“Aunt Darce. Okay, show her the equipment first while we’re slow, then register, so she’s prepared.”
Madeline’s tongue slid over her lip ring and she sighed. “There’s no way she’ll be prepared.”
“Geez, thanks,” I muttered.
Darcy returned Madeline’s glare, which apparently ran in the family. She put her hand on my shoulder. “It’s not you. We’re expecting a huge crowd tonight; that’s why I wanted you to be here.” She grinned at me. “We’re gonna throw you right into the fire.”
I swallowed. So much for observing. Darcy patted my shoulder before excusing herself into the kitchen. I turned to Madeline, who was playing with the ends of her hair. I wiped sweat from my palms onto my apron. “Why a huge crowd?”
Madeline sighed. “A band.” She offered no other information. Instead, she stomped over to one of the machines—I had no idea what it was or what it did—and started fiddling with it. “Are you going to watch or just stand there?”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Watch what I do and don’t ask me any other stupid questions.”
I wasn’t sure what my first stupid question had been, but like a good little girl, I nodded and, without saying another word, Madeline “taught” me how to clean out the espresso machine.
When we were done, Darcy handed me a manila folder. “Put these up. In the windows and around.” She waved her hand and turned away from me to help a customer.
Inside the folder were flyers. dirt soup—live! saturdays until june! The words were set off-center above a picture of the back of a guy carrying a guitar. It wasn’t a photograph, more like Clip Art, and the proportions were slightly off, the guy’s legs too short and his torso too round. The whole thing was presumably printed from a machine running out of ink. Some parts were black, some gray. The V in “Live!” was hardly a letter at all.
“You don’t really want these…”
Madeline glared at me and slammed a roll of tape onto the counter.
What kind of name was Dirt Soup? The worst band name I’d ever heard. I guess it was fitting, then, that Dirt Soup had the worst promotional posters I’d ever seen. But I had to do as I was told. I wrinkled my nose as I taped the posters to the bulletin board back by the bathrooms, on the side of a bookshelf, and at the top of the postcard display. I had no choice but to tape the remaining two to the storefront windows. I couldn’t imagine what a passerby would think. That a five-year-old had a band, maybe.
I wasn’t sure why, but the name of the band sounded vaguely familiar. It bothered me all morning, but I didn’t dare ask Madeline. She acted as if “demonstrating” to me the fine art of blending smoothies was on par with working in a coal mine. Around two o’clock, she announced that she was taking a break and left me all alone at the counter. Apparently, smoothie making was quite tiresome. “It’s not that hard,” she said when I started to protest. “Just do whatever the customer asks you to.”
Twenty minutes later, she still hadn’t returned. Lucky for me, I had only one customer and all he’d ordered was a small black coffee. But then Jack Moreland and his traveling guitar came through the wooden doors.
Two other kids followed, one heavy and wearing glasses, the other tall and skinny with some acne on his chin, both dragging amps and assorted equipment. I recognized the blond kid from my AP Physics class. His name was Reid Leblanc. He never raised his hand in class, but when he was called on, he always had the right answer.
Reid and his friend disappeared behind the break room door while Jack, with a black bag slung over one shoulder and a guitar case over the other, approached the counter.
He stared at me with an expression strikingly similar to Madeline’s, recognizing me, I was sure, from the Coke machine incident. He wore a T-shirt with the name The Pixies on it and a flannel shirt over that. The dark polish on his nails was chipped. Both of his ears were pierced with silver studs and he had a hoop through his eyebrow. “Where’s Darcy?”
For some reason, it took me a minute to find my voice. It was weird, seeing him outside of school. He never went to any parties at Adam Dixon’s house, obviously, and I couldn’t really remember ever spotting him around Main Street or at the beach. “She’s, um, on the phone with a vendor. She said I could help you set up.”
Jack hesitated for a second. “All right.” He motioned for me to follow him.
