Being Friends With Boys (12 page)

“I bet he didn’t.”

“Which was part of what made me want to do it, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“But when I got up there, it felt really good, and now we’ve got to plan out the other three songs, and Eli wants me to do some more, and Oliver might play the xylophone or something.”

“The xylophone?”

“Or Autoharp. Or whatever. So, but, I mean, isn’t it great?”

“I said it was great.”

“No you didn’t. You said you were
proud
.” I’m so glad to be telling someone who will actually understand what a big deal this is for me, that I’m on the verge of giggly.

“Well, I do think it’s great.”

“Okay, good. Hey—your Jujitsu start yet?”

“Aikido. And no. But I’m going to watch the tournament on Saturday. Meet the instructors. Dad’s coming.”

“Well, good.” I don’t know what more to say to this. I want him to joke about it, or say something more about my singing.
Mainly I want him to play a song for us.

“Hey, listen,” he says. “I’ve kind of got to go.”

“Oh. Okay, then.” I try not to sound surprised. Or hurt.

“But good work with the band. I hope I’ll get to see you.”

“Well, you will, silly. The dance is in just a few weeks.”

“Indeed.” Nothing else.

When we hang up, I’m a balloon with all the air squashed out. There are plenty of other things I could and should be doing, but I don’t want to do any of them. I end up downstairs on the family computer, watching music videos and feeling nowhere near as cool as anyone on the screen.

I
n the morning, Trip hands over the notebook as usual, though he’s barely written in it. Certainly nothing about my singing. He just tells me who will be at Chris’s party tonight (no one I know) and ends with
Yeah sometime you should hang out, I mean, if you have time.
And that’s it.

Third period and I still haven’t responded, mostly because I don’t know what to say. Chris Monroe’s? I still don’t know what Trip sees in him. So instead of faking interest, I write notes back and forth to Benji about where we should study this afternoon. He wants to go to the bleachers by the soccer field again, probably so he can smoke, but I think we’re more productive in the
library, like last week. He teases that if I need his brain, I should go for the studying-out-of-doors thing, because it’s proven science that fresh air and oxygen increase brain function.
Not if the fresh air you’re inhaling is tainted with herb
, I write back.
Nature hater
, he replies. We decide to just meet at his car and make up our minds after school.

I’m on my way to psych at the end of the day when Oliver rushes up to me like he’s on fire and I’m holding a bucket of water.

“What is it?”

“I need you for the songs.” He’s practically panting.

“What, now?”

He ignores me. “I tried last night but I just can’t get it and I have to have something for tomorrow.”

I’m trying not to laugh at how dramatic he’s being, so I hold the door open for him instead. I follow him into class, to our desks. Maybe it’s still a little bit of payback for the way he acted about me getting behind the mic yesterday, but something in me wants to make him sort of beg. Or, at least, make him feel bad for what a tool he was.

I make my face a challenge. “You really okay with me singing?”

He flushes. “It just threw me off, man. I thought you were mortified to get up in front of people. I mean, whenever you have to speak in class . . . like I said, I was just surprised.”

I can see in his eyes that he is sincere and, in his own way, apologetic. He wants to make things okay between us. He is, after all, my friend.

“So you can come over? Straight after school?”

“I have a study thing. 20th Cen.,” I tell him.

“Campbell’s such a douche.”

“I know. But not everybody can handle your superexcel course load,” I tease.

“Shut up, man. But seriously, you can’t just get the notes from someone?”

I could, I guess, go meet Benji at his car, get his notes, and borrow them for the weekend. It’s not like we’re working on a test; this was mainly for my benefit. But it seems a little uncool, canceling at the last minute. I feel like I would owe him something.

“It’s that bad?” I ask Oliver. He hasn’t ever had trouble with the music before. Though before, he also always had Trip.

Ms. Neff comes in, bringing class to start, but not before Oliver leans over the edge of his desk, whispers, “You have no idea.”

After class we walk together out to the parking lot with the stream of everyone else. I see Lish hanging out by some volleyball girl’s SUV.

Whatever.

I work my way between cars to Benji’s old brown Volvo. He’s in that army jacket and his aviator sunglasses, leaning against the door, watching me.

“Hey, Coastal,” he says.

“You know I really don’t get where that comes from.” I try to sound irritated, mainly because I’m perplexed by how sort of thrilling it is, Benji having a nickname for me. Even a nonsense one.

He smiles with one side of his mouth. “You’ll get it eventually” is all he says.

“Listen—”

“What, you got better plans?” He gestures over toward Oliver, who’s watching both of us, this expectant little look on his face.

“It’s not like that,” I clip. “I just—we just need to work on something for this weekend. It can’t wait.”

Benji lifts his hand in casual dismissal. “I feel you.”

“So I know it’s uncool for me to cancel, but I was wondering if I could—”

He opens the passenger door of his car. When he turns back to me he’s handing over his notes.

“Really?”

He shrugs. “I don’t much need them.”

I reach out. “Do you—want to see mine? I mean, I can—”

“It’s cool.”

He’s still looking at me in that detached, amused way. It
makes me stumble over myself. “Well, it’s really great of you and—”

“Calm down, Coastal. It’s all good. I’ll just see you Monday. No big.”

His binder is heavy in my hand. I still feel guilty, even though it doesn’t seem like Benji really cares.

“Good luck with your project. Better hurry along, by the looks.”

He gestures again toward Oliver, who’s talking to a few other guys but still glancing obsessively over at us.

“Well, thanks. I mean it.”

“You’re good,” he says, reaching out to squeeze me, once, on the arm. Under his hand, I’m aware how squishy I am.

