Red Velvet Crush

by Christina Meredith

We hit a bump in the road, a pothole or something that makes the fake crown swing from the rearview mirror. Jay holds his hands up, protecting his gadgetry, while he gives Ginger a nasty sidelong glance.

  Ty finally stirs. He stretches his arms out and flexes his fingers.

  He opens his eyes and winces.

  “Is it always going to smell like french fries in here?” he asks.

  He drops his arms.

  “I told you not to let her eat in the car,” I say, looking at Billie.

  Somehow Billie dropped an order of fries—not just one or two but an entire small paper sleeve full—behind the shag bench two days ago. Now every time it heats up inside the van even a little bit, it smells like a deep-fat fryer.

  Jay tried to fish them out with a long screwdriver, but it didn’t fit into the crack. He wanted to disassemble the whole bench, his eyes measuring and hungry, but Winston said we didn’t have the time.

  How the fries made it down into that crack was a mystery to all of us, including Billie. It was like the van was hungry that day.

  Oddly enough, the wad of Billie’s gum landed right where the fries live. The smell is strongest there, almost directly under Billie.

  “She’s a food nuisance,” I say.

  My car has enough broken corn chips and straw wrappers stuck under the passenger seat to attest to this fact. No jury or deliberation necessary.

  “So says the girl who orders her cheeseburgers well done,” Winston says.

  He leans over and cracks the triangular window next to him.

  “I like things a bit roached.” I shrug. No big deal.

  Winston tsks at me and flicks his ash out the window.

  “It’s a shameful waste of perfectly good meat,” he says.

  He turns toward Ty, and they bow at each other, like two warriors having defeated an enemy in a kung fu movie. Medium rare: 2. Well done: 0.

  “Are we talking about dinner?” Jay turns around and asks.

  Eat. Meat. They do sound the same. But he probably thinks he missed out on a high-five opportunity and feels the need to jump in.

  I check my phone.

  “It’s only two-fifteen,” I say.

  Jay reaches back and turns the radio down. He’s rigged his iPad into the antique dashboard. Robert Plant only whispers to me now about cloaks and clocks and threads with no end.

  “Late lunch?” he asks.

  “I don’t care what you eat,” Winston replies, “but Teddy Lee and Billie only get fifteen bucks for the day.”

  Normally Winston buys everything with Marlboro points. His future lung cancer is sponsored. He has the duffel bag (seventy-five points), the shot glass set (fifty points), even the baseball cap (sixty-five points) to prove it. He’s not used to having actual money, and it turns out he is quite tightfisted.

  “Does that include beer money?” Jay asks.

  Winston nods.

  Jay reaches into his front pocket and pulls out a crumple of bills. He picks some pocket fuzz out from the wrinkled money and lets it drift down into the carpet to join forces with the seventies shag.

  He smooths and counts, then twists back toward us with a grin.

  “Lunch it is then,” he says.

  Ginger Baker eats with a knife and fork, British style. I’ve seen it dozens of times by now, but it still makes me want to dress him in a little suit with shorts and a striped tie and send him off to school.

  His egg, sunny side up, splits open and oozes yellow. He has very long fingers. Nice nails. Not ragged and bitten like Jay’s. Jay is so impatient he can’t even wait for his nails to grow. He chews them off before they get a chance.

  I stare at Ginger’s hands, trying to ignore the paper next to Ty’s plate, its torn edges, the words that are coming at me.

  “Just let Ginger take a look,” Ty says, reaching over to slide the paper toward Ginger. “I let him in on what we’ve been up to,” he tells me.

  I am sandwiched in a booth between Ty and Ginger, my Monte Cristo growing cold, the cheese becoming sweaty and solid. Jay and Winston and Billie are outside, leaning up against a car the color of lipstick, smoking.

  The paper between us is filled with my curved words and Ty’s straight lines, a song we have been working on during one of our late-night sessions.“Which one is it?” I ask, avoiding his eyes and the new hole in my heart, a sore, empty spot that didn’t exist before that day at the pool.

  I can’t be mad at Ginger about this. That would be like thinking that Mozart was going to wreck your musical career. Ty knows that, so I’ve been outmaneuvered.

