This Song Will Save Your Life

  You’d think this might make me cool, since music is supposedly cool, but it doesn’t work like that. It turns out that caring a lot about anything is, by definition, uncool, and it doesn’t matter if that thing is music or Star Wars or oil refineries.

  “My dad introduced me to a lot of music when I was very little,” I told Char, then added, because we were in bed together and this seemed like an intimate thing to reveal, “He’s in a band.”

  Char propped himself up on his elbow. “You have a cool dad. What band?”

  “The Dukes.”

  “I don’t know them,” Char said.

  “Yes, you do.” I sang the chorus of the Dukes’ big hit: “Take my hand, baby, and run away with me. Take my hand, and I’ll be your man.”

  “That’s your dad?” Even in the darkness, I could see how wide Char’s eyes had grown.

  “Well, he’s the bassist,” I said.

  “But didn’t the Dukes break up ages ago?”

  “No way. The Dukes have been together for decades. They play cruises, casinos, seventies revues. You know. The big time. The four of them all grew up together in Philadelphia. They started the Dukes for a middle-school talent show. And then they just stayed together. Forever. My dad says that the band has been the most long-lasting relationship of his entire life.”

  “Is that, like, his full-time job?” Char ran his hand through my hair, twisting it around his fingers.

  “Being a Duke would not be much of a living. The drummer is a lawyer now, the guitarist and the singer started an accounting firm, and my dad works at a music store. They just do Duke shows occasionally. Like when Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons are unavailable.”

  That last bit was intended to make Char laugh, but he didn’t. “I can’t believe you never told me this before,” he said, as if he and I were constantly having long, meaningful conversations about our personal lives and I had for some reason kept this particular piece of information a secret.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know what your parents do.”

  “Yeah, but they’re not in a famous band.”

  He didn’t, I noticed, tell me what his parents did.

  “My dad’s band isn’t famous,” I said. “They had one song that was a huge radio hit, and then two LPs of songs that no one has ever heard. Honestly, it’s kind of sad.”

  “Sad?” Char echoed.

  “Yeah, like, every couple months these middle-aged guys put on fringed leather jackets as if they’re thirty-five years younger and sing about ‘dancing to the radio,’ or whatever. Like the best part of their lives happened when they were our age. They play an afternoon show for a sparse crowd of equally middle-aged people who only know one of their songs, and they do it all so they can make a couple thousand bucks that they can use to fix the plumbing in their houses and send their kids to summer enrichment programs.”

  Char laughed a little, his breath tickling my ear. “When you put it like that, it does sound pretty sad.” He paused. “But I guess that’s not how it feels to me. I mean, I don’t know your dad. Maybe he is just forcing himself through the motions so he can bring home some extra money. Maybe he really hates it, and maybe every day he wishes he was eighteen again. But maybe he found something he loved to do and people he loved to do it with when he was a kid, and he’s lucky enough that he still gets to do it years later.”

  “If you were fifty-three years old and still DJing the exact same songs, except at the Illinois State Fair Big Tent at two in the afternoon, would you feel like your life was sad or lucky?” I asked Char.

  Char shrugged. “I guess you’d have to ask me again in thirty-three years. I think I would feel lucky. I think what would make me feel sad would be if I were fifty-three years old and I wasn’t playing music anymore.”

  “I would be sad if you weren’t playing music anymore, too,” I told him.

  He rolled on top of me then, and kissed me long and hard. And there was nothing sad at all.

  * * *

  The following Thursday night, I was in the middle of my set, and everything was going smoothly. People jumping around to the Rolling Stones. Vicky was there with Dave, and they had claimed dance space right in the middle of the floor. Char was at the bar, talking to some college-aged girl with highlighted, flat-ironed hair, but I didn’t mind, because he had already pressed his fingers into my lower back earlier, which meant I was basically guaranteed yet another night of getting home at dawn. I was wearing the rhinestone pumps that Vicky insisted I buy, one of my dad’s old band shirts that I had resewn to fit me, and a multicolored scarf that Vicky had lent me. Even Mel hadn’t found anything to criticize with tonight’s outfit.

