A&b

by J. C. Lillis

  The toughest part is the thing she tacks on last. I’ll keep a couch cushion warm for ya. It pokes a hole in her rant and lets in a beam of truth: underneath it all, she kind of misses me. She misses who I was pre-Tera, misses the comfort of having an echo. All this time she’s been waiting for my dream to deflate so she could have her old partner back, now with extra bitterness. She’s probably had it all planned out. The Lifetime movie snarkfests, the man-my-job-sucks repartee, the weekly Pop U bitch sessions, the junk-food marathons that coat your tongue with synthetic sweetness and strap you to the couch with guilt and sloth.

  Part of me’s like Aw, Ma. She wants me back.

  And part of me’s like Never again.

  I close the text window. I need to conference with my dad. He’ll balance Ma out, help me figure out what my next move should be.

  I pause Tera, hop on YouTube, and search for BILL ENGSTROM. My thumb scrolls fast. I tap a random clip.

  It’s from Camp Creekbottom II—the scene where Counselor Eggers is giving the campers a pep talk in his teeny khaki shorts. Dad is broad and tall like me and has the same butter-blond hair I used to have; he’s covered head to toe in sheep manure but you can tell he has a great smile. It’s too bad Ma never told him I existed because I know he would’ve liked me.

  “All right, campers. So we’ve had some setbacks,” Counselor Dad says. “We’ve been pillaged, we’ve been pranked, we’ve been persecuted. Does that mean we throw in the towel?” No! I think. “Or do we dust ourselves off, dig our heels in, and show those bastards that a true Camp Creekbottomer never gives up?”

  I nod reverently. Then the raccoon jumps on his face and this part always makes me smile because I see where I got my lung capacity.

  “AGHHHHHH!” he bellows. The raccoon is obviously a puppet but Dad is one hundred percent committed to the scene. “GET OFF! GET OFFFFFFFFFFFFFF!”

  The bus rolls to a stop at that very moment which seems like a clear sign to me.

  I thank Dad and get off the bus.

  Okay, Destini: if you exist, let’s see what you’ve got.

  ***

  For a second I’m pretty sure Dad made a mistake, dropping me off here. This is not the LA Tera rhapsodized about in her autobiography—all jacaranda blossoms and postcard pools and Oki-Dogs piled with sauerkraut. Every third building is deserted or boarded up, and there’s nothing enchanting as far as the eye can see.

  Except a flash of silver.

  A disco ball?

  I hurry down the street, past a defunct drugstore and an all-night Sudz with that familiar cheap-detergent smell. I would kiss a porcupine for a dance floor right now. Some of my happiest high school memories were dances, especially our ’80s charity danceathons when me and my chorus buddies would groove all night to some of the greatest songs ever made: “Walking on Sunshine,” “Rhythm of the Night,” “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” I would moonwalk and safety-dance in my Tera-inspired warrior-wear, making mental notes on which songs made people happiest, which choruses made them pump their fists and shout along. In those moments I never cared if people were laughing at me or with me; smiles all look the same in a stutter of red and blue laser lights.

  The disco ball is not a disco ball. Shoot. It’s a revolving silver planet with a sign underneath that says ST. CASTAWAYS. The building looks interesting, though: it’s an old church in disguise, only instead of a stick-on mustache it’s got electric blue doors with handles shaped like rockets.

  I look up St. Castaways on my phone. The first thing I see is this review:

  A garish themed restaurant stuck in one of the city’s deadest neighborhoods, St. Castaways is already struggling mightily. The food isn’t doing it any favors: the day we trekked out to this wannabe hipster enclave, the PBJ bites were simplistic and doughy, the Atomic Apple Pie was mushy and bland, and the baker/chef—former Retromancy model Donna Delvecchio—was clearly stretching beyond her modest talents to deliver a semi-edible ratatouille. Café Antimatter this is not, folks.

  My wrist itches where the Bracelet of Darkness was. This review seems highly unfair. Like, who needs complicated PBJ? Should Chef Donna’s talents be defined by one bad ratatouille day? And why the comparison to some other place—shouldn’t each restaurant stand and fall on its own merits?

  My phone BING BINGs twice. It’s 10:04, which means my Pop U defeat just finished airing across America. Two short sympathy texts have arrived from Tierra and Hailey, chorus pals I haven’t seen since graduation.