  “It’s the one about making out in the morning,” Ty says, sliding the page toward Ginger.

  It does say that, scrawled in the upper corner. Ty is smart. It is one of my favorites. Ginger pulls the paper closer to him and slides a pencil out of his jacket pocket. He scans the page and starts penciling notes, intense and fast. Squinting, I try to read as he writes. I swear, with that handwriting Ginger should be a doctor. His first procedure should be fixing my wobbly, bruised heart.

  Ginger sets the paper back down by my plate. I stare at the sharp, slanted notes that somehow stack together and make one of my songs better.

  I nudge it away with my fingertips and look past the dirty plates lining the other side of the booth, past where Billie has dragged her finger through a puddle of ketchup, past the dregs of Winston’s chocolate milk, up to the gray summer sky outside the window.

  There is more to playing my songs than the feeling that I am laying myself out flat for all the world to see or opening myself up and sharing what has been, until recently, all mine. There is Billie and how they will break her, because if we are really going to do this, I want to sing.

  I sigh.

  “You know I don’t know how to do that.” I remind Ty, tapping the page on top of a skinny bass clef.

  “Ginger’ll help you,” he mumbles, his mouth full of burger, medium rare.

  On my other side, Ginger is tucking toast points away at an alarming rate. He nods in agreement.

  “And we’ll need to practice,” I say, my brain skipping ahead to the logistics and the space and the little details everyone else will forget.

  Ty pushes his plate away knowing he has won.

  “Jay is going to be so stoked!” He pounds a rhythm into the edge of the table that makes Ginger’s eggs wiggle. “Soon we won’t have to be a cover band anymore!”

  “Billie should start memorizing lyrics now.” He continues, looking out the window as Winston and Jay and Billie weave their way back across the parking lot, a tepee of cigarette butts left behind them.

  “No, I want to sing,” I say, breaking the news in one big breath.

  Ginger’s fork freezes midair.

  “You’re sure?” Ty asks, leaning in close with his eyebrows raised.

  I nod. “For these, for sure.”

  Ty squeezes me tight, bumping me up against Ginger Baker in his excitement.

  “It’s gonna be so good,” he says, his voice as close to a squeal as a boy with arms like cannons can get.

  “Yeah.” I laugh and untangle myself, saving the best for last. “But now you’re gonna have to teach Billie how to play the guitar.”

  Ginger smiles and raises his coffee mug, ready to seal the deal. I raise mine. Ty watches us suspiciously, shrugs, and then raises his, too. Clink.

  For the past four mornings Ty has begged or borrowed or scammed a small meeting room in each of our hotels for the three of us to practice in.

  Today’s is called the Sunrise Room. A small easel stands on silver legs outside the doors announcing the big event: Marketing Concepts—Luncheon at Noon. We promised to be out by ten.

  The carpet is dark blue with a tiny diamond pattern, and the tan walls are sectioned, so you can fold them up and roll them away, making an even bigger Sunrise Room if you need one. I’m not much for navigation, but I am pretty sure you can’t see the sunrise from anywhere in here. Small or large, the room faces the wrong direction.
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  We plug in but keep it low. So far we have been working on arrangements, piecing the songs together. Today I am going to sing for the two of them for the first time. Nerves are shooting through me: little bolts that make me trip over my guitar cord and drop my pick for the third time.

  I stand up and hear Ty say, “Ta-ta-tee-tee-ta,” and suddenly I am last chair in the fifth-grade band again.

  “Ta-ta-tee-tee-ta,” Mr. Beauregard said back then, and I scowled as he poised his arms in the air, readying us.

  My feet dangled from a folding chair. The clarinet, the lamest of all instruments, rested between my legs.

  Just count it off, I thought. That was what I had learned in my guitar book.

  Mr. B was a sweaty pork rind of a man. His stomach bulged over the waistband of his pants while he swung that useless little conductor stick in the air endlessly, like any of us were watching.

  We were eleven. It was the first day of school, and some of us weren’t even sure how to hold our borrowed or rented instruments, let alone play them, and he was up there, saying ta-ta-tee-tee-ta like we were the goddamn philharmonic. I couldn’t decide if that was severe optimism or complete ignorance. I quit band the next day.