  Everything was going smoothly. Until the door opened a bit before midnight and Emily Wallace, Petra Davies, and Ashley Mersky walked in.

  I was thrown into shock, like a queen whose castle’s ironclad fortress has somehow been breached. What were they doing here? This wasn’t high school. This wasn’t driver’s ed. This was Start. This was mine.

  Emily and her friends hadn’t noticed me yet. They clustered in a tight circle, looking around the room, pointing and giggling. I could tell they had gotten all dressed up for their big night out, like this was a school dance. Emily wore a tight black strapless dress and fake eyelashes. Her makeup was perfect.

  They looked ridiculous here, obviously high school girls costumed as make-believe adults. Ridiculous, but beautiful. There’s a reason why Emily is a model. There’s a reason why Ashley’s chest was voted “best rack” by the guys’ lacrosse team when she was only a freshman. Because they are the beautiful ones.

  This song was winding down, so I put on my headphones to find a new one, but everything I tried sounded suddenly out of place. I tried to focus on my computer, but my eyes kept flickering up, and I was terrified that I would find Emily smirking at me. I wanted to drop my headphones and let the song play out while I ran straight out the door and all the way home.

  But you are a professional.

  I transitioned into the Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now?” I messed up the beat matching, so it sounded disorienting and wrong, but I didn’t even care. I scanned the room again for Emily and her friends. They were waiting in line at the bar. Still not looking at me. But they could look at me at any time. At any time, I could be discovered.

  And then what?

  Char left the girl with the highlighted hair, and for one second I was convinced that he was going to walk over to Emily, as he had walked over to me weeks earlier. That he was going to introduce himself to her, and ask her to dance, and invite her into the DJ booth. Just like me, only prettier and cooler and normal. I remembered how Char explained to me why he had sex with Pippa: “Because she’s hot.” What if he saw that Emily was hot, too?

  But Char walked past Emily, seeming not to notice her. He walked through the dance floor and into the DJ booth, to me. “What is going on in here?” he asked me.

  I blinked fast. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that it’s prime time on the dance floor, you had this crowd in the palm of your hand, and now all of a sudden you’ve decided to play the world’s most downer of a song.”

  “It’s the Smiths,” I defended myself. “Everyone loves the Smiths.”

  Char raised his eyebrows and quoted the lyrics to me: “‘There’s a club if you’d like to go. You could meet somebody who really loves you. So you go and you stand on your own, and you leave on your own, and you go home and you cry and you want to die.’”

  I shrugged.

  “Do you want me to take over for a while?” Char asked, his hands already moving toward the mixer.

  “No,” I said.

  He paused.

  “What I want,” I said, my voice rising, “is for you to get those girls out of here.”

  Char’s eyebrows knit together. “What girls?”

  “Those girls!” I screeched, pointing at Emily, Petra, and Ashley.

  “Um, why?” Char asked, and I saw them, just for a brief
flash, as he probably saw them: three harmless-looking teenage girls, delicate features, pretty smiles. Like they couldn’t cut you until you were so disfigured that you hardly recognized yourself.

  “Because they’re underage!” I screamed.

  “Yeah…” Char said dubiously.

  “Don’t they have parents?” I raged. “What the hell kind of parents let their teenage daughters go to a bar on a school night? This isn’t the goddamn Freshman/Sophomore Summer Formal. This is the real world.”

  Char cleared his throat pointedly. “Seriously?”

  I grabbed his skinny tie and pulled him in close to me, and I spoke right into his face. “Char, listen to me. I am the DJ. And I don’t want them here.”

  As soon as I let go of him, Char left the booth. He headed straight for the exit and stepped outside. A moment later, he returned with Mel. Char pointed to where Emily and her friends stood, now with pink drinks in their hands.

