Who's That Girl

by Blair Thornburgh

  Umschool. Because that’s a thing.

  “Dropped out,” Sebastian said. “It just . . . didn’t make sense anymore. Not like it ever did.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Um. Hm.” My heartbeat had migrated to my throat, which was making it hard to make actual sentences. Did people just . . . drop out of school like that? No, duh, of course they did—musicians, writers, the guy who invented Facebook, it totally made sense for a certain kind of—

  Okay, focus, Nattie. Ask about the song or—

  “You didn’t tell me you were coming to the show,” Sebastian said suddenly.

  You didn’t tell me there was a show. But all I could say was, “Um . . . well, surprise?”

  Yes, good, act like you’ve just jumped out from behind a couch at a birthday party, you genius. I dug my fingernails into my palms.

  Sebastian said nothing, just flicked a gaze at the ground and then back at me.

  “Did you like it?”

  I swallow-shrugged. “I did say, ‘Nice set,’ didn’t I?”

  Finally. Yes. A complete, articulate, sort of bantering sentence. I resisted the urge to press my hand to my heart in relief. Sebastian was looking right at me, and I was suddenly very aware of him being taller than me, and his arm being so close to my waist, and his face being so close to mine that I could see his eyes from underneath his hair and the stubble on his cheek and the way he was biting his lip.

  “So you’re, like, cool?”

  “I mean, I guess I am,” I said. “My friends think I’m okay.”

  Sebastian smirked. “I mean, you’re cool with . . . this.”

  This. This. What was this? The alleyway? The concert? The song? I opened my mouth to ask, then shut it again, hard. Don’t do that, my brain screamed at my dumb body. Just be cool. Act like you know what he’s talking about.

  “Oh,” I said. My head felt hollow and floaty, and I could barely pry my lips apart. “Oh! Yeah! Of course. Yeah, like, no big deal. At all. Hahaha!”

  No cool person had ever laughed the way I had just laughed. I fluttered my eyes shut and prayed for instant, improbable death. But Sebastian didn’t seem to notice.

  “Cool.” He nodded. “Cool.”

  He took a step toward me, and I sucked in a breath that I hoped was not too disgusting-smelling. I’d done it. I’d played it cool, and this was it. This was Sebastian finally kissing me. This was—

  —something buzzing.

  “Is that yours?”

  My phone. Ten minutes were up.

  “Oh.” Shoot. Shoot! I fumbled it out of my pocket and slid it unlocked.

  “Is that . . . important?”

  “Um, sort of. Yes.” I swiped away a message from Tess that said WE NEED TO LEAVE ARE YOU KISSING HIM YET.

  “Okay,” Sebastian said. He didn’t move for a second, like he was trying to make up his mind, and then spoke again. “You know, I really didn’t expect this.”

  “Yeah!” I chirped, and instantly regretted it. This again. What did he mean? Me at the concert, me hearing the song, me, period? Why couldn’t I just act natural about things? I tried again. “I mean, no”—ugh, God. I winced—“I mean, I know. Life’s . . . full of surprises!”

  That was something Dad liked to say. I sounded like a forty-eight-year-old yurt enthusiast. Sebastian scratched the back of his head.

  “Yeah.”

  “Sorry,” I said, and I really was. If there was a time to ask about the song, about anything regarding Sebastian’s feelings for me, it had totally passed. I had done my Nattie-iest and completely blown the moment. “That was . . . I’m just a fount of aphorisms today.”

  Sebastian blinked, then laughed uneasily. “A what?”

  “Um, never mind.” Just something dumb. A second buzz from my phone: JAMBA ALERT NATTIE MAKE OUT AND LET’S GO. But Sebastian’s eyes were intense on me again.

  “I really have to go,” I said, thinking maybe that would prompt him to sweep me into his arms.

  He shrugged. “No worries.”

  “See you later?”

  God knows why I phrased it as a question. But Sebastian gave a little laugh.

  “Yeah. Life’s full of surprises.”

  And then he reached for me, or, actually, for my face, and—not kissed me, but kind of pressed his thumb into my lower lip.

  I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t say uh, bye or anything, because my lip was being pressed hard into my teeth. I could probably, like, lick him, or something, or just mush my mouth into his hand. But then he dropped his hand, and chuckled, and ran a hand through his hair.

