Who's That Girl

by Blair Thornburgh

  “Number twelve in Germany,” Tess said. “What? I looked it up.”

  Mom shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Me neither,” I said. “I mean, I’m joking. Here’s the thing.”

  So I explained the whole stupid story, starting with the show at Ruby’s and going through the single on the radio, the single everywhere, the show in New York and our selfie with Vivian Violet, and ending with the disastrous confrontation in the yurt.

  Silence, except for the beeping of my various monitors. Sam Huang laughed. So did Tess.

  “Are you serious?” she crowed. “That dumb-dumb Delacroix doesn’t even know the most important basic fact of Nattie safety?”

  “Delacroix?” Mom was on high alert. “Wait. Who is Delacroix?”

  “Sounds like a Napoleonic duke,” Dad said. “A Napoleonic duke who got a lot of swirlies in middle school.”

  “Uh.” Sebastian was back at the door. “That’s me. Sebastian Delacroix. Hey.”

  “Who,” Mom said, voice quavering with rage, “are you?”

  “Sebastian,” said Sebastian. “Look, I’m, uh, really sorry about all this. I swear I didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “Eat the Pop-Tart?” Mom asked.

  “Kiss my daughter?” Dad asked.

  “Write that song?” Tess asked.

  “Uh . . .” Sebastian looked genuinely lost. Every part of him had gone limp, even his hair. Especially his hair. And weirdly, even though I was the one hooked up to all the monitors, I felt kind of bad for him. He scratched the back of his head with his phone. “I just texted the guys. We can totally play the dance if we really have to.”

  I looked at Tess hopefully, but she just pursed her lips hard.

  “After all this bullshit? No way.”

  “But Tess.” I tried to sit up on my cardboard pillows. “What if nobody comes? What if everyone goes to that party?”

  “Oh, but they won’t.” She smiled the prim, contented smile of someone who has an ace up her sleeve. “Sam, would you like to explain?”

  All eyes went to Sam Huang, who stepped over to my bedside and held out his phone. It was a screenshot of someone’s Pixstagram feed—cfranxx00. The top picture was a bunch of bottles: cant wait for friday!!! #therealwinterformal #acappellalife. 36 likes

  “It’s Celeste,” Sam Huang said. “Soprano section. She was going to bring them to the party. I was invited, but—”

  “Sam’s being modest,” Tess said, and clapped him on the shoulder so hard it must’ve hurt. “He turned them in! Everyone who RSVP’d to their party is bus-ted.”

  “Really?”

  Sam Huang nodded. “Suspended. For a week.”

  “Sam!” I tried to hug him, but ended up just kind of wrapping an arm around his neck due to my many machine tethers. “You’re the best.”

  “So . . . does that mean you don’t need us to play?”

  Everyone swiveled to where Sebastian was just kind of holding his phone aloft. Then everyone swiveled to me. I took a deep breath, or as deep a breath as I could.

  “No,” I said. “No, we don’t.”

  Tess folded her arms. Zach the Anarchist pressed his lips together in what was almost a smile. Sebastian just looked blank. Blank and a little hurt. Chunks of hair were falling out of his man-bun. And he was clenching and unclenching his hand again.

  “Wrist pain?” Sam Huang asked. Sebastian frowned.

  “How did you—”

  Sam Huang said nothing, but shot a look in my direction. Dad stepped forward, a very Dad-like sympathetic expression on his face. “I think you’d better go, son. Good luck with your band.”

  Sebastian put his phone in his pocket. “I . . . is that what you want?” He was looking at me, with those eyes I had once thought were, I don’t know, dark depths of artistic meaning. Clearly, he was desperate for me to forgive him. And strangely, I found I could.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But don’t worry. I’m not mad. About, um, any of it. You’re fine.”

  Sebastian looked a little relieved, probably because he realized that even if I did die, my family wouldn’t sue. “Okay. Well, get better soon, Natalie.”

  “It’s Nattie,” I said.

  “Oh,” he said. “Right.”

  And with that, Sebastian left, finally, finally gone for good from my life.

  As soon as he’d disappeared, Mom clucked her tongue at me.

  “Him, Nattie? You kissed him?”