  Mel strode directly over to them. He towered over all the people on the floor; everyone moved aside to let him pass. I watched him speak to the girls briefly. I saw them smile and bat their eyelashes, trying to flirt their way out of it. Then I saw their mouths harden and their eyebrows narrow. Mel just stood there with his arms crossed. Emily pulled a card out of her pocket and handed it to him. A fake ID, I bet. Mel glanced at it briefly before snapping it in half with one hand. Then he escorted them to the door.

  Emily took one look back at the club, her mouth hanging open in the astonished expression of a girl who has never before been denied anything. And now she saw me. Her eyes caught mine right before the heavy metal door slammed shut behind her.

  I had once thought that I wanted to get revenge by dying. But getting revenge by living, and living well, was much, much sweeter.

  Char came back to the booth. “Do you want to explain what that was all about?” he asked me.

  “Nope.”

  He rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. “Well, are you happy now?” he asked.

  “Yes.” And I transitioned into “Walking on Sunshine.” The crowd perked up immediately. Vicky shot me a thumbs-up sign from the floor.

  “Elise,” Char asked, leaning in close, “are you, you know, okay?”

  I closed my eyes. “Kiss me,” I said. And he did.

  I remembered how Pippa had described the thrill of being friends with the DJ. You always have somewhere to stash your coat, and sometimes he’ll play songs for you. But that was kids’ stuff. That was nothing compared with the power of being the DJ.

  But I also felt like an eggshell that had gotten a tiny crack. You can’t repair something like that. All you can do is hope that it sticks together, hope that the crack doesn’t grow until all your insides come spilling right out.

  13

  When I got to our lunch table on Tuesday, Sally and Chava were already seated. With some guy. Seriously. Sally and Chava knew a guy, apparently. His hair was dyed slime green, he had a fake septum piercing, and his face was riddled with acne scars.

  Don’t get me wrong; I’m not blaming anyone for having pimples. At this particular lunchtime, I myself had one massive pimple on my chin and one that looked kind of like a mini unicorn horn right in the center of my forehead. These things can’t be helped. But here’s what can be helped: removing your fake nose ring and using it to more effectively pick at your pimples while sitting at a lunch table with Sally and Chava. Which is what this guy was doing.

  Nonetheless, he was a guy.

  I sat down. “Hello, friends.”

  “Elise!” Sally cried in delighted surprise. “You’re just the person I wanted to see.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “This is Russell,” Sally went on. She reached out her arm as if to put it around him, but then she seemed to think better of it and just pointed instead.

  “Hi,” Russell wheezed out around a mouthful of his burger.

  Chava started to laugh cheerily. I stared at her. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just that Russell is so clever!”

  I unwrapped my peanut butter sandwich.

  “Why don’t you tell Elise that funny story you were telling us earlier?” Sally prompted him.

  As Russell launched into a description of this one time when his online role-playing game turned particularly violent and he had to resort to inhumane tactics to save the day, I let my attention wander. As I gazed into the distance, who did I see walking toward my table but Emily Wallace. She led a group of five beautiful people. Her hair swished with every step she took, and she carried her books in a gleaming leather shoulder bag.

  This was one of the other rules that started at some point, maybe around eighth grade. It turned out that it wasn’t cool to carry your school supplies in a backpack. I didn’t know that it wasn’t cool to have a backpack. It used to be cool, I think. Even after Lizzie Reardon told me not to, I still kept using my backpack. Because textbooks are heavy. Do girls like Emily Wallace never ache from the weight of all those books?

  I could hear Emily’s high-pitched voice float above the din of the cafeteria. “Yeah, we had so much fun,” she was telling her minions. “It was way overpriced, though. Like, six dollars for a hard lemonade? But these college guys fully offered to buy us drinks. We left kinda early, though. Petra’s mom would have lost it if we’d stayed out any later. I mean, it was a Thursday.”

  “Hey!” I heard Petra object.

