by J. C. Lillis
As it is, there’s only one possible way to get to the girl.
The hard way.
***
I hunch in the trees beside the trap door, my sweaty hand clutching the snack sack that holds the peanuts and Whoosh. I am camouflaged in my dark green Evil B coat and my black catsuit and sunnies. Rosalinda is slung on my back. The lost-and-found scarf is draped over my cabaret wig like the black lace veil that one lady wore to my grandma’s funeral.
Help me, Grammy Barb. And Dad. And whoever else up there is bored enough to take prayer requests.
I send a quick text to Abel explaining myself, and then I creak the trap door open. The monster-mouth of the tunnel yawns below the rickety steps. Oh God. Can I do this? I have my phone as a flashlight but you can’t aim a few lumens at a phobia and expect it to turn tail and run, even if the phone is also faintly playing “Hang with Me” for an extra shot of confidence.
It’s all good.
It’s all good.
You’ve got this.
I take a slow step down. Then another. Then another. I think of what Abel said that night on the couch: Every time I try something new or scary, I imagine he’s with me. I used to do that with Tera. Now it’s Ava I picture beside me as I edge myself into the mouth of the tunnel, as I press my hand to the cold stone wall to ground myself, as I force my lungs to process air and my feet to lurch me and Rosalinda forward.
Five steps. Ten steps.
Breathe. Breathe.
Fifteen. Twenty.
It’s all good. Focus.
Twenty-five. Thirty.
Keep going. Keep going. It has to end soon.
Thirty-six. Thirty-seven.
My fingers touch metal.
The iron door. I’m here. I made it. The last of the fear flees because Ava’s close now, so close I could reach her in two paces if a rude slab of metal wasn’t standing in the way. I knock on the door and wait. Then I bang. No answer—crap, that’s right, it’s soundproofed.
I press a gold button that says DOORBELL and a window the size of an envelope slides open. Ava’s eyes are round with fright, and then when she sees me her eyebrows smoosh together like beautiful angry caterpillars.
She scribbles a note and holds it to the window: What the hell???
I type an answer on my phone. Hi there!
They told me you said no. Why are you here?
To help you, silly!
Her eyes soften.
Any cameras on you? I type.
None. T thinks they mess with our focus.
Open the door, then!
Can’t, she scribbles back. Passcode-protected from inside and outside.
I thought the code was 112233?
T changed it. Luke D made fun of her passwords.
Noooo.
I glare at the glowing control panel under the doorbell, these four smug rows of numbered buttons that keep me from hugging the stuffing out of Ava and helping her write an A-plus finale song.
Oh no you don’t, buttons.
I am the three-time champion of the Tera Trivia Showdown on www.terafan.com. And my emporium of useless knowledge is about to become very useful.
Hold on, baby. I’m coming, I type to Ava. Then I crack my knuckles one by one and get to work.
I try the obvious options first: Tera’s birthday, her lucky number, the year her debut dropped, the year she won her first Grammy. No dice. Think, think. What’s important to her? It must be a significant number; Tera’s far too poetic to pick something random. I speed through more options, praying this alarm system doesn’t send out alerts when attempted code-cracking is underway. It’s not her number of Top 40 singles, or her mom’s or sister’s birthdays. It’s not the day “Happy Endings” hit number one, or the date of her life-changing trip to Barcelona. I try every other number, every date I can think of. I even spell out BOOBS with zeros and eights, like Chelsie and I used to with her dad’s old calculator.
Wrong. Wrong. The little light above the buttons buzzes red, red, red.
Ava slides the window open and holds up a note: No luck?
I lean my face against the rectangle of glass. Around the edges of Ava’s paper I can see into the Golden Underground. It’s so, so close. I catch glimpses of the memorabilia hung on the walls: a golden bra, a glittery collar that probably belonged to Queen Fuzzyface.
Fuzzyface.
Hang on one dang minute.
