Читать книгу Better than Perfect - Melissa Kantor - Страница 11

Standing in the parking lot, amazed that so much had happened and yet it was still light out, I realized I didn’t have my car. It reminded me of being an underclassman, when Sofia and I would go to Roosevelt Field Mall or the Miracle Mile and then have to call one of our mothers to come get us. Well, it wasn’t like my mother could come get me now. I crossed the street and walked into a pub with MCMANUS’S written across the front in loopy green neon. Inside, everything was either dark wood or green. It was the kind of bar Sofia and I had discovered we could usually get served in even without fake IDs. Standing next to the hostess’s podium, I couldn’t imagine how walking into a bar, ordering a glass of wine, and getting it handed to me had ever made me happy and giggly or how it ever would again.

I was seventeen years old and my mother might have just tried to kill herself. How would anything ever make me happy again?

The hostess asked if she could help me in a way that made me think she’d asked more than once. I snapped to attention and asked if she had the number of a cab company.

“Island Taxi’s right around the corner, hon. You’re probably better off just going over there rather than calling.” I must have looked like a crazy person, because she offered to get somebody to take me, but I thanked her and said I was okay. She didn’t seem convinced, and she watched me as I headed to the door. I thought maybe there was blood on my tank top, but when I got onto the sidewalk and checked, I didn’t see any.

The cab dropped me off in front of my house. I paid the man and got out, then stood on the lawn trying to force myself to go inside. I was usually pretty self-disciplined—in swim meets, if the stakes were high enough, I could push myself past the point where my lungs felt like they were going to explode, and even though public speaking terrified me, I was one of the best debaters on the team. But standing on my front lawn, which was damp from the early evening sprinkling it automatically got every other day, I knew there was no way I could take my key out of my bag, put it in the front door of my house, and walk through it.

Because what was I supposed to do once I got inside my house—clean my mother’s blood off the bathroom floor?

I took my phone out of my bag even though I wasn’t thinking about calling anyone. Jason’s email was still unopened. I’d gotten it only a few hours earlier, but thinking back to that moment in my hallway when I’d decided to open it after waking my mom was like remembering something that had happened to someone else. Still, I automatically clicked on it and started reading.

J, I love you and miss you more than I can say. But right now I am digesting an unbelievable meal and I have to admit that it is making the pain of your absence easier to bear …

I hit reply without bothering to finish reading what he wrote.

Dear Jason, I have something very bad to tell you. Last night or early this morning, my mother might have tried to …

But then I stopped typing. Had she or hadn’t she? I deleted might have tried to and instead wrote swallowed some pills. The words looked bizarre. And anyway, my mother had been swallowing some pills all summer. What she’d done last night was swallow too many pills. But how many? One too many? Two too many? A bottle too many?

And how was I supposed to put what I’d just seen in an email anyway? I tried to imagine Jason, his stomach full of some insanely delectable meal, sitting on the terrace at the villa the Robinsons had rented and getting an email from me in which I said my mother might or might not have tried to kill herself. There was just no way. I had to call him.

But he didn’t have service on his cell phone in Europe. Neither did Grace. Mark had service on his work cell phone, but I didn’t have that number. My mom’s phone might have it, though. I reached into my bag for my keys, but once I had them in my hand, I couldn’t bring myself to put them in the front door. Opening the door would mean going into the house. Going into the house would mean going upstairs to get my mother’s phone. Getting my mother’s phone would mean going into her room and seeing … everything.

And anyway, Jason had been sitting on the terrace after dinner hours ago. By now his family was sound asleep. You didn’t call people up in the middle of the night in the middle of their vacation and tell them your mother had taken too many pills. You just didn’t do something like that.

I put the keys back in my bag and walked across the lawn to the driveway and got into my car. I put my hands on the steering wheel and turned it gently from side to side, like I used to do when I was a little kid and my parents would let me pretend to drive. I wanted to be someplace—anyplace—that wasn’t my house, and I turned the ignition and backed out of the driveway, not even sure where I was going, just desperate to keep moving.

