Lemonade Mouth Puckers Up (27 page)

“I’m real tired, Olivia. I think you better go.”

“What? But we’re not done!”

“I think we are. It was sure nice of you to come visit me.”

I almost wanted to laugh. It was ridiculous. I’d been there less than an hour. But she was serious—she really was sending me away. So what could I do except stand up and head out?

“Tell your grandmother I’m sorry,” she said to my back. “Tell her I’ll see her next time, and shut the door behind, will you?”

And that was it. For a while I stood in the hallway feeling like my insides had just been ripped from me. I was so angry and sad and confused. I couldn’t have talked if I’d tried. I stumbled down
the corridor and found my way downstairs, and there was Brenda sitting in the little lobby area, waiting for me
.

So now we’re on the bus again, and all this time I’ve been going over and over the things we said. Why did I have to go and tell her I needed her? It’s not true! Brenda is great and I have my dad and I have my friends and that’s good enough. One thing I understand now is that my mother is not a well person, and it isn’t just her kidneys either. She’s not well in the head, which makes me feel sad for her. But that’s still not an excuse for the things she did and didn’t do. If she’s not responsible for her actions, who is? She may be my mother, but in some ways she’s more like a kid than I am
.

In any case, I’m glad I wrote all this down, because now I’m too exhausted to feel much of anything. I’m done crying. I’m too spent to think. I’m going to stare out the window and watch the lights go past until we get home
.

I set the diary down. A few feet away, Olivia was still hugging her knees to her chest, staring out across the water.

“I had no idea you were going through all this,” I said. “Are you okay?”

She shrugged. “I’m fine.”

I tried to imagine how it must feel to be her. I wish she’d told me sooner, but at least now I understood a little better. “So, are you glad you went to see her?”

“Not sure,” she said after a pause. “I thought I’d feel relieved in some way, you know? Like talking with her would resolve something. But it didn’t. My visit only ended up raising more questions than it answered, and when I think about all this stuff, I still feel … I don’t know … kind of empty.” She looked out at the water again. “Maybe Brenda was right after all. Maybe it would have been better if I hadn’t gone.”

She picked up a piece of broken shell and tossed it into the water. The air smelled of the ocean, and from somewhere far to my left came the distant sounds of little kids playing in the waves.

“I’m sorry I waited so long to tell you,” she said at last.

“Why? This was never about me. You had to do whatever was right for you.”

“I’m not saying I should have done it for you, exactly. Looking back over these past few weeks, I think talking to you sooner would have made the whole thing easier. For
me
, I mean. I guess I was just …” She seemed to search for the right word.

“Scared?”

She nodded. “Like I said, old habits die hard.”

We sat there quietly a while longer, but then she stood up. After brushing the sand from her legs, she tucked the diary back in her pocket and then reached for my hand. Without a word we started walking along the water together. The tide was going out, and after a few steps we took off our shoes
so we could go barefoot, letting the waves roll over our feet in the soft wet sand. There was a sailboat in the distance. Behind it, a line of pink puffy clouds looked like the castle wall of a faraway country. We stopped to look.

“Do you ever feel lonely?” she asked. “Like we’re just small parts in a giant, complicated universe?”

“I’m not lonely,” I said. “I’m here with you.”

She blinked at me, and then something unexpected happened. She reached out and touched my cheek, staring right into my eyes, and then she kissed me. And I kissed back. It was a real kiss, gentle and quiet, the kind that gets your blood racing and your head spinning, and when it was done I just stood there, surprised, looking at her.

And she was looking back at me.

A warm breeze blew a few strands of her hair into her face and she swept them aside with her fingers and took a step back. She turned and walked away, continuing along the edge of the water, almost daring me not to follow. But I didn’t wait. I caught up with her and took her hand and we kept walking. No need to talk. No need to pick through the exact meaning of what had just happened. We both knew. I was her boyfriend. She was my girlfriend. Maybe we’d already been that, but now it was official. And the sun was shining and the sand was soggy and cool under our feet and the world was full of mysteries yet to be explored. We were together and it felt good. It felt right. And that was all that really mattered.

Picture the scene: There sat your troubled troubadour in depressed silence on the steps in front of the local Honey Fields Mini-Mart, having just received a call from Charlie with the disturbing news of Olivia and Wen’s recent blowup. Thank goodness Rajeev was there to console her with a bag of salted veggie chips. It felt like storms were swirling and the end of Lemonade Mouth was in sight. The band had nothing scheduled, no prospects, and now this newest debacle threatened to become the final nail in their sad, citrusy coffin.

Yet, unbeknownst to your somber Sista, change was in the air. Little did she suspect just how close she and her friends were to a break in the proverbial clouds—a small one, perhaps, but at this point any tiny glimmer of hope was better than no glimmer at all.

Just as Rajeev and I were finishing the last of the crispy veggie treats I got a message from Lyle.

It was vague but intriguing. I texted back to ask what it was but he didn’t answer, so Rajeev and I set out at once for Lyle’s place, which, unfortunately, was about a twenty-minute walk away.

We were the last to arrive, right behind Olivia and Wen, who were walking up the driveway just as we approached the house. I noticed they were hand in hand. I had no idea what
exactly had gone on between them, but I was relieved to see that the recent trouble seemed to be over.

“All right, Lyle,” I called. He was in his garage, sitting in front of a crate with his laptop. Charlie, Mo and Naomi were already there, standing behind him. “So what’s the big mystery?”

“I was waiting to tell you guys,” he said, running his fingers through his thick mess of hair. “I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up if it was only going to end up being a short-term thing.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Our website. I told you I posted a couple of tracks from the new recordings, right? Well, since your Chet Anders appearance I guess curiosity about Lemonade Mouth has been growing. I expected a surge in site visits for a couple of days, maybe, but I assumed it’d drop away after that. It hasn’t.” He pointed to the screen, where there was a picture of us and an area where people could get free downloads of two of our new songs—“Let Us Begin” and “Freaky Fakey Phony.” “Our daily visitor count has been rising, not dropping. Over the past twenty-four hours alone we got more hits than our server could handle. Earlier this afternoon the whole site crashed. I just had to upgrade it to a more powerful platform.”

We all stared at each other. “So … uh … what does this mean, exactly?” Mo asked.

Naomi grinned. “It
means
that even without Decker and Smythe, the word is still getting out about Lemonade Mouth.”