Being Friends with Boys

by Terra Elan McVoy

  “I’m sorry,” I say, trying to keep my voice quiet. “Everything was so intense up there. And you started this whole other thing and I was—”

  “You’re supposed to be able to go with the flow. You’re supposed to roll with it.”

  “I didn’t know it was going to—”

  “Leave her alone,” Sylvia says behind her. “You’re making a scene. You intentionally sabotaged us—me—with the playlist change, so don’t blame Charlotte.”

  “Sabotaged!” Taryn reels back. “You mean the way you’ve sabotaged every single relationship I’ve ever tried to be in?”

  “Shut up right now,” Sylvia growls, taking Taryn’s arm and jerking her close. “You lied to me about him, when there honestly wasn’t any need. You’re the guilty one here and you know it. So stop taking it out on me, and definitely stop taking it out on Charlotte. It’s gross.”

  “I know I messed up,” I start, wanting them to calm down, for everyone to stop looking at us.

  “Don’t say anything right now, please,” Sylvia says to me. “Let’s all go in and try to have a little bit of dignity. I’d like to be able to show my face around here again.”

  Still clenching Taryn’s arm, Sylvia leads the two of us back in. As we walk through the gallery, I keep my hair a curtain around my face, so that I won’t have to see any smirks or snobbiness. Sylvia is practically pushing Taryn ahead of her, and Taryn’s gone droopy in her grip.

  In the back room, the emcee has already started his announcement.

  “—for us to see all the incredible talent that comes out. Again, if you’re interested in competing in an upcoming show here, please see me after, and we’ll get you signed up. Now, as for our winners tonight . . .”

  Fabian grabs my hand again, gives a comforting squeeze. I feel my family moving closer behind me. Benji winks. But I already know what the emcee’s going to say. Or, what he isn’t going to. So it’s not like I’m upset when the weirdo electronic-instrument guys who went before us are announced as the winners, or when the banjo girl and accordion guy come in second. What does surprise me is Darby’s scream of delight, Fabian’s caught-off-guard smile, plus Benji, Dad, and Hannah pulling me into hugs, because we’ve just won third place.

  I’m too surprised to move. Taryn bounds up to the stage first, clutching the emcee’s hands in both of hers and grinning like Miss America. Sylvia stands quietly behind her, waiting to shake hands with him too. He leans forward, says a quick good-bye into the mic, and then that’s it. I don’t even have a chance to go up. People are already moving toward the exits or back to the bar. The DJ’s set booms out of the PA. I stand there, stunned, as Taryn and Sylvia shake hands with the other performers.

  “Go join them, dummy.” Darby gives me a little shove. “It’s your prize too.”

  I move to the edge of the stage, still not believing I belong here, in the circle of winners. Not believing there are three other groups we managed to beat.

  “Nice job.” One of the first-place guys offers his hand to me. The one who played the tabletop-looking guitar, I think.

  “Thank you.” I shake it. “You guys were really good.”

  “Eh.” He shrugs. “These judges are fickle. Last time we did this, we didn’t even place. So, it comes and it goes.”

  I only half register what he’s saying, because Taryn and Sylvia are coming over, faces happy. And they’re holding hands.

  “Good work, kiddo.” Sylvia grips my shoulder.

  Taryn hands me a twenty-dollar bill, which is almost half of the fifty-dollar prize. “This belongs to you.”

  “But it should be three ways, equal.” I try to hand it back to her.

  “You put up with a lot tonight,” Sylvia answers, while Taryn looks sheepishly at her. They go from holding hands to slipping their arms around each other’s waists.

  “I knew we could count on you.” Taryn beams at me. “Our lucky charm.”

  Um, what?

  “Thanks, I guess.” I really cannot look at them anymore.

  “We’re going to celebrate,” Sylvia says, nodding in the direction of their friends around the bar. “You want?”

  “I think my family,” I say, reaching into the air behind me.

  “Let them spoil you,” Taryn says. “You deserve it!”

  I let them both hug me before I turn back to the people I truly care about. I have no idea what happened tonight. It’s almost like I’m sleepwalking, going back over to everyone, gathered together in the gallery, clearly all ready to go.

  “We thought parfaits at home,” Hannah says, reaching out to rub my arm. “That sound good?”

