“Of course, rock star,” she says. “Darby’s going to be mad you’re not letting her do you over, though.”
“Oh, no. Of course she is. I’m getting ready before I leave. I couldn’t do this without her.” I indicate my baggy flannel pajama bottoms, my rat’s-nest hair.
“She probably has a schedule for you, then.” Gretchen smirks. “You better get downstairs and see.”
By quarter to seven I am in the car, blasting the stereo, singing at the top of my lungs—partly to warm up, partly because I have to get out some energy. With the sun already mostly down and everyone’s headlights on, driving feels even more exotic, more grown-up. I am excited and nervous, but in a good way. Darby spent several hours blowing out my hair, treating my face with a couple of different anti-whatever creams and gels, and then meticulously applying a lot of makeup in such a way that somehow doesn’t look like I’ve got that much on. I even like my outfit: the new sailor pants I love so much and a pretty, drapey burgundy top with some dangly gold earrings of Darby’s. It probably isn’t going to seem very cool compared to the fashionistas at Earhorn, but it makes me feel good, and I’m comfortable in it, which I know is what matters the most. Plus, in these pants Darby doesn’t mind if I wear my boots, which helps me feel even more myself.
“Wow, you look pretty,” Veronica says to me when she answers the door. She holds it open, letting me walk in. I can’t help but notice she is in a robe and pajamas, with furry slippers in the shape of bananas.
“You’re not coming?”
She gives her head a small shake. “Something’s going on between them.” She points to the floor above us. “And I want some peace while I can get it.”
“Is everything okay?” I whisper back.
“I don’t know. Taryn poured her first drink at four, and Sylvia won’t come out of her room. Maybe it’s nerves, but they’re not good signs, believe me.” Her voice rises so that it floats up the stairs, cheerful, “But I’m sure they’ll be right down in a minute.”
“Thanks.” I’m not sure what to do with this news.
We hear a door open upstairs, and Taryn calls, “Hi, pumpkin! Come on up!”
I give Veronica a Wish me luck glance and head upstairs.
“You look pretty,” Taryn says, all breathy, setting down a red plastic cup on her incredibly cluttered but very cool vintage dressing table. The kind with a round mirror.
“Thanks,” I tell her, looking around. Her room isn’t that big, and most of it is filled with the dressing table and a giant bed with a matching wooden headboard. There are some bookshelves anchored to the wall, crowded with books and papers and pictures and CDs and figurines, and a small table beside the bed overflowing with more books and magazines. The floor is covered with clothes and more CDs. It’s worse than Darby and Gretchen’s room. Worse than even Oliver’s.
“Sit, sit,” she says, gesturing to the bed. I find a spot near the edge where I won’t crush the dresses and jackets strewn across it. Taryn drops down on the stool in front of the dressing table and leans close to the mirror to examine her face. She’s nowhere near ready yet. And not just because all she’s wearing is a black silk kimono.
“Are you okay?” I ask, hesitant. She doesn’t seem drunk, but . . .
“Just nervous.” She lets out a long breath, then straightens up and pushes her hair back away from her face, sucks in her cheeks, examines her profile. Without much apparent thought, she picks up a big powder brush and swipes it across her face, puffing more powder into the air than on her skin. “There’s an important person coming tonight and I . . .” She puts the brush down, stares at herself again. “I just want it to go well.”
I’m about to say I’m sure it’ll be fine, so long as we get there on time, when a knock startles both of us. Sylvia’s standing there, outside the partly open door. She has her guitar case in her hand.
“Are you ready?” She looks at Taryn with absolutely no expression on her face.
Taryn throws out her hands. “Duh, no.”
“Hi, Charlotte,” Sylvia says. Her eyes and mouth become a little more pleased. “You look very nice.”
“Thanks, you do too.” And she does. Her short black hair is slicked back, and her jeans and cowboy shirt somehow actually make her look more feminine than usual. I think she might even have on lipstick.
Sylvia looks at her giant man-watch. “Well, the gang is at Righteous, so I’m headed over there. We’ll see you at the place, I guess. Charlotte, you can drive, right?”
