“So you’re okay with sleeping in a tent?” I said.
“I’d stay in a hotel, babes.”
“I don’t think there is one. I think you have to sleep in a tent and use a portable toilet. And honestly, it’s mainly about listening to music. You know, bands. While standing outside. Even when it’s raining. And it usually does.”
“Ew. How do Cara’s brows cope? Okay, not Glastonbury. Maybe I’ll get a Miss Sixty handbag instead. Would that honor my creative spirit, do we think? The new season is pretty out there…”
All the way through this, I’d been trying to catch Lacey’s eye, but she was deep in conversation with Paige, and then it was time for my guitar lesson.
The story goes that when I was four, I found Dad’s guitar and started playing it. Mom discovered me plucking out a reasonably decent version of a TV show theme, and together, they decided that I was some kind of prodigy and that I ought to have lessons.
The funny (not in a ha-ha way) thing about this is that I’m not a prodigy or anything like one. I’m actually terrible. In my head, there’s Jimmy Page making it sound like his fingers are taking an actual stairway to heaven, and then there’s the reality that is Katie Cox mashing up cords in a portable classroom.
The lessons have been going on so long that I’ve run out of things to learn, which sounds more impressive than it really is because there’s no exam in being Eric Clapton. You either are, or you aren’t.
I am not.
I was running out of guitar teachers too. There’d been a nerdy guy in his sixties who declared me “unteachable” and took to reading books while I played and a geeky man in his twenties who, to be frank, could have used a few more lessons himself.
My latest victim was this tall, nervous woman named Jill, who had enormous buggy eyes and a mane of long, red, perfectly straight hair. It was a little like being taught by a small deer.
“I’ve got something I’d like to finish off this week,” I said to her as I unzipped my case, half expecting to find an egg salad sandwich nestling into the strings.
She was fine with that as she always was, and so I sat down and played “Just Me,” stopping every time it sounded less than perfect, which was a lot.
“If you’re up for a laugh, then you’re my cup of tea.
Friends forever, that’s just me.”
“No. That’s not right,” I said, stopping myself. “It needs something else.”
“Maybe just hold the E for a moment longer?” offered Jill.
I tried it, and it was better.
“I’ve got mad beats,
I’ve got mad moves,
I know that 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 faltered, and, as usual, my hands wouldn’t do quite what I needed them to. “…that’s just me. J-just me. Just me.” The notes fell away from my fingers. “Sorry.”
“Katie, it’s really good.”
“Well…” I was so embarrassed that I thought my cheeks were going to melt and start dripping onto the carpet. “Thank you. Can I have one more try?”
“Um,” said Jill, “you’ve been here nearly an hour, and in theory, it’s only a twenty-minute lesson, so—”
“What? Why didn’t you say anything?”
Jill mumbled some stuff about talent that was just her covering up the fact that she was too sweet to kick me out.
So I cut her off and raced to the hallway to meet up with Lacey.
“Good lesson?”
“It was fine.” I didn’t really want to get into my extended one-woman show. “Anyway,” I said casually, “what did I miss this morning? I bet lots of stuff happened.”
“When?”
“When you were walking along the canal. While I was getting the bus from our new house for the first time ever. A bus I was on with Mad Jaz… I’m sure there’re lots of things you need to be telling me, so I’ll shut up about everything going on in my life and let you talk.”
“Devi Lester has these new sneakers. He kept going on and on about how expensive they were, so Kai pulled one off and kicked it onto a barge.”
“Wow. That sounds a little like something that happened to me on the bus this morning—”
“And when Devi went to get it back, this woman came out and screamed at him—”
“Because Jaz started going through my bag—”
“And so he waited until she’d gone back inside and tried to hook it out with a branch, but he couldn’t reach. So he’s going back later with a hockey stick.”
“It was really intimidating. I just didn’t know how to stop her.”
Lacey looked up from dissecting her sandwich. “Jaz was upsetting you?”
“Yeah.”
“Then how come you came in together? Why stay with her if she’s so intimidating?”
“I wasn’t ‘with her,’” I said. “We just happened to be standing next to each other.”
She shrugged. “So am I coming back to your place later?”
“If you’d like,” I said.
“Do you want me to?”
“Yeah, but no pressure.”
“’Cause I don’t have to come.”
“Lacey,” I said, possibly a little more loudly than was really necessary because a lot of other people turned around and stared at us. “Please will you come and stay the night at my house?”
“All right,” said Lacey. “No need to be weird about it.”
Everything was going to be better again. I could feel it.
• • •
School ended, and Lacey and I walked to the bus stop, where Finlay didn’t seem to notice us at all, and when the bus came, we sat at the back, which was the worst seat, what with all the darkness and gasoline fumes and being jolted every time we went over a bump. But with Lacey next to me, sharing a Kit Kat, it was like we were in our own little nest. No one knew we were there.
“So you didn’t answer my calls because you were afraid they’d throw your phone in the water,” I said. All things considered, it did sound reasonable.
“And you didn’t answer when I rang you back because your phone got broken.”