  I look at Fabian: stable, present, fabulous Fabian. And Benji, with whom things changed but have also somehow stayed the same.

  “Can you come too?” I ask them.

  “Unfortunately I can’t,” Benji says with a sorry look.

  “What, Lake House party you still gotta scope?” I tease.

  He salutes. “That’s what I love about you, Coastal,” though he doesn’t elaborate. He shakes hands with my dad and says good night to us all. I want to tell him—I don’t know what—but he’s already gone.

  “You can come, right?” I tuck my arm under Fabian’s, make pleading eyes.

  He squeezes my arm with his. “Ain’t nobody says, ‘Oh, no thank you, I don’t like parfaits.’”

  I laugh. “Donkey’s my favorite. I watched Shrek every day when I was little.”

  “See all the things you’ve been missing about me?”

  “There’s a lot,” I tell him seriously as we walk out into the night, “that I have missed about you.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  I have no idea what I want anymore. Everything is just too mixed up.

  After basically sleepwalking through Sunday and the first part of Monday, I take out a piece of paper during lunch and ask myself: when did I really enjoy all this band stuff, and why?

  All I can think of is the summer, which surprises me. Summer, when it was me, Oliver, Abe, and Trip. When we’d hang out and mess around, playing some and talking a lot. When the atmosphere of Sad Jackal was a lot more like the one in Taryn and Sylvia’s basement. Maybe not with all the silly jumping around, but much less pressure. And yet more constructive. I would write something, and then read it to Trip, and he’d help me shape it into something even better. We’d show it to Oliver and they’d turn it into music. I loved watching them, and loved how Trip always helped me bring out the story in the song, teaching me how to see it too. Writing for and with him, I got braver and sharper with my lyrics. Stronger. And then there was the notebook, heavy with all our other thoughts—the things in our heads we were working out together, instead of alone. I think of lying on the floor, silent, listening to his music, learning a lot more than just the names of a bunch of bands.

  The bell rings, making me jump. I’ve been staring into space for I don’t know how long. I look down at my paper, and what I see there is a shock. I’ve written four words: Our Golden Summer and Trip.

  Realizing that I was maybe happiest when I was working with Trip doesn’t make me feel any better, though. In fact, it makes me feel worse. First of all, what am I supposed to do about it? There’s no way to get that back. For one thing, Fabian and Eli are an essential part of Sad Jackal now. I wouldn’t want to trade them for the old group, Golden Summer or not. On top of that, though, even if Oliver did take me back—which I doubt, because he still isn’t even looking at my side of the room during psych—I have no reason to think he’d take me and Trip together.

  Which doesn’t matter either, because there is no me-and-Trip-together. He has Chris Monroe and his gang now. He has Lily. He’s probably forgotten all about me and the notebook. He’s probably burned up every page.

  But I can’t go back to Taryn and Sylvia, either. I don’t want to be in a band with people who are so undisciplined and unpredictable. So now I guess I’m in no band at all.

  I can barely do anything the rest of the afternoon.


  The next day, thank god, is our last day before Thanksgiving break. There isn’t much to do, since most teachers know our brains are already in vacation mode. But this just makes the time go slower. Except for 20th Cen., when Benji and I do a Mad Libs he made up from some old picture book about the first Thanksgiving. Otherwise, the day crawls.

  That night, all I can think about is Oliver and the band and my own stupidity, and then—Trip. Trip’s gentle hand on my shoulder. Trip’s face close to mine as we work over a song; his whole face lighting up as I round a corner; his hugs that enfold me in something more than warmth. I spend hours with my headphones on in my room, lights out, listening to his playlist. It’s pathetic, I know, but I want to gather as much of him around me as I can. Some of the songs he’s given me are stupid, or not my type of thing, but most make my heart swell and then sink to the bottom of me, thinking of him, and missing him so completely. I should have held on. I should have fought to keep us together. I shouldn’t have let him disappear forever.

  After sleeping late the next day, and lying in front of On Demand with Darby and Gretchen—a Wednesday of pajamas and macaroni and cheese and not knowing what time it is—a horn beeps in our driveway and we open the front door. There she is, Jilly. I realize I need her so bad, my eyes start to tear up.

