Stalker Girl

by Rosemary Graham

  Avery and Liam were into it. Big-time. One by one they would check out every girl wanting to friend them. They didn’t reject anybody. That would be bad business. But if a girl looked hot, they might strike up a messaging relationship.

  Avery started going a little nuts, promising all these girls he’d put them on the guest list, inviting them backstage, taking their cell numbers.

  Brian didn’t approve.

  “Whoa. Whoa. Hold on. Only real girlfriends go on the guest list.”

  “Dude. That’s not fair. You’re the only one with a ‘real girlfriend.’ We’re supposed to just let all these opportunities fly by?”

  “Dude. Do you know how many psychos are out there?”

  Avery looked at Liam and smiled. “Psycho isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”

  “Yeah,” Liam laughed. “There’s ‘Woo-hoo, let’s party’ psycho, and there’s ‘Hi, I’m going to seem fun and wild at first, but then I’m going to get scary and start stalking you’ psycho.”

  “My point exactly,” Brian said, as he lifted the pasta pot from the stove and carried it to the sink. Carly watched his biceps expand as he poured the spaghetti into the colander, rejoicing in the affirmation of her status as girlfriend, hoping they’d get some time alone after dinner. “So don’t you think we should have some standards? Some kind of limit on who we put on that list?”

  “Okay, does this girl look like a psycho?” Avery walked over to the stove, holding the screen of his laptop out for Brian to see. A blonde girl in a lacy black bra gazed seductively into her webcam, puckering her lips.

  Brian laughed. “Yeah, as a matter of fact she does.”

  The question about how to manage the guest list consumed the dinner conversation. Brian agreed to give up the “only real girlfriends” idea, and Liam and Avery agreed that they’d each put only one girl on per show, and only after meeting her in person and establishing that she wasn’t “an obvious psycho.”

  Because you couldn’t always tell at first.

  That conversation should have put Carly’s mind to rest

  It didn’t matter what Shira Zeidman said or thought, or what people who read her blog thought. It mattered what Brian thought. And now she’d heard it in no uncertain terms. She was his girlfriend.

  His real, guest-list-worthy girlfriend. The only real girlfriend among the Quinn boys.

  And so why in the world would she even think about picking up his phone a little while later when she thought he couldn’t see her and scrolling through his sent-message box to find that text he’d sent to Shira a few days before?

  This was the night of what would turn out to be the final game of the World Series, and everyone expected the Red Sox—the Yankees’ archenemies—to sweep the Colorado Rockies. Brian refused to watch, so he and Carly were in the bedroom watching a DVD while Avery and Liam followed the game in the living room. After some big play they called to Brian, demanding that he come and watch the replay.

  It wasn’t premeditated. It was barely even meditated. It just kind of happened. She was looking around his room idly, thinking how different it was from room nine at Ernestine’s. Smaller and darker, with a slight musty basement smell coming from the old green carpet. When she looked at the carpet she saw the phone lying next to the futon, practically within reach. All she had to do was scoot over and stretch out her arm, and she’d know what he said in that text.

  She didn’t even get to Wednesday’s messages before he walked in on her, saying, “So we should probably think about getting you ho—”

  If she hadn’t gasped and shut the phone as soon as she heard his voice, her lie probably wouldn’t have seemed so obvious.

  “Just checking the time,” she said. But she said it way too fast. And too high-pitched. “I was thinking the same thing. It’s getting late.”

  Brian stood there for a moment, head cocked to the side, like he was thinking something over. Carly was sure he was going to ask her what she’d really been doing with his phone. But then he didn’t. He just said, “Yeah. Underground is just where I wanna be when that game ends.”

  She decided she had to confess. And so in one long, messy blurt delivered somewhere under the East River, she told him how she’d been obsessing over Shira’s interview, wondering whether he was the one who used the phrase “family friend” and what that said about how he saw her.

  “Is that how you think of me, as a ‘family friend’? Don’t we have something more than that going on here?”

  She knew as soon as she heard herself saying these things that she was ruining it. The look on Brian’s face—a combination of perplexed and annoyed—was one she hadn’t seen before, and she didn’t like it. Up to then, she’d managed to keep her growing insecurity inside the privacy of her own head. Now that she’d spoken it out loud, it just sounded crazy.

  He hadn’t even noticed that Shira called her a “family friend,” and he didn’t get why it mattered so much to Carly. “You are a family friend. What’s so bad about being a family friend, anyway? You’re my girlfriend and you’re a family friend.”

  “I know. I totally love your family. It’s just—all these girls suddenly coming out of the woodwork—”

  “I don’t even see those girls. I mean, I see them. I know they’re there. And believe me, I’m glad they’re there, listening to us, dancing to our music. If we don’t have fans, we don’t go anywhere. But I’m not into the rock-star stuff, Carl. You know that. I don’t care about it like those guys do. You really don’t have to worry. I wish you would relax.”

  Carly wished she would, too. Wished she could. But it was impossible. From then on, the more popular they got, the more anxious and obsessive she got.

