This Song Will Save Your Life

I tried to picture one of the girls at my school secretly being Vicky, hiding in the skin of a popular clone. What if Lizzie Reardon in three years would look back on the time she spent making my life hell and think to herself, Well, that was really petty, wasn’t it? Would Lizzie Reardon someday be nice to a stranger on the street the way Vicky was to me the first night I met her?

But it was too hard to imagine. I couldn’t see it.

“Enough sad tales of my youth,” Vicky said. “Your turn, Elise. Who are you in the teen movie of our lives?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it. I’m a super-cool underground DJ sensation, I wanted to say. But that wasn’t right. Char had just made it clear that I was nothing of the sort. I’m the super-cool underground DJ’s girlfriend. But I wasn’t that either. Who was I?

I extended my left arm toward them, palm up, my pale white skin illuminated by the stars and a lone streetlight.

“Jesus Christ,” Harry said. “What happened to your arm?”

Vicky smacked him on the side of the head.

“Ow!” Harry exclaimed. “What was that for?”

Vicky shook her head at him, then took my arm in her hands and looked at it. Really looked. “Why didn’t you tell us?” she asked in a low voice.

“Tell you what?” I asked, trying to shake her off. “Tell you I’m unpopular? Okay, I’m telling you now: I’m not Glendale’s hottest DJ. My name is Elise Dembowski, I’m sixteen years old, and nobody likes me. One time I pretended to try to commit suicide, but I didn’t really do it, and for a while I pretended to date Char, but I didn’t really do that either. I’ll pretend to be anyone or anything other than myself, but the problem is that no one is ever fooled.”

I wrenched my arm away from Vicky and shoved past a startled Mel, back into Start. I wanted to lock myself in one of the filthy, graffitied bathroom stalls and not come out until daylight.

But once inside, I couldn’t help but find Char with my eyes. So I couldn’t help but find Pippa, too, next to him.

Her body was angled toward him, her button nose and rosebud lips turned up toward his face. From across the room, I could see his mouth moving as he spoke to her, his headphones resting on the table. She threw back her head and laughed, and Char laughed, too, as he placed his hand on her lower back.

I felt the warmth and weight of his hand as strongly as if I were the one in the booth right now, not Pippa. How many times had Char touched me in exactly that same way? And it always made me relax, because it was the most certain reassurance you will be coming home with me tonight.

Pippa would be going home with Char tonight. I could see it as clearly as either of them up there could. Maybe even more so, because I knew how to read a crowd. And I could read them both perfectly.

I felt my stomach flip, but it wasn’t because of Char. Not really. It was because I could pinpoint exactly how I had lost him. I knew because it was the same way I lost everyone.

Pete had offered me my own Friday night party, and I had accepted. I had been too precocious. Again. Again and again and again.

I had always thought that if I just did something extraordinary enough, then people would like me. But that wasn’t true. You will drive away everyone by being extraordinary. You will drive away your classmates and your friends, and tonight you will drive away Char. But you, you never learn your lesson. The world embraces ordinary. The world will never embrace you.

Of course Char wanted Pippa. It was so clear to me now: why he ended things with me, why he would keep Pippa around and around, no matter how much he didn’t care about her. He wanted a girl he could mold just the way he wanted. And me? No one can mold me. I know because I’ve tried.

So I turned and ran. I left them all behind, and I ran the whole way home.

When I got through the front door of my mom’s house, I saw the poetry castle looming in the sunroom in front of me. I was panting, my heart racing. I bent over, resting my hands on my knees, trying to steady myself. But nothing felt steady.

It was too late for me to turn into the sort of girl who people would like. It was too late for me to be normal and unremarkable. Fake Elise had seen this long before I had. Every word in that journal was true, truer than me fooling myself into thinking that maybe this new world of Start gave me a new lease on life, a new chance to alienate no one.

Silly. Silly Elise. It is too late for you.

But there was one person it wasn’t too late for.

Alex.

And, crying so hard that I didn’t know if I would ever stop, I tore her entire castle to shreds.

When I was done, silence set in. The only sounds were my ragged breathing and the buzzing of my cell phone. I sat down on the floor and opened it.

I had three missed calls from Vicky and a text message.

I THINK YOU’RE WRONG. I LIKE YOU. HARRY AND MEL DO TOO. SO THAT’S THREE TO START.

16

I woke up to screaming.

“I’m going to kill you! I’m going to cut you open with a sword and feed your insides to the dogs!” That was Alex. That’s how she thinks. She reads a lot of books.

“It’s not my fault! I didn’t do it! Help!” That was Neil.

My eyes were stuck together with dried tears. I rubbed them away and glanced at my bedside clock. 5:53 a.m.

“Alexandra Myers, stop that right now!” That was Steve.

“Violence is not the answer!” And Mom. Of course.

I slipped out of bed and padded out of my room. When I got to the sunroom, I stopped.

The ruins of Alex’s poetry castle looked even worse in the daylight than they had a few hours before. It wasn’t just broken. It was utterly destroyed.

Alex was weeping in the middle of the foyer, hugging a collection of torn papers to her chest. Neil was in Steve’s arms, wailing into his shoulder. Mom sat on the floor next to Alex, and I could see that she was crying, too.

“If Neil didn’t do it,” Alex said, “then who did?”

“Maybe Chew-Toy?” Steve suggested hopefully.

Hearing his name, Chew-Toy came trotting into the front hall, his tongue hanging happily out of his mouth.

“I hate you, Chew-Toy!” Alex screamed. She smacked him once and raised her hand to do it again, but he fled before she had the chance.

“Alex, violence is not the answer!” Mom shouted again. She grabbed Alex in a tight bear hug, pi

“Maybe it was a robber,” Steve suggested, again in that hopeful tone. Like he really, really wanted to believe that a burglar had broken into our house in the middle of the night just to wreck Alex’s poetry castle.

I took another step into the foyer. Mom, Steve, and Alex turned to look at me. Neil just kept crying into Steve’s shoulder.

“Good morning, Elise,” Mom said. And I could tell from the tone of her voice that she didn’t blame this on Chew-Toy, and she wasn’t hoping a robber was going to show up to take the blame. My mother knew exactly whose fault this was.

She stood up slowly and spoke to me, her words coming out low and shaky. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

I steadied myself against the wall. “I was just trying to…”

“To what?” Mom said sarcastically. “To hurt Alex? To hurt me? What?”

“To protect her,” I said. “Like a big sister should.”

Mom laughed, a bitter, clipped laugh. “Protect her,” she repeated. “I can’t believe you. This really takes the cake.”

“How do you not see it?” I snapped. Neil stopped crying. He looked back and forth between me and Mom, sucking on his thumb, even though he stopped sucking on his thumb a full year ago. “How do you not see what Alex is going to become if you let her go on like this? What kind of a person do you think she’s going to be?”