by Amy Spalding
“You’ve forgiven me?”
“Oh, fine,” he says. “You know what I mean.”
I go back to watching Sai, because I’m not sure I should forgive Travis just because he’s willing to talk to me again. I want to though, of course. It’s funny how much I miss someone I haven’t even known for that long.
“I’m in the chorus,” he whines. “And I’m a junior.”
“But that’s not my fault,” I say. “Or anyone else’s.”
“I would nail that line,” he says, as Sai jumbles the lyric about the gross percent and the billing clause. I sing it in my room all the time and can verify it’s a tricky verse to get through, which I tell Travis.
“Well, of course you’d defend him,” he says. “Big shock.”
I really hope he means because we’re friends, not because my obsession crush is that apparent.
“It’s going to look awful on my college applications,” he says.
“It’s a smaller part but at a really good school,” I say. “Also, seriously, if you wanted to complain about it, I would have been here for you. I’m your friend. And you acted like I was invisible, which is one of the meanest ways to treat someone.”
I can’t believe how easily it rolls out of me. I’m so used to composing text messages and wannabe-snarky replies in my head. It turns out saying the truth out loud feels kind of great.
“Okay, Devvie, point taken.” He slides his arm around my shoulder. “I’m sorry, okay? Is that what you want?”
Obviously it is, but after weeks of him all but ignoring me it’s not like everything’s just automatically fine. But I guess maybe it’ll get there.
I pull away from him—which is really all for show—and get out of my seat. “Apologize to Sai and Mira later.”
“Fine, fine. Where are you going?”
“He’ll probably get through this better if we aren’t sitting here staring at him.”
“You’re way too nice,” Travis says, though he does follow me to the back of the auditorium and around the corner. “Ohhh my God! Are you being way too nice because something happened?”
“Nothing has happened,” I say. “Nothing’s going to happen.”
He sticks out his lower lip like a little kid put into time-out. “That’s so boring. You have to make something happen. Especially since you and Elijah came to a tragic end.”
“We didn’t come to a tragic end,” I say. “And Sai has a girlfriend. And even if he didn’t . . . he’s him, you know? And I’m just me.”
“What are you talking about? You’re talented and always have the best clothes and you’re cute and you have really good boobs.”
I cross my arms in front of my chest without even really meaning to. Still. I don’t want Travis looking at them. “Thank you. But lots of people here are talented.”
“Not like you,” he says. “I hate you for how you sing. And you know what I’m saying! Sorry if you don’t want to believe it, and I know he’s all godlike and one of the Popular Ones but, no, you guys are clearly right for each other.”
It’s kind of weird because the other day in the hallway I caught sight of this familiar-looking girl with great hair and an amazing dress, and then I realized that she was my reflection. Inside I’m pretty close to the same me, but on the surface I’m just not her anymore. It’s weird trying to see yourself the way other people do—and I’m totally not saying I’m in Sai’s league exactly, if there’s such a thing as leagues anyway—but maybe Travis is only a little crazy, not completely.
“Devan! We need you!”
I run to the stage, apologizing to Mr. Deans as I make my way up.
“Man,” Sai says. “Can’t believe how much I screwed that up.”
“It’s a hard song,” I say.
“I’m glad it’s yours and not mine,” Aaron says.
Sai rakes his hands through his hair, which makes him look like a really hot mad scientist. “I’m never gonna have it right by opening night.”
“Opening night’s in four weeks,” Aaron says. “Not tomorrow. Chillax.”
Sai and I exchange a look at that, because who says chillax? Then I think about Travis and what he said and how Sai and I always seem in sync about everything. There’s seriously no one who I’ve felt this way for before, most especially not someone I also wanted to make out with.
It’s weird and possibly stupid, but for a split second I wonder if I’m falling in love with him. But he’s probably definitely not interested in me at all. And even if he was, he has a girlfriend. Also, I’m sixteen, and I’m pretty sure when you’re sixteen you aren’t supposed to do things like fall in love anyway.
