You Should See Me in a Crown(27)
I realize it’s decorated in stickers—one that reads GINGERS DO IT BETTER over an image of Princess Fiona from Shrek, one with a blue square and a yellow equal sign in the middle that looks familiar but I can’t quite place, a bright pink GIRLS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN … DAMENTAL RIGHTS banner, and a huge Kittredge sticker.
“Wait. You listen to Kittredge?” I ask, grabbing one of the chairs and pushing it against the wall to begin a stack. I’m smiling back at her, and I can’t help it. “That’s my favorite band.”
I don’t know anyone else who we go to school with who’s into their music. I tried to get Gabi into them a few years ago, and after one listen through their first album in her car one day, she turned to me with an apologetic look and asked: “Can we please go back to listening to Beyoncé now?”
Since then, I’ve been on a Teela Conrad island all by my lonesome.
“Yeah, they’re my favorite band!” Mack’s face lights up. “Were you able to get tickets to their concert Sunday? I was the only person who was into them at my last school, so I thought that automatically meant my taste was better than all my classmates’. But you, Liz Lighty, have proven me wrong. I have officially met my match.”
“No, I’m not going. I’m—” Saving every spare dime I have to get out of this town. “I’m sure your taste is great. If your drumming is any indication, you know music.” I look away as I say it, and I’m not sure why. It feels a little intimate to tell someone that you have been thinking about the way they play, even after you’ve left the confines of the band room.
I keep stacking chairs, but I know she’s stopped stacking hers because the sound of hard plastic meeting hard plastic stops.
Her voice is sort of quiet as she responds. “You really think I’m that good?”
“Yeah. Of course.” I turn to face her quickly. “You have no idea what we were dealing with before the, um, incident. You were a godsend.”
It might sound too earnest, but I mean it. There are very few things I take more seriously than band, and Mack’s presence in it makes it better. That means more to me than she could know.
She doesn’t say anything for a second. The room is completely silent except for the sound of me stacking another chair. Instead of replying, Mack just turns up the speaker on her phone and fills the room with the sound of “My Life, My Story”—my favorite Kittredge song. It feels sort of like kismet.
And then, in between slowly moving chairs, we’re talking—not about prom or school or scholarships, but about the band. We’re talking about their best album and Teela Conrad’s best looks on the red carpet. We’re talking about what Mack wants to do with music after high school and why arranging music is one of my favorite hobbies.
We’ve almost managed to stack all the chairs against the wall before I even realize we’ve been together for nearly an hour. I turn, and she’s closer to me than I remember her being, but then again that could just be my nerves. It’s kind of dizzying being this close to her, even though we’re talking about nothing. Just music and the future and our collective crush on Teela Conrad, but it’s been nice.
It’s been exactly what I needed.
“I wouldn’t have guessed you’d be someone who ran for prom queen,” I say, thinking out loud.
“I could say the same for you.” She leans an elbow against one of the stacks of chairs. “But here we are, stacking chairs together like a couple of real contenders. I don’t know why they don’t slap some tiaras on us right now, honestly.”
“So you’re in it for the hardware?” I shake my head with mock disappointment. “I thought you were a woman of principle. Someone dedicated to the scholarship and service that the crown represents!”
She laughs. “Can I tell you something kind of embarrassing?”
You can tell me anything, I think. I nod.
“You ever notice that one prom queen with the really bad bangs and that awful chartreuse dress with all the ruffles in the gallery?” She smirks. She’s talking about the Royal Portrait Gallery—the wall that holds portraits of all the prom kings and queens dating back to when this whole thing started—that sits next to the front office. It’s impossible to miss. From the moment you enter the school, there’s no doubt about this town’s commitment to the pomp and circumstance of the biggest night of the year.
I’ve walked past that picture a hundred times, so I know exactly who she’s talking about, and I don’t know why I didn’t put the pieces together sooner. The freckles. The hair. The same smile.
“That’s not your—”
“Yup.” Her grin is wider than I’ve ever seen. “That’s my mom.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I shout, more excited than I would usually let on. “So you’re running as a legacy?”
“A legacy?” she asks, and I remember she’s not actually from Campbell, even though she threw herself directly into Campbell’s biggest tradition like it was her only mission.
“Oh, um, someone with a parent who’s already won a crown. It sort of guarantees you a type of cache that running on your own can’t really get you.” I don’t add that legacies are pretty much the closest thing you can get to a guaranteed crown without being a Jordan or an Emme. I dig the toe of my bootie into the carpet. “Campbell is really big on tradition and stuff like that.”