“Come on. You should do it.”
“I’d have to write words and everything,” Hunter says, looking up at me from the bandstand.
“You can write lyrics. That’s the easy part. You wrote a whole song! You can write lyrics.”
In a gesture of confidence, I hop up onto the piano and swing my feet in the same way Hunter always does. He grins.
“Well, Ms. Duff does say I’ve got some verbal skills,” he says. “Even though I use the word ‘crap’ way too much.”
“See! I agree with her! You should do it. You should totally do it.”
Hunter takes his guitar off and rests it next to him. Without it, he seems kind of vulnerable, like it was a shield or something. He leans forward. “You think I should?”
“I’m making you,” I tell him, smiling.
Hunter throws his head back and makes a playful growling sound, like he’s frustrated, but when he leans forward again, he’s smiling. He’s made up his mind.
“So how long do I have to write this thing?” he asks.
“Two weeks.”
“Two weeks?” He sighs.
I slide down from the piano and go back over to the bandstand. Resting my hand on his guitar, wishing it was his arm or leg, I tell him, “I have complete faith in you.”
CHAPTER 13: HUNTER
“Unlikely Heartthrobs: The Shy Guy, the Slacker, and the Video Game God”
“The Boy Recession©” by Aviva Roth, The Julius Journal, November
Dude, are ulcers contagious?” I ask Eugene. “I think you gave me yours.”
Eugene’s had an ulcer since eighth grade. The stress of running his business and freaking out about getting busted, plus the huge cups of black coffee he drinks every morning, have eaten a hole in his stomach. I don’t know what an ulcer feels like, but right now, my stomach feels weird, like there’s a bunch of battery acid sloshing around in there. I’m backstage in the Julius auditorium, and all the people who are going to perform in this open-mic thing tonight are crammed backstage.
Eugene ignores my question and walks over to the curtain so that he can watch Bobbi onstage.
“Look at her out there,” he says. “How amazing is my girlfriend?”
Bobbi’s the MC tonight, so she’s giving a little speech about whatever disease we’re raising money for before introducing the next act.
“My girlfriend put this whole thing together,” Eugene says. “She’s incredible! She did all the publicity; she got all these people here. Look at this, Huntro—the place is packed!”
“Is it really?” I ask.
I go up to the curtain and look out. Damn. All the seats are full, and some people are standing in the aisles, too.
I groan loudly and clutch at my stomach again.
“What’s going on with you?” Eugene asks, turning around.
“My stomach.”
“What’d you eat tonight?”
“Uh… a bacon cheeseburger. Three Fruit Roll-Ups. Some chili out of a can without heating it up.”
“Okay, so the usual,” Eugene says. He grabs my face with both of his hands and squishes it. I hate when he does this. He stares at me for a creepy length of time, then gives his diagnosis. “You are stressed,” he pronounces.
He’s more excited about this than the big audience is. I pull away from him and pick at my guitar, trying to tune it. But my fingers are acting weird, so I’m just plucking random strings.
“You are stressed out,” Eugene repeats, totally pumped. “That’s what’s wrong with your stomach! You are stressed.”
He points his finger in my face, and I reach up to slap it away.
“Shut up, dude,” I tell him. “I don’t get stressed. You get stressed.”
Eugene laughs, all gleeful and evil.
“I don’t stress!” I repeat, starting to get heated. “I fell asleep during a final last year.”
“Because you didn’t give a crap about that,” Eugene says. “But you give a crap about this.”
My stomach is still churning. I groan again. Eugene reaches into his pocket and hands me a plastic wrapper with pink pills in it.
“Pepto-Bismol,” he tells me. “I’m always packing.”
Onstage, Bobbi is talking to the audience. “Our next act is really exciting, you guys. With their debut performance, Julius P. Heil High School’s one and only stomp team—White Kid Stomp!”
Kids in red jumpsuits start pushing past me, which doesn’t help my stomach.
When the stomp kids start stomping and clapping, Bobbi comes backstage and immediately runs up to Eugene.