Deciding to find Sofia at the club happened when I’d already been driving in the opposite direction for almost twenty minutes. There was nobody behind me and nobody coming toward me, so I made an illegal U-turn so sharp my tires squealed in protest and headed toward the Milltown Country Club.

It was hot in the car, so I rolled the windows up and put the air conditioner on, but that only increased the sensation I had of being trapped, so I lowered the windows and left the air conditioner on. I cranked the volume up on the radio, but I couldn’t find a song I could stand listening to, and I turned the music off. Then it was too quiet in the car, and I turned it back on and plugged my phone in, glancing down at the screen and searching for something to listen to, then looking back up at the road, then back at my phone. I was skimming through a bunch of random titles when I flew past the sign for the Milltown Country Club. Keeping one hand on my phone, I made a hard left into the driveway.

I didn’t see the driver of the van that had been coming from the opposite direction and that was also making a turn into the Milltown Country Club’s driveway. There was the sound of honking and of rubber screaming against pavement as he spun his van far over to the side of the driveway, narrowly missing one of the enormous oak trees that lined the drive. My stomach hit my throat as I slammed on my brakes and braced my arms against the steering wheel. But instead of the crunch of glass and metal, there was only the sound of a guy cursing his brains out.

I leaped out of my car. “I’m so sorry,” I said. My voice and my hands were shaking. “That was all my fault. I’m really sorry.”

“Jesus, woman!” said the driver. He had his head against the back of the seat, so I couldn’t see him until I got up to the side of the van and put my head near the window. He was a little older than I was—maybe in college. He was also odd looking; it was almost as if his face was made up of different people’s faces—nose from one person, lips from another. His eyes were very blue.

“I’m really sorry,” I said again, squinting into the dark van. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Clearly,” he said.

“Are you okay?” asked a girl from the passenger seat in lightly accented British English. Like the driver, she had bright blue eyes and black hair, but where he was weird looking and bloated, she was beautiful, her blunt-cut bob accenting sharp cheekbones and a delicate chin.

“I’m okay,” I said, because it wasn’t like I was going to tell a complete stranger that almost killing myself and two other people was hardly the worst thing that had happened to me all day. “Are you okay?” I asked her. “I’m really sorry.”

“You’ve got to stop saying that,” said the driver. “It’s getting on my nerves.”

“For Christ’s sake, Sean, she’s trying to be polite,” said a male voice from inside the van. It had an accent like the girl’s. Hearing another person in the van revealed the magnitude of the accident I’d almost just had. That was three people I’d come close to killing. My legs started to shake.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” asked the girl. “You look a little done in.”

The side door of the van opened, and a boy got out. He must have been in eighth or ninth grade, and he was holding an electric guitar.

“Hi,” he said. “You okay?” He had the same eyes as the driver and the passenger, and the same black hair. I’d nearly taken out an entire family with my shitty driving.

“I’m okay,” I said. “And again … I’m really sorry. And I’m sorry for saying sorry!” I added before the guy in the driver’s seat could object.

I went back to my car. It was lucky no one had tried to enter the club driveway in the past five minutes, since I was stopped directly in the middle of it. There were black skid marks leading up to where I’d stopped and more leading to the van’s tires. Just looking at how close they came before veering apart made my stomach rise up.

“Drive carefully, would you?” the driver called out to me, and even though it was a harsh thing to say and he said it harshly, there was something in his voice that might have been concern. He watched me get into my car before pulling back onto the driveway ahead of my car.

Sitting in the driver’s seat, I could feel my whole body twitching. I would gladly have curled up in a little ball in the backseat and lain there, shaking uncontrollably, until Sofia got off work and drove me home. But I was parked in the middle of the road. And Sofia didn’t even know I was coming to see her. She didn’t know anything.

At the thought of what I had to tell her, I started shaking harder.

I wasn’t the kind of person who sat in her car shaking too hard to drive it, and the fact that that was exactly what I was doing started to make me angry. “Get ahold of yourself, Juliet.” I said it firmly, the way my mom had talked to me when I’d wanted to stay in bed all day. “Get. It. Together. Now.”