  Gretchen, Darby, and I go out into the yard in our slippers and wrap her in squealing hugs, help with her bags, and bring them upstairs to my room—our room. Back down in the kitchen, Jilly is almost vibratingly hyper from sucking down too much Coke Zero on the drive. She needs a shower, she says, and has no idea what she packed besides a bunch of dirty laundry, it’s good to see us—she grabs whomever’s closest in a hug—and when will Dad and Hannah be home?

  We sit her down on the sofa. We give her water and ask does she need anything to eat. We try to tell her, all at once, what’s been going on since she left, and we ask, on top of each other, how the heck is college? Darby especially can’t get enough, leaning over the counter, getting as close to Jilly as possible. From her questions, it’s clear that Jilly’s barely talked to either her or Gretchen all semester. It makes me feel glad, a little.

  Still, there’s so much Jilly doesn’t know. So much I have to say, and so much that’s been a mess without her here.

  After about an hour of talking together in the kitchen, it’s like someone pulls a cord and everything falls back to this normal place. Jilly heads upstairs to shower, and we put our movie back on. When Jilly comes down, fresh and fragrant and with damp hair, she plops on the floor in front of me and holds up a comb. I help her work the knots out of her long wavy hair. Hair like mine.

  We stay that way, the four of us, like regular sisters, until Hannah comes home with a bag of groceries. Dad appears soon after, carrying the turkey for tomorrow. There’s another round of exclamations, hugs, and questions, and then we help Hannah with dinner while Dad checks his email and Gretchen takes her phone upstairs. It is normal and it is not. It is comforting and it is not. I am happy—so happy—to focus on Jilly, but I also know she’s just a temporary distraction from the whirlpool of thoughts and memories that keeps sucking me down.

  After dinner, Jilly and I wash our faces side by side in the double bathroom sinks and slip, clean and quiet, into our beds. Only now do I have a chance to really talk to her.

  But what do I say? Where do I start?

  So I just . . . talk. It’s hard to keep myself on one topic, with all the images cascading over me: Oliver turning away from me in class; Benji folding a pizza slice in half and shoving it into his mouth; Fabian hugging me in the front seat of his car; Trip cracking me up with one of his cartoons.

  Jilly listens. And then, after a long pause, she says, “You need to do what makes you happiest. Don’t worry where it’s going right now.”

  My brow furrows. I wish she could see it. “It’s not that. I’m just . . . unsure.”

  “Unsure about what, exactly?”

  “Unsure what I want from all of this, from all of them. Unsure if it’s about me or—” Oliver. Benji. Fabian. Trip. Lish. Taryn. Sylvia. Mom. Even Jilly.

  “You can’t do it for someone else.” I hear her shift in the bed, can almost see her, in the dark, facing me fully. “You have to do it for you.”

  “Huh.”

  “What?”

  “You sound like Mom.”

  She is surprised. “Do I?”

  I backpedal. “Well, not exactly. But that’s something she’d say.”

  I wait for her to get mad. To tell me how wrong I am, say it’s awful for me to compare her to someone she’s trying so hard not to be. But she doesn’t say anything. And I don’t want us to be fighting when she’s only home a couple of days.

  “How do I know what’s really the right thing, though?” I ask, to keep things going.

  “Oh, I think you know. Deep down we all really do.”

  I consider this, staring into the dark. “I’m afraid I might like Trip,” I test out.

  Absolute quiet comes from her side of the room. And then, finally: “Do you?”

  I imagine him. His grandpa-style gold-rimmed glasses. His floppy hair. His sloped handwriting. His focus on me whenever I’m talking.

  I imagine myself, the last six weeks, without him around.

  “I know I’m better when I’m with him,” I admit.

  Jilly doesn’t say anything for so long, I think she’s maybe asleep. So long I regret not saying something different.

  But after a while it comes out, quiet: “Well, there’s a start.”

  The next day is Thanksgiving, so the moment we’re awake, there are other, better-smelling things to focus on. We sauté shallots and chop garlic. Corn bread is baked and then crumbled for stuffing. We take pans off the stove, clean them only to dirty them again with something else. Gretchen’s made a playlist for us—songs full of thanks. When Carole King bursts out of the speakers, Hannah sings along, unembarrassed. Jilly and I do harmonies up and around her, and it feels good and right in a way I didn’t know I’d been missing. Even Dad joins in. We sing together all afternoon.

