Katie Cox Goes Viral

by Marianne Levy

  The door to Mom’s bedroom—no, not Mom’s bedroom; Mom and Adrian’s bedroom—was open, but there wasn’t anyone in there. Just the faint scent of Mom’s eau de toilette and the not-so-faint stench of Adrian’s deodorant.

  I must have inhaled it ten times a day, but even so, every single time was a shock. I hadn’t even known my old life had had a smell until he’d come along and swapped my home and bought Mom a different perfume and sneaked cigarettes at the back of the garden. Now I knew things were messed up without even having to go to the trouble of opening my eyes.

  I knocked on Amanda’s door. “Manda?”

  He was there. Sitting on a chair by her bed, guitar under one arm. “Hey, Katie.”

  “Oh. Hello.”

  Amanda was propped against her desk, head bent over her own frets. She didn’t meet my eye. “Katie.”

  “What are you two doing?” It came out more confrontational than I’d meant. But surely Amanda couldn’t have been playing guitar with…him.

  I mean, there was making the guy feel at home and then there was out-and-out sisterly betrayal.

  Playing together was ours. We’d done it with Dad since we were little—Amanda banging a drum while I sat on his knee and he held my fingers in place on the strings. We got older and better, and there were nights after a really big fight when the music was just about the only thing keeping us together.

  And now here she was, strumming away as if it was just normal.

  “We’re not doing anything,” said Amanda as Adrian said, “You’ll like this—”

  “She won’t,” said Amanda, actually holding her fingers across his strings to stop him from playing. Absolutely right too.

  While Amanda had at least noticed that she was in trouble, Adrian was still grinning. “Go on, Katie. Grab your guitar. We could use your expertise here.”

  “My fingers are tired,” I said, which made no sense whatsoever, but there you go.

  “So are mine,” said Amanda quickly. “Should we call it a night?”

  Adrian’s head swiveled between us. He picked up his guitar and started to leave, pausing to say, “I’ll put on a pepperoni pizza, okay?”

  “Katie—” Amanda began.

  “No, it’s fine,” I said, heading for the door. “You play with him if it makes you happy.”

  “Really?” said Amanda.

  “No.”

  Mobility Scooting on the Pavement

  Got a head full of blame

  And a knee full of hurt

  Got a heart full of shame

  And a face full of dirt

  Lady,

  You’d think you’d have a bell

  Or perhaps a kinda hooter

  Somewhere on your mobility scooter

  You’re a Triple-A holder,

  And I was in your way

  One day I’ll get older

  But first I need to say

  Lady, please,

  Get yourself a bell

  And a really giant hooter

  And put them onto your mobility scooter

  And if you won’t do that

  Then lighten my load

  And ride the stupid thing

  Along the stupid road.

  Showing up at a bus stop on a school morning is a little like jumping into a den of tigers—or something just as deadly but not so endangered. Like jumping into a bowl of cashews if you’ve got a nut allergy.

  To avoid making it completely obvious to the bus crowd that I was Katie-no-friends, I made sure I got there nice and early. Which didn’t work at all, as, in fact, I was the first one to arrive. I ended up standing around completely on my own, fiddling with my phone.

  Okay, not fiddling. Trying to call Lacey so we’d at least be able to talk to each other on our way in like we’d planned. But her phone just rang and rang and rang.

  She probably had it on silent or something.

  Which left me with a dilemma. How many times should you try calling a person before you start to seem like you’re kind of mental? I stopped after fifteen attempts and went back to staring out at the road instead. I couldn’t even try to look cool. It was guitar lesson day. So I had to stand there with this huge thing strapped to my back like a kind of deformed tortoise.

  My mood wasn’t helped by the fact that the bus stop closest to our house would not have made it onto a list of Harltree’s best bus stops. Not even a top one hundred. The bushes around it were filled with candy wrappers and pieces of Styrofoam. The shelter’s seats had been ripped out, and on the piece of plastic protecting the time schedule, someone had taken a permanent marker and scrawled a picture of something Gran would call obscene.

  Suddenly, just a few minutes before the bus was supposed to turn up, it was the Harltree version of Piccadilly Circus.

  A bunch of sixth-graders were doing something complicated with playing cards, and Finlay was poking his fingers into an egg salad sandwich. Then Nicole announced she could make her eyeball pop out by pinching her nose and blowing it at the same time. She couldn't—she just got snot on herself.

  That was really funny, and I did a big laugh to show how much I was in on the joke, only no one seemed to notice.

  And I thought of Lacey and was about to try calling her again when—

  “All right, Katie?”

  Oh no.

  “Jaz!”

  “What are you doing here?”

  Out on the street, she looked scarier than ever, the pimples on her chin oozing yellow stuff and piercings all the way up both ears. She’d even managed to put a stud through that little triangle part in the middle. The part that, strictly speaking, is not ear but head.

  “I’m taking the bus now,” I said.

  “Why?” Jaz was wearing a school uniform skirt, but instead of the required navy-blue sweatshirt on top, she had a black bodice thing with sleeves that billowed out at the top and narrowed from her elbows to her wrists and finished up with rows of tiny buttons. This, combined with her piercings and a fairly extreme level of makeup, made her look like a twisted Victorian doll.

