I nodded.
“Well,” she said, like it was just that obvious, “do that.”
My mom went out that night, didn’t say where she was going; I lay in bed and stared at the patterns of light on the ceiling, waiting for her to come home.
God, was this really going to be my entire life?
I thought of the fireworks at Disney, the colors exploding above us. I thought of laughing my head off at Guy’s weird bidet. I thought of being on that airplane, terrified and exhilarated, of Alex asking me what I’d do if I wasn’t doing this.
Olivia had been right, in the end: I’d never really cared about being a pop star. I’d never meant to chase after fame. But I wanted something more than this—that much was undeniable.
And I knew where I wanted to start.
I threw back the covers and I went to the phone in the hallway, dialed Alex’s number, and listened to it ring two hundred miles away.
“Hi,” I said, taking a deep breath when he finally answered. “It’s me.”
EPILOGUE
My anatomy class ran over on Tuesday, and I hurried home in the late-autumn sunshine so I could get changed before my shift at work. A cool breeze blew my bangs into my eyes as I unlocked the mailbox in front of the apartment—it finally felt like fall here, the long, baking summer over at long last—and reached inside for the usual stack of junk mail and bills. There was something else wedged in the back, though, and with some effort I pulled out a small padded manila envelope addressed to me in handwriting I didn’t recognize.
I climbed the narrow staircase to the unit I shared with another girl from my program, smelled the student-apartment smells of cheap cleaning solvent and weed. I was about to open the envelope when the phone rang.
“Hey, you,” Alex said when I picked up the receiver in the kitchen, the deep, familiar sound of his voice setting something alight at the base of my spine. “How was your exam?”
“Not terrible, actually,” I admitted, twisting the phone cord around my finger. “Not great or anything, but not a total disaster.”
“You rocked it,” Alex said, all confidence, and I smiled. I’d never met someone who was so perfectly confident in my ability to do whatever I set my mind to, whether it was soloing at Madison Square Garden or correctly identifying all the bones in the human foot on a midterm at Southeast Community College. It made me feel like I could grab the sky. “We’ll celebrate this weekend.”
“We will, huh?” I felt my heart tumble in anticipation. Tulsa’s tour was coming through Atlanta on Friday; Alex and I would have forty-eight whole hours together, the first time we’d be in the same place since we’d gotten back together three months ago. Just thinking about seeing his face in person—imagining having his hands on me again after all this time—turned my whole body warm and prickly.
“We will,” Alex promised, and I wondered again how I’d managed to get so lucky. It was work, the past few months had made that much undeniable; it was missed calls and gnawing loneliness and the beat of my own jealous heart—but it was undeniably solid, too. We were good for each other. I knew it in my bones. Together we were so, so good.
“I’m excited to see your place,” Alex said now, and I looked around the tiny, sparsely furnished apartment. It wasn’t much, two cramped bedrooms and a hundred layers of shiny paint on the doorjambs, everything an industrial landlord white—but the floors were clean and wide-planked and it got bright yellow sunshine in the morning. A water glass of wildflowers sat cheerfully on the desk.
Most important of all, it wasn’t my mom’s house.
“Yeah,” I said slowly, feeling a grin spread across my face as I imagined him coming here. A part of me had known for a long time that I couldn’t stay in my old bedroom forever, that I’d shrivel up there day by day. But if this summer hadn’t happened, I don’t know if it ever would have occurred to me to make a change. If I’d gotten anything out of this whole crazy adventure, it was the realization that my life was mine and mine alone. There was always going to be stuff I couldn’t change about my circumstances. But I got to decide. “I’m excited for you to see it, too.”
“I gotta let you go,” I told him after we’d talked a bit longer—about the show they’d done last night where none of their mics had been working properly; about the girl Mikey had met in Tennessee. “I’m late for work.” Turned out I hadn’t been wrong when I told Alex I’d be a waitress if I wasn’t in Orlando—but he hadn’t been wrong, either, when he’d told me that wasn’t all I could do. I was taking a full load of classes, trying to get my miserable grades up. And we’d see what came next after that. “I’ll see you soon.”
“You will,” Alex said. “I love you.”
I smiled. “I love you, too.”
I’d almost forgotten about the padded envelope by the time we hung up, but it caught my eye again once I’d changed into my work clothes, before I walked out the front door. I ripped it open quickly and peered inside, my heart catching at the contents: the snapshot of me and Olivia from the photo shoot, and a blank tape in a plastic jewel case. No label, no note.
I glanced at the clock on the microwave. I was cutting it close for my shift at the restaurant, but my curiosity got the best of me: I stuck the tape into the boom box in the tiny living room, hit the button for play, and listened to the soft popping sound that came with a homemade recording. When I heard the opening bars of “Tangerine” I tilted my head to the side, curious; when I heard Olivia’s voice my mouth fell wide-open in surprise.
I stood in the middle of the living room for a moment, full of anger and shock and a purple kind of sadness, letting myself miss her more than I had since I walked away. I thought of all the dumb songs she’d sung to me over the years to cheer me up, the two of us lying in her yard and in her rec room and tucked into our sleeping bags side by side: Olivia, sing “Dancing Queen.” Olivia, sing “I Will Always Love You.”
Olivia, sing “Tangerine.”
I hadn’t talked to Olivia at all since I’d left Orlando. I didn’t know if I’d ever see her again. I didn’t know if the two of us could ever get back what we’d taken from each other—but for the first time it occurred to me that maybe, after everything we’d been through, we’d given each other just as much.
I looked out the window of my apartment. I closed my eyes and listened to the song.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing is a solitary job, but anyone who says they do it alone is a liar. I have so much help:
Alessandra Balzer, my editor, and every other dreamboat at Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins. What an honor to be a part of this astonishingly sharp, talented team.