This Song Will Save Your Life

  I bet I do seem exhausted, Ms. Wu. I bet I do seem less engaged. I was up all night, doing something that I really love, and I’m sorry, but I just didn’t reserve enough energy to fully participate in this miserable, mandatory little exercise in public education.

  Since discovering Start, I had felt, for the first time in years, like good things could happen to me. I felt happy. Yet somehow, for the first time in years, someone was bothering to ask me what was wrong. Where were you in September, Ms. Wu? Where were you last spring? Where were you when I needed you?

  “Ms. Wu,” I said, “I appreciate your concern. But I’m fine. I had a late night and didn’t get much sleep. I’m sure I’ll feel better on Monday.”

  “All right,” she said. “But if there’s ever anything you want to talk about, you know where to find me. You’re a real talent, Elise, with a bright future ahead of you, and I don’t want to see you throw that away.”

  I looked at her sharply, wondering if this was a reference to the time I cut myself. But how could it be? Ms. Wu didn’t know about that. Nobody at school knew, except for Amelia. Amelia, who now thought I had done something to hurt her, apparently. When all I had ever wanted was for her to just be my friend.

  Don’t think about Amelia.

  “I just want you to know that I’m on your side,” Ms. Wu went on. “I believe in you.”

  You and Char both, I thought. “Thank you,” I said, and I made a mental note to stop eating lunch in Ms. Wu’s classroom.

  I left for my next class. Opening the door, I nearly collided with a guy who was running to beat the bell. I’d seen him before, usually recruiting people for the lacrosse team. The only other things I knew about him were that he had beautiful green eyes and seemed to wear Adidas sandals all the time, even in the winter.

  “Watch it, lesbo,” he snarled, lunging out of my way and down the hall.

  I steadied myself on the door frame, almost bowled over by the irony. What’s wrong with me, Ms. Wu? What’s wrong with everybody else?

  * * *

  “I think we should give you a makeover,” Vicky declared. It was Sunday afternoon, shortly after we had met up at Calendar Girls, a consignment shop downtown. I’d told my mother I was going shopping with my new friend, Vicky, a girl I’d met at my favorite record shop, which was plausible if not 100 percent true.

  Now, as we pawed through cheap bracelets and belts, Vicky suggested making me over like she had just had the most brilliant and original idea in history.

  I instantly snapped back, “No.”

  Vicky raised her eyebrows. “Why not?”

  I opened my mouth to respond. Because, I wanted to explain to her, in eighth grade, Emily Wallace’s friends all chipped in to split the cost of an ad in our middle school yearbook that said, ELISE DEMBOWSKI: LET US GIVE YOU A MAKEOVER! YOU DESERVE IT! Because a whole bunch of pretty girls saved up their allowances just so they could call attention to my ugliness. The yearbook adviser let the ad run because—Emily explained to me later, in her syrupy-sweet tone—he thought it was so kind that the popular girls were being generous with their beauty expertise.

  Everyone saw that ad. Even Alex, who couldn’t really read yet then, but who knew her letters well enough to point to my name and beam and marvel, “Look, Elise! You’re in the yearbook!”

  “Because,” I said to Vicky, “I don’t need a makeover. I’m happy with myself the way I am.”

  That’s the sort of thing the psychiatrist at the hospital told me to say, even if I don’t believe it. It’s called an affirmation.

  “Obviously you are,” Vicky said, holding a fur coat up to herself in the mirror. “You’re Glendale’s hottest young DJ. I’m saying that now you can dress like it. That’s the whole point of being a DJ, is getting to dress up like a DJ and not look like a total poseur.”

  “I’m not sure that’s the whole point of being a DJ…”

  “Fine, maybe it’s, like, 30 percent of the point.” She grabbed a pair of bejeweled red-and-purple pumps off the shelf. “Most of my closet is filled with rock star clothes, and I’m not a rock star yet.”

  “Are you really that good a singer?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Vicky said simply.