  “Because Mom has just bought the world’s worst house with the world’s worst man and…”

  I trailed off because it was possible that Jaz wasn’t truly listening. I could tell because she had turned her back on me and because she had started talking to Nicole.

  I’m aware that there are more unfortunate people in the world than me and that being lonely at a bus stop isn’t the same as being in a famine or getting shot or catching a deadly disease. But somehow, knowing that didn’t really seem to help.

  Just then, my deep and interesting thoughts were interrupted by the sight of Nicole walking backward off the sidewalk and into the traffic.

  “Aaaargh, careful!” I lunged forward to pull her to safety.

  But, instead of thanking me for saving her life, Nicole shook me off, and Jaz said, “You’ve ruined it now.”

  “Ruined what?”

  “We’re videoing.” She turned to Nicole, “Okay, start again.”

  Jaz held up her phone while Nicole started wobbling off toward the road again.

  And part of me wanted to stop them because obviously it was incredibly dangerous. But another part of me was really interested to see what would happen. Nicole was just veering off the pavement when, thank goodness, the bus drove up, stopping just before it squashed her.

  My plan had been to stay safely in the front near the driver, but just as we were getting on, Jaz put her face right in mine and said, “You can sit in the backseat with us.”

  And suddenly, I was pining for the good old days when it had just been me, the bus stop, and my guitar.

  So we all piled on, shoving past a bunch of people who had left their bags and legs sticking out. One of them, this thin, veiny man, said, “Excuse me,” in a really pointed w
ay, and Jaz just laughed.

  The veiny man caught my eye, and I made a face that said, Sorry about her. She’s not my friend or anything. I’m new to this bus actually, and I’m finding it kind of difficult.

  I’m not certain I managed to get all that across because the veiny man scowled and said, “The nerve. In my day you’d have been whipped.”

  So anyway, the bus took off really slowly, like it had to visit every last street it could before getting us to school, and we were all sitting at the back—Finlay and the sixth-graders shoving themselves between the seats, Nicole in the middle, plucking her eyebrows with what looked like a pair of pliers, and Jaz in the back corner like some kind of public transportation queen.

  “Katie?”

  “Um, yes?”

  “Finlay is trying to open your guitar case.”

  I turned around, and he was.

  “Oh. Thanks, Jaz.”

  Mad Jaz was being nice. Weird.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without Lacey. It’s like you’re joined at the hip or something.”

  “Nah,” I said, thinking of the zillion missed calls Lace would be finding the very second she looked at her phone. “We’re not actually even that friendly anymore. You know. People move on. Apparently.”

  “Do you want me to get Finlay to egg her?” said Jaz.

  “Um, no, that’s fine. Thanks, Jaz.”

  “’Cuz he will.”

  And in fact, I was so upset at Lacey for not phoning me back that I almost thought about saying yes, only at that exact second, my phone rang, and it was her.

  “Lace! Where’ve you been all my life?”

  “Oh, you know.” She sounded distant. In all the ways you can be distant. “We were walking along.”

  “You and who?”

  “Just…people.”

  I considered bringing up our pact to talk to each other on the phone and then decided it would just sound needy and that I wouldn’t say anything about it.

  “It’s just…I thought we were going to talk on the way in. Like we’d said.”

  “Sorry. Something came up.”

  “Well…” Just leave it, Katie. She clearly isn’t interested. Let her go. “Want to spend the night tonight and see the house of horrors? We’ve got mice and everything.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Oh, come on. I’ll make Mom give us money for fish and chips.”

  “Fish and chips?” The reply was immediate and very enthusiastic. Unfortunately, it hadn’t come from Lacey. It had come from Mad Jaz. “I like fish and chips. And Nicole likes them too.”

  And suddenly, I was hosting the world’s scariest sleepover. And that wasn’t even including our exciting new pets.

  “Um, Lace, ring me back in a sec, okay?”

  I put the phone down and was about to explain that it hadn’t been a general invitation, only I discovered that Jaz was going through the contents of my bag like that was a completely normal thing to do.

  “Ha-ha, look. It’s Katie’s secret diary.”

  Of course, she’d found my lyric book. People like Jaz can smell that kind of thing a mile off.

  “No, it’s not.”

  She flicked it open. “‘Just Me.’ What is this, please?”

  Only Jaz could make the word please sound like a threat.

  “I write songs.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes.”

  “Since when?”

  I thought back and realized, quite interestingly, that I couldn’t ever remember not having written them—the song for Amanda’s fifteenth birthday, which had made her cry, even though she pretended it was an allergic reaction to her new mascara. The divorce songs, which made me cry. And the ones about silly stuff like types of breakfast cereal and the weather and never being able to find shoes that look nice that I can also walk in. Actually, that last one isn’t silly at all. It’s very important.

  “Since forever.”

  I genuinely couldn’t tell whether Jaz thought this was good or bad. Her face was pretty hard to read, what with it being covered in eyeliner and cakey foundation that was supposed to hide her acne but in fact just made it look like acne under a layer of foundation. And because Jaz pretty much always scowls, even when she’s happy. Especially when she’s happy. It’s one of the ways you can tell.

