I let out a whoop. “Holy shit, Nick. Check this out.”
I handed him the screen, and his eyes went wide. Then he laughed and nodded. “Did not see that coming. The girl’s pretty cool.”
Yeah. She was. For the first time since she left my garage, I could breathe easy. She got it. She understood the game.
“So what do we do now?” Nick stood up, stretched his arms over his head, and then poked his head into the bag of bagels. “I guess Kristen’ll be back. She doesn’t seem too pissed off anymore. But Sam? I don’t know, man. He was definitely pissed off.” He tore a cinnamon raisin bagel in half and bit into it dry.
I shoved my hands in the pockets of my jeans and looked around the garage. “I guess we move on. Let’s take a look at the rest of the stuff we recorded before.” We moved to the table where the old Mac sat, Nick dropping bagel crumbs on the keyboard. I clicked a few buttons and opened my GarageBand software.
Nick glanced down the driveway, but it was still empty. Sam was long gone. “Okay, I know this could just make everything a hundred times worse, but what if we forget about the whole plan to amp up that Common Kiss song and just use what we recorded today? Maybe splice together a kind of music video…one that tells a story, you know?”
“A story? What kind of story?”
“We could create an I’m sorry story.” Nick laughed and shook his head. “But I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t make a dent in the egos that just stalked out of here.”
Wait. Egos. I grinned. “Nick, you’re a genius.”
Thick eyebrows shot up to his buzzed hairline. “Uh. Sure. We’ll go with that.”
“Seriously. I thought I could get Sam to put the band’s needs ahead of his own, but I forgot about his ego. What?” I demanded when Nick’s eyebrows shot up in a mocking look.
He shook his head. “Nothing. Forget it. Go on.”
If it was nothing, he wouldn’t have looked like that. But I let it go. “Um, yeah. Okay. So, we need to feed it.”
“Uh. Sure,” Nick repeated.
I laughed, encouraged by the idea. “Come on. I’ll show you.” I started uploading bits of footage from the video we recorded and then switched to the old computer. “Here. This is good.” I marked frames where I found raised eyebrows, mocking smiles, a pair of crossed arms, and an open mouth. I separated the sound from the video so I could play the song straight through as a background track. Then I started laying down the elements. “See?”
“But this is all out of context,” Nick protested.
“Yeah. Exactly. I’m creating a new context, and it’s a bitter rivalry between Kristen and us.” I jabbed a finger at the monitor.
“It’s a…contest?”
“Got it in one.” I slapped his back. “Kristen is pure, Nick. Her voice is… God! It’s how heaven would sound. But Sam can’t see that. In his mind, every time I tell him how great Kristen is, he hears how bad he is.”
“But he’s not bad. He’s amazing. Besides, he doesn’t sing!”
“I know that. But it’s how he’s thinking. So I’m going to show him how much better he is with her.”
“He won’t listen to you.”
“You’re right. But he’ll listen to them.” I angled the Mac’s screen toward us and took another look at the stats from our earlier posts. “Look at the traction this little Twitter war is getting. I’ve been trying for months to get this to happen, and Sam did it with one shot.”
“Kristen shot back,” Nick reminded me.
I laughed once. “She sure did.” Damn, I loved it that she did.
Nick scratched his head and thought about that for a moment. “So are you hot for Kristen? Are you doing this just to get laid?” When he waved a hand toward the driveway, I knew he was trying to confirm what Sam had accused me of.
I crossed my arms and stared at him hard. “Don’t you have a girlfriend, one whose play you dragged me to? How is this different?”
“Because I’m not hanging Ride Out’s success on Leah singing with us.”
I made a sound of frustration. “Okay, look. Do I think Kristen Cartwright’s hot? Absolutely. What’s the big deal if I hit that?”
Nick rolled his eyes and ran a hand over his buzzed hair. “Eli, you’re a good guy, most of the time—”
“Most of—what the fuck, Nick?”
He shot up both hands. “Most of the time. Just…not with girls.”
