by Patty Blount
@Rawr4Fems
Is @elijahhamilton just another boy with entitlement issues or a misogynist? #KrisVsEli #CatCall
@Paulie69
Meow for me @kristencartwright! #CatCall #KrisVsEli
@Paulie69
I’m making @kristencartwright meow & piss her pants! #CatCall #KrisVsEli tinyurl.com/kris673jg
@Paulie69
@kristencartwright Next time, I’ll pull U to UR knees, bitch #CatCall #KrisVsEli
@Paulie69
I got somethin’ 4 U @kristencartwright tinyurl.com/mlp909jg Lick it #CatCall #KrisVsEli
I watched a bewildering array of emotions cross Elijah’s face as he stared at me. He’d apologized.
There was that.
Kiss me. I gave him the opening. I mean, oh my God, I did everything but send him a printed invitation. My hand tingled against his warm and scruffy cheek. But he never moved, and my heart sank a little bit lower. I dropped my hand, and that seemed to break him from his trance. He looked shocked to see me sitting there. Dark eyes went wide and then shut when his head fell back against the wall. He rubbed his face roughly, and I think I died a little more.
“Sorry,” he muttered. He peered closely at the video monitor. “She’s finally winding down.”
“Yeah.” Tears burned behind my eyes. “Um. That’s good. So I should…um, I’m just gonna go.” So I could fall to pieces in private.
Suddenly, he lunged, grabbing me by both arms. “No! Don’t.”
What, don’t feel like the world just ended? Don’t feel like curling into a tiny ball because for maybe five freakin’ minutes I’d totally forgotten about Etta lying in a hospital bed with a hundred tubes and wires connected to her because the boy I was crazy about looked like he wanted to kiss me…but didn’t?
“Don’t what?” I demanded, shoving him off me.
“That,” he said quietly, waving a hand at my face. “Don’t cry. Especially not—” Abruptly, he clamped his lips together.
“What?” I demanded, flicking the stupid tears off my face.
“Never mind.”
A snort escaped before I could think twice. “Yeah. Sure. What else is new? You know, I’m getting kind of tired of you always forgetting I’m not just another one of the guys.”
He opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again, like he couldn’t stop the words from falling out. “I didn’t forget. I just have to…oh, fuck it.” He dropped his head. “Kristen, I want to kiss you like I want to breathe, but I can’t. I have to stay focused. The band, my sister, my parents—”
My brain latched on to his words. He wanted to kiss me. But he hadn’t.
And he wouldn’t.
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat when my voice cracked. “I have to focus on Etta, too.” I swallowed back tears and took a step away. “I…I think I’m just gonna go.”
“Right.” He turned and stopped with one hand on his sister’s door.
My phone buzzed.
So did his.
I read the alert from Twitter. “Oh, God,” I said, groaning.
Elijah’s stunned eyes snapped to mine. “Did Madison fucking Kelly just tweet about us?”
“Yeah, she’s apparently a fan.” I waved a hand.
Elijah nodded slowly, lips moving as he reread the tweet. “Loving the Rock Band War! My money’s on @kristencartwright Sorry, boys. #RockGirlzRule #KrisVsEli.”
Suddenly, Elijah came back to life.
“Wait, she’s a fan, you said? You mean she tweeted you before?”
“Oh, yeah. I can’t remember when.”
“Oh my God.” He swiped and tapped and held his phone out to me. “She has almost a hundred thousand followers,” he said with a low whistle. “This is amazing.” He clapped his hands to his head and turned in a circle. “We have to tweet her back, right now. Tweet her back.”
“What do I say?”
“Favorite it. Retweet it. Then reply. Invite her to the mall events.” His face lit up. “Maybe she’ll come! Maybe she’ll put us on the show.”
His excitement spread to me, so I did exactly what he said. “Wait, wait. What about this.” I tapped out a reply, reading it out loud as I did: “Come to next show #BearRiverMall. We’ll save you a ringside seat! #KrisVsEli.”
