by Robin Benway
“I think five? I’ll text him and call you back.”
Pierce, it turned out, got off at four thirty, and James was at my house by five. I would’ve gone to his house in a heartbeat, but I was too paranoid that the paparazzi would show up and infest his cul-de-sac.
The pictures of him and me after our first date had made it into last week’s People, accompanied by a blurb that read, “Who’s arm in arm with rock’s favorite siren? Audrey Cuttler leaves RPM Records with her unidentified new date, rumored to be a musician.” Which was a total lie, of course. James and I both had our heads down in the photo and he was way behind me. “You can see my shoe!” my mom said when she saw the photo, and sure enough, her dirty white sneaker was in the corner. James’s mom had apparently sent a copy to his grandparents in Oregon. “She used to send copies of report cards and, like, Little League photos,” James had sighed when he found out.
But all of that was out of my head now. All I wanted to do was apologize to him and make it right, make it like it was before.
So of course I answered the door wearing a ring made of aluminum foil around my head.
“What is that?” James said after he had rushed inside and Pierce squealed out of our driveway. He tapped at my makeshift arts-and-crafts project with one finger. “Are you trying to attract aliens?”
“No, they’ve probably already heard of me. But this,” I added as I gestured to my head, “is my halo.”
“Your what?”
“My halo. You might have noticed that it was missing earlier today. But good news! I found it! And it was sitting next to a big apology for you.”
I could tell he was trying not to laugh, which was exactly what I wanted him to do. “A big apology?” he asked. “Or a huge one?”
“Gigantic. Elephantine.”
“Elephan—what?”
“PSAT word. But don’t interrupt me!” I sidled up to him and wrapped my arms around his waist, pressing my face against the cold denim of his jacket. “I’m sorry,” I told him. “I was crazy. I was DramaGirl.”
After a second, his arms went around me. “Yeah, you were pretty aggro.”
“Well, I hate Sharon Eggleston, but I also ate seven candy canes today,” I told him by way of explanation.
“Did you save any for me?”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a mini candy cane, one that I had in fact been saving just for him. “Here,” I said, and tucked it into the top of his hoodie so that it peeked out over the zipper. He promptly pulled it out, ripped the wrapper off, and popped it into his mouth. “There would have been more,” I told him, “but I got hungry.”
“S’okay. This one’s fine.”
We stood together for a minute, breathing so our chests went up and down at the same time. “Audrey,” he finally said, “don’t let Sharon create all this, okay? Just…don’t play into it. Please.”
“I know. Did I mention I’m sorry?”
“Yeah, you did. And I am, too. I shouldn’t have carried you down the hall like that.”
“No, you probably should have. I was about to rip Sharon’s eyeballs out. And it was very King Stud of you.”
“Really?” I could tell that he was smiling. “Can I tell Pierce you said that?”
“No, because then he’ll tell someone and then they’ll tell someone and it’ll be online and in the gossip columns by Christmas Eve.”
“Okay. And I swear that I’m not in any way attracted to Sharon Eggleston. At all. Ever. She’s too…just too. Too too. And she probably doesn’t collect concert ticket stubs.”
“Or wristbands from waiting in line to get on the floor at shows,” I agreed. “And she probably has all of Creed’s CDs.”
I could hear the rumble of James’s laugh against my ear, and I tightened my arms around his waist. “I’m sorry,” I told him again.
He patted my halo, then lifted it off my head and placed it on his own. “What do you think? Too much? Does it clash with my outfit?”
“I think it goes perfectly with dirty jeans.”
He grinned and bent down to kiss me, a perfect peppermint moment. “I love you with or without your halo, Audrey.”
Waitaminute.
He loves me? He loves me? He? Loves me?
HE LOVES ME! JAMES SAID HE LOVES ME!
This needed confirmation.
“Uh, not to make this awkward or very, very embarrassing, but did you just say you loved me?” I twisted my hands in the bottom of his sweater, our lips about two inches apart.
“Well, yeah, I mean…yeah, I do. I always kinda did.”