I wasn’t sure I was supposed to leave the register unattended. But Madeline should be back any second, and Darcy did tell me to be on the lookout for the band. There was no one in line and only a couple of customers, some sipping coffee at the café tables, a couple perusing the postcards and books in the back. “Okay, one sec.” I found a piece of scrap paper, wrote helping the band on it, and left it on the top of the register.
He led me to a door to the stockroom marked employees only. Inside, the band clearly knew what they were doing, unloading and unfurling cables with efficiency.
Jack glanced at me but looked away when our eyes met. “You could bring this out.” He handed me a mike stand, which was heavier than it looked. “Leave it by the postcards—do you know where that is?” I nodded. “That’s where we play. And you can bring some of the café chairs over there, too; that’s what Darce usually does. Some people like to sit up close.”
I carried the stand out to the postcards, then brought up four or five chairs. I couldn’t believe they were expecting a big crowd for Jack’s band. Dirt Soup was a non-entity at school. I vaguely remembered hearing that they won the county Battle of the Bands last summer, but it wasn’t an event my friends or I went to.
When I was done, I went back into the break room. Reid was alone in there, tuning a guitar. “Hi,” I said. “Do you know if there’s anything else I can do to help?”
He pushed a chunk of floppy blond hair out of his face. Slowly, the tip of his nose and his ears colored red. “Um, Darcy or Maddie usually gets us snacks.”
Maddie? In what universe was someone like Madeline called Maddie? “Oh, okay. What kind?”
“Um, usually hot tea with honey and some cookies.”
“I’ll be right back.” I turned to leave, nearly colliding with Jack.
His hands grabbed my shoulders, just for a second, to steady us both. “Sorry,” he said.
“No worries.” I stepped out of the way so he could pass, trying to figure out why I suddenly felt so hot. I stood there for a second, watching as Reid and the other boy—Travis, I remembered—worked with their heads down. After a second, I turned again and this time nearly collided with Madeline.
“Oh my God! Watch yourself!”
“Sorry. I—”
She walked by me, into the stockroom. “First of all, don’t ever leave the register unattended. Second of all, it is my job to help out the band.”
“Uh, Darcy told me—”
Madeline wasn’t listening. She was looking at the band like, Can you believe this idiot? Then she did something that really surprised me. She smiled.
At the band, of course. “God, did you lose more weight, Skinny?” She poked Reid in the side, and his entire face nearly burst into flames.
“It’s his diet,” Jack said. He was leaning up against the wall, arms crossed, and when I glanced at him, he didn’t look at me. “The kid eats like a rabbit. No, rabbits eat more.”
Madeline shook her head. She slid up onto a plastic card table that looked like it was going to give way at any second. “Before I leave this godforsaken town, I’m taking you out for a cheeseburger.”
“He won’t eat it,” said Travis.
“I’ll eat a black bean burger,” Reid offered.
That made Madeline crack up. She laughed long and loud and stopped only when she saw me standing there. Then her face hardened. “What are you still doing here? Go get them tea and a tray of cookies.” She turned back to Reid. “So anyway, we really do need to go out before I leave…”
When I walked by him, Jack caught the elbow of my shirt. “She’s not usually t
his much of a Nazi,” he whispered, “but you’re the new girl.”
I looked up at him, expecting him to look away, but he didn’t. His eyes, I noticed, were only a tad darker than the caramel shade of his hair, and his eyelashes were longer than mine. I swallowed. “Thanks.” I could still feel the pressure of his fingers on my arm after he let go.
Darcy was manning the register and gave me an encouraging smile as I made up the tray. At least she wasn’t acting like she was going to fire me for abandoning my post. She told me what to do as she helped customers. Eventually, the café began to fill. When she asked me where Madeline was, I shrugged. “I think she’s with the band.”
Darcy sighed and wiped her hands on her apron. “Of course she is.” She disappeared into the break room, coming out a couple of seconds later, a scowly Madeline in tow. Madeline glared at me wordlessly, then turned to the next customer and said in her monotone, “Can I help you.”
