A Song to Take the World Apart (12 page)

Nik says, “Carina's at the bar trying to round up a beer or two. I won't tell if you want to have some sips.”

There are a couple of guys at the bar who Carina knows. They're Chris and Nik's age, seniors at a different Valley private school than the one Bean goes to. They're badly groomed and neatly dressed, the stubble covering their chins marking them definitively as older than Lorelei's smooth-skinned classmates. Carina introduces them all around—the dark-haired one is Daniel, and his friend, a blond, is Paul. Daniel has a fake ID with someone else's face on it. He flashes it at the bartender and buys them all their drinks.

Lorelei can see the boys doing the math in their heads: three girls, three guys. Nik is charming Carina as easily as he charmed Zoe in the car; Zoe tilts her face up toward Daniel's when she talks. He motions that he can't hear her. She rises onto the balls of her feet and props a hand against his shoulder to steady herself.

Paul and Lorelei catch each other's eyes, and smile, and look away. For the first time Lorelei understands the appeal of a wedding ring: some silent symbol she could flash that would say
off-limits.
Not unfriendly, just unavailable.

“Have you heard these guys play before?” Paul asks.

“Yeah,” Lorelei says. “A couple of times.”

Should she be flirting with him, and trying to get a rise out of Chris, who's tuning his guitar onstage? It seems pointless to pretend. Instead, she sips at her icy beer, so cold it doesn't really taste like anything, and lets the chill and the alcohol numb her from the inside out. Chris not kissing her stings less and less and less.

“So they're good?”

“I think so,” she says. “Pretty good.” Lorelei nods at Chris on the stage. “He's my boyfriend, so. You know.”

“Oh,” Paul says. He smiles at her. “Got it.”

By the time the band comes on, Lorelei is buzzing. She feels like a firecracker about to go off: tightly wrapped, full of sparks. She knows all the songs by now, from the last show, and the practices, and Chris humming them unconsciously under his breath.

It's different, though, when the band comes together, when the sound rolls up and spreads through the air in the room. Instead of concentrating her inside herself like the first show did, this one connects her to everyone around her. It's nice to look at a crowd and see every face in it: to think,
You and you and you and you.
At the first show she wasn't sure she belonged, or whether she could move in a mass governed by a beat. Now it seems easy. Natural, almost. She understands how to let her body tell her what to do.

If she was the one onstage, her voice might snare all of these people the way it did on the Pier. When it first happened, Lorelei was horrified by herself. She doesn't want anyone under her thrall. But the power Chris wields, up front, holding the microphone—that's something she recognizes. It's something she wants to have, and if she can't have it, she wants to touch someone who does. Chris finds her in the crowd and Lorelei lifts her hands up to him, mouthing along with his words.

Zoe nudges something cold against her thigh, and she looks down to see another bottle of beer being quietly handed her way. Lorelei shakes her head to clear it, and purses her lips to take a sip.

Zoe and Lorelei retreat to the bathroom after The Trouble's set ends, taking turns in the single relatively clean stall. “Ugh, I feel like I've had to pee
all night,
” Zoe says. She has to yell to be heard over the din coming in from outside and Lorelei running the sink.

“I know,” Lorelei yells back. “Wait, how many have you had?”

“One and a half?” Zoe emerges, a little unsteady on her feet. “Two, actually, I guess. I had one, and then I split that one with you, and one with Daniel.”

“Yeah. So. Daniel.”

“Daniel,” Zoe agrees. She smiles at Lorelei in the mirror. She looks pleased and pretty, pleasantly distracted. Lorelei wonders if that's how
she
looks when Chris is around. “He's, like, cute, right?”

“Cute,” Lorelei agrees. “Maybe don't let him buy you any more beers.”

She doesn't want to sound like a downer, but she's never seen Zoe's eyes shine like this before, and she doesn't know anything about how much beer a person can drink. In the wake of the music, she's feeling steadier, but still slightly off-kilter, like there's a thin layer of static between her and the world.

“Oh, come on,” Zoe says. She turns to lean her back against the sink's damp ledge. “Have I given you shit about Chris? I have not. Your dumb brother might, but I have been—” She covers a hiccup. “I have been very supportive. And I'm not gonna, like, marry this dude, or even go home with him. Carina would never let me. I'm just seeing what I can do.”

That makes sense to Lorelei: she thinks of the moments on the Pier before she realized that anyone was watching her, when singing almost felt like stretching her wings. Her voice lies coiled up inside of her most of the time, unacknowledged and unused. Most people don't even know she
has
it. The power of it scares and seduces her in equal measure.

“Just be careful with yourself, then,” Lorelei says. “You might not plan on going home with him, but you're— He would be an idiot if he didn't try.”

Zoe laughs and ducks her head against the intimacy of the moment. It's hard to talk about, Lorelei knows: the feeling you have for your very best friend, the kind of love that isn't romantic and isn't family. It's just love, the kind that hooks into your heart and
pulls.

She does love Zoe, and doesn't understand how anyone could not want to spend time with her, how anyone could not think she's the coolest, the greatest, the funniest and smartest. Of course some dude in a bar is buying her drinks, trying to buy himself a slice of her time.

“You know I can take care of myself,” Zoe says again, looking over her shoulder as she pushes the bathroom door open. “Coming?”

Lorelei follows her back to the bar. Chris is over with his friends, but she isn't allowed to talk to him, so she talks Carina into sharing more sips of her beer instead. She figures that if Zoe's still standing after two, a little more won't undo her. This one is Rolling Rock, slippery with condensation in its green glass bottle.

Zoe picks up her practiced flirtation with Daniel, and Lorelei leaves her to it. Paul has long since disappeared, and the assurance she felt earlier in the evening has mostly evaporated.

When she sees Chris slip backstage, she goes to follow him.

It's not even really a backstage: just a narrow hallway from the back half of the stage to the alleyway where they load equipment. Hidden from the crowd, she grabs Chris's arm and rocks forward into him. She's a little unsteady on her feet. He's mostly washed the paint off his face, so he's pink-cheeked again, looking like himself.

“Hey,” he says, laughing, leaning down to kiss her.

“Hi,” she says, and goes back to the kissing. It feels different when she's tipsy, honey-warm and loose. She just wants to be
closer.

“Did we sound okay?”

“Sounded great.”

“Better or worse than the first time?”

“Better?” Lorelei doesn't really want to talk about music right now, for once.

“We didn't play the new song,” he says. “The one that freaked you out.”

“I wondered about that.”

“Wanted to get it really right,” he says. He's pulled away a little bit, but he leans in and brushes the tip of his nose against hers. “I wanted to see if you'd sing it with me, actually. We could do a little duet.”

“You've never heard me sing,” she says.

“Have so,” he counters. “I hear you humming, sometimes, when you don't think anyone's listening.” She blushes. “It's cute,” he insists. “And I'm sure— I know you're talented, okay, I just know it.”

“That's a big bet,” she says.