Being Friends With Boys (11 page)

When Oliver starts the chorus, though, something’s wrong. The band sounds fine, but Oliver’s doing this screeching thing with his voice: an angry, squalling sound that’s awful. I know it’s a song about the zoo, but I’m not sure howler monkey is what we’re going for. I grit my teeth, wait for Oliver to drop back into crooning for the next verse.

It goes fine from there, until he comes back to the chorus:
“You put me in this cage, now you want me out of it; You’re enlivened by this rage, now you want to stifle it.”
Apparently I can’t contain my grimace anymore, because Oliver stops, seeing me, and goes, “What?”

He has never halted mid-song like this. Not even with Trip.

I’m aware, immediately, of all four guys looking at me. Of my face turning what must be an excruciating shade of red.

“It’s just—” I clear my throat. “I’m just not sure the, you know,
angry
sound is the best way to go.” I try to make this sound like an apology.

“
You’re
enlivened
by this rage
.” Oliver holds his hand out like I’m dumb.

“I know it’s talking about being angry, but the point, kind of, is that she—I mean, the speaker—is . . . over it. Like, ‘You used to love it when I got all dramatic, but I’ve been held down by you for so long that I’m not sure I can work myself up anymore.’”

A memory comes into my head: Dad and Mom fighting, the tired sound of Dad’s voice, simply not wanting to engage with her. I didn’t know that’s what the song was about.

“Melancholy,” Eli says, nodding. “Tired.”

Oliver’s face clenches. “Well,
you
sing it, then,” he says to me.

Clearly this is too much criticism from me. But also, Oliver suspects I’m right. He’s holding the mic out, but in a way that means he doesn’t want me to take it.

“No, you just—” I start, but at the same time Fabian goes, “Show us, Charlotte. Please?”

I cannot possibly be any more uncomfortable. Not only Oliver, but Abe, Eli, and Fabian are staring. They want me to sing for them. And I’m not going to. It’s just too weird. And yet,
now you want to stifle it
rings between my ears just as clear as Jilly’s voice.

“Charlotte,” Fabian says, “it’s your song, right? Just show us.”

His voice is like Trip’s: a gentle combination of praise and understanding. He’s acknowledging my fear but wants to help me get past it.

I look at Oliver, whose face is a mixture of things. Frustration. Unwilling need. Embarrassment. Resignation.

I force myself to stand up.

“Okay.” I wipe my sweaty hands on my jeans before I take the mic from Oliver. “The buildup to the chorus.” My voice is wavering. “I won’t sing it, but you know.”

Oliver’s off to the side amid a ton of cords and black boxes on the floor. He watches Abe for the count. Around me the music starts up. I hear the last lines of the first verse in my head:
Will you look at the real me? When will you see enough?

Somehow the chorus unfolds out of me: careful, apologetic, worn.
“You put me in this cage, now you want me out of it; You’re enlivened by this rage, now you want to stifle it.”

Eli stops, with the others drifting to a halt soon after.

“Do it again,” he says to me. He has kind of a scowl on his face, but I can tell he’s just thinking. To Abe and Fabian he says, “There, then slow.”

Fabian nods, knowing what he means. He gives me an encouraging look. Oliver’s jaw tightens. They start up again. I hear the song all around us, feel the way Eli’s altering the
rhythm—slowing it, only slightly but still noticeable. It comes out of me, again, stronger:
“You put me in this cage, now you want me out of it; You’re enlivened by this rage, now you want to stifle it.”

“Keep going,” Eli hollers. I don’t want to, but I do. Charging through the second verse, taking up the chorus again, slowing down, feeling how their music supports my voice—it’s easier to relax. I close my eyes, sing:
“Stare and stare and stare all day / Bent and crushed under all this weight.”
I’ve only heard Oliver do the melody once, but thanks to Fabian, it’s easy enough to hear basically where I’m supposed to be. I don’t mess up too much, even when we go into the bridge and the key changes. At the end, Eli and Fabian just keep playing, so I start repeating
“Walking away from me,”
quieter and quieter. Getting to stand there and alter the song myself while it’s being played, hearing how the words can be shifted, is actually pretty cool.

Not that I want to do it again. As soon as it’s over I hold the mic out for Oliver. He won’t look me in the eye.

“Okay, well, how about we start at the beginning and I’ll—” he tries.

“Can you do ‘Disappear’ like that?” Eli says to me, paying no attention to Oliver.

My eyes dart to Abe. He shrugs, like
It’s fine with me
. Oliver’s looking at him too, but Abe just clunks around on his drums.

“I’m not sure I—”

“We should go forward with the new stuff, don’t you think?” Oliver says over me.

This is all feeling very, very weird. And not good. In absolutely no way am I going to sing for Sad Jackal. Oliver doesn’t need to be so flustered and stiff. I am no kind of threat to him at all.

But Eli is unfazed. “You’ve been sitting here,” he says, pointing at Oliver and Abe, and then me, with the head of his bass, “on this amazing nut of a girl this whole time, and you haven’t even cracked her open, seen what she can really do? Think about what it could mean, being big enough to switch it up from time to time. Having two singers in this group.”

Oliver’s holding my gaze and not letting go. He’s mad. But he’s also hearing what Eli’s trying to say.

“Do you want to?” he asks me, eyes unwavering. Stern.

“No. Absolutely not. I’m no singer.” I move closer to the safety of the couch.

“Oh, you’re not, are you?” says Eli. “That’s not what it sounded like to me.”

This is making me blush with outrage and embarrassment, especially because, if I’m honest, it feels good to have someone as talented as Eli say something like that to me, even if he is being kind of mean about it. It’s hard to keep staring him down, keep my chin up high.

