Best. Night. Ever.

by Rachele Alpine

  But.

  I steal another glance at Ellie, who’s now staring at her hands, and my stomach does this weird swoopy thing. Huh? What is happening to me? Am I getting sick? Maybe the creek water had icky bacteria in it or something. Why am I feeling so . . .

  Guilty.

  So what if I get the credit for stopping the Great Soap Slide instead of Ellie? I mean, we’re talking about Ellie.

  Before I can even think about what I’m doing, I shrug at Abby. “Yeah, well, so I guess it was kind of Ellie who foiled things, or whatever.”

  Abby turns her head to Ellie, her eyes wide.

  Oh my God, what did I just do? This is so— Wait! Maybe the creek didn’t have bacteria. Maybe it had a tapeworm that got in under my skin and is crawling around inside my brain right now and making me feel all sisterly and . . . sweet. This sucks.

  “Is that true?” Ilana asks, also facing Ellie now with one hand on her hip.

  Shanti appears too, with her ribbon in one hand and a single shoe dangling from the other. They seem to have abandoned the duck hunt to the boy with the camera around his neck. From a few rows over I hear him croon, “Here, ducky, ducky, duckies!”

  “I—I—” Ellie’s staring at me with superwide eyes. (Which, I note, could use a little more mascara, if I’m being honest. Take that, tapeworm.) “I guess so?”

  “Oh well, whatever.” Ilana shrugs, then turns to Abby and Shanti and says, “Let’s go, girls—I’ve had all I can take of this madness.”

  Abby squints. “Um, you don’t want to, uh, maybe use the mirror first?”

  Shanti glances at the ribbon from her dress. “I’m willing to brave the haunted bathroom. Some creaking pipes are way preferable to this . . . quack show!”

  She steps forward and slips on the soap, throwing her arms up to catch herself against the wall she slides into. “Argh!” she screams.

  They begin to file out, but something occurs to me and I yell after them.

  “Hey, wait,” I ask. “Where’s Sydney? I thought she was hanging with you guys tonight.”

  Abby darts a glance at Ellie before giggling. “Oh, she’s busy . . . with Kevin.”

  The others laugh too, and I raise my eyebrows. “Still?”

  Are they saying he ditched his actual date to hang out with Syd? Wait, what?!? Normal Ashlyn would probably be laughing here too, but instead I glance at Ellie. She’s studying the floor like she’s counting the tiles or something, and it does NOT help the swooping situation in my belly.

  “Coming, Ash?” Abby asks.

  “Yeah, I’ll be there in a sec.” I point to my hair. “I’m gonna use the mirror in here. That haunted bathroom creeps me out.”

  Shanti throws one last evil look toward the back of the locker room, where the quack noises are quieting. “I’m never, ever forwarding another cute duck video from YouTube. Those things are . . . monsters!”

  The girls slam out of the room and it’s quiet for a second, until a lone pip! sounds.

  “I guess I’d better help him get them out the side door,” the attacky girl says. She stands and brushes her hands on her legs before telling Ellie, “It was really nice meeting you.”

  Ellie gives the girl a small smile and resumes twisting her hands in her lap. I can’t believe she’s made friends with this girl instead of insisting we turn the evildoer in for master scheming crimes, but I kind of can’t be bothered with it. I have to focus on me right now—specifically, solving the mystery of what is happening to my insides.

  Neither of us speaks as we listen to the door in the back of the locker room open. There’s some muffled talking between the girl and the yearbook kid, a final shuffling, and then all is quiet. I sigh and step down from the bench I’ve been standing on, instead plopping next to Ellie on hers.

  I should be addressing the burrs-and-twigs-in-hair situation, but my blisters need a minibreak. “So what’s up with that whole Sydney thing? How come she’s hanging out with your Kevin?”

  Oh, whoa. I mean, not her Kevin, because really he’s way more my friend than hers, and before tonight even the thought of them in the same room was kind of—well, I’ll just say it, comical—but he did ask her to the dance, so, I mean . . .

  Ellie snort-laughs, which is so not something Ellie ever does. Was there something in the punch at this dance or what?

  “He’s certainly not my Kevin. The entire date was an enormous fraud. As it turns out, he only asked me as a joke.”