I lifted its poor, sad body out of my bag and onto my lap. “It’s no good. I can’t look.”
“Maybe we should bury it in your garden.”
“Not the best final resting place,” I said, thinking of the weeds and the pool of gray sludge. “It was a good phone. It deserves more.”
“So the house isn’t as nice as Adrian claimed?” said Lacey with her usual understatement.
“It’s grimmer than grim.” I filled her in on the latest horrors, including Mom putting her hand through the side of the bathtub and how we’d all heard something moving around in the loft. “And the worst of it is that we can’t say how hideous it all is because then it sounds like we’re going after him.”
“And it’s not his fault?”
“It’s totally and completely his fault. But if I say so, then I’m basically saying I don’t like him.”
“And you can’t say that because…?”
“Because it would be the equivalent of saying that I don’t want Mom to be happy. When really I do want her to be happy, just…differently happy. With someone else. Anyone else. Or no one. Who needs men anyway? What is this complete obsession society has with everyone coupling up?”
Lacey’s expression told me that she was starting to have second thoughts about coming over.
“We don’t need to talk about him anymore,” I promised her. “You can do my hair—not my bangs—and we’ll watch Mean Girls.”
“What about the mice?” Lacey wanted to know. Through the window, I saw that we’d pulled away from all the nice roads full of houses and shops and sid
ewalks and other useful things, and we were heading out toward the fields. “Because if you’ve got mice running around everywhere and I’m sleeping on the floor, then—”
“My room’s fine. Honest. Other than that somehow I’ve ended up providing a home for Adrian’s drum set. But I’m vermin free.” The bus went over a bump. “Maybe don’t leave any food lying around though. Just in case. Hey, this is our stop.”
And so we came tumbling off the bus, me and Lacey and a broken phone and a guitar, ready for some full-on friendship.
To find Nicole and Jaz waiting for us.
I told myself not to panic.
“We’ve got big plans for tonight,” said Jaz. “Nicole wants to pierce her thumbnail. So we borrowed a staple gun from the art room. Well, not borrowed, exactly—”
“I didn’t know you were invited,” said Lacey, and she didn’t seem very pleased.
I was desperate to tell her that, in fact, the person who’d invited Jaz was Jaz.
Only I couldn’t because the person standing next to me was Jaz.
“So where’s your new place?” Jaz said, and all I could do was start walking there and hope that she and Nicole would get a better offer somewhere along the way. Meaning within the next four minutes.
We ambled alongside the fluorescent-yellow field at the end of our road, then past the house of the lady who’d been giving me evil looks all weekend. She was watching me out of the front window, so I tried to give her my best “we’re friends now” smile. It might have worked if Nicole hadn’t tossed a half-drunk can of Sprite into her front garden.
Lacey wasn’t saying anything at all. And Jaz had her headphones on, nodding away to music so loud that it was drowning out the traffic. Part of me wanted her to switch it off so I could make another excuse and get her to go away, but most of me wanted her to keep listening because then I wouldn’t have to speak to her.
We got to my front door.
“Are you sure you want to come in?” I said. “It’s going to be pretty awful if I’m being honest.”
“I might just head home,” said Lacey.
“Not you. I meant—” Only I didn’t get to finish the sentence because at that point the front door opened.
“Ladies!”
Apparently, in the moment before you die, your whole life flashes before your eyes. Thinking about it, I guess it can’t be your whole life. Partly because it would have to go so fast that you wouldn’t be able to notice any of it and also because a lot of the flash would be taken up with things like being asleep and looking very closely at the skin on the back of your hand and leaving voice mails.
“Adrian,” I whispered. “What are you doing here? You’re not due back for another two hours. Minimum.”
“Business was a little slow, so I thought we’d call it a day.” Adrian grinned. “Having a party, are you?”
“No!”
“Too bad. I was going to open a beer.”
“Yes, please,” said Jaz.
Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm.
“Well?” Amanda was hovering in the hall. “Are you coming in or what?”
• • •
Let’s just recap.
Mad Jaz.
Nicole from tenth grade.
Adrian.
Amanda.
Lacey.
And me.
We were all sitting down eating fish and chips like everything was normal and fine. Amanda was telling us the fascinating story of how many sales they’d made that day (it was three), and Adrian was telling Mad Jaz all about his days in a band.
“Me and Tony, we were signed and everything. Tony Topper—you know him?”
“Of course she doesn’t,” I said.
“Still got my drum set. Couldn’t bring myself to part with it.”
“Then why is it in my bedroom?” I asked.
Adrian launched into a whole thing about how the leak in his and Mom’s room wasn’t good for musical instruments, but before he could finish, Jaz’s eyes went all glinty and crazy.
“Can I try it?”
There was a miniscule pause as Adrian clearly thought about how much he didn’t want anyone messing around with his precious drums but also how much he was enjoying having an audience.
“You know what? Katie’s been using them as clothes hangers. We should set them up, have a jamming session!”
