“Audrey, Wait!” entered the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart at number eighty-four, then zoomed to number forty-seven the very next week, which was apparently some big to-do that only a handful of bands had ever done before. I know all this because I started reading the Do-Gooders new website, which was all fancy-schmancy with a message board and photos of the band in a recording studio. Evan looked exactly the same, only with longer hair and a bigger smile, and okay, I admit it, I still thought he was cute. Maybe hot. But you didn’t hear that from me.
Their message board was getting pretty popular, too, and I will shamefully admit to spending more than one late night clicking “refresh” on my computer screen to see what comments people were posting. In this weird way, I was proud of Evan, like he was finally achieving all the success he had ever wanted, and then I’d read some comment like “Screw that Audrey bitch, you’re too good for her!” and that would pretty much kill my benevolence. (That one comment came from someone named “QTpie,” by the way, if that gives you an idea of Evan’s new fanbase.)
Sharon Eggleston, never one to miss a party, kept saying hi to me along with her gaggle of friends and telling me what she was doing for the rest of the day. For example: “Oh, hi, Audrey! We were going to go to Sbarro for lunch today, okay?” Translation: “If you don’t want to spend the rest of your life in Loserville Hell eating egg salad sandwiches, I suggest you eat lunch with us.” I don’t even know who she thought she was kidding, since no one has ever seen Sharon Eggleston eat anything in her life except butter rum LifeSavers and the lemon wedges that she squeezes into her Diet Coke.
But of course, I kept wimping out and saying, “Oh. Oh, okay. But see, I have this orthodontist appointment/study session/“Save the Whales!” rally I have to go to, so…” I really wanted to wish Sharon a lifetime of frizzy hair and chin zits, but that’d just be mean, and I couldn’t be mean. At least, not yet.
If there was one thing that Sharon knew how to do, though, it was hitch a ride on the Popularity Train and then take over as conductor. If she couldn’t date the guy, then she was gonna be my friend whether I liked it or not.
Victoria, on the other hand, was less sympathetic than I was and had plotted a cruel fate for Sharon that involved piranhas and a chainsaw and wasn’t for the faint of heart.
And then there was Tizzy, speaking of the faint of heart. She was on me like a barnacle, following me between classes, offering me food from her lunch during classes, which was making Victoria either jealous or irritated, I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t ask her, either, because unlike Sharon, you couldn’t really hate Tizzy. She was well-meaning and probably a little lonely, which meant that she didn’t show up on Victoria’s radar. And besides, all Victoria wanted to do was talk about The Song and Evan and What Possibilities It Presented. Possibilities that I myself had yet to see.
“You sound like a guidance counselor,” I finally told her as we were sitting on the grass during English two weeks after the song had come out on KROQ. We were supposed to be reading Leaves of Grass but instead everyone was just sitting in the sun and glancing at the book every once in a while.
“I’m just saying,” Victoria began for the forty-sixth time, “that maybe—just maybe—you should look into getting some representation or something and try to make something out of this. This could be an opportunity, you know. We could go to movie premieres, get free swag at the Grammys—”
“Swag?” I asked.
“Swag.”
I flopped down and watched the leaves flutter over my head. Whitman had been on to something with his “let’s all love nature” philosophy, I had to admit. “And what am I gonna do in between the swag collecting?” I argued, also for what felt like the forty-sixth time. “What? Christen new strip malls? Tell knock-knock jokes as Evan’s opening act?”
“Ha, yeah, no. Look, you’re Audrey. You’re my best friend, you’re the most awesome person I know, and everyone is going to love you. Capital L love. L-O-V-E. All you have to do is just put yourself out there and be open to whatever opportunities might be available. Like, say, opportunities for free jeans.”
I snorted.
She threw a handful of grass at me. “Why are you being a raging pessimist?”
“I’m not. I’m a realist.”
“A real pessimist.”
And so on. It would’ve kept going, too, but a shadow suddenly came over me and I opened my eyes to see James standing there, looking almost as tall as the trees. “Oh!” I said. “Hi!”
And if you don’t think that the sight of James standing next to me didn’t get the whispers going, then you haven’t been paying attention.
“Oh, hey,” he said, like he was surprised to be standing next to me, like it wasn’t him who had walked over. “I, uh, I burned you a copy of that CD we were talking about. Remember…? The Clash? I, uh, I put some other stuff on there, too.”
Victoria sat up like an eager puppy, almost like she was expecting him to pat her on the head. Behind her, I could see Tizzy’s eyes widening and Sharon Eggleston’s narrowing. Every single copy of Leaves of Grass had been, well, left in the grass.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Thanks, that’s really cool.” I took the case from him. The front cover was this awesome collage of black-and-white photos. “Did you make this?”