This Song Will Save Your Life

  Alex.

  And, crying so hard that I didn’t know if I would ever stop, I tore her entire castle to shreds.

  When I was done, silence set in. The only sounds were my ragged breathing and the buzzing of my cell phone. I sat down on the floor and opened it.

  I had three missed calls from Vicky and a text message.

  I THINK YOU’RE WRONG. I LIKE YOU. HARRY AND MEL DO TOO. SO THAT’S THREE TO START.

  16

  I woke up to screaming.

  “I’m going to kill you! I’m going to cut you open with a sword and feed your insides to the dogs!” That was Alex. That’s how she thinks. She reads a lot of books.

  “It’s not my fault! I didn’t do it! Help!” That was Neil.

  My eyes were stuck together with dried tears. I rubbed them away and glanced at my bedside clock. 5:53 a.m.

  “Alexandra Myers, stop that right now!” That was Steve.

  “Violence is not the answer!” And Mom. Of course.

  I slipped out of bed and padded out of my room. When I got to the sunroom, I stopped.

  The ruins of Alex’s poetry castle looked even worse in the daylight than they had a few hours before. It wasn’t just broken. It was utterly destroyed.

  Alex was weeping in the middle of the foyer, hugging a collection of torn papers to her chest. Neil was in Steve’s arms, wailing into his shoulder. Mom sat on the floor next to Alex, and I could see that she was crying, too.

  “If Neil didn’t do it,” Alex said, “then who did?”

  “Maybe Chew-Toy?” Steve suggested hopefully.

  Hearing his name, Chew-Toy came trotting into the front hall, his tongue hanging happily out of his mouth.

  “I hate you, Chew-Toy!” Alex screamed. She smacked him once and raised her hand to do it again, but he fled before she had the chance.

  “Alex, violence is not the answer!” Mom shouted again. She grabbed Alex in a tight bear hug, pinning her little arms to her sides.

  “Maybe it was a robber,” Steve suggested, again in that hopeful tone. Like he really, really wanted to believe that a burglar had broken into our house in the middle of the night just to wreck Alex’s poetry castle.

  I took another step into the foyer. Mom, Steve, and Alex turned to look at me. Neil just kept crying into Steve’s shoulder.

  “Good morning, Elise,” Mom said. And I could tell from the tone of her voice that she didn’t blame this on Chew-Toy, and she wasn’t hoping a robber was going to show up to take the blame. My mother knew exactly whose fault this was.

  She stood up slowly and spoke to me, her words coming out low and shaky. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  I steadied myself against the wall. “I was just trying to…”

  “To what?” Mom said sarcastically. “To hurt Alex? To hurt me? What?”

  “To protect her,” I said. “Like a big sister should.”

  Mom laughed, a bitter, clipped laugh. “Protect her,” she repeated. “I can’t believe you. This really takes the cake.”

  “How do you not see it?” I snapped. Neil stopped crying. He looked back and forth between me and Mom, sucking on his thumb, even though he stopped sucking on his thumb a full year ago. “How do you not see what Alex is going to become if you let her go on like this? What kind of a person do you think she’s going to be?”

  “She can be whoever she wants to be,” Steve answered.

  “No,” I said. “She can’t. Nobody can. And you’re not doing her any favors by telling her that she can because she’s special. Look at me. Look at me. I’m ugly and boring and stuck-up. I’m awkward and gross; I’m pathetic and worthless. Do you think that’s who I wanted to be?”

  I blinked and behind my closed eyelids could see only Char, again, dismissing me.

  “Alex doesn’t need to have the best booth at the second grade fair,” I went on. “She needs a reality check, diminished ambition, and some non-imaginary friends. And that’s what I am trying to give her.”

  “Elise did it?” Alex’s gray-blue eyes grew wide as she finally figured out what we were talking about. Her face contorted into an ugly, silent howl, and Mom held her even more tightly.

  “Do you honestly believe that?” Mom asked me. “That you’re boring and worthless and all of that? Because you’re not, Elise. You’re nothing like that.”