  She bites her lip and blinks a few times fast, like I do when I’m trying to settle fake eyelashes into place. But since Ellie would never wear false lashes, it’s almost like she’s trying to hold back tears or something.

  Immediately, my gut does that backflipping thing again.

  I mean, on the one hand, Ellie is exactly the perfect target for a prank like this, and I get why he picked her.

  But he doesn’t have to see her camped out in here like she’s planning to move in and pull a Moaning Myrtle for the rest of time. And he’s not the one who knows how long Ellie spent getting ready or how she wore her mom’s dress just for him. Not to mention my grandmother’s headband! My halmoni might have been a tiny Korean woman who’d only come up to Kevin’s shoulder, but she would whoop his butt if she were here right now.

  Wait, I’m a tiny Korean girl. Maybe I can whoop his butt. Because he can’t just get away with doing this to her! The other thing my halmoni would say is, “Family first,” and as much as I can’t believe I’m going to say this, it kind of feels like Ellie is part of mine now.

  “This is so not acceptable. We are gonna take immediate and irrevocable action on this!” I pause when I catch her expression. “Why are you smiling? We need to make him pay for what he’s done to you!”

  Ellie glances at me. “I’m smiling because you said ‘we’ and also because you know the word ‘irrevocable.’ ”

  I roll my eyes. “Of course I do. I’m not a total puffhead, you know.”

  “I know. You’re more like Tralalia on Secret Lives of Celebrity Sisters. There was this time she almost got arrested for swimming in the fountain at the mall and she got out of a ticket by quoting a really obscure bylaw in the Beverly Hills city code, which was quite unexpected.”

  My jaw drops to the floor. “You did not just reference SLCS!”

  Ellie shrugs. “It’s one of my guilty pleasures.”

  “Nooooooo way!” She can’t be for real right now. That is the very last thing I would have expected her to say. I thought her favorite TV show would be more like World’s Boringest Skills, Such as How to Churn Butter Like the Colonists Did or something.

  It’s not even possible that she’s a true fan of something as trendy as SLCS. I’ll bet she just wandered by the TV and caught that one part of one episode. There’s an easy way to catch her in a lie here. “Which girl is your favorite?”

  She doesn’t miss a beat. “Well, I suppose Serenity Loveyish, because she’s very overshadowed by the other two and she’s actually quite sweet.”

  She totally watches it!

  “No. Way. She’s my fave too!” I can’t help but let out a tiny squeal, which echoes around the empty locker room. Omigosh, I’m talking about S. Lovey with Ellie.

  “I especially like how they’re so different, but they’re sisters, so they make it work,” she says.

  I feel like she’s trying to send me some kind of message. Her smile is kind of, I don’t know, meaningful or expectant or something. But it’s sort of pretty, too. I lean back a little more and fully take in her appearance.

  Oh. Oh, yikes.

  “You know, you’re kind of a mess. You look like you went ten rounds with Mr. Clean,” I say, running my eyes up and down her soapy dress.

  Ellie’s eyes go wide again, but then she blinks and raises her eyebrows and says, “Yes, well, you should talk. You look like you crawled out of a sewage pipe.”

  Um, what? She did NOT just— Although I happen to catch sight of our reflections in the mirror across from us, and I
’m all bunched shirt and scratched arms and twiggy hair and she’s all soapy and disheveled, and yeah, she’s right. We’re both megatragic at the moment.

  Then she starts laughing and then I start laughing and then we’re laughing together.

  And there are no zombies or apocalypses anywhere in sight.

  So. Weird.

  When we can breathe normally again, I glance at her. “I’m pretty sure it was Khloe Kardashian who once said, ‘When it comes to guys, the best revenge is looking good.’ I say we show Kevin exactly what he’s missing out on. When he comes begging for you to date him for real, we can laugh right in his squashed-looking face!”

  Ellie’s expression can only be described as Have you gone round the bend, babycakes? (which of course she’d probably say as Excuse me, but have you misplaced a few brain cells?), but I just smile and shrug.

  What she actually says is: “I don’t believe in revenge, but I am all about karma. Only, how would I achieve that while looking like this?”