  So sorry Barry. Guess it wasn’t meant to be. One door closes, another one opens!

  Wow that sucks babe…but everything happens for a reason, you know?

  I shut my eyes. Soon I will respond with assurances and emojis, will face my infamy with a smile. But right now I want to hide in a garish themed restaurant where no one’s watched the show since Season 3, back when even hipsters thought it was cool.

  St. Castaways it is.

  I look around and make an awkward sign of the cross like Grammy Barb taught me when she used to take me to church. Please have good cupcakes and no mean people.

  I grab a silver rocket and push the door open.

  Chapter Five

  Music is always the first thing I notice when I go someplace new. They’re playing Madonna’s “Lucky Star,” probably ironically. I looked up this song on YouTube as a kid because Tera said it was her favorite Madonna single, and it was one of the first tunes I taught myself to play.

  A smile with no soul in it. I wince and shoo her words away.

  There’s no one around. I walk through the empty please-wait-to-be-seated area and wow, this place is intense. Every nook and cranny is stuffed with sci-fi memorabilia—a lot of it from Castaway Planet, that old show Chelsie’s big brother was obsessed with once upon a time. Action figures, posters, autographed 8x10s, Lego models of spaceships. I wander past a giant robot statue and descend two steps to the deserted dining room, a graveyard of mismatched tables and chairs. Some of them look like ’50s-diner castoffs, some like seats from condemned movie theaters and abandoned amusement park rides.

  I love places like this. Monuments to obsession, museums of rescued things. So of course when I spot a staircase I’ve got to see what’s up there. I take the creaky steps two at a time until I hit a tinsel-curtained doorway with a plaque above it. THE CHURCH OF ABANDON.

  I slip through the curtain.

  Oh, man.

  The third most melancholy song in the history of synthpop (“Being Boring” by the Pet Shop Boys) starts up when I walk in, and it’s perfect. Because this place is the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s a big converted choir loft someone made into a party room and abandoned, apparently mid-party. Dusty smiley-face piñatas hang from the ceiling. Half-deflated balloons haunt everything: the confettied card tables, the tall folding screen painted with disco-dancer silhouettes. Best and/or creepiest of all, the room is randomly studded with mannequins. A girl in a rainbow afro and bell-bottoms. A guy in DISCO FEVER shorts. The best is the boy with rainbow-feather wings, because he has cards shaped like lava lamps pinned all over his neon tank top, along with a sign that says Take a fortune! (Suggested donation $5.)

  I am not one to shirk a suggested donation. So I take a worn five-dollar bill from my savings envelope and stuff it in his bejeweled treasure box.

  “Give me a good one, okay?” I whisper.

  I close my eyes and tug a fortune free.

  “No!” a voice shouts. “Don’t you go there!”

  I gasp and jump back, search the glassy eyes of Rainbow Boy. They’re dead as ever, so the voice must have come from downstairs, past that red archway in the back marked CAPTAIN JAMES CADMUS MEMORIAL BAR.

  I shove the fortune in my pocket—I’m too spooked to look at it now—and creep back downstairs. The laughter of strangers rises up from the back room. Part of me wants to leave but I haven’t eaten since the double-meat turkey sub at lunch and I’m aching for cake and a healing m
ug of tea.

  They won’t know who you are, I remind myself. Just be cool. I pretend I’m Tera in the “Fight for Love” video where she plays a sexy medieval outlaw who swaggers into taverns and shoots people with love arrows. I take a deep breath and saunter in.

  The guy manning the St. Castaways bar is one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen. He looks mid- to late-twenties, with a movie-star jawline and a soft, thick mess of white hair. Big white rubber watch, tight black t-shirt with glow-in-the-dark raygun. He looks as tall as I am, even in my boots. I bet he’s been shot with tons of love arrows.

  Bartender Guy is joking around with two youngish men on the barstools, a black guy with dreads and a pale freckled redhead. When he sees me in the doorway, he stops and does a cartoon jaw-drop.

  “OH,” he says, “MY. GOD.”

  Yikes. So much for hiding out. The other guys toss me a glance and their eyebrows hike a little.

