by Amy Spalding
“Killington Hill,” he says with a note of pride in his voice. Something about New City that’s so different than back home is how much everyone seems to care about things. “We go on at nine. Definitely you should go, if you’re into music and everything. We finally don’t completely suck.”
I laugh. “I’ll try, yeah.”
“Also I hear Kennedy is organizing some karaoke thing this weekend, which you should definitely come to,” he says.
I am truly truly truly not an expert in anything having to do with boys, but I do see how they act around girls they’re into, and there is something about Elijah’s tone, and the way he leans in when he talks to me, and how he is adamant about his gig and the karaoke. And obviously I like Sai the Lost Cause, and obviously Elijah and Lissa are an item or almost one or something.
But I still like it.
My phone beeps as I’m dashing to Women’s Choir, and having no idea who it might be, I grab it out of my purse and check the screen. NEW TEXT FROM: REECE MALCOLM. I programmed her name that way, obviously, but it still feels like a kick while I’m down, just another reminder that I’ll never have a normal relationship with my mother.
Still. Sorry I’m a bitch. xo
Okay, it doesn’t change the fact that she does think I ruined her life. It doesn’t make me feel better about her mentioning sex and Sai like that’s ever going to be a possibility. It definitely doesn’t make up for her ignoring me all of last night. Or, you know, my whole life before that.
But it’s good she reached out. Right? Maybe I should want an actual apology. Not an apology for the fact that she feels the way she does about me, because that much is fair.
Lissa bumps into me as we walk into the choir room together, and she gives me a little shrug. “Everything okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say quickly. “Actually—I thought today would suck and I guess it won’t completely.”
“Aw, that’s cause for celebration.” She grins as she tucks her long red hair behind her ears. “So I don’t know if you heard from anyone yet, but Travis wants us all to go out for karaoke this weekend, one of those places in Little Osaka where we’ll have our own room. I hope you’re coming.”
“What’s Little Osaka?” I ask, because—unlike Mira—Lissa isn’t someone I worry about looking stupid in front of.
“Oh, right, you’re new to L.A. It’s a Japanese part of town on the Westside, but it’s smaller and newer than Little Tokyo, which is downtown. You should come.”
“I’ll ask my mother, but I’ll try. I’ve never actually gone to karaoke before.”
“You’ll love it, I’m sure. Especially when you have a private room, you can be an idiot and not worry what anyone thinks.” She waves to Mira as she walks into the room. “Hey, I was filling in Devan on karaoke.”
“Oh,” Mira says. “You’re coming?”
I notice Lissa elbow her. “Yeah, probably,” I say.
“Oh, good, E gave you one of his flyers?” Lissa points to the neon orange paper sticking out of my folder. “Are you going? We can ride together.”
“I just have to ask my mother,” I say.
“Is your mom really strict?” Lissa asks.
“Totally not at all, I should just ask before agreeing. She never says I can’t do anything, though.” I shrug. I don’t want to talk about my mother. “It’ll probably be okay.”
“Must be nice,” Mira says before walking to her chair. I start to walk to mine, but Lissa grabs my purse strap. Of course Mira is watching us intently.
“She’s been weird lately,” Lissa says quietly. “I wouldn’t take it personally.”
I wonder if it’s actually amazing that people here—besides Mira, of course—are so nice to me. Back in Missouri, yeah, no one went out of their way, but I also now keep thinking of times I could have talked to people more, been less invisible, not been so afraid. It’s possible my instincts are kind of almost completely backward.
Unlike the last auditions I went through—last February in Missouri—when we waited to audition sitting on the floor of the hallway outside of the choir room, today I’m in a chair in the room where I first met Sai. I can’t believe how much has changed since February. Seriously, I can’t believe how much has changed just since I first met Sai. Today in this room every chair is full, to the point that some kids are sitting on the floor while others pace as well as they can. I’m between Sai and Travis; all three of us are receiving more than a few glares, and I know it’s thanks to our calm exteriors. To be fair I guess it could totally be taken as snotty—and okay, maybe Travis is—but I’m not. I just think it’s stupid to care so much about theatre and yet get psyched out by auditioning when it’s going to be something you’ll theoretically do for the rest of your life.
