The Book of Love

  “What about it?” said the girl.

  “It’s pretty,” said Lucy.

  “Thank you.”

  “Does it mean something?” said Lucy.

  The girl smiled. “More than you could ever imagine.”

  And they stood there together until the fireworks ended, but neither of them said anything after that.

  Eighteen

  The first thing Lucy saw when she woke up was the empty spot in the tent where Gil wasn’t. And the second thing she saw was the blinking light on her phone. She had a text from Gil: a little winky face all on its own.

  “Did you guys get . . . ?” Lucy started to say.

  Olivia and Liza were already awake. Liza was still in her sleeping bag, facedown in her pillow, letting out periodic miserable groans. Olivia was sitting cross-legged, finger-combing her hair.

  “We saw,” said Liza, her voice muffled. “We got it too.”

  “It’s good news,” Olivia said simply. “I can’t imagine it will be long before she’s done.”

  “So what do we do now?” said Lucy. She sat up. Her head hurt and her mouth was dry. It was morning, only a few hours after Lucy had gone to bed, but somehow she was wide-awake.

  “Nothing,” Olivia said. She reached for a pair of dark jeans and a charcoal gray sweater. “We just enjoy the day. Your show is in a few hours.”

  Somehow with everything else going on, Lucy had barely even thought about it.

  “Are you still doing that?” Liza said, rolling over.

  “I don’t know . . . ,” Lucy said slowly.

  “Well, what would be the point?” Liza sat up. There were pillow creases on her face and dried drool crust in the corners of her mouth. She was stunning as ever. “Gil’s already with Beacon.”

  Olivia pulled her hair up into a bun. “But, of course, you could,” Olivia said. “If you wanted to. Do you?”

  Olivia turned toward Lucy. A show at SoundWave—did Lucy want to perform?

  How strange that Lucy didn’t really know, or care about, the answer.

  An hour later, they stood out in the field with the food trucks, sipping coffees with two Heartbreakers Liza and Olivia knew.

  “So that’s it,” Liza finished. “She’s still with him. And I think we can pretty much guess where all this is going.”

  One of the Heartbreakers shrugged. “That’s nice, I suppose.”

  Liza smirked and turned to Lucy. “They’re pretending they don’t care that we’re winning.”

  The other Heartbreaker rolled her eyes. “We’re just here for fun,” she said. “What could anyone give us that we don’t already have?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Liza said. She tossed her coffee cup toward a big metal trash can. It swooped right in. “Victory?”

  “Oh, right,” said the first Heartbreaker. “That.” And they all laughed.

  Back in Tent City, Lucy wandered. The bands had started playing a couple of hours before, and most everyone was off watching them. But there was Lucy, alone with her camera looking for something to photograph.

  When she’d first started taking pictures the summer before, something funny had happened—she started seeing the world ever-so-slightly differently whether her eye was behind a lens or not. It was like she was always on high alert, and without even consciously thinking about it, she was constantly finding things that would give her that ping-y feeling in her gut, a feeling that could only be relieved by the click of a shutter.

  Only now she could barely remember the last time she’d really needed to take a picture. She wanted to feel that again, that sense of urgency, that deep inner itch. But as she walked through Tent City, all she saw were blandly pretty things—a bird in the air, a pile of flowers. She looked inside for the ping, for the pull, but there was just nothing there.

  The New Voices stage was set under a miniature circus tent of red and white stripes.

  Lucy stood down the stairs to the side, hair teased, rock chick outfit on, squeezing the neck of her brand-new guitar. Why was she doing this again? Why was she bothering? Even she wasn’t entirely sure. Maybe she just needed to prove to herself she could do it—she could still feel that rush of connection she used to feel when she sang. Then again, maybe she was just bored. And had already put on all that eyeliner . . .

  Up onstage a guy was whistling and playing a small set of drums. It didn’t sound like much to Lucy, but when he finished, the crowd gave the closest thing to a standing ovation you could get from a bunch of people who were already standing. They must be an easy audience, Lucy decided. Which was good, because she was finally starting to get nervous. And it was her turn to go.