“I love you, too,” I told him, and I felt like I was going a million miles an hour and standing still all at the same time. “I do. You’re amazing. I’m so glad I started working at the Scooper Dooper, because it was so worth it.”
“Even after we had that power outage last summer?”
“Even then.” I stood on my tiptoes to kiss him again. “Can we not ever fight again?”
“Done.” He barely interrupted the kiss long enough to talk, and that’s how Bendomolena found us, standing in the darkened entryway, a shared tinfoil halo looping our hearts together.
33 “Sometimes I think that I’m bigger than the sound.…”
—Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Cheated Hearts”
AFTER CHRISTMAS, my parents finally killed my job at the Scooper Dooper. If someone had told me three months ago that I’d be upset to leave the Scooper Dooper, I would’ve told them to check their head. But now that meant extra hours away from James (and that back freezer).
“You see James all the time,” my mom pointed out when I protested. “You’ve got the SATs coming up.”
“They’re five months away!”
“You need to focus more on your schoolwork.”
“Mom, my grades are awesome. And sad as it is to believe, work is like the only time I can get out of the house! What am I gonna do for money?”
“Your father and I will give you an allowance.” She was busy in her office, paying bills or some other scary adult thing, and not looking at me. If my mom doesn’t look at me while I’m trying to negotiate, forget it. There’s no way I’m winning.
But there was always my dad.
“And don’t ask Dad, either,” she added. My mother, the mind reader. “We both agree that this is the right thing. You’ve got people lining up halfway down the mall to take pictures of you through the glass door, Aud. They had to bring in extra security. That’s not safe.”
“Mom, have you watched the news lately? High school isn’t all that safe, either.”
“This is not a discussion.”
The day after that disaster, “Audrey, Wait!” hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100.
“Ho. Ly. Crap.” Victoria got the notice as we were walking to history (for her) and geometry (for me). She scrolled furiously through the messages on her phone with a weird half-smile on her face. “Aud. Aud.” She tugged on my arm. “The song is number one.”
“Gee, great. Wait a minute, let me put on my excited face.”
“Oh my God, this is incredible. This is huge. Do you realize how huge this is?”
I glanced at her as we turned the corner, where the pep squad was frantically changing the “Audrey, Wait!” countdown banner. ‘AUDREY, WAIT!’ IS AT #1! it read now.
“Are you kidding?” I asked no one in particular. “You’re kidding me, right.”
Victoria didn’t even bother to respond. “The Lolitas haven’t even cracked the Top Five,” she reported. “Take that, Simon.”
“Oh, God. Please, let’s not bring him up, okay?”
“I’m just saying.…”
But I tuned her out. Her enthusiasm was so annoying that I wanted to smother her with a couch cushion. (Okay, not really like that, but you know what I mean, right?) Whose side was she on? It was like all of this was so great and she was so happy and it made me want to gag. Excited Victoria and Hermit Audrey were not exactly peanut butter and jelly. It was going to get ugly
, and even though I could see the fight coming, there was no way I could stop it.
The ugly came a week later.
34 “So here we are at the last broadcast.…”
—The Doves, “The Last Broadcast”
I WILL RIGHT NOW SAY that half of the fight between Victoria and me was my fault. I was woefully undercaffeinated (and then way overcaffeinated, as you’ll see), irritated by how much homework I had, and exhausted after staying up all night texting with James and then having Bendomolena sleep on my head. I was irrational and cranky and just meh.
That being said, Victoria totally started it.
It was the day that the video for “Audrey, Wait!” was about to premiere and Victoria was coming home with me to watch it. “I don’t even wanna see it,” I told her as we walked to my car in the parking lot after school.
“Oh, whatever,” she scoffed. “You’re gonna see it eventually. You might as well see it with me.”
“It already leaked online,” I told her. “Can’t you just watch it there?”
“No, ‘cause my monitor sucks and your family has high-definition TV.”
“The better to see my traitorous ex-boyfriend.”
“You sound like a bitter old woman.”
