Chapter Twenty
ALICE OPENED HER EYES AND STARED UP AT THE BROWN WATER-stained ring on the ceiling above her bed. Her tongue felt dry, like she’d slept with her mouth open. The sharp details of last night stabbed at her head.
She remembered a blurry taxi ride, stumbling into the hotel room, Tiernan putting her to bed. The rest she didn’t want to remember.
It was 6:06 a.m. The same time she’d woken up every Monday through Friday for the last four years. Hangover or not, Alice was a morning person and her internal clock was strong.
A strange vibration made her sit up so fast her brain seemed to flip inside her skull, as if it were trapped in one of those frozen drink machines. Then she realized she’d slept with her phone in her back pocket, in her entire outfit from last night, earrings and all.
It was Quentin. Finally, Quentin. Thank God her phone had been in her pocket and not her purse. She needed someone to tell her everything would be okay, that she wasn’t a horrible person. Even if it wasn’t true.
But when she opened his message, all she saw were two little words:
I can’t
A wave of nausea traveled from her belly to her eyebrows. She made it to the toilet just in time.
The last time Alice puked was after the eighth grade beach day when she’d gotten sun poisoning. Summer had rubbed her back while Tiernan assembled a cold pack for her neck out of a facecloth and a bag of frozen peas. She hadn’t deserved their kindness.
Tiernan rapped at the door. “You okay in there?”
“No,” Alice moaned.
Tiernan came in anyway, last-night’s makeup smeared across her cheeks, and puffy owl eyes.
“You want something to hold back your hair?”
Alice shook her head, her knees digging in to the cold tile floor. “I just need to be alone.”
Tiernan closed the door, and Alice retched the last of it into the bowl. It was all gone. Everything was gone—Summer, the Level3 tickets, her dignity. And yet she kept on heaving like her body had more to give.
When it was finally done, she scrubbed her hands with the hottest water she could stand, the smell of the hotel’s soap so perfumey, she thought she might get sick again. She brushed her teeth, washed her face until it was squeaky and raw, then stared at her reflection for a solid five minutes. Who was this girl underneath the pink skin? Her mirror self seemed to answer more honestly than the real Alice was capable of. It frightened her.
When she came out of the bathroom, Tiernan was back in bed.
“You asleep?” Alice asked.
“Uh-uh,” Tiernan answered groggily. “You feel better?”
“A little,” Alice said. She sat down on the edge of her bed. Standing took too much energy.
Tiernan gave her a weak smile. “We could still get tickets from scalpers.”
“I can’t afford to pay those prices,” Alice snapped, harsher than she’d intended.
“So, what are we supposed to do?”
“Well, I guess we just give up,” Alice said. What else was there? It was done. Game over.
Tiernan was silent for a few seconds, then she hauled herself out of bed, angrily gathering last night’s outfit from where she’d scattered it around the floor. Great. A fight with Tiernan. The perfect capper to a perfectly wretched morning.
“Tiernan, don’t be mad. You know how much scalpers charge,” Alice reasoned. Using her loud voice made the room start to spin.
Tiernan rolled her miniskirt into a ball and chucked it into her suitcase.
“I thought you were done with this trip, anyway,” Alice said, sounding curt. “I saw you last night, deleting those pictures.”
The last thing Alice remembered before falling asleep was seeing Tiernan, over in the armchair by the window, going through her camera and deleting her photos one by one. A colorful shot of the frozen drink machines—gone. A picture of the three of them at the bar, smiling—poof—right in the digital trash can. If only Alice’s memories of last night could be so easily wiped clean.
“I was hurt,” Tiernan said.
Right, Alice thought. Since when did Little Miss Hipper Than Thou start having feelings? “Hurt about what?” Alice asked. She raised her eyebrows in disbelief, but it only made her headache worse.
“Forget it,” Tiernan said, tossing her backpack over her shoulder. “I’m gonna go find someplace to get a coffee.”