  “Bye, Natalie.”

  Face and especially lower lip burning, I felt my way through the dark backstage, pushed my way through the chaos of the Forty Thieves’ set, and ejected myself out onto the sidewalk.

  “There you are,” Tess said from the window of Meredith’s minivan. “That was at least twelve minutes. It’s almost eleven thirty.”

  “Sorry,” I said, clambering into the backseat. “Had to powder my nose.”

  “Mm-hm.” Tess chucked Zach’s shirt at me as Meredith eased the car back into traffic.

  “Everyone have a good time? Make out okay?” Tess flashed a devilish, tight-lipped smile back at me, which I returned with a simple Mona Lisa–style look of mystery. Okay, maybe I hadn’t kissed Sebastian in the technical mouth-on-mouth sense of the word. But we’d kind of had a Moment. A moment with physical contact.

  “They were pretty good, I thought,” Meredith said. Her voice was as loud as if we were still inside Ruby’s instead of her much quieter car. “I kind of thought there would be more O-Dubs people there, though. Did you guys see anyone from school?”

  Tess shrugged and twisted her bangs between her fingers. “It’s college-visiting weekend for the seniors. Everyone’s probably off underage drinking in Ivy League dorms. And I’m pretty sure we’re the only juniors keeping tabs on Sebastian Delacroix.”

  “I just wish that first band hadn’t been so loud,” Meredith went on, as if she hadn’t even heard Tess—which, given the apparent state of her eardrums, she might not have. “It would have been nice to actually hear the lyrics, you know?”

  Tess opened her mouth to reply, but I rushed in first.

  “I don’t think you missed anything,” I said.

  “And I wish Sebastian had come out with the rest of the band. I wanted to tell him he did a good job.” Meredith clicked a turn signal and swung us back toward the highway that would carry us home. Wister seemed like it was a universe away as I watched the patches of light whoosh by, almost matching the rhythm of the poppy, upbeat song on the radio. “God, he’s so cute.”

  Poor, poor Meredith.

  “He’s not cute,” I said at last. “He’s hot.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Something is definitely different. I can see it in the whites of your eyes.”

  Tess jabbed at me with her fork, chewing emphatically through her leftover meatloaf. I just aimed the whites of my eyes down toward my sandwich and tried not to smile.

  “I admit nothing.”

  When I looked back up, Tess had leveled a stare at me. “Sure you don’t,” she said. “Look at you. You can’t even eat.”

  “I can’t even eat because it’s 10:32 in the morning.” Since Upper School lunch at Owen Wister Preparatory Academy started at the ungodly hour of 10:50, we club officials often ended up scarfing down food at the end of third period, which we all had free. I gave my sandwich a valedictory poke and put it away for good. “Are you going to tell me why you called this emergency Monday meeting?”

  Sunday night, Tess had sent me an all-caps Jamba alert that we of the OWPALGBTQIA were to assemble the following day at lunch for a MANDATORY SPECIAL MONDAY MEETING, but why it was special—or mandatory—she had not yet said.

  “One, all in good time, and two, don’t try to change the subject,” Tess said. “Have you listened to it yet? I mean, yet again?”

  “Maybe,” I said. Definitely. “Once or twice.” I l
ost count after twenty.

  “We’re listening to something?” Tall Zach bounded into Dr. Frobisher’s room from the hallway, with Endsignal and his music apparatuses trailing. “What are we listening to?”

  “Oh, just a little group called the Young Lungs.” Tess smiled wolfishly. “They’re Nattie’s new favorite band.”

  “Ooh, isn’t that Sebastian Delacroix’s music thing?” Tall Zach stuffed his legs under the desk by the window and unwrapped two glazed doughnuts from a cafeteria napkin.

  “Absolutely,” Tess said.

  “Um, yeah,” I said.

  “Hey, one of their songs is even called ‘Natalie.’” Endsignal’s voice chirped from somewhere behind his screen. “Did you know that?”

  A dead silence fell in Dr. Frobisher’s room, except for the faint bleeping of the Endsignal battle station.

  “I . . . had an idea,” I said.

  A slow look of realization spread over Tall Zach’s face. “Oh my God,” he said, grinning his giant grin. “Nattie, Sebastian totally loves you!”

  “He does not,” I retorted.

