The Reece Malcolm List (17 page)

I shake my head.

“Wanna go to Starbucks?” She leans in a little closer, drops her voice down to a whisper. “Promise I won’t invite Mira along, okay?”

I don’t think I can refuse her after spending so much time kissing her okay-not-technically-boyfriend-but-still.

Jasmine walks out into the hallway and points to me. “They want you next.”

“Good luck,” Lissa tells me, which is nicer than I feel like I deserve.

I walk into the room, and it’s the same teachers as last time. Hardly any time passes before the accompanist begins, and I try to forget about how much hinges on this song. I even try to forget all the amazing advice Kate gave me, because I don’t want it to clog my brain. I just sing.

Afterward I wait in the hallway for Lissa, and she walks out with her mouth in a straight line. I’ve seriously never seen Lissa look anything but happy.

“Are you okay?” I ask, even though maybe I shouldn’t acknowledge anything.

“I hit a couple bad notes,” she says. “A
couple
.”

“A couple isn’t bad,” I say.

“Enough people will try out without missing any,” she says. “It’s okay, though; I don’t think I’m the lead type. I’m not even sure I want to be in a musical, but I felt like I should at least try.”

I text my mother that I have a ride home, and then walk outside with Lissa to her car. We’re quiet and I still have no idea what to expect.

“I’m sorry,” I say, because I am. Regardless of anything. “If I shouldn’t have—”

“Listen, to be honest I’m not a huge fan of E going out with you, but . . . ” Lissa shrugs. “Obviously we had our chance together, and it kind of fizzled. And I knew he still liked me and I like him—as a person, you know. But I didn’t want to go out with him. So who am I to say what he can’t do now?”

I sort out the information, piles in my brain.

“And, Devan, you are lucky, because I was the first girl he kissed, and he was
awful
. You have me to thank for any fun you’ve had as far as that’s concerned.”

I laugh, against my better judgment. “Thank you?”

“Oh, you are welcome.” She turns her car into the parking lot behind Starbucks and slides right into one of the first spots. “You could have talked to me, you know. It’s so weird you were acting so scared of everyone.”

I know I shouldn’t say it’s because a lot of the time I basically
am
scared of everyone. Time to work on my wild squirrel mantra more.

We walk into Starbucks and get into line to order. I check my phone to see if my mother has responded, and she has.
Of course it’s fine. Be home for dinner if you can because Brad’s making burgers on the grill and they will amaze you. xo

“Do you think burgers could amaze anyone?” I ask without thinking about it. Then I feel really dorky. “Sorry I asked that; my mother just sent me a weird text.”

Lissa looks over my shoulder and laughs. For a moment it’s like I’m two thousand miles away with Justine. It’s surprisingly nice. “How
will
burgers amaze you? Do they do magic?”

“Brad
is
a really good cook,” I say. “My mother’s boyfriend.”

“You’re lucky. My parents are both terrible cooks.”

She steps up to order, but I kind of push in so that I can pay for her drink, too. I feel like I should do
something
for sort-of-not-really stealing her sort-of-not-really-boyfriend.

“I felt so weird when it happened,” I say once we have our drinks and we sit down at the only open table. “Like he was kissing me and I kept thinking about you and how I was a terrible person.”

“Well, definitely don’t think about
me
when you’re kissing E,” she says. “God, don’t stress. Seriously.”

Then she laughs kind of hysterically. “I guess it’s pointless telling you not to do that.”

“Ugh, kind of,” I say.

“Yeah, E and I had . . . something. We didn’t
not
have something. But if you like him . . . ”

“You’re being too nice about this,” I say, as if I’m an authority. Maybe people act like this all the time, who knows. “I just feel—”

“How you feel
kind of
doesn’t matter,” she says. “Not to sound like a bitch, but, you know? If you’re worried about me, and I say it’s okay . . .”

I’m not sure I could be this reasonable, considering I have way less claim to Sai than Lissa does to Elijah—well, no claim at all, let’s be honest—and I still hate Nicole for being his girlfriend. “You have a point, yeah.”

“You and Mira are kind of the same,” she says.

“What?”

“Ha, sorry,” she says, which I guess means I look as alarmed as I feel. “It’s just that she freaks out over everything, too. You admit it, which is a big difference. Mira’s a lot crazier than she used to be.”