I opened my mouth to defend myself. I didn’t date. I devoted every minute to taking this band all the way to the top. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Nick shut his eyes with a long, loud sigh. “Jesus, Eli, you’re completely oblivious. Girls are like background singers to you. Most of the time, you don’t notice them, and if you do, you hurt their feelings when they get too close. Remember that girl at the spring concert we did at the park? Jenna. She took two buses to hear you sing, and you never even posed for a fucking picture with her.”
I cleared my throat. “Dude, she was…an emotional basket case. I didn’t want to encourage her.”
“Bullshit. You didn’t want to be stuck with her.” He sneered at me and shook his head. “Look, man, I like Kristen Cartwright. I don’t want you to hurt her like that, and I especially don’t want you to hurt her like that if she does become the secret to our success.”
I met his eyes and tried not to show how deep his assessment of me cut. “Okay. So you’re siding with Sam on this. Hands off Kristen.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess I am.” He stared at me for a long moment and then tapped the screen. “Let’s just get back to this, okay?”
Yeah. Sure. Fine. Whatever.
I clicked through screens on the Mac. I dragged, dropped, and shuffled, and twenty minutes later, clicked Play. The final version of the song—now connected to good speakers—filled the garage. The first scene was an extreme close-up of Sam’s fingers on his guitar. Slowly, I pulled it back to frame Sam, whose face was tight and pained while he watched something to his right. I added a split-screen effect and, in the second half, showed Kristen bopping her head to the beat.
“Oh, okay, Eli. I see what you’re doing,” Nick said. “Move this one here.” He pointed to footage of Kristen making a disgusted face and slapping her hands to her ears. In context, she’d been reacting to feedback from one of the speakers. Out of context, it would look like she was not impressed with my scream. But my performance was gold, just like always, so it would ratchet up that sense of competition between us—and hopefully, the comments we were seeing online. It hadn’t taken long to cut the whole song this way.
“Okay. What do you think?”
Nick let out a low whistle. “This could blow up in our faces.”
I rocked my head side to side. “Yeah, it’s a risk. But you wait. Sam’ll be back just to play to this crowd. I’m betting Kristen’s the same way.” I clicked a few more buttons, and Nick’s hand shot out to stop me.
“You sure about this, man?”
“Absolutely. This is it, Nick. This is our ticket all the way to the top.” Big egos like Sam’s and Kristen’s fed off their audience like sharks on a shipwreck. All I was doing was dropping a little chum. He let go of my hand, and I clicked the Upload button and watched the video spool to our YouTube channel. “All we have to do is ride it out.” I grinned and held up my hand for a high five.
After a moment’s hesitation, he slapped my palm.
• • •
At school on Monday, I’d just tossed my math textbook into my locker when I got shoved from behind. I whipped around, fists ready, to find Sam’s Clairol locks practically standing up like a lion’s mane. Crimson-faced, he stared me down but said nothing.
“What the hell, Sam?”
“Yeah. That’s my question, Eli.”
I shifted my weight to one leg. “You saw the video.”
“I
saw the video,” he mimicked me. “Payback? Is that what that was?”
“No, shithead, it’s not payback. It’s damage control. It’s an attempt to get you to see how stupid you’re acting. This isn’t all about you.”
“Yeah. It’s all about you.”
Like talking to a fucking wall. I ground my teeth together and counted to ten. “Kristen is the turbocharge the band needs. Admit it, you just don’t want to share your stage.”
“That’s right, I don’t—especially not for a girl who’ll be gone the second you nail her.”
My arm twitched, and suddenly, I had Sam shoved up against my locker. Everyone in the corridor suddenly shut up to watch the floor show. “You want me to swear on a stack of bibles that I won’t touch her? Done. Now can you get your shit together?”
“Fuck that.” He broke my hold and shoved me back a step. “And fuck you too.”
The students watching the show all hissed and gave me pathetic looks of fake sympathy when Sam stalked away from me for the second time in three days.
