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Char laughed a little, his breath tickling my ear. “When you put it like that, it does sound pretty sad.” He paused. “But I guess that’s not how it feels to me. I mean, I don’t know your dad. Maybe he is just forcing himself through the motions so he can bring home some extra money. Maybe he really hates it, and maybe every day he wishes he was eighteen again. But maybe he found something he loved to do and people he loved to do it with when he was a kid, and he’s lucky enough that he still gets to do it years later.”
“If you were fifty-three years old and still DJing the exact same songs, except at the Illinois State Fair Big Tent at two in the afternoon, would you feel like your life was sad or lucky?” I asked Char.
Char shrugged. “I guess you’d have to ask me again in thirty-three years. I think I would feel lucky. I think what would make me feel sad would be if I were fifty-three years old and I wasn’t playing music anymore.”
“I would be sad if you weren’t playing music anymore, too,” I told him.
He rolled on top of me then, and kissed me long and hard. And there was nothing sad at all.
* * *
The following Thursday night, I was in the middle of my set, and everything was going smoothly. People jumping around to the Rolling Stones. Vicky was there with Dave, and they had claimed dance space right in the middle of the floor. Char was at the bar, talking to some college-aged girl with highlighted, flat-ironed hair, but I didn’t mind, because he had already pressed his fingers into my lower back earlier, which meant I was basically guaranteed yet another night of getting home at dawn. I was wearing the rhinestone pumps that Vicky insisted I buy, one of my dad’s old band shirts that I had resewn to fit me, and a multicolored scarf that Vicky had lent me. Even Mel hadn’t found anything to criticize with tonight’s outfit.
Everything was going smoothly. Until the door opened a bit before midnight and Emily Wallace, Petra Davies, and Ashley Mersky walked in.
I was thrown into shock, like a queen whose castle’s ironclad fortress has somehow been breached. What were they doing here? This wasn’t high school. This wasn’t driver’s ed. This was Start. This was mine.
Emily and her friends hadn’t noticed me yet. They clustered in a tight circle, looking around the room, pointing and giggling. I could tell they had gotten all dressed up for their big night out, like this was a school dance. Emily wore a tight black strapless dress and fake eyelashes. Her makeup was perfect.
They looked ridiculous here, obviously high school girls costumed as make-believe adults. Ridiculous, but beautiful. There’s a reason why Emily is a model. There’s a reason why Ashley’s chest was voted “best rack” by the guys’ lacrosse team when she was only a freshman. Because they are the beautiful ones.
This song was winding down, so I put on my headphones to find a new one, but everything I tried sounded suddenly out of place. I tried to focus on my computer, but my eyes kept flickering up, and I was terrified that I would find Emily smirking at me. I wanted to drop my headphones and let the song play out while I ran straight out the door and all the way home.
But you are a professional.
I transitioned into the Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now?” I messed up the beat matching, so it sounded disorienting and wrong, but I didn’t even care. I sca
And then what?
Char left the girl with the highlighted hair, and for one second I was convinced that he was going to walk over to Emily, as he had walked over to me weeks earlier. That he was going to introduce himself to her, and ask her to dance, and invite her into the DJ booth. Just like me, only prettier and cooler and normal. I remembered how Char explained to me why he had sex with Pippa: “Because she’s hot.” What if he saw that Emily was hot, too?
But Char walked past Emily, seeming not to notice her. He walked through the dance floor and into the DJ booth, to me. “What is going on in here?” he asked me.
I blinked fast. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that it’s prime time on the dance floor, you had this crowd in the palm of your hand, and now all of a sudden you’ve decided to play the world’s most downer of a song.”
“It’s the Smiths,” I defended myself. “Everyone loves the Smiths.”
Char raised his eyebrows and quoted the lyrics to me: “‘There’s a club if you’d like to go. You could meet somebody who really loves you. So you go and you stand on your own, and you leave on your own, and you go home and you cry and you want to die.’”
I shrugged.
“Do you want me to take over for a while?” Char asked, his hands already moving toward the mixer.
“No,” I said.
He paused.
“What I want,” I said, my voice rising, “is for you to get those girls out of here.”
Char’s eyebrows knit together. “What girls?”
“Those girls!” I screeched, pointing at Emily, Petra, and Ashley.
“Um, why?” Char asked, and I saw them, just for a brief flash, as he probably saw them: three harmless-looking teenage girls, delicate features, pretty smiles. Like they couldn’t cut you until you were so disfigured that you hardly recognized yourself.
“Because they’re underage!” I screamed.
“Yeah…” Char said dubiously.
“Don’t they have parents?” I raged. “What the hell kind of parents let their teenage daughters go to a bar on a school night? This isn’t the goddamn Freshman/Sophomore Summer Formal. This is the real world.”
Char cleared his throat pointedly. “Seriously?”
I grabbed his ski
As soon as I let go of him, Char left the booth. He headed straight for the exit and stepped outside. A moment later, he returned with Mel. Char pointed to where Emily and her friends stood, now with pink drinks in their hands.
Mel strode directly over to them. He towered over all the people on the floor; everyone moved aside to let him pass. I watched him speak to the girls briefly. I saw them smile and bat their eyelashes, trying to flirt their way out of it. Then I saw their mouths harden and their eyebrows narrow. Mel just stood there with his arms crossed. Emily pulled a card out of her pocket and handed it to him. A fake ID, I bet. Mel glanced at it briefly before snapping it in half with one hand. Then he escorted them to the door.
Emily took one look back at the club, her mouth hanging open in the astonished expression of a girl who has never before been denied anything. And now she saw me. Her eyes caught mine right before the heavy metal door slammed shut behind her.
I had once thought that I wanted to get revenge by dying. But getting revenge by living, and living well, was much, much sweeter.
Char came back to the booth. “Do you want to explain what that was all about?” he asked me.
“Nope.”
He rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. “Well, are you happy now?” he asked.
“Yes.” And I transitioned into “Walking on Sunshine.” The crowd perked up immediately. Vicky shot me a thumbs-up sign from the floor.
“Elise,” Char asked, leaning in close, “are you, you know, okay?”
I closed my eyes. “Kiss me,” I said. And he did.
I remembered how Pippa had described the thrill of being friends with the DJ. You always have somewhere to stash your coat, and sometimes he’ll play songs for you. But that was kids’ stuff. That was nothing compared with the power of being the DJ.
But I also felt like an eggshell that had gotten a tiny crack. You can’t repair something like that. All you can do is hope that it sticks together, hope that the crack doesn’t grow until all your insides come spilling right out.