Audrey, Wait!

  She grinned. “Dude, Doomsday Scenario. They’re gonna tear the place up.”

  “Big traitor.”

  She eyed me carefully. “What can we do to cheer you up, Gloomy Gus?”

  “For starters, don’t call me Gloomy Gus.”

  “We could go try on really expensive shoes and make all the salespeople really mad at us?”

  “No. That’s depressing. I always want the shoes when we’re done.”

  “Yeah, I know.” She sipped again. “We could go to the MAC store and look at all the hot guys wearing eyeliner and ask them for application tips.”

  “Um, perhaps you haven’t met my boyfriend yet.”

  “Oh, like I’m single? Just think of it as artistic appreciation. They’d probably even give you all of the limited edition holiday makeup for free, just ‘cause you’re Audrey.”

  I sighed. “I think I might change my name.”

  “New Year’s resolution?”

  “Survival instinct.” I sipped at the apple cider and got a mouthful of warm whipped cream. “Thanks for the cider, Victoria.”

  She was about to reply, but the doorbell rang, followed by a loud, off-key chorus of “Jingle Bells” coming from outside. “Oh, for the love of Baby Jesus!” I heard my dad shout. Victoria craned her neck to look out of my room toward the front door. “What’s going on?”

  “Carolers,” I told her. “You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one of them. They’ve been arriving by the truckload.”

  “Did this happen to you guys last year?”

  “Nope.” I rolled my eyes. “Shocking, I know.”

  Victoria just shook her head and opened her mouth to comment when the caroling suddenly went awry. “You said your piece and now I’ve got to say mine! I had you and you strung me on the liiiiiinnnnneeeeee!”

  We looked at each other.

  “Are they singing in harmony?” Victoria finally asked. “It doesn’t sound half-bad.”

  “Just make them go away,” I moaned.

  Victoria patted my knee. “Think of it this way. They’re serenading you.”

  “Bah humbug.”

  She grinned. “That’s the spirit!”

  29 “Then we’ll turn it up and we’ll play a little faster!”

  —The Academy Is…, “Slow Down”

  VICTORIA AND I had the same conversation for the rest of the week leading up to the concert. It went something like this:

  “What time should we leave for the concert?”

  “I’m not going.”

  “Traffic probably won’t be too bad, since it’s on a Saturday. Wanna say five o’clock?”

  “I’m not going.”

  “You’re right, four is better.”

  “I’m not going.”

  “Four it is!”

  Do you see what I have to put up with?

  The day of the show, Victoria was honking outside at three fifty-five. This struck me as odd for two reasons.

  1. Victoria is usually late.

  2. She doesn’t have a car.

  So I immediately went outside to see who was honking and I found my best friend sitting in a brand-new convertible BMW. She was wearing heart-shaped sunglasses that matched the car’s cherry-red exterior and a look that said, I am so obviously cooler than you.

  “What did you do?” I cried.

  She looked at my lazy-day jeans and ratted hoodie. “You’re wearing that?”

  “Let’s focus on the car right now,” I said. “Where did you get this? Did your mom win the lottery?!”

  She grinned. “Remember that reality show?”

  I immediately began looking for cameramen hiding in the trees. “If they’re filming right now, Victoria, I swear to God—”

  “Relax, Captain Paranoid. No one’s filming. But I told them you were still thinking about whether or not to do the show and they thought you needed a little persuading.” She patted the car’s cream interior. “Nice persuasion, huh? We’re supposed to be using it to ‘scout locations,’ but whatever.”

  “They sent a BMW?!”

  “I’m telling you, Audrey, you would not believe the shit they send celebrities.”

  “This is blackmail.”

  “No, it’s America. Let freedom ring. Now go get changed or we’re gonna miss the first bands.”

  “I’m not going, I already told you.”

  Victoria held up her MP3 player. “Would you like to hear the sound system in the car?”

  I bit my lip. “Yes, but no.”

