“Stella, I have two words for you,” Miles says, piling clothes into my arms. “Zebra leggings.”
“Oooh,” I say, digging through the pile. I have a real weakness for animal prints. And leggings.
On the other side of the sale rack, Tamara sighs. She holds up a narrow leather skirt. “In what universe is this extra large?” Jacob patiently takes the skirt from her and hangs it back up. Then he gently steers her away.
We’re in the Blue Mantle, the most awesome thrift store in a hundred miles. I had to beg my mom to drive us here because it’s in a whole other town, but she finally agreed when I suggested she spend two hours at their weird little arts-and-crafts bazaar. Mom’s weakness is crocheted dishcloths and pottery coffee cups. She can’t get enough of them.
It was Miles’s idea for us all to go shopping for audition clothes together. He even convinced his dad to sponsor us with fifty dollars each. All we have to do is put stickers for his laser-tattoo-removal service on all our cases. It’s brilliant marketing, actually, when you think about all the tattooed wannabes who will be at the auditions. And fifty dollars goes a long way in the Blue Mantle because the women who volunteer here are about a hundred and fifty years old and don’t know how much people normally pay for such rad clothes. The zebra leggings say Made in the United Kingdom, for God’s sake! And they’re five bucks! I have to have them.
Miles comes out of the fitting room in a pair of brown cords and a paisley shirt. He manages to look like a young Lenny Kravitz and the ghost of Jimi Hendrix at the same time.
“I’m totally performing barefoot,” he says, admiring his reflection in the large gilded mirror.
“Live your dreams, kid,” I tell him. I’ve decided on the zebra leggings, a men’s black shirt that goes down to my knees, and a child’s double-breasted waistcoat that I can barely do up. It’s lime green and has bumblebees on the buttons! I’m going to wear my biker boots with the outfit, I think. Docs would be too predictable.
After we pay, Miles and I search for Jacob and Tamara. We find Jacob standing outside the fitting rooms in the back of the store. He’s wearing a surprisingly well-fitting men’s suit and looking pretty much like one of the Beatles. Which is excellent in every possible way.
“Where’s Tamara?” I ask. Jacob points toward a closed fitting-room door. I have a flashback to the day I tried to shop with her, when nothing fit and everything made her look sad. I hope we’re not facing a repeat.
“When are you coming out?” Jacob says to the door.
“I’m not sure about the dress,” Tamara says. “I kind of had to squeeze into it.”
Jacob grins. “The best dresses always have to be squeezed into.”
“Jacob!”
He looks at me innocently. “What? It’s true!”
“Okay, I’m coming out,” Tamara says.
I actually hold my breath as the door opens.
Ever have one of those moments when you suddenly see the universe as a friendly, supportive haven instead of a hostile and confusing maze of dark tunnels and dead ends? Seeing Tamara in that dress is like that. She looks A-MA-ZING! She is definitely squeezed into the dress up top, and her boobs are framed in wild waves of ruffles. The skirt is gathered and full and cloudy-looking, like cotton candy. She’s wearing it over black tights, with green Chucks on her feet. The dark pink of the dress, her pale skin and fair hair, which she’s bunched into a pair of spiky pigtails, all work together to create an arty, rocky, sexy hipster look that I could never in a million years pull off.
I turn to look at the boys, to see their reactions. Miles is grinning and clapping. Jacob’s face is bright red, his mouth hanging open. I’m calling that a win.
“How do you feel?” I ask Tamara as she considers her reflection.
She takes her time answering, even swirls in the dress, before offering her assessment.
“I feel like a star,” she says. “An exploding pink star.”
“You mean in a good way, right?”
Tamara doesn’t answer. She just ducks back into the fitting room and grabs her purse.
Five minutes later, when we all leave the store, Tamara is still wearing the dress.
* * *
When we get back to town, Mom drops us at Mitchell Music, our only store that sells musical instruments. The staff used to be mad-conservative, classical-only jerks who sneered at kids like us if we didn’t buy something straight away. But recently the store got a new manager, a cool Jamaican guy with dreadlocks and a wicked accent. He’s a lot more tolerant. And, perhaps not coincidentally, there are now a lot more girls in the store whenever I drop in.
I need some drumsticks, and the boys need strings. Tamara comes along to peruse the sheet music. I guess we’ve been having such a magical shopping day, we don’t want it to end.
Mitchell Music has a great selection of used guitars, which the boys dive into without so much as a see-you-later. I’d love to try the drum set on display, but that might be a bit antisocial. Instead, Tamara and I head into the sheet-music part of the store.
“I want to learn an aria,” she says, flipping through the classical-vocals section. “Actually, I might do a tenor aria. ‘Nessun Dorma,’ maybe.”
Always with the contradictions, this girl. I love it.
