Being Friends With Boys (17 page)

The next morning, I wake up in the same sludge of blah. Between first and second periods, I don’t even pause by the spot where Trip and I used to meet. I just go straight to Algebra II, try to fake my way through some of last night’s assignment before the bell.

Afterward, I’m still so entrenched in my own pitying gloom that Benji has to call my name three times before I even register it’s him behind me on the way to 20th Cen.

In his hand is a yellow weed. He holds it out. “This bud’s for you.”

“What, you get that from a movie?”

He looks at the wilty thing. “No. From the PE field.”

“No.” I laugh a little. “Not the—never mind.”

He holds it out again for me to take.

I lift it up to my nose, sniffing for something I already know isn’t there. “What’s this for?”

“You were pretty solemn in class yesterday. Better now?”

I sigh. “You should do the test yourself this time. I really won’t be any help.”

We’re outside the classroom now. A few kids pretend not to watch us talking as they pass.

“All the more reason,” he says.

I narrow my eyes at him, twirling the weed. “You’d be doing most of the work. I’d feel like I owed you something.”

“Pizza date it is, then,” he says, steering me into class with one arm lightly around my shoulder. This time, I don’t try to duck out from under it.

After school at the car, I swear Darby’s head is going to pop off. “What do you mean? You’re going out with
another
guy this afternoon?”

“See, sis? Apparently being yourself is a total guy magnet.” Gretchen’s sarcasm is heavy and thick. “You should try it sometime.”

“I’m not going out with him. We’re just studying.”

They both snort at the same time, and I glare at them.

“Benji McLaughlin, right?” Gretchen goes. “That kid you hung with before?”

“He’s in my Twentieth Cen. class. Why?” It’s dumb to get defensive with Gretchen, because she’ll just pounce and use it
against me, but whatever. I don’t need her criticism on top of everything else.

But Gretchen doesn’t answer, just whistles low and long.

I don’t get a chance to ask her to elaborate, because Benji’s Volvo clunks up behind Gretchen’s car right as Darby whines, “But what about Fabian?”

“I’ll be home before Dad and Hannah, don’t worry” is all I tell them.

“Uh-huh,” Gretchen says, not even pretending to hide her knowing look.

Benji watches them over the rims of his aviator glasses while I get in the car. “Hi, ladies,” he says in that lazytag way.

Gretchen nods and Darby does some kind of bounce-wave that is accented by a strangled giggle.

“Gah, the two of them are so stupid,” I grumble.

“What, you’re not excited for you, too?” He smirks. “Let’s just get this finished.” But I can’t help a small grin. That was funny.

Fellini’s isn’t that far away, so I don’t even try to talk over the pulse-shaking garage punk coming out of the stereo.

“You ever go to Saturday shows at the Masquerade?” I ask as we’re walking in. Since he seems to like his music loud.

“Place is all right.” The one-shoulder shrug. “Lot of freaks there, though.”

“Oh, right. Because you’re
so
not freaky at all.”

“Good one, Coastal,” he says, holding the glass door open.

“What is that Coastal thing about?”

“That’s just you,” he says. “Girl of the tides.”

It’s an oddly personal, oddly sweet, oddly observant thing for him to say, and it pulls me back into my regular self again a little. I small-smile at Benji in thanks, and we order our food before spreading out at a glossy booth by the window.

Two pizza slices each and two and a half hours later, we shut our books, tests completed. We’ve been joking and sassing each other the whole time, cracking each other up, and I feel a lot better. I might even get an A on this test.

“Thanks. I needed that,” I tell him when we get back to my house.

“I know you did.” Those jokey eyebrows.

I look at him, serious. “I’m saying, really, thanks.”

He pushes back in his seat, peers out the windshield. “Sometimes your head is the last place you need to be, you know? Or your house, for that matter. Am I right?”

I take in his relaxed shoulders, his unself-conscious face. How he’s so easy and fun to be around.

“Did you sneak a smoke or something while I was in the bathroom? Because you are getting kind of deep, my friend.”
I’m looking at him over the tops of imaginary glasses.

He touches his fingers to his chest. “Ah, such great depths inside here, Coastal, waiting to be plumbed.”

And even though his smirk makes that statement sound dirty, getting out of the car, I’m aware how actually true I’m finding that to be about him.

F
eeling a little clearer-headed, I go up to my room, try to make sense of all my crazy writings from yesterday. There’s still nothing to hang a song on: just a pile of random images and wounded metaphors that don’t fit together. Or, at least, not enough of them do. And looking at the pages makes the Cloud of Sadness move a little closer, which I don’t want. I’d rather joke with Benji than think about Trip. I shove the papers into the back of a desk drawer, decide to decipher them—and my feelings—later.

When my phone rings, though, I rush to it, relieved, and ready to accept whatever apology he offers.

Except it’s Jilly.

“Hey. Where’ve you been?” I ask.

“Sorry, it’s been really crazy here.” She sighs. “I called as soon as I got a chance.”

“Well, how was Savannah?”

“Oh, fun. But it kind of made things even crazier.”

Her answer makes my bad mood creep even closer, but I don’t know why. I listen while she tells me about her roommates and something to do with waiters at a Mexican restaurant, a fake ID. But it’s kind of like listening to someone else tell you a dream. It’s only interesting to her.

“Did you get my email?” I try.

“Yeah, I did. And god, I’m really sorry I haven’t had a chance to write you back. But I think it’s amazing that you’re singing. Really, I do. When is the dance?”

Not that email
, I grumble inside.
The other one. About Fabian.
“It’s the same weekend as Mom’s show, actually.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, isn’t that funny? Me and her getting famous at the same time.”