  “Open your eyes!” I screamed. “That’s exactly who I am. And I am trying to be a good big sister, so instead of two screwed-up daughters you’ll have only one. I’m sorry if you don’t like it, but I am doing the best I can. And in ten years, when Alex is happy, maybe you’ll see that I was right.”

  I didn’t want Alex to ever have to lose someone the way that I lost Char. She deserved better than that.

  “Elise, this is unacceptable,” Steve said. He cleared his throat. “I’m not comfortable having you near my children right now.”

  His words were like a slap in the face. I was Steve’s child. He had been my stepfather for nine years. And since my own dad was so angry with me these days, Steve was the next best thing.

  “What are you saying?” I whispered. My legs felt suddenly weak under me, and I sat down, right there on the floor.

  “I want you to stay at your father’s until this whole situation has cooled down,” Steve said, rubbing the bald spot on the back of his head. “Maybe for a few weeks. I’m sorry, but I can’t have you putting my children in danger.”

  My children.

  “You are so grounded, young lady,” Mom added. “You are going to go to school, and then you are going straight to your father’s house, and you are not leaving there. End of story.” To my sister, she said, “Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go wash off those tears.”

  I pulled myself to my feet and dragged myself back to my room.

  I had done Alex a favor. In the long run, this would make Alex happier. It would make everyone happier.

  But right now, I didn’t feel happier at all. If anything, I just felt worse.

  * * *

  By next Thursday, the day before my first party, I had made up my mind: I wasn’t going to do it. I was going to tell Pete that I couldn’t, I wasn’t experienced enough, I didn’t have the technical skills. And I was going to offer the party to Char. Pete had said I could do whatever I wanted with Friday nights, and this was what I wanted to do.

  Because I was grounded, I hadn’t seen Vicky for a full week. My parents had taken away my cell, so I didn’t even have her phone number to call her. In a way I was glad for this, since I knew that if I told Vicky my plan, she would try to talk me out of it.

  I was going to go to Start tonight and tell Char that he was right: I wasn’t as good as all that, and I needed him. And he would take over Friday nights. Maybe he would even be generous and let me do a guest slot. And everything would go back to the way it had been, back when things were good enough, before I ruined it all by trying to make it better.

  I knew this plan was a last-ditch effort, coming too late and unlikely to work. But I also knew I had to try. Because what else did I have?

  My first obstacle was figuring out how to get from my dad’s house to Start on Thursday night. My dad had taken the week off from work so that he could constantly monitor me. I hadn’t been allowed back at my mom’s house since Friday. I hadn’t even been allowed to talk to Alex on the phone.

  The problem was that my dad’s house was about nine miles from the club. I was grounded. And it was pouring rain, one of those June storms that sounds like the God of Weather roaring at you, “You shall never have your summer!” Even if I wanted to sneak out of the house and walk nine miles, I wouldn’t have made it.

  What I needed was a ride.

  After dinner on Thursday, I sat on my bed and ran through my options. Vicky didn’t have a car. Neither did Pippa, and even if she did, she wouldn’t have helped me with any plan to win back Char. Asking Char for any help was obviously out of the question. I didn’t have Mel’s phone number, and anyway, I was pretty sure that
he was enough of an adult that he wouldn’t help me break out of my dad’s house. In fact, without my cell phone, I would have had a hard time figuring out how to get in touch with any of them.

  No matter how I thought about it, I kept coming up with one idea. She wouldn’t like it, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

  I grabbed my father’s landline. I grabbed my school directory. And I dialed.

  “Hello?”

  “I need your help,” I said.

  “Oh, thank goodness,” said Sally. “I thought you would never ask. Okay, the first thing is: You are not alone. The second thing is: Suicide is not the answer. The third thing is … Wait, I forget.” Her voice became muffled and I heard her say, “Chava, what’s the third thing?”

  “Sally,” I said. “That’s not what I need your help with.”

  “Oh. Wait, what else do you need?”

  “Do you have any plans tonight?”

  “It’s a school night,” Sally answered.

