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“Kale’s so last year,” Jake said, picking up on her riff. “I asked for brussels sprouts, but they were all out.”
They both laughed at this.
“You better get your mom to take care of that,” she said.
She tapped at the table with both hands, grinning at Jake, unable to contain the energy inside herself. She could see by the inquisitive angle of his gaze that he was trying to get a bead on why she was so excited.
“Everything okay, Elena?”
She held up a finger, like, wait a second. She felt like a hundred firecrackers were going off at the same time inside of her, each one a new thing she wanted to tell him, all of them erupting on top of each other, drowning each other out. To calm herself down, she guzzled her smoothie through the straw until she’d given herself a brain freeze. Then she threw herself dramatically, head and shoulders and one slapping open hand, onto the table.
“So,” she said. And she grinned at him.
“It’s good to see you, too,” he said, matching her grin for grin.
Sitting up, leaning back, both hands splayed flat on the table, she just kept grinning.
“What, Elena? Tell me!” he said, carving a little doodle of expectation in the air with his head.
“It’s nothing. It’s stupid,” she said.
Jake’s eyebrows raised slightly, then returned to neutral.
“I’ve been talking to some guy on AnAmerica. Chatting. Like internet-wise. And … I don’t know. It’s silly. It’s just flirting. Forget it.”
“You’ve been chatting with a guy online? Don’t you do that every day with your AnAmerica friends?”
“Yeah, but this is different.”
“Different how?”
“I don’t know. It just is. He seems smarter than most of those people. And he really liked the animation I made for you. He said it reminded him of the art he saw in Paris. He just … surprised me, I guess.”
Jake hunched down in his chair, as much as was possible with his long legs. He had that look on his face that he got when was listening closely, taking everything in and absorbing it in that sensitive way of his. “Paris, huh?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“And you’ve fallen in love with him because—”
“Love? Who said anything about love? I’ve fallen into witty banter with him. I’ve fallen into Wow, you know about art and you can talk to me about my animations in a really sophisticated way and you think I’m talented and you’re so much cooler than the boneheads and dweebs who usually like me with him. I’ve fallen into I’m bored and my sister’s being a pain and my best friend is busy with his new family across town with him.”
Jake flinched a little, and Elena sort of regretted making that comment about him being too busy for her. But what had he said on moving day? That he’d call her all the time or something? Well, her cell hadn’t exactly been ringing off the hook or buzzing with texts from him since then. She didn’t want to admit it, but it kind of stung.
“Do you know anything else about him? Like what his name is, even?” he asked, his voice sharp.
“His name is Harlow.”
“Harlow what?”
Elena stared at Jake, unable to answer. What was up with him today? This was exactly not how she’d thought this conversation would go.
“You’ve talked to him, how many times?”
“Like … two.” Why did she feel so defensive? “Does it matter?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Jake. He shook his head and winced, thinking it through. “I’d be careful, Elena … Guys on the internet. Anybody on the internet, really. You can never know who they really are. Who knows what he might be up to. Stealing your information. Infiltrating your computer. Toying with you just to, I don’t know, fulfill some dark little fantasy of his. He might not even be a guy. Or he might be eighty years old. Or seven. You see what I’m saying? Just … be careful.”
“Okay, Dad. I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, hoping her tone would point out to him how weirdly overprotective he was being.
He looked so wounded somehow. It was bizarre. “I’d just hate to see you get hurt,” he said.
“Have you ever seen me let myself get hurt? Look! I’m wearing Doc Martens!”
She yanked her foot up above the tabletop to show off her pink combat boots, hoping that doing so would lighten the mood. But Jake had withdrawn into one of his quiet places. Elena could never tell what he was thinking when he did that. She could see the emotions rippling on his surface, but she had no way of knowing what those emotions were. Though she knew there was no reason to, she felt bad, like she’d somehow done something wrong.
Jake’s fans were beginning to show up. Kids from school, mostly—Becky Anderson, with her timid way of walking, like she didn’t want anyone to see her and her signature waist-length braid; Arnold Chan, the computer whiz who’d gotten in so much trouble a couple of years ago when he’d been running tech for the graduation ceremony where Jules Turnbull’s homemade sex tape had been inadvertently played; and a handful of others. Jake nodded and threw curt two-fingered waves at them.
Hoping to make peace, Elena asked, “How’s life in the fast lane? Has Cameron taken you out on the yacht yet?”
“No,” he said glumly. “And even if he had … he’s sort of aggressively proud of how rich he is, you know?”