“Sure.” But wait. Is she really leaving? Now? I try to show her how anxious this makes me.
But she’s unresponsive. “You can get her there?” she says to Taryn.
“God! Yes.”
Sylvia ignores the nastiness. “Just be there no later than eight thirty, all right?”
“Why don’t you take my stuff if you’re so worried about it,” Taryn snaps.
Sylvia looks at her a second. “I’ll see you there, then. Bye, Charlotte.”
“Jesus,” Taryn huffs, looking back into the mirror when Sylvia’s gone. When she sucks her cheeks back in, applying her blush, it’s like she sucks all my previous confidence right on out of me.
Taryn’s not drunk, just incredibly slow. It takes her almost forty minutes to put on powder and two streaks of thick black eyeliner over her lids, plus a smear of red lipstick. There’s another ten minutes of pushing her hair back in a headband and taking it down. Finally, under my encouragement—because I am freaking out about getting there—she leaves it in the headband, with a bit of her long bangs pulled forward. After another fifteen minutes, she’s in her outfit.
“I look fat, I think,” she says for the fourteenth time, pausing at the top of the stairs.
At this point I want to push her down them. I’m sure my family is already at Earhorn, looking around the room at all these arty college kids, wondering where I am. And I wanted some time before we go on, just to get acclimated to the vibe. Not to mention eat some dinner, so that I can sing without passing out. But now we’re barely going to make sound check, if at all.
“You look great,” I say again. “And besides, I don’t think we have much time.”
Her eyes widen. “Shit! What time is it?”
“Almost eight.”
“God god god.”
Suddenly she’s in motion, putting her hands on the tops of my shoulders and gently guiding me down the stairs. She keeps muttering as she flies around the corner into the kitchen and into the basement.
“Okay, thank god,” she says, coming immediately back up. “Sylvie’s got all the stuff. Okay, okay, let’s get going, then.” She’s rushing to the couch, snatching up her purse, reaching for her keys in the bowl by the front door.
“Bye, Veronica,” she hollers as she pushes me out the door. I don’t know where Veronica went. I don’t know if she even heard. But it doesn’t matter. Taryn’s sudden panic has me panicked even more than before. What if we don’t make it at all?
“Shit shit shit,” Taryn keeps muttering while I drive. She’s chewing on her thumbnail too, stopping only when she has to tell me to turn.
“It’s going to be fine,” I say, trying to calm myself down more than her. I don’t know where the bubbly, bouncy Taryn has gone, but I want to get out of the car with this version as quickly as possible.
Luckily, it’s not that far to Earhorn, and though there’s Saturday-night traffic to deal with on Ponce, the back streets don’t have many cars. We pull into the rutted parking area just as the clock on the dashboard changes to 8:25. It’s a miracle, I swear.
“Come on, come on,” Taryn mutters as we strain our necks, looking for a space.
“Why don’t you go on in?” I suggest. “You can let them know we’re here. I’ll be there in a sec.”
A twinkle hints across Taryn’s strained face. “How’d you get to be so smart?”
I don’t answer as she jumps out of the car and runs to the entrance. I have to unbuckle and lean way across the pa
ssenger’s seat to get her door shut.
There are absolutely no spaces in the lot, so I end up parking on the street, about eight cars away from any streetlights. It’s dark and a little skeevy, but I make myself walk at a normal pace. I have no idea what Taryn and Sylvia are going to be like when I get in there, but I know I don’t want to look panicked and frazzled. I swallow a few times, blink my eyes wide, and go inside.
Sylvia is right there by the door, watching for me. Without a word, she clamps her hand down on my arm and gives a tight fraction of a smile, leads me through the art gallery into the back room. It feels darker and more crowded than it was last week. I want to explain to her that I did the best I could, getting Taryn here, that I don’t want her to be mad at me, but by the clenched look on her face I decide to keep my mouth shut.
“It’s fine,” she eventually says, though her face is tight. “Taryn’s here, along with her boyfriend, and we’re slated to go second. Our stuff’s set up, and I checked the mic. I think it sounds okay. So we’re set. All right? It’s going to be fine.”