“Good, good, now shrink the link.”
“I know.” I waved him away but did what he said and sent the tweet. We watched our screens, Elijah holding his breath, waiting for some sign of life from the Internet. A moment later, another alert sounded, and he cheered.
“She favorited it!”
There it was. Madison Kelly. Good Morning, Long Island’s host herself. Just what Elijah wanted. I turned to go.
“Wait, I want to get in on this. Can’t let that go unchallenged.” He grinned at me, thumbs blurring over his keypad. The phone buzzed again, notifying me that the Ride Out account had retweeted and favorited the posts. But he wasn’t done. A minute after that, another alert appeared in my feed.
@Ride_Out
@MadisonKellyLI @kristencartwright Challenge: accepted! #KrisVsEli The battle continues #BearRiverMall
Again, we waited and watched for more alerts, and they came by the dozen. The tweet was favorited and shared over forty times.
“This is fucking amazing,” Elijah said. “We’ve never seen numbers or interest like this.” He paced the small hallway in front of his sister’s door. “Come on. We need to use this momentum.”
I followed him back across the hall to his room where he booted up a laptop on the desk next to his bed, still messy from where I’d fallen asleep that morning. He logged on to the Beat and typed:
@Ride_Out: So Madison Kelly from Good Morning, Long Island just tweeted about us. She’s enjoying the Elijah and Kris rivalry. Whose team are you on?
“Elijah, Sam already hates me. Are you sure starting teams is a good idea?”
Elijah shook his head. “He doesn’t hate you, Kris. He just likes to be the star, you know?”
Yeah. Yeah, I did know. It was the same issue I had with Leah Russo. I think it was the same issue Etta had with age. Sharing the stage meant you weren’t the star, and if you weren’t the star, that could only mean you were part of the background. Anonymous.
Forgotten.
“Yeah, I know, and that’s why I think maybe you shouldn’t keep trying to whip the whole Internet into taking sides.”
Elijah shook his head. “Are you kidding? That’s exactly what we should do. People love this kind of shit.”
“Come on… I thought you wanted this to be all about the music, not gimmicks.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He waved me off impatiently. “That was before Madison Kelly tweeted us.” His fingers flew across the keys like a man possessed.
Elijah pulled strings and conducted his virtual orchestra and never noticed when I turned and left his room.
• • •
It was sometime after I’d fallen asleep for the second time that day when my phone buzzed with an email from Mrs. Reynolds.
Hi, Kristen,
I’m so sorry to hear about Tisch, but I’m excited about your plan for a summer theater group. I think that’s a fine idea and am happy to advise. In fact, I have a suggestion for you if you want to move on this right away. I’ve already licensed a series called Modern Day Shakespeare in the Park. It’s a collection of scenes performed in today’s language. Each performance includes two songs. The series is designed to be performed weekly over the course of a summer, but I think that might be a bit ambitious for middle school. I’m sending the list. Choose your favorites, and then we can discuss further.
Mrs. R.
Oh, I loved this idea. Shakespeare in modern language, plus musical numbers? I could have a blast with this. Revved up, I sent her a quick reply, asking if we could get started right away. A few minu
tes later, she replied, agreeing to run it by the administration so we could get kids signed up before the end of the term, plus get the space reserved.
It would be summer; nobody wanted to be in school during the summer, so I wasn’t worried about that. What else would we need? Well. Costumes, for one thing. Shouldn’t be a problem. The school had lots of things we could appropriate.
Scenes and sets. That could be a problem. But if we did lots of poster board and paint, maybe it would be fun.
That was critical. Fun. I wanted this to be fun for the kids who signed up. It would be hard work, yes…but fun like—
Singing in a rock band.
And just like that, my mind was back on my Guitar Hero for like the thirty-second time that day. Jeez, what was up with him? One minute, he acted like I was the best thing that ever happened to him, and the next, it was like he wanted to shove me headfirst off a rooftop. I just didn’t get it.
