Stalker Girl (16 page)

He wasn’t completely rude. He said “Hey, Val,” and he did make eye contact with her and even smiled when he did. It wasn’t like he didn’t make an effort. He explained that he’d just broken a string warming up and wanted to get the new one replaced so that he could get back to warming up.

“Can you guys stick around after our set?”

But they couldn’t. Angela was very strict about that stuff. It had been hard enough to get her to agree to let Val out on a school night.

Val wasn’t mean about it. She told Carly she understood about how Brian got tense before a show. And she was obviously really impressed with the music. They stayed for two songs, and Val told Carly she thought the band was really good, much better than she had imagined. Maybe they did have a shot at success.

But she obviously wasn’t any closer to thinking Brian was great boyfriend material.

The next weekend, Val suggested Carly invite him to the restaurant for Sunday brunch. Jake was going to be down from Ithaca for the weekend. It would be fun for all of them to get together. But it didn’t happen. Or not the way it was supposed to. Brian called that morning to report that the water heater in the Brooklyn house had flooded and Sheryl needed him to find a plumber and supervise the repairs for the tenants. No one trusted Avery to handle this kind of thing. He said he’d try to make it later, but they shouldn’t wait for him to eat.

So Carly sat through brunch with Val and her friendly, well-mannered boyfriend, who showed up on time, ordered in perfect Spanish, and made a point of including Carly in all their conversations. Brian showed up three hours after the brunch was supposed to start. Jake had to catch a train, so the two of them merely shook hands. When Val brought a plate of chicken stew, pink beans, and rice, Brian asked if he could have it to go. He apologized. Said it looked and smelled great and he was sure he’d love it later, but he was just too full to eat. He had gotten so hungry, he’d ordered a pizza and split it with the plumber.

After that, Carly realized she would have to give up the idea that if Val could just get to know Brian, she’d understand why Carly was so nuts about him. He missed brunch because he was a responsible son who took care of the stuff that needed taking care of. He wasn’t being rude about the food. He really did like it, and later that night when he was back home in Brooklyn, he called Carly to tell her how great it was and how he had to fight Liam and Avery off for it. Carly passed that information on to Val, but it didn’t appear to have much—if any—impact.

They continued to work together every Saturday night, and they still hung out together at school, but Carly and Val had less and less to talk about with each other.

Talking to Paula Castleman was no longer an option. In fact, Paula was no longer. She’d gone to Rome that summer and come back wanting to be called “Paola,” the Italian version of her name, pronounced kind of, but not exactly, like “Pow-La.” Every time she saw Carly and Val, she’d greet them with nonironic two-cheeked European kisses and exclaim,
“Bella! Bella!”
It was what you did in Rome.

Paula had somehow become friends with Chloe Brosnan, Bellwin’s biggest junior socialite and budding philanthropist. That fall, Chloe was putting on her first very own charity ball, raising money on behalf of endangered gorillas in Africa, and she’d invited Pow-La to be on her “advisory board.” From what Carly could tell, this involved difficult tasks like deciding which kinds of hors d’oeuvres to serve and what colors to choose for their theme.

 

All of this made Carly a lot more needy when it came to Brian. The only time she felt right was when she was with him.

But being with Brian in New York was a lot more complicated than it had been at Stony Hollow, where they saw each other every day at work and Ernestine’s was a five-minute walk from the camp. Upper Manhattan and Brooklyn, though technically both part of the entity known as New York City, are pretty far apart. The fastest public transportation could bring them together was forty-five minutes, and that didn’t count walking to the subway or waiting on the platform.

They stayed in almost constant electronic contact. Carly would text him when she woke up in the morning and hear back from him when he got up a few hours later. They’d exchange more texts at lunch and between classes.

But whenever they wanted to see each other live and in person, they had to figure out a time and place to meet. She couldn’t see him during school hours, and he couldn’t see her most nights because of practice and gigs. Plus, to make ends meet, he started working weekend days at a music store in Greenwich Village. Carly needed her Saturday-night shifts at SJNY more than ever now that her mother was watching every dollar.

All told, they probably had ten good face-to-face days in the two months they lasted past the end of summer.

That’s an average of one good day a week.

And those good days really only amounted to a few hours at a time.

There was one great afternoon walk through Riverside Park; one movie-montage-worthy trip to the mummy exhibit at the Met. One cold Sunday morning in early October they took the subway out to Coney Island and drank three hot chocolates apiece while they snuggled on a bench on the boardwalk making up stories about the people walking by.

Truly private time was even harder to find. The basement apartment in the Brooklyn house only had one bedroom. Avery and Liam were nice about it, and would make themselves busy on Sunday afternoons so Carly and Brian could get a little alone time. They had one amazing night on Carly’s little futon on the floor when Jess was at Nick’s and Isabelle was out for dinner and a movie with her sister Nancy, and Carly felt as good as she had during the summer.

When it was just the two of them, she didn’t hate the apartment. She imagined they were living there together, that she was in college and he was playing music and they were poor but happy young people in New York.

When they were alone together like that, she felt like she had during those afternoons at Baldwin Rock, or nights they sat out on Brian’s roof, or on the day he took her to the secret underground room.

But as those weeks went by, another Carly emerged. This Carly was whiny, needy, clingy, and jealous. She took over Carly’s thoughts, put words in her mouth, and made her do stuff she’d instantly regret but somehow couldn’t stop herself from doing.

It was like being possessed.

THE FIRST
time this happened was in October.