We have to go second? is knocking against my brain, but the first thing she said crowds everything else out.
“What do you mean, her boyfriend?”
Sylvia’s eyes meet mine. “I didn’t know either until just now.” She jerks her head to the left of us. I look over and there, indeed, is Taryn, in her black dress, talking very seriously—and very, very closely—to some guy with a beard and a wool cap.
“She didn’t tell me,” Sylvia growls. “And what did she fucking think? That she’d waltz in and pull some ‘Oh hi, by the way, this is Aaron’”—she says his name with a bitterness that makes me wince—“and la dee da I’d just go along?”
I don’t know what to say to this. Things were already chaotic enough, but now my heart is truly knocking against my teeth. I have no idea what performing is going to be like with them.
Before I can react, though, I hear a loud “There you are!” as Darby flings herself around my neck. Turning, I see Gretchen, Dad, and Hannah, all holding mostly full glasses of Coke. “This place is righteous,” Darby says, looking around the room in embarrassing awe. “You have to bring me here, like, every Saturday from now on.”
“I’m Sylvia” I hear next as I untangle myself from Darby.
“Sorry. This is my friend Sylvia,” I tell my family, trying to look like everything’s fine. “She plays guitar.”
“We can’t wait to hear you perform,” Hannah says—too loudly—leaning in like Sylvia might be deaf.
Another hand grips my shoulder, and I turn too fast, flicking the person behind me in the face with my hair.
“Oh god, sorry,” I say, realizing, as I do, that it’s Fabian standing there.
I grab him in a big hug without thinking, almost collapsing against him. “I’m so glad to see you,” I murmur into his ear.
“I wouldn’t miss it,” he says. Just his presence makes me feel utterly relieved.
“I’m so sorry,” I blurt, mainly for being such a crappy friend.
“Well—” His face is sweet and chastising, both. “You do owe me a real, at-length explanation about what happened.”
But then the emcee guy takes the stage. Oh god I feel, all the way in the pit of my stomach. Oh god oh god oh god—please not yet.
The first group starts, and I’m like a zombie victim getting her brain sucked out. They’re guys—that much I can register— playing this bizarro-but-pretty ambient music. I have never seen the instruments they’re using. One of them is maybe a guitar neck turned to lie flat like a table, and the other one is—I don’t even know. A box with some antennas coming out of it that the guy just moves his hands toward and back. Both are hooked into laptops. The sound coming out is so floaty and hypnotic that it almost shuts up the crazy, freaked-out feeling in my head and my stomach. Still, I must look like I’m about to collapse because Fabian reaches over and takes my hand. I cling to him for the rest of the set, not because it’s sparkly, but because it’s what I need.
Too soon, everyone is clapping and whistling, and the emcee guy is back on the stage saying something into the mic while the first group breaks down. Fabian is hugging me, and then Darby and my dad, and Sylvia’s looking at me all serious and sympathetic and mouthing “Ready?” Somehow I am nodding and following her up to the stage.
Taryn’s not far behind us. While the two of them shift their instruments from the back of the stage to the front, I stand there, wanting to be helpful but not knowing at all what to do.
“All right, Coastal!” I hear from somewhere in the audience. I turn, squinting, to try and find Benji, but the lights are almost pink in their brightness, and I can’t see him. Still, I’m glad he’s out there.
“Test the mic,” Sylvia says, nodding toward it.
“Test?” I say. The mic gives a harsh squeal.
“Do it again.” Sylvia’s quiet behind me, scootching back a little. She’s trying to be calm for both of us.
“Test, test.”
Someone whistles—maybe over where Dad is. Or back by the bar. It could be Taryn’s boyfriend.
“Okay,” I hear Sylvia say behind me.
“Yeah, okay,” Taryn says back.
“Okay,” I say, to let them know I’m ready. Which I’m not. At all. In any way. Because I can’t feel my legs, and I can’t see anything but the bulbous, crisscrossed face of the mic, and I’ve never sung in front of an audience of judgmental strangers like this before, or with such unpredictable people. I try to take in a deep, slow breath. But then, to make everything a hundred times worse, when Taryn starts playing, it’s not the notes I’m expecting. Instead she’s starting with a different song: the too-high new one I’ve only sung twice.
