narrowed and she peered closely at my face, which probably glowed like a stoplight.
“She thought I should be in the loop, in case you’re hiding things too.”
God, I loathed Mrs. McCrae. “I’m not, Mom. I swear. I don’t have a secret boyfriend.”
“But you knew Aubrey had a secret boyfriend?”
“Well, yeah. She’s my best friend.” I traced my finger over my collage, which was supposed to be a representation of all my favorite things. So far, all I had was a picture of Aubrey and me, a magazine cutout of an actor I liked, and bubble letters spelling out my name. “I don’t get what the big deal is, anyway. Why can’t she have a boyfriend? Would you freak out if I had one?”
“Depends on the boy, but no, I wouldn’t freak out. I can’t speak for your father, though.”
I snorted. Dad often joked that the first thing he’d do when I brought a boy home was take him down to the basement and show him his rifle collection.
Mom reached down to pick some paper scraps off my carpet. “The problem with Aubrey’s parents is they’re scared to let their kids be kids. And if you expect perfection out of your children and make them feel like they can never mess up . . .” She shook her head. “It’s only a matter of time before they rebel.”
“Aubrey’s not rebelling,” I said. “It’s not like she ran off with a biker gang or something. She and Justin are just, you know, hanging out.”
This earned me another narrow-eyed look. “Is that all?”
My mind flashed with an image of the small boxes of birth control pills the clinic doctor had given Aubrey a few weeks ago. She’d hidden them on the top shelf of her closet, behind her old porcelain doll collection. Every night, she had to dig around up there and then swallow a pill with the bottle of water she kept on her nightstand. Then I thought about the twinge of jealousy I felt when she told me she was no longer a virgin.
So it definitely wasn’t all, but no way in hell would I discuss my best friend’s lack of virginity and the crush I had on her boyfriend with my mother. I could barely even admit one of those things to myself.
“That’s all,” I said in what I hoped was a convincing tone. It must have been, because the wrinkle between Mom’s eyes all but disappeared. “Did Mrs. McCrae tell you anything else? Is Aubrey grounded?”
Duh, I thought. Why did I bother asking? Of course she was grounded. They’d probably taken away her phone and laptop and locked her in her room with a tray of stale bread and lukewarm water. Maybe I’d never see her again.
“She didn’t get into any of that. I think the main reason she called was to make sure I’m parenting my kid.” Mom stood up and tossed the paper scraps into my overflowing trash can. “You know you can talk to your dad and me about anything, right? Even if you think we’ll disapprove, don’t ever be afraid to come to us. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
She gave my hair a gentle tug and left the room. Not even a minute later, my phone started dinging with texts.
Can you come over?
She won’t come out of the bathroom.
Not sure what to do.
My stomach dipped. They were all from Ethan, who rarely texted me and never asked me for help. I texted back, Your parents home? If Aubrey was grounded, it meant grounded from everything except school and violin.
No.
I looked down at my collage, which was due Tuesday and nowhere near finished. Then I thought of my best friend, crying in the bathroom while her brother stood outside the door, helpless.
Be there in 10 mins.
Downstairs, I told my parents the truth—Aubrey was upset and needed me. It was enough. Dad drove me over so I wouldn’t have to walk in the biting cold. To my relief, Mr. and Mrs. McCrae’s cars were still gone when I arrived.
Ethan swung open the door before I even had a chance to knock. His face was drawn with worry.
“Where is she?” I asked, slipping out of my heavy coat.
“Upstairs bathroom.” He ran a hand over his buzzed hair. “She’s been crying for . . . I don’t know, at least forty-five minutes, and she won’t open the door. She yelled at me to go away.”
His tone held a combination of hurt and surprise. Ethan and Aubrey weren’t the type of siblings who fought and called each other names, like Tobias and I sometimes did. Aubrey rarely got angry with him or pushed him away, and I could see on his face that it had shaken him.
“Ethan.” I wrapped my fingers around his forearm and jostled him a little so he’d look at me. “She didn’t mean it.”
He nodded quickly. “I know.”
I wasn’t convinced he did, but I’d worry about him later. His sister needed me more.
Upstairs, I knocked lightly on the bathroom door, trying the knob with my other hand. Locked. “Aubrey,” I said, knocking again. “It’s me. Open up.”
A loud sniffle filtered through the door, followed by the sound of toilet paper unrolling. I listened as she blew her nose, then knocked a third time.
“Go away.”
Her voice sounded nasally and rough, and so unlike Aubrey it made my heart thump. I glanced behind me to where Ethan was leaning against the opposite wall, watching me. He looked slightly relieved that I’d gotten the same response.