“Group Three, girls.”
“That’s me. See you guys.” I get to my feet, relieved despite my auditioning mantra that soon this part will be over. It would be better, obviously, if Mira weren’t in Group Three as well.
We go in one-by-one first. I’m the fourth one in our group of ten, and I belt through my chosen sixteen bars of “Now You Know” with as much ease as I can manage. Mr. Deans smiles encouragingly at me, even though the other teachers (who I don’t know) are basically expressionless. The whole thing takes less than three minutes, and then I’m back in the hall waiting for the rest of the group to finish so we can have the chorus and dance auditions all at once.
“Just so you know.” Mira walks over to me so directly I feel like I’ll get pushed into the wall. There’ll be a Devan-shaped outline between photographs from last year’s productions (Spring Awakening and Urinetown). “Seniors almost always get the leads in the shows here. I don’t know how it was before you moved.”
School shows are one area I know tons about. “It’s always like that.”
“I just don’t want you to get your hopes up,” she says. “People transfer here from little schools where they’re the most special, and it’s not like that here.”
“I didn’t say that it was,” I reply. “Or that I was.”
She rolls her eyes. “The way you look when you sing . . . you think you’re great.”
I flex my hands because I don’t want to ball up my fists and let her know how fast she can make me mad. And I don’t have the words I want, the right way to tell her that singing is the only thing I never have to worry about. Singing is the most natural part of me, like how my heart beats and my lungs breathe air. So of course I don’t have to worry about doing it. But if I say any of that to Mira, she’ll laugh in my face.
Luckily people join our little circle, and Mira has no choice but to stop being publicly rude to me. And I’m not, like, BFFs with any of these girls—or with anyone here, except maybe Travis and Sai—but it hits me that no one but Mira’s a jerk. Really, no one but Mira even looks at me weirdly. People are nice here, and considering the whole thing with my mother and her ruined life, it’s a good realization.
Even if it’s also a pretty weird one.
After our dance audition (very basic considering New City’s standards, but Merrily isn’t exactly a dancey show) I head outside. My mother’s text this morning made me feel a little better, but it’s still a relief that it’s Brad’s Jetta waiting for me.
“Thanks for picking me up,” I say.
He turns down the music from blaring to normal. “Absolutely no problem. It was a good excuse to leave work early, as it were. How was your audition?”
“Pretty good, I think. How was work?”
“Not bad. No fights with anyone so perhaps a banner day,” he says.
I can’t imagine Brad fighting with anyone, and I tell him so.
“You know what it’s like,” he says. “Sometimes you must absolutely say everything that you’re feeling about something, whether you should or not.”
“Um, no. I’ve seriously never felt like that.”
He chuckles. “You and Reece have quite a great deal in common.”
I seriously d
oubt that, but I stay silent.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I must run to the grocery store,” he says. “You don’t need to rush home for anything, do you?”
“Totally not. I don’t mind at all.” I glance over at him. “Um, this might be a weird question. Just—do you think it’s weird that, like, before, we moved a lot, and I hardly ever had friends, and here people are nice to me like that’s normal?”
“Isn’t this school much more suited to you?” he asks. “With all of the singing and dancing in the halls and such?”
I laugh, even though his actual point is fair. “It’s just so different here from how it’s been everywhere else. That’s all.”
“I can certainly understand it,” he says. “I went through it a bit when I moved here for university, and suddenly spent all my time with others who were interested in everything I was. Quite a shock.”
“Totally,” I say. “Was it weird being in another country, too?”
“Somewhat, of course. I suppose that much was easier to adjust to, though.”
“Do you go back a lot?”
