“Hey,” Olivia said. She’d been chattering with Becky and Jonah but turned around and looked at me now, urgent, as if somehow she’d read my mind. “You ready to get out of here?”
“Definitely,” I said, setting my half-finished milk shake down on the chipping Formica table and sliding out of the sticky booth. “Night, y’all.”
“Aw, fallen soldier!” Tim chided, pointing at the milk shake, but I ignored him.
“Bye, guys!” Olivia called, hurrying after me. “You okay?” she asked quietly once we got outside.
“Yeah,” I promised, sounding like I was full of garbage even to my own ears. “I’m great.”
Olivia rolled her eyes. “Okay, not convincing. Try again.”
I sighed, looking out across the parking lot. Burger Delight was way down at the far end of what passed for a main drag in Jessell, across the street from a used-car dealership ringed with chicken wire and an empty lot advertising space for lease. I stared for a moment, watching as a waxy paper cup skittered a few yards in the hot wind before finally getting caught against the chain link. “You don’t really think that, do you?” I finally asked, turning to face Olivia in the neon light from the restaurant sign. “That I’m going to wind up with Tim?”
Olivia’s eyes widened. “What? God, no,” she said, shaking her head at me across the roof of the car. “I was just teasing. Shoot, I’m sorry.”
I shook my head. “No, it’s fine,” I said as she unlocked the car doors and I settled myself in on the passenger side, getting a familiar whiff of vanilla from the little cardboard tree dangling from the rearview. “I know you were. I guess since we got back from the trip I’m just feeling weird.”
“Weird about . . . ?”
“Me staying and you leaving, I guess.” I felt stupid and embarrassed admitting it, but Olivia just nodded, no judgment or pity on her face at all.
“I know,” she said quietly.
“I mean, it was one thing when you were just going to school down the road like a normal person, but now odds are you’re going to do something amazing and be actually famous and I’m just going to stay here and marry some guy with a truck and wind up like my mom—”
“Hey,” Olivia said, holding her hands up to cut me off. “Uh-uh.” She looked me in the eyes. “First things first: you are never going to be your mom, do you hear me? The fact that you’re even worried about being your mom means there’s no way you’re going to wind up like your mom.”
I smirked. “I don’t think it works exactly like that.”
“I think it does,” Olivia said firmly, leaning her head back against the seat. Both of us were quiet for a moment. Through the window of Burger Delight, I could see the rest of our friends still inside, laughing and joking around just like we’d done every Friday since junior high, just like we’d all keep doing for the foreseeable future. That had never felt like a bad thing to me before.
“I’m scared about being apart, too. You know that, right?” Olivia asked softly, tucking one leg underneath her and turning to face me. “I’m terrified. I don’t even know if I exist without you.”
I shook my head. “Of course you do.”
“We’ll see,” she said, looking down at her lap for a moment before raising her head. “But I also know it’ll be okay. I’m probably not even going to get that Guy Monroe thing, first of all—it’s a total long shot. But no matter where I wind up, obviously you’ll come visit me all the time.”
She was right, I knew. I couldn’t imagine a time when I wouldn’t drop everything to be with Olivia, when I wouldn’t skip job interviews to keep her company at an audition or spend all night on a Greyhound to see her in a show. We were best friends; we were there for each other. That part of it would never change. Still, I knew it would never be exactly like this again, the two of us on one side and the whole world on the other. It was part of growing up; it wasn’t surprising. I just wasn’t sure if I was ready to say good-bye.
“You sleeping over?” Olivia asked, turning the key in the ignition. The Toyota gurgled to tenuous life.
“Yup,” I replied, so quiet I wasn’t sure if she heard me. “Let’s go home.”
FOUR
I finally started the job-search rounds in Jessell the next morning, dutifully dropping my application at Waffle House and Pizza Planet, a video store, and a place that sold pet supplies. “We’ll call you,” the skinny, oily-looking manager said unconvincingly, as I tried not to wrinkle my nose against the overwhelming smell of dog pee.
By the time I got back to the empty house, all I wanted to do was sit in front of the TV and not talk to anyone, but I had barely closed the door behind me when the bell rang. I was surprised, first at the sound itself—we didn’t exactly have the kind of neighbors who just popped by—and second to find Olivia on the other side of it, her cheeks flushed and dark eyes bright. She hardly ever came over here, especially with no advance warning. If our friendship was a movie, the set was her house, not mine. “Hi,” I said, swinging the door open. She was wearing shorts and a pair of sneakers with giant platforms, her shiny dark hair slipping out of a ponytail. “You okay?”
“Why are you not answering the phone?” she asked.
I frowned. “I just walked in,” I said slowly. “I was out looking for a job.”
“I think I got one,” Olivia said, her face glowing bright, “with Guy Monroe.”
“What!” My mouth dropped open. “Really?”
“Really.” Olivia made a funny face, eyes wide and tongue stuck out on one side of her mouth. “Really really.”
“What! That’s amazing!” I flung my arms around her, disbelieving, a hundred different emotions ricocheting around inside my body. “That’s beyond amazing. What’s a word for beyond amazing?” I pulled back, scanning her face. “What happens now?”
“I have to go back to Orlando at the beginning of next week,” Olivia explained. “They’re going to put me up in an apartment with the other girls so we can learn the songs and routines and do media training and stuff. And then we go into a recording studio, I guess? And at the end of the summer is the tour.”
“I love how casually you’re saying that,” I teased her. “The tour. Oh, you know, just your national tour with Tulsa-fucking-MacCreadie.”
“I don’t feel casual,” Olivia said. “I do not feel casual at all. Like, what was the biggest thing I did before now, Cinderella? Like, this is not freaking Cinderella.”
“You’re freaking Cinderella,” I said, trying to picture it: Olivia cutting an album, Olivia in a music video like the ones we watched after school on MTV. Olivia walking the red carpet at the Grammys, and me back in Jessell, pointing at the screen: I know that girl. “I cannot get over this.”