“Aubrey,” I said in a don’t-test-me voice. “Open this door or I will break it down.”
My threat was greeted with complete silence. Either she didn’t believe I had it in me (I did), or she was considering the potential damage to both the door and my body if I did have it in me. Fortunately, her practicality won out and she opened the door before I got the chance to follow through.
“Are you okay?” I asked the second I saw her red, puffy face.
She ignored my question, which was admittedly stupid, and sat down on the edge of the bathtub. I edged into the room while Ethan stayed put outside, waiting. The cloud of estrogen wafting out of there was probably making him uncomfortable.
I sat next to Aubrey, my foot crushing one of the balled-up tissues scattered across the tile. For several minutes we just sat there, not talking, Aubrey’s occasional sniffling the only sound in the room.
“I’m not allowed to see him anymore.”
Again, my heart jolted at the tone in her voice. She sounded beaten. Hopeless.
“I tried to keep up,” she went on, pressing a fresh wad of tissue to her eyes. “I thought I could do it all . . . school, homework, violin . . . and still have time left over for him. But there was never enough time, so I kept choosing him. I started neglecting all the other stuff and I was too stupid and preoccupied to realize my parents would eventually notice I was slacking off. They don’t notice everything, but they do notice that.”
I wrapped my arm around her slumped shoulders. “Aubrey . . .”
“They grounded me for a month. A month. They took away my phone and my laptop and I’m not allowed to go anywhere or do anything unless it involves school or orchestra. I’m a prisoner.”
Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks and she sopped them up with the soggy tissue. The Kleenex box on the counter was empty, so I handed her some more toilet paper. She tossed the used pieces on the floor with the others and folded the clean stuff into a smaller square.
“As soon as Mom left for work, I called Justin on the landline.” She took a deep, hitching breath. “He was pissed. Told me he was done with all this crap. He doesn’t think I’m worth it and I don’t even blame him.”
“He told you that?” I asked, rubbing her back. “That you’re not worth it?”
“No, but I’m sure it’s what he thinks. Who wants a girlfriend with psycho parents? It’s too much hassle. All this drama . . .” She leaned into me, her small body trembling against my side. “I don’t even think you could talk him down this time, Dara.”
The despair in her voice made me want to find Justin and kick his ass for hurting her. Then she started sobbing again, and the urge passed. Seeing her like this, completely shattered at the prospect of losing him, made me realize exactly how much he meant to her. I felt guiltier and more ashamed than ever for feeling even the slightest h
int of attraction toward him. Or envy toward her.
From now on, I told myself, I’d be the image of appropriate. I wouldn’t secretly watch him, or think about him, or revel in any accidental touches. I’d see him for what he was—the boy my best friend had fallen in love with. And instead of feeling jealous of her, I would channel my resentment into helping her outwit her parents so she could have a life outside the narrow space they’d restricted her to.
“Don’t worry,” I told Aubrey as she cried against my shoulder. “It’ll be okay. Your parents probably won’t back down any time soon, but Justin will. And when he does, I’ll do whatever I can to help you guys, okay? You are worth it, Aubs, and he knows it. He’ll come around. If he doesn’t . . . well, he’s just as psycho as your psycho parents.”
She pushed out a breathy laugh and sat up straight. Her eyes were swollen and bloodshot, but significantly less drippy. “Thanks, Dara. You always know the perfect thing to say to make me feel better. I’m sorry for crying all over you.”
“No worries. It’s part of my job description.” I lifted my foot off the damp tissue and cringed. “Uh, you might want to get rid of this mess before your parents get home. It looks like a trash can threw up in here.”
“Just a sec.”
She stood up and went to the door, opening it all the way. Ethan was still standing in the exact same spot, waiting for us to emerge. Aubrey headed straight for him and pressed her forehead into his shoulder.
“Sorry for yelling at you, Eth,” she told him. “I didn’t mean it.”
His hand came up, hovering over her for a moment before resting on her hair. “I know.”
Our eyes met over her head. I knew we were both thinking the same thing—no matter how hard she pushed us away, Aubrey would always come back to us eventually.
fifteen
Senior Year
“YOU’RE LOOKING BETTER, DARA.”
I adjust my feet on the floor, making sure they’re straight and still. “Better how?”
Mrs. Dover perches on the end of her desk, fingers curling around her usual purple coffee mug. “Healthier. Your cheeks have more color, and it looks like you gained some weight. In a good way, of course.”
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