  She immediately cued up a song and I heard some of my favorite guitar notes ever. “Your lipstick, his collar, don’t bother, angel! I know exactly what goes on!” Victoria knew that I loved Taking Back Sunday and that I had listened to “Cute Without the ‘E’ (Cut from the Team)” on repeat for three days straight last summer.

  “That’s not fair,” I said. “You’re using one of my favorite songs against me. You’re cheating.”

  Victoria just smiled and turned the radio up.

  “When everything you’ll get is everything you wanted, Princess!”

  Oh my God, the stereo system in that car was sent from the heavens. I could feel my resolve weakening with every note.

  “Five minutes,” Victoria said. “Go put on something decent. No paper bags allowed.”

  My parents were out for the evening, so there was no need for a debate with them. It only took me four minutes to change into decent jeans, a white tank top, and a dark green cardigan that was so worn at the wrists that I could poke my thumbs through the holes. “Very Kurt Cobain on Unplugged,” Victoria said as I climbed into the car. “I like it.”

  “Less talk, more music,” I replied. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

  “Less talk, more music,” she repeated back to me. “Turn it up.”

  30 “The center of the earth is the end of the world.…”

  —Green Day, “Jesus of Suburbia”

  I WAS SO SEDUCED by the car that I had temporary memory loss and forgot that we were heading toward a concert where I knew I’d be spotted. But then Victoria followed the signs off the 101 toward the arena and artist parking and when we got out of the car, my knees were literally shaking. “Victoria?” I said, but she was too busy trying to figure out where will-call was, and so I just followed her because I didn’t want to be by myself.

  I wasn’t by myself, though—I was surrounded by a bunch of people who all kept stealing glances at me. Victoria got our backstage passes and I hung mine around my neck and tugged on it nervously. “C’mon,” she said, pulling at my arm. “Let’s go see if they’ve got food.”

  “If I eat, I’m going to throw up,” I told her.

  “Stop being so dramatic,” she replied. “You’ve already been backstage before. You’re a seasoned professional.”

  Backstage felt really hot and crowded and small, even thought it was huge. There were probably a billion people back there and I kept seeing people I recognized, people whose pictures were collaged onto my bedroom wall. Victoria was trying to play it cool, I could tell, but every so often, she would turn to me and grin. “Isn’t this fucking amazing?” she whispered at one point.

  “Do you think Evan’s here yet?”

  “Dunno. This is so much better than the Lolitas’ backstage.”

  My stomach flipped. Granted, at that concert, I’d sort of sealed my notoriety, but at least we had danced and Jonah had been there and it had all been new and exciting. Here, everyone was jaded. No one seemed to be having a good time and I wondered how many people were there for the show and how many people were there to just be seen.

  And I wondered which category I was in.

  “I’m gonna go get a Diet Coke,” Victoria said, and before I could quietly beg her not to leave, she had disappeared down the hall. I took a deep breath and leaned against the cool cinder-block wall, trying to look invisible.

  “Hey, you’re that girl!”

  I glanced up, praying that whoever it was was talking about som
e other girl, and I saw the guitarist from Doomsday Scenario looking right at me and grinning.

  I was so going to throw up that it wasn’t even funny.

  “You’re Audrey!”

  “No, I—” I started to say, but then he was standing next to me and honest to God, I think I was a foot taller than him. And I’m not that tall. “Hi,” I squeaked. “I like your band.”

  “Awesome song,” he was saying. “So fucking awesome.” He was looking up at me and I felt like some huge awkward giant. “Did you write it?”

  “Um, no, no, I just—”

  “Fucked the singer. Yeah, welcome to the business.” He grinned. “So. Got any hot friends? We’re writing our second album in Burbank and right now it’s just a bunch of bros in the studio. We need inspiration.”

  I realized that he and I had different definitions for “inspiration.”