Through the whole thing, it’s like I’m wrapped in a blanket of awfulness: dark, shifty audience in front of me, angry, unreliable, hating-each-other bandmates behind me. I’m up there, in the lights, all alone but surrounded, my insides swirling between freezing dread and hot, angry humiliation. This is nothing like the Sad Jackal show, when I felt so awful but could sink into the songs. At least then I knew Oliver, Eli, Fabian, and Abe all had my back. Now I’m up here and everything itches like a stiff Easter dress—nothing fits, but I can’t pull it up over my head and get rid of it either.
We get through it, and Taryn starts up the Heart song, which at least is a crowd-pleaser and one we planned to play tonight, only last. We end with what should have been our first song, but whatever.
When we finish there’s applause, but I don’t wait for it. I don’t offer to help Taryn and Sylvia with their instruments, either. Instead I practically stumble off the front of the stage and move toward the bathroom, where I want to shut myself in the smallest of the three tiny stalls, press my head to my knees, and cry.
But that doesn’t happen. Instead I’m blocked by Fabian, flanked by Gretchen and Darby, all three of them with concerned faces that I can’t stand.
“What happened?” Darby says, as I sink into Fabian’s strong-armed hug. Gretchen strokes my back.
That they know it was awful makes it harder not to cry, but I’m aware of everyone else around us—our competitors, the judges, everyone—seeing me miserable. I suck in my breath, stand up straight.
“It’s fine,” I say, unable to look any of them in the eye. “I just got nervous.”
“Hey, you okay?” Benji says, finding us.
I dab my eyes with my fingertips. “Yeah.” But it comes out all wobbly. “Thanks for coming.”
Fabian gives me another hug. “It wasn’t you,” he says, close to my ear.
I shake my head, try to show I’m thankful.
“We can’t talk about this now,” I tell them. “Because I will seriously lose it.”
Benji loops his arm around my shoulder. “The rest of your family here?”
I look over in Dad and Hannah’s direction. “I should go back to them. But you guys really don’t have to stay.”
“Are you kidding?” Darby t
akes my hand. “Come on.”
There are only six acts tonight. Four more to watch before the winners are announced. I try to shake off my cloak of embarrassment, my veil of fury at Taryn and Sylvia, and just enjoy the music. The two of them have disappeared anyway, which is good riddance, the way I feel.
Eventually Sylvia shows back up with her friends and leans in to say “Good job,” though not very convincingly. I tell her the same back, but she doesn’t say anything else. It’s too loud for us to talk, for me to find out what she really thinks, and there’s not a lot she can say. We were awful and I know it. Though really, they played fine. Played the wrong songs, but played fine anyway. It was mostly me who messed up. Me who flung away everything I know about practice and good management, all for a silly time and the approval of girls I barely know.
Jilly was right. Just because something’s fun, it doesn’t necessarily bring out the best in you. You need to work at it. You need what I had when I was with Sad Jackal.
By the time the last performers finish, I’m beyond ready for that emcee to get it all over with. I want to hear that we didn’t win, so I can go home and put this entire night behind me.
There’s a break first, though. Most people head to the bathrooms, the bar. Sylvia’s disappeared again, though her friends still hover. Since I want to leave as soon as everything’s over, this might be the best chance for us all to talk. I tell Dad I need some air and go to look for her.
She isn’t hard to find. Just off the crowded patio, Sylvia’s standing, arms crossed, listening to Taryn, who’s making wild gestures. I’m about to step back inside—clearly this isn’t a conversation for me to be in—when Taryn looks up, sees me, and heads over, eyes flashing.
“What was that?” she hisses. I’ve stepped out of the way of most of the smokers, but still a tall dude in black looks over his shoulder at us. “What happened? That is not what I expected from you.”
Her anger slaps me worse than knowing I didn’t sing well.
Being Friends with Boys Page 22