  I paused. “So is that a no?”

  “Chava’s over,” Sally said. “We’re doing homework.”

  “Great. Can you pick me up at my dad’s and then drive me somewhere?”

  “Um … why?” I could almost hear Sally raising her eyebrows.

  “I just have this thing I need to do.”

  Sally lowered her voice. “Is it a drug deal?”

  I sighed, very quietly. “It’s not a drug deal,” I said.

  “Let me ask.”

  I overheard some footsteps and shuffling and muffled conversation. A couple minutes later, Sally got back on the line. “Yes,” she said.

  “Yes!” I squealed.

  “But I can’t take the highway.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “And I can’t drive faster than twenty-five miles an hour.”

  I paused. “Sally, your parents won’t know if you drive, like, thirty miles an hour.”

  “They told me about this story they once read about a boy who went drag racing in the rain, and then he crashed his car.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “And died,” Sally added.

  “Fine,” I said. “We can drive at twenty-five miles an hour. Can you come get me at ten?” I gave her my dad’s address, then added, “But can you just wait down the block, not right outside the house?”

  She was silent for a moment. “Are you sure this isn’t a drug deal?”

  “Positive.”

  I told her my dad’s address, we hung up the phone, and I swung into action. I told my dad that I was going to be in my room the rest of the night. I said it in a way that seemed both sulky and exhausted, so he would be clear on the fact that I really, really did not want to hang out with him tonight. Then I stomped around the house in my pajamas and brushed my teeth in the hallway to make sure that he saw me all ready for bed.

  “Good night, Daddy,” I said. Then I shut my bedroom door. I turned on my music, and I got ready.

  I put on the same outfit I’d been wearing the first night Char kissed me. It felt like good luck. Like maybe if he saw me looking just like I had then, he would remember just how he felt about me then.

  The last thing I did, as part of my preparations, was check Fake Elise’s journal.

  June 17:

  tonight is the night. i don’t want to do this anymore. i give up. goodbye. xoxo elise dembowski

  In a way, Fake Elise knew what she was talking about. In a way, she always did. I was giving up. But sometimes you have to give up something you are to get to who you want to be.

  I gave myself one last check in the mirror and whispered the line from my fake journal: “Tonight is the night.” Then I grabbed my ladybug umbrella and snuck out of the house.

  It was easy. I had done it before, just to go for walks. Being officially grounded didn’t make it any harder to slip out my first-floor window and jump to the ground.

  Keeping my head down, I ran through the pounding rain to the street corner. Sally and Chava were already there, headlights cutting through the downpour. I crawled into the backseat of Sally’s parents’ SUV.

  “Thank you so much, guys,” I said.

  “You look crazy,” Sally responded, looking at my outfit.

  “But pretty!” Chava added as Sally started to drive. Chava gave a little sigh of pleasure. “I love to drive at night. It feels like we own the streets, you know?”

  “Seriously?” I asked. Not that driving was such a weird thing to enjoy doing. Just that it had never occurred to me to wonder what Chava and Sally might like to do when they weren’t at school.

  “One time,” Sally whispered, looking around as if for hidden cameras, “I let Chava drive this car. And she only has her permit.”

  “Did you get in trouble?” I asked.

  “No!” Chava exclaimed, and they both burst into giggles.

  “Hey, guys?” I said. “Thank you.”

  “For what?” Chava asked.

  “For giving me a ride tonight. I really needed your help.”

  Chava’s face cracked into a huge grin, like she had been waiting for me to say this to her for her entire life.

  “That’s what friends do,” Sally said slowly, like she was explaining something to a hearing-impaired child. “They’re there for each other.”

  I didn’t know much about friends. But the more friendships I saw up close—with Vicky, Pippa, Harry, Char—the more I suspected that Sally knew what she was talking about.

  “Look, Elise,” Sally said matter-of-factly. “We know you think you’re too good for us.”

  Chava nodded in unemotional agreement.

  “What, did you read that on my quote-unquote blog, too?” I asked.