Still. Maybe I feel something. Something bigger than just make-outability.
“Old Friends” is a much easier song, which means I can focus on getting the (totally simple) choreography down completely. I also keep reminding myself of everything Kate told me, and I try to look for more in the lyrics so I can use more emotion. It’s there, too: anger, annoyance, eagerness, love. I love that I can find it when I just think to look.
Sai and I are free to go after we run through the short scene after the song a few times, since Mr. Deans will be working more with Aaron for his solo that comes next. I check my phone to discover a text from my mother (Going out with Brad tonight, can you get a ride home? xo) and text back a fast response without checking (Yes of course!).
“Um,” I say, because it’s weird asking favors from Sai, “is there any way you can take me home?”
“Yeah, of course, Dev,” he says. “Was gonna stop and get food, that okay?”
I like Dev a lot better than man. “Totally, if I’m not intruding on your plans.”
“Nah, think my book’ll take it okay I’m spending my time with you and not it,” he says, gesturing to the paperback in his back pocket. “Come on.”
We stop for pizza, the only thing we can agree on, because apparently Sai doesn’t like Mexican, Chinese, Thai, Japanese, or Indian. I want to ask him if that was weird growing up, with a mom who’s Chinese and Indian, but I don’t know if that’s an okay thing to ask.
“What do you think of Nic?” Sai asks as we sit down with our giant slices (me: one, him: three).
“What do you mean? I barely know her.”
“Really? You guys have some classes together.”
I’m still not sure what it means that Sai seems to see no differentiation between the group I’m in and the one he mainly hangs out with. “Yeah, but . . . we’re not friends.”
He nods and plows through more of his first slice.
“Why?” I ask.
“Doesn’t matter,” he says. “Just—not to complain or anything . . . Nic’s a great girl. I think she just wishes I wasn’t depressed all the time. Not like I don’t.”
“Right.” A tiny thrill dances on my fingertips and down my spine. Now I have a legitimate reason to dislike her. “I wish . . . Back in St. Louis, my best friend had this key to our choir room; she got a copy so we could practice our solos. Anyway, whenever we were having crappy nights, we’d sneak in to use the piano and sing and . . . ” Out of my mouth it doesn’t sound like salvation, though, it sounds incredibly geeky.
Sai slowly grins at me. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for a breaking and entering girl, Dev.”
“It was just entering! We had a key!”
His eyes are all crinkly and distracting. Just like he can smile with his voice, Sai can smile with his eyes, too. “A stolen key. So do you miss St. Louis?”
“Not really. Sometimes I forget to even think about it.” It feels physically buried in my chest somewhere, like I only feel it when I move certain ways. Justine and Dad and Tracie, pushed as far underneath as I can keep them.
Sai looks at me, jutting his chin up into the air a little.
“You don’t believe me?”
“Neither of us has been here that long—it’s interesting you don’t think past the last few months.”
Really, Sai? What about you, guy
with a girlfriend, seeking solace in someone else, if we’re talking about being interesting?
Wait, am I mad at Sai?
“It’s complicated,” is what I finally say.
“Yeah?”
“My dad died,” I say. “Which you know already, sorry. Just . . . before I moved, I never knew my mother. I don’t know why, but I didn’t. She didn’t have anything to do with me, and if my dad hadn’t died . . . ”
This thing that’s almost everything about me that I don’t want anyone to know didn’t just slip out. I said it because no matter how weird things can get between us, I trust Sai. And I can’t say that about anyone else in my life, at all. Travis could turn on me again with no warning, Mira makes no sense to me, Justine only knew my superficial dreams—and not even those anymore—and Lissa and Elijah are both a little awkward to talk to now about anything, much less the most personal stuff. But Sai has this honesty practically pulsing in him. It’s like even if he wanted to he’d never be able to keep his true feelings under wraps.
“Whoa,” Sai says, which is a fair—and honest—reaction.
“Yeah.”
“You want to talk about it?”
