The song didn’t get better from there. The bridge—the height of “rhymes with boots”—was especially something.
Terrance finished with a flourish and looked at August, eyebrows raised expectantly. “What do you think?”
August looked conflicted—half like he was seriously considering it, half like he wanted to burst out laughing. Finally he spoke: “I mean. It’s so bad it’s almost good again.”
Terrance paused. “I’ll take it!” And then yelled, “ONE MORE TIME!”
We let out a cheer.
six
A couple of hours later, we were attempting to cajole Brit into Dash’s car.
We had sung, we had danced, and she had drunk. I was familiar with the stages of Brit drunkenness—there was the saying-things-she-wouldn’t-normally-say stage, the hands-on-both-my-shoulders stage, the grinding-up-on-Aiden-Morales stage, arms in the air, liquid sloshing over the rim of her cup.
It had taken some doing to get her away, and now she had one arm slung around my neck, the other around August’s, still clutching an empty plastic cup in one hand as we made our way through the house, toward the front door. Dash was bringing his car around.
Brit could walk on her own, but she leaned heavily on us anyway, swaying toward me. “Do you think Cassie knows her skirt is ugly?”
“She does now,” August said.
She snorted and then leaned toward him. “Question.”
“Yeah?”
“Who even are you anyway?”
His lips twitched. “August Shaw, so I’m told.”
“Different last name,” she said.
“Hm?”
“Conlin. Shaw.”
His expression didn’t change, but his lips pressed together slightly as he reached for the front door.
“You’re not bad-looking, you know,” Brit continued.
“Geez, Brit, come on,” I said.
“He’s not! It’s a compliment! You’re just her type,” she told August in a loud whisper, jerking her head toward me. I squeezed her wrist where it hung down around my neck, praying she wouldn’t mention Teen Zones. “And I go in for that whole kinda vibe sometimes myself, if I’m being honest.” She held up one finger. “Sometimes. Don’t get any ideas.”
Now August looked amused. “I have no ideas. I’ve never had an idea in my life.”
It was my turn to snort.
We waited for Dash out front. Inside, they cranked “Gave You My Heartland,” which means people had reached peak intoxication. A sing-along began after the opening chords.
“Hey, this is her.” Brit batted at August’s arm. “Good ol’ Megan Pleasant. Meggy P. Pride of Acadia right there.” I mentally cataloged Meggy P. for future use. I didn’t usually use drunk-Brit things against normal Brit. But Meggy P. was too good.
I watched as Brit spun around, started dancing, and then stopped suddenly, swaying a little on the spot. “You know who should sing at the Megan Pleasant contest?” She smiled, broad and pure. “Megan Pleasant.”
Then she belched.
“Except she would probably win,” she continued, “and then Chelsea Peters would cry ’cause she’s been trying to win that shit for the last hundred years.” She tossed her cup aside. “No one wants her crappy indie version of ‘Steel Highway.’” She pointed to August. “When you sing ‘Steel Highway,’ you have to put the motherfucking steel on that motherfucking highway. None of that … warbling shit. Fucking … ukulele. If Megan Pleasant heard that, she would slap Chelsea. In the face.”
“Where else would she slap her?” August murmured.
“On the ass?” I said.
“Like a Go team! kind of thing?”
I nodded. “Maybe if she was into it.”
Headlights appeared, cutting through the circle drive in front of Tegan’s house, and Dash’s pride and joy, his 1992 Cutlass Supreme, pulled up in front of us.
He had bought it from an old lady down the street with the money he made last summer, and fixed it up as best he could. I remember when he first showed it off to us. It’s an antique, he had said, because a car had to be twenty-five years old to be one, and the Cutlass just qualified. There had to be a pretty deep valley of coolness stretching between a barely antique car and a definitely antique car, but no one pointed that out, because Dash was well and truly thrilled. He had smiled that sun coming out from behind the clouds smile—an impossibly wide one where you could see his top and bottom teeth, pure joy, like a little kid.
I opened the door and ushered Brit in.
