I crossed my arms in front of me and stood by the side of the stage, hoping the Do-Gooders would hurry up and play so we could go home and skip the traffic. “Those words exactly,” I told her. “Plus some other choice phrases.”
“What? Like, ‘Fuck you’?”
“No, more like, ‘How could you do this to me?’ ‘I thought we were gonna be together forever.’ That kind of stuff.” I stirred my melted ice with my straw.
Victoria rolled her eyes in solidarity. “Please. He must be a closet romance novel reader. I’m surprised he didn’t break out a lute and try to woo you.”
“If he had done that, I would’ve been more interested.” I took her drink from her and set it down. “You’re making me nervous with all the addictive stimulants. Don’t you know that NutraSweet can give you cancer?”
“So can sunlight.” She took her drink back and made a big deal out of slurping the rest with her straw. “I hope Jonah’s getting me another one of these.”
“I hope he’s also getting you a side of tranquilizers.” I looked over my shoulder and saw a third of our class standing behind us. No one seemed too interested in me. Yet. “Do you think people know we broke up?”
“Have you told anyone besides me and Jonah?”
“Nope. But Evan might have.”
“You’ve totally ruined the pool that people had going for Cutest Couple in the yearbook, by the way. Not to guilt you out or anything.”
“What?”
“Not me, I mean. I saw this one coming a long time ago. But people were laying two-to-one odds that you and Evan would be Cutest Couple.”
“People are betting on yearbook superlatives? Really?”
Victoria nodded. “Now the smart money’s on Dan Milne and Janie Couper. She’s worse than static cling.”
I was about to comment on Janie Couper’s static-clinginess, but just then I saw Sharon Eggleston across the room. Even if you’ve never met Sharon, you know her. Every school, I’m sorry to say, has a girl like her. She’s pretty or hot or whatever word you want to use, and she has this weird ability to make every guy worship her.
Every guy, that is, except Evan.
At least, that was the scuttlebutt (PSAT word) when Evan and I first hooked up. Sharon had apparently set her sights on him, he set his sights on me, I set my sights right back on him, we got together, and Sharon found herself on the outs before she was even on the ins. As you can imagine, she wasn’t thrilled. Even to this day, she still shows up to all the shows and smiles at Evan in the halls and generally is an annoying little gnat. And when I saw her across the room at the show that night, she smiled and did that little wave thing that showed off her French-manicured silk tips.
“What are you looking at?” Victoria asked, craning her neck to see, but luckily Jonah elbowed his way back to Victoria and me with her Diet Coke and my cranberry juice with lime. “See, now, Evan wouldn’t have done this,” Victoria pointed out as she took her drink. “He wouldn’t have noticed that you were even thirsty, much less that I was. I mean, you could both be walking in the goddamn Sahara desert and you’d be dying of thirst and he’d be like, ‘Hey, Aud, I’ve got this killer idea for a song.’ Totally useless.”
I swirled my ice with the straw. “Evan used ‘killer’ last year. This year, everything’s ‘fool-ass.’”
“Okay. Audrey? Let me introduce you to something called The Point. You are missing it.”
It should come as no surprise that when Victoria is asked to spell her name, she says, “Like the queen.” She was on a roll now. “I’m just saying that you’ve been really patient with Evan. More patient than I would’ve been—”
Jonah snorted and then became really interested in his drink.
“—and I think you just deserve someone who makes you feel special and wonderful and all those good things that you see on TV.”
“I thought you weren’t watching TV anymore.”
Victoria shrugged. “I fell off the wagon.”
If you ever meet Victoria, do not call her Vick, Vicky, Victor, Victrola, Vicious, or anything other than Victoria. If you’re feeling both immortal and bored, though, call her Vicks VapoRub.
Onstage, Jon, the Do-Gooders’ drummer, started to do a halfhearted sound check. If there is a hell, there will be a drummer sound-checking there, I guarantee you. “Oh, God, kill me now.” Victoria rolled her eyes again.
“I’m a weak, spineless girl, what can I say?” I was quickly downing the cranberry juice and wishing it had a kick to it. The problem with the Jukebox is that it’s so local the bartenders know all of us and, more specifically, how old we are, so alcohol’s not happening. Which is why everyone gets wasted in their driveways afterwards. “Plus, the A&R guy’s here and Steve kept promising that he would come and I want to see him in person.”
A word about Steve: Three months ago, the Do-Gooders played a show at the Jukebox, the one where part of the ceiling caved in during their set and it knocked out their amps and they kept playing anyway. (Maybe you saw the article in the local paper. I was there too, and if you look closely at the picture, you can see my hand in the bottom part of the picture—I was cheering them on with the rest of the crowd. I spent the rest of the night picking insulation out of my hair.)
Anyway, Steve was at the show that night. Steve was a freshman at UCLA who smoked tons of weed, went to class occasionally, downloaded MP3s, and had an uncle who knew someone who did A&R at a record label. Steve thought the Do-Gooders were “a-may-zing dude, fucking a-may-zing!” and after the ceiling collapsed and the amps gave out, they all went and hung out at Steve’s dorm room, where they dreamed big, bet each other $20 to drink the bongwater, and agreed to let Steve manage them. As far as I could tell, though, getting the A&R guy to come to the show was the first managerial thing that Steve had done for them.