A voice came out.
“OOOOOOOOOOH,” the voice sang.
It wasn’t even Lucy’s voice. Lucy’s voice was high and sweet. This was deep and ragged and raw. This was not a note pushed out her open mouth, but something escaping from the split in her heart. She could feel the cry leaving it, vibrating up out of it.
“OOOOOOOOOOH.”
When she heard that voice, that rich, strong voice, hers but not hers, something happened and her fear broke like a fever. She opened her mouth up wide and felt the vibration as the sounds left her mouth, more and more and more of them. There was an endless supply.
Was that really her up there? Singing? Howling? Screaming?
She was no longer aware she was up on that stage. She was no longer aware of anything but the feeling of prying apart that crack in her heart, of letting what was inside of it out.
She could not see anything, just the blue light pulsing through her eyelids. And for a moment she did not even know where she was, or who she was, or what she was.
But she didn’t care.
And what was she singing up there on the stage that night?
The song she’d written for Alex, of course. The only song that had been in her head for two months. The song she’d sang quietly to herself a thousand times over.
It was the first time she’d sang it in front of anyone at all. Only instead of singing it sweetly the way she’d always practiced, she was screaming it:
I feel you here when you’re not
Her voice grew louder and louder.
I see your face in the sky when you’re not here
I hear your voice in my head when you’re not here
She was really screaming then. And she did not stop.
You’re always here, you’re always here
You are you are you are
She sang until the singing vibrated down deep within her chest. She sang with all she had. She just sang everything out.
And then, when she was empty, when all the blackness had been expelled, she stood there as the beat faded. There was a whirring pulsing, and her voice above it all a final sweet high, clear note. The music stopped. The song was over.
For a brief second there was complete silence.
Lucy opened her eyes as the spotlight circled and went down into the crowd. All those bodies were suddenly frozen. No one was dancing anymore. No one was moving. All she could see was the light reflected off of the two thousand eyeballs that were staring right at her. And in one horrible moment it all came rushing back, where she was, who she was, and what she had just done.
They hated it. They hated her. She’d been so terrible that she’d paralyzed everyone with her terribleness. She felt as though she were standing onstage completely naked. Worse than naked: without her skin.
She gasped.
Then the silence broke. Her gasp was drowned out by a rushing wall of deafening sound, a thousand voices screaming just for her.
Chapter Twenty
Breathless, Lucy just stood there, staring out at that crowd, completely frozen until her legs decided to walk her offstage. Behind the curtain people hugged her, squeezed her. “AMAZING!” they shouted. “INCREDIBLE!”
She kept going, all the way back, into the hallway, head buzzing. All alone, she leaned against a wall to catch her breath. She brought her hands up to her face. There were tears leaking out of the corners of her eyes. Not of sadness, but of something else:
She’d done it.
She’d gotten up onstage, stood in front of a thousand people, and sung her heart out, sung her guts out. She’d lived through her greatest dream and her very worst nightmare. And survived.
But what exactly had happened back there? Why were people reacting this way?
BLAM! The answer exploded in her skull.
Most people spend their entire lives afraid—of looking stupid, of being lonely, of wasting their life, of losing someone they love, of never finding anyone to love at all, of spiders, of drowning, of being burned alive, of bees, of crossing the street, of flying, of fighting, of being hated, of heights, of sharks, of failing, of winning, of elevators, of escalators, of falling, of fire, of getting up in front of a thousand people and singing out loud.
We like to say that love is what unites us; however it’s fear that we all share.
But standing up there onstage, nakedly, honestly, showing them the real, ragged insides of her ravaged heart, Lucy had appeared entirely fearless. Because in that moment she was. And in this way she had seduced them all . . .
Offstage, Lucy still couldn’t make her way through the crowd, but this time it wasn’t because people didn’t see her, but because they did.
People called things out to her, stopped their dancing or pulled her in to dance with them. She was passed forward in a daze. Everyone wanted a piece of her. They would not let her go.
Someone may have put a glass of water in her hand. She may have even drunk it. A very tall girl asked for her autograph and it was only after she walked away that she realized the girl had not in fact been kidding.
Jack and B were still up onstage; a cello player was out with them now. On the wall behind them was a time-lapse video of flowers blooming, blooming, blooming.
Some people said things to Lucy, about the beauty of her voice, about her dress, her hair, her presence. Some just stared at her in awe, too intimidated to say anything at all.
But through all of this, she kept thinking if only, if only Alex had been there to see her.
She took out her phone and wrote him a text.
Just performed a song in front of a thousand people. Wish you could have been there. X
She hesitated for one second, then hit SEND. She stuck her phone in the little side pocket of her dress.
A moment later Gil flew through the air and attacked her in a hug. She dragged Lucy off to the side. Olivia and Liza were right behind her.
“YOU WERE COMPLETELY INCREDIBLE!” Gil shouted.
Liza was shaking her head. “Damn, girl,” was all she said.
Olivia just nodded, looked at Lucy, and let out a laugh. “I’m not surprised by much,” Olivia said. “But that surprised me.”
Lucy blushed with pleasure.