  The way Vicky said it reminded me a little of Alex. “Are you really a unicorn, Alex?” “Yes.” Or it reminded me of myself, before I knew better. “Are you really going to build that entire dollhouse from scratch, Elise?” “Yes.” “Are you really going to make all your own clothes by hand, Elise?” “Yes.” “Are you really going to make everyone at Glendale High suddenly stop hating you?” “Yes.”

  “So why aren’t you a famous rock star?” I asked.

  “Because,” Vicky said, trying to shove her feet into the pumps, “it’s not enough to be a really good singer. You also need a band who actually shows up for rehearsal sometimes. You need to be taken seriously. You need anyone at all to book you to play a show. You need a break. I cannot control everything. I can only control what my voice sounds like. And how my rock star clothes look.”

  “What did Pete say when you talked to him about the Dirty Curtains?” I asked. “Is he going to give you a slot sometime?”

  Vicky made a face. “After about two hours of hanging around him, he told me to send him a demo and ‘we’ll see.’ So I sent him a demo. And I guess we’ll see. I’m not holding out hope.”

  “Could Char just invite you to play some Thursday night?” I asked. “Is he allowed to do that, or does Pete need to approve it?”

  “Sure, Char could invite us,” Vicky said. “But he doesn’t.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  Vicky sighed.

  “Has he heard you?” I asked. “Maybe if he heard you, and heard how good you guys are—”

  “Oh, Char’s heard us,” Vicky said. “Pippa brought him around to band practice a month or two ago.”

  “He didn’t like your music?” I asked quietly. “What a jackass,” I added, even though I had never heard the Dirty Curtains and maybe I wouldn’t like their music either.

  Vicky snorted. “Please. He loved our music. That’s why he’ll never, ever invite us to play at Start. Char doesn’t share his spotlight. Not with anyone who might steal it from him.”

  “He invited me to DJ with him,” I pointed out as gently as I knew how, so Vicky wouldn’t take it personally.

  She nodded. “Exactly. That means he doesn’t think you’re a threat.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but before I had the chance, Vicky handed me the shoes she’d been trying to fit into and said, “I think you should buy these.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, toying with one of the rhinestones on the toe. “They look like the eighties.”

  “Then they’re perfect. You can play the Cure and your shoes will match. Come on, Elise. I might not be a famous rock star yet, but you are a famous DJ.”

  “I think famous is a bit of a—”

  “Shut up,” Vicky said kindly. “We are going places. This is just the start. Now get in that dressing room.”

  So I did.

  Every time I tried on something new and came out of the dressing room to model it, Vicky would sing part of a Start hit—Joy Division or the Jackson Five or Dexys Midnight Runners—and then I would say, “Yeah, I could see wearing this while that song was playing,” or she would go, “Ugh, that totally clashes with the music! Take it off.”

  And she was good. Even just hearing her sing a couple lines here and there, I could tell: she really was that talented.

  After Vicky approved a pair of lace leggings, I tried on a fluffy pleated pink dress that looked like it belonged to Madonna circa 1987. “Ta-da!” I announced as I emerged from the dressing room. I stuck one hand on my hip and the other in the air.

  But Vicky was gazing into the distance and didn’t respond immediately. And when she did, what she said was not “You look like an extra in Footloose” but “I wish Pippa were here.”

  I let my hands fall to my sides.

&n
bsp; “Pippa would love today.” Vicky sighed. “She’d have so much fun shopping with us. Of course, shopping with her could drive even a self-respecting woman to the brink of anorexia, since Pippa spends most of her time whining about how stores never have clothes small enough to fit her. It makes me want to strangle her. At least she has the shoe size of a normal person.”

  “What size?” I asked.

  “Eight. That was how we met, actually. I saw her in the laundry room of our dorm—this was October—and she was trying to work a washing machine in, like, a sweatshirt and stripper heels.” Vicky laughed. “So of course I went right over there and asked her where she got her shoes, and the next thing I knew I was trying them on. They fit me like Cinderella’s glass slipper.”

  I watched Vicky smiling in the mirror. “So it was love at first sight?” I said.

  “No way. For starters, I wasn’t ‘supposed’ to be friends with Pippa. She lived on the sixth floor, and I was on the ninth.”