  “Sort of.” I twisted the pulse monitor around my finger. “He kinda kissed me first. I don’t, um, actually think I like him that much.”

  “Thank God,” Dad muttered. “I don’t think I’d be able to trust him with you.”

  “Dad,” I said, with a look at Tess. “I’m a human being, not a piece of chattel.”

  “A very cute human being,” Tess said, and kissed my temple. “I’m so glad you’re not dead.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Me too.”

  “Me too,” said Sam Huang.

  “Us too,” said my parents.

  “Me too,” Zach the Anarchist said. “For sure,” he added softly.

  “Snacks!”

  The door banged open and Tall Zach and Endsignal returned, arms full of bright packages that they dumped onto my blanket-covered legs.

  “They didn’t have Triscuits or Wheat Thins, but—” Tall Zach looked up from where he was spreading out the bounty. “Nattie! Are you okay?”

  “We can go look for Wheat Thins,” Endsignal offered.

  I shook my head, scrubbing at my eyes. Silently, Sam Huang took my empty ice-chips cup and started for the hallway.

  “Wait,” I said. Sam waited. “Sam, I’m sorry I said that to you. Before. I’m glad you’re my not-exactly brother.” I hiccupped. “Tess, I’m sorry for . . . well, everything. And Zach and Other Zach and Mom and Dad . . . I’m sorry, everyone. I’m just . . . I don’t know.” The Benadryl was really starting to kick in, and I felt like I was trying to talk underwater. “I’m gross and blotchy and this is so weird and embarrassing. I’m so weird and embarrassing. I’m just . . . I don’t know why I’m lucky enough to have you.”

  A tear trickled down my cheek.

  “Hey! Hey,” Zach the Anarchist said. “It’s not weird.”

  I sniffled and gave him a look. “I’m in the hospital, covered in snacks, because I don’t know how to kiss right.”

  “Okay, it’s a little weird.” His pink cheeks were back. “But it’s not embarrassing.”

  “We’re glad we have you, too, Nattie,” said Tess.

  “Really glad,” said Sam Huang.

  “You could never embarrass us,” said Dad.

  “Sebastian doesn’t know what he’s missing,” said Tall Zach.

  I laughed, and then cried a little bit more, and then everyone started tearing into the snacks. Sam Huang brought me more ice chips, Tess ate an entire package of Butterscotch Krimpets, and Endsignal and Dad got into a long conversation about the history of sound engineering. Also, at some point, Zach the Anarchist slipped his hand into mine.

  “Everything okay?” It was Nurse Brett, back at the door. “Whoa. Hi, everybody.”

  Nurse Brett did some nurse-ly things and told me that as long as I kept up the good work, I would probably be good to go home in a couple hours. Everyone cheered.

  “Somebody’s popular,” Nurse Brett said. “Glad I could deliver good news.”

  He left, and everyone started throwing things out and deciding who was getting a ride home with whom. Except Zach the Anarchist, who wasn’t moving from my bedside, and Mom, who was hovering by the window, her sweatshirted arms folded and another round of tears twinkling at the corner of her eye.

  “See? Look at this.” Dad wrapped his arm around Mom’s waist and nodded at the packed room. “You bring people together, Nattie Gann.”

  He kissed Mom, and she smiled.

  “It’s true,” she said. “You’re our star, Nattie.”

  Zach the Anarchist gave my hand a squee
ze.

  By the time my skin went back to its normal Nattie color and I was declared fit to be discharged, it was almost ten at night. Tess and Tall Zach and Endsignal had all left an hour or two before, so it was just Dad and Mom and Sam Huang and Zach the Anarchist and me who headed out to the waiting room. My parents went up to the counter to deal with the paperwork, and Sam Huang took a seat in the corner so that Zach and I could pretend that we were alone together. Which was actually kind of nice.

  “Do you need these?” Zach handed me the stack of printed-out aftercare instructions Nurse Brett had given me after he’d unhooked me from all the machines.

  “Gross.” I folded them up and gave them back to Zach. “I can’t even think about it. I’m still too traumatized.”

  Zach rolled his eyes and reopened the handout. “You know, when hospitals give you things to read, they’re usually pretty important.”