I was so sure he liked me. From the night we met, when our eyes linked across the auditorium, I’d felt…I don’t know—something that made me stand up a little taller, something that made my heart beat faster.
Something that made me want to lick my lips.
But did he feel it too? He said he wanted to kiss me. But it was pretty damn obvious he didn’t like me that way, and that pissed me off. Not special enough again.
What was so wrong with me? I mean, all of my friends spent their time trying to fit in and be like everybody else. Conform. I was the only person I knew—besides Etta—willing to take a chance to stand out. To break away from the pack. That was pretty damn special, if you asked me. Elijah said rock was all about being defiant. I was the friggin’ definition of defiant, and he still didn’t care.
I put my phone on the table beside my bed and sank deeper onto my bed. He wanted me to sing? Well, all right then. I’d sing. I’d sing like it was my band, my show, my career.
The hell with Elijah Hamilton.
• • •
“Kristen! You here?”
I opened my eyes and discovered it was after two o’clock and that I’d slept for a few hours. I got up, rubbed sleep from my eyes, and opened my door. “Yeah, Mom. In my room.”
I heard her feet on the steps, and a minute later, she was in my room, looking like she’d been through hell.
I guess she had.
“How is she, Mom?”
Sighing, Mom sat on the edge of my bed and took my hand. “She’s not bad, all things considered. It was a major stroke, yes. But the doctors are satisfied that they were able to treat her in time. They think much of the damage can be corrected with therapy. She can’t walk, and she can’t talk, but she will.”
I pressed both hands to my face, tears spilling through the spaces in my fingers. “Oh, God, Mom, that’s excellent news.”
Her arms came around me, and I felt the sob in her chest. “Yeah. It is. I won’t lie to you. It’s not going to be easy. She can’t be alone now. Ever. We’ll have to do something with her place. She can’t get up the stairs.”
“Put the boys out there. They’ll love it.”
Mom’s eyes went round. “That’s…not a bad idea. We can probably convert the dining room into a space for her. We never use it.”
We said nothing for a few minutes but clung to each other anyway. Mom adored Etta, as much as she teased her for her outlandish behavior. I knew she was as worried about her as Dad.
“How are Dad and Aunt Deb?”
“Holding on. I think everyone will be fine. I really do. They’ll be home soon for showers, food, and fresh clothes. Then we’ll go back to the hospital…and wait.” She let me go and stood up, stretching her spine back until it popped. “That reminds me… Can you do me a favor and go out for me? I’ll give you a list.”
“Sure.” I stood up, scraped my hair into a ponytail, and found my boots while Mom scribbled a short grocery list onto a sheet of paper she tore out of a notebook.
Twenty minutes later, I was rolling a cart up and down the aisles of our local Stop and Shop, feeling like I just going through the motions while someone operated my body with a remote control miles away.
I’d just reached the cold cut counter when I felt eyes on my back. I turned around and found two guys with baskets hung over their arms, studying me like I was one of the appetizers inside a glass case. Both were tall. One was skinny, and the other was wide, like a linebacker. The skinny one wore a Slipknot T-shirt. The linebacker wore baggy shorts with a sports jersey.
I turned away, ignoring them, and waited—not patiently—for my turn.
Finally, it was. I gave the white-coated worker an order for a pound of ham, a pound of turkey, and a pound of American cheese. Behind me, I heard one of the guys let out a low but very definite meow.
The deli counter worker heard it too, and shot them a look.
I wanted to evaporate.
“You know what? Don’t worry about the cheese. Just do the ham and turkey, please,” I said. “Fast,” I added under my breath.
“Hey!” The bulky guy tried to get my attention.
I turned my back and locked eyes on the deli counter guy, begging him to help me.
“Hey.” The skinny guy got in my face, blue eyes glued to my chest. “I wanna hear you meow for me.”
So not gonna happen. “Back off, Tiny. I don’t do requests.”
Behind me, his husky friend let out a loud laugh. “Burn! Damn, Paulie, did you hear that? She don’t do requests. Ha, ha, ha!”
