OWEN AND I DRIVE to the festival in silence. He keeps inhaling sharply, then clearing his throat, then picking a new song on his phone, then starting the whole routine over again. It reminds me of Charlie, both of them habitual fidgeters, so I know he wants to say something. I can’t decide if I want him to or not.
That moment with my mom at home was the truth—I’m ready to move on. Criminal charges for Owen aren’t a possibility now. Mr. Knoll was too long ago, too hard to prove. What else is there to do? What else is there for any girl to do, when everyone but her can just forget everything like a random bad dream? I have no idea what moving on sounds like, looks like. I’ve spent the past three years trying and decidedly not getting over anything.
“So,” I say, swallowing hard. “How’s first chair stuff?”
I feel him glance at me and I make myself meet his eyes. “Good,” he says. “It’s busy with the fall concert coming up. You know, I have to walk out there all by my little lonesome and lead the tuning. It’s weird.”
“Oh, please.” I force a laugh. “You love it and you know it.”
He shrugs, a smile touching the edges of his mouth. “What can I say, I was born to make grand entrances . . . before everyone else.”
“You did not just compare first chair to our birth.”
“Birth certificates don’t lie.”
“Are you kidding? Of course they do. It’s called human error. Some overworked and exhausted nurse clearly got our birth times all turned around and . . . maybe . . .”
My words slow and trail off, my throat tight. This feels wrong, this banter back and forth between us, as though these words are not the ones I should be saying.
“Mar?”
I don’t answer him.
A few minutes later, Owen pulls the car into the school’s parking lot, and we walk over to the grassy field next to the stadium where the festival is already in full swing. He hesitates near the booth he’s manning, a cakewalk set to recordings of the school orchestra’s best concerts.
“So, this is me,” he says.
I nod but say nothing.
“Mara. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
It’s a lie and he knows it. He lifts his eyebrows, waiting for me to go on, but I’m already walking away before I can say anything else. What my words would be, I don’t even know. They’re formless in my head, dark swirls and sharp corners. They’re not pleasant or witty or loving.
Not fine, not fine, not fine.
As I walk across the field, the words swirling through my head, my legs swishing through the grass, I feel dozens of eyes on me. I haven’t seen anyone from school except Hannah since I tried to scratch Jaden’s eyes out, and honestly, the memory almost calms me down a little. I jut my chin into the air as a few of Jaden’s orchestra buddies glare at me. But then I remember that they’re Owen’s friends too, that the whole shit show with Hannah was because of Owen, whether he egged it on or not.
Not fine.
My walk slows a bit, but I force my jaw to tighten, my eyes fixed on the red-topped tent I see a little ways off, a GUESS THAT SONG sign fluttering in the breeze.
“Mara!”
I turn toward my name, bracing myself for some asshole, but nearly crumple to my knees when I see Alex weaving through a family laden with bright puffs of pink and blue cotton candy.
“Hi,” I say, so relieved to see him that I actually manage a smile.
“You okay? I feel like I haven’t talked to you in a while.”
“It’s been about a day.”
He waves a hand and smiles, but it fades quickly. “I’m sorry how things went down at school.”
Now it’s my turn to wave a hand. “It’s done. I’m fine.”
Not fine.
“So, your parents set you loose?”
“Only to work.” I hook finger quotes around the last word. “But I’ll take it.”
“So will I. Hey, you want to come over tonight?”
I lift my brow and he actually blushes.
“Just to hang out,” he says. “My parents always make dinner and we can . . . I don’t know. Play Wii or something?”
“Wii? As in Mario Kart?”
He grins. “As long as I get to be Princess Peach.”
I can’t help but laugh at that. Owen always chose Princess Peach whenever the three of us played Mario Kart when we were younger. “She’s badass!” he’d say, and I always loved that he picked her. How cool was it that my popular brother wasn’t afraid to be the girl and make damn sure that she always won?
The thought is a sharp punch to the chest. Everything that’s been simmering and boiling in me since last night surges, and for a second, I can’t breathe.
“Hey.” Alex steps closer. “You okay?”
I nod, pressing my hands against my stomach, trying to force air into my lungs.
Alex reaches out, and soon he’s touching me for the first time since we kissed. It’s not a huge deal, just his hands lighting gently on my shoulders, but it shocks me enough that I gulp a big breath and then another and soon feel calmer.
Until I see Owen watching us from a few tents down, open-mouthed, cakes stacked like a fortress on the table behind him. His forehead is wrinkled and his eyebrows bunch together like when he’s confused. I call it his old man stare. Consequently, he calls it my old lady stare, because I do the exact same thing.
“Have you talked to Owen lately?” I ask Alex.
He frowns. “Not a lot, no.”
“Yeah. Me neither.”
“I know—I’m sorry.”
I shrug, and his hands fall away from my shoulders. Unsaid words hang between us—charges, belief, Hannah—but I can’t bring myself to say any of them.
“I’ve got to go find Charlie.”
He nods. “Okay. Sure.”
“Hey.” I catch the sleeve of his navy sweater. “I’ll see you tonight.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. If my parents will let me.”