  “What’s to know? Just don’t eat strawberries again,” I said. Then, after a second, I added, “Or, um, you know, get them near my mouth in any way. Which I’m not going to. Again.”

  Zach was busy reading the handout. “The steroids can give you a flush, but it’s perfectly normal. And apparently you can also have something called a biphasic reaction.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A recurrence of symptoms within seventy-two hours. So, uh, watch out.” Zach handed me back the papers, and this time, I kept them. The CCTV above Sam Huang kept blaring something about the importance of whole grains and the other waiting people rustled their magazines and the two of us just sat next to each other for a minute. And I have to say, sitting next to Zach West was very reassuring, even when he wasn’t reading to me from my own medical literature.

  “Zach,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  His head jerked up. “What?”

  “About everything I said at your house. And . . . everything.” I chewed my lip. It wasn’t the world’s most articulate apology. But Zach didn’t seem to mind.

  “It’s okay.” He smiled. “I’m just glad you’re alive. Dying with that on your conscience would’ve probably doomed you to becoming a ghost or something.”

  “Ugh, I’d be the worst ghost,” I said. “I look terrible in white.”

  Zach chuckled, and we sat there a moment longer, listening to the whole-grains lady on the CCTV struggle to pronounce quinoa.

  “So there’s this dance coming up,” Zach said suddenly.

  “I think I heard about that.”

  “Do you want to go?”

  “I am going. I mean, I guess I’m grounded, but I’ll have to figure something out. Because Tess will kill me if I don’t.”

  “Yeah.” The corner of Zach’s mouth twitched. “I meant do you want to go with me?”

  Oh God. Duh. My skin got hot, and my mouth went terrifically dry, and I briefly wondered if I was indeed having a biphasic reaction.

  “Are you okay?” Zach asked. Nurse Brett, who just happened to be passing by with a clipboard, skidded to a stop. I waved him off.

  “I’m fine!” I said cheerily. “Still breathing just great!” I took a few healthy inhales to show him. To Zach, I said, “Sorry. Um. Yes. I would. Like to. That would be great.”

  “Yeah?” Zach smiled, and I noticed that he’d been fidgeting with the hem of his T-shirt.

  “Of course,” I said. “What did you think I was going to say? You’re one of my best friends.”

  Zach stopped fidgeting, and instantly my heart sank. Shoot. SHOOT. I’d blown it. I’d said the thing I didn’t mean to say and didn’t even mean, period. I turned in my little plastic seat, trying to read Zach’s expression, trying to think of anything to say that would counteract what I’d just said or just make sense already.

  “I mean,” I started. “What I meant was—”

  “Nattie, do you like me?”

  I opened my mouth, but he wasn’t done.

  “Because I like you. And I’m sorry I’m not great about saying it. I guess . . .” He blew out a breath. “I guess I was figuring you’d catch on, which was stupid of me, but—”

  “Wait.” I put up a hand. “Catch on? Catch on to what?”

  Zach stared. “Latin? You don’t really think I’m that bad at class, do you?”

  My face flushed, in a nonanaphylactic kind of way. Zach laughed.

  “Wow. Well, so much for my reputation as an academic all-star.”

  “You were really bad at some of those translations,” I said. “I hope you didn’t fail any tests for me.”

  He shrugged. “It all worked out. I got to see you a lot more. And that was pretty cool, so . . .”

  Over at the desk area, my parents appeared to be wrapping up, by which I mean Mom was putting her hat back on and Dad was tugging at the zipper on his polar fleece. I looked back at Zach.

  “So . . . is that a yes?” he said quietly.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Yes, you’ll go, or yes, you actually . . .”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes and yes.”

  Zach smiled, and I smiled back. That was it—stupid and simple and right. It was kind of incredible, what could happen when you finally came out and just told the truth. Fortune did actually favor the bold.

  Which gave me an idea. As soon as my skin had lost its last trace of steroid-induced flush, I had a Pixstagram selfie to take.

  @nmccullz

  11:37 p.m.

  Hi, people of the internet and of the world. I’m Natalie and you may have heard of me.