“And speaking of people who think Lucy’s fabulous . . .” Gil was looking at someone behind Lucy. “There you are,” she said. She reached behind Lucy and pulled him toward her. Tall, square glasses, sweet face, dimples, blue eyes. Colin. “Where have you been?” Gil said. “Did you just get here?”
He shook his head. “I got here a while ago. But it’s so crowded and it’s so hard to get through a crowd like this. I was over there by the wall. I could still see though.”
“Did you get to hear Lucy sing?”
He nodded, then turned toward Lucy. “Hey, you were really . . .” His voice was quiet and Lucy had to lean in to hear him. “. . . watching you up there on that stage. I mean, I’ve never heard anything . . . you were just—” He took a deep breath. “Luminous.”
“Thank you,” Lucy said. “That is really nice of you to say.”
“How did you do that? How did you just stand up there in front of all these people and sing like that? And radiate that? And look so comfortable?” He blushed then, as though he’d already said more than he meant to. But then he did not stop. “If that had been me up there I would have been so scared . . . mostly of getting shot, because the only way I’d have ended up on that stage in the first place would be if someone was standing behind me with a gun.”
Lucy laughed.
But Colin’s face got even redder then, as though he had just heard what he’d said and decided it was exactly wrong. He stood there bouncing from foot to foot to foot, vibrating with jangly nerves, just staring down at her with his big, actually rather beautiful eyes open all wide. She could feel the discomfort radiating off of him.
“Colin,” she started to say. She wanted to tell him something then. Standing there, in that place with all those people who had just heard
her sing, in that hot room filled with music and noise, what she wanted to tell him was something about how he did not have to feel so trapped by his own nerves, trapped in that little box he was in. She wanted to tell him that things are not as set as he might think they are. And that no matter what he believes about himself, one day he just may surprise the hell out of himself by what he is able to do.
But she did not know how to begin that kind of conversation with someone who was practically a stranger, even one who was looking at her the way he was, like he was not any kind of stranger at all. And even if she did know what to say and how to say it, it’s not like she could have with Olivia and Liza and Gil standing right there. With Gil, in fact, watching her at that very moment. Gil was nodding and grinning as though she was signaling for Lucy to do something, although Lucy had no idea what this was. Before she could figure it out, someone came up behind her.
“Mmmf, I could just chop you up into little pieces and sauté you,” a voice said. Lucy turned. There was a man standing in front of her. He was short and broad shouldered, with tattoos covering both his arms and a face like chewed-up meat. He was old, not quite parent-age but close. He licked his lips, then mmmf-ed one more time before he started walking away.
When Lucy turned back, Colin had moved a few feet away, was standing with Gil. It was as though he’d felt like he was intruding, as though he thought Lucy and Chewed-up-Meat-face might want to be alone.
“Colin is going home now, Lu,” Gil said. She looked disappointed. Her little arm was linked through his. “I tried to convince him to stay, but he won’t.”
“I’m sorry,” Colin said. “I just . . . need to.”
“Colin, why don’t you give Lucy your number so she can call you?”
Colin blushed even more.
“Uh,” he said.
“Lucy wants it, right, Lucy?” Gil looked up at her. “She already has her phone out.”
Lucy nodded quickly. “Yes,” she said. “Of course.”
She handed her phone to Colin.
Gil winked and walked off.
Colin was looking down at her phone, punching numbers slowly, like he was trying to avoid having to look at her as he said whatever he was about to say. “I would love to hang out more. It’s just that big crowds like this are not so much my thing . . .” He chewed his lower lip. “I guess maybe you noticed yesterday. I’m sorry about running out so fast. But I’m glad I got to hear you.” He handed her the phone. “You were amazing.”
He turned to leave, started trying to work his way through the crowd. Then stopped, turned back. “Um, bye!” He reached his arms out and pulled her toward him into a hug.
His body did not feel like she would have guessed it would. There were strong muscles in his arms, in his chest, in his back. She could feel them through his thin gray shirt. This was not the tentative hug she would have expected from him. This was something else. . . . She leaned against him. She felt his arms around her waist, his strong hands pressing against her lower back, pulling her now more firmly toward him. She felt his stomach against hers as their entire bodies lined up. She leaned her head on his shoulder. She could smell him—he smelled like clean, sweet sweat.
Lucy sighed. She closed her eyes. She felt some part of herself melting, the harsh edges being softened. She hadn’t been hugged like this in so long, held like this in so long. The last time was the day before Alex left.
Alex.
Lucy’s eyes popped open. She pulled back. She shook her head.
Colin was staring at her. His face was flushed.
“I really hope you call me.” He had a glassy look in his eyes, as though the hug was a drug and he’d been suddenly made braver by it. “I mean, I don’t mean to make that sound weird and pressure-y or anything. I just . . . hope that you do.” He smiled one last time, a big full smile. A dimple dimpled deeply in each cheek.
Then he turned and slipped off into the crowd.
But when he was gone, and no one was looking at her, Lucy felt the empty space in her heart all the more deeply. Lucy looked down at her phone.
No text.
Well, really that didn’t mean anything. Alex just wasn’t a quick text-backer. The night before had just been a fluke.
