This Song Will Save Your Life

“This one could be about you,” Char said, looking at me.

I tilted my head. “Why?”

“Because it’s about a girl whose eyes are green and blue and gray all at the same time. Just like yours.”

“They’re usually blue,” I said. “Bluish gray.”

He stared into my eyes deeply, unblinking.

“They only look green when I wear a green shirt,” I said. “So it’s not really like this song.”

“This song is about never having seen anyone like you before. And I haven’t ever seen anyone like you,” Char said.

“I haven’t seen anyone like you either,” I said.

We both fell silent and looked at each other for a moment.

And then he kissed me.

I pulled away almost instantly, as if I’d received an electric shock. “What did you do that for?” I demanded, my hand flying to my mouth.

Char reached out and gently removed my hand from my face. “Because I wanted to,” he answered quietly, and, still holding my hand in his, he kissed me again. This kiss lasted longer than the first, and I didn’t know what to do with my lips. But Char knew exactly what to do.

When he leaned away from me, I stared at him for a moment, my heart thundering so fast in my chest that I thought I might throw up, or just collapse to the floor, if he weren’t still holding on to me.

“You know, I’m not going to have sex with you.” The words flew out of my mouth. I immediately felt myself turn bright red. You never know when to shut up.

But Char laughed and laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said, kissing the top of my head. “I never thought you would.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, unable to tell if he meant that as compliment or criticism.

“What about Pippa?” I asked.

His face was unreadable, and his eyes kept straying to my lips. “This isn’t about Pippa,” he said. “This is about you.”

“But—”

“Come here,” Char said. “It’s okay.” He opened his arms to me. I slowly sank into his embrace, and he rocked me back and forth. Dimly I was aware of the song fading out, the silence that followed, the lights coming on overhead. I slid my arms around him and pressed my face to his chest, trying to hear through his thin T-shirt if his heart was pounding as hard as my own. But his heart seemed fine.

“Come on, Elise,” he said after a time, softly into my hair. “Let me drive you home.”

11

When my alarm went off on Friday morning, I woke up in my mom’s house, not my dad’s, which still felt a little crooked. I could hear Alex downstairs, banging around with her poetry castle construction project. I could hear Chew-Toy scratching at my door. But I stayed still for a moment, just thinking about last night—five hours ago, really. Me playing songs. Strangers dancing. Char kissing me. Me kissing Char. Char and me kissing each other.

In the dark and in the night, it made some kind of sense. There we were, two DJs, standing close together, sharing an evening where every song we touched felt golden. But in the harsh light of morning, I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. He was nearly twenty, I was in high school. He was cool, I was not.

So why had he kissed me?

I got out of bed, threw on a pair of jeans and a plain T-shirt, and braided my hair so it would be out of the way. Before I went downstairs for breakfast, I opened up my laptop. I clicked away from the DJ program I’d been using the night before and opened up my Internet browser. Then I googled “Flash Tommy” and clicked over to his Web site.

It was filled with party photos. I saw boys smoking in bathrooms, girls pretending to take off their clothes, boys and girls making out in every combination. I saw lots of shots of Pippa: Pippa dancing with Vicky, Pippa downing a glass of wine, Pippa with her arms around Char. I quickly scrolled away from that last one.

And then I came across what I’d been looking for: a photo of me. It wasn’t one of those that Flash Tommy had taken when I first arrived last night. I hadn’t noticed him shooting this one. In the photo, I am standing alone in the DJ booth. I have my headphones half on, and I’m looking out just past the camera, smiling like I have a secret. The dress that Vicky helped me buy makes me look like a punk-rock ballerina, and my eyes look wider and bluer than I remembered them ever looking before.

I glanced toward my mirror, but I bore only a passing resemblance to the Elise in that photo on that Web site. My eyes were puffy, and the most punk-rock thing about me was that the cuffs of my jeans were frayed. But I was still smiling like I had a secret. Because I did.

I decided right then that Flash Tommy’s big fancy camera, no matter how much it had cost him, was worth every single pe

I hummed my way through breakfast and the bus ride to school, all the way to my locker. I was working on my combination when my friends showed up. You know, Chava and Sally. Those friends.

“Just the people I wanted to see!” I said to them, and I wasn’t even being sarcastic for once. I have watched enough popular television to know that when a boy does something inexplicable, like kiss you out of nowhere, you are supposed to discuss it with your girls. Especially if your girls are people like Chava and Sally. There is nothing they love more than trying to explain the behavior of boys they don’t know.

Yet neither of them responded by saying, “Girlfriend! Spill the gossip!” which is how your girls are supposed to talk to you, according to popular television. Instead, Chava said to me, looking very serious, “Elise, Sally and I just want you to know that we are here for you. We are your friends and we are here for you,” she went on grimly. “Like, in your times of need.”

“Okay, that’s great.” I raised my eyebrows at her. I assumed she wasn’t talking about Char kissing me, since that wasn’t exactly a “time of need.”

“And you can tell us anything,” Sally added. “In fact, you should tell us anything. That’s what friends do.”

“You should tell us anything so that we can be supportive,” Chava said. “You know, of whatever it is that you tell us.”

“Plus, we tell you everything,” Sally added. “So it seems only fair.”

“I do tell you everything,” I said, which was not true. But I told them more than I told anyone else at school, so it seemed like a lot.

Sally said, “You didn’t tell us that you want to kill yourself.”

I heard a loud whoosh in my ears, and I felt dizzy, like the earth was suddenly rotating around me very, very fast. I pulled my sleeves down over my wrists in an instant, like a reflex.

“I don’t want to kill myself,” I said in a shaky voice.

“You see, she doesn’t tell us anything,” Sally complained to Chava.

“Who said I wanted to kill myself?”

“You did,” Sally said.

“You just claimed that I never tell you anything!” I slammed my fist against my locker, and Sally and Chava exchanged a look of concern.

“We read it in your blog,” Chava said.

“I don’t keep a blog.”

“Okay, your ‘online journal,’ then,” Sally said with a sigh.

“I don’t keep one of those either.”

“Elise, you can trust us,” Chava said gently.

“Then can I trust you to tell me who claims that I have a goddamn blog about my suicidal tendencies?”

Sally wrinkled up her nose. Predictably, Sally’s parents do not allow her to swear. She was probably supposed to put a quarter in a jar just for listening to me.

“Everyone,” Chava said, blinking hard, like she was trying to hold back tears. “Everyone has read it.”

I shoved past them and ran down the hall to the computer lab. I sat down and typed in “Elise Dembowski” to Google. The first option that popped up was “Elise Dembowski, MD.” The second was “Elise Dembowski Tampa Florida school superintendent.” But the third line read, “Elise Dembowski suicide.”

I clicked on the link, then stuck my fist into my mouth and bit down while I waited for the page to load. When it came up, it was a design scheme of orange stars, with the heading “Elise Dembowski’s Super-Secret Diary,” and the sheer juxtaposition of my name and my least-favorite color was shocking to me.