Evan’s voice pulled me back toward the stage. “This is usually the point where we go backstage and you clap and we do our encore, but we’re gonna skip that middle part tonight and get straight to the music.”
One more song, I told myself. One more song and then I can go to the In-N-Out drive-thru with Victoria and Jonah and get a grilled cheese and a chocolate shake and blast music until my ears want to fall off and Jonah takes me home. One more song and then I can be a normal, average girl without a boyfriend.
“This is a new song for us; I wrote it tonight.”
A new song? Everyone in the crowd was talking a little. The Do-Gooders hadn’t written a new song in at least four months, and we already knew all the words to their stuff. The encore was usually just a cover of Oasis’s “Don’t Go Away,” and I already wasn’t looking forward to watching Evan go all emo with the lyrics.
But new song? This wasn’t in my grilled-cheese-and-loud-music plan.
Victoria, I should point out here, is very smart. Sometimes she’s smarter than me. “Uh-oh,” I heard her say, but before I could turn my head to see what “uh-oh” was about, Evan kept speaking.
“My girlfriend Audrey broke up with me today and—”
Uh-oh.
You know how in movies, the room will be really crowded and noisy and someone will say something that causes everyone’s heads to whip around and stare at that person? Let me tell you something: That happens in real life, too. And it happened to me when Evan said that. Two hundred people in the room, four hundred eyes (actually 399— Jake Myers lost one in a fishing accident when he was six), and all of them were burning into me.
Evan hadn’t shut up yet. “Yeah, she broke up with me right before the biggest night of my life—”
“Harsh,” whispered a voice behind me. Guess who.
“And I always said I’d write a song about her and, well, I hope it’s not too late. This one is called ‘Audrey, Wait!’”
Have you ever had brain freeze? That’s what it felt like when I heard the title of the song. I remembered walking down Evan’s staircase, pretending I didn’t hear him. I had made a huge fucking mistake. I hadn’t listened then, so he was making sure I was listening now.
(Okay, so I also have to admit, I was a little disappointed the song wasn’t titled “Audrey, the Hottest Girl I Ever Met,” or “Audrey, That Time Upstairs at the Party (Was Amazing)” or something like that.)
The bass drum pounded hard, just like my heart, and a thin guitar line sizzled up and sliced through the stage, setting the whole band off. It was like nothing they had ever played before. Evan was changing chords so fast and I thought for the briefest moment, Is that how he loved me? Did he really love me like this? I began imagining our reconciliation scene, making out after the show and giggling about how stupid I was for breaking up with him and—
He started singing.
“You said your piece and now I’ve got to say mine! I had you and you strung me on the liiiiiinnnnneeeeee!”
What?
“We said we loved and it was a lie! I touched your hair and watched you die! You crucified my heart, took every part, and hung them out to drrrrryyyyyyy!”
Oh. My. God.
“’It’s all good!’ you always say! But save it for another day! ‘Cause now I’m watching you walk awaaaaayyyyyy!”
Here’s the worst part: The song was good. I mean, you obviously know that by now—I’m not revealing some big secret or anything. But at the time, the whole crowd was about to have a collective heart attack, they were dancing so hard. Even the bartenders, the mean bartenders who are bitter about life and water down the Cokes, had stopped pouring and were drumming their fingers on the bar top. Even the kids who don’t dance, the ones who refuse to show any emotion about anything but still show up at the Jukebox just for something to do, they were nodding their heads to the beat like they were issuing a mob hit. I could see the A&R guy tapping his foot and watching the stage, hungry. Steve was completely bug-eyed and gaping—he’d had no idea this band could produce this song.
Neither had I.
And then the chorus started. Sing along if you want.
“Audrey, wait! Audrey, wait! You walked out the door and I want you to see me slam it shut! Audrey, wait! Audrey, wait! You can say all you want, but I want you to know that this is the cruelest cut!”
I swear, if that song hadn’t been about me, if I had never met Evan, I would’ve been on that stage shaking what my momma gave me, it was that addictive. But instead I was rooted to the floor and my jaw was somewhere around my knees. Victoria was next to me, her eyes wide, and Jonah was bopping around behind us, a little unaware of how dire the situation was. I mean, Evan was standing on the stage and singing about me in front of our entire school! If I had been quicker, I would’ve run up onstage and yanked the wires out of the amp, and while I was at it, body-slammed Evan or knocked over the drum kit or something. But I couldn’t move; I couldn’t cry or cheer or talk. Really, it was like being buried alive, the weight of everything in the world crushing my chest, and Evan had the shovel.
“Audrey, wait! Audrey, wait!”
Now people behind us were singing along, and Evan was totally getting off on the crowd interaction. He used to talk about these kinds of moments sometimes, when we were in his bed underneath his California Angels sheets, the afternoon sun peeking in through the shades. “I want to hold the crowd in my hand,” he whispered, and I had giggled and said, “One day you will,” but I mean, come on. The Do-Gooders had only written three songs by that point. Evan wasn’t exactly at the front of the Rock God line.