“Hi, baby!” she says. “I didn’t know you were back here!”
Eugene grabs her and kisses her. When they disentangle, Bobbi turns to me and says, “You’re on after Diva, and Diva’s on next. Do you see her? Diva! Oh my gosh, you look amazing!”
Jesus. Diva just came out of one of the dressing rooms wearing some crazy short dress that looks like a disco ball.
“Hi, Hunter. How are you?” Diva says, smiling at me and putting her hand on my arm. Bobbi said Diva looks amazing, but I don’t see it. Usually she’s okay-looking—tall and kinda thick for a girl, with brown hair, brown eyes, and orange skin because she uses that fake-tanning crap—but tonight she put all this makeup on top of her orange skin, and there are way too many colors going on on her face.
“Uhh, okay,” I say.
“You can have my dressing room if you want,” she says. “So you can change.”
What? Why would I need to change? I’m wearing socks and shoes and jeans and a red T-shirt that says: Got Crabs? Maryland. I’m even wearing deodorant.
When I look up from my shirt, Diva is sticking out her face. What is she doing?
“Give me a kiss for luck!” she says.
I quickly kiss her cheek and then look for an excuse to run away.
“Uh… I’ve got to… uh… I have to tune my guitar!” I say, and quickly walk farther backstage, where Johann is organizing sheet music and wearing a dress shirt. Is that what Diva meant when she said I should change?
“Yo, Johann!” I call out. “What’s up? You playing the piccolo tonight?” I ask him.
“No, I’m accompanying people on the piano,” he says, holding up his sheet music.
“Cool,” I say.
“What are you playing tonight?” Johann asks me.
“Something I wrote,” I say. “It’s kind of… I don’t know. Acoustic stuff. Just a song.”
Johann’s looking at me like I’m an idiot, but then he offers to help tune my guitar. I have a pretty good sense of when the notes are right, but Johann’s amazing. He takes charge and tells me exactly which strings to tighten and by how much.
“Damn,” I tell him. “You’re good at this shit!”
“I have perfect pitch,” he says.
We finish tuning just in time to hear Diva belting out a high note in the song she’s singing. Or trying to belt it. I give Johann this look, like, What the hell?
“She’s flat,” he tells me. “Very, very flat.”
“Man,” I say, whistling. “I don’t wanna go out there and sing, but if I don’t go out there, she’ll never shut up.”
“You don’t want to sing?” Johann asks.
“I dunno,” I say. “I think I’ve got this stomach thing….”
“It could be performance anxiety.”
A normal person would say “stage fright.” But freakin’ Johann and his khakis have to make it sound like I need Viagra or something.
“If you don’t want to sing, why did you sign up?” Johann asks.
Valid question. The first answer that pops into my head is: It seemed like a good idea at the time. But the real answer probably has something to do with Kelly. I’ve been thinking about her all the time. Lately, when I zone out in class, I’ve been picturing one specific thing about her—like those crinkles she gets around her eyes when she smiles, or the freckles around her nose that I noticed even though they’re almost invisible. Or
I’ll remember something she said or how she reached out and touched my arm. She does that to people a lot, and she doesn’t even notice she’s doing it—but I notice.
Usually I don’t even bother liking girls, but with Kelly I can’t help it. And when Diva stops singing, Kelly pops into my head again. I forget about my ulcer because I’m busy hoping she’s out there rooting for me.
CHAPTER 14: KELLY
“It’s Raining Women: Female Performers Make Up 80 Percent of Open-Mic Night Performance”
“The Boy Recession©” by Aviva Roth, The Julius Journal, November
How would you describe his outfit?” Aviva whispers to me and Darcy.
Leaning across me, Darcy whispers back, “Gas-station casual.”
She’s talking about Hunter, so I hit her.
“Don’t be mean, Darce,” I say. “It’s hard to get up onstage. It doesn’t matter what he’s wearing. And no one made fun of you when you wore a power tie to the first day of kindergarten.”