  For the past few weeks, everyone’s been trying to figure out who the Real Natalie is. Well, using the power of social media, I’m here to tell you. The real Natalie is 17, allergic to strawberries, loves her friends so much she’d die for them as long as it wasn’t a particularly painful method of death, and has a Latin test this week. What she is not is Sebastian Delacroix’s ex-girlfriend.

  So there’s your answer. I know it’s anticlimactic. You probably wanted some cool drama, or epic heartbreak, or even a lawsuit, but really, that’s all there is to my side of the story.

  Well, sort of.

  See, the thing I’ve realized about songs is that they can be about anything—cute girls, cute boys, making toast, whatever. What really matters is what they do to you. How they make you feel. About that stuff, Sebastian’s totally right. And over the past few weeks I’ve seen so many people freak out and go crazy and clap and cheer over “Natalie”—not me, Natalie the person, but “Natalie” the song. So if you like the song, you have my official permission to keep liking it. I don’t want anything out of it other than for everyone to just leave me alone for the rest of forever. That’s it. Enjoy.

  —Natalie, alias Nattie

  #Natalie #music #indie #pop #rock #younglungs #YLs #sebastiandelacroix #sebdel #sleepmore #fortroxrecords #vivianviolet #buzzklik #jawharpmag

  PS. Okay, I lied. There’s a link in my profile to support my awesome best friend, who spent seven hundred dollars of her own money to stage our school’s first officially queer-friendly dance. If there’s one thing I want out of this, it’s for that dance to just rock.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “Okay. Time.” Tess patted the side of the tub. “Let’s rinse.”

  She flicked on the water and gave the shower wand a few test pulses. I unwrapped the towel, bent over obediently, and watched as Clairol Raven Black 001 swirled down the Kozlowskis’ drain.

  “All done. I think,” Tess said. I heaved my head out of the tub and shook it like a dog.

  “Hey!” Tess threw a clean towel over my head. “Watch it.”

  “It looks weird,” I said. “Does it? Does it look weird?”

  Tess ignored me and scrubbed a bit roughly at my head. “It looks fine. Dry yourself off and let’s get you in hot rollers.”

  The last three days had been . . . eventful, to say the least. Mom let me stay home from school on Tuesday and sleep in. I came back to school on Wednesday, and if people were talking, I didn’t care. I had more important things to worr
y about, like my Latin test.

  Catullus 85:

  Translate:

  Odi et amo. Quare id

  I hate and I love. Why I do this,

  faciam, fortasse requiris.

  by chance you ask.

  nescio, sed fieri sentio et

  I don’t know, but I feel it

  excrucior.

  happening and I am tormented.

  Catullus 70:

  Nulli se dicit mulier mea nubere malle

  quam mihi, non si se Iuppiter ipse petat.

  dicit: sed mulier cupido quod dicit amanti,

  in vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua.

  Translate:

  To no one herself my woman says that she prefers to marry

  than me, not even if Jupiter himself might seek her.

  She says [this ??]: but what a woman says to her desirous lover

  Is fitting to write on the wind and the fast water.

  Theme analysis:

  This whole semester, we’ve been studying Catullus. And that’s great—he is a poet, he did write a lot. He talks all about how torturous art is, and I’m sure making poetry was difficult. But right now, I’m honestly much more sympathetic toward Lesbia. She was smart, too, and she was probably a perfectly normal person—flawed, maybe, but who isn’t? But we can’t know for sure. We can’t know because all we do know about her is what a man tells us about her, which is a little—for lack of a more academic term—creepy. Catullus says he loves her and wants to give her literal millions of kisses, but then he turns around and he writes poems about her giving sexual favors in the back alleys of Rome. At best, he’s mercurial; at worst, completely inconsistent—he literally says he hates her and loves her at the same time—and yet somehow he attempts to claim that women are the ones whose opinions change with the wind and water. Everyone says women are crazy, but reading Catullus makes you realize that everyone who says that is just a bunch of angry dudes.

  When I got my test back, I’d aced it: A– for the translation, A+ for the analysis. Spoken like a true feminist, Dr. Frobisher had scribbled on the bottom of the sheet. You should read some Sappho.

  “Five minutes.” Tess came into her bedroom, hands on hips, looking absolutely dynamite in her vintage suit and red lipstick. “Make that four.”