And with that Alice was alone again, having driven away not just Summer but now Tiernan, too, exactly like she’d done freshman year.
Alice rubbed her forehead and sighed. Less than twelve hours ago, she’d actually believed the three of them could be friends again. Had wanted them to be friends again, if she was perfectly honest. Why couldn’t she just get over it? Why couldn’t she be like a normal person and just shake off the bad stuff and move on without even looking back?
Alice knew history repeated itself, but up until this moment she never realized why. Now it seemed obvious: Human beings weren’t capable of learning from their mistakes, even if they wanted to. They were just doomed to repeat the same awful patterns over and over, no matter how hurtful or stupid they were. That was the universe’s brilliant master plan—to put the song on repeat.
Freshman year, she’d blamed everything on Tiernan and Summer. After all, it wasn’t Alice who’d decided she wasn’t cool enough for Tiernan anymore, or popular enough for Summer. At least that was the story Alice told herself. But now she could finally see the truth. It wasn’t them, it was her, all along. Alice’s neediness was the thing that had sent them running. She was the one who didn’t want anything to change, the one who wanted to keep hanging out in the Pea Pod even after high school started, to keep Summer and Tiernan all to herself, doors closed off to the rest of world.
No doubt her neediness had sent Quentin running too. Boys had a way of sensing desperation. Or so she’d been told.
Alice quickly packed her bags, then went down to the reception desk and returned all three keys. Outside the hotel, she gave the valet her ticket and waited for Tiernan to get back from her coffee run. That is, if she even was coming back.
The early-morning air made Alice shiver. It was the first time she’d had a chill since they’d been down South and it made her homesick for New England. Oh, well. She’d be back there soon enough. By October in Vermont, they’d probably have snow.
She leaned back against the hotel’s cool granite exterior, listening to the hypnotic pulse of a bass line in the distance. The noise grew louder and louder, until a neon blue ghetto glider cruised around the corner. Thump, thump. A-thump, a-thump, a-thump, thump. This car was the real deal—wheels tricked out with spinning chrome hubcaps, a lightning flash painted along the side in electric yellow. It was still too far away to make out the song, but Alice could feel the bass traveling right up her spine. Thump, thump. A-thump, a-thump, a-thump, thump. The car crept closer, the music distorting as it bounced between the tall gray buildings, her head throbbing along with the beat. Then she heard it. Of course, it was the one hip-hop song that sampled Level3.
IF YOU WANT TO SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY
YOU CAN’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK.
IF YOU WANT TO SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY
YOU CAN’T BE AFRAID . . .
Yesterday she would have taken it as a sign. Today the idea of believing in signs seemed simple and selfish, as if this vast, incomprehensible universe would ever bother with someone as trivial as little Alice Miller. If hearing this song meant anything at all, it was only as proof that there was nothing new in the world, nothing was fresh. It was just the same old stuff going around and around and around.
The Pea Pod arrived, and she tipped the valet two dollars and climbed inside. The last place she wanted to be. In her hasty departure, Summer had forgotten to grab Coach Quigley, so Alice started the van and turned him on. The real Coach Quigley had a team motto he made them chant before each game: “Never Give Up! Never Say Die!” But the GPS version was happy enough to just navigate their way home. The drive to Walford was 1,532 miles. If they did it nonstop they could make it in a day. No. She wouldn’t plan it. They’d drive each day only as far as Tiernan wanted to go. For once, Alice would keep her big mouth shut and just go along for the ride.
A minute later Tiernan appeared around the corner, bouncing along in cutoff jean short-shorts and a hot pink tank top, an oversize iced coffee in hand.
“Hey,” she said quietly as she slipped into the passenger’s seat. Alice waited to hear Tiernan’s seat belt click before pulling away from the hotel.
The sun was so bright in the middle of the street, she had to drive slowly to let her eyes adjust. Even so, she would never have seen the girl running along the shaded sidewalk if it weren’t for the flash of green from her duffel bag as it swung through a patch of light. It couldn’t be. . . . Alice stomped on the brakes just as Summer stepped out of the shadows, her skin glowing white, like an apparition of herself, still in her clothes from last night.