Ernestine is Everywhere got booked for the weekly Thursday-night showcase at Train, a club on the Lower East Side. Shira Zeidman, a drama major from LaGuardia Arts High who ran a popular indie-music blog called ShiraZ, wanted an interview. She told Brian she’d seen a lot of bands come and go, and she thought they really had something.

Liam and Avery didn’t think some drama-nerd girl with a blog could do much for them, but Brian knew better. He understood that if the arty New York kids liked you, word would spread fast and no telling how far. He’d done his homework—seen how many friends and followers Shira had and knew she’d reviewed and interviewed some big bands before they’d gotten big.

He was excited about it and invited Carly to come along. So on a rainy October afternoon, they met up after school and trekked across town to Café Fortuna, where Shira used the big back booth as her office.

Carly drank tea and ate chocolate cake and listened while Brian told Shira the story of how the band was born. As well as Carly knew the story, she loved hearing it again. She loved hearing Brian talk about the place where everything started. Not just EiE, but also the two of them.

Shira asked him about the band’s name and Carly sat up, waiting for him to give her props for thinking of it. She listened happily and proudly as Brian told Shira all about Ernestine, how she had encouraged the boys to pursue their music, especially after their father died. How she had made The Plan with them: pursue the music dream for a year, and if it looked like something was going to happen, keep going. If there was no progress, then back to school.

Carly waited for him to get to the part about how she came up with the name that night they all sat around Ernestine’s table, brainstorming.

But he never did. He told Shira all about Ernestine’s house—the funky rooms, the needlepoint, the crocheted afghans, the Ernestineisms and Ernestineabilia. But he never told her about how Carly was the first one to say “Ernestine is Everywhere.”

When they left the café, she tried really hard not to ask him about it. She wanted to just be happy for them. She told herself it wasn’t about her. She should be happy that the band was starting to get some buzz. It didn’t matter who came up with the name. What mattered was that it was a good name. It was the right name. It wasn’t like she was actually
in
the band or had written the songs or anything.

But before they’d even gotten a full block away from the café, she found herself saying, “Don’t I get even a little credit?” She tried to make it sound light and jokey, but even she could hear the whiny undertone.

“Huh?”

“For coming up with ‘Ernestine is Everywhere’?”

“Of course you do,” he said, putting his arm around her and pulling her close. It was raining even harder now, and when he kissed her neck, he sent a trickle of water rolling down her back. “It’s a great name.”

“So why didn’t you tell her it was my idea?” By now there was nothing under about the tone. She was flat-out whining, and she wasn’t sure why.

“I didn’t?” He squinted, puzzled, like he really thought he had.

She shook her head. “Nope.”

“Oh, geez. I meant to, Carl. I totally meant to.”

But he hadn’t.

“I guess it slipped my mind. I was nervous, you know? I wanted her to like me and tell people to come see us, so I just wasn’t thinking about that part of the story.”

“Of course. Forget I said anything. It’s not important.”

“It is important. Everybody loves our name. I’m going to tell her.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket.

“No! Don’t do that.” Now she was embarrassed. “It’s silly. Just leave it.” But she was glad to hear him say that it mattered to him. And she was glad that he ignored her protests and typed out a text.

“Too late,” he said with a smile as he shut the phone and put it back in his pocket. “It’s done.”

 

Carly stayed up that night, hitting Refresh on Shira’s blog over and over until the interview showed up.

What did that mean?

Is that what Brian texted her? Or were those Shira’s words? She couldn’t ask him. Not after whining like she had that afternoon. And she couldn’t ask Shira. That would be totally weird.

 

Her doubts should have been put to rest a few days later, when Brian invited her out to Brooklyn for the boys’ first attempt at putting on a Quinn family Sunday-night dinner without Sheryl there to cook. Avery had gone up to Ernestine’s the day before, and Sheryl sent him back with a batch of her special spaghetti sauce—made with the last of the summer tomatoes—and step-by-step instructions for re-creating her garlic bread.

When Carly got there, she found the three of them laughing it up in the kitchen. Brian stood at the stove warming sauce, boiling water, and assembling the garlic bread; Avery and Liam sat at the table, each with a laptop in front of him. Ever since Shira’s interview, they’d been bombarded with new friend requests, most of them from girls, and a lot of them offering more than cyber friendship.

Avery and Liam were into it. Big-time. One by one they would check out every girl wanting to friend them. They didn’t reject anybody. That would be bad business. But if a girl looked hot, they might strike up a messaging relationship.

Avery started going a little nuts, promising all these girls he’d put them on the guest list, inviting them backstage, taking their cell numbers.

Brian didn’t approve.

“Whoa. Whoa. Hold on. Only real girlfriends go on the guest list.”

“Dude. That’s not fair. You’re the only one with a ‘real girlfriend.’ We’re supposed to just let all these opportunities fly by?”

“Dude. Do you know how many psychos are out there?”

Avery looked at Liam and smiled. “Psycho isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”

“Yeah,” Liam laughed. “There’s ‘Woo-hoo, let’s party’ psycho, and there’s ‘Hi, I’m going to seem fun and wild at first, but then I’m going to get scary and start stalking you’ psycho.”

“My point exactly,” Brian said, as he lifted the pasta pot from the stove and carried it to the sink. Carly watched his biceps expand as he poured the spaghetti into the colander, rejoicing in the affirmation of her status as girlfriend, hoping they’d get some time alone after dinner. “So don’t you think we should have some standards? Some kind of limit on who we put on that list?”