“What about my bike?” she said as I got her seat belt fastened.
“August will ride it. Flora can ride her own.”
A worried crease appeared on her forehead. “What about her shoes? She can’t pedal in those shoes.”
“She’ll be all right.”
“Here.” She fumbled against the seat belt, reaching down and pulling off one of her sneakers. “Take my shoes.”
“Brit—”
“Give Flora my shoes.” She wrangled the other one off and forced them both on me. I took them, battered and warm.
“Drive safe, okay?”
Dash nodded, and I stepped back, shutting the door.
The window was down, and Brit waved to me like we might never see each other again.
“I love you, Sophie.”
“Love you too.”
“Give Flora my shoes.”
“I will.”
They drove off, brake lights disappearing in the distance.
It was quiet.
“I was thinking of heading out too,” August said after a moment. “Should I give you my shoes? Is that like a parting thing here?”
“Yeah. Get drunk, comment on people’s appearances, talk about country music. Give away your shoes.”
“Noted.”
“You should take Brit’s bike. Flora’s was probably a bit small for you.” My eyes raked his frame for a moment, and then I tried to pretend like they hadn’t. “You can just leave it outside my house.”
His brow furrowed. “But someone might steal it.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Like. Vagrants or something.”
“This is Acadia. Most people don’t lock their front doors.”
“Most people are pretty deluded.”
“Ooh, edgy,” I said, starting around the side of the house toward the garage, where our bikes were stowed. August followed. “Are you gonna school me all about life in the big mean city?”
“Saint Louis is not the big mean city, good Lord. It’s just … a city.”
“You’re from Saint Louis?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. I guess I pictured you from … a bigger, meaner city.” Not that Saint Louis wasn’t big—just that I had been there before. I had imagined August from somewhere … less familiar, I guess.
“Which city is the big mean city? Chicago?”
“No. Maybe. Just like. A big place. Lots of people. Anonymity. Graffiti. Cool shoes and stuff.”
“Like those?” He pointed to Brit’s beat-up sneakers.
“These were cool once upon a time. She just keeps running through them.” They were all worn down in the heels, the rubber starting to come apart. Brit did everything hard—when she was into something, it was all in, whether it was partying or friendship or track. Especially track.
“She’s the fastest runner in the state, you know,” I said, fumbling with one of the rubber flaps on the soles.
“Really?”
“Mm-hm. In the hundred meter. She had the two-hundred record too, but this girl from Collinsville beat her by a third of a second at their last invitational.” I made a face. “Fastest runner for girls, I should say. But she’d hate if you made that distinction. She wants to be fastest, period. Go to the Olympics and all that. She takes it really seriously.”
I didn’t know why I was telling him all this. I hadn’t drunk anything—I didn’t need to, apparently, to say what I was really thinking. Sometimes I wondered if Brit played it up as an excuse to say anything she thought out loud.
Then again, maybe if I had been drinking, I would’ve had the courage to ask August out on a date. Because I had pretty much decided—I liked him. I didn’t know him very well, but that was what dating was for, right? And anyway, there were so few people in town that when someone came along that you were actually interested in, you had to go ahead and do something about it.
But it was easier to talk about Brit, so I just fumbled with the laces on her sneakers and said, “She’ll definitely get a track scholarship somewhere.”
August nodded, and I wondered if he was bored. His expression gave no indication either way, decidedly neutral.
“It’s like her … thing,” I added, like that somehow conveyed the importance. It was less complicated-sounding than “revenge quest.”
He nodded again as we reached the garage, and then asked, “What’s your thing?”
You could be my thing. Your thing could be my—God, that was …
“Band,” I said, “I guess.” Even though there was no guessing about it.
“Kind of got that from earlier. What’s map as fuck?”
“MPASFC, the student fundraising committee. I’m the president. Well, the new president. Kayla Jenkins was president until last week. She’s going to nursing school—she graduated—so I like, ascended or whatever.”
“Very biblical.”
I smiled. “What about you?”
“Thing-wise?”
“Yeah.”