Half in shock, Alice yanked the keys from the ignition while the van was still in gear. Next to her, Tiernan’s jaw appeared to be swinging in the breeze. Summer waved to them casually, then headed toward the van. Was it a wave of forgiveness? More likely, it was a tail-between-the-legs kind of wave because she’d missed her flight.
But even in Alice’s bewildered state, she could feel a small seed of hope growing inside of her. She did her best to fight it off, but the closer Summer walked, the bigger it grew. Maybe, in spite of the miserable mess she’d made of everything, even with the shame and regret she felt about what had happened last night, there was a tiny part of her that held on to the crazy idea that she could somehow fix this. That she could redeem herself and make things good between them. That she still wanted to.
“Did you miss your flight?” Alice asked when Summer opened the van’s sliding door.
“No.” Summer shook her head. “I remembered our dance.”
Their dance. Like all seventh-grade girls throughout the history of time, Alice, Summer, and Tiernan spent many a sleepover choreographing dance routines to their favorite songs. They’d created lots of different numbers over the years, but their dance to Level3’s “Parade” was far and away their best. They’d performed it for Alice’s parents in her den at a quarter a ticket. A few hours from now, they’d perform it in front of hundreds of strangers in Houston, Texas, to try to win tickets to the Level3 show.
It was a long shot, and they all knew it. But like last night’s fiasco, no one brought it up. Right now they were all business.
“So the contest is in Houston, not in Austin where the show is?” Alice was confused.
“They give you a limo ride to Austin if you win,” Summer explained. “I think it’s only two or three hours away.”
“Tell us exactly what you saw on the news segment,” Tiernan said. “What are other people doing?”
“We can’t think about what other people are doing,” Summer spoke with authority. “This dance is what we’re doing. It’s all we have.”
Normally, Alice would have tried to come up with a better solution. Their old dance routine was kind of goofy and not all that original. But this was Summer’s plan, not hers. Plus, their dance was something they’d created together. Maybe it was all they had left.
Coach Quigley said it would take them five hours and thirty-seven minutes from New Orleans to Houston. That meant they’d arrive at the contest twenty minutes before it ended at noon. But the real Coach Quigley voice, the one inside Alice’s head, said: Never give up. Never say die. Screw the speed limit.
“How are we gonna practice?” Tiernan asked.
“Two of us can rehearse in the back while the other one drives,” Summer said.
“But we can’t pop the top while we’re driving,” Alice pointed out, flying past an eighteen-wheeler. “We’ll have to dance all hunched over.”
“We’ll do what we have to,” Summer said, unbuckling her seat belt. “Okay, T, you’re up.”
“Parade” filled the Pea Pod as Alice moved into the left lane to pass a granny going sixty.
AND TOGETHER WE WILL WALK
DOWN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET
AND THE CARS, THEY MAY CURSE US
BUT THEY WON’T MAKE US RETREAT
She couldn’t get the full picture from the rearview mirror, but from the glimpses she caught, Summer and Tiernan looked like two Beyoncé wannabes with osteoporosis. Their first run-through got as far as the bit with the scissor jump; then Tiernan hit her head on the roof and fell to her knees, doubled over in hysterics.
“Is there a prize for worst act?” she gasped from the floor.
“Stop laughing!” Summer commanded. “We have work to do.”
Two hours later, necks and backs sore from bending, they had it down. At a pee break, they made the switch—Tiernan at the wheel, Alice in the back.
So, maybe dancing in a moving van wasn’t the wisest idea, considering that Alice’s stomach felt like it was eating itself and even sitting down made her dizzy, but what choice did she have? Summer was back. They were moving forward. At least the Texas highway was flat.
“No, no, no,” Summer coached from the bench seat. “The head bob comes after the part where you bring your hands together in prayer.”