Darcy, Aviva, and I are in the second row of the Julius auditorium, front and center. Surprisingly, Aviva’s the one who got here early and snagged us our seats—she’s covering the event for the school newspaper.
The spotlights on the stage must be strong, because when Hunter comes out onstage, he squints and raises his hand to shield his eyes. I don’t care what Darcy says about his clothes; I think Hunter looks cute in his baggy jeans, Chuck Taylors, and red shirt. I think his shirt says something about crabs on it, but when he slips the strap of his guitar over his head, the guitar covers the shirt. Plus, he looks really, really good holding the guitar.
“This is the song he played for you?” Darcy asks me.
I told Darcy and Aviva all about the universe bringing me and Hunter together in the band room.
“Yeah. He played part of it for me, and I helped him with the chorus.”
“You wrote it together?” Darcy asks. “You’re, like, a musical power couple!”
“You wrote it together?” Aviva repeats, and starts scribbling in her notebook.
“Stop!” I tell her. “Don’t write that! I just gave him some ideas. He wrote it himself. I haven’t even heard the words yet.”
“The melody was a collaboration with celebrated Julius High School flautist Kelly Robbins….” Aviva narrates as she writes.
“Stop it!” I say, and look back to the stage.
“Hey,” Hunter says into the microphone.
Then he squints into the audience again. Can he see me? Or are the lights too bright? He sort of waves at the audience, and Aviva whispers, “Awkward wave,” and makes a note on her notepad.
I snatch her pen out of her hand.
“Okay, so, uh, thanks for being here and, uh, paying five bucks,” Hunter says into the microphone. “Hopefully we, um, cure that disease. So! Here’s my song. And it doesn’t have a name, so…”
I’m not sure what other people expect from Hunter. I mean, no one’s ever heard him sing before. So when he starts playing, I get nervous for him. I actually close my eyes and hold my breath for the first few measures of him strumming the guitar. Then he starts to sing.
Sure, of course, terrain is rough
My aching arms are not enough
You’re the healer, I’m the holder,
But the world turns darker, colder
I open my eyes and smile. He can sing. And he can write, too! The lyrics are so… sweet. And smart. This is a real song. When I hear the chords leading into the chorus, I think, I helped him write this! I would never let Aviva print it in the newspaper, but I did help.
You’re the soft place that I fall
After all
Every everyday disaster
The days of running farther, faster
Fall down here with me
As he moves into the second verse, Hunter seems more comfortable onstage.
You know my shape, and let me sink
And see my strength, and give me lift
And they don’t know, no, they don’t see
The me when you’re alone with me
As soon as the song ends, Darcy turns to me, fixes her blue eyes on me, and says, “Oh. My. God.”
Around us, everyone is clapping and the sophomore girls next to me are saying, “Aw!” In the aisle near us, Damian is cheering and Derek is yelling, “Huntro! Huntro!” in his hoarse voice. The seniors in the front row stand up to give Hunter a standing ovation, and I stand, too, partly because Hunter deserves it and partly because they’re blocking my view.
Aviva whips out her digital camera, scurries down the aisle, and crouches next to the orchestra pit to point her camera up at Hunter. He does another awkward-yet-adorable wave and then walks offstage. Even though his head is down, I can tell he’s still smiling.
“He’s good, right?” I say to Darcy when I sit down.
She doesn’t even answer. She turns to face me and grips the armrest between us with both of her hands.
“That song was about you!” she says.
“What?”
“Did you hear the lyrics?” Darcy says. “That thing about giving him strength or whatever… You’re the one who realized he could sing. And you gave him strength by telling him about the Open-Mic Night. ‘When you’re alone with me…’ You helped him write when you guys were alone in the band room. And the chorus! I mean, ‘You’re the soft place that I fall….’ He’s talking about someone he’s really comfortable with. That’s what the whole thing is about. And you’re the first person he felt comfortable singing in front of.”
“That was some pretty quick analysis, Darce. I don’t know,” I say. “No wonder you bolted out of the AP lit exam after one hour.”