The memory slams back: that obscure outtake from the Lionheart tour documentary, sent to me by rearview88 of the Terafan forum. Tera’s in her dressing room before the March 28th Boston show, wrapped in an alluring pink terrycloth robe and shyly sharing a secret about her childhood labradoodle.
“You know why I have off tomorrow? It’s the anniversary. She died when I was twelve and I still…” She touches a gold-framed Fuzzyface photo and chuckles at herself. “It’s still a sacred day to me. Day of remembrance. Isn’t that odd?”
The anniversary. March 29. 3…29…I calculate fast for Tera’s twelfth year, take a deep breath, and punch in the final two numbers.
It must be Destini because the light turns green, and the door between me and Ava cracks open.
I throw the snack sack on the floor and we fling ourselves into a hug that lasts longer than the final chorus in the live version of “Fight for Love.” Over her shoulder I sneak peeks at the Golden Underground, because I’m still human and whatever, you would too. I spot icons that glittered onscreen—the sequined flag from “Comeback,” the “Queen of the World” crown—but mounted on the walls they seem dim, drained of magic, not nearly as thrilling as holding this complicated girl in my arms.
“You’re a genius,” she says.
“Just a nerd,” I say.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“Don’t. Don’t.”
“I panicked that night. I wasn’t used to being happy and it felt weird and wrong and I thought it would—”
“You don’t have to explain. I get it.”
She grips my arms. “What happened with Tera? You played for her?”
“Yes, and it was…” She blinks up at me expectantly. I should tell the truth, but I don’t want to disappoint her. “It was incredible, Ava. Thank you.”
“I can’t believe you turned her down.”
“I can’t believe you tried to give me your spot.”
“Yeah, well.” She shifts her eyes down, scratches at the back of her neck. “I wouldn’t have won without you.”
“Lady.” I lift her chin in my hand. “What makes you think I could win without you?”
She goes in for a kiss and it’s so, so tempting, but Fernando is watching us from the swivel chair and I stop her hands lightly with mine.
“We should keep our heads in the game.”
“You’re shitting me, right?”
“Look, if we start kissing now, we’re not going to stop, and we’ve got like—” I check my phone. “—five hours and fourteen minutes here.”
Ava huffs out a breath. “There’s no way I’ll win. I’ve been bottom two for the past two weeks.”
“Tough odds. But not impossible.”
She lifts an eyebrow. “Did you hear what the assignment is?”
“Empowerment anthem. Piece of cake.”
“You have an idea?”
“Off the top of my head?” I scan the room for central metaphors. “Fighting for a crown. Taming a dragon. Cracking a passcode.” I tilt my head at a shadowbox displaying Tera’s gold-plated “Lionheart” bra. “Taking pride in one’s boobs.”
“Oh, I like the boob idea.”
“We should rewrite a Tera song, only with boobs.”
“Fight for Boobs.”
“Rearboob.”
“Boobieheart.”
“People (Get Boobs).”
“Happy Boobings.”
I try to say Or Booby Endings but then she’s kissing me like screw the deadline, and oh Lord her hands are all over
and she’s wearing some fruity new lip gloss that has to be Passionfruit and it’s a beautiful flaw-free moment except for when she grabs my arm where the bracelet is and I’m like OWWWWWW.
She breaks away. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’ve got a rash.” I try to cover the bracelet with my sleeve but I’m wearing a catsuit, so it’s like trying to stuff a squash in a balloon. “No big deal. Let’s write.”
“You wear that thing all the time now?”
“Kind of.”
“Can we take it off? It creeps me out.”
“I would. But I…lost the key.”
“Let me see it.”
She pulls me over to a gold gooseneck lamp on the desk. In the warm circle of light, she bends close to the bracelet—my regular ugly non-magical bracelet—and examines its lock.
“Really, it’s okay—”
“Shh. Trust me.”