  “It’s her! Isn’t it?” Bartender Guy squints at me and jabs a finger at the TV above the bar. “You were just on TV. Right? That was you?”

  He’s so excited I have to smile. “Yep, that was me!” I bust out some jazz hands and grab a barstool.

  “Your wig rebelled. On national TV! Omigod, you were the best—so stoic and badass about it, like ‘no hair, don’t care.’” His voice drops lower and he leans in. He smells like beer and cinnamon. “You look a hundred times better without it, by the way. What is it? Trichotillomania? Are you a cancer survivor?”

  These are super-nosy questions but I never mind those; I hate how you’re supposed to live your life parallel to all these interesting strangers and pretend you’re not interested in them at all. “It’s lichen planopilaris,” I tell him cheerfully.

  “What the fuck is that? It sounds awful.”

  “It is a rare inflammatory disorder,” I recite, “that causes follicular hyperkeratosis, and progressive scarring alopecia.”

  “Jesus H. Christmas, you poor thing. Can I Instagram you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Will you hold up a St. C’s shirt?”

  He grabs a t-shirt from under the bar and tosses it to me. It’s a cool design, a retro aqua rocket with ST. CASTAWAYS across it in red.

  “My friend is gonna die when I say you were here.” He snaps photos with his sleek phone. I pull funny faces. “Best Pop U premiere since—Season 5? Was that when Ravi Whatshisface did that neo-soul song…”

  “‘Just Like Tina Turner’?”

  “YES. Holy Proud Mary!”

  The other guys glance at each other and shrug.

  “Okay, can we do another one with your keyboard on the bar, maybe—guys, can you move down?”

  “We’re taking off anyway,” says the redhead. He tosses a twenty by his empty glass. “Clance, you ready?”

  “Yep.” His friend yawns and slides off the stool. “Good luck with life,” he says to me. “And don’t take any of his advice.”

  “Will you shush? I get to be a wise bartender for once, and you’re ruining it.” Bartender Guy leans in as they leave. “I’m Abel, by the way.”

  I shake his big warm hand. “I’m—”

  “Barrie K. The world knows you now, lady.”

  “Just eighteen million people.”

  “More like eight mil these days, let’s be real.” Abel clears the empty glasses from the bar. He flicks his hair back and a blue streak flashes through the white. “How bitter are you that they didn’t edit the wig thing out? Fuckin’ producers.”

  “I don’t get bitter,” I say.

  “You’re a saint, then. I personally loved your song, you know? Like, I guess it was a little basic, but statistically? Their three biggest-selling alums have been fun-summer-anthem machines, so whatever.”

  I smile. I might be a smidgen in love with him. “You know your Pop U history.”

  “I fully commit to my fandoms.” He slams his palms on the table. “So what can I get you? On the house!”

  “Losers eat free?”

  “Only semi-famous losers. What’s your poison? Wings? Fries? Potato skins—ooh, I know.” He cups his mouth and bellows: “Hey DON!”

  “Yeah?” A thin nervous voice from the kitchen.

  “C’mere. We’ve got a celebrity guest!”

  The person who emerges is a large, pretty woman with kissy-lips all over her apron and dyed-black hair in a messy topknot. This must be Chef Donna. When she sees me she goes “Oh! God!” and ducks back in the kitchen, which I try not to take personally.

  “Don’t mind her, she has this visceral reaction to failure, it makes her super-nervous—not that you’re a failure! I mean—”

  “It’s okay.”

  “It’s been a tough week, you know? We found out we might have to close next month, so she’s on edge, she blames herself—DON, get this girl one of your Castaway Cupcakes, on the house!” Abel lifts his shoulders with glee. “I love saying on the house.”

  “Thanks, but you don’t have to—”

  “De rien, cutie.” He plunks down a glass and a bottle of blue syrup. “So what’s next for the great Barrie K?”

  “Ahh…” I want to weave some fantasy about finding a job and making it in LA, but in this town I’ll burn through my savings envelope in like thirty-six seconds. I tell the truth: “Well, I’ll go home. Get a new job, record a full-length demo, build up my YouTube followers…”

  “Hang on, hang on. Sorry to interrupt. I’m just so stoked you’re here.” He grabs his phone again. “I gotta call my friend.”