“I had to pee, so I rushed the last essay. But I still got a five,” Darcy informs me. “But seriously, Kelly! The song!”
It’s intermission, and the auditorium lights come on. Darcy and I stand up to let the sophomore girls get out of our row. When we sit down, I tell Darcy, “You can just write a song to write a song. Songs don’t always have to be about someone.”
Aviva hurries up from the orchestra pit, frantically flipping the sheets of her yellow notepad.
“Everyone’s trying to figure out who the song’s about,” Aviva reports, out of breath. As soon as she sits down, she starts scribbling messy notes.
“I told you it was about someone!” Darcy tells me. “You can tell by the way he sang it.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was so… emotional,” Darcy explains, sounding awed. “I mean, think about Hunter Fahrenbach in class. He just, like, sits there, huffing Sharpies. But tonight he was… deep.”
“Pam thinks it was about a fat girl,” Aviva says, not even looking up as she fills the last line of her notepad.
“What?”
“Because it goes”—Aviva removes the pen from her mouth and uses it to flip her yellow pages back to where she jotted down lyrics—“ ‘You’re the soft place that I fall.’ ”
“Oh, that is so dumb, Pam,” Darcy says, rolling her eyes. “It’s a metaphorical soft place. It’s a comfortable place. It’s a supportive place. Or a supportive person. It’s Kelly!”
“It’s Kelly?” Aviva says, her voice going an octave higher than usual. Then she looks up, confused. “But Kelly’s not fat.”
“Stop!” I say. “It’s not about me. It’s definitely not about me.”
But part of me wants them to keep saying that it is about me.
“I never see Hunter with any other girl,” Darcy says.
“Except Diva Price,” I suggest miserably. “Remember homecoming?”
“That wouldn’t be a soft place to fall.” Aviva snorts. “That girl is built like Michael Vick.”
“Diva sat in his lap, but they didn’t actually talk to each other,” Darcy says. “The only other person Hunter talks to is pervy Eugene. So unless the song is about Eugene, it’s about you.”
I look from Darcy to Aviva. They’re both completely convinced.
“Okay, okay!” I say. “What do I do about it?”
The lights in the auditorium are flashing on and off, which makes me feel like time is running out.
“Go backstage!” Darcy tells me.
“What do I do?” I ask them frantically as the lights flash for the last time. “I mean, what do I say? I can’t just go up and ask who the song was about!”
Aviva doesn’t answer, because she’s trying to push my boobs up.
“That’s as high as they go,” I tell her, and she looks disappointed.
“Stop that!” Darcy slaps Aviva’s hand away. “Kell, congratulate him. Tell him you loved the song. Then he might—”
“No.” Aviva shakes her head. “You won’t even have to say anything! He’s gonna make out with you.”
The lights go out, and I hurry up the darkened auditorium aisle. But backstage, things don’t go so well. The wings are so crowded, it takes me a minute to even spot Hunter, who looks ridiculously good wearing a guitar… and hanging out with freshman girls. They’re freshman twins who did a mime act during the first half of the show. They still have their white mime makeup all over their faces and hands, and it’s rubbing off on the water bottles they’re holding. Their mime act was totally bizarre, and not very good—Aviva reviewed it as “Not even the best miming I’ve seen in Whitefish Bay,” which is pretty sad.
But it looks like they’re pretty entertaining right now, because Hunter is laughing loudly at something one of them said. Then he stands up, takes his guitar off, and puts it around one of the girls’ necks. He starts showing her where to put her fingers to play a chord.
My forward momentum fades away. I stop where I am, half hidden by a drum set. Suddenly I feel stupid for believing Darcy and Aviva. If Hunter wrote a song about me, wouldn’t he want to know what I thought of it? Wouldn’t he be looking for me? Or at least looking around? But he’s not. For a minute I thought my life was romantic and a guy wrote a song about me. Now I realize that my life isn’t exciting or romantic—my life consists of hiding behind a drum set and getting overshadowed by two mimes.
CHAPTER 15: HUNTER