A few yards up the driveway, the van stopped, and I had the terrible feeling they’d discovered that something was wrong with their car after all. I gripped my hands into fists and tried to get control of my shaking. “Stop it now, Juliet. This is no big deal. If there’s some kind of problem, all you need is your license and registration.” The sound of my own voice made me feel better. I leaned forward to get the registration out of the glove compartment just as I heard the door of the van slide open. When I sat up, I saw that a guy in a white T-shirt and cargo shorts was jogging toward me. I wondered how many more people were in the van. It was turning out to be some kind of fucking clown car.

The guy bent down and put his head through the passenger-side window of my car. Sofia complained that because I had Jason, I never noticed how hot other guys were, but this guy was objectively hot. He had the same blue eyes as the other people in the van and the same black hair. His shoulders were broad under his T-shirt. If Sofia had been sitting next to me, she would have texted me He’s hawt.

He gave me a slightly nervous smile. “My sister thought you might need a hand driving.” Like the girl and the younger boy, he had a British accent. “She said she’s always shaken up after a near miss like that. Which should tell you something about her driving. Do you want me to drive you up to the parking lot?”

“No, I’m fine,” I said. My voice was clipped; I sounded like my mom when she talked to a pushy waiter.

Neither of us said anything for a minute. All you could hear was the quiet, except for a sound almost like a moth hitting a screen. When I turned to face the front of the car, I saw that my hand, which was holding the car registration, was shaking so much that the card was flapping against the steering wheel. I could tell that the boy was seeing it also.

“It’s no trouble for me to drive you,” he said finally.

“Yeah,” I said after another long pause during which I studied the black skid marks on the asphalt. “Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad idea.”

My legs were rubbery, so rubbery I wondered if I could stand up, so I slid over to the passenger seat. The guy waited until I was settled, then walked around the car, opened the door, and got in. He slid the seat back, closed the door, and started the car up the hill. Neither of us said a word.

“I’m Declan, by the way.”

“I’m Juliet,” I said. I looked out the window. As we crested the hill, the two rows of trees ended and a wide lawn opened up in front of us, topped by the enormous clubhouse. A green-and-white awning swayed gently over the wide porch. There was the tinkle of piano music that I knew was coming from the lounge just on the other side of the veranda. Politics aside, there was something comforting about being at the Milltown Country Club, and I wanted to wrap it around me like a cashmere sweater.

In front of us, the van wound around to the side of the building, a route I’d never taken before. The guy driving my car—I’d forgotten his name already—followed it for a few yards, then suddenly slammed the brakes. I jerked forward. “Sorry,” he said. “We’re the band for tonight, so I was going to the service entrance. But there must be a members’ parking lot.”

“No, I’m not a member,” I said. I purposely didn’t add but my boyfriend is. When Jason and I started going out, I referred to him as my boyfriend about every five seconds. But freshman year, another couple in our group of friends got together, and I had to listen to Bethany say my boyfriend ten thousand times a day. Ever since then, I tried never to say those words. “I’m going to see my friend,” I explained. “She works here. So, I mean, the service entrance is fine.”

“Great,” he said, driving again. “Maybe you and your friend will come to the show.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.” I was going to tell Sofia what had happened and then … well, I didn’t know what then. But I certainly wasn’t going to sit through a concert.

The driveway ran between two rows of hedges along the lowest level of the back of the building, a part of the club I’d never seen. I was rubbing my hands against my thighs as if they were sweaty, which they weren’t, and I imagined that the guy was glancing my way and wondering how he’d gotten stuck driving a mentally unstable girl the five hundred yards she was too shaky to drive. When the driveway opened up into the parking lot, he swung my car into a spot next to the van.

“Here you go,” he said, turning off the car and handing me my keys.

I took the keys from him, opened the door, and headed for the building, relieved that my legs were holding me up. I’d walked a few feet from the car before I realized I hadn’t even thanked him for the ride.

He was just closing the door of my car behind him when I got back. “Thanks,” I said, embarrassed by my rudeness.

“No problem,” he said, and he seemed to mean it.

“I really appreciate your driving me,” I added.

“It’s no big deal,” he said.