  By four o’clock, everything is ready and we’ve changed from Cooking In the Kitchen Casual to Thanksgiving Dinner Outfits. It’s sort of funny, transitioning into Formal Dinner Mode with each other. Why we don’t eat dinner in whatever we were wearing before I don’t know, because it’s not like anyone’s here to see. But when we sit down at the table—made bigger by the leaf we rarely use anymore and lit by tall candles in Hannah’s mother’s crystal candlesticks—it’s actually nice.

  The reliable goodness of our family joining hands like we do every year, going around the table to each say a thing we’re thankful for—it feels like some of the questions inside me start to break apart and drift away. There are some things I know are right.

  While we’re cleaning up the dishes after Thanksgiving dinner, Mom calls. Right away she apologizes for not doing so before now, and it occurs to me I’d hardly noticed. She tells me about the grain salad she’s making for the multifamily Thanksgiving they always have at the studio, and I wonder if she still misses regular corn-bread stuffing. But for the first time, while she talks, I can hear in her voice how content Mom is there. Holidays without her usually make me all sorry for myself, but somehow, today, I know she wouldn’t be happy if she was here. She wouldn’t—and neither would we. It’s a strange thing to have my head around.

  We’re leading up to good-byes when Jilly sidles over to me and takes the phone, wanders into the living room. When she comes back into the kitchen, I can tell she’s been crying a little. But I can also tell she doesn’t want anybody to notice, so I toss her a towel and get her to help me with the drying.

  Benji texts me on Friday, saying that he is dying of boredom and can I please rescue him. Since Jilly has plans with her high school friends, I suggest we go to the movies and out for Chinese. When Fabian texts ten minutes later, I invite him along.

  Which turns out to be one of my best ideas, ever. Benji
picks me up and we meet Fabian at the restaurant. We pile our plates with greasy buffet and talk so much we barely make it to the movies, all three of us jokingly irritated that we missed the first preview. When it’s over we stand in the parking lot debating the pros and cons of the film, until I’m in danger of violating curfew.

  Before we split up, Fabian hugs me. “I think you should call Oliver,” he says.

  When I start to protest, he gives me this fatherly look. I tell him I will think about it. He says he hopes I won’t think too long.

  Early Sunday morning I’m helping Jilly check the bathroom for all her toiletries, making sure her laundry got separated from mine when we did Laundry Marathon last night. It sweeps over me how much better things are, without me even knowing it, when my sister is here. How much I don’t want her to go, don’t want to go back to trying to be okay with her gone.

  But it doesn’t matter how much clearer things are with Jilly, because it’s time for her to go, and for me to clear them up myself. We help load up her bags, and she moves around the circle of us, saying good-byes.

  “You’re doing so great,” she says. “Just listen to yourself, and you’ll be fine.”

  I squeeze her tighter and tighter, not knowing what to say. And then she’s walking down to her car, and opening the door, and driving away.

  With Jilly gone, it’s best to get things back to normal, so I spend an hour turning the room back into mine—straightening the comforter on her bed, throwing the sheets in the wash, putting on my music, pulling out my binders and books to plan the week. Taking out my algebra homework, I find that reasons-I’m-in-a-band list I tried to make: the one that starts with Our Golden Summer and ends with Trip.

  Immediately, I know what I have to do. I don’t know why I’ve waited for so stupidly long. I pull on my boots, grab for a jacket, then pound down the stairs and holler to whomever is in earshot that I’m going for a walk.

  As I propel myself down the street, I can’t believe I’ve been so pigheaded and selfish, how I let all this get in the way. Oliver and I have lasted through so much. Like the time we got busted for trying to walk off campus during lunch as freshmen and had to serve detention together for a week. The month in seventh grade when he was in love with Zoe Blackstone—how silently devastated he was when she started wearing Will Stanford’s hockey jersey, and how I spent one entire afternoon filling up his locker with Her loss! notes. How grateful he was every day that I took notes for him while his arm was in that cast in tenth grade, so much so that, for a while, I confused it for a crush. Our fifth-grade science fair project, and the poetry project last semester in Mrs. Stenis’s class. How he’s always needed me, and I’ve always needed to be the one he counts on.