The rest of the day crawled by in inches and centimeters. I had to find a way to fix this—all of this. I needed Sam to be cool, but I wanted Kristen, and I was sure if I could get the two of them focused on the music instead of each other, this would work. By the time lunch rolled around, I was ready to sneak out the side exit so I could be sure to see Kristen as soon as she left her school. But instead, I took out my cell, scrolled through messages, and nearly choked on my own spit.
Oh my God. Holy hell. There was a message from our local mall. They wanted us to play the food court this weekend. This couldn’t be on the level.
Could it?
I read it once. Twice. Three times, just to be sure. Then I forwarded it to Nick and Sam because if there’s one thing I knew for sure about Sam, he’d be all over this no matter how pissed off he was. In seconds, I got their replies back:
Nick: WTF? In cafeteria.
Sam: Is this 4 real?
I headed for the cafeteria and found Sam sitting with Nick at an empty table. I took out my phone and showed them the email again. “I think it’s real.”
“No way. What would the mall want with our band?” Nick asked.
“Probably saw the video with Kristen and thought it kicked ass,” I suggested, but Sam rolled his eyes and flipped me off.
“Maybe the person running this account’s been following us since the beginning. Maybe he’s one of the fans on the Beat,” Sam added. “Maybe this has nothing to do with what’s-her-name, and everything to do with us.”
I was about to fire back when Nick waved his hands. “Give it a rest, Sam.”
Before anybody could say anything, the phone buzzed. I glanced at the screen. It was another email. My knees bounced under the table as I read it.
“Read it, Hamilton.” Sam ordered.
I cleared my throat. “I’m the event planner here at the mall. I saw your tweet, watched the video, and loved the battle of the sexes thing that your band has going on. Blew me away. Let us know if Ride Out is available to play the food court Friday night from 7:00 p.m. until close. We’ve already secured cover rights to the songs listed below. Know it’s short notice, so we’ll pay five hundred dollars.”
Beside me, Nick choked. “Five hundred actual dollars? Hell yeah, I’m in.”
We both turned to Sam. “Um. Sam. It’s pretty clear he wants us because of Kristen.”
“Yeah. I heard that part.” Sam was busy peeling the label off a water bottle. “Guess you’d better go sell what’s left of your soul to get her back.”
I let that one go by me. “And what about you? Are you in?”
He was silent for so long, I was sure he was going to leave, but he nodded. “I’ve been in this since the beginning. I’m not walking away because of some girl, no matter how impressive her tits are.”
Nick’s hand suddenly clamped down on my shoulder, and I realized I’d risen half out of my chair. Sam took his bottle and left.
“Eli. This is never gonna work with you and Sam fighting over every little thing. You know that, right?”
“So I’ll fix it.” I had to.
An hour later, I’d successfully sneaked off campus and was waiting outside North for Kristen. I had to convince her to come back. I stood at the tree line for decades, waiting for the damn bell to ring. The buses lined up in the parking lot, so I knew it would be soon. Finally, it rang, and a few minutes later, students began pouring out of the exit like the building was burning. I skimmed every female form that went by but Kristen’s wasn’t among them. Cursing, I shoved off the tree I’d been leaning against and tugged at the leather cuff on my wrist. Where the hell was she?
My heart lurched when I caught sight of her friend—the one who had tried to separate us the last time I was here. I jogged up to her. “Hey. You’re Kristen’s friend, right? She here?”
The girl twisted away from the hand I’d put on her arm and sneered at me. “What makes you think she wants to see you after what you did?”
Oh, boy. “It was a misunderstanding. That’s why I’m here. To straighten it all out. Is she here or not?”
The friend pressed her lips together in a blatant show of solidarity that I’d ordinarily respect—under different circumstances. But right now, I needed to find Kristen and beg her to come back. I dropped my alter ego of the bad-boy rock star and went with honesty, straight up. “Look. I fucked up and want to apologize.”
The girl put both hands to her mouth and let out a squeal.
Huh. Honesty works.
“Okay. You just missed her.”
