14

PV: Tell me about the last song you tasted.

F: Dude, I’m in class.

PV: And you’re thinking about tasting songs? Terrible. I’ll stop texting you.

F: Don’t you dare.

Fiona had never liked romantic texting—she’d always made a point not to trade emoji-heavy, cutie-pie texts with Horace—but she spent the whole week with her face planted firmly in her phone. She communicated with her friends in monosyllabic utterances and absolutely refused to talk to anyone about Horace, what had happened, whether they were broken up or not. She wasn’t even entirely sure, but at this point, she didn’t care.

She ate her lunches alone out on the bleachers, chewing without tasting as she waited for the next text from the Pit Viper.

F: But come on, man, if it doesn’t have a distorted guitar, why am I bothering?

PV: I don’t play distorted guitar. I’m a DJ.

F: Maybe not in your music. You ARE sort of a distorted guitar.

PV: Best compliment I’ve ever been paid.

Maybe it was because the Pit Viper’s texts were never overly romantic, or that they never devolved into the idiotic sexting that the teenage boys she knew seemed to be so excited about. More than once, she’d had to navigate messages from Horace asking about what she was wearing or what she would do if he were there right now, responding to them with a quick and painless digital wink or eye roll. But though there was a physical hunger behind the Pit Viper’s interest in her, he didn’t make it an open issue. He wasn’t careless or sophomoric. She felt like she was talking to an equal.

They discussed music constantly. It excited her, how passionate he was, how immersed he would get in their conversations. He’d been raised on a mix of grimy crust punk and party-dance DJs, though he’d obviously dedicated himself more to the latter than the former. He confessed that the first record he’d ever grown addicted to was Ace of Base’s The Sign, and that he’d once considered getting a lyric from “Young and Proud” tattooed on him (You are the least cool person in the world, she’d said. I know, he’d responded). He’d lived in a squat, though he wouldn’t say where it was, before he’d met his benefactor, though he wouldn’t say who that was. He had weird OCD preferences that he told her about: Black coffee with nutmeg. Eight hours of sleep every night, no napping. Clear liquor or wine, no beer, occasionally tobacco but never as a habit. Proper spelling and grammar, even in texts and emails; no substituting letters for words. An hour of reading and an hour of practice every day.

F: Come on, I promise I won’t tell anyone.

PV: My real name is Pit Viper.

F: Look, it’s just really weird to call you that. Help me out here.

PV: You realize it’s now just about annoying you.

F: A REAL MAN would tell me.

PV: Nice try.

F: Dammit.

He wouldn’t budge on the name issue. My real name is Pit Viper, every time. At first, it had infuriated her in a fun way, and she’d made a game of trying to tease it out of him. Now, it was gnawing at her, a burning question she had to answer if only to show she could pull the boy out of the persona, unearth something about him that told her at least some of where he was from—though deep down, she hoped it wasn’t anything too embarrassing. If she found out he was actually an Irving, it would break her heart.

She loved having a personal window into his world, and at times she was worried her own life in Hamm would seem sad and underwhelming to him, but he seemed enthralled by her existence, too, the way one is fascinated by an episode of Planet Earth. He loved the quaintness of the local doughnut shop and hippie café, and sounded genuinely tickled by her idea of the city as a huge, edgy wonderland compared to her own town (I think you’d really like Madrid, he’d written her, and she had covered her mouth and giggled without wanting to). He was sympathetic when she complained about the false sense of security that ran through Hamm, the sense of everything being fine when it was actually miserable once you considered it honestly.

F: It’s like everyone’s so nice and proper, but the minute you threaten their little lives, they become hollow inside.

PV: Trust me, I know.

…

The town council charity breakfast that Saturday felt as endless as a dentist’s appointment. They were at the community center again, and this time Fiona and Caroline were serving alongside their dads. Fiona had potatoes; Caroline had scrambled eggs. Fiona did her best to smile and say, “You’re welcome” to each person she served from her steel burner tray, but she was perpetually distracted by her post-event escape plan. She checked her phone repeatedly until finally Caroline stopped her steady rambling about school gossip and the Pit Viper.

“Whose text are you waiting for?” asked Caroline.

Fiona blushed and mentally swore. Caught red-handed. She turned back to her potatoes. “No one. Just, Keller told me he’d text me the name of this song I was asking about.”

Caroline shot her a withering Oh, honey look; even Fiona could hear how ridiculous that sounded. “Has he been texting you about it all week?” she asked. “Come on, Fiona, enough’s enough. What’s actually going on?”

