Isabelle’s face went white. She sat there for a second, her lips scrunched tight. Like she was deciding whether or not to ask the question. Finally she did.
“Did Chantal sleep over?”
Jess giggled. “No!”
Isabelle closed her eyes and took a long, relieved breath.
“But she came back for breakfast in the morning. She brought pastries—corrsants and—”
Before Jess could finish, Isabelle stood up, grabbed her phone, and disappeared into the bedroom. After the first “How could you?” Carly whisked Jess outside, promising a trip to the playground in Riverside Park and her choice of chips at Nuevo Mundo.
Carly and Isabelle didn’t see eye to eye on much those days, but she was with her mother on this one:
How could he? Wasn’t there, like, a mandatory waiting period before you were supposed to introduce your kid to your new girlfriend?
It wasn’t just the timing, though. When Isabelle and Nick first got together, they used to fake Carly out with the coming-over-for-breakfast trick. Nick would be there when she went to bed, but not when she woke up. Then, suspiciously soon after she’d gotten out of bed, he’d suddenly show up with the newspaper and bagels, pretending to “come over for breakfast” when what he’d really done was sneak out as soon as they heard Carly stir. When the truth finally dawned on Carly a few years later, they all laughed about it together. It was their family joke.
The IKEA stuff stayed in boxes.
Most of it, anyway. Carly put together this one piece they had bought for her “room”: a tall, narrow cubbyhole/ shelf thing “perfect for making the most of small urban spaces,” according to the catalogue.
It took her three hours. Four if she counted the ten-block search for a place to buy a screwdriver and wrench. She did her best to follow the nonverbal instructions, did everything the smiling cartoon IKEA man did, but something wasn’t right. She had to prop it in the corner to keep it from falling over. Despite her efforts to even it out with folded bits of cardboard, it wobbled every time she put something away or got something out.
Isabelle’s dreams of living large in small spaces seemed to fizzle after that incident. She stopped looking for apartments. She pretty much stopped cooking. And she didn’t do much talking, either.
Always the professional, she still managed to get up and go to work every day, driving all the Bellwin seniors about their applications and essays as hard as she’d always done.
That was the other thing.
As the daughter of the college-placement director at the Julia Bellwin School for Girls, Carly was quite familiar with the annual collective insanity that gripped 25 percent of the upper-school population and their parents every fall.
Even though most of them hired private consultants, and even though Isabelle had a staff of associates, Bellwin parents expected Isabelle Greene, placement counselor extraordinaire, to “be there for them” and their daughters during this trying time.
College-crazed parents were the reason they had an unlisted home number and the reason Carly was under strict orders never to give her mother’s cell number to anyone she hadn’t preauthorized. One Sunday morning about three years before, Carly, Jess, and Isabelle had been accosted by Lindsey Nakashima, her mother, and her father when they walked out of their building on their way to the park. They’d obviously been waiting a long time. Each held a different version of Lindsey’s personal statement for Harvard. The early-action deadline was the next day, and they couldn’t decide whether Lindsey should go with the one about how capoeira had changed her life, or the one about her homeless friend, Nadine, whose grit and determination had opened Lindsey’s eyes to the injustices of the world and the strength of the human spirit.
And yet, in spite of all she’d seen and heard over the years, Carly was still caught off guard in September when everyone around her turned into a freaked-out zombie, unable to talk about anything except “apps.”
Even Val. Even though she had always made fun of the craziness before.
Carly tried not to hold it against her. Val had more to worry about than most of the other Ivy League aspirers. She didn’t just need to get in; she needed financial aid. Because she would be the first generation of her family to go to college, Val was eligible for several special scholarships at the schools where she was applying. These programs often had their own separate, additional applications, so Val was doubly busy.
And then there was Jake. He was now at Cornell, but that didn’t necessarily free up time. When she wasn’t staring into her computer, working on the various versions of her personal statement, Val was staring at her phone, smiling at Jake’s nonstop texts.
Carly and Val never talked about it explicitly, but it was clear that their friendship was changing.
Val and Brian met twice, and neither time did anything to dispel Val’s assumptions about him or to convince her that he was the great, affectionate, level-headed guy Carly knew him to be.
The first time was when Carly dragged Val to a gig, one of the Thursday-night new-band showcases at Train. They could only stay until eleven, and EiE didn’t go on until ten thirty, which meant that the only opportunity for Carly to introduce them was before the show, and Brian was never at his interpersonal best before a show. The pressure of performing in New York had made this even worse, and when Carly brought Val backstage to introduce them, Brian barely looked up from his bass.
He wasn’t completely rude. He said “Hey, Val,” and he did make eye contact with her and even smiled when he did. It wasn’t like he didn’t make an effort. He explained that he’d just broken a string warming up and wanted to get the new one replaced so that he could get back to warming up.
“Can you guys stick around after our set?”
But they couldn’t. Angela was very strict about that stuff. It had been hard enough to get her to agree to let Val out on a school night.
Val wasn’t mean about it. She told Carly she understood about how Brian got tense before a show. And she was obviously really impressed with the music. They stayed for two songs, and Val told Carly she thought the band was really good, much better than she had imagined. Maybe they did have a shot at success.