  But when Ty moves his fingers along in the air on an invisible fiddle or viola or something and says, “Bum-de-bum-de–bum-de-beyeeeooowww,” Ginger nods, completely fluent in the secret language of music geeks and middle school band teachers that eludes me.

  Seconds later they are bouncing along and I am struggling to keep up.

  How can Ginger already be better at my own songs than I am?

  It’s true: he is a musical genius. Ta-ta-totally. I watch his fingers fly and miss my cue to sing.

  I drop my shoulders and shake my head. I’ve been here before, once in the garage when I tried to sing for the first time and again right now. Unfortunately I crashed and burned both times.

  Ty and Ginger loop back around, playing me in. I have to jump. Now.

  All the air is knocked out of my gut. I pump the dry squeeze box that is my abdomen and push the first note out of my mouth. It is good. Not as smoky and sweet as Billie, but damn good.

  Distracting my shaky stomach with my fingering, I tap out the beat with my toes. I hold tight to my guitar, slowing my voice so it doesn’t run away from me. My palms are sweaty. Fireworks burst inside my brain: I did it! I’m doing it! Keep doing it!

  Ty smiles, and Ginger nods along.

  I ease into the pocket and even out my breathing, my voice rising high into the open Sunrise Room, like liquid sunshine.

  My heart is still pounding when the song ends. My fingers flutter along the neck of my guitar, even though I’m not playing a note. I feel like I am in a dream.

  I hear clapping, but it is far away, muted and fuzzy. Ty and Ginger are beaming at me, but their hands aren’t moving. The clapping gets louder.

  Ty turns toward the door. Ginger sets his guitar down.

  Billie is standing in the doorway wearing striped pajama pants and an Oregon Ducks sweatshirt. She has half a bagel held between her front teeth as she slowly claps. Why did Winston wait until today to finally score us a hotel with a breakfast bar?

  She stops clapping and slowly takes us in: the three guitars, the cups of coffee, the notes and papers resting on the chairs behind us.

  How did I think this was going to happen?

  Did I think we were just going to spring it on her one night? Stand back, Billie, we’ve got a song that you won’t be singing.

  Now that she is here, I felt better, less guilty, because at least now she knows. Now all I have to do is clean up the mess.

  Billie looks past Ty to the windows that span the side of the Sunrise Room. Right behind Ginger there is a scenic view of the parking lot.

  She takes a bite of the bagel and says, as if she doesn’t give a shit about what we are doing, “So there’s no pool?”

  Billie doesn’t answer when I knock on her door. It is wedged open, so I push my way in, wondering if she slept that way, with the door open, cracked enough to let light in from the hall.

  I kick a crumpled matchbook cover from under the door and listen for the latch to click behind me. Once my eyes adjust to the darkness of the room, I climb into the bed, across a jumble of sheets and hotel pillows and slide under the slippery bedspread.

  Billie is buried near the bottom, curled up with the remote tucked under her chin, watching as cartoons play silently on the TV five feet away. It feels like I haven’t really seen her for so long. Her fingernails are chewed short, and it looks like one cuticle is bleeding. We both have faded X’s on our hands, left over from last night.

  “Too young to drink, but old enough to rock your world,” a guy with a mustache and way too many muscles said to his skinnier friend when they walked by Billie and me as we were setting up.

  “We should get that printed on a T-shirt.” Billie laughed, wrapping her microphone cord around her fingers and watching the muscleman go.

  Today her hair is shiny and blown out superstraight, fanning out around her head on the pillow. She is fully dressed, covered head to toe in bright pink, even her lips, but the bottoms of her feet are black and bare.

  I picture her padding around in the hotel hallway at all hours, perfect from the ankles up.

  Our mom was the same way. Hair perfect. Lipstick on. Shoes left behind.

  In first grade she showed up at my school one day with a squished sandwich in a wrinkled paper bag. And maybe some leftover pie from the restaurant—Marionberry, I bet.

  “Teddy, Teddy Lee,” she whispered to me from the hall, followed by the wrinkling of the bag.

  I looked up from my spelling book. So did the entire class, including Mr. K, the best teacher ever. My fingers gripped the edge of my avocado green desk. I was frozen.