“Not too often,” he says. “It’s a long trip, and I’m honestly not all that close to my family. Los Angeles feels far more like home to me. Especially now that I’ve”—he clears his throat and makes some froggy gulpy noises—“met Reece.”
I wonder if anyone will ever feel that way about me.
He turns the car into the grocery store’s parking lot. “Speaking of Reece . . .”
I try to act all natural like my insides aren’t twisted up like a giant pretzel.
“She quite often speaks before she thinks.”
I wonder how she said it to him. I screwed up or I accidentally told her the truth. “But she means what she says,” I say.
“Well,” he says, turning off the car. “It isn’t that simple. Rarely with anybody. Never with Reece.”
I shrug as I follow him inside. “Probably easier for you.”
“Well, yes,” he says. “But only by comparison.”
I trail behind him into the produce section, where he begins squeezing a bunch of avocados with an insanely serious expression on his face. “Do you want help?”
“Absolutely. I need them for this weekend, so you don’t want one that’s soft like this.” He hands me a mushy-feeling avocado. Gross. “Or one that’s too hard. Right in between.”
I get to work hunting for something just right, feeling a lot like Goldilocks. “How did you learn all of this? Like how to feel avocados and cook amazing dinners and stuff?”
“I’ve honestly no idea; I just began picking it up somehow,” he says. “Also I look up a great number of things on the Internet.”
I grin because it feels good to share that nerdy quality with someone else, especially someone else in my mother’s life.
After the avocados, I help with tomatoes as well as a bunch of fruit so we can have a fruit salad tonight with dinner. Brad explains his selection process for each, so at least I feel like I’m contributing and not just standing there.
“Perhaps you’re like your mother, and believe ordering delivery constitutes making a meal, but if you’re interested in learning, I’d be happy to teach you whatever you’d like,” he says as we emerge from the produce section.
“No, I’d love that.”
He folds the shopping list in half and carefully tears down the crease. “Would you like to take the last two aisles? We can make better time.”
I agree to that and dash off with a basket to get through my part of the list. Brad is bizarrely organized, to the point that the list is in order of how I walk down the aisles, so I don’t have any trouble locating anything. It’s weirdly satisfying when I find Brad still finishing up his part of the list. Suddenly I think about telling him about my notebook, about the list I work on constantly (though obviously not the subject or contents), about how between that and music and Google I feel kind of connected with him. But it seems weird to say aloud. Today especially.
“Nicely done.” He takes the basket from me as he steers the cart into the checkout lane. I want to ask him how someone so freaking nice could end up with someone like Reece Malcolm, but I rearrange the question so many different ways that by the time I get into his car, it comes out as something else entirely.
“Were you mad when you found out I had to move in?” I ask him. His eyes fly off the rearview mirror and to me so quickly, I’m afraid he’ll back into something.
“Devan, certainly not. I don’t know why you’d ask such a thing.”
“Not mad, I guess. Just—”
“Well, it was . . . it was quite a surprise.”
I chew on a hangnail on my thumb. “Because you didn’t even know I existed?”
“Devan, there’s a great deal I’d be happy to discuss with you, but I’m not certain this, specifically, is something we should be discussing.”
“I can’t just talk to her,” I say.
“I realize she’s . . .” He laughs softly, turning out of the parking lot and onto the street. By now I’ve chomped my thumb into a bloody mess. “She can be difficult. But she’s also astonishingly reasonable.”
I don’t mean to, but I let out a noise like unghhhh, which makes Brad laugh. Luckily. It feels rude enough insulting my own mother, but insulting someone’s girlfriend is somehow worse.
When we get to the house, my mother breezes in to help with the grocery bags like it’s any other day. I don’t know what I expected; I guess to her the text counted as an apology. And maybe technically it did. I want more from her, though, and not just in that vague way I always want more. If she didn’t mean it, couldn’t she at least tell me so? And if she did, isn’t there a way to still make me feel better? I didn’t exactly ask to be born. Who would ever ask for that?