So no, she could not expect one back yet. No, she would just be calm. She would wait.
Except her stomach started to churn. Where was he? It was just before midnight. What was he doing? Where would he be when he received the message? Would he be excited when he saw her name flashing there? Well, assuming she was still in his phone . . . And was she still in his phone?
But then, suddenly, her phone did vibrate with a text, as though she had brought it forth by the force of her wanting it.
She held her breath and looked down.
Hope ice-cream night is going well, bud. If you run out of mint chip, let me know!
Lucy’s heart popped. The pieces flew everywhere.
She stood squeezing her phone until she felt a hand on her shoulder. There was Olivia, standing alone.
“All right, my little bean cake,” Olivia said. “You come with me now. I have something to show you. Something you’ve earned the right to see”—she took Lucy by the arm—“finally. We never show this to people who aren’t one of us. But I suspect you will be soon enough.” She gave Lucy a sly smile and pulled her into the crowd.
Lucy could barely breathe.
This was it.
Olivia pulled Lucy through a door, down a narrow hallway, into a back room. They walked until the booming music faded into a faint pounding. They went through one last door and there, straight ahead, was a tall metal ladder stretching twenty feet into the air and leading to a hatch in the ceiling.
Without speaking, Olivia started to climb, her smooth calf muscles barely flexing with each step. A few moments later, she vanished up into the hatch.
Lucy gripped the ladder’s thin metal sides, and waited for the familiar tight fist of fear to clench her stomach. This was a ladder after all, leaning against nothing, leading straight up into the sky. But the clench did not come.
Lucy climbed. As the floor got farther and farther away, all she could do was smile a tiny and bewildered smile at what she knew was waiting for her up at the top. At what she was leaving down below her.
Four days ago, Lucy was a scared little girl sobbing brokenheartedly in the bathroom, and now here she was, having just sung in front of a thousand people, on her way up a ladder about to be taught how to do magic that she would then use to get back her lost love.
Life is nothing if not surprising.
Lucy entered a warm dark room. Olivia flipped on the light.
In the center of the room there was a big metal desk facing a wall with nine flat-screen monitors stacked in a square.
“Where are we?”
“Pete’s surveillance room.” Olivia sat down in a fancy leather desk chair and motioned for Lucy to sit in one beside her. “He had this stuff installed last year when he thought someone was stealing from him. Turns out he’d just forgotten he’d put a big stack of cash under his bed to keep anyone from stealing it. He ended up keeping the cameras.” Olivia grinned. “Because in addition to being kind of forgetful, he’s also kind of a perv.” She pointed to the monitor on the bottom right corner, which showed a couple in a hallway heavily making out. “But I didn’t bring you up here for that,” Olivia said. “I brought you here . . .”
Lucy held her breath.
“. . . for this.”
Olivia twisted a few knobs on the control panel, then raised her finger to her lips. “It looks like she’s already started.” Olivia tapped the monitor in the middle and flipped a switch. Liza’s voice came crackling through the speakers.
“. . . we are done now,” Liza said.
On the screen, Liza was sitting at a picnic table in an outdoor courtyard. Across from her was a guy with short brown hair in a black T-shirt, his back to the camera. His shoulders were hunched and he was leaning his head against his
hands.
“But there must be a reason,” the boy said. “Please”—his voice cracked—“whatever it is you can tell me . . .”
“That’s Max,” Olivia said. “He really loves Liza. It’s quite sweet.”
“Okay? You want reasons? Do you have a pen? A notebook? This might take a while.” Liza laughed. “Number one, your voice is too soft. Two, you always look like you need lip balm even after you’ve just put on lip balm. Is there something wrong with your mouth? Do you have a mouth disease? And three, the lip balm you use smells bad, like medicine. Which was only one of the many things wrong with kissing you by the way, which we will discuss more extensively when we get to items eleven through twenty-five. Number four, every time you told a joke you’d look at me after, like checking to see if I thought it was funny. Five, you have freckles.”
“Wait,” Lucy said. “Why are we watching this?”
“This is your prize! You get to watch Liza break a heart.”
“But I don’t . . . ,” Lucy started.
“Ssh,” Olivia said. And she pointed toward the screen.
“But . . .” Max said. His voice sounded strange, shaky. “You told me you liked them.”
“Well, I don’t. Six, you gave me too many presents. Seven, I hate your belt. Eight, you’re allergic to lemons. . . .”
Lucy stared at the screen where Liza was still listing and Max now seemed to be crying. A cold heavy weight sank in Lucy’s gut. These girls broke hearts, she knew that. She’d seen Ethan post-heartbreak and had felt, if not good about it, at least generally okay. Ethan was strong and a jerk and Lucy could see how his broken heart might help both him and the world. But this was different. All Lucy needed to know about Max she already knew—he was sweet and he was weak. And Liza was shredding him to pieces. And nothing about it was okay.
Lucy couldn’t watch any more. She had to turn away.
Olivia was leaning back in the chair with her legs up, smiling at the screen as though she were watching a favorite TV show.
The Secret Sisterhood of Heartbreakers Page 15