He smiles, a tiny thing. “Six thirty?”
I nod before walking toward the song tent. I don’t look back at Owen, but I can’t help but picture us sitting on the roof, faces turned toward the stars.
You know you pretty much have to marry Alex now, right? he’d say.
Why’s that?
He touched your shoulder—that’s like a marriage proposal in my book. Plus, I can’t divide my loyalties. Very unfair.
Ah, yes, I forgot that my friendships are all about your comfort.
Damn straight. Plus, then I can just live with you guys in your basement and you can take care of me for life.
Dreams do come true.
That’s how it would go if all of this weren’t happening. If there weren’t all these lies and a stranger wearing my brother’s face between us.
The ache in my chest is so sharp it steals my breath. I want that imagined conversation to be real. I want a lifetime of teasing smiles under the stars. Our stars. But I’m starting to think that life is gone forever. Maybe it never really was. Maybe I lost it the second Mr. Knoll asked me to stay behind. Maybe that’s when I lost everything.
I keep walking, a million different thoughts and wishes trailing after me. Charlie comes into view and I pick up my pace.
She doesn’t see me at first. She’s perched on a stool behind a table, bent over a ball of gold yarn and brandishing her knitting needles, weaving the wool into a crimson lump. Her bottom lip is caught between her teeth and I see her mouth form the f-word as she unravels some unintended knot. She’s so damn cute that the fact that we haven’t talked in twenty-four hours fades to the back of my mind.
“Hey,” I say as I duck under the tent’s awning.
She startles, her knitting needles clattering onto the table, and her ball of yarn drops and rolls a few feet away.
“Hi,” she says. Then she’s in motion, picking up the needles and yarn and cramming the whole whatever-it-is she’s knitting into her bag. She stuffs her hands into her pockets and tries to smile. “Hey.”
“You okay?”
She nods. “Yeah. Just . . . I’m glad you’re here.”
Her gaze on me is so intense, her thoughts pretty much bleed out of her eyeballs.
“I’m fine,” I say before she can ask. “Really.”
“Yeah?”
I nod.
“You never texted me back,” she says.
“You stopped texting me.”
“Yeah, because you never texted me back.”
I push my hair out of my face. “I was grounded and I needed to think.”
“You had to know you’d get suspended for hitting Jaden.”
“I didn’t really think about it at the time. And Principal Carr suspended me for the skirt, too.”
“For real?”
“Yep.”
“Asshole. Though you did look . . .” She trails off, biting her lower lip.
“I did look what?”
A smile ghosts over her mouth. “Sexy as hell. But you look sexy as hell in anything.”
My stomach handsprings down to my feet.
“Sorry,” she says, lacing her hands together. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You’re not allowed to think I’m pretty?”
She frowns. “No. I just . . . I don’t know.”
“Oh, right. Tess.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Who the hell is she, anyway?”
Charlie sighs, dragging both hands through her hair. It sticks up everywhere, dark mountains and valleys, and it’s so adorable it makes my teeth ache.
“I met her at that pizza night I went to a few weeks ago for my dad’s school. Her mom’s a math teacher there.”
“Cute. Are you together?”
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“You know what. Talk to me like you’re interested when you’re actually pissed.”
“I’m not pissed—I just want to know who she is.”
Charlie fiddles with the peeling plastic rim of the table and shakes her head. Only when her eyes are off me do I register the throbbing in my fingers from balling them into tight fists, trying to hold all these different threads of my life together. But they’re all coming unraveled.
“You wanted this,” she whispers. “And you have Alex.”
“I don’t have him. We’re just friends.”
“You something him.”
Hurt blankets her words, but I don’t know what to say. When I broke up with Charlie, it seemed smart and safe, for both of us. I didn’t think I could ever be a good girlfriend to Charlie. So I did want this. But I didn’t want this. I brush my hand over her back, feeling her breaths push against my fingertips.
Romance and friendship blur with Charlie and me. Always have. It’s hard to tell the difference. It’s hard to tell which is more important. It’s even harder to tell if one actually has to be more important than the other with us. But Charlie and me, we’ll always be more than something.
“So do you have a list of songs with which to stump our patrons?” I ask, leaning against the plastic table. I need to stop thinking about this. I need to stop thinking about everything.
She stares at me for a few long seconds, a thousand emotions playing over her face. Finally, she presses her lips together and looks down at her feet, nodding.
“Songs?” I ask again.
“Yeah.” She reaches under the table and pulls out a glass fishbowl filled with folded-up pieces of paper. After setting it onto the table, she grabs her guitar from its case on the ground and strums a little, twisting the tuning pegs. “They’re all pretty basic. Shouldn’t be too hard.”
I sift through the bowl and pull out a slip of paper, unfolding it and rolling my eyes.
“ ‘Let It Be’? If you can’t guess that within three notes, you don’t deserve the glow-in-the-dark bracelet or edible necklace or whatever crap we got donated as prizes this year.”
Charlie pretends to be affronted. “Everyone deserves a fair shot at a temporary Wicked tattoo, Mara.” She grabs a wicker basket full of quarter-size Elphabas and Galindas and sets it next to the fishbowl. “Everyone.”