“Tammy? Oh my god!” a sickly sweet voice says behind us. I turn around just as four girls dive onto Tamara and smother her in air kisses and squealy girl hugs. Once they step back, I recognize them. They’re the remaining members of Fantalicious, all four of them in booty shorts, tight cartoon T-shirts and way too much makeup. They look like they should time-travel back to the nineties and dance in a Britney Spears video.
Tamara introduces me, and the Fants are a little too friendly as they look me up and down.
“OMG, I totally used to do karate with you, Stella,” says one of them. “You don’t recognize me?”
“Did you kick me really hard in the head the last time you saw me? Maybe that’s why I can’t place you,” I say, which makes them all squeal with laughter.
Tamara catches my eye, her eyebrow raised. “What are you guys doing here?” she asks.
Karate Girl answers. “We’re looking for a song to cover for the Parkland Summer Music Festival auditions.”
Another girl finishes her thought. “We think a cover will be a more popular choice. Apparently the judges are super conservative this year. Petra said even the Dixie Chicks would be too radical! Can you imagine?”
“What are you doing here, Tammy?” a third girl asks.
I begin to feel like we’re having a conversation with some hideous four-headed beast.
Tamara hesitates. “I’m just looking at arias. I thought I’d try to learn one.”
“Opera?” Karate Girl says. “Well, you know what they say about opera.”
It’s like watching a child fall down and knock her teeth out. Like you reach out to try to stop it, but you can’t, even though it seems to be happening in slow motion. On cue, one of the other girls snorts.
“Yeah, it’s not over until the fat lady sings.”
Wow. Tamara is many things that these girls aren’t, not the least of which is dignified. She just turns and looks down at the selection of arias as though the last five minutes didn’t even happen. Maybe she’s thinking how she would mop the floor with all of them in a real singing competition if it ever came to that. Maybe she’s just trying to keep from crying or punching one of them in her frosty-pink mouth.
As for me, I don’t care about dignity. “You know what they say about trashy pop music?” I ask the four girls, noting with some satisfaction that they all look vaguely mortified. “It’s not over until the cheap skank sings.”
Then I grab Tamara’s hand and drag her back toward the guitar section.
“Thanks,” she says, giving my hand a squeeze.
“Believe me, it was my pleasure. Are you okay?”
“I’m fabulous,” she says. “I’m a pink exploding star, and the singer in the best band since Sonic Youth.”
The boys are having a little jam session when we get there. I look at the manager with a pleading expression, and he just rolls his eyes and shrugs. The display drum set is pretty sweet. It has Zildjian cymbals and a wicked run of toms that I’m itching to try out. I dig my drumsticks out of my backpack and start a simple rhythm to go with Miles and Jacob’s jam. When Tamara plugs a microphone into the little pa, the boys automatically bust into her song, “The Alien.” But she doesn’t sing along.
“Wait!” she says into the microphone. Everyone in the store, including the Fants, who are still skulking around in the sheet music, turns to look at us. “Let’s do the new one. Stella’s song.”
Oh, crap. My “love” song. We’ve only practiced it a few times since Nate blabbed about it to Tamara. To be honest, her voice makes it all kinds of sweet. Like sweet-love-song sweet AND sweet-edgy-moody-dark-and-broody sweet. That’s the miracle of Tamara Donnelly.
I take a deep breath and count us in. “One, two, one two three four.”
The song is basically an answer to Tamara’s “The Alien.” Where she wrote about feeling isolated and unworthy of someone who might love her, I wrote about how it feels when you finally meet that one person who seems to get you just as you are. The day I wrote it, I thought maybe it might be about Nate, which is mortifying beyond all measures of mortification. But as Tamara sings the opening lines, I begin to think that maybe I was writing about her. I mean, not in a romance way or anything, because I’m pretty sure I prefer boys. And I’m pretty sure Tamara does too. But she does get me better than almost anyone I’ve ever met.
A small crowd starts to gather around us as the song builds. Tamara comes around the back of the drums and stands beside me as she starts the chorus. She leans down to share the microphone with me. Without even thinking about it, I add a harmony to the chorus. Not only are the notes I randomly add amazing—all minor and introspective-sounding—but my voice comes from somewhere deep inside me that I didn’t even know existed. I don’t sound like a scared little girl. I sound like a woman. Miles and Jacob actually turn around, looking at us with their eyes bugging out.
I’ll never be a singer like Tamara. I don’t even want to be. But singing harmony with her in front of all these people, without squeaking like a mouse, running out of steam or just generally freaking out? It’s for real just about the coolest thing that has ever happened to me. I don’t even care about the music festival right now.
Watching the Fantasy Lickers sneak out with their skinny tails between their legs doesn’t hurt either.