Famous in a Small Town(51)

I thought about what Brit said last night—How can you know you’re a good person if you’re never tested? We should all lie more often, just to make sure.

I stood there for a moment.

“Don’t you have work today?” I said.

She snorted, not bothering to lift her head, to even look at me. “I got fired.”

I took a deep breath in, let it out.

Then I turned and left.





thirty-nine


Brit was the last to arrive at band rehearsal on Monday, but she made it all the same, sliding into the empty seat next to Dash.

We got together at break time, Terrance and Dash taking Becca’s and Chelsea’s empty seats in front of me. I wasn’t sure if Brit would join us—I could see her fussing with her drum a bit out of the corner of my eye—but eventually she came over.

They all talked, for a bit, like nothing out of the ordinary had happened this past weekend, like Brit hadn’t taken us on a wild-goose chase followed by a catatonic freak-out.

Finally I couldn’t take it. “Are we gonna talk about Saturday?” I said, in the middle of Terrance’s story about work.

I was looking at Brit, but she was studiously ignoring me.

“What’s happening on Saturday?” Terrance said.

“Last Saturday.”

Brit looked up from her nails. At Terrance, not me. “What were you saying?”

“Brit. Seriously. You lied. To all of us. You said Megan’s brother was at the party and he wasn’t.”

It was quiet for a moment. Then Terrance cleared his throat awkwardly.

“I mean … technically not all of us, since Flora and I weren’t super involved in … whatever happened,” he said, glancing at Flora.

“Yeah, lucky you,” I replied, and Brit looked at me finally, eyes narrowed.

“Megan Pleasant doesn’t owe you shit, Sophie. Neither does Acadia, or the band, or me, or August, no one owes you anything. I feel like you don’t understand that.”

“Let’s not do this here,” Dash said, voice calm and even.

I shook my head. “It was messed up to track down Tanner like that, it was dangerous—”

“Yeah.” Brit nodded. “Yeah, maybe it was messed up to go after Tanner. But maybe it was also creepy as fuck to go to a random party just to meet some singer’s brother to try to convince him to get her to play at our stupid festival. Maybe that’s pretty messed up too, if you actually think about it.”

“You’re always so careless.” I blinked hard. “You are.”

“It’s not my fault you care too much! About everyone! And everything!”

“I would do anything for the people I love.”

“Yeah and maybe all one hundred and fifty-two people you love would like you to chill out and worry about your own damn self for like five minutes, Sophie! Maybe we’re drowning in your constant need to fix every little thing, Jesus Christ, maybe it’s suffocating us! And maybe if you stopped for a second and actually worried about yourself, you’d realize that getting Megan to come here isn’t gonna change jack shit.”

“It’ll help us raise the money,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

“If you think that’s what this is about to you, then you’re out of your mind.”

“Hey.” Suddenly Chelsea appeared next to Terrance, holding her flute like a baton. “Just an FYI, everyone else here doesn’t feel like hearing about your rando friend-group drama.”

“Fucking shut it, Chelsea,” Brit snapped without even skipping a beat.

“I don’t mind hearing it, to be honest,” Becca offered from next to her. “We’ll just hear about it from everyone else anyway.”

“Whatever.” I stared at Brit like I could stare through her. “That’s fine. If you want to go around lying and punching people and doing stupid shit, then that’s totally your business, isn’t it? If you want your life to be one huge unmitigated Coach Junior of a failure, then I should just sit back and fucking let it happen, right?”

Brit looked as though I had slapped her.

No one spoke, not even Chelsea and Becca, who probably wanted their seats back. Ms. Hill had moved back to the front of the room—she was going to start the practice back up—but none of us moved.

It felt like the floor was slipping away, like I couldn’t even feel the seat under me.

“All right, folks,” Ms. Hill said, and people were moving back to their spots, picking up their instruments.

I stood, cut past Chelsea and Becca, and left.



* * *



When I got home, I fell across my bed, pulled out my phone.

I opened a text to Ciara.

Brit doesn’t get to be mad at me, it isn’t fair. She says a million shitty things and I say one shitty thing and it’s supposed to be equal? Like she gets to be just as hurt as me? It shouldn’t work like that, it’s bullshit, this whole thing is bullshit, and I wish you were here, you were supposed to come back, I wish you were coming back

I stared at it, the letters swimming in front of my eyes, and then I deleted it.

I squeezed my eyes shut, clutched the phone to my chest. I almost jumped out of my skin when it buzzed with a message a few moments later.