  “First of all, it sucks what happened to your mom’s dress, but at least it’s only soap, which means it should totally wash out. So that’s good. Second of all, you’re in luck because I have extra clothes in my locker and I’ll bet they’d fit you, if you want. The whole reason I’m in here in the first place is ’cause I was coming to grab them.”

  “But then what about you? What’ll you change into?”

  I shrug. “I’m good. I mean, my first choice was to ‘refabulous’ myself, but when it comes down to it, the best part of being popular is if you act like you’re doing something on purpose, no one questions it. Even better, they copy it. Maybe I can start a new “sewage pipe” fashion movement. Anyway, it’ll be completely worth it to watch Kevin squirm worse than a baby hamster in a Halloween costume when he sees you looking a-d-o-r-a-b-l-e as we march straight past him and out the door. I’ll call my mom to see how soon she can get here, so we don’t have to hang around for the last forty-five minutes. Oh, crud. My phone! Well, whatever. We’ll get you fixed up, then we’ll find one to borrow. Now, my threads are totally way more trendy than you’re used to, but it’s zero problem for me to show you how to wear them the right way.”

  I catch Ellie rolling her eyes. “What? What’d I say?” I ask.

  She smiles and shakes her head. “Nothing. That would be really lovely.”

  Lovely? Ugh. Who even says that in this century? She’s so superlucky to have me as a sister, because not many other people would have the stamina to take on a project as big as Ellie is going to be. Although she does have a decent head start with her choice in TV shows, so maybe there’s hope for my soon-to-be sister after all.

  “Okay, come on, Ells.” I stand and hold out my hand, and she lets me yank her up. We link arms to keep each other from slipping on any duck droppings or soap as we make our way to my locker and I spin the combo lock. I’m just handing her a supercute purple cami from inside when she asks, “I still can’t figure out what you’re doing here. Did the Terzettis come home early? Did they drop you off here instead of at our house, because it— Oh! What is it? Why did your eyes get all big like that?”

  “Um . . . because . . . no reason. Yup. Nope, it’s . . . nothing at all! Hey, uh, I’ll be right back. One sec, okay?”

  I run from the aisle and use my momentum to slide across the soapy floor the whole way to the door, both arms out to stop myself when I hit it hard. I yank it open and dash into the gym.

  “Brats? BRATS? I DEFINITELY DIDN’T FORGET ALL ABOUT YOU! I’M COMING, YOU GUYS!”

  GENEVIEVE { 10:20 p.m. }

  “I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS.”

  The minute Ms. Huff finally finds us all in the chaos and manages to corral us behind the stage, Tess starts pacing back and forth and back and forth across the narrow strip of polished floor. Her hands are buried deep in her hair like she’s going to rip it out by the roots. It’s making me kind of woozy to watch her. Or maybe I feel weird because of the way the lights are flickering as they slowly, slooowwwly warm back up after the blackout. Then again, I felt pretty awful to begin with, so maybe it has nothing to do with Tess or the lights. I hug my knees to my chest and press my back flat against the wall, trying to disappear so no one will ask me what happened onstage.

  “We still get to play,” Claudia says. “Ms. Huff said we just have to wait until the next opening in the broadcast, and then they’ll—”

  Tess keeps talking like Claudia hasn’t even said anything. “This is so important, and the school can’t even be bothered to keep the lights on—”

  “I don’t think it’s the school’s fault,” Mariah says. “Ilana posted something on Instagram about how someone was trying to sabotage the band, and—”

  Tess turns on her. “Are you serious? Someone hates us enough to sabotage us?”

  Claudia’s mouth drops open. “Who would do something like that?”

  “A couple of the boys were making fun of Heart Grenade in PE the other day, but they’re probably too lazy to actually sabotage us,” Faith says.

  “It wasn’t them,” says Mariah. “Ilana’s post says it was a girl.”

  “If I find out who, I’m going to make her sorry she ever heard of Heart Grenade,” Tess says. There are basically laser beams shooting out of her eyes.

  “It’s probably good we get to start over, honestly,” Faith says. “That wasn’t exactly our best performance.”

  And then comes the thing I’ve been fearing most: Tess turns her laser eyes on me.