But she obviously wasn’t any closer to thinking Brian was great boyfriend material.
The next weekend, Val suggested Carly invite him to the restaurant for Sunday brunch. Jake was going to be down from Ithaca for the weekend. It would be fun for all of them to get together. But it didn’t happen. Or not the way it was supposed to. Brian called that morning to report that the water heater in the Brooklyn house had flooded and Sheryl needed him to find a plumber and supervise the repairs for the tenants. No one trusted Avery to handle this kind of thing. He said he’d try to make it later, but they shouldn’t wait for him to eat.
So Carly sat through brunch with Val and her friendly, well-mannered boyfriend, who showed up on time, ordered in perfect Spanish, and made a point of including Carly in all their conversations. Brian showed up three hours after the brunch was supposed to start. Jake had to catch a train, so the two of them merely shook hands. When Val brought a plate of chicken stew, pink beans, and rice, Brian asked if he could have it to go. He apologized. Said it looked and smelled great and he was sure he’d love it later, but he was just too full to eat. He had gotten so hungry, he’d ordered a pizza and split it with the plumber.
After that, Carly realized she would have to give up the idea that if Val could just get to know Brian, she’d understand why Carly was so nuts about him. He missed brunch because he was a responsible son who took care of the stuff that needed taking care of. He wasn’t being rude about the food. He really did like it, and later that night when he was back home in Brooklyn, he called Carly to tell her how great it was and how he had to fight Liam and Avery off for it. Carly passed that information on to Val, but it didn’t appear to have much—if any—impact.
They continued to work together every Saturday night, and they still hung out together at school
, but Carly and Val had less and less to talk about with each other.
Talking to Paula Castleman was no longer an option. In fact, Paula was no longer. She’d gone to Rome that summer and come back wanting to be called “Paola,” the Italian version of her name, pronounced kind of, but not exactly, like “Pow-La.” Every time she saw Carly and Val, she’d greet them with nonironic two-cheeked European kisses and exclaim, “Bella! Bella!” It was what you did in Rome.
Paula had somehow become friends with Chloe Brosnan, Bellwin’s biggest junior socialite and budding philanthropist. That fall, Chloe was putting on her first very own charity ball, raising money on behalf of endangered gorillas in Africa, and she’d invited Pow-La to be on her “advisory board.” From what Carly could tell, this involved difficult tasks like deciding which kinds of hors d’oeuvres to serve and what colors to choose for their theme.
All of this made Carly a lot more needy when it came to Brian. The only time she felt right was when she was with him.
But being with Brian in New York was a lot more complicated than it had been at Stony Hollow, where they saw each other every day at work and Ernestine’s was a five-minute walk from the camp. Upper Manhattan and Brooklyn, though technically both part of the entity known as New York City, are pretty far apart. The fastest public transportation could bring them together was forty-five minutes, and that didn’t count walking to the subway or waiting on the platform.
They stayed in almost constant electronic contact. Carly would text him when she woke up in the morning and hear back from him when he got up a few hours later. They’d exchange more texts at lunch and between classes.
But whenever they wanted to see each other live and in person, they had to figure out a time and place to meet. She couldn’t see him during school hours, and he couldn’t see her most nights because of practice and gigs. Plus, to make ends meet, he started working weekend days at a music store in Greenwich Village. Carly needed her Saturday-night shifts at SJNY more than ever now that her mother was watching every dollar.
All told, they probably had ten good face-to-face days in the two months they lasted past the end of summer.
That’s an average of one good day a week.
And those good days really only amounted to a few hours at a time.
There was one great afternoon walk through Riverside Park; one movie-montage-worthy trip to the mummy exhibit at the Met. One cold Sunday morning in early October they took the subway out to Coney Island and drank three hot chocolates apiece while they snuggled on a bench on the boardwalk making up stories about the people walking by.
Truly private time was even harder to find. The basement apartment in the Brooklyn house only had one bedroom. Avery and Liam were nice about it, and would make themselves busy on Sunday afternoons so Carly and Brian could get a little alone time. They had one amazing night on Carly’s little futon on the floor when Jess was at Nick’s and Isabelle was out for dinner and a movie with her sister Nancy, and Carly felt as good as she had during the summer.
When it was just the two of them, she didn’t hate the apartment. She imagined they were living there together, that she was in college and he was playing music and they were poor but happy young people in New York.
When they were alone together like that, she felt like she had during those afternoons at Baldwin Rock, or nights they sat out on Brian’s roof, or on the day he took her to the secret underground room.
But as those weeks went by, another Carly emerged. This Carly was whiny, needy, clingy, and jealous. She took over Carly’s thoughts, put words in her mouth, and made her do stuff she’d instantly regret but somehow couldn’t stop herself from doing.
It was like being possessed.
16
THE FIRST time this happened was in October.
Ernestine is Everywhere got booked for the weekly Thursday-night showcase at Train, a club on the Lower East Side. Shira Zeidman, a drama major from LaGuardia Arts High who ran a popular indie-music blog called ShiraZ, wanted an interview. She told Brian she’d seen a lot of bands come and go, and she thought they really had something.