There was a loud bang from the far side of the van, and the girl from the passenger seat said to someone I couldn’t see, “Do you have to be such a complete wanker?” In reply, a voice I was sure was the driver’s answered, “Blow me.” Both of them sounded pretty annoyed, but my driver didn’t bother investigating.

“Look, I don’t know you, but are you sure you’re okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” I said. Immediately, to my complete and utter humiliation, my eyes started to well up.

He took a step toward me. “Jesus,” he whispered. He patted the pockets of his cargo shorts, and on the third try extracted a couple of napkins. “They’re clean,” he assured me, pressing them into my hand.

“I’m really …” I blew my nose. “I’m really okay.” Since I was still crying, I probably wasn’t making the most convincing case for my okayness.

“Can I help you find your friend?” he asked.

I balled up the napkins and stuffed them in my pocket. “I’m just … I’ve had a really hard day. I’m sorry that … I’m really okay.”

He studied my face, not rudely but curiously. “Well, okay then,” he said finally. “I hope everything’s … okay for you.”

“Yeah,” I said again. “Thanks.” I suddenly remembered his name. “Thanks, Declan.”

He gave me a two-fingered salute. “Anytime.”

Feeling like a total ass for losing it in front of Declan, I headed toward the main house, which rose up over the parking lot like a mountain. There was a sign above the glass-and-wooden door I’d been walking toward that read EMPLOYEES ONLY. I opened it and went inside, where I found myself in a long, low-ceilinged corridor lit by fluorescent lights. It was nothing like the wide, carpeted hallways with their rococo moldings and wall sconces holding faux candles that I knew from upstairs at the club. I passed metal carts piled high with dirty coffee cups, used plates, and crumpled napkins, following the sound of loudly banging pots and pans, and then, pushing through another glass-and-wooden door, I found myself in the enormous kitchen.

There were at least a dozen people running around, all wearing hairnets and black aprons with elaborate white script Ms on them. At first I didn’t think Sofia was there, but then I spotted her over in a relatively quiet corner, standing in front of an enormous tray of pastry puffs that she was methodically filling with cream from a pastry bag.

I crossed the kitchen, half expecting someone to stop me, but everyone was too intent on whatever they were doing to care about who I was. Sofia jumped and spun around when I tapped her on the shoulder.

“Juliet!” She popped out one of her earbuds. “What are you doing here?”

Having started bawling when Declan asked me if I was okay, I was surprised that I delivered my news to Sofia without a single tear.

“My mom’s in the hospital,” I said. “She … she swallowed some pills.”

“Oh my God,” Sofia whispered. She put down the bag of cream she’d been holding and wrapped her arms around me.

I hugged her back for a long minute, then stepped away. “I’m okay,” I said, even though she hadn’t asked. Suddenly I didn’t want sympathy and I didn’t want to be hugged. “They’re not sure what happened. They won’t know until … I don’t know when, actually.” As I realized I had no idea how they were going to figure out what had happened with my mom, I gave a weird laugh, almost like a bark. Were they just going to ask her? Mrs. Newman, you were found passed out on the floor of your bathroom. Did you mean to take too many pills, or was it an accident?

Sofia watched me with an odd look on her face, waiting for me to explain, but all I said was, “I just … I don’t want to go home.”

“No, of course not.” She started to untie her apron. “We’ll go to my house.”

“Let’s go, Taylor,” said a thin guy with a beard carrying another tray of cream puffs. “This is no time to socialize.”

“Frank, I have to go,” said Sofia, pulling off her hairnet. “I have an emergency.”

“You’re not going anywhere, Taylor,” said the guy, carefully placing the tray down. “We’ve got two hundred people for dinner. Two seatings. You’re here until midnight.”

He sounded harsh, but it didn’t seem to frighten Sofia. “Frank, I’m serious. I have to go.”

Frank pushed the tray of pastry shells farther back on the table and turned to face us. Now I could see why she wasn’t scared of him. He was a big guy and he had a beard, but he probably wasn’t much older than we were.

“Look, Taylor, I want to help you and, you know”—he glanced at me—“your friend. But I can’t let you go. Seriously. Mitch will have my ass.”

“Frank—” Sofia started.