I precariously balanced the cookie tray and the drinks as I made my way toward the break room, where I pushed the door open with my hip.
The band sat around the plastic table. Jack was shuffling a deck of cards. They immediately stopped talking when I entered and—very slowly—placed the snack tray filled with an assortment of pastries in the middle of the table. Totally nothing weird about a conversation halting to a dead silence as soon as you enter the room. They were probably talking about how big of a bitch I was, how they hated my friends and me. And I couldn’t blame them.
“Is this all right?” I asked.
They inspected the tray. “Good amount of chocolate chip cookies,” Travis said.
“Although the scone to muffin ratio is a bit off,” Jack said.
I giggled, which was weird. I wasn’t the giggly type. “What is the proper ratio?”
“Three to one scone,” Reid said.
“I’ll try to remember that.”
Jack cut the deck in half and shuffled some more. “All right boys, what do we want to play? Poker?”
Reid groaned. “That’s all we ever play. Can’t we mix it up? Doesn’t anyone have, like, Boggle or something?”
“Boggle,” Jack said. They laughed. I did, too, under my breath. They had an ease between them that I liked. I stood there, watching as he dealt the cards. How had I never noticed those eyelashes before? I swallowed again—hard. What was going on with me, and why did I feel so light-headed? Maybe I was getting a cold. Yeah, that was probably it.
When I returned, Darcy tied her black apron and pushed her visor down over her GI Jane head. “How’d it go? Is the band all set?”
My face felt a little flushed, and not from all the tray carrying. “Oh, they’re fine. They didn’t really need my help, except with the snacks.”
We spent the next little while assisting customers. It was so much easier working without being watched constantly by Madeline. I wondered if she’d ever considered an exciting career as a drill sergeant. Then, as I poured a hazelnut coffee into a mug, I realized what this was. Karma. And it sucked.
When there was a lull in customer flow, Darcy showed me some of the pictures she’d taken and was trying to sell on Etsy. They were really beautiful shots of the café, and she’d somehow managed to make exterior shots of the Riverdale Plaza look interesting. Browsing through her site, I realized how bad the photos I took were.
“Hey, Darce.”
Jack leaned against the counter, close enough to smell him. Surprisingly, he didn’t smell like sweat or cigarettes. He smelled like laundry soap. His elbow brushed mine, and I inched slowly away.
“Hey hon.” Darcy pushed through the small wooden door that separated us from the customers and hugged Jack. “All set for tonight?”
“Golden.”
“Well, we’re expecting quite a crowd, based on last time.” She put her hand on his shoulder and turned to me like a proud mom. “Have you heard them yet?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Not yet.”
“You’re in for a treat. He’s gonna be big one day.”
“One day,” Jack said. “As soon as I get out of this shit town.”
Darcy frowned at him. “Language.”
“Sorry.”
“He’s right,” I told her. “Stonebury sucks.”
He looked at me, somewhere between surprised and amused. “But aren’t you in every club there is?” He turned to Darcy. “You’re currently in the presence of the student body president.”
“Really?” She sounded impressed.
“Um, yeah, but it isn’t a big deal.” I was shocked he knew this, considering he was hardly ever in school.
“Sounds like a big deal to me. When I was in high school, the closest thing I got to our class President was taking her picture.” Darcy laughed, then excused herself to assist a customer.
Jack moved in the direction of the break room and I awkwardly followed. “So are you going to college for music?” The Berkeley School of Music in Boston was close by and very prestigious.
“Hell no. I’m not going to college.”
As both of my parents were college professors, this phrase would be considered blasphemy in our house. “Then what are you going to do?”
“Count down the days until graduation, then leave for New York City. The only reason I’m even sticking around to graduate is so my parents don’t have to tell everyone their kid’s a dropout.”
He couldn’t be serious. Teachers and parents and every adult, it seemed, had been lecturing all of us about the road to success since the first day of kindergarten: get good grades in high school, get into a good college, graduate, and find a job. The chances of Jack being some famous musician were about as good as Adam Dixon getting drafted by the Celtics.