  “The bouncer was kinda weird, though. I mean, he…”

  And at that moment, Emily’s eyes met mine. I resisted the urge to look away, to play ostrich. Instead I stared right back at her, and I tried to send her this message through my eyes: Don’t you dare talk about Mel like you know him.

  Emily’s voice faltered. She blinked and looked away. Then she made an abrupt turn and led her posse down an aisle toward their table in the center of the room, away from me.

  I had never seen anything like it.

  “So do you want to?” Russell was asking, and it took me a moment to come back to earth and realize he was speaking to me.

  “Do I want to what?” I asked.

  He coughed a number of times, his hacking getting louder and louder until I half expected him to expel an owl pellet. Sally flinched away, like he might be contagious. At last, Russell coughed out, “Do you want to go to the summer formal with me?”

  Chava clapped her hands delightedly. She is a sucker for romance.

  “Me?” I asked.

  Russell nodded a bunch and slurped down his Coke, which seemed to help with the coughing.

  “Do you even know my name?”

  He nodded again, less vigorously.

  The Freshman/Sophomore Summer Formal is a relatively new addition to the Glendale High social calendar. It used to be that there was only one formal dance at the end of the year, and that was prom. Obviously. Only juniors, seniors, and their dates are allowed to go to prom, so this led to some seriously immoral and occasionally illicit maneuvering on the part of lower classmen trying to score tickets. Two years before I started at Glendale High, some sophomore girl apparently offered to tell everyone that she had given a senior guy a blow job in exchange for him agreeing to take her to prom as his date.

  At this point, the school administration must have realized that they desperately needed an occasion for freshmen and sophomores to spend their money on; thus, the Freshman/Sophomore Summer Formal was born. It’s now a very big deal among the community of people who care about school dances, and almost no one bothers to bribe or blackmail her way into actual prom anymore.

  I breathed out, slowly. “Thank you for asking me, Russell,” I said, “but I’m afraid I already have plans that night, so I won’t be able to make it.”

  “You don’t even know what night the formal is,” Sally pointed out.

  This was true.

  “It’s in two weeks,” Chava piped up.

  “Two weeks from Saturday,” Sally said.

  I nodded. “I have plans.”

  Russell didn??
?t seem terribly devastated. He didn’t say anything like, “Don’t leave me, my love!” He said, to Sally, “Can I go now?”

  She shrugged. He took off, leaving his burger wrapper and soda cup behind.

  “Wow, Elise.” Sally turned on me. “You really are a snob, aren’t you?”

  “Excuse me?” I blinked.

  “All your journal entries about how nobody at this school is good enough for you. I was always like, ‘Oh, she can’t really mean that.’ But you do mean that.”

  “Sally, what are you talking about? Who do I think I am better than?”

  “Russell!”

  “I don’t know Russell. Where did you even find him?”

  “He’s a freshman,” Chava said.

  “So what was he doing here?” I asked.

  “He wanted to ask you to the formal,” Chava explained.

  Suddenly it all became clear to me. “You wanted him to ask me to the formal.”

  Silence from my friends.

  “You made this poor freshman come over here and ask me out. Why? Just so you’ll have company at the dance, Sally, so you won’t have to stand there alone like always?”

  “No!” Chava sounded shocked.

  “For your information,” Sally snapped, “I won’t be alone. Larry Kapur asked me to be his date.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t know how to respond to this. “Um, that’s great, Sally.”

  “I just thought it might be fun for us to double-date,” she said. “Share a limo or something. You know, like friends do.”

  “Plus,” Chava said, “you’re always talking about how no boys ever like you and how lonely you are.”

  “I’m not,” I said, flashing back to last Thursday night, Char’s mouth on mine, our bodies pressed together—

  “You know, in your journal,” Chava said. “We didn’t want you to be sad anymore. That’s all. So that’s why we encouraged Russell to ask you to the dance.”

  “Encouraged,” Sally repeated.

  “We didn’t say he had to. We just wanted you to know that boys do like you. Like Russell.”