  “Excuse me,” I said, then backed away from him and stumbled down the hall. I heard someone else say my name and I ignored them before realizing it was Victoria. “Hey,” she said excitedly. “Were you talking to the guy from Doomsday Scenario?!”

  “Sort of,” I replied. “He’s gross.”

  “Really?” She glanced at him over my shoulder. “Is he a dirty old man?”

  “Yep.” I could feel my stomach flipping again. “Victoria, I mean, I know that this is supposed to be fun, but—”

  “You’re not having fun,” she sighed.

  I shook my head. “Everyone’s looking at me and I don’t want to see Evan or the Do-Gooders and I just want to leave.”

  She looked at me for a long minute. “You really want to go?”

  “More than anything in the entire world.”

  Victoria sighed and toyed with the backstage pass around her neck. I felt like the worst friend in the world, but I couldn’t feel like this anymore. If it kept up, I’d be so mentally scarred that I’d never be able to go to another concert again. “I’ll make it up to you, I swear,” I told her. “But it’s…it’s not fun like it was last time.”

  She glanced around and saw that, in fact, the whole hallway population was watching us talking out of the corner of their eye. “Okay,” she sighed. “Let’s go.”

  We didn’t talk the whole car ride home.

  The stereo was so loud, we probably couldn’t have heard each other, anyway.

  31 “Oh, I think I smell a rat!”

  —The White Stripes, “I Think I Smell a Rat”

  ONE OF THE FEW BENEFITS of spending all my time in the school office was that I didn’t have to deal with Sharon Eggleston every minute of every class. In fact, I hadn’t seen much of her, which made me nervous. It’s important to always have your enemy in your sight. Who knows what could be going on behind your back?

  I found out the last day of school before Christmas break.

  I was walking across the campus after lunch, coming back from the Spanish department, where I had to hand in my final exam. Since I couldn’t sit in the regular class, all of my teachers had given my finals to the office, and Connie the secretary (I should really try to learn her last name) watched over me as I took them. And for once in my life, they weren’t bad. I had had nothing to do but study in school and study at home, so the ironic thing is that my GPA was the highest it’s ever been. My parents were positively gleeful. “Your social alienation is the best thing that’s ever happened to you!” my mom crowed.

  It’s nice to know whose side they’re on.

  I had hoped that maybe I would be let out of the office long enough to go to one of the sugar-spun holiday parties that all of my classes would be having. I had heard that they were watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas in geometry. I used to make my parents call me Cindy Lou Who when I was a little kid because I loved that cartoon so much, so I really wanted to watch with everyone else.

  No way, José.

  Instead, I was stuck playing solitaire on Connie’s computer and reading the copies of Vogue that she stowed in her bottom desk drawer. Totally fucking depressing.

  But it got worse after lunch.

  Like I said, I’d just handed in my surprisingly easy Spanish final essay and was heading back toward the office when I saw her and him.

  By her, I mean Sharon Eggleston.

  And by him, I mean James.

  They were standing by his locker and she was way too close to him, almost like she was his jacket. That’s how close she was. She was saying something and laughing, and James was doing that nervous smile that he used to do with me before we knew that we liked each other.

  Uh-uh. No way. Not on my watch.

  I marched over so fast that I was breathless by the time I got there. James saw me coming and he started to frantically wave with a huge smile on his face. “Audrey,” I could see him telling Sharon, and she threw a look over her shoulder at me before standing away from my boyfriend.

  “HI!” James said as he stepped away from Sharon and started to wrap an arm around my shoulder. But as he stepped away from her, I stepped away from him.

  “What the hell?” I said. “What the hell? What the hell? What the hell?”

  Sharon calmly straightened her sweater. “Aud, relax. Jealousy is so unattractive.”

  “So is boyfriend stealing!”

  “Boyfriend stealing?” James repeated. His eyes grew wide. “Audrey, no. Nuh-uh. No way in hell.”

  I got as close to Sharon as I dared without catching whatever creepy sexually transmitted disease she probably had. “You? Don’t talk to him. Ever again. You’re a fucking leech!”