  “Yeah, what happened out there, Genevieve? Did you forget when your cue is? It’s drums and bass for eight measures, and then you come in. You had it right in rehearsal yesterday.”

  I open my mouth to tell her I know when the cue is, but what comes out isn’t words. It’s this horrible, wet, choked sound. And then, to my horror, I’m suddenly crying in front of the whole band.

  Tess’s eyes widen. “Oh my God. Are you okay?” She crouches down in front of me, and when Mariah joins her, the ruffles on their identical purple dresses bunch up around their legs in the exact same way. If I weren’t completely miserable, it would actually be kind of funny. Mariah offers me a tissue from her bottomless purse, and I take it and blot my eyes.

  “Don’t do that,” says Faith. “Your mascara’s getting everywhere.”

  “Are you sick? Should I get a teacher?” asks Claudia.

  I shake my head. It’s bad enough that all the girls are seeing me like this; I don’t want anyone else coming back here. “No, it’s okay. I’m okay.”

  “You’re obviously not,” Tess says. “What’s the matter? Are you going to be able to sing?”

  I expect her to be furious, but when I glance up at her face, she doesn’t look angry at all. She looks kind of . . . soft and concerned. And not about the band or our TV broadcast. She looks like she might actually care about me, personally.

  “I ruined everything. I’m so, so sorry.” Saying it out loud triggers a fresh flood of tears.

  “You didn’t ruin anything,” Mariah says. “The jerk who turned the power off ruined everything.”

  “But I—I got up there, and I—couldn’t—” I hiccup and wipe my eyes again, even though I’m probably making my makeup even worse. “My voice, it wouldn’t—and I got so scared, and I totally panicked, and—I’m so sorry.”

  “Oh,” Tess says, and for some reason, she looks relieved. “It’s just stage fright.”

  There’s no “just” about it. Standing up there with spots dancing in front of my eyes and an iron band around my chest and a voice that didn’t work was pretty much the worst feeling I’ve ever had in my entire life. But I nod.

  “Well, that’s a relief,” Tess says. “I thought something was really wrong with you. Why didn’t you tell us you were freaking out?”

  “I tried to earlier, but you seemed really busy looking for Leif, and then there was the thing with Kate’s teeth, and Mariah needed to learn the song, and . . . I don’t know. I felt stupid, and it didn’t seem import
ant, and I thought . . . I didn’t want you all to be mad.”

  Mariah hands me another Kleenex; she seems to have an endless supply. “Why would anyone be mad?”

  “Stage fright’s totally normal,” Tess says. “It happens to everybody.”

  “Not you guys.”

  She looks confused. “Of course it happens to us.”

  “The first time we ever performed together, I was so scared I played an entire song in the wrong key,” Claudia tells me. “A whole song. It sounded awful, but I couldn’t do anything about it. It was like my hands weren’t even connected to my body.” She wiggles her fingers, and her turquoise nail polish sparkles.

  Faith laughs. “I kept trying to get her attention, but it was like she was in a trance. Her eyes looked all creepy and glazed over.”

  “They did not!” Claudia says.

  “They did. It was like you were a zombie.” Faith makes a slack-jawed face to demonstrate.

  Claudia laughs. “Oh man, I’m glad almost nobody was there for that.”

  “I had a stomachache for two days before our first show,” Tess says. “Going up onstage in front of all those people—it’s superscary. Especially if you’re not used to it.”

  I know it shouldn’t make me feel better to hear about other people being miserable, but it kind of does. Maybe Tess and Faith and Claudia aren’t cut out for this more than I am. Maybe they’ve just had more practice.

  “But none of you are freaking out now,” I say. “How did you make it stop?”

  Tess sits down next to me, and the way her shoulder presses against mine makes me feel more grounded. “It never goes away completely, but the more you do it, the easier it gets,” she says. “Deep breathing helps too. I know it sounds stupid, but I swear it works. You breathe in through your nose for three counts, then out through your mouth for five. Try it. In, two, three . . . Out, two, three, four, five . . .”

  It does sound kind of silly, but I do what she says, and suddenly my lungs start to open up again. Air swirls into the very bottom, the part that felt totally cut off before.