But I interrupted her. “Sofia, it’s okay. Really. I’ll just … I’ll wait for you.”

“Juliet, that’s like”—she checked a clock on the wall—“five hours.”

“It’s fine,” I said.

“Do you want to go home and wait for me? I’ll give you my keys. My mom will be there.” She turned to get her bag.

“No!” I grabbed her arm, my voice sharper than I’d meant it to be. I didn’t want to sit with Sofia’s mother. Suddenly, all I wanted was to be by myself.

“Juliet, what are you going to do until midnight?” she asked, so anxious I almost thought she was about to start crying.

Sofia’s being upset only made me more calm. “I’ll be fine.”

“Do you want to just stay here? They’ll never notice you. There’s like a thousand members here tonight. You could say you’re a guest of the Robinsons.”

“Taylor,” snapped Frank, “we’ve got to get this tray finished. Let’s go.”

Sofia ignored him. “Seriously. Just stay here.”

“Sure,” I said, but I couldn’t really imagine saying I was a guest of Jason’s family when I wasn’t. Grace and Mark weren’t chill about things like that. If I called and told them where I was, they’d probably let me have whatever I wanted. But they wouldn’t like it if I started signing their names for stuff without asking.

“Just go to the library and take a book or something, okay? I’ll call you as soon as I can.” She hugged me again. “It’s going to be okay,” she whispered in my ear.

I hugged her back, then recrossed the kitchen, walked back down the long, empty corridor, and stepped outside into the sticky summer evening. Even though my phone was in my pocket, I’d missed three calls, one from my aunt Kathy and two from my dad. They’d both texted me, too. My aunt’s text said she was taking the red-eye and she’d be at my house in the morning. My dad had just written: Where are you?

I didn’t want to text my dad back. Why should I have to tell him where I was? He was a smart guy; let him figure it out himself.

I texted my aunt and told her I’d meet her at the house. Then I looked up at the darkening sky. I pictured Jason asleep in the villa his parents had rented, pictured waking him up to tell him about my mom. He’d be shocked, like Sofia had been. And then he’d say, just like she had, It’s going to be okay, J. Everything’s going to be okay.

But was it? How could everything be okay after what had happened?

There was a garbage can right next to me, and I had the crazy fantasy of tossing my phone into it so I wouldn’t have to deal with any more calls or texts from people. After that, I could just get in my car and drive away. I’d find a job in a diner somewhere, waiting tables. I’d been planning on applying early to Harvard. Surely I could get a job waitressing.

I stood there, holding my phone and looking at the garbage can for a while, and then I chickened out. If I ran away, they’d find me. And once they found me, I’d have to come back. And when I came back, everyone would know I was the crazy girl who’d run away to work at a diner.

Instead of running away from home, I texted my dad. I told him I was okay. I told him I was with Sofia. I told him I would meet Kathy at the house in the morning. I asked him to stop texting me.

Because I was a good girl. And good girls didn’t throw away their phones or leave home or make their parents worry about them for no reason.

I’d left my bag in the car, and now that I had several hours to kill, I headed back to retrieve it. When I got to my car, Declan, the girl from the passenger seat, the guy who’d been driving, and the kid who’d gotten out of the van earlier were talking to an older guy in a blue button-down and a pair of khakis. He was writing something on a clipboard, and as I approached, he ripped off a piece of paper and handed it to the girl.

“Display that prominently on your dashboard so security can see it,” he said, and she nodded.

“What’s with this one?” he asked, gesturing at my car with his elbow.

The girl opened her mouth to respond, but before she could say she had no idea whose car it was, I said, “That’s mine.” My voice had an edge to it.

The man swung around in my direction. He was simultaneously pale and sunburned, like an egg someone had roasted. “And who exactly are you?”

In an instant, it was clear that the man embodied the Milltown Country Club fascist state Sofia had spoken of.

“I’m Juliet,” I said.

“Should this mean something to me?” he asked, sarcastically. He held his clipboard out to me. “If I look, will I find your name on this list? Or should I be asking you to leave now?”