I bit my tongue at that point. I was tired of hearing how I was being unreasonable, especially from someone who could still go wherever she wanted with her boyfriend. “James is gonna come over later to study,” I told her.
“Study. Ha. Is that what you’re calling it now?”
“Yes, because we actually are studying. I’m tutoring him in English and he’s tutoring me in geometry.” I started the car with more oomph than it needed. “It’s practically the only thing we’re allowed to do together.”
“Well, you know,” Victoria said in her very-innocent-but-not-so-much way, “Teen Vogue wanted to do a photo shoot with you and James on a date, but you turned them down.”
The white noise in my head got a little louder. “That’s not exactly the sort of date I want with him. You’re missing the whole privacy thing.”
She pfft’d the idea away. “Privacy is overrated.”
I glanced out my window and saw three girls looking at me from two cars over. “That’s easy to say,” I told Victoria, “when you still have a private life.”
At my house, I popped open a Diet Coke while Victoria dove for the remote control. “Want anything?” I asked her.
“No!” she called back. “Hurry up, it’s coming on! Are you TiVoing this?”
I grabbed another Diet Coke, sensing that I would need more energy before the afternoon was over, and fell onto our couch with what I hoped was the right amount of nonchalance.
Because as much as I wouldn’t admit this to Victoria, I did kind of want to see the video. As mad as I was at Evan, as mad as I was at all of the Do-Gooders just for existing, I knew them. I knew how hard they had worked. I had sat through band practices, equipment load-ins, horrible shows that once left Evan teary-eyed with frustration. I had watched them upload songs to the band’s MySpace page (the one no one ever friended), watched them painstakingly address, stamp, and mail CDs to every single A&R guy in North America. None of their success was unearned, but Evan didn’t have to use our breakup to get it.
In typical MTV tease fashion, the video premiered at nearly the end of the hour. “Oh, come oooonnn!” Victoria screamed at one point as another block of commercials started. “Babies are being born! I’m getting older! Play the damn thing already!”
I sipped from the second Diet Coke.* The caffeine was starting to hit me with its familiar zippy feeling, and I could feel all my nerve endings dancing around. Perhaps two Diet Cokes in less than an hour had been a bad idea. “You know,” I told her, “maybe the video will suck so bad that it’ll never get played again and the Do-Gooders will crash into obscurity.”
She threw me a glance over her shoulder. “If memory serves, you thought no one would ever hear The Song again, either.”
I considered lobbing my Diet Coke at her head, but I didn’t want to waste it. I’d probably need the rest of that caffeine by the time the video was over.
By the time it started, Victoria was like a nervous puppy, wriggling everywhere and setting me on edge. “Here it comes!” she said, slapping at my knee.
“Ow.”
“Aren’t you excited?”
“Ow. Thrilled.”
The VJ introduced the video while dozens of girls screamed in the background, and then it started. The scene opened on what looked like a mirror image of Evan’s bedroom, with a girl coming up the stairs toward it. It was Caitlin McGregor, the girl who was in that movie last summer and then got busted for pot and sent to rehab. She had long blond hair and a black bag that looked just like my black bag slung over her shoulder.
And she was wearing arm huggies.
“You are fucking kidding me,” I said. Victoria had stopped jumping around and was trying to figure out why I looked so murderous.
“You said your piece and now I’ve got to say mine! I had you and you strung me on the liiiiiinnnnneeeeee!”
The scene cut to Evan and the band playing in a backyard, where they looked really styled. The camera zoomed in on Evan, his face all scrunched up in make-believe agony as he screamed-sang the words. “We said we loved and it was a lie! I touched your hair and watched you die! You crucified my heart, took every part and hung them out to drrrrryyyyyyy!”
And then they cut back to Caitlin, going into Evan’s room while Evan sat at his desk. I knew this scene, I knew exactly what would happen, and I knew this because I had already lived through it.
Not only had Evan written a song about our breakup, but he’d made a video about it, too.