  Lucy climbed the stairs and walked out onstage. She could feel a couple hundred people staring up at her. She unfocused her eyes a bit so she wouldn’t have to see them.

  “Hello,” she said into the microphone. “My name’s Lucy, and this is a song I wrote for . . .” She paused. She’d written it for Alex, but it was her song now. “Someone I cared about a lot, back when I was really stupid.” She heard a few people laugh. She inhaled one last time, then opened her mouth and let out a note, high and clear.

  Oooooooooo

  I see you here when you’re not

  I . . .

  Lucy felt a sudden coldness deep in her chest, like someone had thrust her heart into a freezer. She took a breath as the coldness spread out through her torso, down her arms, to the tips of her fingers, carrying with it a buzzing energy. What was happening? She couldn’t think about that now. She’d only sung one line. And the crowd would be expecting a next one.

  I feel you here when you’re not

  I see your face in the sky when you’re not here

  She cringed as she heard herself.

  You’re always here, you’re always here

  You are you are you are

  How had she ever written such corny lyrics? And sang them like she really meant them? And how had a crowd ever loved it?

  She looked out into the audience. Well, this one certainly didn’t. They looked bored. A girl whispered something to her friend. A guy was staring down at his phone. A couple linked arms and strolled away.

  Lucy tried to ignore the crowd, to look away. But it didn’t matter because she could imagine what they were thinking—here was just another girl with a kind of pretty voice singing about nothing that meant anything. Not to them and certainly not to her. She couldn’t understand how it ever had.

  She raced through the rest of the song, and finally it was over. There was a smattering of polite claps, and on top of them the sound of two people cheering like crazy. Lucy looked down at the crowd again, and there right up at the front were Tristan and Phee screaming their heads off. Olivia and Liza were nowhere in sight. Lucy left the stage.

  Back on the ground Phee flung herself at Lucy and squeezed her tight.

  “That was amazing!” Phee said. And Lucy thought for a moment what a kind person this girl must be to say that, to try to make Lucy believe it. Behind her Tristan was nodding. He held his hand out for a high five.

  “Yeah, bud,” he said. “That was really great!” But Lucy could see from the look in his eyes that he didn’t really mean it.

  “Well,” said Lucy. “At least that’s over.” And she forced a smile.

  Up onstage, the next act had started. The crowd was clapping and stomping, Lucy’s crap performance entirely forgotten as though it never happened at all.

  Phee reached into her pocket and took out her phone. She stared down at the screen. “I just got an alert from the SoundWave boards.” She began to read. “‘With great apologies to his fans, Beacon Drew has pulled out of the concert, citing personal reasons and dehydration.’”

  “Personal reasons and dehydration,” Tristan said. “Hmmm.”

  “According to the world of internet tabloids, I believe that is always code for something else,” Phee said. “Probably went on too big a bender last night.”

  Lucy pressed her hand to her chest, where sh
e could still feel the last bit of coldness lodged in her heart. And with a sudden fierce clarity she realized exactly what had happened.

  They’d won.

  Nineteen

  The drive back was a celebration, a traveling party in a baby blue convertible. Liza rode shotgun, flashing every other trucker that passed. Olivia sang along with the radio, loud and off-key. Gil just could not stop bouncing, bouncing, bouncing in her seat.

  One of Beacon’s songs came on, and Olivia cranked it up.

  If you’d give me one chance

  To show you my love, baby

  Gil danced in the seat next to her and sang at Lucy. My heaaaaart. She held her hands up to her chest and mimed a heart beating in time to the music. Then she mimed breaking it. When the chorus came on, Gil shimmied her shoulders. She leaned in like Lucy was supposed to join her. Lucy did her best to fake it.

  In a way she understood Liza’s and Olivia’s excitement—they’d entered a contest together, and they’d won. But somehow it struck Lucy as strange for Gil to be celebrating like this, and maybe a little bit wrong considering everything else. And Lucy could not tell if she was being fair or not.