  “Audrey—” James was pulling at my shoulder, but I kept shrugging him off, too irate.

  “You didn’t get Evan,” I yelled at her, “and you sure as hell aren’t gonna get James, either! Just stay away! Get your own damn love life!”

  Sharon just smiled serenely at me, like she was the fucking Mona Lisa. “Audrey,” she said in the same voice that people use when they talk to little kids, “why so defensive? Hmmm?”

  “I’m not defensive!” I yelled, which of course sounded completely defensive. What can I say? I was furious and tired and had eaten way too many candy canes that day to be rational. “You’re delusional! He’s my boyfriend, not yours!”

  “Then how come you never go out with him?” She smiled a thin, terrible smile. “If you love him so much, how come no one knows it?”

  I would’ve kept on threatening her life and such, but James wrapped an arm around my waist and began carrying me away from the scene. “Put me down!” I struggled, but he waited until we were around the corner and far away from Sharon before setting me back on my feet.

  “What are you doing?” I huffed as I shoved my hair out of my eyes. “What the fuck was that?”

  “I could ask you the same question!” he snapped back. It was the first time he had ever been snappy with me, and the two of us stood staring at each other, both panting and flushed.

  “You were talking to Sharon Eggleston!” I finally told him.

  “So you’re automatically just gonna jump to the conclusion that I’m cheating on you? With Sharon fucking Eggleston?!”

  I paused. “No, it’s just…she’s…she’s a really bad person, okay? She tried to steal Evan a long time ago, back when we first started dating.”

  “Well, I’m not him.” James’s jaw was flexing and tightening and I could see the hurt in his eyes. “In case you haven’t picked up on the thirty thousand differences between me and Evan, let me give you one more: I’m not gonna date Sharon Eggleston.”

  “So why was she all pressed up against you, then? And why were you doing that nervous smile?” I wasn’t done being mad about that part.

  “Because she made me nervous!” he cried. “And I was at my locker and I turned around and she was right there! I didn’t know what to do! She’s a girl-I can’t just threaten to bitch-slap her like you can, you know!”

  It’s hard to have an eye-to-eye argument with someone who’s nearly a foot taller than you. “I didn’t threaten to
bitch-slap her!” I told him. “You stopped me before I could!”

  “Yeah, feel free to thank me anytime for that, by the way! Jesus, you girls and your fucking drama!” James tightened the strap on his bag and pulled it across his chest, then ran a hand through his tangled hair. It was always tangled. I loved that about him. Sharon Eggleston would only make him comb his hair. That’s the kind of girl she was.

  “Look,” he said. “I have to go. I’m already late for calc. Can we just figure this out later?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Go. Fine.”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “Fine.”

  “Yeah, fine.”

  I watched him walk away down the hall, his messenger bag slapping against his legs with each step. I could still smell Sharon Eggleston’s perfume in the air, even though I was all alone.

  Back at the office, I went right up to the front desk and pawed through the basket of Christmas candy, pulling out three more candy canes before going back to Connie’s desk to sit and stew. I wondered if James was right, if Sharon was running around outside trying to get news of the fight into the next issue of whatever magazine would pay her the most money. I already knew James was right about one thing: I had played into her drama plan, hook line and sinker.

  The office Christmas tree was next to Connie’s desk and I stared at it for the rest of the afternoon, my eyes misting over several times. I felt like one of the ornaments, transparent and fragile, dangling on the edge, with only a thin silver wire to keep me from shattering all over the ground.

  32 “There are angels in your angles.…”

  —The Decemberists, “Of Angels and Angles”

  I CALLED JAMES when I got home. “Can you come over?” I said after he picked up. I considered it a good sign that he still answered after seeing my caller ID. “Please?”

  “I think Pierce is working.” James’s voice wasn’t quite flat, but it wasn’t the voice of someone super eager to hear from me, either.

  “Well, what time does he get home?”