“I hate that she hates me.” It’s way more honest than I intended, but there it sits, right in the air, between us.

“She hates
everyone
,” Lissa says. “Even me, and we’ve been friends since kindergarten.”

“I guess to be fair she was kind of nice yesterday,” I say. “Nice for Mira at least.”

“See? Don’t take it personally.”

I’m not sure I can manage, but I know it’s good advice.

We finish our Frappuccinos and then walk back outside to Lissa’s car. I feel about twenty times better than I did this morning, with the callback behind me and Lissa clearly not mad.

“Do you still want to go together to E’s show on Friday?” Lissa asks as she pulls up to my house.

“Um.” I do want to, but I don’t know if I
should
want to. Is it weird? Is it weirder not to? But here’s the thing: I want to be Lissa’s friend. And if I’m going to follow Kate’s mantra, I have to reach out. Right? “If that’s okay with you.”

Lissa shrugs like it’s a no-brainer. “Definitely. And you have to tell me tomorrow if the burgers are literally magical.”

“Maybe they’ll all get letters from Hogwarts.”

We laugh, and I wave and get out of the car. My mother is working in the living room, but Brad is in the kitchen and recruits me to help. He teaches me how to make burgers, which is pretty easy even though touching raw meat is
completely
a little gross. It feels like a dumb thing to get hung up on when someone so nice is being so patient with me. And then it makes me think about how Brad will be a really good dad someday, if he wants to be, though I guess that would be if he and my mother break up. I can’t exactly imagine Reece Malcolm and kids would mix; I barely count, really.

After dinner (the hamburgers don’t perform magic or anything but it is incredible how amazing they taste), my mother says it’s fine if I want to hang out with Elijah, so I text him. I know I should probably spend a little more time on my homework or reviewing my callback in my head, but I don’t end up thinking about it nearly as much as I normally would. You think you know how you’ll react to anything, and then a boy shows up and kisses you, and some of that just vanishes. I wonder what else of me is waiting for life to erase it.

Elijah shows up a little while later and is polite to my mother and Brad, and I feel special that it’s for my benefit. Maybe it’s silly that I can still hardly believe a boy likes me—because to be honest lots of people end up being liked, and I can accept I’m not less special than
all
of them—but maybe it’s okay it feels rare and amazing.

Outside, in his car, we kiss once, twice, lose-track-of times. Until my brain kicks in full-strength and I remember a question I should have already asked.

“Um, hey.” I pull away from him. Just a little. Our cheeks are still kind of grazing. “How did Lissa and Mira find out?”

“Liss is my best friend.” He backs out of the driveway and pulls onto the street. “Of course I’ll tell her. As for Mira, Liss must have told her. You mind that I said something to Liss?”

“No,” I say. “I guess you could have told me you told her, though. I could have been prepared on Monday at school.”

“Don’t worry so much.” He reaches over and touches my hair before taking my hand. “You’re one of those people who’s gonna have a heart attack at twenty.”

“Shut up.” I shiver as he traces a couple of his fingertips over my palm. “If that’s true, you’ll feel bad when it happens.”

Elijah laughs. “True that. So you want to come over? I was thinking maybe since you’re so into music you could hear my band’s demo. Lame?”

“Totally not lame. I want to hear it. Can you play for me, too?”

“I mean, I
can
,” he says. “But bear in mind I play bass, so it’s just gonna be like
dum dum dum dum dum dum dummmm
over and over.”

“You totally
have to
then.”

“Then you have to act like it’s actually cool.”

Elijah’s mom is out, so at his house we head up to his room, since that’s where the bass as well as the demo CD are. And I feel myself getting nervous, because I’m in a boy’s bedroom where there is an actual
bed
and once you kiss someone, isn’t it assumed more will happen?

“Okay, you have to keep up your end of the deal.” He slides his black bass’s strap over his shoulder before plugging it into his amp. “I expect total groupie behavior.”

I pretend to rock out, head-banging to his playing, which, okay, is pretty lame without the other instruments. But he’s
good
, and now I get why he likes us theatre geeks, because at least we have passion for music in common.

“Okay, this’ll be better.” He puts the bass back on its stand and hits a few buttons on his computer. Music blares out of the speakers—punk, which I expected, but at least it isn’t just loud and fast, but melodic and fairly polished, too.

“You guys are really good,” I say.