  Soon they were playing Friday nights at Train, sharing the bill with just one other band instead of five. Kids from schools all over town stood on line to see them. Not just high-school kids, either. Some came from Columbia, NYU, and even Fordham, in the Bronx. They came knowing the words to songs and shouting requests.

  The online friend and fan counts went from the hundreds to the thousands. Most of them girls, most clamoring for Avery’s attention. But some wanted Brian’s.

  And he was truly oblivious.

  Carly wasn’t.

  At night, in her curtained-off corner on West End of the Earth, she’d spend hours online, looking at the girls who left messages for him. She knew it was a ridiculous way to spend her time, especially as her schoolwork started to pile up, but she couldn’t help herself.

  She’d study their profiles and look at their pictures, trying to measure the threat level. She’d comb through their comments, looking for signs of boyfriends and to make sure Brian wasn’t friending them back.

  Of course he wasn’t. He truly didn’t care.

  One night on the phone, she let slip what she’d been doing. She made a stupid joke about how many girls were trying to get his attention online.

  “What? Why are you looking at them?”

  She laughed and lied. “Oh, I was just messing around tonight after my homework.”

  Instead of her homework was more like it.

  And make that every night that week.

  She promised herself she’d stop. And she tried. But she failed. Anytime she did anything on her computer, she’d look. She’d start out with the intention of only working on her history paper, and before she knew it, she’d be madly Googling and scrolling and clicking.

  Shows became torture. Self-inflicted torture. She’d be okay for the first few songs, rocking out, enjoying the show like everyone else, feeling proud of them and happy for them.

  But then she’d catch a glimpse of some girl dancing in front of Brian. And she’d stop listening. She’d study his face, looking for the slightest sign of interest. He’d loosened up onstage since they started gigging in New York. Now he would sometimes look up and make eye contact with the audience. Sometimes he’d smile, or lift his chin at a girl. It was never anything more than that, and he was never anything more than casua
lly friendly when girls tried to talk to him while Carly was by his side. He’d always keep an arm around her waist, or hold her hand.

  Still, it made her crazy.

  When the end came, Brian said all the usual stuff about how it wasn’t Carly’s fault.

  But it was.

  Of course it was.

  She ruined everything.

  It happened soon after she admitted her online sleuthing. Carly went backstage after their set at Train and saw him talking to a girl she had seen watching him during the show. Carly had noticed this girl in particular because she looked older than most of the other kids. Plus, she didn’t seem to be with anyone. She’d spent the whole time leaning against a wall, watching the band, her eyes lasered in on Brian. This had made Carly even more suspicious than usual.

  Brian didn’t see Carly enter the room, so she took a couple steps back, hid behind the doorway, and watched the two of them. It looked intense. The girl had a lot to say, and she kept touching his upper arm. More than touching, it seemed to Carly. She’d put her hand out and keep it there while she talked and talked and talked. He was obviously paying close attention, nodding and smiling a lot. And he had a lot to say to her, too. More than Carly had seen or heard him say to any of the other girls who talked their way backstage after shows.

  When the girl took out her phone and handed it to him, obviously for his number, Carly lost it.

  She walked up to where they were standing, squeezed herself between them, took Brian’s hand, and looked the girl in the eye.

  “Hi,” she said, in a way she hoped conveyed back off. “I’m Carly. Brian’s girlfriend.”

  “Oh, hey.” The girl smiled, looked warily at Brian, then at Carly, then at their hands. Carly was holding on tight; Brian’s fingers were stiff and unyielding.

  “So, I’m gonna go,” said the girl, gesturing over her shoulder and stepping sideways toward the door. “You’ll call me?” She held her extended thumb and pinky to her ear and mouth.

  “Definitely,” Brian said, smiling, as she headed toward the door.

  When she passed through it, his smile disappeared and he pulled his stiffened fingers away from Carly’s.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just—These girls—”

  “Do you have any idea who that girl was?”

  “No.”

  “That was Tori Michaelson, head of A&R for Up All Night Records. She wanted to tell me how much she liked the show. She’s bringing her boss in next week. She thinks she might be able to interest him in signing us.”

  “You’re kidding! That’s great!” Carly threw her arms around him, but he pulled away. He put his hands on her shoulders, held her at arm’s distance and uttered those four awful words:

  “We

  need

  to

  talk.”

  Carly panicked. “I’m sorry,” she blurted. And babbled, “I’ll calm down, I promise.”

  He shook his head. Looked down at his feet, took a deep breath, and looked back into her eyes.

  When he opened his mouth to speak, she cut him off, as if that would keep him from saying it. “I know I’ve been really hyper.” She reached up to her shoulders, and put her hands on top of his. “It’s just the transition. We’re still figuring out how to be us in this new place.”

  He pulled his hands out from under hers and folded his arms in front of his chest. “Listen, Carly. There isn’t going to be an us. Not anymore.”

  “But—”

  “We had a great summer thing. We had a blast together. But I can’t give you what you need right now. I have to focus. I have to make sure we don’t blow whatever’s happening here. Those guys seem to think it’s all about the party.” He tilted his head toward the side of the room where Liam and Avery were basking in the admiration of three girls apiece.