I’m just kidding around, but I can hear the shift in her even before she says anything.

“Is that what she said?”

“Who, Mom?”

“That she was going to get famous.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Well, good.”

I pause. “Jilly, don’t you think that for once she might—”

“She might be a
flop
, is what she might. Just like always.”

“You don’t know.”

She quiets down. “You’re right.” She sounds tired. “I don’t know. And I don’t care. Maybe that’s the whole thing. Listen, I should really—”

“But we haven’t even talked about—” Fabian. Or Trip. Or Benji, even.

“I have to get to the dining hall in the next ten minutes or I’m eating out of the vending machine for dinner. Okay? We can talk more this weekend, I swear. I just wanted to hear your voice real quick, say hey. It’s really busy up here right now.”

“You said that.”

“Jesus, Charlotte,” she huffs. “Could you please try to handle a few things on your own for once?”

Which is not fair of her. And out of the blue. “I
am
handling things on my own. I’m so on my own it’s not even funny! But I guess you’re too busy
not
being on your own to even care.”

I expect her to fight back—to try to convince me I’m wrong, to apologize for being so self-absorbed—but instead she says, wrung out, “Look, I’ll call you later. But I have to hang up now.”

I don’t even have the energy to throw my phone down after that. Instead I just fall onto my bed and cry into my pillows.

Aside from passing notes with Benji in class, and avoiding any place I might see Trip, all I can do Wednesday is look forward to Thursday. But Thursday is the same thing, except after my last class I get to walk with Oliver to his car, hang out with people there a little before we drive to practice.

Things perk up, though, when Fabian shows up at rehearsal, for one because he is particularly cute today, and for two, we are both wearing vests. When he comes down the stairs into the rec room, we laugh at our matchy-matchiness, and I try to suppress the utter delight welling up in me, being twins with him.

Eli takes it a little differently. “Just make sure you each wear your
own
clothes next Friday,” he grumbles.

“Oh, come on,” Fabian pokes. “Don’t you think some kind of uniform would be fun?” He grabs the sides of his vest and straightens his spine. “We look dapper.”

We.
He said “we.” We are a
we
now.

Abe looks from Eli to Oliver, biting his lip. “What
are
we going to wear, man?”

“You’re pretty much looking at it, if you ask me.” Eli indicates his own T-shirt and faded gray cords, held up by a thick black belt buckled one loop off to the side.

“We shouldn’t, you know, wear jackets or something?” Abe.

“I might, I don’t know,” Oliver says, like he hasn’t already thought about every detail of his outfit. “I think it’s important to at least make an effort. It’s annoying when you go to a concert and not even the band seems like they bothered.”

He’s trying to sound indifferent, but this is actually a huge point of contention for Oliver. He practically squirms with discomfort if he sees an
audience
member in Crocs or cargo shorts at a concert. And I have never seen a boy with so many accessories; he has more belts and shoes than I think even Darby.

“You want this one in a dress?” Eli jerks a thumb in my direction.

Oliver glances at me, looks away again.

My face gets hot for no reason. “I’m not wearing a dress.”

“No,” Oliver agrees, too fast.

Jerk.

“Everybody’s going to look great,” Fabian butts in cheerily. “Let’s just agree that we won’t show up like we’re pig wrestlers, and everyone’s personalities will come through naturally. It’ll be good. Right?”

A sunbeam spreads inside me. Forget Trip. Truly.

Oliver turns to me. “We think you should do ‘Disappear.’”

Um.
What?
And when did they talk about this? “But we only have, like, a week to practice left, and you’re the—”

“It’s the first one you wrote.”

“Yeah, but I wrote it for
you
to sing.”

“Yeah, but you’re better than I am.”

We stare at each other. It takes me a full minute to process what he’s just said. I look at Fabian. He gives me an easygoing thumbs-up. Even Eli is nodding.

“Well, if that’s what you want . . .”

And apparently that decides it. I take my place behind the mic. We practice the whole set list a couple of times, and by the end of rehearsal, it feels like we’re actually going to be pretty good.

When Fabian offers me another ride home, it’s more than the band that’s good. Sparkle spreads along my spine, and going out to his car I think I bounce.

“You up for Saturday again?” he wants to know when we get in.

Sparkle. Sparkle. Sparkle. “Absolutely.”

“Great, then. I’ll call you, but it’ll be around the same time. Taryn and Sylvia will be there again. They said to say hey.”

And I don’t know if it’s being happy after feeling so awful, or that today we even
look
like we belong beside each other, or the dozen pleased looks I got from him while I was singing, or Darby nagging me to show him how I feel, or that he’s so, so, so wonderful . . . but when we get to my house, before I climb
out of the car, I unbuckle and half reach, half lunge around to squeeze him in a hug and plant a quick kiss on what could be construed as either the side of his mouth or the lower half of his cheek, depending. He kisses my cheek too (more my cheek than my mouth), and his freest arm goes around my back. I am lined with double rainbows. Diamonds from the blue. Glittering sunshine through my bones.

I don’t know if it’s the glitter-glow of Fabian, or just enough distance from my fight with Trip, but Friday things feel a lot more normal. Eli high-fives me when I walk past him on the way to Algebra II, and even Whitney smiles meekly at me in the hall. Looking up and making eye contact with other people, instead of being caught up in my self-pity and self-absorption, I realize things really aren’t that bad. When Benji passes me a note wondering what I’m doing tonight, I don’t even feel embarrassed telling him Hannah’s decreed it Family Game Night.