It was incredible and ever since then, our principal kind of hates Victoria and is kind of scared of her, too. It doesn’t help that she always gives him this really big fake smile whenever their paths cross.
All this to say that sneaking out of school with Victoria is a real pain in the ass, which is why we ended up not going to the bookstore together. Instead, I made Victoria swear on her Nirvana box set that she would go and scour the shelves while I went to work.
In the meantime, though, three things happened:
(1) In second-period geometry, a girl named Tizzy leaned across the aisle toward me. We hadn’t really talked before, despite sharing two classes, which was a conscious decision on my part. Let’s just say the girl was aptly named. “Um, are you the girl that Evan Dennison wrote the song about?” she hissed over at me while we were getting our homework out.
“Um, yeah,” I said. “What’d you get for number four?”
“Screw the homework!” Tizzy cried. “Oh my God, that song is so awesome! And you’re Audrey! Oh my God! This is crazy! Just crazy!”
“How’d you get the name Tizzy, anyway?” I asked.
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“So is Sharon nice? She seems really nice. What’s it like dating Evan?”
“Um, we’re not really dating anymore,” I started to explain, but Tizzy wasn’t interested in that answer.
“Hey, do you think I could meet the band? Their guitarist is really cute!”
“Well, I—”
“So you’re not dating anymore? What a bummer, right?” I swear to God, her eyes were going in two different directions by this point.
(2) During fifth-period bio, apropos of nothing, Jared Simmons turned around in his seat and handed me a CD. “Hey, do you think you could give my band’s demo to Evan?” Well, a herd of giraffes could have run through the lab right then and I don’t think anyone would’ve noticed because up until that moment, we had all thought that Jared was mute. No joke, we really did. So when he (a) talked, and (b) revealed he was in a band, the whole room came to a standstill. Even our lab teacher was like, “Holy crap.” I was so surprised that all I could say was, “Um, sure,” and he just nodded and turned back around in his seat like nothing had happened. Meanwhile, my buddy Tizzy was having kittens in the back row. “Did you guys just hear that? Oh my God! Audrey, you’re like a miracle worker!”
(3) I made it a personal mission to track down Chris Collins, original source of the famous-in-New-Jersey story, which didn’t happen until after the last bell. I was a wreck by this point, and over the day I ended up braiding my hair into all these little braids because I had to keep my hands busy and collaging wasn’t really an option during history class. Plus, it gave me an excuse to not have to make eye contact with people.
Yeah, so finding Chris Collins took some time. Talking to him, however, was like talking to time suckage personified.
“Oh, yeah, that,” he said when I prompted him about his brother’s news. “That’s right. Pretty fuckin’ awesome, huh?”
“Totally. Best day of my life. So your brother told you about it? Did he say anything more?”
“Uh…I dunno. Not really.”
“Like if I was mentioned in that article or anything…?”
His eyes were heavy-lidded and I couldn’t tell if he was just in a general haze or suffering a pot overdose. “I don’t think so.”
“Are you sure?”
“Uh, maybe? I don’t really remember. I wasn’t there.”
“Of course you weren’t.”
“So that song’s about you, huh?” Chris shoved his hair out of his eyes and laughed. “Wow, you really pissed him off. What, did you suck in bed or something?”
“Hey, I—” I stopped myself from giving Chris Collins a detailed outline of my sex life, limited as it was. “That’s a really rude question to ask a girl,” I finally said. I was trying to go for a cool, detached, Karen O vibe but I just ended up sounding like someone’s pinched grandmother.
“Hey, it’s a party!” Victoria came running up and grabbed my elbow. “Hi, Chris.”
“Whatever, dude.” Chris waved us both away.
“What crawled up his ass and died?” she asked as I took her arm and practically dragged her into the parking lot.
“Hopefully something sharp and poisonous.”
She was giving me the fish eye. “What’s up with your hair?”
“Oh, um…” I reached up and fingered a braid. “Nervous habit.”
“It’s sort of like Bob Marley meets Pippi Longstocking.”
“That’s not a compliment, is it?”
“Hell no.”
I sighed and began unraveling my hair. “Can we go to the bookstore now?”
“I did better than that.” She held up a printout from the computer. “I Googled.”
I smacked my palm to my forehead. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Nice facepalm. You trying to keep that vein down?”
I ignored that last bit. “Thank God one of us is good under pressure.”
“Yeah, you caved like a wet noodle. So anyway, if I may.” She held up the paper and began to read as we walked to the parking lot. I took her arm so that she wouldn’t walk into a parked car or something. “Okay, it’s titled ‘Band We Love This Week,’ exclamation mark. ‘If “Audrey, Wait!” is any indication, the Do-Gooders are in for a long ride down the musical highway. Led by the vocal athleticism—’”