  “No,” Sally said. “But we’re not stupid. Okay, we’re not popular, but we’re not blind either.”

  “I don’t think that I’m too good for you,” I said, but they both acted like I hadn’t spoken.

  “And you’re clearly using us right at this instant,” Sally went on.

  “For Sally’s license,” Chava added.

  “For my license,” Sally said.

  And I couldn’t argue with that, because that was true. I treated Sally and Chava in the same disposable way that Amelia and her friends treated me. The only difference was, I’d never made them clean up my trash. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  They shrugged in unison. “Honestly?” Chava said. “It’s okay. We don’t really mind.”

  “What?”

  “We like you,” Chava said simply. “You’re interesting.” She added quickly, “Good-interesting, obviously.”

  “I wouldn’t ask my parents for permission to take the car out at ten p.m. on a school night if I didn’t like you,” Sally said.

  “I like you, too,” I said, and realized that, in a way, I meant it. I didn’t feel about Sally and Chava the way I felt about Vicky. I never would. They didn’t get me like Vicky did—and, honestly, I didn’t get them either. But that didn’t stop me from liking them.

  “We know,” Chava said with an understanding nod. “You’re just bad at showing it, that’s all.”

  As we drove down the street of warehouses toward Start, Sally muttered, “There’s, like, nobody out here.”

  But she was wrong.

  A small cluster of people stood at the end of the alleyway, waiting for Mel to let them into Start. On the otherwise desolate gray street, the cluster of brightly colored umbrellas stood out like a poetry castle in a field of cardboard boxes. Sally slowed the car, and together we took them in: the giggling girls in high heels or colorful sneakers. The boys in galoshes, jumping in puddles in the street. The couple sharing one umbrella, kissing, pressed up against the concrete wall.

  I saw Sally glance down at her own mom-fitted jeans and too-big sweatshirt, then back out the window. “Who are they?” she asked.

  I thought of all the answers to that question. Students. Artists. Dancers. DJs. Guitarists. Photographers. Bartenders. Designers. Club kids. “People,” I sa
id.

  “What is this place?” Chava asked.

  I had thought I’d never be able to explain what Start was to anyone, but my response actually came out simply. “It’s called Start,” I said. “It’s the greatest underground dance party in the world.”

  Sally’s forehead creased. “Why are we here?”

  “Um.” I tugged down my skirt. I didn’t want to explain about Char, not now, so I went with the easier explanation. “Because I DJ here.”

  “You DJ an underground dance party?” Chava shrieked.

  “Only on Thursdays,” I said lamely.

  “You never mentioned that on your blog,” Sally accused.

  “Sally, I’ve been telling you this for weeks: I don’t write a blog.”

  Sally still looked shell-shocked. “But you never mentioned it to us, either.”

  “I know.” I stroked the inside of my left wrist. “Don’t you ever want to have just one thing that no one else knows about, so no one can ruin it for you?”

  Sally just stared out the window at the line of people and didn’t respond. I was about one second away from saying, “Never mind,” when she opened her mouth. “I have a boyfriend,” she said.

  I stopped stroking my wrist. “What?”

  “Do you mean Larry Kapur?” Chava asked, looking as surprised as I felt.

  “No.” Even in the dark I could see Sally blushing. “He’s an online boyfriend. I’ve never actually met him in person. He lives in California. But we message each other all the time. Our first anniversary is coming up in August.”

  “How did you never mention this to me?” Chava demanded.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Sally said. “I’m just saying … yeah. I get it. About having a part of your life that’s secret, so no one can take it away from you.” She looked down at her short, plain nails. Sally had told me before that the only nail polish she was allowed to wear was the clear kind, and, as she herself pointed out, “What’s the point of that?”

  “Do you want to come in to Start?” I asked suddenly. I wanted to give them something in exchange for the things they’d given to me—not just the ride tonight, but things I’d taken for granted: letting me sit with them when I had no one, welcoming me into their little group of two when we all knew they didn’t need me. “I’m the DJ,” I went on. “The bouncer won’t care if I bring in underage friends, I bet.”