I laugh while trying not to cry. “I thought I did just talk about it.”
Sai reaches forward and touches my face for, like, the briefest of moments. “Fair enough.”
Only one other boy has touched my face like that, and it was Elijah while we were kissing. If it were someone else or if I were someone else maybe it would mean something—something beyond that Sai knows this is a tough topic for me.
“How bad do you think I did today?” he asks.
It’s nice of him to ask—it’s like he knows exactly how much I need the subject changed. “It’s a hard song, but you have time. Just recite the lyrics to me. That’s the hardest part, right? Like, that there’re so many of them? The melody’s pretty straightforward. I mean, for Sondheim.”
“I guess,” he says. “Yeah, I’ll do it.”
So he does, and I make him start over when he messes up, and it only takes him a few times through to get each line right. We’re finished eating by then, and we walk out to his car where I make him sing it through right there and then, a capella. He still flubs a couple lines, but it’s not like before.
“You’re good at this,” he says. He’s leaned in close to me, and I can almost pretend we’re cozy in his car for a reason other than this song. “Thanks, Dev.”
“Maybe Aaron’s right,” I say. “Maybe you just need to chillax.”
It’s still early enough in our rehearsal process that we have nights off, so on Friday I agree to hang out with Travis. Even if maybe I’m still mad at him. The alternative—hanging out at home alone—sounds worse.
Also right now the only person I seem to be totally capable of talking to is Sai. And despite that Sai is great, I don’t want the only person I hang out with to be the boy I’m obsessed with in love with crushing on.
“So what do you think about Aaron Finley?” Travis asks me over pasta (mine) and ahi tuna (his) at Firefly, which he likes because of this one room that looks like a library but is actually the bar, and he feels like he’s getting away with something to be out at a place with a bar (which we’re not even sitting in). Considering by now I’ve been places like Molly Malone’s, which actually is a bar, it seems like lame reasoning. Still, it’s comforting knowing I’m not the only one who makes decisions for lame reasons sometimes, and it’s nice imagining sitting in the fake library with Sai the Book Nerd, holding hands or even making out in the dim light.
Yeah, something is clearly wrong with me to devote so much brain space to him. I am well aware.
“Aaron’s a really strong singer,” I say. “And actor. When he was rehearsing that fight with Sai the other day, I seriously almost cried.”
“Unimportant,” Travis says. “What I’m saying is, what team do you think he’s on? His sexuality confounds me!”
I laugh. “Hmmm. Confounding to me, too. He is cute, though.”
“Oh, really, so you notice other guys? Guys who aren’t—”
“Shut up,” I say with a lilt in my voice, hoping it’ll sound adorable and not bitchy.
“Do we have a plan yet?”
“A plan to unconfound Aaron Finley’s sexuality?”
“Like I need a plan. I’ll just wait till the cast party and make my move.”
Maybe this sounds crazy? But sometimes I wish I were more like Travis. “What if he’s straight?”
“If he’s straight he won’t even figure it out, and I’ll be spared humiliation as well as further pining. But, no, we need a plan for you and S—”
“Don’t say his name.”
“—for you and Troy Bolton,” he says. “Fine.”
“Oh my God,” I say. “Don’t even.”
“You can do what I’m gonna do,” Travis says. “But somehow I don’t see you jumping him unless I physically throw you at him.”
“Can we stop talking about this?” I pull on my cardigan, even though the outdoor heaters are on in the dining area that looks indoors but actually opens up to the trees and sky. It’s weird how chilly L.A. fall nights are. “It’s totally depressing to act like it’s a possibility when it really isn’t. I’d rather unravel the mystery of Aaron Finley. Or, better, not talk about boys at all.”
“Tell me. Boys are so stressful.” Travis perks up in his chair. “Oh my God, Mira’s here! With her parents. Tragic.”
“Hanging out with your parents is not tragic.” I follow his line of sight to Mira, sitting with a couple definitely at least ten years older than my mother.