  An hour into the ride, they were waiting at a stoplight when Liza suddenly shouted, “SHIT!” And turned toward the back. “I just thought of something,” Liza said. “What if we didn’t win?” She looked kind of horrified. “We’re acting like we won, we’re just assuming Gil was first. She was fast. Someone could have been faster.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Gil’s voice was hard. She sounded almost angry. “No one could have beaten me.” But the look in her eyes said that this hadn’t occurred to her either. And now she was worried.

  “We’ll find out when we get back,” Olivia said. “Either the council will be there or they won’t.” But she turned down the volume on the radio, and she did not sing along with any songs after that.

  Lucy leaned back against her seat and watched as the sky darkened. Fat raindrops began to fall onto her skin, into her hair. Olivia did not pull over to put the top up, and no one asked her to. They just kept going like that, the top down, the rain pounding down into the car, drenching all of them.

  A shimmering gold balloon was hovering in front of the door when they got back to Olivia’s. Olivia reached out to touch it and it popped, releasing the faintest wisp of silver smoke. In the smoke were the faces of Olivia’s Heartbreaker friends from SoundWave, smiling and waving while giving the finger.

  Olivia shook her head.

  It was just after midnight when they walked into the house. Usually when they were all together, Lucy felt like they were a part of something—even if Liza was crazy sometimes, and Olivia could be hard to read, Lucy felt like they were a unit and she was part of that. But now, as they made their way into Olivia’s living room that night, Lucy could feel the vast distance between them, as though each one was sealed inside her own bubble with her own thoughts, floating off into space, all on her own.

  Olivia stood in the living room, staring at the photograph of her grandmother that hung over the fireplace. She turned to face them.

  “I’m making hot chocolate,” she said. “Does anyone want hot chocolate?”

  Gil and Lucy exchanged a look, and then Gil nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Okay.” And she forced her mouth into a smile.

  Lucy said, “Me too.”

  Liza licked her lips with her pointy cat tongue. “Same,” she said.

  They followed Olivia into the kitchen and sat at the thick wooden farm table while Olivia got glass bottles of milk and cream from the huge brushed-steel fridge. She heated the milk and cream together, then melted in two bars of dark chocolate, the warm sweet scent filling the air. They were all silent as Olivia whisked the mixture until it was frothy and then poured it into four off-white mugs and topped each with a drop of bourbon, then whipped cream and chocolate shavings. Lucy looked around. How strange it seemed that Olivia had so much actual food in there—a fully stocked pantry, breads in bags dusted with flour, a refrigerator filled with cheeses and piles of fruit, like a still-life painting come to life.

  Olivia set the four mugs down on the table, one in front of each of them. Lucy reached for hers, too tired even to drink it. She just sat and let the sweet steam rise up toward her face.

  For a while it felt like the four of them were together again—for a while it felt certain that everything would be okay. But time kept passing, and the Heartbreaker Council didn’t appear. And with each hour that went by it seemed less and less likely that they were going to.

  Twenty

  Lucy and Gil lay back on the green velvet couches. It was four a.m. They were the only ones left awake.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to just head up to bed?” Gil asked for the third time in the last hour. “I’ll wake you up when they get here, I promise.” Gil’s phone buzzed with a text. She looked down. “Beacon again,” she said.

  Lucy shook her head. “I’m not sleeping until they either come or . . .” She stopped. She could not allow herself to entertain any “or”s. Of course they were coming. They had to.

  “I’m staying up with you.” Lucy tried to smile. But for some reason Lucy’s own friendliness felt forced now. They were supposed to be in this together, the two of them more than anyone. So why didn’t it feel like that?

  Lucy wasn’t sure how much time had passed when she woke up on the couch, but there was Gil silhouetted in front of the window, typing furiously into her phone. She stopped. It vibrated. Gil read whatever was on the screen, let out a sigh, and then tiptoed out of the room. A minute later, Lucy heard the front door opening and then being slowly shut.