I cursed under my breath, but the friend leaned in. “You didn’t hear this from me, but Kristen has lessons after school today. You’ll find her at the studio over on Kinnear. She has an acting coach there.”
“Thanks.” I smiled and grabbed the friend in a hug. “Hey!” I called her back when she turned to go. “What’s your name?”
She looked at the ground. “Rachel.”
“Rachel. You’re the best. Thanks again.”
I left her blushing and smiling.
Since I was on foot, it took me until well past four to get to Kinnear Street and find the performing arts center. I tiptoed inside, found a seat in the rear of the theater, and waited for Kristen’s acting class to wrap up. I watched her standing just behind another girl, who was doing a scene with some dude. It looked like he was about to propose to her. Sure enough, he dropped to one knee and pretended to open a box. The girl’s face lit up with love and adoration, and as she opened her mouth to deliver her lines, Kristen tapped her shoulder. The dude froze in place, still on one knee, still smiling his I’ve won the best prize ever smile. The girl exchanged places with Kristen, who arranged her features into the same expression of love and adoration…and something else.
“Yes! Yes, of course I’ll marry you,” Kristen said, pulling the imaginary diamond onto her finger and admiring it. When the dude went to kiss her, Kristen put a finger across his lips and added, “But I have a few concerns. First, where are your bank accounts? And second, you should know that I know.” At that line, her expression turned almost evil.
I leaned forward, suddenly extremely interested.
The smile dripped off the guy’s face, and he stood up. “You know what?”
Kristen moved toward him, about to kiss him. “I know.” She emphasized. “About the silk and lace fetish you enjoy at night, when you think no one’s watching.” She grabbed at his belt. “Are you wearing them right now?”
When he leaped back, the second guy tapped him. The two guys exchanged places, and guy number two slipped into the same position and then slapped her hand. “Okay. So you know I enjoy wearing women’s underwear. But I assure you, it won’t be an issue when we’re married.”
“No, of course it won’t. Provided you also develop a similar fetish for diam
onds and gold.”
The second guy grinned. “Diamonds. Gold. Cars. Trips. Oh, I think this is going to be a very successful marriage. But there’s one more thing I need from you.”
Kristen stepped into the second guy’s arms, and the first girl tapped her shoulder. They exchanged places, and I watched, mesmerized. Kristen was so…so immoral, and it was the hottest thing I’d ever seen.
When the scene was over, I approached the stage and waited while she said her good-byes.
“Ah. You must be Elijah.”
I spun and found an old lady sitting in the front row. I knew her. I saw her at Kristen’s Cats performance. Kristen’s grandmother. “Yes, ma’am. Elijah Hamilton.”
“Ah, here she is. You were marvelous, darling!” The old woman stood up, and when I turned, I found Kristen walking down the stage steps, shooting me with laser glares.
“Thanks, Etta.”
“Kristen, I’ll leave you to find your own way home so this young man can accomplish his goal of groveling without an audience.”
Groveling? Jesus.
“Etta, I don’t—”
“Of course, you do, darling. Run along now. I’ll see you at home.” She kissed Kristen on both cheeks and, with one last laughing look at me, walked out the rear of the auditorium. She didn’t look a thing like any other grandmother I knew. She had perfectly smooth blond hair and wore the kind of makeup my mom wore to go to someone’s wedding. She was dressed in a whole matching outfit, right down to her purse. All I could think was Wow.
Behind me, Kristen cleared her throat. I turned, and we stared at each other for a long moment. I had so many things to say to her. But I couldn’t seem to find one. Finally, I settled on the most boring one I could find. “I’m sorry.”
Kristen folded her arms and angled her head. “Sorry you have to grovel, you mean? Save it. I’m not interested.” She took off in her grandmother’s wake, and I jogged to catch up.
“No. Sorry for the tweets. For everything, Kristen. Come on. Let me buy you a burger and explain.”
Her eyebrows rose, and she pressed her lips together, and it made me think about stuff I shouldn’t be thinking about. “Fine.”