“Thanks,” he says, pulling me out of the desk chair I was sitting in. Safer than the bed, right? “You should sing with us sometime.”

“Right, my voice is
so suited
to it.”

“Seriously,” he says. “You should stretch yourself, put yourself out there. Bet you’re capable of stuff you never even imagined.”

I kiss him for saying that, which leads to more kissing, and standing-up kissing eventually leads to sitting-down kissing, which—even though it’s on the bed—feels fine. Well, you know. More than fine.

“How was your callback?” he asks when there’s a lull in kissing. “Do you find out soon?”

“Pretty good. And, yeah, tomorrow morning.” My stomach flips a little thinking about that cast list hanging in the hall, how right now Mr. Deans or whoever must have already printed it, how if my name’s not on it I don’t know how I’ll get through the next few months at New City. “Do you guys have auditions and stuff in the music department?”

“At the end of the year before so we know what classes we’ll be in,” he says. “Some people try out to be in the orchestra for the musical but they don’t always do shows that need a bass. This one doesn’t. Last year I got to play for
Spring Awakening
, so that was cool.”

“I’m so glad I don’t go to a normal school anymore,” I say, which makes Elijah laugh. “I’m being serious!”

“I know. It’s cute.” He takes my hand and spins my bracelet around on my wrist. “So you’re glad you moved and everything? Don’t miss St. Louis?”

It’s like one moment my brain is full of things like kissing and cute boys and how it feels to exist in a world where everyone I know seems to care about the same things in life, and then the next it grinds to a stop.

“Yeah.” I’m not even sure it’s a real answer, and I know it’s nothing like how I actually feel about my situation. Not how guilty I feel for ruining my mother’s life twice—once by being born and once by moving here—or how I never felt so alone as when I lived just with Tracie for those three months before her lawyer figured out where I was supposed to go. And maybe I shouldn’t love being here, because of the guilt thing, but I kind of do.

And I’m not going to tell Elijah any of that.

“I should probably go home,” I say. “I still have a lot of homework.”

“Same, unfortunately,” he says, and we walk downstairs and out to his car. Of course we kiss for a while before the car’s actually pulling up to my house, and I’m glad. All the heaviness in my brain hides away again.

“See you at school tomorrow,” he says. “Good luck, but you won’t need it.”

“Thank you.” I kiss him once more—not just for saying that, but it’s part of it for sure—and head inside. Brad’s alone in the living room with his laptop.

“Hello, Devan,” he says. “Reece is in her office, as we don’t always work well in the same room. How was your evening?”

I’m pretty sure there’s no part of hanging out with your sort-of boyfriend you should have to report to your mother’s boyfriend, so I just shrug. “Fine.”

“I was talked into making dessert after you left, so if you’re interested . . . ”

“Totally,” I say, following him into the kitchen. It literally seems like he’s still opening the refrigerator when my mother appears in the doorway.

“Hey, kid,” she greets me. “Good night?”

“Sure,” I say.

“I believe you have superpowers when it comes to the sounds of pie being served,” Brad says, which makes her laugh.

“Hell
yeah
I do. Don’t you remember? That’s almost exactly the first thing you ever said to me.”

Brad laughs as he makes sure I get the first slice of chocolate pie. It’s impressive, given how closely my mother seems to be all-but-circling it. “I nearly forgot that.”

My mother glances at me. “We were at a catered party, and I’m pretty great at intercepting caterwaiters before their trays are empty.”

“I regretted saying that quite a lot,” Brad says. “I was only trying to find an excuse to talk to you, and it seemed to be bordering on an insult.”

“Eh, I didn’t take it as one,” she says. “Also your accent helps.”

I laugh because it’s so true. Also right here in the kitchen, over chocolate pie, I can feel how much they love each other, and it’s kind of funny how I feel better off for it. What if Dad died a year earlier and there was no Brad in the house when I moved in, and therefore no pie and no excuse to stand in the kitchen at night? Not that I wanted Dad to die
at all
, obviously. My brain feels like it could cloud with darkness again, and so I try to overcome that with pie and replaying moments with Elijah. I wonder if my mother feels comfortable telling Brad the dark, horrible things about her. There must be dark, horrible things somewhere in Reece Malcolm, right? And does Brad feel okay telling her all his hopes and dreams and whatever else?