Maybe this was why Jake was in such a mood today. Maybe he was having a hard time getting used to the idea of this new guy strolling into his life and in some way trying to replace his dad. Elena frowned sympathetically, but she wasn’t sure Jake saw. She’d lost him to the hidden thoughts in his head.
She surveyed the room with its potted palm trees and tiki lamps and rasta flags. There was Seth Rothman. And Sally French. Hank Lewis. Cassie Crews. When Hannah Jones entered, Elena watched her fuss over where to sit. This happened every time Hannah showed up at one of Jake’s gigs. Trying to look nonchalant with a finger tapping at her lip, Hannah paced from one part of the room to another, vying for a prime position near the stage, where she could sink her head into the cradle of her arms and gaze longingly at Jake while he played.
“Look,” Elena said, trying again to coax him out of his mood. “Hannah’s here to ogle you again.”
This got him to at least look at her, but it didn’t lighten his mood. “I’ve got a girlfriend,” he snapped. “Sarah. Remember?”
“Still, it’s nice to be wanted, isn’t it?”
“Not by Hannah. Remember Lilah Bell?”
“Yeah.” Everyone remembered Lilah Bell and the crazy obsessive way she’d stalked Jules Turnbull. It was the most exciting thing to have ever happened at Chris Columbus High. A warning story people told themselves when they felt themselves slipping toward making bad, bad decisions. “But—”
Jake cut her off before she could finish her sentence. “You want that to happen to me?”
He was just impossible today. “Jake,” she said. “Why so defensive? This is me you’re talking to.”
She locked eyes with him and danced her head around, trying to coax a grin out of him. When it finally came, halfheartedly, she could tell Jake was just appeasing her. She sighed and rolled her head back to look at the imitation bamboo ceiling.
“When you want to talk,” she said, “I’ll be here.”
“Will you? I hope so. You might be too busy.” Before she could ask what that was supposed to mean, he tapped the table once with his fingertips and walked to the stage to tune up his guitar.
As he wandered away, she realized that this must be a reference to her online chats with Harlow. Was that it? Was Jake jealous? But why? It wasn’t like some guy she’d met online could ever come between them.
9 (#ulink_144f8b4e-da78-534f-90e2-19f61ce0944a)
Beneath his carefully cultivated casual stage persona, a destructive energy surged in Jake’s blood. He felt out of control in a way that he usually never did. He wanted to take the water bottle next to him and whip it across the room. He wanted to pick up his stool and shake it above his head, roaring at the audience, scaring them with his rage. He wanted to smash his guitar over Elena’s head. Or his own head, because really, he wasn’t mad at her, he was mad at himself. Nathaniel was right. He was a coward. And with this Harlow guy in the picture now, he’d lost his chance yet again. Jake was the kind of guy who swallowed his emotions, endured and suffered and lost and lost again.
As he sang the first song in his set, a ballad called “I’m Here” that he’d written years ago, Jake ignored the crowd and stared moodily at his fingers. They wouldn’t notice. He often looked inward as he played his music, disappearing into the feelings he conjured out of his instrument.
He played “Nothing Doing.”
He played “Wake Me When You’re Home.”
All these old songs he knew so well he wouldn’t have to think. Thinking was too much for him right now. It was like white light, blinding and obliterating him.
Every time he felt the urge to look up, he felt Elena’s presence at the side of the stage and knew he’d gravitate to her, staring, his feeling of hurt and rejection bleeding out of him. He imagined her projecting this Harlow character into the romantic scenarios his songs described. It was too much for him. He could just imagine what an idiot he’d look like if he played the new song he’d written for her.
He launched into “Misunderstood,” which pretty much summed up his feelings right now.
When this one came to an end, he knew he couldn’t ignore the crowd much longer and he finally looked up and, leaning into the mic, said, “Thanks for coming out tonight, folks.”
Forty or fifty faces gazed back at him. His fans. It was ironic—he should have been happy to see so many expectant, appreciative people here to see him, but somehow they and their devotion didn’t count. All that counted was Elena, and she’d gone and found some random stranger on the internet to swoon over. Jake tried to block her out of his vision, but he couldn’t. She’d dressed in her best spunky clothes—her pink Docs, those skintight black tights that made it so hard for Jake not to stare at her luscious legs, those layers of tank tops in differing colors and degrees of looseness that seemed always to be on the verge of falling off her body. It wasn’t fair. He knew she’d gone to this effort for him. And she was so unfathomably beautiful, sitting there, watching him play.
