Brendan Nesbitt wasn’t a terrible singer. He wasn’t a good one, either.
Ana couldn’t play the piano for beans. The Vasquezes could never afford lessons, and online tutorials could only get you so far when you insisted on learning only the opening chords of anime theme songs, when you didn’t own a keyboard and could only pretend your desk was one.
Brendan sang. Ana sat on the risers and watched him poke at keys between lines.
He wasn’t tone-deaf. He was just very calculating, and his calculations sounded in his voice. Brendan, as far as Ana could tell, was determined to dissect every syllable that passed his lips and turn it inside out before uttering it. It didn’t help that he sang through his nose for the sake of his character.
The longer Ana watched him through burning galaxy eyes, grateful for the bulbs that kept the carpeted room poorly lit, the less this made any sense to her.
“Don’t think so hard about the words.”
“Oh.” He lifted his long fingers to the back of his neck (wings and wings with him). “You’re right. I really am overthinking it, aren’t I? The trouble is, I’ve spent the past couple months obsessing over whether I can land the comedic lines right, because being comical in musicals is something of a trial for me.”
“Just in musicals?” Ana murmured. Her mind was snagged by another phrase: the past couple months, months during which Brendan Nesbitt was not invited to the Vasquez home, during which Brendan Nesbitt had to find other ways to occupy his demanding mind.
“What’s giving me away, Ana?”
Ana considered. “You sound constipated.”
Brendan laughed, high and light, let his arms fall back to his sides. “All right. Yes, that’s a pretty big tell.” He collapsed on the piano bench. “Ana. You have to tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
Completely deadpan: “Which phrase sounded the most constipated?”
The Ana Vasquez of yesteryear would have rolled her eyes right out of her head.
Brendan Nesbitt never got offended. He only got inquisitive.
Brendan had an arsenal of questions on hand at any given moment, and he used to loose them on the Vasquez household. Questions about where the Vasquezes got the odd collection of glass animals by the window, about the floral design on her mother’s mysterious inherited dinnerware, about what sort of critters came out of the canyon at night: “Do you ever find bats in your living room?”
For all the questions Brendan Nesbitt asked, he never asked about Hank. Not about his bedroom or his baby pictures. Hank was the one certainty. Ana longed to answer Brendan, that bird-boned boy with questions where marrow should have been.
Hank was usually there to answer first. But sometimes when Hank wasn’t, Brendan asked smaller questions that mattered more.
On the day Ana came home realizing her friendship with Marissa was finally done, she fell into the kitchen a mess, her makeup having migrated to all the wrong parts of her face. Ana expected her collapse to go unwitnessed, forgetting that Milo had minimum days on Fridays and on those days, if Hank had practice, Brendan did the babysitting. He caught her before her knees hit the linoleum.
“Wanna talk about it?” Brendan asked, while Milo whisked imaginary eggs.
It didn’t matter that Ana said no. It mattered that he asked.
“… any other advice for me, Ana? I really want the part, and … I need the part.”
“I don’t know anything about singing.”
“Of course you do. You used to sing.”
Did I, Luz? “Did I?”
“Absolutely. We could hear you from your window, whenever we—Hank and me—well, whenever we were … outside. Hank thought you did it for attention. I thought maybe you didn’t even realize.”
Didn’t I, Luz?
“What did I sing about, Brendan?” Mom never sang. Dad always had.
“You know, I have no idea.” Had he frowned? “We just heard you.”
Ana stood up from the risers. “I thought you were into photography, not theater.”
Brendan twitched. “I was. But now, I don’t know. I’m not sure it’s for me.”
“And this is? Brendan, what are you singing about?”
“Oh. It’s half a duet between a shopkeep and a man-eating alien plant. I’m trying out for the shopkeep.” He patted the bench. “Wanna help me out by pretending to be a soulful Venus flytrap?”
Ana scooted into place beside him. She tried to make sense of the sheet music. She could read the treble line, but not the bass. It wasn’t just that her eyes were sore; her memory of music was, too. “Is it … a romantic duet?”
“What? Of course not. Didn’t I say man-eating alien plant? Because man-eating alien plant.”
“Stranger things have happened.” Ana couldn’t tell whether that was a truth she wanted to exist, or the answer to a question he’d never ask her.
A blink hit her. She tried not to let it show.
“This is more like a … partners-in-crime song. They agree to murder people together. I guess, at a stretch, you could call it a friendship.”
“… at a stretch.”
“Yes. Look, I know I need to practice more.”
“Or maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe that’ll make it worse.”
“There’s the Ana I know. Straight to the point.”
Ana and Marissa had memorized those most favorite of anime theme songs, especially when Marissa went through that phase in seventh grade where she was obsessed with shows about teen idols wearing cotton-candy-colored school uniforms. Idols didn’t have to sing well to become idols.
“That’s half the appeal, really,” Marissa informed her.
“You’re gonna have to explain the other half, too,” Ana snarked.
Not that it mattered, as months later Ana was called a lesbian on the bus for the eighth time because she and Marissa were always together, attempting to draw girls with legs up to their moon-size eyes and hair down to their ankles, and Ana promptly announced, at the succeeding sleepover: “I know we promised we’d still love this crap when we got older—”
“Crap?” Marissa whimpered.
“But I just don’t anymore, okay?”
It wasn’t true. Ana dreamed of magical girl transformations for years.
Brendan Nesbitt didn’t have the benefit or detriment of anime idol Auto-Tune. He did have the benefit of long fingers on white piano keys.
“Ana … are you crying?”
Ana blinked and winced. “No. These are just my eyes now.”
Brendan turned away, tapped out a new chord. “All right.”
“You want to ask me about my family.”
“It’s not that I want to pry.”
Ana nodded. “You just can’t help it. And you can’t ask Hank, so here I am.”
All those questions Ana had longed to answer, and Hank had answered them, with that infamous big smile: “Oh, sometimes we get bats up here, but it’s the owls you have to look out for, Nesbitt.”
Brendan’s eyes cut right through her. The warmth left his features.
Did Brendan Nesbitt say “I love musicals!” in the same way that Hank declared “I love basketball!”?
On the Fourth of July with Luz inside her, Ana had spotted Brendan Nesbitt among the clamor of townsfolk at Burley Field.
He was with his art friends—a girl who sometimes wore antlers in her white hair, a boy who boasted a collection of tartan skirts. The three were sprawled on an old tablecloth, staring at the sky, anticipating the fireworks to come. Brendan tugged absently at tufts of grass between his oxfords.
This boy matters to you? Luz asked, in his way. The language of memories was not so direct as writing or whispering, but through the careful combination of images, Luz could say anything. He showed her a blended vision: Brendan caught Ana in the kitchen, but now every one of his questions belonged to her.
Luz created this and made it evaporate inside her. It was unimaginable.
Brendan would always catch Ana, but never kiss her.
On the field, Hank or Luz grabbed her shoulder. Come with us.
Ana followed them back to their spot. Milo hummed softly on the blanket, chewing on celery. Mom hadn’t come out with them. They hadn’t asked her to.
It was Luz who liked to watch the sky, or maybe Milo or Hank or Ana.
Beside her in the choir room, Brendan Nesbitt belted.
Ana joined him, loud as she could, singing the part of the murderous man-eating plant.