“Thanks again.” I hurry off then, mainly because I don’t want Benji to see how flustered that whole exchange has made me.

“Everything okay?” Oliver wants to know when I get to his car.

“Let’s just go,” I tell him, getting in and slamming the door, hard.

When we get to the house, I realize we didn’t give Whitney a ride home from school today, that she wasn’t even at Oliver’s car this afternoon.

“What up with Whitney?” I try to be casual.

Oliver shrugs and opens the fridge to find us something to eat. “I told her we had to practice.” He’s so blasé about it.

“And she was okay with that?”

“Sure,” he says, in a way that makes me think Whitney doesn’t know, exactly, who “we” is today. But whatever.

We heat up some Hot Pockets in the microwave, pour big glasses of Coke, and take them downstairs, where Oliver’s two guitars are set up on their stands. I’m surprised to see the acoustic one out.

“You really were experimenting last night, huh?”

He bites off about a quarter of his Hot Pocket and talks around it. “Just trying a few things out.”

While we eat, he takes out my lyric sheets and spreads them between us on the couch. We look at the words, talk about what sort of tone we think each song should have. It’s strange to be talking to Oliver like this, but also wonderful. He and Trip were always the frontmen, and I was just the girl who ran around covering the details. Now I’m in Trip’s seat.
I’m
here making Sad Jackal what it is. It’s kind of awesome. But at the same time, I know I need to prove myself. So I try to remember what Trip’s taught me about music, to think like he might, and picture the songs as sound pieces and not just thoughts in my head.

“‘You’re Ugly, Too’ can be your angry-sounding one, if you want,” I say.

Oliver’s face is not sure I will be much help, after all. “I don’t want angry.”

“Oh. Well, I just thought that you were going for—”

“That was just playing around. Most of it was Eli’s idea.”

“Got it.” I’m not going to push it further. “At any rate, this one should be faster. Frustrated. But ‘Foreign Tongue’ has got to sound dark and European.”

“No matter what Eli says, I am not playing the accordion.”

We both laugh at this.

“You don’t have to. But you know what I mean.” I let my bangs drop toward my face, pretend I’m inhaling deeply from a cigarette, and make my eyes sultry. “Moody.”

“Moody I can do.”

This is a joke, kind of. When Oliver’s mom first heard them play, she pursed her Mary Kay’ed lips together, smiled, and said, “Why, it’s so
moody
, honey.”

“It’s called
Sad
Jackal, Ma,” Oliver had said.

And true to the name—which Oliver and Abe and Trip just came up with; I’m still not sure what it’s supposed to mean—the band’s sound is mostly that: moody. It occurs to me that maybe this is part of why Oliver wanted new members, to at least bring in another emotion or two.

He goes for his electric. “Let me show you what I was thinking for that.”

I watch him plug in, mess around a little, sing. He’s just showing me the rough lines of the sound, but it’s still good. I tell
him, when he’s finished, to do it again, so that I can listen for alternate paths the melody might take. He nods and starts right in, sings a little more seriously. Whatever happened yesterday at practice, he’s already let it go, and so should I.

It’s hard to concentrate, though, because while he’s singing, Oliver’s phone bings next to me on the coffee table, with about ten incoming texts. When he finishes playing he turns it off. I’m sure it’s Whitney, but I don’t ask.

We move on to “You’re Ugly, Too,” and after an hour—Mr. and Mrs. Drake leave for a benefit dinner in the meantime—end up changing the entire third verse, making it into more of a kick-in-the-throat song than a pathetic attempt at an insult.

“Fabian’s going to like messing around with that one,” I say from nowhere.

“He’s good, right?”

I nod. Oliver saying Fabian is talented gives me a little thrill inside. But I can’t let Oliver of all people see that, so I keep my face even. “Really good.”

Working out “Just Hang Up” is harder. The chords Oliver’s trying are all wrong.

“Stop playing and close your eyes,” I finally tell him. I’m sitting on the floor in front of him, legs crossed.

He does, and his placid, trusting face is startlingly sweet.

“Think about a girl—a girl who’s desperate to get the last
word in. A girl trying her very hardest to hurt the dickhead boyfriend on the other end of the phone. She has no way of knowing she’ll never succeed. Because he doesn’t really care and is just doing all this for some kind of twisted amusement. But she keeps trying. She won’t let go. She’s like some kind of pit bull.”

He opens his eyes. “A pit bull hanging on to a dead man.” The way he says it, there’s some personal experience behind his words.

“Exactly. We should even put that in.”

“Okay, here—”

He tries another progression of chords, these definitely darker. I test out a few lines along with him. We sketch out a melody and for a second try some harmony but just end up scrunching our faces at each other and laughing.

It isn’t perfect. We have to go back, change some things, but we do it. Together. No egos and no awkwardness. Just me and him, working to make these songs the best we can.

Which is why I don’t realize how late it is. “Oh, shit,” I say, squinting at the digital clock on his elaborate entertainment console: 11:23. “Is that clock right?”

“Looks like it,” he says, turning on his phone and holding it up for me to see.

“Damn. I’ve got to go. Like, right now.”

He stands up. “It’ll be quicker if I drive you.”

Which is another good thing about Oliver: he is totally respectful when it comes to parents and their demands. Chores, groundings, curfews, family dinners, whatever, he understands it. He doesn’t tease you or say, “Screw your parents, man,” or anything like that. So when I jump up from the floor, all he does is switch off the power on his equipment, and then he’s behind me up the stairs, grabbing his jacket, out the door.