  “So?” I asked.

  “Ah, spoken like an outsider. What you clearly overlook is that the sixth and ninth floors in Murphy Hall are locked in bitter rivalry. Because 6 is the inverse of 9, which means that the sixth floor is…” Vicky rolled her eyes up to the ceiling, like she was thinking about this. “Bad,” she finished. “And the ninth floor is good, obviously,” she added. “Very intense prank war between the two.”

  “I’d always kind of hoped that college would be more mature than high school,” I commented.

  “I do want to believe that there’s some place in the world that’s more mature than high school,” Vicky said. “But I haven’t found it yet.”

  “So Pippa was your sworn enemy?” I asked.

  “She was definitely supposed to be. Sixth floor and all, it’s like everything the ninth floor doesn’t stand for. Or whatever. Plus, Pippa can be a bitch when you first get to know her. She was definitely a bitch to me at first. She’s suspicious of new people. Like, she had been living with her assigned roommate for almost two months and she had basically never spoken to her. They would sit at desks spaced three feet apart and just not talk to each other. So Pippa was lucky to have me. She needed a friend. Then it turned out that we both like to go out dancing, and the rest is history.”

  “Why do you and Pippa like to go out so much?” I asked.

  “Why do you like to go out so much?” Vicky replied.

  “Because it’s dark and no one there knows me,” I answered immediately.

  Vicky tilted her head. “I wouldn’t get too accustomed to that, if I were you. You’re the DJ now. Soon everyone is going to know you.”

  “Oh, please. They won’t even notice me. I’m not a very good DJ,” I reminded her.

  Vicky rolled her eyes again. “Look, I don’t know why Pippa likes going out. Sometimes I think she likes it just because she can drink and flirt with Char. But I like going out for the opposite reason as you. I feel like people there do know me. They see me—maybe not how I really am, but how I really want to be. They see me how I see myself. It’s like I dress the part of Vicky Blanchet, rock star, and I act the part of Vicky Blanchet, rock star, and everyone at Start is willing to see me as Vicky Blanchet, rock star. And that’s who I am inside, even if I don’t have the record contract to prove it yet.

  “No one else is willing to do that. People in the daytime see Vicky Blanchet, English major, or Vicky Blanchet, fat girl. And they’re not wrong, but they’re still somehow overlooking me. Is this silly? Does this make sense?”

  “It’s not silly,” I told Vicky. And I suddenly wanted to tell her more, wanted to tell her how Amelia Kindl saw me as a crazy girl whose life needed saving, how Ms. Wu saw me as a student in trouble, how Lizzie Reardon saw me as an endless source of amusement, and how I saw myself as so much more, so much brighter. But I didn’t even know how to begin, among these used cowboy boots and vintage ball gowns, how to lay out years of my life for Vicky in a way that would make sense. I didn’t want to tell her how Amelia or Ms. Wu or Lizzie or anyone else saw me, because I didn’t want Vicky to start agreeing with them.

  So all I said was, “I see you as Vicky Blanchet, rock star.”

  “And I see you as Elise, DJ extraordinaire,” she said, settling a big pair of sunglasses on her nose. “So buy the rhinestone pumps.”

  I wound up buying not only the shoes but also two new pairs of earrings, a set of bangles, a vest, two dresses, and a pair of leather pants.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do with leather pants?” I asked Vicky as I twisted to look at my backside in the mirror.

  “Wear them when you dance around your room,” she explained, and I could tell from her tone that she was trying not to add obviously.

  “But I don’t dance around my room,” I objected.

  “Well, you should start.”

  The total bill was enormous, but I’d received checks from both sets of grandparents for my sixteenth birthday, and if DJ clothing wasn’t the perfect use for that money, I didn’t know what was. It was still less than that bill I’d racked up on my back-to-school shopping trip, and those clothes had done nothing for me at all. But these clothes did something for me. They made me feel happy.

  I went home looking for someone to share my good mood with, and the first person I saw was Alex. Actually, I just saw Alex’s bare feet. The rest of her was hidden under a number of big cardboard boxes.