  Mom stood in her waitress uniform and the suntan pantyhose she got at the drugstore. Her hair was done up, her lipstick applied and blotted, but she had slippers on her feet. I gripped my desk even tighter.

  I glanced up at Mr. K, wondering if I should answer her. He ran a pretty tight ship.

  In the end I stayed put.

  Mr. K walked over and retrieved my wrinkled lunch, which he slid into the little wire basket under my seat, while I stared down at my spelling book until I heard those slippers slipping away.

  I wriggle in, really close, and Billie stirs. She sets the remote down and looks me in the eyes. I watch her brow furrow, her lips pouting as an idea becomes a thought and the thought becomes words.

  “Soon all the songs will be yours,” she says, staring past me.

  Over her shoulder I watch a cat hit a mouse in the head with a hammer. I exhale and smooth out the small spot of empty sheet beneath us.

  “Don’t you think we’re pretty far away from that?” I ask.

  Billie shrugs, but we are. We are so far away from that.

  Can’t we wait until I can play at least one of my own songs well before we all start to worry? Besides, Jay and Winston are barely in on it yet.

  “You know it sucks for me, right?” Billie asks.

  I do. I want to pretend that it doesn’t matter, but I can see it—in her eyes, in her skinny shoulders, in the quiver when she speaks.

  “Yeah.” I nod.

  She picks at her nails and keeps quiet, being very serious and un-Billie for a few minutes.

  When she finally squirms and says, “That guitar makes my fingers hurt,” I know we are back to regular Billie.

  Ty is teaching her how to play. He ran out and bought her a brand-new guitar, keeping up his end of the deal that Ginger and I made.

  It was waiting for her in the front seat of the van when we packed up to leave the afternoon I told Ty and Ginger I wanted to sing. She never even asked why. It had pink sparkles on it, and that was enough.

  I reach over and examine her fingers. The tips are red but not raw.

  “Are you scared?” I ask.

  She shakes her head.

  I know she
wants to believe that we are always thinking and feeling the same thing.

  When we were little, she would suddenly look over and ask me with her eyes lit up, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” She wished we were wonder twins, with great hair and boots and telepathic powers.

  I studied her. Tried to mind meld. But I always gave in.

  “I don’t know,” I’d say. “What are you thinking?”

  This time I know better. I loop my fingers around hers.

  This time I say, “Me, too.”

  15

  We are pulling into Pocatello, into that endless gray light that can somehow seem much brighter than sunshine, even if it’s just seconds from flat-out rain. I watch a freeway interchange coming up, a concrete cloverleaf of double yellow lines and hybrid cars. My eyes dilate in the bright light and then throb.

  Everyone inside the van seems as listless as the weather. Maybe nobody’s born to be wild when it’s overcast, but come on. We are the farthest away from home we will get on this trip, the farthest away I have ever been. They can at least act excited.

  Plus, tomorrow night I will sing for the first time. We will use tonight to feel out the crowd for original material. I am hiding my nervousness under a hoodie, a jean jacket, and a vow of silence, Ginger Baker style. Thank God for one more night.

  “Okay, here’s the deal,” Winston calls out from the driver’s seat in his loud DJ school voice as he stops the van. “We’ve booked two nights with a band called”—short pause while he consults his managerial clipboard—“Blasting Cap.”

  “Woohoo.” Billie claps, half assed.

  “Cool name,” Jay says, coming alive, stretching his arms toward the carpeted sky and yawning big.

  Ty nods. “Wish I would have thought of that.”

  “Our name is cool,” Jay says.

  “It is, in an Elvis’s grandmother’s favorite cake recipe kind of way.” Ty jokes, stabbing me through the heart with his words.

  “I love cake,” Jay says, so dreamy and wanton that I seriously question if I have fallen for the wrong former Trigger Brother.

  Winston consults the top sheet on his stack of papers and peers out the side window. “This has got to be it.”

  He drops his clipboard onto the dash and slowly eases the van into the entrance. The back end creaks up and over the curb into the parking lot. A bum stands next to a pink rosebush under a weathered marquee that says THE BARRACUDA LOUNGE.