“So, you’re going to go to New York, with no plan or anything?”
“Yeah, I have a plan.” So he was serious.
“But…don’t you think school’s important?” I asked. I was really sort of shocked. I didn’t know anyone who wasn’t planning on going to college.
He shrugged. “Yeah, if you want to be a doctor or something. But not for me.”
“But don’t you think you need a back-up plan or something? I mean, the odds…”
“Yeah, I know. My mom tells me that all the time. But if every musician thought that way, there wouldn’t be any music, right?”
The logical part of me wanted to tell him that he could get a real job and still make music on the side, but I knew it would sound completely lame. “Oh. Well, I guess that’s true. I can’t wait to get out of there either. I feel like I’ve been waiting forever.”
The eyebrow with the hoop through it rose slightly, like I’d surprised him, too. When he looked at me again, I got that strange off-balance feeling. Something in me had shifted somehow. The break room door opened, and Reid stuck his head out. “Dude, come on, we gotta go through that chord progression one more time.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, but it seemed serious. Jack nodded at me, then disappeared behind the door. I stood there for a second before heading back to the counter.
As time ticked closer to Dirt Soup’s performance, Darcy’s prediction materialized. With ten minutes before show time, Nona’s was packed. The line at the counter snaked around the seating area, out around a display of postcards and journals, finally ending just short of the entrance doors. Under Madeline’s critical eye, I dished out scones and crumb cake as fast as I could. It wasn’t fast enough. After a while, it grew harder to hear the orders over the buzz of customers. The air seemed to have taken on a different energy, some sort of collective anticipation. For Jack Moreland and his traveling guitar? For a band called Dirt Soup?
Minutes before the show was to start, Darcy nodded off in the direction of the makeshift stage. “Go,” she told Madeline and me, “get a good view.”
“But—”
“No one ever orders during their set,” she said.
Madeline tore off her apron and quickly stepped into the crowd, not bothering to wait for me.
I maneuvered myself carefully through a wall of customers, finally finding a spot off to the side. I leaned my back against the wall and scanned the crowd. Everyone looked normal. There were kids my age and older people, too, and all of them started applauding as the band took the stage.
“Thank you,” Jack said into the microphone, like he was on MTV or something. “We’re Dirt Soup.”
That was met with cheers. After a wave of applause subsided, the band started to play. Travis, mostly hidden by his drum kit, started with a soft beat. Reid soon joined in on guitar, the two of them creating a sound that surprised me. The song was melodic and catchy, not the hardcore metal or punk I expected. And then Jack began to sing.
This was not the boy from Stonebury High, the one who couldn’t buy a Coke without being tormented. This boy owned the stage. He embodied confidence. The whole place became his. I might not have belonged there in that café, but Jack did.
I couldn’t make out every word of every song he sang, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t need to know exactly what he was singing about, because I could feel it. It was all dripping out of him and onto the stage. It was like he’d taken every one of his hopes and fears—and some of mine, too—and shaped them into a song.
Chapter Four
The Stonebury Gazette’s offices were tucked away off Main Street on Pine, between a pet salon and pastry shop. We liked to joke that the biggest story in town was whether they’d run out of Boston crème pie next door. There’d never been a serious crime in Stonebury’s history, and there was only one memorable scandal, back in late 2007, when an intern accused Senator Howell of inappropriate conduct. The charges were eventually dropped, and he’d gone on to win another term in the state Senate, and no one ever said a word about it to Amber. We’d all read the stories, though, every day for at least a year, in the Stonebury Gazette.
And now I worked here, as a staff photographer and copy editor. Over the past couple of months, I’d taken pictures at a pavilion that had recently been renovated at the harbor, the ribbon cutting at the elementary school annex, a dinner honoring Stonebury war vets, and a modeling contest at the mall. Hard-hitting news, to be sure.
The Mean Girl Apologies Page 4