“Your mom’s cool,” Travis says. “Not everyone’s is. Case closed. Let’s go embarrass her. Mira!”
He’s out of his seat before I can do anything, so I follow him over.
“Oh, hey.” Mira ducks down a little in her chair. Her fauxhawk is dehawked, just lying there like boring hair, and she’s wearing a pale blue sweater over her T-shirt and jeans. “What are you guys doing?”
“Eating, obviously,” Travis says. “Hi, Mira’s parents.”
They say hello to him and introduce themselves to me. Mira’s dad is wearing the kind of casual-but-clearly-high-end-label clothes I’ve noticed Brad’s Hollywood friends wear. I guess that’s pretty normal for L.A. in general, though, not just Hollywood types. Her mom is very mom-like, the kind of woman I pictured back in the pre-Destruction days. Light brown hair, sweater set, nice-but-not-too-trendy jeans. Hopefully it isn’t bad that occasionally I still wish I went home to someone like her.
“You should come with us,” Travis says, because for someone who gets good grades and so is theoretically smart, he never figured out that Mira and I sometimes hate each other, and at best have a wary, awkward acquaintanceship. Boys can be dense about that stuff, even if they know who you’re secretly in love with. “Is it okay, Mira’s parents?”
“Maybe you should ask if I even want to come with you,” she says.
“Mira, that’s no way to talk to your friends,” her mother says. “But if you want to go out with them, it should be fine, as long as you’re home by curfew.”
“Are you sure?” Mira asks, starting to stand up.
“Go with your friends,” her dad says. “We’ll see you at eleven.”
“Eleven thirty, Dad,” she says. “You promised.”
“You’re right, I did. Have fun.”
Mira carries her plate (the same pasta I ordered) over to our table and rolls her eyes at me.
“What?” I snap.
“Don’t make fun of my sweater,” she says. “Or my stupid hair. My mom has a heart attack whenever I look too—too casual. Just don’t.”
“I wasn’t going to,” I say, though I do feel sad about her pathetic outfit.
“Is it because you’re Asian?” Travis asks. “Like Asian parents are extra strict or something?”
“Travis, you don’t get to ask me that,” she says. “And, no. It’s not.”
&
nbsp; “Do you want to switch sweaters with me?” I ask her.
“What? Why?”
“Because that’ll still look okay with what I’m wearing, but this’ll look way better with your T-shirt and jeans.”
She eyes me for a minute before pulling off her sweater and handing it over. “Try not to stretch out the chest too much.”
“I’m not that big!” I say while Travis guffaws.
“I guess this is better.” She slides into my cardigan. “I trust your judgment, all hail to the fashionista, etcetera.”
“Too bad your hair’s still all limp,” Travis says, to which we both respond, “Shut up,” at the same time. Uh oh. Being in sync with Mira seems like a very bad thing. “So we’ve been talking about Aaron Finley.”
“‘We’?” Mira asks. “So that translates to you talking about Aaron Finley while poor Devan is forced to listen.”
I try not to giggle but not really that hard. Mira joins in.
“So what are you guys doing after this?” she asks. “Sorry about my curfew. My mom watches way too much daytime TV. She’s so convinced I’m going to these sex and drug parties that I don’t even think exist.”
“Yeah, seriously, if only,” Travis says. “And like you’d get invited!”
Mira laughs and shakes her head. “I know, right?”
“Um, maybe this is dumb,” I say, surprised at my own bravery. “But maybe we could just go to your house? Then we don’t have to worry about your curfew.”
“Perfect,” Travis says. “Ooh, we can use your piano.”
“You guys actually want to do something that lame with your curfew-less Friday?” Mira asks.
“We’re eating here so Travis can pretend he’s out at a real bar,” I say. “How is going to your house any lamer?”
“Devvie, I’m gonna kill you,” he says, as Mira holds up her hand.
“What?” I ask her.
“I’m high-fiving you, stupid.”
I slap my palm against hers. When I see this side of Mira, I actually want to be her friend.
