The next morning at breakfast, Carter was sitting with Ava. I waved and he smiled at me, but it felt awkward to follow him there so I sat at our usual table instead. Verity and Freya didn’t come down for breakfast, but at break I came across Verity in the girls’ toilets, fixing her make-up.
‘I guess you’ve heard, then,’ she said as I went into a cubicle, her eyes red and raw. ‘I guess everyone’s heard.’
Now that I thought about Carter switching tables this morning, and what he’d said last night about their relationship, it seemed obvious, and I was secretly glad Carter had seen the light. When I came out of the cubicle, I asked, ‘Are you OK?’
Her face crumpled. I tore her a piece of paper towel, which she dabbed over her newly applied mascara.
‘You’re better off without him anyway,’ I said. I hadn’t really spoken much to Verity before, but I’d been through this routine with Phoenix many times and knew I had to say something vaguely sympathetic. ‘I mean, he’s hot and everything but he’s not a great guitarist.’
She let out a surprised laugh and I pretended not to notice the snot that came with it. ‘Liliana, I wasn’t with him for his guitar skills.’
I laughed too. Maybe we could be friends; maybe she could put her defensiveness away, now that she wasn’t with Carter. I thought about the way he’d touched my hands under the willow tree, his fingertips on my stinging blisters. ‘Anyway, don’t you want to be with someone who’s not looking over your shoulder all the time?’
She stared at me in the mirror. ‘Did he say something to you?’
‘I just mean …’ I stuttered. ‘The kind of guy everyone’s taking bets on to see who he’ll take to the Summer Ball … well, that guy’s not going to make a lifelong commitment, is he?’
‘I didn’t want a lifelong commitment, babby,’ she snapped. There was tense silence and then she added, ‘It must be so much easier to date girls.’
I hated it when people assumed that dating within your own gender was the easy road, but she marched out of the bathroom without giving me time to correct her.
Carter didn’t turn up to the rehearsal room during Chapel, so I took the opportunity to try writing something new. It was hard enough to write a song only I would perform – writing a song for the band was a whole other challenge.
I wrote my first song after Mum walked out for the final time. I was fourteen. Jack and I had been expecting her to leave for weeks, but we were still shaken. For the first few days I felt like I was underwater, and then finally anger started to break through the numbness and I took out my rage on my guitar, lyrics pouring out of me like tears. The song was much too personal for me to actually show to anyone, but since then I had been a songwriter as well as a singer.
I tried to summon up that anger now, but everything I’d left behind in Sydney felt so far away, and anyway, it wasn’t like I could turn up to rehearsal with a song about my mum. I cast my guitar aside. I hadn’t spoken to Ellie in days. It was late in Sydney, but she picked up on the first ring.
‘I thought you were going to call me yesterday.’ Her voice had a slightly high-pitched echo. I started to pour out my heart about the songwriting process, but she cut in abruptly. ‘Liliana, I’m not sure I can do this.’
It was like the moment the bass drops – except I felt it in every part of my body. My mouth moved but I couldn’t speak.
‘It’s just so hard. I didn’t sign up for rushed phone calls with you whenever you can fit me in between band rehearsals. I want to be happy for you, but every time you mention this Carter guy I want to punch something.’
And I hadn’t even told her about last night – the way he’d asked ‘So I am in with a chance?’ like it was an offer he would take back the moment I showed interest. Was it lying not to tell her? Even if I was doing it to protect her feelings and I had no interest in starting anything with Carter?
‘It’s only a month till I’m back.’
‘God, Lil, we’re only halfway through,’ she breathed. ‘It’s killing me. Being at school is torture with everyone asking about you all the time. And I’ve got nothing to tell them, apart from that you seem to be having the time of your life. You do know it’s been almost a week since we actually spoke?’
I hadn’t realised it had been that long. Our daily phone calls had been replaced by texts. The band had taken over my time.
‘I need to hear your voice,’ she said. ‘And you need to call me when you say you will. Is that too much?’
‘No.’ My throat felt thick with panic. ‘It’s not too much, not at all.’
‘Because you should tell me if I’m being unreasonable.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I could hear the desperation in my voice. ‘Let’s make it a regular thing.’
‘You have Sundays off, right? I’ll call you on Sunday at five pm my time. That’s about eight in the morning there.’
When we hung up, the background photo stared up from my screen: the two of us at the skate park, just before I packed for England and the academy and everything that awaited me here. Now, our smiling faces looked so naive, struck out with sunlight, as if we should have known we were about to detonate our relationship.
I spent the rest of the day in a fog. In the evening, I Skyped Phoenix from the rec room; I wanted to see a friendly face. Midway through our conversation, Carter poked his head into the viewer, his breath on my neck. I didn’t shove him away. It was nice to know he hadn’t been avoiding me at breakfast.
‘Is this the famous Ellie?’ he demanded.
Phoenix laughed. ‘You have me mistaken, Sir.’
‘Phoenix, this is Carter,’ I said. ‘Phoenix is my best friend in Sydney. Carter is …’
‘The guitarist. I’ve heard about you,’ they said, with a wink I hoped he missed.
‘Only bad things, I hope,’ said Carter mildly.
‘The very worst,’ said Phoenix, flitting their eyelashes.
Carter grinned, rolled off the couch and headed to the pool table on the other side of the room, where Austin and Benton were failing to pot any balls. I made sure he couldn’t hear me before I turned back to my phone.
‘So,’ said Phoenix. ‘That’s King Cutie himself.’
‘King what?’ I laughed. ‘What does that even mean?’
‘When you said he was charismatic, you didn’t mention he was also downright gorgeous.’
‘Oh, you noticed, then,’ I said. ‘You and the rest of the world.’
‘You shouldn’t let a little competition put you off.’ They tugged their hair elastic free and blonde strands dropped around their shoulders. For a moment, they looked like they hadn’t aged since we were white-haired kids making Play-Doh worms. ‘That’s what makes it fun.’
‘God, have you forgotten about Ellie?’
They shrugged. ‘What she doesn’t know can’t hurt her.’
I loved Phoenix, but sometimes they were brutal. ‘Well, I’m not built like that.’
Their expression softened. ‘I know you’re not. That’s why I love you.’
King Cutie. Phoenix had always had a way with words. I turned to a new page in my notebook and wrote it down. Carter was still shooting pool with Austin. I thought about Verity crying in the bathroom, the way Ava had basked in his attention at breakfast, and my own weirdly flattered response when he joined in my chat with Phoenix. King Cutie suited him. A guy who always had a girl, but never a girlfriend. The kind of guy you’d write songs about.