“Let’s not do this now,” said Fiona.

“Please tell me you’re not going to break up with Horace for Doug,” said Caroline. Fiona laughed, assuming her friend was being funny, but when she looked up there was a genuinely pissed expression on Caroline’s face. “That would cause, like, an atomic blast of drama in our crew, Fiona. Horace would die.”

“Both our dads are about ten feet away from us,” whispered Fiona. “Ask me later and we can talk, I promise, but any time other than now, okay?” Caroline stayed motionless. “It’s not Keller, okay?”

“You swear?”

“Council’s honor,” said Fiona, holding up a hand. Caroline snorted, and Fiona exhaled heavily as she went back to loading plates with home fries.

Finally, as things wrapped up, Fiona went to the bathroom and carefully rehearsed her lines. She was dizzy with adrenaline as she approached her waiting parents. Please, she thought, please let this work.

“Ready to go?” asked her mom.

“If it’s cool with you guys,” she said too quickly, teeth buzzing, “I’m actually going to head out around here for a little bit. There’s this underground record store I want to check out—”

“What? No way, Fiona.” Her father scowled. “What record store? What neighborhood? How long will it take?”

Fiona’s mouth flapped. Too many questions she hadn’t figured out the answers to, coming at her way too fast. This was her fault. She should’ve created a complete fiction, like she had with the night at the club (Ultradrool, dear God). “Just…it’s a place downtown. I forget the name. It’ll be fine—”

“We’ll give you a ride and take you home afterward,” said her dad. “This is a lousy neighborhood. You can’t just be walking around on your own. Do you have an address?”

“I’m all right,” said Fiona. She was still mad at him from their argument about Horace, but she did her best to pretend otherwise. Better to swallow her pride than get dragged back home. “I actually want to take a walk, see some of the areas around downtown that I might not know—”

“How many times do we have to go over this?” sighed her dad.

“Robert, let her go,” said her mother. “She’s just going out shopping.”

“Am I supposed to believe that, given the past couple of weeks?” Now he was using that whiny Trump voice, that victim tone that said, What about me? “Given the rampant partying with that Palmada kid? The lack of respect?”

Fiona wasn’t sure if she was going to weep or scream. Her whole week of texting, and now to have it blown off because her stupid, ignorant dad felt disrespected when there was a boy he wasn’t allowed to assault—

“Hey, you ready?”

She turned slowly at the unexpected voice. Calvin Hokes smiled at her and waved politely to the Joneses.

“Uh…maybe,” she said, looking back at her folks.

“Cal, you’re going with her?” asked her father, suddenly deflated, maybe even a little shocked.

“Yeah,” said Calvin. “I’m managing Fiona’s band. She wanted me to come see them play.” He glanced at her nervously. “Oh, man, you haven’t told them? Sorry, I didn’t mean to blow up your spot.”

Fiona winced. Of all the lies Calvin could have told, this was the least believable. But any incredulity on her parents’ part seemed overwhelmed by her having a day out with Calvin Hokes. Her mother gave her a saucy look-at-you smile that made the inside of her mouth taste like burnt medicine.

“You never told us you had a…band,” said her father with a smirk.

“We just didn’t become a band, you know, officially, since l-last night,” she stammered. “Which is why I made up the record-store lie! And Calvin is really good with PR and crunching numbers, so I figured why not, uh, have him, you know, manage. Us. The band.”

“Well, all right,” her dad practically cheered, suddenly elated by the concept of Fiona traipsing around the city’s grimier neighborhoods. He gave Fiona forty dollars and a slap on the arm. “You guys have a blast. Be home by nine—” Her mother rolled her eyes and elbowed him. Her father took a deep breath and nodded. “Eleven. But call me and let me know you’re on your way before then.”

She and Calvin walked silently through the halls. They were almost safely out the door when they ran into Will grabbing a mop from the supply closet in the coatroom.

“Cal, where you going—” The other Hokes twin froze, eyes bulging out of his skull. “No way, son! Check out Cal, making a move!”

“I’m going to murder you later,” said Calvin, cheeks going purple.

“Jones and Hokes, together at last!” he called after them. “Town council, what! My brother, everyone! Give him a hand!”

“You didn’t need to do that,” said Fiona once they were down the block and she’d regained her composure. Now that she was free of her parents, of obligation and Hamm, her nervous energy was blossoming into a joy for life and its many possibilities. The outside air felt cool and tasted sweet, even though it was full of exhaust and hobo-pee smell.