  Lucy crept out of the living room into the hallway.

  “No, absolutely not,” Lucy heard Gil’s voice say.

  The heavy front door was opened just a crack. Lucy peeked through.

  Gil was standing on the front steps with a girl. She was a Heartbreaker—Lucy could tell that right away, from her golden glow, from the tattoo on her chest. Was this girl part of the council? She had streaky blonde hair, tan skin, a wild look in her eyes. She looked familiar, and it only took a second for Lucy to realize why. Lucy had seen the girl in Alex’s photographs from over the summer. This was the Heartbreaker who’d broken his heart.

  Lucy leaned toward the door.

  “. . . that’s not what we agreed on,” Gil said. She sounded upset.

  “But that was before things changed,” the girl said.

  “What do you want, Shay?”

  This was Shay?

  “I did you a favor, and now I want you to do me one. . . .”

  “You didn’t do me a favor, I paid you. The deal is done.”

  “The deal was done. And then I heard a rumor that you broke one of the HHB’s hearts, and now I just can’t help but feel you may be in a better position to do favors than you were before. . . .”

  “Go home,” said Gil. “We don’t know if we won or not. And even if we did, you’re not getting anything else.”

  “Are you sure?” Shay raised her eyebrows. “How do you think your sweet little sister Lucy would feel if she found out what you did? We all know you can’t get into the prizes without all four of you.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” said Gil.

  “Really? So it’s just a coincidence that the guy whose heart you hired me to break just so happens to be the guy who broke the heart of your brand-new sister?”

  Lucy’s heart was pounding so hard she could barely breathe.

  “Go ahead and tell Lucy whatever you want.” Gil’s voice wavered. “She already knows.”

  Shay laughed. “Really? And that’s why you’ve been hiding from me for days?”

  “I haven’t been . . . ,” Gil started. “I’ve been busy.”

  “Ssh.” Shay raised her finger to her lips. Behind it she smiled a sly-looking little smile. She just looked so pleased with herself, this girl who had stolen Alex away. Lucy thought she didn’t care anymore. She didn’t care anymo
re, not about the Alex part, at least. And yet . . .

  Lucy felt her hand reaching for the knob, twisting it, pushing the door open. She stepped outside into the cool blue light of morning.

  “Oh, hey girls,” Lucy said easily, as though they were expecting her. Lucy slung one arm around Gil’s shoulders. “You’re Shay, right? Thanks, by the way, for what you did. To Alex, I mean.” Lucy stuck out her hand.

  Shay stared at her, her expression completely unreadable. She reached out. They shook—how weird it was to touch this girl who had touched Alex in ways Lucy never had.

  Lucy took her hand away and wiped it on her pants as if she’d just touched something disgusting. “Nice try, by the way. But what Gilly says is completely true. I do know everything. I doubt the council will be very happy to hear about your attempts at blackmail. And they’ll be here any minute, so . . .” Lucy steeled her jaw and stared at Shay. “You probably shouldn’t be.”

  Shay tipped her head to the side, bit her lip coyly, then shrugged and sighed. “Well, damn.” She grinned at both of them. “It never hurts to try, right?” Shay slowly looked Lucy up and down. “I don’t know how you put up with him as long as you did, really. He was so needy. And awful in bed too. Just”—she held up her pinky—“awful.”

  Shay made her way down the steps, walked to the driveway, got in a little yellow car, and drove away.

  Gil turned toward Lucy. “I don’t even know what to say.” Her lip was trembling, her mouth curled into a grateful smile.

  Lucy shook her head. “Just explain.” Her voice was an ice-cold whisper. “What the hell was she talking about?” Lucy felt the tears begin to form behind her eyelids, but they didn’t fall. She was too angry.

  “I just . . .” Gil looked panicked, like she was trying very hard to come up with a suitable answer.

  “Tell me the truth,” Lucy said.