My desire to tell him to go fuck himself was kept under control by the fact that if he asked me to leave, I’d have no place to go. I glared at him, furious and scared and silent.

It was Declan who answered him. “She’s with us.”

The girl, the driver, and the other boy turned to Declan, but none of them said anything to contradict him.

“She’s with you?” asked the roasted-egg man, his voice dripping doubt as he looked from the four black-haired, blue-eyed people who’d gotten out of the aging van to me, blond and brown-eyed and standing in front of my spanking new Honda, my parents’ birthday gift to me just four months ago.

“Tambourine,” said Declan. He shook the tambourine I hadn’t seen he was holding.

A car drove into the parking lot and pulled into a spot all the way at the other end. I could almost smell the egg man’s desire to go and bully the new arrival vying with his desire to stay here and bully us. The sound of the other car’s door slamming shut decided him. He glanced at my license plate, jotted something down on the piece of paper on his clipboard, tore it off, and handed it to me.

“Place this prominently on your dashboard.”

I took the paper from him and nodded.

He glared at us. “And don’t let me catch any of you wandering around the grounds, or I’ll throw the whole bunch of you out. This is a private club, and you’re here to perform, not enjoy yourselves.” With that, he turned and marched across the lot calling, “Hey! Hey!” to the guy who’d just parked and was heading toward the kitchen carrying a large green box.

“Care to tell us what this is all about?” asked the driver, turning to Declan.

“Nothing,” said Declan. “It’s fine.”

“It’s fine?” repeated the driver, sounding as sarcastic as the egg man.

“Oh, Sean, don’t be an arse,” said the girl. She came over to me. Fine boned and pale, she was even prettier up close. She might have been the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen in real life. “I’m Sinead. This is my cousin Sean. And this is my little brother, Danny.” She pointed at the boy next to her, and he gave me a shy wave. I gave him a wave back. “And I guess you already know my brother Declan.”

“Hi,” I said. “I’m Juliet.”

“Hi,” said Declan. “Again.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Again.” I gave him a nervous smile.

“No problem,” he said, and his face stayed serious.

“Well, this is just fucking great,” said Sean, slapping his thigh in frustration. “What are we supposed to do with her?”

“I really appreciate your helping me with that guy,” I said. “But I won’t bother you anymore. Seriously.” I backed away from the van. “See? You won’t have to deal with me for the rest of the night. I’m outta here.”

But as I turned to go, Sean called out, “Oh no you don’t!” His voice was authoritative. I turned back around. “If Mr. Stick Up the Ass finds you on the grounds, he’s going to toss all of us out,” Sean reminded me. “And I for one don’t want to lose a gig I worked very hard to get.”

Sinead snorted.

“That’s enough out of you, missy,” said Sean to Sinead.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I said it to Sean, but I meant it for all of them. “I really don’t know how I ended up being your problem. I’m just waiting for my friend to finish working.” I could hear my voice shaking slightly, but I hoped anyone who didn’t know me pretty well wouldn’t notice.

I saw Sinead and Declan exchange a look, and then she said, “Are you kidding? You know what a relief it is to get a break from all this testosterone? Not that you have that much, Sean,” she added quickly.

“I’m surrounded by comedians,” said Sean, walking around the van. From the far side of it, he yelled, “All right, then, you’re going to be pulling your weight if you’re sticking with us, Jules.” He hit the nickname hard, like he knew nobody called me that and he was daring me to tell him not to.

I didn’t give him the satisfaction of correcting him; I just let Sinead guide me around the van, where I stood with her while Sean kept calling me Jules as he loaded me up with cords and told me to follow Danny up the hill to the stage.

By the time we’d set up all the equipment, I was dripping sweat and my arms and legs ached. I couldn’t believe how much work it was to set up for a concert. We’d dragged mics and mic stands and amps and guitars and a drum set up the hill from the parking lot for what felt like hours. But when I checked my phone, it was only eight fifteen. Everyone in the band was calling me Jules, and the unfamiliar nickname only intensified the sense that I was living in an alternate reality, one that was light-years away from my actual life.