  “Abel.” Chef Donna—Don, I guess—appears beside me with a huge lopsided cupcake on a white plate. She’s trying to make her voice all stern but you can tell she’s not used to it. “You, um…told me not to let you call that person tonight?”

  “Don. This is an exception.” Abel’s dialing with one hand and squirting blue syrup in the glass with the other. “Seriously, it’s gonna be—hello? Hey, it’s me. Get your ass to St. C’s…’Cause you won’t believe who’s here…NO. God, not him! Someone from the Pop U premiere…What do you mean, you DIDN’T WATCH?” He fills the glass with ginger ale and slides the blue drink to me. “Virgin Cadsim Cocktail,” he whispers. “—No, nothing…You missed the best Sudden Death in four seasons. Okay, so it was this tortured boho type versus this earnest teen glamazon, and—”

  Glamazon! The compliment warms my insides. I bite my cupcake and wow it’s terrible, dry and crumbly with thick lardy frosting. Poor Chef Don. I jot the first line of an empowerment anthem in my mental notebook: Maybe you feel like a sad cupcake/Dry and crumbled on a cold white plate…

  “—Fine, don’t come down!” Abel’s scolding the phone. “But look: at least get off the couch, put the Rocky Road away, and—what?” He listens, frowning. “I did not! I did not say ‘our couch.’ I said ‘the couch’…Will you stop being so paranoid?…I know this. I know. Trust me, I don’t want you back either! Yes: I, Abel McNaughton, in no way, shape, or form, under any circumstances in the known universe, want you back. SHEESH.”

  He hangs up.

  “Who was that?”

  “My once and future boyfriend.”

  “Oh.” A tiny cute-guy-is-gay bubble pops in my chest.

  “Brandon’s staying with me for a while. Bad breakup. Dumped for another—I mean, I never met this Drew guy, but he must have a severe personality defect.” He rakes his hair back with both hands and goes arggghhhhhh. “I’m trying so hard not to have Ulterior Motives but I want him back so bad. Am I pathetic?”

  I quote Tera: “Passion is never pathetic.”

  “I think I might be, though. I’m like one step away from boombox-at-the-window.” He clasps his hands and lowers his nose to them. “Omigod. I just had the best idea.”

  I smile along with him. I can tell he’s thought of a grand romantic gesture, and I love those. “Tell me,” I say, both hands hugging my Virgin Cadsim Cocktail.

  Don sighs with gusto and I realize she’s sti
ll in the room, wiping down the tables for two behind me. Abel pulls out a black leather wallet with a robot sticker on it.

  “So here’s the thing: officially Brandon is all about folky guitar crap like Iron & Wine and Slumberjack, but he’s a huge Pop U fan and has this deep and secret love of synthpop, both of which I take full credit for.” He’s counting a small wad of bills. “I will give you, Barrie K, sixty-seven American dollars to come to my place and give him a private performance of ‘Breakup Survival Kit.’”

  “Seriously?”

  “Plus a couch to crash on. I’m assuming your flight’s not till tomorrow?”

  “I’m taking the bus.”

  “They don’t even fly you home? Dickwads!”

  I consider his offer. I know I shouldn’t go home with strangers, but this is a chance to help someone via music and bounce back from my brief descent into darkness. Plus I’ve studied judo with the help of YouTube and can defend myself in any situation if necessary.

  “I accept,” I tell him.

  “Excellent!” Abel shakes my hand and starts locking up the register.

  “Can you…do that?” I ask him. “Just leave?”

  “Can I? I own the place, my dear.”

  “Not for long,” Don murmurs.

  “Take a load off, Don. Go home, get Grant to give you a neckrub.” He lifts an eyebrow at me. “Her husband is like so geeky-hot, I can’t even look him in the eye.”

  Abel goes to get his stuff. I choke down the last of the cupcake, because Don is watching.

  “Don’t get mixed up in this,” she says. “Trust me.”

  “He seems nice.”

  “He is nice. But—”

  “Are you slandering me?” Abel calls.

  “Just be good,” Don warns him.

  He kisses his finger and draws a big X across his graphic tee.

  “I will,” he says. “Cross my raygun.”

  Chapter Six

  “So are you into girls or what?” Abel says.

  It’s a six-block walk to his apartment. He gets to this on block two.