The next song on his playlist was “Driftwood.” He doodled on his fret board, procrastinating, knowing that revealing his love now, in an achy, moony emo song, would be just about the worst move he could make. She’d laugh at him. She’d think he was joking. Worse, she’d think he was endorsing her new quasi-relationship.
Jake was glad not to see Nathaniel’s smirking face in the crowd. He didn’t want to admit it, but Nate had been right. The good guy always lost. You had to be an asshole to win at love.
He brought his hand crashing against the strings, a loud power chord like he almost never played. Maybe if he took Nathaniel’s advice, she’d see that he was worthy of her attention. She’d see he was capable of surprising her too; that he wasn’t the asexual platonic BFF she saw him as.
“I’m going to mix it up a little now,” he said. “This one goes out to Elena.”
He threw her a defensive glance and she beamed back at him, that pure joyful smile she sometimes allowed herself brightening her face, framed adorably in her wave of black ringlets. Every time Jake saw her smile like this he was stung by its beauty, its tenderness. Nobody, not even his dad, believed in him the way Elena did. And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Protecting his friendship with Elena meant he was perpetually frustrated by the distance between what they had together and what he wanted.
“Wednesday’s Girl.” That’s what he would play. It was one of the first songs his dad had ever taught him. A mean little Bob Dylan–inspired thing his father had written about the woman who’d broken his heart before he met Jake’s mom.
He strummed quickly at his guitar, generating a vigorous rumble of sound, and then he sang:
On Monday, when the world was new
She marveled at a bird that flew
Through her doorway, into her room
And spread its wings
To show her all its precious things
Oh, I warned her it was too good to be true.
I said, he’s not pretty, he’s just new
Glancing up, he could see from the crimson color of her face that she was hurt by this. It gave him a little thrill to think that she might experience a touch of the rejection he was feeling. He strummed on. He strummed harder. He broke a string, he strummed so hard.
On Tuesday, he was in her bed
Cooing softly, spinning thread
He bit her ear until she bled
And still she wanted to believe
In him and all his precious things.
Hearing an abrupt thump from the corner of the room where Elena was sitting, Jake looked up. She’d stood up. She was slamming shut the flap on her messenger bag. She was stalking out of the café.
“Hey … Elena, wait,” he called after her.
But with a flip of the bird behind her back, she was already gone.
Jake felt like an idiot. The urge to chase after her and apologize was so strong that he almost fell off his stool. But he kept on strumming. He was trapped on the stage, and anyway, he had a responsibility to his fans.
10 (#ulink_7eb60881-3e8c-53c3-ad72-10132c347924)
Later that evening, Elena and Nina walked slowly around the block, looking at the Christmas decorations, the sleds on roofs and cactuses and palms wrapped in blinking lights and plastic snowmen lodged on perpetually green lawns. They paced themselves so Nina wouldn’t get overheated. Elena felt like she had ants under her skin. She couldn’t keep still.
“You gonna tell me what’s wrong?” Nina asked her.
“Is it that obvious?”
“Of course it is. You’re a Rios, girl. We’re hot-blooded.”
“Well, okay, fine,” Elena said. She launched into a long, overheated harangue about everything that had happened tonight. The smoothie, the horrible, tense conversation in which Jake sat there and petulantly criticized her for talking to Harlow, and then that song, that unbelievably angry and just plain mean song.
“Can you believe that, Nina? Suddenly he’s got all kinds of money and he moves across town and what happens? He turns into somebody I don’t even know.”
Nina just smiled at her like it was all a joke, but if so, Elena wanted to ask, What’s the punch line? She didn’t get what was so funny about it.
“I want my Jaybird back,” she said. “The one who makes me laugh. The one who encourages me to dream big. Not the one who dogs me for talking to guys online and treats me like I’m an idiot.”
Nina tipped her head, still smiling that smile, still acting like it was all just so, so funny.
“What?” Elena asked.
Nina kept on smiling.
“What’s so funny? Why do you keep looking at me that way?”
They’d come out for this walk in part because Nina felt like she was up for it for once, and in part because Elena hadn’t been able to sit still at home, where her father had demanded total quiet while he did the books for his Laundromat empire. It was ten thirty at night and most of the bungalows in the neighborhood were closed up, the lights completely off, or at most, a pale flicker of TV peeking out of an arched window.
“You really don’t know,” Nina said.
“Would I be asking if I did?”
Nina sighed and rested herself against a white fire hydrant.