“Why don’t you just let us hear it?” Fabian asks, nicer. “Just so we can, you know, get a different perspective. I thought it was very helpful, actually, your singing. If nothing else, it might improve our warmth.”

I check over at Oliver again. He is glaring at poor Abe, who is still fiddling, saying nothing. Maybe Oliver’s wondering if the wrong person left the band. Maybe he thinks Trip would back him up and would also back me up in my desire not to sing.

Picturing the two of them agreeing I shouldn’t be anywhere near the mic does something funny inside me, though. There’s this kind of click in my throat, and I feel my spine straighten. It’s not that I
can’t
sing, I just—

“Just think about how it increases our demographic, man,” Eli says to Oliver. “You get a hot chick up there and—”

Oliver makes a pointedly scoffing noise, and it’s like I’ve been slapped. I didn’t think my embarrassment and anger could get worse, but there you go.

“It
would
open up some more options, man,” Abe says quietly.

Oliver’s looking back at me again. But this time without so much venom. Again he says, “Do you want to?”

“Not ‘Disappear,’” I hear myself saying. “That one is Oliver’s. He just does it too well. But maybe ‘Every Kind of Kindness.’”

“We could do some covers, too,” Eli says, squinting around
his thought. “And I like the idea of Oliver playing something besides guitar. Recorder or something. My mom’s got one of those old Autoharp things. You know, the ones we’d play in, like, elementary school? That could be cool.”

Oliver is clearly embarrassed and furious. He is not going to play some elementary school instrument. And he’s not going to let some crazy-haired bassist take over his band, either. If I’m going to be singing, Oliver has to make it look like it’s his idea too. I can see all this in his face. And I hate knowing this about him right now.

“I never thought you wanted to before,” he says to me. “I mean, you were always so weird about it with your sister and everything, so. But if you’re game now, if you want to be more a part of it, we can give it a try.”

It’s unfair how he’s making it seem like this whole time I’ve been holding back, even though it’s also not surprising. I’m not going to fight with him, but I’m not going to give in, either. I still hear that nasty sound he made when Eli called me hot.

“What about ‘Too Close to See’?” I say to Eli and Eli only, making it clear to Oliver that I don’t care about his opinion right now.

“Sure,” Fabian agrees. “Saturday we should probably lay down the tunes for the new songs, decide who will sing them. At least a rough idea.”

Again Oliver’s jaw tightens, but he nods.

“I’ll work with you on the tunes if you want,” I offer to Oliver, trying to move us toward some kind of truce, just so we can go forward with practice. Once we both get our heads out of our asses this afternoon, collaborating might even be great. For now I guess he still needs to be mad, though, because he keeps his face stone.

“Let’s go back to this cage song,” Eli decides. “Get it really good. We can focus on the other stuff as it comes. Oliver, now that you’re not in front of the mic, don’t be afraid to trust me, and experiment a little.”

It’s not so bad, seeing Oliver being taken down a notch for once.

We do the song over. And over. And then over and over again. Each time, it progresses and solidifies. By the end, I’ve forgotten to be embarrassed about singing. Forgotten, even, about me and Oliver being at odds.

While the guys pack up their stuff, I carry cups and plates back upstairs, mainly to avoid hovering around. I load the dishwasher for Mrs. Drake and wipe the counters (even though they don’t need it) until the guys start coming up the stairs.

“So we decided,” Oliver says to me, amiable once again, “we should meet earlier on Saturday, to get more time in with the new songs. Can you be here at noon?”

“Can you be
up
at noon?”

Abe hoots at this. I expect Oliver to get pissed again, but he makes a cuckoo face at me and says, “Sh-yuuh.”

“I think Fabian needs a hand,” Eli says. Talking to me.

Obediently I go downstairs, though the request is a little odd.

“Hi,” he says. His equipment is all packed up.

“Hi,” I say back.
I am downstairs with Fabian. By myself
.
And he wanted to talk to me. Alone.
My heart races, flips, stutters.

“You’re really excellent, you know. Eli and I both think so.”

I can barely move. Plus my face is probably scarlet.

“So you don’t have to, you know, hold back or anything. Around us.”

I wonder what they said to Oliver and Abe while I was upstairs. Or each other.

“Oliver and I have been friends since fifth grade.” As though that’s some kind of explanation for—whatever.

Fabian’s just looking at me, waiting.

“And—” I feel at a loss. I don’t know what we’re really talking about. “This band is incredibly important to him. He doesn’t . . . get . . . excited about things, I guess. Not this way. Maybe you can’t tell, but he is astonishingly serious about all this.”

“No, that’s clear.”

“So I just don’t want to—”

“You’re not going to ruin anything by being more involved in the band, Charlotte. You’re going to make it
better
.”

Walking home, I let the whole afternoon spin in my head: the looseness of the music around and in me, standing up there, leading the song. The incubating dimness of Oliver’s rec room. Fabian telling me that I’m excellent. When I get back to the house, I still need to tell someone about it. I need to call Trip.

I’m surprised when he actually answers.

“What’re you doing?”

“Same thing you should be doing,” he answers. “Homework.”

“How do you know I’m
not
doing homework, smarty?”

“Didn’t you guys have practice?”

“Well, true.”

“So how was it?”

“What, my homework?” I’m grinning.

“You’re not doing homework, dummy. How’s practice coming?”

I blurt it out: “They want me to sing. I mean, I’m singing. I’m going to sing a couple of the songs.”

There is a bunch of quiet on the other side of the phone.

Then, “Huh.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I just mean ‘huh.’”

“Huh, what?”

“I just . . .” More quiet. “I’m proud of you, I guess. I didn’t know you’d ever want to do something like that.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so either. And believe me, Oliver did not want me to.”