“Nah, I kind of did,” said Calvin, staring down at the sidewalk. “You were dying back there. You really made no effort whatsoever to come up with a believable lie, huh?”

She chuckled. “Not in the slightest. Thank you, Cal. Seriously, I do owe you one for that.”

“Ah, whatever,” he said with a shrug. “I like walking around the city, anyway. Maybe you were an excuse for me to get away from them as much as I was one for you.”

“I feel you,” she said, shooting him a sympathetic smile. She couldn’t help but pity the guy. It had never occurred to her that Calvin felt trapped in Hamm, too. He was just so clean-cut, so nice, that she’d assumed everything was fine with him. But maybe Hamm was casting him in a role that he’d never asked for. She understood that all too well.

“Welp, now I have to come up with a place my fake band rehearses,” she said.

“Ah, just make something up and change it every time,” he said. “‘We changed again, now we’re called Blowhole and we rehearse at the Spot.’ They’ll never remember details like that. Works on my dad consistently. And the more confused they are by those specifics, the less they’ll ask about whatever it is that you’re actually doing. Which is pretty obviously something they wouldn’t like.”

“Was I that easy to read back there?” she asked.

“You looked at your phone all morning and sweated your hat off, so I figured…” He laughed.

She laughed back. They came to a halt on a corner. She smiled up at Calvin, not nearly the cretin she’d imagined. He hadn’t even pressed her on her actual plans, which was decent of him. He was trying, and he had saved her ass back there. That counted for something. She didn’t love that he’d noticed her sweating, and she certainly had sensed that walking out there with her was some sort of triumph for him, but he was making an effort, and he was being a good dude about it.

“Well, look, I need to haul,” she said. “Thanks again for the help back there.”

“No problem,” he said. She turned off, and he went straight, waving after her. “Good luck, stay out of trouble.”

…

She texted the Pit Viper that she was on her way, and he gave her a corner to meet him on. When she saw him from a few blocks away, she felt her heart rate spike and wondered if she was going to faint. It was a little chilly, but he was there in jeans and a T-shirt—the sleeves of which, she noticed, were taut with the muscles of his arms. Ho boy.

“Let’s go back to your place,” she said the minute he was within earshot.

“Got it,” he said, turning on his heel.

They rode the bus together in relative silence, much to Fiona’s amusement—so much to say via text, but here they were, quietly smirking like dumb kids. Once in a while, an older person getting off the bus would make a point of ice-grilling him, and he usually nodded back to them. At first, she’d assumed he was just a local fixture like Emperor Norton in San Francisco, but after a while it dawned on Fiona that these bystanders and the DJ didn’t know each other. They just saw something in him that people her father’s age understood to be bad news.

He led her through his haunted neighborhood, up the dusty stairs, past the sonic graveyard. Once they were in the safety of his corner, he stopped, turned, faced her. After a pause, in which they both seemed to be presenting themselves to the other, she closed the distance between them.

This time, there was no hurry or outrage to make things dramatic and awkward; both moved at their own pace. She stepped into his arms, and they closed softly around her like the jaws of a Venus flytrap. Their lips met and deftly explored. He tasted like bubble tea. She kept her guard up, holding this one soft, tongue-less kiss long enough to let him know that this wasn’t a precursor to anything, that this momentary pulse-speeding spark between them was enough. He, in turn, kept his hands crossed behind her back, and when they broke apart he looked at her with a smile of knowing gratitude.

“Feel that?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she nodded.

“That’s music,” he said.

She pulled back and looked into those planetary eyes. “You really think you feel…some sort of power in me.”

He laughed. “Well, not like that. You’re not an X-Man. But I see in you the basic tools to do a lot of great things, Fiona. I see a lot of powerful songs that are going shamefully unwritten. I’d like to be here when they’re set free.”

Her logical mind told her it was flimsy. That he was a handsome dude from her past with a very intricate prop out of The Evil Dead who was playing her for a fool. But her gut believed it, or wanted to. Her gut told her to go for it.

“No marks,” she said. “No hickeys, nothing like that. It implies ownership. That shit’s gross.”

He shrugged. “All right.”

“No trying to pressure me into sex,” she said.

“I would never,” he said, neither casual nor offended.

“And no lying to me,” she said. “If I ask you something, tell me the truth. And if I’m freaked out by it, or you do something that upsets me, I’m gone, and you can’t come after me. Got it?”

“Got it,” he said.

“Okay,” she said. She kissed him again, softly, lightly. She pulled away from him, but reached out and put her hand in his, letting him know she wasn’t backing off entirely. “Show me your book. I want in.”