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Pippa.
“You’re back!” I exclaimed. “How was Manchester?”
“What the bloody hell is your problem?” Pippa spat at me.
I took a step backward. I tried to catch Vicky’s or Char’s eyes, but they were both staring at the floor.
“I don’t…” I began, the electricity seeping straight out of my body.
“My mum makes me leave the country for all of a month and a half, and you think this is an opportunity to just jump right in there and start banging Char?”
Shit.
“Pippa, it wasn’t like that,” I tried.
“Oh, really? What was it like? Did you wait a whole week after I was gone? Come on, do you think I’m an idiot? If you were trying to keep your little romance a secret, maybe you shouldn’t have let Flash Tommy photograph it. We do have the Internet in England, you know.”
I saw Char wince.
“Pippa, honey,” Vicky said gently, “it wasn’t Elise’s fault.”
“Oh, so she just accidentally pulled Char one night? And what about you?” Pippa turned to Vicky. “You never mentioned this to me because you thought I wouldn’t care, or because you weren’t brave enough to tell me?” Her voice rose and her tiny hands clenched into fists as she stared down Vicky and Char. “I was gone for six weeks. You can’t both just replace me!”
“That’s not fair,” Vicky said in a low voice. “You’re my best friend, Pippa. I missed you every day.”
“Just tell me why you did it,” Pippa demanded of me, and I could see her long lashes fluttering as she blinked back tears. “Why did you have to steal him?”
Why did I do it? I didn’t know. I didn’t have a reason, really. Char kissed me, so I kissed him back. I hadn’t thought of it as stealing him from Pippa. He had told me he wasn’t interested in her. He didn’t want to be her boyfriend. How could I have stolen him if he was never hers?
“Do you love him?” Pippa asked, her voice pained.
I glanced over at Char. He was still studying the floor.
It was a ridiculous question. Did I love Char? Did I feel about Char the same way I felt about the Beatles, string instruments in pop songs, the way Little Anthony sang high notes, the way Jerry Lee Lewis played piano?
“No,” I said.
Pippa frowned. “So why, then?”
Because you were swept away by someone liking you.
I took a deep breath and tried to explain. “I didn’t know. I feel sometimes like … there are all these rules. Just to be a person. You know? You’re supposed to carry a shoulder bag, not a backpack. You’re supposed to wear headbands, or you’re not supposed to wear headbands. It’s okay to describe yourself as likable, but it’s not okay to describe yourself as eloquent. You can sit in the front of the school bus, but you can’t sit in the middle. You’re not supposed to be with a boy, even when he wants you to. I didn’t know that. There are so many rules, and they don’t make any sense, and I just can’t learn them all.”
“Well, here’s a simple rule for you, Elise,” Pippa snapped. “Don’t steal your friend’s man.”
And she turned on her heel and marched toward the bar.
Vicky ran to catch her. Char started after them.
“Char,” I said, catching his sleeve. “I have something to tell you.”
He pulled himself free and said, his voice clipped, “It’s not really a good time, Elise.”
“Oh.” Of course, he was right. Pete’s giving me a Friday night party seemed silly and irrelevant now. No one was interested.
I had a sudden flash of wondering just how Char was going to take that news. He would be proud of me. Wouldn’t he? Proud that he had taught me so well that Pete would trust me with this?
Yes, of course, Char would be proud.
But maybe I wasn’t so sure of that, because I let the subject drop.
“Can you take over the decks so I can deal with Pippa?” Char asked me.
I nodded mutely. He turned away again. “Char,” I blurted out. “Am I going over to your place later tonight?”
I sensed instantly, staring at Char’s half-turned shoulder, that I had broken yet another unspoken rule. To ask for what I wanted.
My question seemed to hover in the air between us, while I wondered what it would be like to have a real boyfriend. Someone who you could make plans with. Someone who called you when he thought of you. Someone who would say that he wanted you to come over. I wondered what it would be like to be Sally, and to have Larry Kapur tell you that he wanted to take you to a formal dance. Someone where you didn’t have to guess.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Char said. “Not tonight. It would just upset Pippa even more if we went home together.”
“You’re right.”
Char reached out and squeezed my shoulder briefly. “Thanks for covering for me, Elise. I owe you.”
Then he went to the bar to handle Pippa, and I went to the booth to handle the music, and that was the last we spoke all night.
I liked being up there in the booth, separate from everybody. Pete was right: I was good at it, and it was safe. But on a night like tonight, it was lonely, too.
* * *
When I was done, I walked home for the first time in weeks. When I reached my mother’s house, I eased open the front door into darkness and then closed it behind me as quietly as I could. I leaned back for a moment, resting my head against the door. Home safe.
Then someone screamed.
I bolted upright.
“Alex?” I whispered.
A pause. Then my little sister emerged from the shadows, brandishing an empty paper towel roll like a sword.
“Are you okay?” I asked softly.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed. “You scared me!” She didn’t quite lower the paper towel roll, like she still wasn’t sure whether she would have to physically fight me or not.
“I’m sorry, honey,” I said. “I just went for a walk.”
Alex stepped forward so I could see her better. “Now?” she asked. “It’s the middle of the night.”
It was much later than the middle of the night. “I couldn’t sleep,” I explained.
Alex blinked a few times, then asked, “You’re not sick again, are you?”
And I knew we were both thinking about September, when I was rushed to the hospital and then had to miss weeks of school, because I was “sick.” I felt a sudden surge of love for my baby sister. Even if no one told her what was going on, she was no fool.
“No,” I said. “I’m not sick.”
“So why—” Alex began, at which point I decided that the best defense was a good offense.
“What are you doing up?” I asked.
Alex twirled the paper towel roll around in her hands. “Working on my poetry castle,” she said. “Come see.”
She led me into the sunroom. The cardboard castle sat proudly in the middle of the room, flags flying from its two turrets. Paper and markers were spread out all over the rest of the floor.
“It looks great,” I told her.
Alex looked at it critically. “I still need to paint the front,” she said. “And I need to finish writing the poems. I’m going to sell poetry, and I don’t know how many people will want to buy them. I need to be sure I have enough. Everyone in the whole school is coming, even the fifth graders. And all the parents. You’re coming, right?”
“Of course,” I said. “I wouldn’t miss it.”
“How many poems do you think people will want to buy?” Alex asked.
“Well, I’ll want to buy at least ten,” I told her.
Alex nodded like she had expected as much. “I need to write more poems,” she concluded.
“But, Alex,” I said, “you don’t have to write them now. You have two whole weeks. It doesn’t have to get done at three o’clock in the morning.”
“I know that,” Alex said, picking up a piece of paper and carefully setting it on top of the stack inside her castle. “I wanted to do it now.”
I looked into her gray-blue eyes and saw myself in them, as clearly as looking in a mirror. Building a miniature record player for my dollhouse long past bedtime. Teaching myself to code a Web site under the covers, so my dad wouldn’t come in and tell me to go to sleep. DJing alone in my bedroom in the dark. These things could always wait until daylight, but I wanted to do them in the night.