She paused for a minute. “Aud,” she finally said, “that is so fucking twisted that I don’t even know where to start.”
“Okay, I know, but it had to be drastic.”
“That’s not drastic, that’s sadistic. You’ve got your -tics mixed up.”
“Will you please focus on the issue at hand? Evan doesn’t listen to what I’m saying!”
I could hear her sigh loudly. “And this is news?”
“Should I break up with him?”
“Do you want to break up with him?”
“I don’t know.” I did my best dramatic sigh. “Distract me from feeling miserable.”
“Umm…ummm…I got new shoes.”
“Woo.”
“Wanna come over and try them on?”
I kinda did. “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” I said, and my trouble with Evan was forgotten for the moment.
Evan and I had spent hours on and in my bed while my parents were at work. Sometimes we’d sprawl opposite each other while he’d strum his guitar and try to think up words that rhymed with Bendomolena. The only time he actually succeeded was when he accidentally stepped on her tail and then spontaneously burst into song: “Bendomolena! / I didn’t see ya!” And I was like, “Hi, you almost severed my cat’s tail, thanks.”
What kind of guy writes a song about stepping on your cat while she’s yowling in pain? I should’ve known then.
But it wasn’t all bad, of course. I mean, I had loved him, I really had. There were better times, the quiet moments when no one was talking and even our breath was the same, rising and falling under our tent of blankets like we were made to breathe with each other, for each other. It’s funny how bed and pillows and covers can change a conversation. Words turn quiet and you mean more and say less. It’s like you can build your own little world, Population: 2.
Evan would play with my hair and wrap it over his wrist and reel me toward him until our lips touched. They were small moments but I could only hold them like water in my hands before he was slipping away, pulled back by melodies or friends or rehearsals, leaving my hands empty and my heart too full to hold alone.
5 “To readjust you’ve got to trust that all the fuss is just a minor thing.…”
—Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Minor Thing”
ON MONDAY MORNING, I pulled a little illegal trick and drove to school wearing headphones so I could listen to the “Suck It Up!” mix as much as possible to psych myself up for the day. (My car’s speaker fund was steadily being drained for the “Ooh, I want that CD!” cause.) I couldn’t even handle the radio, since KUXV was playing “Audrey, Wait!” almost every hour. (Okay, I cheated a little and listened to the nightly Top 5 countdown—the song was number one—but you would’ve done the same.) The night before, when I was supposed to be sleeping but instead was lying awake looking at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling, I tried to think of how long the song’s popularity would last. Maybe it was a one-week thing, a novelty that would wear off as soon as the next big band broke. It wasn’t like Evan was on MTV or in Teen Vogue or anything like that, right? This was just a local thing, a hometown boy making good.
By 8:01 A.M., that theory was shot straight out of the water.
Victoria saw me walking out of the school parking lot and came running down to meet me. “Hi!” she said breathlessly. “You’re not gonna believe this!”
“Based on the events of the past forty-eight hours,” I told her, “I’m gonna believe it. And good morning to you, too.”
“Whatever. Hi. You suck for not answering your phone, by the way. But I was talking to Chris Collins and his brother’s a freshman at Rutgers and he said—”
“Hi, Audrey!” Sharon Eggleston called across the quad, waving to me with that perfect bone-china wrist of hers.
I blinked. “Did Sharon Eggleston just say hi to me?”
“Of course she did,” Victoria huffed. “She’s moving in on you. Prepare to be invaded. Did you ever call her back?”
“No, of course not. What am I supposed to say? ‘Hi, you had a huge crush on my ex-boyfriend, let’s be beffies and go shopping’?” We were walking toward my locker and I was painfully aware of the fact that many, many people were staring at me, including a group of freshman girls that sounded like they sucked helium. “Hi, Audrey!” they cried out as I passed.
“Hi…?” I said, not sure how to respond to three people who looked like they were about to either spontaneously combust or eat my head.
Victoria, of course, kept moving forward. “So anyway, Chris Collins IM’d me last night and he said that his brother’s going to school in New Jersey—”
“Why Jersey?” I interrupted. I couldn’t help myself. “I mean, why didn’t he go to New York and spend time frolicking in the city? That’s what I’d do if I were him.”
Victoria paused and I could tell she was trying not to smile. “Did you just say ‘frolic’?”
“Is it not a word?”
“Who the hell says ‘frolic’?”
I spun the lock on my locker and waited for it to stick like it always did on 33. “I say frolic,” I told her. “And more people should.”
“They should say frolic or actually frolic?”
“Both.”