I lay on my back staring up at the sky while Danny, Declan, and Sinead tested their mics and Sean hovered over a man Danny had told me was the club’s sound guy as he adjusted the levels. Every once in a while there would be the loud screech of feedback, and then everything would go quiet and then they would start again.

My mother either tried to commit suicide or accidentally overdosed.

I lay on the stage, repeating the sentence in my mind as if repetition might make it comprehensible. But the words remained completely unreal to me, detached from any kind of meaning they might try to convey. Overhead, clouds passed slowly in a stratospheric breeze, and I felt as far away from earth as they were.

“Okay, Sinead, let’s hear it,” called Sean.

“She just went to get some water,” Danny answered.

“Oh, well, that’s great then,” said Sean. “I guess we’ll all sit around twiddling our thumbs while we wait for Her Highness to return.”

“Just give me a second and I’ll do it,” Declan said. He was taping wires down with bright blue tape.

“How about you, Jules? You don’t exactly seem to be overworked.”

I sat up. “What?”

Sean was standing next to the guy at the soundboard, his arms crossed over his chest, a beer in one hand. “Talk into the mic,” Sean said. “Testing: one, two. Just like in the movies.”

I got to my feet, crossed the stage, and stood at the microphone. The perfect lawn stretched out all around me, as if the stage were a ship floating on a broad emerald ocean. Beyond the edge of the hill, the actual water appeared, then disappeared into the horizon.

“Testing: one, two,” I said. “Testing: one, two.” There was a loud screech, and suddenly Danny was at my side.

“Here,” he said, moving the stand about a foot away from where it had been. “Try this.”

“Thanks,” I said, following him and standing at the mic in its new location.

“Keep going,” Sean called out.

“Um, testing. One. Two. Testing.” On the second testing, my voice boomed out, shockingly loud.

“You’re killing me with that testing,” said Sean. “Sing something. Sing ‘Happy Birthday.’”

Obediently, I started singing. “Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear … someone. Happy birthday to you.”

There was silence. In the distance, Sinead appeared, a pyramid of water bottles balanced in her arms.

“Let’s have that again,” said Sean, but he didn’t say it with quite the same venom with which he’d said everything else.

I sang “Happy Birthday” one more time. By the time I was finished, Sinead was standing beside Sean. “Holy shit,” she called out. “Jules, you have a great voice.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“No joke, Jules,” said Danny from over by the drums. “You can really sing.”

“Okay,” I said, not really able to process their compliments. They were all staring at me. “Do you need me to sing it again?”

“Ah, yeah,” said the sound guy, who had a mustache so big I was pretty sure it was ironic. “If you could sing it one more time, that would be great.”

I sang the song for a third time. It didn’t sound like anything special, certainly no different than it sounded every other time I’d sung it. When I was finished, everyone clapped. I felt weird standing up there with people looking at me, so I just asked if we were finished, went over to the edge of the stage, and sat down.

When it was time for the concert to start, everyone but me went off to change. Contrary to gender stereotypes, Sinead was the first one done, wearing a tight black dress and a pair of high-heeled black pumps. She stood at the edge of the parking lot, and a minute later the boys joined her. They walked toward the stage, where I was sitting, the guys in black suits and white shirts, Sinead in her dress. I wondered what it was like to be a member of their let’s-be-in-a-band-together-and-bicker-but-really-all-get-along-and-love-each-other family. You could tell just by looking at them that all of their parents were happily married, that nobody in their family had tried to commit suicide or overdosed, that they gathered around the piano at holidays and sang seasonal songs.

I kind of hated all of them.

I looked out at the lawn. Little lights were strung up in the few trees scattered picturesquely across the grounds. People were wandering around eating hors d’oeuvres and drinking from tall glasses. All of them looked happy and carefree, enjoying a warm summer’s night at their club. I wondered what would happen if I opened my mouth, started screaming, and refused to stop. Would the roasted-egg guy throw me out? Would he have me arrested?

Would the police put me in a hospital bed with restraints on my arms?

My phone buzzed and I picked it up. Sofia.

Sofia: how r u?

I reread our previous exchanges.

Sofia: how r u?

Me: im ok.

Sofia: how r u?

Me: i am okay.