  “Craft project?” I asked.

  Alex’s response came back muffled. “It’s for the spring fair. Everyone is supposed to make their own building, and then we put them all together in the field so it looks like a town. And then we each sell things from our buildings, only we sell them for fake money, not real money. The fake money is called Berger Bucks.”

  Alex’s second grade teacher is Mr. Berger.

  “Doesn’t that seem a little self-absorbed?” I asked her. “That he named the money after himself?”

  “That’s what I told him,” Alex’s disembodied voice replied. “But he said he was the teacher, so he makes the rules. And the money. Only he said he doesn’t actually make that much money.”

  “Got it. So what’s your building going to be?”

  “A castle.” Alex moved a box so her head was poking out. “A poetry castle. That’s going to be the turret, right there.”

  I didn’t see any turrets. I just saw more boxes, but I said, “It’s fabulous, Alex. Very royal.”

  She beamed at me. Then I went upstairs, locked myself into my bedroom, and drew my curtains. I put on those ridiculous leather pants and DJed song after song, dancing with myself until I tired myself out enough to fall asleep. I didn’t even need to walk that night.

  10

  On Thursday, after Mom, Steve, Alex, Neil, and the dogs went to bed for the night, I changed into one of the dresses that Vicky had helped me buy. It was short, with a tight bodice and a tutulike skirt. I put on my new bangles, too. I even ran up to the attic to get out the belt that I had painstakingly covered in multicolored sequins last year, before suffocating it in a garbage bag when I decided that I wanted to look like everybody else.

  Tonight I didn’t want to look like everybody else. Tonight I wanted to look like how I felt on the inside: Elise Dembowski, DJ.

  “Woo-hoo!” Mel exclaimed when I showed up at Start. “Elise, honey, look at you!”

  I pulled down my skirt and tried to play it cool. “I went shopping with Vicky.”

  “I always knew that girl was going places,” Mel said. “She is a mother-loving genius, Vicks is. You are only further proof of that. Twirl for me, will you?”

  I blushed. “Mel…”

  “What, you’d deny me this small bit of paternal pride?” Mel stuck his hands on his waist, playing mad.

  I had to smile at that, since my actual father was white, had arms about one-third as muscular as Mel’s, and was probably asleep right now.

  Other than right now, I had barely thought about my father all night. Yes, it felt weird to take the school bus on
a Thursday afternoon to my mom’s house instead of my dad’s. But I got over it. Dad had called my phone after dinner, but I was too busy to talk, trying to cram in my last bit of DJ practice before taking it to the floor of Start. With my headphones on, I didn’t even hear the phone ring.

  When I got inside Start, I tried to beeline to the DJ booth to let Char know that I was here and ready to play whenever he wanted me to. But that guy with the big camera got in my way. Flash Tommy. He didn’t introduce himself or ask permission or anything, he just snapped a bunch of photos of me in quick succession, then walked away again, his external flash leaving bright clouds in my vision.

  When I finally reached the DJ booth, Char was just transitioning into the Pixies.

  “Way to steal my songs,” I said, climbing into the booth next to him. I edged him over a little with my hip so there would be room for us both. “Now I’ll have to find something else to play tonight.”

  “Bummer,” Char agreed. “How long is it going to take you to come up with a replacement song? You need an hour or so to think it through?”

  “Oh, please. I’m ready anytime.”

  “All right, then, let’s get this party started. Hook in.”

  Char kept playing while I unpacked my laptop and plugged it into his mixer. I cued up Joan Jett, “Bad Reputation,” then slung my headphones around my neck and said to him, “Ready.”

  “Over to you, my lady,” he said, gesturing grandly.

  I hit play, and the room exploded.

  “You seem to have things under control here.” Char spoke directly into my ear as I surveyed the dancing crowd.

  “You think?” I responded.

  His laughter was a warm breeze on my ear. “All right, hotshot. I’ll leave you to it. Can I get you a drink?”

  “A water would be great, thanks,” I said, looking away from my dance floor to find the next song for them. Maybe something kind of punk rock …