She shoves something in my back pocket while I’m stowing Diet Coke in the refrigerator. I wait until I can slip into the next room before extracting the mystery item, which turns out to be a bracelet that matches my favorite necklace (white Bakelite from a vintage shop in St. Louis). I slide it onto my wrist right away even though I wonder what it means. I have a bracelet so I can’t hate how Reece Malcolm feels about me? It makes me think of my full closet and my shiny MacBook and the phone in my pocket. Are they supposed to wipe out everything else? Because they’re nice but they aren’t what I actually want from her at all, if I had to pick. Can’t she just love me and want me here? Or, you know, try?
Still, I walk back into the kitchen with the bracelet heavy on my wrist. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” she says, instead of any of the million things I’d like her to say. Instead of any of the million things maybe she should say. “Kate dragged me out shopping and I spotted it while she tried on about five thousand items. You two are way too much alike.”
“I’m not that bad,” I say, even though I am, and even though I’m not sure I’m on board with this casual conversation. I guess it’s better than the alternative.
“Devan, are you helping me tonight?” Brad asks, arranging pots on the stove.
“Totally.”
“I’m teaching Devan how to cook,” he says to my mother.
“Let’s hope that’s wise,” she says. “I’m not entirely sure anyone related to me should attempt anything in the kitchen besides eating.”
Then Brad blushes, and they laugh really loudly, and I try really really really hard not to think about what else has been done in the kitchen. Their lives must have been a lot different before I moved in.
It’s weird, though, how a bad morning can turn into a nice night. I learn how to mince garlic and how to cook chicken breasts in olive oil so that they’re done inside but not all dried out either. Eating food you made yourself (or at least partly yourself) feels rewarding, like I really earned this meal.
It’d be nice to stretch out that feeling to the rest of my life.
Chapter Ten
Things I know about Reece Malcolm:
24.
Tr
avis is waiting at my locker after the last class on Friday. He grabs me by the shoulders and gives me a semi-scary, intense look. “I have to prepare you for something, and I want to make sure you’re actually prepared. Are you prepared? Actually?”
Is that even possible? “I guess so.”
He spins me around, where, off in the distance, Sai is standing near Nicole, like he often is, but they are definitely holding hands, like he hasn’t done, at least where I could see him, before. It isn’t unexpected or shocking or wrong in any way, but I’m still fairly convinced my heart drops to a new, lower, sadder location.
I just shrug, though. Travis doesn’t need to know about my heart’s southern migration. “Figures.”
“It’s so boring and expected,” he says. “Are you okay?”
“Of course! You’re so weird.”
“Duh.” He waves and takes off down the hallway.
My phone rings as I’m going through my locker to make sure I have everything I need for the weekend (and concentrating on not looking crushed). I don’t recognize the number, but considering I hardly have anyone’s, I still take every call that comes in.
“Hey, sweetie, it’s Kate. What are you up to? Big Friday night plans?”
“Totally not.” Tomorrow I’m going out for karaoke with everyone—even if maybe I shouldn’t give Mira more chances to be mean to me—and on Sunday Travis invited me to go shopping at Fashion Square for new jeans. It’s weird to have this crowded of a weekend, but I’m trying to dwell on the positive and not the weird.
“Oh, good, because I know this is such short notice, but let’s go get dinner and chat. I want to hear about everything, and I know there’s only so much we can talk about in Reece’s presence.” She laughs, and I can’t help joining in. “So tonight? I’ve already run it past Reece, and I can pick you up.”
“Um, sure. What time?”
“Our reservations are for eight, so seven-thirty-ish? See you then, Devan.”
After double-checking I have everything in my bag, I slam my locker door and head out to the parking lot. My mother’s car is right up front, and I get into it like everything with us is fine. I guess everything is fine, or as fine as it’s going to be.
