“I have an idea,” I offer as she hangs up her phone.
“First time for everything.”
Ignoring her jab, I ask, “Don’t bands like this have tour buses?”
While she stands there staring blankly at me, I wait for her to tell me what an idiot I am, or how stupid my idea is. But instead, the corners of her mouth start pulling up, and she smiles. Really smiles.
“See,” she says, beaming down at me, and she’s so sincerely happy, I can’t help smiling back.
“See what?”
“I knew you weren’t completely useless.”
Chapter 2
“Didn’t I tell you he was hot?” Danica asks as I sit on the pavement in front of the band’s double-decker tour bus, picking a rock out of the sole of my sneaker. I scratch at it with my nub of a fingernail, mentally tallying how many times she’s said that word over the past week.
Mike’s band has gotten so hot.
They performed with Cutting the Line. Cutting the Line is so hot.
Mike wasn’t this hot in high school. Look at this picture. Do you think he’s hot? Hailey, are you even looking?
“Hailey, are you even listening?” Danica scolds, nudging my knee with the toe of her boot as I chip a short fingernail on the rock still wedged in my shoe.
I stare way up at her, wondering if she kicks everyone when they don’t give her their undivided attention, or just me. Was she this bossy with Mike when they were together? What did he even see in her?
“Yeah,” I finally answer. “He was okay.”
“Okay?” she scoffs. “Are you blind?”
I’m not blind. I just don’t feel like answering stupid questions at one o’clock in the morning. Of course I saw how hot he was. Everyone did. The girl in the cheetah print did, the girl in the fishnets did, and I’m guessing a hundred other girls did too, and each one of them will be jealous of Danica, and I’m pretty sure that’s exactly why she’s making me sit out here in the cold next to a locked behemoth of a tour bus. What does she want me to do? Congratulate her on how hot her soon-to-be boyfriend is?
“Adam was hotter,” I lie.
“Huh?” Danica scrunches her nose, and my expression changes to match her confusion.
“What?”
“Who do you even think I’m talking about? The lead singer. Adam. Do you ever listen to anything I say?”
I free the rock from my shoe and stand up, dusting off the back of my jeans. We’ve been waiting out here for so long, my ass is numb and the rest of the fans have left. “If you’re so in love with Adam, why didn’t you date him instead of Mike?”
“Yeah, right,” Danica scoffs, and when I just stare at her, she rolls her eyes. “They have some stupid bro code or something,” she explains as she combs her fingers through the smooth hair hanging over her shoulder. “Mike was always in love with me, so Adam wouldn’t go for it. Believe me, I tried.”
I don’t even know how to respond to that, and I apparently don’t need to because Danica orders, “Stop looking at me like that.”
“Why are we even here?”
I can guess, but I’ve spent the past few weeks trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. Now, I’m tired, I’m bored, I’m cold, and any sense of self-preservation I had got smashed somewhere inside the pit of Mayhem. I don’t care if I make her mad or that she has the power to make my life hell—I just want an explanation for why I smell like armpit and can’t feel the tips of my fingers.
“I want Mike.”
“Why?”
“I miss him,” she lies. I can tell because she smiles when she says it. It’s her sweet smile—the one she uses to get what she wants from her rich father, a smile that’s too sweet. It’s the same kind she gave me tonight when she asked if she could wear my hoodie “for a minute,” even though we both knew she had no intention of giving it back.
I cross my arms tight over my thin thermal to ward off the cold, and Danica must be able to see the doubt on my face, because she continues explaining.
“Mike was an amazing boyfriend,” she insists. “He treated me like a princess. He used to carry my books and bring me little gifts. On Valentine’s Day, he always put flowers in my locker.”
Her smile softens into something almost genuine, but it disappears when I ask, “Then why’d you dump him?”
In that condescending, usual tone of hers, she says, “Because we were graduating and he wasn’t doing anything with his life. He was totally broke, but he wouldn’t even think about going to college. He didn’t have real goals. He was just a loser in some stupid little garage band.”
Judging by the legion of fans jammed in front of the stage earlier tonight, it’s clear he did have real goals and he’s accomplished them with his “stupid little garage band,” but I don’t bother pointing that out. I also don’t bother pointing out that Danica dropped out of college after only one semester and has spent the past six years living off of her parents’ credit cards.
Sixty years ago, our grandparents bought a farm. Twenty-six years ago, her dad and my mom inherited it, and my parents made it their home. Fourteen years ago, Danica’s parents made a lot of smart connections and investments, breaking into the corporate level of the livestock business, making a fortune, and moving far away from our small town and the modest plot of land that started it all. Now, Danica works for their company when it suits her.
My parents and younger brother still live on the same small farm our grandparents bought, and up until two months ago, so did I.
“And this has nothing to do with what Adam said at the beginning of the show about their band signing a big record deal?” I challenge, and Danica’s eyes harden, but she doesn’t bother arguing with me. Instead, movement toward the club steals her attention, and her almond eyes swing toward Mayhem.
Seven people walk across the dark parking lot toward the buses. Adam and a girl under his arm. Shawn and the female guitarist, Kit. Joel and a bombshell in high heels. And Mike.
Danica strips off my oversized hoodie before any of them can see her in it, tossing it to the ground and running toward her ex. “MIKE!”
It’s like a scene out of a movie. Her long legs race across the parking lot. Her hair flies in the wind behind her. She jumps into her ex’s arms.
But when his arms should lift to wrap around her—so he can spin her around like any good movie heartthrob would—Mike’s simply hang motionless at his sides.
I stop brushing the dirt and dried leaves off my green Ivy Tech hoodie—the one my parents bought me one Christmas when they couldn’t afford to get me much else—to watch the curious scene in front of me.