“Here’s our star,” Guy said when I came into the voice room. He was standing at the piano with Lucas, a half-unwrapped granola bar clutched in one beefy hand. “You ready for everything to change?”
“It already has changed, hasn’t it?” I asked. Kristin and Ash had left first thing yesterday morning, Juliet driving them both to the airport before it was even light out. I’d gotten up early to say good-bye, for all the good it had done me. Ash was concentrating so hard on not crying that she could barely string together a sentence. Kristin slammed the van door so hard it almost took my fingers clean off. I’d glanced over at Olivia a couple of times, searching for some trace of the person I knew behind her sharp, stony expression. She hadn’t looked back at me once.
Now Guy nodded approvingly. “You’re right,” he said, finishing his granola bar in one big, hungry bite and crumpling up the wrapper inside his hand. “Let’s get to work.”
By the time I got back to the apartment that night, Olivia had moved all her stuff into Ashley and Kristin’s old room, her mattress and dresser naked and unsettling, her arty black-and-white posters pulled down off the walls. The message was as clear as if she’d written FUCK YOU in red lipstick on the mirror. “Fine, Olivia,” I muttered, pulling off my sneakers and chucking them on top of her old bed like a five-year-old, the springs squealing as they bounced right back off again. “Be like that.”
We ate dinner in silence, went back to our rooms without a word; Charla was making a point of ignoring us, flipping through a magazine on the sofa, but it felt like the tension was actually pushing at the walls of the apartment, like the space ought to expand to compensate. Even the potted plants seemed to wilt.
I sprawled on the bed and flipped through my lyrics binder, turning the pages so hard I ripped one out by accident and had to stick it back together with a Band-Aid when I couldn’t find any tape. I wanted to go talk to Alex, but the boys had a performance that night and wouldn’t be back until late. Finally, I figured I might as well just go to sleep, or try to, but when I opened the door that connected my room to the bathroom, Olivia was opening hers at the same time. We stood there for a second, stared at each other with contempt.
“You can have it,” I said finally, shrugging in a way I hoped looked careless. “I can wait.”
“No, go ahead,” Olivia said, her voice high and brittle. “I mean, you’ll probably butt in and take it anyway, so.”
“Oh, shut up, Olivia.” I shook my head, stung. “Jesus Christ, stop being such a princess about everything. You didn’t actually get cut, in case you somehow haven’t noticed. You’re still here.”
“No thanks to you,” Olivia replied nastily. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail so tight it had to have been uncomfortable; I could see a tendon sticking out in her neck. “You’ve been sabotaging everybody else since you got here.”
“Sabotaging you?” I gaped at her. “What is this, a Lifetime movie? You’re being ridiculous.”
“And you’re being a backstabbing bitch!”
I blanched at that. Olivia and I had never name-called, not ever; it wasn’t something we’d needed to do, until now. “I’m a bitch?” I repeated, shaking my head slightly. I hated her in that moment. I blamed her for everything that had gone wrong. I wanted to slap her, and I actually might have if Charla hadn’t come into the room.
“What the hell is going on in here?” she demanded, looking at us like we’d lost our minds entirely. “They can probably hear you down in the parking lot. You sound like infants, both of you.”
“Ask her,” we both said in unison, like a couple of idiots. I huffed a furious breath out, shook my head. “Just stay the hell away from me,” I told Olivia, then spun around and slammed the bathroom door.
I heard the shower go on a moment later, then the sound of Charla knocking on my bedroom door. “Dana,” she began, easing it open, but I held my hand out to stop her.
“I know,” I said, sitting up on my bed. “I’m being an infant. There’s nothing to be upset about, this is the opportunity of a lifetime, I could have gotten sent home like Ash and Kristin, so who cares if my best friend hates me and everyone here is full of shit?” I glared at her. “Does that about cover it?”
I was expecting blowback, but Charla just looked at me calmly for a moment. “No, actually. That’s not what I was going to say at all.”
I raised my eyebrows. “No?”
“No.” Charla stuck her hands into her back pockets, put one knee up on the edge of the empty bed. “Look,” she said, “I know you’re upset with me. I know I have to earn your trust back. And I know that whatever is happening between you and Olivia is mostly our fault, and I’m sorry for that. But already this is working better as a solo project, don’t you think so? Don’t you feel that at rehearsal?”
I hadn’t been feeling much of anything at rehearsal besides numb, actually. I shrugged. “Maybe,” I said, unconvinced.
Charla pushed forward. “Guy knows what he’s doing, Dana. If you don’t believe anything else I say, believe that. If you work with him, and Juliet, and Lucas, and me—this could be bigger than anything you ever thought.”
“Maybe,” I said again, watching an empty bag of chips skitter across the concrete below us. Then I looked up at her. “But what’s it going to cost?”
I was expecting some bullshit answer, but Charla held my gaze. “Well, that’s up to you, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “Yeah,” I said slowly. “I guess it is.”
“You want some ice cream?” she asked then, holding her hand out to pull me off the bed and to my feet. “Would that cheer you up?”
I knew she was trying to distract me or buy me back again, on top of which it was probably fat-free frozen yogurt as opposed to anything I actually wanted to eat. But I was tired, and I didn’t want to fight anymore. I just wanted someone to tell me what to do. “What flavor?” I asked eventually, raising my eyebrows.
Charla grinned.
TWENTY-FIVE
Sitting on the kitchen counter in the apartment and clutching the receiver in my sweaty hand, I finally scraped together the courage to call Ashley at home in her ritzy Chicago suburb. I don’t know why exactly I felt compelled to do it—it wasn’t exactly like we’d been friends while she was here—but it bothered me, the way she and Kristin had gotten dropped so quick and so dirty. I felt like it had been partly my fault.
I was expecting an attitude, but instead Ash sounded happily surprised to hear from me. “It’s fine,” she said when I was finished apologizing. “It is what it is, you know? I wanted it, but it’s my senior year. Everybody’s really happy I’m back. I’m probably going to be homecoming queen come fall.”
I laughed at that. “You definitely will be,” I said, picturing her waving from the top of a crepe-paper float. “Take pictures, okay?”