Alice was pretty sure she remembered it the other way around, but now was not the time to question Summer’s memory.
Summer clapped to the beat. “And feet together, jump back, side-to-side, kick and turn. You got it! Nice!”
When she was young, Alice had loved coming up with new routines. She was probably the worst dancer of the group, but that never seemed to matter to Summer and Tiernan. The magic was never in the individual dance moves anyway. The thing that made their routines good was that they performed them together, in perfect synchronicity. Or at least it seemed perfect to them.
“Does it worry you guys that we won’t get a chance to practice all together?” Alice asked. She wasn’t feeling very optimistic about their chances of winning, but she wasn’t about to mention it when they were still on such shaky ground. Literally. They’d been driving for hours now, and no one had dared to breathe a word about last night.
“It’ll work,” Summer said confidently. “We just have to trust it.”
They were only fifteen miles outside of Houston now, thirty minutes ahead of schedule. Except for the shoulder shimmy (which, according to Summer, Alice performed like she was having an epileptic seizure) she’d perfected her part.
“Hey, check it out!” Tiernan called from the front. She cranked up the radio, and out of the static two voices emerged, stretched taut with exaggerated DJ happiness.
“Welcome back to WKID. This is Kai Kidman . . .”
“. . . and Laura G.”
“And we’re coming to you live from the Freedom Stage at Houston’s one and only Liberty Park on this very, very hot June morning with our Level3 Super-Fan Challenge.”
Through the hiss of the radio, the crowd erupted in high-pitched hysteria.
“Okay, here’s a question for our Level3 fans. Which do you guys think is hotter—Travis, or the summer in Houston?”
“Travis!” the crowd screamed.
Laura G.’s voice was scolding. “Getting back to the contest, Kai . . .”
“Oh, right, right. The contest.” Some forced chuckling on Kai’s part.
“Well, next up,” Laura continued. “We have a couple of young ladies who’ve just graduated from our very own Rice University where they say their majors were Travis Wyland and Ryan Hale.” More fake laughter from the DJs. “No, seriously, though—you girls are mechanical engineers?”
There were two nervous “mm-hmms,” then Kai jumped back in, his crazy DJ voice working overtime. “I don’t even know what that is.”
“Me neither. But I know it means they’re smarter than we are.”
“That’s not too hard,” Kai added. Laughter from the crowd.
“Holy crap.” Tiernan sighed. “If their performance is as bad as these DJs, we’re totally gonna win.”
Summer shushed her. “I want to hear.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, we present to you the lovely Molly and Priyanka, who’ll be singing a duet of ‘Little Me.’”
“THERE WAS A TIME, YEARS AGO,
WHEN WE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT WE DIDN’T KNOW . . .”
“American Idol wannabes,” Summer proclaimed.
Tiernan shook her head disparagingly. “Basement karaoke at best.”
Alice felt her heart start to race. There was that hope again, that need. We could win this. At least we have a shot.
“In eight-hundred yards, exit right,” Coach Quigley said.
Two more mediocre songs and a dog act that didn’t translate well over radio, and they pulled up to the station. Alice’s cell phone said it was 11:11. Normally, that meant it was time to make a wish. But Alice wasn’t making wishes anymore.
“THE METRIC SYSTEM”
WE LIVE IN THE ONLY COUNTRY
THAT DOESN’T USE THE METRIC SYSTEM
WE KEEP OUR FEET IN OUR YARDS
WE GET THERE IN MILES.
AND I’D LIKE TO LEAD THE REVOLUTION
TO OVERTHROW OUR RULERS,
I THINK THE WORLD WOULD APPROVE
MAYBE EVEN BUY ME A LITER OF BEER
DESPERATE TIMES
CALL FOR DESPERATE MEASURES
OUR NUMBERS ARE DIFFERENT,
OUR DISTANCE THE SAME
IF ONLY WE COULD SEE IT LIKE THAT
IF ONLY WE COULD SEE IT LIKE THAT
—from Level3’s second CD, Rough & Tumble