The song reached its bridge, falling back in order to build into the final chorus.
Isaac wedged his guitar securely between seats. He grabbed the shoulders of Jon Cox’s seat and maneuvered himself to his feet, craning his long body over the driver’s headrest. The wind clawed at his hair, clearing the straggling locks back from his forehead. My throat tightened—if we hit anything, or even braked too fast, Isaac was getting pitched straight over the windshield—but Jon Cox and Mama didn’t say a word. It wasn’t until Isaac leaned forward to fiddle with the bass levels on the sound system that Mama smacked his hand away, shouting over the music, “Sit down, moron, you’re going to hurt yourself.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Isaac yelled, sitting back down, “and the lyrics to this song kind of suck. I told Trav we shouldn’t do it. People are gonna think we’re dicks.” He put his legs up over the side of the car, crossing them at the ankles.
Jon Cox turned the music down. “Nah, bro,” he called back, glancing in the rearview. “Everyone knows the Minuets are the asshole group.”
I suppressed a laugh. It was true. Everyone knew the reputations: The Minuets were assholes. The Sharps were pretentious. The all-girls’ group—the Precautionary Measures—were super-gay. The jazz group—the Carnelian, named for one of our school colors—were a bunch of drinkers. And the two coed groups, Hear Hear and Under A Rest, were quagmires of in-group incest.
It had been only a week, but I couldn’t imagine what in-group dating would feel like. You’d never get a break from the person you were seeing.
Had the Sharps ever had a problem with that? They must have. The School of Music was less gay, proportionally, than the other schools, but that wasn’t saying much.
“Hey, do you have a phone charger?” Mama said.
“Yeah,” Jon Cox said, nodding at the glove compartment. “In there.”
Mama reached for the glove compartment’s handle. It snapped open, and there was a loud, distinct pop.
Out exploded a twinkling burst of glitter. It danced and twisted in the air like flour in a hurricane.
For a second, I just stared, unsure what the hell was happening.
Isaac flinched and drew his legs back into the car. Mama spluttered helplessly, his pale face screwed up and smothered in sparkles. He scrubbed at his forehead, spitting glitter over the side.
“What the shit?” Jon Cox said, as it settled. “Is that glitter?” A million flecks reflected the sun from the seats, from the backrests, from the dashboard—every last leathered crevice. Tiny, blinding points of light. As Mama hit the power button, killing the music, the hollow rush of the wind whipped up to fill the silence.
“Did you lend your car to someone?” I asked.
“Of course not. I don’t let anyone borrow this thing.”
“Hang on.” Mama leaned forward, staring into the glove compartment. “I—there’s a note in here,” he said, sounding disbelieving. He yanked it out. “It says, ‘Might want to put your roof up. Signed—’ and there’s a dotted half note.” Mama lowered the note, his expression injured. “Oh, come on.”
“The Minuets,” Isaac said.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Minuets are in 3/4 time,” Mama said. “Dotted half note. It’s a joke.”
“Great joke,” Jon Cox said. He slammed the heel of his palm against the steering wheel. Once, twice. “Fuck. I’m gonna be vacuuming glitter out of this thing for the next eight years.”
“And not all minuets are even in 3/4,” Mama said, as if that were the worst part of the whole thing. “Some of them are in 3/8. Or even 6/8, for some of the Italian—”
“Man, shut up,” Jon Cox said. Mama emitted a sigh and went quiet.
“It’s okay, Cox,” Isaac said, a grim smile stretching across his face. “We’re gonna sort this out.”
When I got to the Nest that night, Isaac was sprawled on the floor in front of a hefty mason jar, snipping the heads off matches. They danced in the glass as they toppled in, plink, plink, plink. Nihal sat nearby with a sketchbook open in his lap. Jon Cox and Mama were in their usual spots on the sofa, both on their laptops.
“Hey,” I said, dropping my backpack into my chair. “Isaac, what’s that?”
He didn’t look up. “Science project.”
“Sure,” I said. “Is this about the glitter?”
“Maybe.” Isaac snipped another couple of match heads into the jar.
“Isaac has an evil plan,” Jon Cox said, looking up from his laptop. “He won’t explain.”
“My theory,” Isaac said, “is that they did it ’cause of the competition. They want to put us on edge, you know? Distract us. Which is, obviously, never going to happen, ’cause you could probably shoot Trav in the knee and he’d still show up at rehearsal ready to go.”
“You think they could win?” I said.
Nihal let out a merry chuckle but didn’t answer.
“I don’t know.” Isaac set his scissors on the ground. “I guess it depends. Aural Fixation has nine people, all male, so they might want their opener to contrast with that more than we do. Our best shot is to be so freakishly good that they have no choice but to hand it to us.” He flicked the empty matchbook into the trash can. From his backpack, he tugged out an unlabeled white bottle the size of a shampoo bottle. The cap popped open, and clear liquid glug-glug-glugged its way into the jar.
Isaac screwed the cap onto the jar and swirled it a few times. The match heads swam around, tiny red fish caught in a whirlpool.
“So,” I said slowly, “just to make sure: That’s not an explosive, right?”
He hopped to his feet, and Isaac took up his guitar by its rosewood neck, flopping down hard on the sofa. Jon Cox and Mama grumbled with no real malice.
“No exploding,” Isaac said, tugging a pick out of his wallet. “But in a couple days, those off-key degenerates are going to be sorry. And we’re still going to win the competition, and get famous, and that’ll be that.”
I sat down hard. “I can’t believe those guys sell out stadiums. Do people really care about a cappella that much?” I shook my head. “I don’t care about a cappella that much.”
Jon Cox, typing something into his MacBook, mumbled, “Nobody does except Trav. But it’s a thing now.”
“It’s probably those movies.”
“Right.” Jon Cox grimaced. “Girl power.”
The derision in his voice stuck into me like a pin. I shot him a look. He probably didn’t mean anything by it—he’d been in a shitty mood since the glitter incident. I got the sense that the Minuets’ sabotage had gouged a deep wound into his pride.
“They’re not bad,” I said. “The movies, I mean.”
“Not to nitpick,” Mama sniffed, shutting his laptop, “but their group only sounds good after they augment the bass. That’s essentially a coed sound.”