  “Sing one.”

  She said it in this laid-back, not-bothered kind of a way, so quietly that I’d almost have ignored it, only when I looked up, her eyes were staring right into mine. Like it was a test.

  “Really? It’s not like they’re any good, Jaz. You won’t be that interested. It’s just stuff I do when I’m—”

  “Sing one.”

  So there I was, new on the bus, surrounded by sixth-graders, Finlay, Nicole, and a bunch of people who were going to work or wherever it is that adults go on a bus at eight in the morning, which I guess must be work because otherwise, you’d obviously stay in bed.

  We were just going around the Old Ewe beltway, where Amanda had failed her driving test. There were drops of water running down the insides of the windows, and the air smelled like gasoline and bad breath. Most of the nonschool people had headphones on, so there was this tick-tick-tick sound of leaked-out bloblets of music, all mixed in with the noise of the engine and a siren from outside the window.

  Not exactly an ideal environment for my very first public performance.

  And I was about to point this out, only then I realized I was actually more scared of what Jaz would say if I didn’t sing than if I did.

  So I took a deep breath and then another one, as though I were standing at the top of the high diving board at the rec center—except that’s a poor example because I’ve never managed to jump.

  But I did sing.

  “I’ve got mad skin,

  I’ve got mad hair,

  I borrowed your stuff, and I don’t even care.

  I’m the big bad apple on the family tree.

  Deal with it, sister. That’s just me.”

  And…it was okay. Better than okay.

  “I’ve got mad beats,

  I’ve got mad moves,

  I know your mom really disapproves.

  If you’re up for a laugh, then you’re my cup of tea.

  Friends forever, that’s just me.”

  I could feel without even having to look, that everyone was listening, leaning in, as if my words were a sort of a net drawing them all together, and for maybe a minute or two, the whole bus faded away.

  “I’ve got mad love,

  I’ve got mad hate,

  I’ve got my whole life to come, and I just can’t wait.

  And here’s the thing, I think you’ll agree,

  We’re all in this together. It’s not just me.”

  I finished, and in the pause just after, I saw a new light in Jaz’s eyes. Because I’d done it. I’d opened myself up and earned her respect.

  She opened her mouth slowly, her surprisingly pink tongue running across her bottom lip. “Katie?”

  “Yes?”

  “Finlay just dropped your phone out the window.”

  I’m going to try to be very calm about this and not go over the top or anything, so all I will say is that it was like the world had ended, and leave it at that.

  Just getting my phone back into my hand was hard enough on an alien bus in the middle of who knows where. And when I did, the screen was cracked, the back was smashed, and it wouldn’t turn on.

  I cradled it in my arms, hoping it knew how much I’d loved it.

  “Finlay, you are a jerk,” said Jaz.

  So it wasn’t shaping up to be the best of days.

  There was a small moment when I arrived at school with the bus group, and Lacey was there with the canal crowd. I was going to talk to h
er, but somehow a pack of boys got in between us, and by the time I’d squished past, we were all on our way into morning assembly. You can’t talk there, or McAllister murders you and strings up your guts on the information board.

  Then we were in the hall but not next to each other, which had never happened in the whole history of Katie and Lacey. Not that I minded or anything. I mean, I knew we’d have to sit apart eventually. I guess. I just hadn’t thought it would happen quite so soon.

  We’d met on the first day of school, when we were the teeniest, tiniest kids walking along the canal, and we’d teamed up right away in a friendship that, at least to begin with, was based on not wanting to get thrown in the water.

  No, there was more to it than that. Lots more. We both loved long baths—not together, whatever Devi Lester would have you believe—and going for walks around the athletic fields right after it had rained.

  We could drink whole rivers of Diet Coke and stay up until four, talking about what exact dog each of us would have, who we’d most like to go out with, and the truly vital things you should get from a Chinese takeout food restaurant. (For the record, it’s a Labradoodle, Robert Pattinson when he was Cedric in the Harry Potter films, and shrimp crackers and Peking duck.)

  We even had the same hairstyle, or at least we did until one of us got trigger-happy with the scissors.

  “So for my birthday,” Savannah was saying as we shuffled back out after twenty minutes of some woman talking about saving the bats, “I’m thinking I’d like a MacBook, a pair of diamond studs, and as much Clarins stuff as they’ll give me. Plus tickets to the Glastonbury Festival. Because of my creative spirit.”

  The idea of Savannah at Glastonbury with its eccentric music, theater, and performance lineups was so spectacularly hilarious that I almost didn’t say anything just so she’d go and I could hear about it afterward. But that would have meant denying someone else the chance to go. Someone like Amanda. Or me.

  “Savannah, do you know what Glastonbury is?”

  She ran her fingers through her perfectly highlighted blond hair. “Katie, how can you not know? It’s this amazing party where Cara Delevingne and Alexa Chung go to drink champagne and wear Hunter boots.” Her head flicked over to Paige. “I should ask for Hunter boots too.”