Famous in a Small Town(66)

A smile. “Maybe whoever it was is super confident in your fundraising abilities,” she replied. “Maybe it won’t be very much money at all.”





fifty-seven


Brit and I were waiting around before band practice a few days later, sitting on the low wall outside the front of the school. The others weren’t here yet, so Brit scrolled through her phone, and I leafed through the sheet music to “Reach Out.”

And then I remembered what Heather had told us about Megan.

“Hey, you know what Heather said?”

“What?”

“Megan actually got one of our messages. She heard about the fall festival. Said it was from a girl who wrote on behalf of her friend.”

“Huh.”

She didn’t look up from her phone.

I poked her shoulder. “What did you write?”

She made a face. “It was probably one of your messages. You sent her like a million.”

“I never talked about one friend specifically. I only talked about the band in general.”

Brit shook her head. “I didn’t write her.”

“Brit.”

“I don’t know a Megan Pleasant.”

“Brittany Carter.”

She made a face. “It wasn’t much. Just … about you. And band. And how it was important to you, and how you’re important to me, and stupid stuff like that, whatever, can we go inside now?”

“Did you send it through Megan Wants to Hear from You?”

She gave me an odd look. “No, I contacted her agency, who contacted her publicist.”

“Why did that never come up in one single brainstorming session? Why didn’t you have us all do that?”

“I don’t know! I thought I’d give it a try! No one ever answered. I didn’t think it went anywhere. Or that Megan cared about that kind of stuff anyway.”

“Of course she does. Megan loves her fans more than anything.”

“No.” Brit shook her head and turned to me. “No, Sophie. For real. Look at me for a sec, because I just … need you to understand.” I looked over at her. “Megan Pleasant is just a person. A regular person who feels and thinks and sleeps and has diarrhea sometimes, and probably hates some parts of her job, and likes other parts, and in the end, if she’s smart, she loves herself more than anything.”

“She—”

“I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I think it’s … the best thing, actually. We should all love ourselves more than anything. You should put yourself before everything else, because in the end, you’re the only person you’ve got, right? You’re the only one you can really depend on.”

I shook my head. “I’m always gonna put the people I love first. Always.”

“I know that,” she said. “I know. I hate that about you.”

“Opposites,” I murmured.

“You make these, like, declarations and you believe them. God, you talk about Flora, but it’s you who thinks that everyone is as good as you are, everyone’s willing to give as much, and I just … I don’t want you to be disappointed by anyone ever.”

I wouldn’t say I worried about Flora. But I think Brit wouldn’t say she worried about me either. It was probably the same sort of feeling.

Right now she frowned out at the parking lot, and when she spoke, it was gruff: “I don’t want you to be disappointed by me ever.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just knocked my shoulder against hers, and we both watched as Flora and Terrance approached from across the parking lot.

They were still a little ways away when Flora stopped. She gestured Terrance to her, put one hand up and braced herself on Terrance’s shoulder while she adjusted her shoe. She nearly tipped off center—he had to reach out and grab her. Her laugh rang out, a loud delighted peal.

Brit’s gaze lingered on Flora, and the look on her face was one that I had never seen before. It was soft, and fond, and I flashed suddenly on Ravi, looking at Ciara as she held up two ice cream cones, grinning broadly. Those look great, he said, reaching for one. I know, she replied. That’s why they’re both for me.

I almost said “Oh” aloud, but caught myself. Oh.

Maybe I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was. Or maybe I didn’t know the people around me as well as I thought I did. Or maybe—maybe, maybe—the people around me were more than I was capable of imagining, contained more to them than I could fathom. Everyone had little pieces they kept to themselves, the same way I listed my schools, or reread my text messages—I knew that deep down. But somehow, you feel like you’re the only one who’s got undiscovered parts, when it’s your best friends in the whole world in question. You feel like you must be the only one holding something back, when you knew someone as intrinsically as I knew Brit.

And yet.

She looked over at me. “Should we head in?”





fifty-eight


My phone buzzed that night. I had been in the middle of a text conversation with August about a new book I picked up at Bygones. It was by the same author as the previous one—Summer Burn—and I told August I was going to text it to him line by line.

But when I checked my phone, though, it wasn’t August with another— PLEASE STOP