  “Does too,” Tess said, and rapped her pencil against the cover of my Catullus book. “Why else would a straight guy write about a girl?”

  “Catullus wrote to boys, too,” I said to Tess. “He wasn’t totally straight.” But that wasn’t the point. “But that’s not the point. And that’s a terrible lunch, Tall Zach. Especially for an athlete.”

  “But I like doughnuts,” Tall Zach said, and ate one.

  “Um, Natalie?” said Endsignal.

  “Everyone just calls me Nattie,” I said, unsure if I had made this distinction clear to him.

  “Oh.” He sat still for a moment. “I was actually just reading about the Young Lungs on this website, if you want to see.”

  I followed his motions, crouched above his laptop, which was scabbed over with layers of weird stickers and decals, and squinted at the screen, where he had about a billion tabs open.

  “Beatmaxing and timestretching in the Audacity beta release?” I read. “I only know, like, two of those words.”

  “Oh, sorry. Wrong tab. That’s some random DJing stuff.” Endsignal skittered his fingers over the keys and swapped out the black-and-white wall of text for a candy-colored website with a giant cartoon turntable on the top.

  Vivian Violet: Putting the die in indie rock since Kurt Cobain.

  “Is that a person’s name?”

  “Yeah. She’s this awesome DJ from New York who does all this crazy stuff,” Endsignal said. “And a music blogger. She wrote a thing about the Young Lungs the other day.”

  “Um, excuse me? I haven’t even heard the song yet!” Tall Zach said. “Guys, I just want to be cool!”

  “Oh man, you have to. It’s great.” Tess thunked her can of Diet Coke next to Endsignal’s computer and punched in a search for “Young Lungs website Sebastian Delacraw.”

  “That’s not how you spell it,” I said.

  “Whatever.” Tess clicked, and a grainy black-and-white photo of the band greeted us, the same one I’d looked at every hour on the hour for the last two days.

  “Ugh, he is so good-looking,” Tall Zach said. “And that’s such a good picture. So artsy.”

  It looked like the kind of picture Sebastian would take, but he was right in front, looking intense and mysterious as always, and even though I knew I shouldn’t let it, my heart kind of skipped a beat looking at him. I wanted to be like, “Hey, he touched my face once! I mean twice! That cool guy with the haircut and the guitar! Me, Nattie!” but fortunately, I had better sense than to yell this kind of sensitive information out in the middle of school. Tess clicked a little Play button, and suddenly Endsignal’s speakers were pumping out a rhythmic, distorted strum of a guitar.

  “I like it,” Tall Zach said.

  “Got a sick drum part,” Endsignal said.

  “Do we have to do this now?” I said.

  “Shut up, all of you,” Tess said. “Listen to the lyrics.”

  A few bars later, the words started, in a singing voice that I now recognized as Sebastian’s.

  “Well, there’s curves like madness in her hips

  And red like sin painted on her lips

  Got heat like wildfire in her eyes

  A short short skirt riding up those thighs.”

  I squirmed a little. It was one thing for the song to get played on college radio or at a concert full of strangers, but having it played for my actual friends was completely different. I didn’t exactly want Tall Zach and Endsignal, for example, to be thinking about my thighs.

  “Oh, Natalie

  Hair like a burning flame

  Natalie

  I can’t forget her name

  Natalie

  Sets herself apart

  Natalie

  Why’d you break my heart, heart, heart?”

  “That could be anyone,” I said. “By the way.”

  “Shush,” Tall Zach said.

  “Just wait,” Tess said as the chords shifted and sped ahead into the second verse.

  “Too cool to leave, too tough to tease

  And she won’t give in if you don’t say please

  With just one look she can make you burn

  Oh, Natalie, when will I ever learn?”

  “Oh my God, Nattie!” Tall Zach couldn’t handle it. “Do you love this song? It’s so . . . indie rock.”

  “Is it? I mean, it’s . . . the coolest song I’ve heard lately,” I hedged.

  Tess rolled her eyes. “Zach, you’re forgetting that this is the girl who thinks the only thing worth listening to is dead folk singers.”

  “Hey,” I said. “Joni Mitchell isn’t dead.”

  Tess waved a hand. “She’s old. Same difference. And this”—she paused for heightened drama—“is definitely about you. Do you actually think Sebastian even knows another redheaded Natalie?” She gave the end of my ponytail a gentle yank in punctuation.

