Olivia frowned then, at an expression on my face real or imagined. “I didn’t mean—” she began, but I shook my head at her.
“No, of course not,” I said quickly. “I know.” Still, I thought suddenly of what she’d said the night Juliet called to offer me the spot in Daisy Chain: What else are you going to do? Right up until the moment the phone rang, there’d been no way I was getting out of Jessell, either—and if the look on Lucas’s face today had been any indication, I might wind up right back there. I didn’t know which side of Olivia’s line of demarcation I fell on.
“I’m sorry today sucked so much,” Olivia said quietly.
I waved my hand, not wanting to make a big deal out of it—not wanting to think about it at all. “Oh, I’ll survive.”
“I know you will.” She smiled. “It’s what you do.”
“Like a cockroach,” I joked.
“That’s not exactly the metaphor I would have picked.”
“I never said I was literary,” I pointed out.
“Dork.” Olivia made a face at me, but then she smiled. “So,” she said, pulling one leg up onto the seat and looking for all the world like a little kid with a secret. “Alex.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, happy to change the subject. “Alex.” It had been a long time since Olivia had liked a boy—not since things with her last boyfriend, Stupid Pete Tripp, had crashed and burned at junior prom last year. I bit my lip, remembering how devastated she’d been when he broke up with her for Valerie Burton: I’d watched her like a parole officer for weeks afterward, packing all her favorite foods in my own lunch and doing everything I could think of short of force-feeding her to get her to eat them. It was the first time I’d ever seriously considered getting her mom involved: it wasn’t until she almost fainted in gym one morning and I’d actually gone to the pay phone in the lobby and dialed her house phone that Olivia came after me and promised me she’d stop. We’d gone directly to the cafeteria, where I’d watched her eat a turkey sandwich with chips and a fruit salad. It took two full periods; I missed a geometry test and had to take a zero. I sat there until every bite was gone.
That had been more than a year ago, though. Olivia was better now.
“So what’s your plan of attack?” I asked, tucking one foot under me as I finished my milk shake. It felt good to be talking to her about non-performance stuff, to be back on more familiar ground.
Olivia shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s kind of reticent, you know? Shy, like.”
“Well, in that case”—I raised my eyebrows—“you could always stand under his apartment window, sing him a love song.”
“Shut up.” Olivia made a face at me. “I’m serious.”
“I know you are,” I said. “Just talk to him. Be your fabulous self. He’d be crazy not to fall in love with you.”
“Are you pep-talking me?” Olivia asked.
“A little.” I grinned. “Is it working?”
“A little.” She banged her head lightly against the seat. “He’s already a little famous, you realize. I don’t know. He seems like . . . out of my league.”
“He is not out of your league,” I said immediately, feeling irrationally annoyed at Alex, wherever he was, and not wanting to think about why. “And he’s not even that famous! Regionally at best. One MTV spring break show, you said? That hardly even counts.”
“Snob.” Olivia laughed. He was a big deal around Atlanta, she told me: he did a lot of regional theater, had cut a demo a couple of years earlier that had made it all the way up the ladder at Jupiter Records in Hollywood. He’d toured with the Broadway Across America company of Oliver! when he was five. “Either way, he’s, like, not the kind of guy they make at home, you know what I mean? He’s . . . different.”
“Sure,” I said. “But he’s also kind of a nerd, right? I mean, he seems so corny.”
Olivia looked at me quizzically. “What makes you say that?” she asked.
“I just—” I broke off, realizing abruptly that I hadn’t actually gotten around to telling her about meeting Alex by the vending machines last night. It was a small, stupid thing—but for some reason it felt like it was too late now, that there was no way to say it out loud without making it into something bigger than it was. “All of them are, I mean. Hurricane State. The whole pop star thing.”
“You know we’re doing the exact same thing as them.”
“Uh-huh.” I grinned. “And I think it’s corny of us, too.”
Olivia made a face at that. “All right,” she said. “But promise you’ll come to my rescue if you see me looking like a total loser.”
“Don’t I always?” We laughed, and I breathed a secret sigh of relief. “Should we pick up fro-yo to bring back to everyone?” I asked as we crumpled up our waxed paper wrappers. “I think I saw a place on the way.”
Olivia nodded. “That sounds awesome.” She put the car in drive and turned to look at me before she pulled out of the parking lot. “I’m really glad you’re the person I’m here with, you know that?”
That made me smile, something deep inside me settling down. “I’m glad you’re the person I’m here with, too.”
EIGHT
“Need another?” Trevor asked a few nights later, handing me a Corona from the fridge in one of the dingy apartments on the ground level of the complex. Austin had gotten a cartload of beers at the liquor mart across the street, so the Hurricane State guys had invited us for a party.
“Sure,” I said, smiling. Trevor was easy to be around, I was finding, with his casual bearing and relaxed, isn’t this bananas? attitude about all things pop star. “Thanks.”
“Okay, okay, important question!” Mikey called from the living room, voice as loud as a carnival hawker’s. “If you were going to have a threesome with two Spice Girls, which two would you pick?”
He was answered by assorted groans and hoots from the group crammed into the living room, all of us crowded onto various surfaces and the smell of body spray and weed pungent in the air. “You’re disgusting,” Ashley informed him, rolling her eyes from where she was sitting beside me cross-legged on the carpet. We’d spent the afternoon singing scale after scale with Lucas, and my throat felt scratchy and raw.
Mikey shook his head. “Now, don’t feel left out of the conversation, ladies,” he said magnanimously. He was the self-styled cruise director of the group; it was easy to picture him telling crowds of girls to clap their hands and jump. “You’re welcome to answer as well.”