“In my bedroom?” I squeaked. “There’s really no need to go up there. It’s incredibly messy, disgusting actually. Why don’t we bring the drums downstairs? Or we could just leave it—”
“Maybe you should have thought about cleaning up a little before you invited so many people over,” said Amanda, and right then and there, I decided that her yellow sweater wouldn’t be making its way back into her wardrobe, however much she asked for it.
Despite my many, many objections, we all ended up cramming into my room. Amanda started picking out odd notes on her bass in the way she does, while Jaz sat down on the edge of my bed and didn’t play the drums so much as physically attack them. Seriously, if I’d been on the receiving end of what she was giving out, I’d have dialed 911.
“Reminds me of the glory days,” said Adrian, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor next to my dirty jeans pile, balancing a keyboard across his lap. “Great technique you’ve got there, Amanda. And Jaz, that’s some real…energy.”
This pleased Jaz so much that she whacked the biggest drum hard enough to knock it onto the floor.
“You two going to join in?” said Adrian, looking at me and Lacey.
“I can only play the recorder,” said Lacey in a way that made it clear she didn’t even want to do that. Nose Hairs didn’t seem to notice her moodiness though and offered her a tambourine.
“But I don’t…” Lacey began. “I thought we were going to watch Mean Girls, Katie. I’m going home.”
This could not be allowed to happen.
“Lacey, please. Let’s just do this. Then we’ll absolutely watch Mean Girls. Promise.”
Very slowly and in a way that made it clear she found the whole thing incredibly stupid, Lacey took the tambourine from Adrian, who gave it a little shake as he handed it over. “Wicked. Nicole?”
In answer, Nicole held up Jaz’s phone.
“She’s videoing it,” said Jaz. “For posterity.”
“Yup, yup,” said Adrian. “Katie?”
This was awful. But on the plus side, if we were playing, then Lacey couldn’t fight with me, and Adrian couldn’t be too embarrassing. And Jaz couldn’t…do whatever the terrible thing it was that Jaz was surely about to do.
I unzipped my guitar from its case and tuned up.
“Let’s go,” said Adrian. “One, two, three, four—”
There was a minute, maybe two, where the air in my bedroom turned into this music casserole, guitar twangs, drumbeats, and the tinny notes from the keyboard all floating around together and taking turns to come to the surface. It was a complete mess.
Then Adrian began playing.
“That’s your song,” said Jaz. “The one you sang on the bus this morning.”
Exactly how did Adrian know the tune to “Just Me”?
Then I saw Amanda’s guilty face, and I knew.
And she knew that I knew.
“I just went through it with him a couple of times the other night. That’s all. It sounded nice with two guitars, and I thought—”
“You played my song?” I said. “You sat down with him, and you played something that is mine? With him?”
“Yeah! And we got it pretty good,” said Adrian, who clearly hadn’t quite grasped the epic treachery going on right beneath his hairy nose. “I’ve worked out a keyboard backing. You do the guitar and vocals, okay?”
No.
No.
There was no way I was sing
ing my song with the Cox Family Destruction Collective, featuring drums from Mad Jaz. No way.
They were all looking at me.
“I really don’t want to,” I said.
They kept looking.
“Seriously.”
More stares.
“I guess…” I said hopelessly. “But does it have to be ‘Just Me’? We could do ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ or ‘Yellow Submarine.’ Or ‘The Wheels on the Bus.’”
“I like your song,” said Jaz, and I honestly couldn’t tell whether she genuinely did like it or just wanted to see me squirm.
“It’s just quite personal,” I said.
And Lacey said, “Not that personal, is it? If you sang it to everyone on the bus.”
There was nothing—and I really mean nothing—I could do. Except maybe get up and walk out, but I didn’t think of that until afterward.
So I hummed the tune—just a little—and then, in that way that sometimes happens, the music sort of took over, and I hummed it louder.
“Cool, cool,” said Adrian, nodding his head to the beat.
Then Jaz started playing at the exact speed of the song, boom tish boom boom tish, like she’d been a drummer all her life. Which, come to think of it, was perfectly possible.
“Nice,” said Adrian, and together, we sort of mashed through the song, stopping every now and then for Amanda to twiddle or for Jaz to get a little overenthusiastic, which was often.
“Again?” said Adrian, and we did it again, and this time it almost sounded really good.
“Well, this has been fun,” I said. “Should we call it a night?”
“Once more,” said Adrian. “And this time you should sing.”
“Nah.”
“If you don’t,” said Adrian, “then I will. I’m the something apple in the fa-mi-ly…”
Hearing him singing my words, or at least a version of them, was deeply cringe-inducing. As if I’d come home to find him trying on my clothes.
“It’s I’m the big bad apple on the family tree,” I said.
“Sing it,” said Adrian, and Amanda said, “Oh, go on, Katie.”
Years and years ago, I remember we did this poem in English, something about choosing between two paths. And how once you go down one path, your life changes forever, and you can never go back and see what was down the other path. I think there was a hard part about leaves and undergrowth in there too that I never quite understood.
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