I laugh, so glad to be joking around with my best friend again.
Soon, we start getting a few customers and Charlie strums the tinny strings while I hum “Hotel California” and “Billie Jean.” In between customers, she shows me a few chords on the guitar.
“It looks like I’m flipping someone off,” I say as she places my fingers on the frets.
“It’s a G.”
“Still looks like I’m flipping someone off.”
“Well, they probably deserve it.”
She releases my ring finger and it immediately pops out of place.
“Dammit,” I say. “My fingers don’t bend that way.”
She laughs. “Yes they do. They just have to learn how.” She scoots her stool behind mine and my insides flop when I feel her breath on my neck. Her chest presses against my back as she wraps her arms around me so she can manipulate my hands on the guitar, her legs wide on either side of me. I clear my throat as she concentrates, peering over my shoulder as she pushes my fingertips to the strings.
“Ow,” I say, but it’s a whisper.
“You need rougher fingers. They’re too soft.”
“My fingers are plenty rough when they need to be. Besides, what’s wrong with soft fingers?”
When she doesn’t answer, I turn my head toward her and nearly collide with her face. I didn’t realize how close she was, but my mouth is inches from her reddening cheek, which completely confuses me until I retrace our conversation in my head.
“God, way to make it awkward, Mara,” I say, feigning conversing with myself to cover my embarrassment.
Charlie laughs and her flush deepens. She’s so pretty, I have to take my gaze away, remove my hands from under hers. I wish this would go away, this constant desire to go back on what we said we wanted, what we said was right for us.
I feel Charlie’s hair against my cheek, as if she’s shaking her head, and she inhales deeply. She’s still the color of a beet, but she takes my hand back and runs her fingers along mine, setting them on the frets again. “This is G.” She folds my fingers into a new position, gentle and careful. “C.” Her voice is soft in my ear and her callused fingertips glide over and under my own, moving them easily. “D.” Another bend, another feathery touch. “And E minor.”
I hold my breath and my blood pounds out a rhythm in my veins. I’m not sure what Charlie’s doing, but it’s not just a guitar lesson. There’s a Tess out there somewhere, but in here, there’s just a Mara and a Charlie.
And that—us—is my normal.
“Learn those four and you’ve got a song,” Charlie says, her mouth still close to my ear.
“Okay.” I’m out of breath, out of thoughts. “I’ll practice those.”
“You do that.” Her voice has a flirty lilt to it and I don’t know what to do with that.
Charlie and I separate when a tired-looking mother ambles up to our booth with two little kids in tow. I hum “You Are My Sunshine,” and we pass out a few more tattoos. Several more parents and students visit our tent, all of them easily guessing the songs. Even Principal Carr comes by and leaves with a Galinda, though I’m almost positive he leaned over the table to check the length of my skirt. He pretty much harrumphed under his breath when he spotted my jeans.
Around five, we start closing down the booth. Everything in me feels like kindling. I’m placing the fishbowl into a cardboard box full of stuff that needs to go back into the school, but I can’t stop thinking about Charlie’s fingers on mine over the guitar, guiding me, helping me. Her voice in my ear. A voice I’ve always trusted.
My favorite voice in the world. My favorite person in the world.
I rub my eyes to keep the tears back, to keep all the fine in place, and then, just like I knew she would be, Charlie’s right there.
My back is to her, but she taps my elbow.
“Hey,” she says softly. “What’s wrong?”
Because there is no hiding with her. There never really has been. It’s only because she met me after Mr. Knoll that she never knew I was keeping something from her. But now that something doesn’t want to stay hidden. It’s tired of the dark. I fed it a bit of light last night with Hannah and it’s hungry, this something. It’s ravenous. Distracting it with guitar lessons and dinner with Alex isn’t enough. Those things are a penlight when it wants the sun. It needs light and air and maybe, maybe, maybe if I tell Charlie, my person, it’ll be satisfied. Maybe then it can finally lie down and sleep.
“Hey,” Charlie says again. My shoulders are shaking. My hands. My legs. My heart. My lungs.
I turn and settle on a stool, my breathing so loud and deep that I’m dizzy.
Charlie sits next to me. “Mara, you’re scaring me.”
She sounds totally freaked out, so I grab her hand. Breathe. Breathe.
“Whatever this is, let me help,” she says. She leans closer to me, her cheek on my shoulder. It’s so natural. So safe. So right. So us.
I rest my head on hers and look out at the festival winding down. Little girls with sticky cotton-candy fingers. Tween girls with freshly glossed lips, casting shy glances at the high school boys. Girls my own age in jeans, in skirts, in running shorts, in flannel, long hair and short hair and dyed hair, walking through the grass, searching, hunting, needing connection and belief and validation and something.
Something to feel worthy. To feel like ourselves.
“Mara,” Charlie says. She lifts her head and wipes the tears off my face with her thumbs. “Is it Owen?”
I think about this, because everything has felt like Owen lately. But then I realize this isn’t. This isn’t Owen at all. This is me. This is mine.
And then I open my mouth and give myself a little more light.