  I could feel my face go hot pink. Tall Zach wiggled his eyebrows, and Endsignal quietly edged his laptop out of the blast radius of Tess’s Diet Coke.

  “Well?” Tess said.

  “Did he tell you he was going to write you a song, Nattie?” Tall Zach practically had to fold in half to look me in the eyes.

  “Guys.” Panic was starting to crawl up my throat, sharp and unswallowable. “It’s not like we even know that it’s definitely about me. He never said anything about it.”

  “But it’s called ‘Natalie’!” Tall Zach exclaimed. “Who else could it be about?”

  I chewed on my lip. I knew I definitely wasn’t the only girl Sebastian had ever . . . ever what? Touched the face of? “I don’t know, plenty of people,” I said. “It’s not exactly an uncommon name. No one even calls me Natalie.”

  “Wait, wait,” Tess said. “You spent twelve minutes with him and you didn’t even definitively discuss this song?”

  The heat went back into my cheeks. “Um, not exactly, no.”

  “Then what else were you doing?” Tess yelped.

  “We were . . . I don’t know. Talking. And stuff.”

  “Well, I’m declaring the song is about you,” Tess said. “It has to be.”

  “Nattie! You’re so special,” Tall Zach cried, stooping down to give me a squeeze on the shoulder. “That song is totally about you.”

  “Thanks. I mean, sort of,” I said. “Sebastian wrote poetry for, like, every other girl at this school. Right?” I turned around and found myself looking at Endsignal, who just shrugged.

  “But this is a song,” Tall Zach said. “And wasn’t it on the radio? That’s different.”

  “It was on college radio. That’s not that different.”

  “So, congrats and everything, but . . . ,” Endsignal piped up from below me. He was staring at Tess in an unmistakable get away from my computer kind of way, but she ignored him and flicked back to the search results.

  “Look at this. They’re all over the blogosphere.”


  “There’s only six pages of results,” Tall Zach said.

  “And no one says blogosophere,” Endsignal said.

  Now it was my turn to laugh. Tess looked indignant.

  “I’m just trying to celebrate my best friend’s newfound fame, if that’s all right with you?”

  “I’m not famous,” I said flatly. “There are cats that have more internet fame than I do.”

  “On the internet, no one knows you’re a cat,” mused Endsignal.

  “Guys!” I said, more sharply than I meant to. There were definitely more than a few pages of results, though. I swallowed hard. “Sorry. But can we just . . . not talk about it? Especially not at school? I don’t really want it to be, like, a thing.”

  “Sure, of course,” Tall Zach said immediately, then frowned. “Wait. Won’t Wister people figure it out, though?”

  “Oh . . . I doubt it,” I said, more to convince myself than anyone else. Tall Zach looked intrigued, or possibly incredulous, so I kept talking. “When Sebastian was here, he and I were, like, polar social opposites, right? And, um, he’s two years ahead of us. I mean, if you hadn’t heard this song, would you even think someone like me had ever even spoken to Sebastian?”

  Tall Zach considered, chewing. “Would you be mad if I said no?” He flashed a grin before I could answer. “No, no, I promise. Sworn to silence. As long as everyone else is.”

  Tess slumped her shoulders. “Fine. Sorry.” She relinquished the computer, to Endsignal’s visible relief, and went back to her lunch. “I just thought it was flattering.”

  “What’s flattering?”

  Zach the Anarchist, in a T-shirt with an upside-down American flag, swung through the double doors to Dr. Frobisher’s room, right under the big sign that said “Procul O Procul Este Profani.” Mercifully, before anyone and especially Tess could answer, the post-third-period rush flooded into the hallway and OWPALGBTQIA kids started to push their way in.

  “Nattie was just—” Tess started.

  “—nothing,” I interrupted. “No one has ever paid me a compliment of any form in, uh, ever.”

  I gave Tess an unmistakable I’ll send you a Jamba alert about it later kind of look. I felt sort of bad about keeping a secret from Zach the Anarchist, especially when he’d been the one to drive us, but if I was being honest with myself, I was scared of what he would do if he knew. Not that I knew what his reaction to knowing about the song would be or anything. But maybe that was what made me so nervous.