“This! Is! Our! Break! Up!” I yelled at Victoria. “Look at this! This is exactly what happened! And Caitlin fucking McGregor is playing me!”
“What’s wrong with Caitlin?”
“She went to rehab!”
“People are human, Audrey.”
“She went three times! Is that what people think of me?”
I glared at Victoria, then back at the TV. Caitlin and Evan were having this faux-dramatic conversation, in which Evan kept making puppy dog eyes. “This is the lamest video ever,” I announced.
“It’s kind of a cool angle,” she said as the camera followed behind “Audrey’s” head and toward Evan. He looked sweet and loving, the obvious Good Boyfriend to my Evil Girlfriend doppelganger. (PSAT word.)
“Look at this!” I gasped, pointing at our TV. “Look! This is exactly how it happened!”
“Caitlin doesn’t even look like you, Aud. Relax.”
“She’s wearing arm huggies! This is slander! Or…something equally bad and illegal!”
Victoria glanced at the video, where the girl was sitting on Evan’s bed, looking aloof and bored, like she would break up with him every day. “Hey, wait a minute,” I told Victoria. “I didn’t look that bitchy!”
“Don’t you own that shirt?” she replied.
I squinted at the television. “Audrey” was wearing a white T-shirt that had the shoulder seams held together with safety pins. “That’s the shirt I was wearing when I broke up with him!” I gasped. “Oh my God! That’s the exact same shirt! I made that shirt myself! Are you serious, Evan? You couldn’t even remember our anniversary, but you remembered the shirt I wore when we broke up?”
“It’s a memorable shirt,” Victoria pointed out.
We watched the video in shocked silence. Well, I was shocked into silence. Victoria was too busy noticing camera angles or whatever held her attention while I was defamed in front of a national audience.
Again.
The video started to wind down as “Audrey” walked down the stairs while Evan stood in the doorway, lip-synching the words and trying his best to look wounded. And when Fake Audrey walked out the front door, there was a redheaded boy waiting for her in a car at the curb. He looked at Audrey conspiratorially, kissed her, and the two of them zoomed
off.
I literally did not breathe for thirty seconds, I was so mad.
By the time it was over, I was pacing the living room, ready to throw the remote control through the window. “Are they touring right now?” I screeched at Victoria. “Because if they are, I’m flying to whatever nightmare tourist-trap town he’s currently in and I’m going to beat the crap out of him. And not just Evan. That asshole director, too. And MTV.”
Victoria sat on the couch and watched as I flew around the room in a fit. “Aud—”
“You know what! I’ve had it! This is it! My dad has a lawyer and I’m gonna sue Evan! I’m suing the record label, I’m suing the band, I’m even gonna sue that stupid pothead manager of theirs!”
“Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”
“Are you kidding?” I yelled. “I’m at Defcon 5 here! It’s not overreacting until someone loses an eye!” That caffeine was certainly effective.
“Aud, seriously, you need to calm the fuck down.”
“Okay, first of all,” I told her, “telling someone to calm down is the absolute worst way to get them to calm down. And second, are you kidding? Calm down?! After going through hell for the past three months? Calm down after being stalked by photographers? Calm down after my new boyfriend sees this video? What a great idea. Calm down. Why don’t I just take a little nap? That’ll solve everything. Or better yet, you know what? Fuck it, I’m going to Disneyland.”
Victoria’s eyes were starting to spark. They often did that, but rarely at me. “When are you gonna realize that you’re not an average girl anymore?” she said. “Is that gonna kick in anytime soon, or are you just gonna keep your head in the sand?”
I was amazed. I mean, Victoria could do and say some amazing things, but that one really took the cake. “I am an average girl!” I started to yell back, but she cut me off by pointing at the television, where my likeness was busy ripping out Evan’s heart.
“No, you’re not!” Victoria shouted back. We were standing six inches apart now, and even though I’m taller than her, it felt like she was bigger. “Look at this!” she yelled. “Look at you! This is not average, this is not normal! Jesus, Audrey, you’re awesome! Half of the free world loves you! And you’re blowing it!”