Liam and Avery didn’t think some drama-nerd girl with a blog could do much for them, but Brian knew better. He understood that if the arty New York kids liked you, word would spread fast and no telling how far. He’d done his homework—seen how many friends and followers Shira had and knew she’d reviewed and interviewed some big bands before they’d gotten big.
He was excited about it and invited Carly to come along. So on a rainy October afternoon, they met up after school and trekked across town to Café Fortuna, where Shira used the big back booth as her office.
Carly drank tea and ate chocolate cake and listened while Brian told Shira the story of how the band was born. As well as Carly knew the story, she loved hearing it again. She loved hearing Brian talk about the place where everything started. Not just EiE, but also the two of them.
Shira asked him about the band’s name and Carly sat up, waiting for him to give her props for thinking of it. She listened happily and proudly as Brian told Shira all about Ernestine, how she had encouraged the boys to pursue their music, especially after their father died. How she had made The Plan with them: pursue the music dream for a year, and if it looked like something was going to happen, keep going. If there was no progress, then back to school.
Carly waited for him to get to the part about how she came up with the name that night they all sat around Ernestine’s table, brainstorming.
But he never did. He told Shira all about Ernestine’s house—the funky rooms, the needlepoint, the crocheted afghans, the Ernestineisms and Ernestineabilia. But he never told her about how Carly was the first one to say “Ernestine is Everywhere.”
When they left the café, she tried really hard not to ask him about it. She wanted to just be happy for them. She told herself it wasn’t about her. She should be happy that the band was starting to get some buzz. It didn’t matter who came up with the name. What mattered was that it was a good name. It was the right name. It wasn’t like she was actually in the band or had written the songs or anything.
But before they’d even gotten a full block away from the café, she found herself saying, “Don’t I get even a little credit?” She tried to make it sound light and jokey, but even she could hear the whiny undertone.
“Huh?”
“For coming up with ‘Ernestine is Everywhere’?”
“Of course you do,” he said, putting his arm around her and pulling her close. It was raining even harder now, and when he kissed her neck, he sent a trickle of water rolling down her back. “It’s a great name.”
“So why didn’t you tell her it was my idea?” By now there was nothing under about the tone. She was flat-out whining, and she wasn’t sure why.
“I didn’t?” He squinted, puzzled, like he really thought he had.
She shook her head. “Nope.”
“Oh, geez. I meant to, Carl. I totally meant to.”
But he hadn’t.
“I guess it slipped my mind. I was nervous, you know? I wanted her to like me and tell people to come see us, so I just wasn’t thinking about that part of the story.”
“Of course. Forget I said anything. It’s not important.”
“It is important. Everybody loves our name. I’m going to tell her.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket.
“No! Don’t do that.” Now she was embarrassed. “It’s silly. Just leave it.” But she was glad to hear him say that it mattered to him. And she was glad that he ignored her protests and typed out a text.
“Too late,” he said with a smile as he shut the phone and put it back in his pocket. “It’s done.”
Carly stayed up that night, hitting Refresh on Shira’s blog over and over until the interview showed up.
ShiraZ
ERNESTINEISEVERYWHERE
If you’ve been at any of the new-music showcases at Train recently, you’ve probably been wondering, as have we, why you
never heard of Ernestine is Everywhere before. You’re probably also wondering when you’ll get to see these guys headlining, instead of playing a few songs jammed between amateurish wannabes. The guitar-bass-and-drums trio, made up of Brooklyn-born brothers Brian and Avery Quinn and their cousin Liam Quinn, has spent much of the last five years writing songs and working on their quirkily arranged ’80s covers locked in a shed behind their grandmother’s house upstate.
Okay, maybe not locked. But the door was closed, and no one was allowed in.
Their grandmother’s name was—anyone?—Ernestine, of course, and the boys credit her with giving them the inspiration to pursue their music seriously. “She was amazing,” says bassist and songwriter Brian. “When we moved in with her, she gave us the shed and told us to get to work. She had it wired for electricity, and our mother let us spend all our time back there.” Their name, suggested by a family friend, is tribute to her influence.
A family friend?
What did that mean?
Is that what Brian texted her? Or were those Shira’s words? She couldn’t ask him. Not after whining like she had that afternoon. And she couldn’t ask Shira. That would be totally weird.
Her doubts should have been put to rest a few days later, when Brian invited her out to Brooklyn for the boys’ first attempt at putting on a Quinn family Sunday-night dinner without Sheryl there to cook. Avery had gone up to Ernestine’s the day before, and Sheryl sent him back with a batch of her special spaghetti sauce—made with the last of the summer tomatoes—and step-by-step instructions for re-creating her garlic bread.
When Carly got there, she found the three of them laughing it up in the kitchen. Brian stood at the stove warming sauce, boiling water, and assembling the garlic bread; Avery and Liam sat at the table, each with a laptop in front of him. Ever since Shira’s interview, they’d been bombarded with new friend requests, most of them from girls, and a lot of them offering more than cyber friendship.
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