Bridger disappeared, and Hartley turned his attention to the task of getting out of my wheelchair.
“You could just stay there,” I offered. “Keeps you from jostling it.”
Hartley considered this idea, and then shook his head. He stood up on his good leg and tipped his body onto the couch. “I’m better off here,” he said under his breath.
And he didn’t look me in the eye.
Without comment, I moved the wheelchair away from the sofa. But the truth was, it bothered me. Hartley obviously couldn’t stand the thought of sitting in a wheelchair when a passel of singing group girls entered the room. I’d always felt like the chair made me either pitiful or invisible, and Hartley had basically just agreed with me.
I was distracted from these distressing thoughts by the sound of pounding feet outside the window. Dana’s face froze with excitement.
Quickly, I crutched into the hallway and opened the outside door. Twelve girls in red T-shirts ran past me and into our room. They had linked arms and begun to sing Aretha Franklin’s Respect before I even made it back inside.
The second the song was over, the girls asked Dana if she wanted to become a member of the Merry Mellowtones. I held my breath, because I didn’t know what Dana was going to say. I knew this group wasn’t her first choice. On the other hand, they’d come for her early on, which meant they really cared.
“Maybe,” she said quickly. The allowable answers were “yes,” “no” and “maybe.” But if a group wanted to, they could give away your spot after ten p.m., which was just forty-five minutes away.
“We hope you’ll change that to a yes!” The pitch handed Dana a card with her phone number on it. Then they ran off to tap the next person on their list.
“Crumbs,” Dana grumbled when they’d gone. “Should I just have said yes?” She took up her position at the window again. “I really want Something Special,” she whispered. “But it’s kind of a stretch.”
“I want something special too, baby,” Hartley grinned, his hands behind his head.
“Hartley!” Dana yelled.
“I guess the pain relievers are kicking in,” I muttered.
Bridger came back into the room with a plastic bag full of ice, which Hartley eased onto his knee. But then his phone began to ring. Even the minimal shifting required to ease his phone out of his back pocket made Harley wince in pain. He checked the phone’s display and then silenced it.
“Awful late for Stacia to call, isn’t it?” Bridger asked.
Hartley gave a one-shouldered shrug. “She’s probably drunk dialing me from some club. I can’t deal with her and pain at the same time.”
Bridger snorted. “Remind me why you stay loyal to someone who doesn’t even know how to comfort a man in pain?”
“Leave it alone, Bridge.” Hartley’s voice was exhausted.
“Okay. But then don’t ride me for being a man-whore, when you make commitment look so appealing.” He sat down on the sofa.
“I don’t want to ride you, Bridge. You’re not my type.”
“But thanks for the visual,” Bridger returned, and I laughed.
Across the room, Dana seemed oblivious to the entire conversation. She worried the card in her hand and paced back and forth. Her own hope fairies were obviously working overtime, whispering words of encouragement, fighting off the dread.
“Hang in there, Dana,” Bridger said, pointing at the T.V. screen. “Dude, the volume?”
Hartley just shook his head.
For a long time, nothing happened, except the Patriots scored a touchdown. So at least we had that going for us. While the minutes crawled by, Dana tried alternately to wear a hole in our new rug and tatter the edges of the card the Merry Mellowtones had given her. Meanwhile, Hartley’s color improved, and he stopped making weird pain faces every time he moved.
And I was on some kind of emotional overload. It was hard to keep from hugging the both of them. Dana looked stressed out and forsaken. Clearly I’d made the right decision about rushing a singing group. Tap night was a kind of medieval self-torture, whereby the world notified you, within the span of an hour, just how desirable you were.
Who needed that? It was better to receive rejection in bite-sized slivers. I got regular doses every day — in the look on Hartley’s face at the idea of sitting in a wheelchair, or the Big Smiles I got from people who didn’t know what to say. I watched Dana’s crumbling bravado and asked myself, why buy problems when they’re giving them away for free?
Just as I began to wonder whether Dana could take any more, there was another pounding of feet outside, and every muscle in my roommate’s body tensed. There was a knock on the outside door. And then Bridger leapt up, running out of our room to let them in.
A gaggle of girls in purple T-shirts ran into our room, linked arms and began to sing the school fight song in four-part harmony. Dana’s face lit up like the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.
“Dana, would you like to be the newest member of Something Special?” the pitch asked when the song ended.