  “You can focus. You can totally focus.” With each word that left her lips, Carly knew she sounded more desperate. She was more desperate. But the words just kept coming. “I’ll back off. We’ll take a break. I should be focusing more, too.”

  He shook his head and said, “Things have gotten too intense.”

  He meant she had gotten too intense.

  He said, “I need to spend more time on the music.”

  He meant he needed to spend less time with her.

  He said it wasn’t her.

  But it was her.

  It was totally her.

  And she was just getting started.

  17

  SHE DIDN’T cry and she didn’t tell anyone.

  Not Val. Not her mother.

  Why go through all that when she knew it was just temporary? Neither of them fully approved of Brian, either, and she didn’t want to hear what they might say if they thought he was out of her life.

  Besides, he couldn’t be out of her life.

  Carly was sure that if she calmed down and gave Brian some breathing room, they’d be fine. In fact, she decided, a break was a good thing; it would make their connection even stronger, their relationship better than ever, once they got back together.

  And they would get back together, she was certain.

  She went home that very night and started working on her senior history project, the twenty-page paper that was supposed to be the “intellectual culmination” of the Bellwin Experience. She’d decided on the Triangle Shirt-waist Factory Fire of 1911, which she’d learned about in her junior seminar on the history of New York. One hundred forty-six people—most of them girls not much older than she—died because the factory owners used to lock them in during working hours, to make sure no one could leave early or steal anything.

  She had a bunch of library books sitting on the floor next to her bed and a list of Web sites to visit. She went on autopilot, digging into the reading and taking notes. When thoughts of what had transpired earlier threatened to interrupt her concentration, she willed them away. She simply refused to listen to the echoes of his “We need to talk” or “Things have gotten too intense” reverberating through her head. When her arms, of their own accord, recalled exactly how it felt when he pulled away from her hug, she typed faster.

  She typed until she fell asleep and dreamed of being trapped in a burning building.

  The next night, she worked her regular Saturday-night shift at SJNY and when Val asked about Brian, Carly told her he was fine, and that the band was spending some time upstate playing frat parties and recording at Ernestine’s. By then they were mostly avoiding the subject of their boyfriends, so when Carly changed the subject to Val’s college and scholarship applications, she was off the hook.

  One night during this time her father called, deliriously happy, to report that Carly’s second little sister, Allison Elaine Finnegan, aka Ally, had been born.

  “I’m sending you a picture. Right now,” he said, in a voice that was both ragged and ecstatic. “You won’t believe how much she looks like you.” When Carly opened the picture on her laptop, she had to agree. If it weren’t for her father’s receding hairline and the crows’ feet around his eyes, she might have mistaken the picture of him holding Ally for one of her own just-born baby pictures. From then on she got daily—sometimes hourly—pictorial updates from her father. Ally leaves the hospital, Ally rides in a car for the first time. Ally squinches up her face in something resembling a smile but is probably just gas.

  Her father’s excitement was over the top, yet endearing. And for a little while, the updates helped distract Carly from the misery she was resolutely avoiding.

  She put some time into her application essay for Denman.

  But Brian’s sudden and complete absence left a huge void in her life, and no amount of baby-gazing or research or writing could fill it.

  She missed him terribly. In those moments when she couldn’t concentrate on her paper or admissions essay, she’d click through pictures from the summer, with Ernestine is Everywhere music blasting on her iPod. She had a bunch of pictures from Baldwin Rock; another
bunch she’d taken from the lumpy armchair in the corner of the shed at Ernestine’s of the guys rehearsing or goofing around for the camera. Her favorite was one she’d snapped of Brian asleep in room nine the night after their trip to the secret underground room. His face was completely relaxed, and there was a little smile on his lips.

  That smile and all the pictures were proof of what they’d had together, how much she’d meant to him, how happy they both had been and would be again.

  Then there were his old texts. Her phone could hold 400, and she’d saved every one of the 271 he’d sent. She reread them all, the best ones several times.

  She kept tabs on the band, setting up a Google news alert for “Ernestine is Everywhere” and checking Shira Zeidman’s blog once a day. Shira was a better updater than Avery, who kept the band’s pages. That’s how she heard about their being signed.

  ShiraZ

  ERNESTINEISEVERYWHERE

  No one who reads this blog regularly will be surprised by our excitement over the news that EiE has signed a two-CD deal with Up All Night Records. Smart move, Up All Night people! I personally talked to spokeswoman Tori Michaelson at Friday night’s show. She tells me recording will begin this spring, and that they’re hoping for a fall release. A limited (East Coast) tour is a possibility. Ms. Michaelson promises ShiraZ readers an early preview. So be sure to check in regularly for more EiE news.

  This was huge. Their dream. What they’d been working so hard for all this time. There was no way Carly could not congratulate him. Not just him, but all of them. It was the friendly thing to do.

  For two weeks she’d successfully resisted the urge to call or text Brian. She figured a simple, casual, and relaxed message couldn’t hurt. She composed a one-word, one-screen text:

  Congrats!

  xx, (2all). C