Ava shoves her hand deep in her jeans pocket and digs out something small and glittery. The letter-A pin. She hesitates for a second, and then she bends two silver prongs away from the A and twists them to hold them together. Squinting, she slides the prongs into the tiny lock and conducts a series of short precise jiggles, until a sharp click sounds and the bracelet unlatches.
“Done,” she says.
Relief rushes through me. I duck my arm under the desk so I can separate the bracelet from my skin, hide my wounds from her quick.
“So you’re a master lock-picker, too?” I grin at her. Nothing wrong here, nope. No oozy parts stuck to metal.
“Had to be,” she says. “My parents found my diary once and they flipped out ’cause I’d written—basically fanfic starring me and Zoe Saldana.”
“Good taste.”
“Thank you. So after that I got a locked diary, but I lost the key. I couldn’t afford a replacement.” She glances at her mangled letter-A pin. “So every time I wanted to write, I had to pick the lock.”
I think of twelve-year-old Ava, battling a diary lock with bobby pins or sewing needles, desperate to write down her dreams. I adore her so much in this moment that I forget part of me is a horrorshow, and I reach out for her with both hands.
“Holy shit!” Ava grabs me. “What happened to your arm?”
I tug down my sleeve. “It looks worse than it is.”
“It looks SUPER infected.”
“I’m fine.”
“Barrie.”
“C’mon, let’s start.”
“Huh-uh. You’re leaving. You’re going to the hospital right now.”
“Incorrect. We’re writing.”
“I refuse. I’ll sit like a stone till you leave.”
“Fine, then. I’ll write the chorus without you.” I plug in Rosalinda. “Once I was in so much pain/Girl, it made me go insane…”
“Stop. That’s not funny.”
“Yeah, and then I found your love/Sent to me from up above…”
“ARRGGGHHHHHH.”
“C’mon. I need you. I’m adrift on an oooooocean/And it’s full of emoooootionnnn…”
She’s almost there. She vibrates with artistic indignation. Above me on a high shelf is the golden goblet from the “Queen of the World” video; I lift it from its perch, wipe the dust from its inside, and dig a Whoosh from the snack sack.
“I’m staying,” I tell her. “We’re taking out Caleb, and Johnny, and we’re winning this. Together.” I pour some Whoosh in the goblet and hand it out to her. “Drink with me.”
Five seconds tick by.
Ava accepts the goblet and takes a solemn sip. Then she puts her curls back in a black band and hauls Fernando up on her knee.
Ready for battle.
Chapter Thirty-Two
You can crack the passcode
You can pick the lock
When you’re on your last hope
Seconds on the clock
Join hands with the ones you love, baby, work your magic way into winning
A door is not the end if you blast it into a beginning
“So.” Ava grins, plucking her t-shirt off Fernando. “That was a thing we did.”
It’s 11:30 p.m. We are mostly nude on the golden floor in a heap of clothes, instruments, scribbled-on paper, a fuzzy white blanket, and the sequined flag from the “Comeback” video. Ordinarily when I finish a song I celebrate with a single Tastykake from Ma’s stash. But this celebration was a billion times better.
“Writing your winning song?” I sit up, pull the blanket around me like a superhero cape. “Yes. We can cross that off our list.”
“It’s good, right?”
“It’s great, Ava.”
“Happened so fast. Came like lightning.”
I stifle a That’s what she said and adjust my wig. “Some of the best songs came fast. Sia wrote ‘Diamonds’ in fourteen minutes.”
The intercom crackles on the wall. Ryan, the Pop U staffer guy, with one of his periodic check-ins. “Thirty minutes, Ava,” he says. “You need anything?”
She stands up, presses the button to respond. “Nope,” she says. “I’m all set.”
“You are, you know,” I tell her. “You believe that, right?”
She kneels back down on the floor with me and tugs her shirt on. “You swear this chorus isn’t a hundred percent cheese?”
“The choruses of most empowerment anthems are at least sixty percent cheese,” I assure her. “It’s the quality of the cheese that counts.”
“I have limited fancy-cheese experience.”
