“Do your laundry!”
“I hear nothing but the demands of my customers!”
James was already behind the counter when I came running in, still holding my hat while diving to slide my time card. One minute late, just like I thought. I am nothing if not accurate. “Remind me to bring home a pint of Coffee Dream ice cream,” I told him after (reluctantly) putting on my hat. “My parents are crack fiends for it.”
“Okay.” He was straightening the towers of sugar cones into something resembling a skyline. “Do these look even?”
“Um, sure.”
“You think?” He took a step back and eyed his handiwork.
“So…” I fiddled with the ice cream scoops in their well. “Way to say hi to me at school today.”
To say we were both surprised by my comment would be an understatement. “When, today?” he said, heading back toward Sugar Cone Town.
The ship had already sailed: I might as well go with it. “Yeah, today. This morning. I was gonna wave at you and then you looked away so that I was doing that weird half-wave thing—”
“I hate when that happens.”
“Yeah, me too.” There was another awkward pause. I hated those even more. “So what were you listening to while you weren’t saying hi to me?”
“Oh, um, just a mix my brother made for me.”
“James!” I cried. “You’re finally speaking my language! Halle-freaking-lujah, I live and breathe mix CDs. What’s on it?”
He left the sugar cones alone and started refilling the napkin dispensers. I suspected James suffered from a mild form of OCD. “Just some Clash, some Dylan, y’know. The standard mix-tape stuff.”
“You listen to the Clash?”
“You don’t?”
“Not all that much.”
“I could burn you a CD, if you want.”
“Cool, thanks.” I boosted myself up onto the counter and swung my feet against the cupboards, probably committing ten health code violations in the process. “What about new bands, do you listen to any of them?”
“You mean like the Do-Gooders?”
I never thought I’d see the day when James would make me blush. Thank God Victoria would never hear about this. “No, I just meant, like, other bands.…”
He smiled a little. “I’m just giving you a hard time.”
“Because today hasn’t been hard enough, thanks.”
“Yeah, you’re kinda famous at our school.”
“I’m not famous, I’m just…” I fumbled for words. “There’s a bump in my popularity numbers, let’s put it that way.”
He smiled and the back of his neck turned bright red, almost as red as his hair. Looked like I wasn’t the only one blushing.
But when I turned around, I saw that I wasn’t the only one making James blush. Sharon Eggleston was standing in front of the register, doing her patented flirty girl smile at James. “Hey, Aud!” she said, like she was surprised to see me, like it was some big secret that I worked at the Scooper Dooper. “What’s up?”
“Um, hi,” I said, while scanning the store for an escape route.
“You know, all the sorority girls at USC are totally into your song.”
“It’s not my song,” I told her.
“Do you want to try a free sample of our latest flavor, Pumpkin Pie?” James offered her a tiny spoon with a bit of ice cream on the end. “It’s seasonal.” I kind of wanted to bop him on the head.
Sharon moved her eyes over to him and did that thing girls do where they tilt their head down and look up at guys through their lashes. “Wow, thanks,” she said. “That’s so sweet.”
“Uh, no problem,” James said, and Sharon did her full-on megawatt smile.
I tried not to roll my eyes and almost gave myself a migraine in the process. Why was my heart suddenly too big for my chest? Why was I mad? Why was James acting like a bumbling idiot around her? And why did I care? I mean, it wasn’t like I had a cru—
Evan’s voice on the radio suddenly cut through the noise in my head.
“Hey, this is Evan from the Do-Gooders, and you’re listening to our new song ‘Audrey, Wait!’ on the world famous KROQ.”
Holy shit.
“Did he just—?” I said to James as Sharon’s mouth fell open.
“Was that—?” she said.
“I don’t—” James tried to answer both of us at the same time.
“He did a promo for KROQ?” I squeaked. “Are you kidding me?”
“We said we loved and it was a lie! I touched your hair and watched you—!”
Sharon was honest-to-God squealing. “This is, like, the biggest station in L.A.! In California! On, like, maybe the planet!”
I mentally shot death rays at Sharon’s head as James reached over and turned the radio off. “Wow,” he said. “This is…uh, yeah. This is kinda big.”
Sharon and I both looked at him. “Holy shit,” I said after a minute. “Holy freaking shit.”
7 “Can’t help the feeling I could blow through the ceiling…”
—Radiohead, “Fake Plastic Trees”
IT TOOK TWO WEEKS for the L.A. Weekly article to come out, and to be honest, I wasn’t really thinking about it. But the whole time before that, I was still trying to navigate the weird popularity circle that Evan’s song had landed me in at school. I didn’t know what Evan was doing anymore, but it’s a safe bet that he was having a better time of it than I was.