Paulie’s eyes left my chest long enough for me to worry about what I saw inside them. This was no behind-the-scenes type of nerd. This was a guy with real problems hearing the word no.
“Yeah, I heard her. And now I wanna hear her scream.” He took a step toward me and dug in his pocket, and I swallowed hard, but he came out with his cell phone and not the switchblade I was expecting, and Jesus God what the hell was I supposed to do now?
My hand locked around the handle of my shopping basket. I should probably move it. Strangely, I couldn’t seem to move at all. Paulie aimed his phone at me, and I just stood there.
Frozen.
“Meow…meeeeowwwww,” he taunted. Shoppers stared and frowned, but nobody was doing anything.
“Here you go.” The deli guy put two wrapped packages on the counter, but I was still frozen. Paulie grabbed them.
“Oh, look.” He showed his big friend. “Kitty cat has some ham and some turkey.” He read the labels on the packages.
I finally remembered how to move my limbs and held out a hand. “Give those to me.”
“Oh, you want these?” He held the packages high over my head. “All you have to do is meow for me. Come on, pretty cat. Let me hear you hiss and scream.”
“Leave her alone.”
I looked up, surprised to find my only support come from an old lady, not the deli counter guy and not the meat counter guy across the aisle. Or any of the dozen other shoppers just watching.
Paulie lifted a blond brow and sneered at the woman. “Back off, Grandma. I’m just having fun.”
“You’re scaring this young lady. What kind of man are you?” she taunted him, lifting a bag of whole potatoes out of her cart.
He spun to face her. “I said, I’m just having fun. Now mind your own business.”
“I am minding my own business. I’m making sure you leave this girl alone. I’ve already called the police. You still have time to get away.”
Paulie’s friend paled at this news. “Paulie, man. Come on. I don’t want trouble. Let’s just go.”
“I am not going anyway until she fucking screams for me.” And with that, Paulie grabbed a handful of my hair and forced my head back. At that point, I was ready to scream, meow, hiss, and hell, and use a litter box if he insisted, if it meant he’d stop pulling my hair.
But before I could do anything, someth
ing hit Paulie square in the face.
“Jesus, what the fuck!”
“Leave her alone.”
Thunk.
Oh my God. It was a potato. The woman was throwing potatoes at him, one at a time, from the bag in her hand.
A uniformed security guard ran toward us—finally.
“What’s going on here?” he demanded.
“These men are harassing this young lady. No one seemed willing to help her, so I did.” the old woman said. Etta would love her. Oh, God.
“You two. Come with me.” The security guard took hold of both men’s elbows.
“Paulie! Run!” Tiny told his friend, and after a second or two of wrestling with the guard, broke free and ran for the exit, the guard on their heels. When they were out of sight, I began to shake and couldn’t stop.
“It’s okay now. It’s okay.” The woman’s hands rubbed up and down my back. “Did you know them?”
I shook my head. “Never saw them before.”
“But they seemed to know you.”
Tears stung my eyes. “The Internet. They don’t like that I’m singing in their favorite band.”
The woman’s eyebrows drew together. “This Internet and those social networks are going to get someone killed. My little granddaughter had to change schools because of the Internet. Can you imagine? She’s just twelve years old.”
Oh, I could. Too well.
The phone in my pocket vibrated. With dread balling up in my stomach, I pulled it out and read the messages. I opened my email app and tapped out a quick message to Mrs. Reynolds, informing her that we’d have to pull the plug on the whole summer theater program idea.
What if they came back? How could I protect the kids in my group when I couldn’t even defend myself? That’s when I let the tears flow.
• • •
At the mall that weekend, it was a packed house with people lining every empty inch of space around the catwalk erected for the fashion show.
I swallowed hard, trying to figure out the words to tell Elijah I was done. Out. Finished. Scared witless over what had happened at the grocery store the other day. I hadn’t talked to him since Monday, when I fell asleep in his room and all but threw myself at him.
