Kissing Ted Callahan (and Other Guys)(9)

“No more than usual,” I say. “No, it’s just, it’s important, getting shows, having people see us.”

“Yeah,” Reid says, looking right at me, “people, in general.”

“Yeah,” I say in my Reid voice. Captain Chipmunk. “Not three specific girls or anything.”

“What are you guys even talking about?” Nathan strums his guitar a little. The tuning is not good. “Crap, not there.”

“Almost,” Lucy says like he needs validation.

“What about this?” he says, and they do the thing where they make eye contact and play notes and chords at the same time to make sure they’re literally in tune with each other. They’ve done this forever, way before the Incident, but now I feel like I should leave the room while it happens.

“Riley and I were just saying we should look for gigs.” Reid always sounds diplomatic at practice.

“Yeah,” Nathan says. “I can talk to my cousin again.”

“Why?” I ask. “Is he marrying a second person?”

“Ooh, it’s like fundamentalist cults,” says Lucy, since she loves reading about cults and other creepy groups of people. “We can learn haunting religious music.”

“Reid can grow an old-fashioned beard,” I say, which causes Reid to clutch his hands over his bare chin, which probably isn’t up for growing a beard, old-fashioned or otherwise, yet. “We can braid our hair.”

“Guys.” Nathan only needs one word to express how annoying our tangents are. “Jack liked our set, and so maybe he knows someone.”

“Great idea,” Lucy says.

“I had an idea, too,” Reid says.

That’s news to me.

“I just thought of this. What about the fall formal?”

“What about the fall formal?” Lucy wrinkles her nose. I feel this surge of relief my friend hasn’t become obsessed with dances and froufrou dresses and romantic nights in a school gym just because she has a boyfriend.

“They sometimes hire a band, right? Why not us?”

Actually, it isn’t a bad idea. All of us agree.

“It’s in a few weeks,” Nathan says. “We have to move fast on this.”

“I’ll talk to Ms. Belman tomorrow,” Reid says. For his free period he’s an office assistant. “I don’t know where they normally find bands for events.”

“It doesn’t count as going to the fall formal if you just play there, does it?” I ask. I’m not against high school functions in general, but even with my Hunt for Ted Callahan in full swing, the thought of intentionally going to a school dance makes me feel like the kind of person I never want to be.

“Definitely not, Ri,” Reid says. “We can still be cool.”

We all laugh at that and start playing our newest song, “Garage.” It’s sloppy, but it’s starting to sound like an actual song and not all of us just randomly jamming. The moment when that happens is like magic, how it all gels together and settles into something bigger than the four of us and our instruments.

I remember always loving music. Dad played CDs constantly when I was little, and I thought all kids grew up listening to Nirvana and the Pixies nonstop. When I was in kindergarten and everyone else thought they’d grow up to be firemen or nurses or horses (to be fair, that was just Holly Long, and she’s still weird), I insisted I’d grow up to be a rock star. (I accompanied these declarations with drawings of me looking like David Bowie.) By now everyone else wants to be lawyers and professional bloggers and geneticists, but I’m still on the path to being a rock star. If I didn’t believe that, I couldn’t see the point.

After practice I rush out after Reid (and it’s hard to rush with your drums in tow) because I figure Nathan and Lucy want alone time. Today Nathan’s right behind us, though, and then Lucy appears.

“Can you hang out?” she asks, and I realize she’s talking to me. “Mom got all of these berries at the farmers’ market today, and I was going to make fancy lemonades.”

“Oh, um.” I look at Reid like he’s going to save me. Those words echo in my head—save me—and I wonder if I’m stupid for needing to be saved from the girl who was my best friend. Is my best friend? Plus, fancy lemonades sound great! “Reid and I were going to work on a thing.”

“Yes,” Reid says quickly. “Lots of work to do.”

Saving me. Actually. The way best friends do. It’s weird how that switched around.

“Do you need help?” she asks. “I don’t have to make the lemonades tonight.”

“No,” I say as quickly as a person can. “No thank you, I mean.”

She watches us for a couple moments. I’ve stood by Lucy so many times when she was worried about something, so I know this is exactly how she looks. Back when the something wasn’t me, I would have done anything to take the blank look from her eyes, to make her nearly constant smile reappear.

But the something is me.

“Okay, Riley. See you tomorrow.”

I wave and finish loading my car. Reid hangs nearby and watches me. It’s good we don’t have to say much to know what’s going on with the other.

“Can you really talk to Ms. Belman tomorrow?” I ask.