Here it was for the third time, and I typed a new response.

Me: i am fucking freaking out, sofia, how do you think I am?

I stared at the screen of my phone.

Don’t make a scene, Juliet.

I deleted what I’d just typed. im ok, I wrote, and I put the phone back on the stage beside me.

“God, this crowd is ancient,” said Sinead, standing at the edge of the stage next to where I was sitting with my legs hanging down.

“We’ll have them rocking in the aisles,” said Declan, surveying the audience along with her. When they were standing next to each other, it was clear how much Declan and Sinead looked alike—even more than they looked like Danny and Sean and Sean and Danny looked like each other. Declan and Sinead even stood the same way, both arms crossed over their chests, each hand holding the opposite bicep.

“Are you guys twins?” I asked, staring at them.

“Irish twins,” said Sinead. Her teeth were very white against her bright red lipstick. “We’re eleven months apart. And Danny’s our little brother. He’s going into first form.”

“They don’t call it that here,” said Sean, who was standing on the ground just below us. The way he said it made me think it wasn’t the first time he’d had to tell her. “It’s ninth grade. And you are going to be a junior and Declan’s going to be a senior.” He popped open the beer he was holding.

“Right,” said Sinead, snapping her fingers. “Junior. Senior. It sounds so American.”

“We are American,” Declan reminded her. He gave me an apologetic look. “We’ve been living in Beijing for the past seven years. Our dad just got transferred back to New York in June.”

“Start spreading the news!” Sean sang, and he took a swig of beer.

“I thought you were British,” I said, confused. “You have British accents.”

Sinead laughed. “We were born in London. We lived there before we moved to Beijing.”

The sound guy came over to the stage. “Okay, you guys start at nine?” His mustache was truly astonishing.

“That we do,” said Sean.

“I guess it’s time, then,” said the guy. “Break a leg.”

“Thanks,” said Sinead.

Suddenly everyone was moving around the stage, gathering instruments, talking into a mic, doing a quick roll on the drums. I felt idiotic sitting up there and being in the way. I hopped off the stage just as Declan called out, “Hey! Jules!”

I turned around. He was holding a tambourine out in my direction. “Do you want to play with us?”

I shook my head. “I really can’t.”

“A cat could play the tambourine.” He shook it lightly. “Haven’t you ever dreamed of being a rock star?”

Even if I’d wanted to play with them—which I didn’t—I was sure that shaking a tambourine would shake loose something inside me that was already barely staying attached. “No. But thanks. Really.”

He looked at me like he wanted to ask me something, then dropped the arm holding the tambourine to his side. “See you after the show,” he said.

The show was completely insane.

At first, none of the people on the lawn were even remotely listening to the band. Sinead said, “We’re the Clovers” into the microphone, and I was literally the only person who noticed. As Sinead counted them in for the first song, I had enough time to try to think about how I’d have to find something nice to say when they came offstage knowing they’d bombed, and then Sinead finished the count and Declan started playing the guitar.

The notes were crisp, almost twangy. Danny joined them on the drums and Sean started playing the bass, and by the time Sinead started singing, people were already filing toward the stage. “I found a picture of you,” she began, and her voice was beautiful but there was a slight growl to it, almost like she was mad about what she was singing. “What hijacked my world that night …”

I’d heard “Back on the Chain Gang” before, but it wasn’t a song I stopped to listen to if I happened to be playing the radio in my car and it came on. Now, for the first time, I could feel how good it was, how the notes pushed into your blood and bones. By the time the song ended, there must have been a hundred people standing on the lawn in front of the stage, and the audience kept getting bigger. Sinead was right—it was an older crowd. But I spotted some younger people, maybe junior high kids, and they were dancing along with their parents.

They went right into a song I didn’t know. “Been running so long I’ve nearly lost all track of time,” Sinead belted out, and by now there was no one on the lawn who wasn’t listening to the band except for an elderly couple standing about as far away as they could get without actually leaving the grounds of the club.

I edged around to the back of the stage where no one could see me. I’d been right about the music shaking something loose inside me, and as they played I let myself sob, grateful that the band was loud enough that no one could hear me cry.