“Me too. But trust me, this is A-plus…” I recall the cheeses in Abel’s fridge. “…Camembert.”
“Never had it.” She settles herself in my lap so we’re chest to chest and wraps her legs around me. “Tell me it’s not goat cheese.”
“Would I insult our chorus like that?”
“Goat cheese literally tastes like goats, which means it tastes like evil.”
“Well, Camembert is buttery and smooth.” My hand dips below her shirt, wanders up her warm back. “Mild and inoffensive. But still satisfying.”
“Sounds about right.” She nudges the blanket away, kisses my bare shoulder. “What are the verses, then?”
“Oh, those aren’t cheese.”
“No?”
“They’re like, the murky, complex wine you serve with it.”
“Murky!”
“That line about the fickle weathervane?”
“I like that line.”
“Me too. It’s you.” I kiss her lips and touch my forehead to hers. “We made this, like, perfect blend of sad and happy. Clarity and mystery.”
We run through the chorus once more, her head on my shoulder, our harmonies easy as a summer-evening porch chat on twin rocking chairs. I love this. I love us.
“I feel pretty good,” she says.
“You should.” I make a fist and put on my battle face. “Lock up your ukulele, Johnny. We’re coming for ya.”
She has a giggle fit that’s twelve kinds of adorable.
“You’re a TUBA, you know that?” she says.
“A tuba.”
“Totally Unconvincing Badass, Actually.”
I shove her shoulder and she laughs and pulls me back down on the floor. We spend a spectacular two to three minutes making out until a passionate roll puts her shoulder in contact with the mangled letter-A pin. She sits up and picks it off the floor. She studies it like it’s put itself there, like it’s asking her to make a decision. Then she wraps it in a tissue, walks it over to Tera’s golden trash can, and drops it in.
“We could’ve fixed that,” I say softly.
She shakes her head. “I don’t need it.”
I get up and go to her, wrap my blanket and my arms around her and hope that’s what she needs. Her shoulders stiffen. I back off right away and wait for her to speak, trying not to fill her silence with my fears.
“Barrie.”
“Yes.”
“If I win,” she says.
“When you win,” I say.
“I won’t be able to mention you.”
“I know.”
“Say how you helped.”
“I know. It’s okay.”
“No it isn’t. No one’ll ever know about us.”
“I’ll know. We’ll know.”
Ava turns around. Her eyes are so serious I start to sweat. She touches a finger to my chest and traces a slow phantom heart there.
“I want to tell everyone,” she says.
“What?”
“I want to tell our story. Tomorrow. Onstage.”
“Ava. NO.”
“I can’t do this. I can’t pretend this never happened.”
“You’ll be disqualified.”
“No I won’t! Are you kidding? People will love this.”
“Tera hates when people break her rules.”
“But she loves a good story.”
“Okay, look.” I grab my catsuit and yank it back on because I need to do some serious gesticulating, and you can’t do that properly if you’re naked under a blanket cape. “Don’t say a word about us. I don’t care if one single soul ever knows I wrote with you.” I throw my arms out wide. “This is all coming together for you! You are like one day away from winning the show. Winning a whole new awesome life.”
“You think I don’t want to win anymore? I want it more than ever. I know I can do it.” She catches my hands in hers. “But I want to do it with you.”
“Ava.”
“I want you on that stage with me tomorrow.”
I sigh. “That’d be the best romcom moment, right?”
“What’s a romcom moment?”
I shake my head like never mind.
Ava takes the “Queen of the World” crown off its shelf. She runs her fingers over its sparkling swirls.
“Okay. Here’s the plan,” she says. “I tell Tera everything ahead of time, and ask her to let us play together.”
“She’d never allow that.”
“Why not? You don’t know. She was going to break the rules to let you come back.” Ava stands on her toes to put the crown on my head. “Barrie, she’d go for it, I swear. It’d be the juiciest watercooler talk of the season. Of any season.”
“What if she doesn’t go for it, though? All our work, all this time—for nothing.”
