Katie Cox vs. the Boy Band Page 4

  Because…unlike the sling-back pumps, which were definitely amazing, kissing Dominic Preston might be, well, a little yucky. Not having kissed anyone before, it was hard to know what to expect. And when it comes to kissing, there are so many things to worry about.

  Suppose it turns out that he doesn’t ever brush his teeth? Suppose he leans in and I feel sick and I’m trapped in the kiss and I end up barfing into his open mouth?

  I mean, I’ve never heard of it happening before, but there’s a first time for everything.

  A rush of sixth graders let us know that it wasn’t too long before the end of lunch, so we gathered up our stuff.

  And Lacey said, in the most casual possible way, so casual that she made sure to look at her bag rather than me, “You sure you don’t want to come to Karamel with us?”

  “You’re deigning to invite me to come to something that you’re only going to because I gave you tickets in the first place?”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean, how can you invite me, when the whole thing was my idea? That’s just…wrong.”

  The bell rang, and I followed her down the stairs.

  “It’s just, I know what you’ll be like,” said Lacey.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’ll get into one of your moods and sit around in your room and listen to something angry like Utopia—”

  “Nirvana.”

  “Yeah, them. And you’ll be all touchy and not answer your phone and spend the next week giving me these looks.”

  We stopped outside our classroom.

  “I do not recognize the person you are talking about,” I said. “If you want to waste a perfectly good evening watching the world’s worst band, then fine. But I have other things to do. I mean, boy band? Boy bland, more like.”

  “See?” She turned around and headed inside to her desk. “You’re doing it already!”

  And before I could reply, Sofie and Paige came floating over in a cloud of Vera Wang Princess.

  “Message from Savannah,” said Paige. “We’ve got to go long. Legs are so out. Do you have anything maxi?”

  “But my legs are my best feature!” said Lacey.

  “I thought your back was your best feature,” I said.

  She made a face. And then, “Can I borrow your blue dress?”

  “No.”

  “It’s for one night.”

  “I’m using it,” I said.

  “Fine. I’ll just have to go shopping.”

  “Ooh, can I come?” said Paige.

  “Yes!” said Lacey. “Are you free tonight? We could go to Cindy’s, get some ideas.”

  “I have dance tonight. When’s the concert?”

  “The ninth,” said Lacey. “So I guess we could go tomorrow. Or…”

  “The ninth of July,” I said. “That date sounds sort of familiar, doesn’t it, Lace?”

  “Does it?”

  “Yes. Are you sure it’s not ringing any bells with you?”

  She thought for a second. “Nope. God, Katie, why are you being so weird? If you want to come, come!”

  And in my head I was screaming, I don’t want to come! What I want is for you to realize it’s my birthday that night and to say of course you’d rather hang out with me, and maybe at the same time you could admit Karamel is a bad band, and Savannah and co. are annoying, and perhaps you could stop with all the leg and limo chat while you’re at it!

  Even Nirvana wouldn’t be angry enough for this.

  Happy birthday, dear Katie.

  Happy birthday to me.

  It’s important I have that there because no one else sang it.

  To be fair, Mom did at least have a present waiting on my plate when I finally staggered downstairs. (A pair of earrings with real diamonds in them! Teeny-weeny ones, but still!)

  And Adrian had gotten me the reissue of Frank on vinyl, which was waiting in a flat, shiny box next to my seat, underneath birthday cards from Gran and Auntie Tasha, who isn’t a real auntie. She’s Mom’s friend from nursing school, but hey, it’s always good to have an extra auntie.

  “Do you like it?” said Adrian, his early-morning face sporting a light coating of silver-and-black stubble.

  I ripped off the paper. “Yes! Yes, I do!”

  He did a whole playing-the-drums mime thing and ended with a ba-doom-tish.

  Now, me and Adrian had had our ups and downs recently, pretty steep ups and downs, come to think of it, what with him being Mom’s new boyfriend and my self-appointed manager. And he had a bad habit of coming downstairs in the mornings wearing Mom’s flowery bathrobe.

  Still, things had been getting better. And it was sweet that he cared so much about making me happy.

  Yeah. Adrian was okay.

  Amanda had been in the bathroom when I woke up and in the bathroom while I got dressed. She’d still been in there when I banged on the door and said I had to brush my teeth and do certain other things, quite urgently. She’d still been in there when I’d gone to do them in the downstairs bathroom, which I try to avoid at all costs, because there’s a serious risk that people in the kitchen might overhear.

  When she finally came in, she was holding something behind her back.

  “Happy birthday, K-Star. Fourteen! Sorry I wouldn’t let you into the bathroom. I was doing…this.”

  She handed me a package covered in about twenty different layers of tissue paper and tied with a bunch of swirly ribbons.

  “Mands,” I said. “Please don’t tell me that you’ve spent the morning wrapping up poop.”

  She laughed. “Come on. Open it!”

  So I did…and…

  “Well?” Her eyes were all glowy. “What do you think?”

  There in front of me was a brand-new leather-covered notebook, with my name on the front in letters that had been sort of pushed into the leather. And next to it, a pen in a little box.

  “It’s for your songs!” said my sister. “I know you’re always trying to write in that ratty old notebook, so I thought this might inspire you!”

  No…no, no, no.

  I mean, it was gorgeous. It had the new leather smell that, in the normal way of things, I can’t get enough of. And the cover was buttery soft. Then inside, page after pristine page of thick, creamy-white paper.

  But if I couldn’t write in just my normal lyric book, which was a battered, cardboard-covered thing, how on earth was I supposed to come up with something good enough to put onto these perfect pages?

  It deserved someone so much better.

  “This is…beautiful,” I managed about ten seconds after I should’ve said it.

  “Good,” she said. “I’m so glad I found something you can use.”

  She knew from my face that I couldn’t use it.

  “It must have been expensive,” I said.

  “It was.”

  “Thank you so much.”

  “All right,” said Amanda.

  “So, Katie, what’s the plan for your party tonight?” said Adrian. “I can go to the grocery store on the way back from the shop. Just tell me what you need.”

  “Okay,” I said. “A tub of Häagen-Dazs, any flavor you like as long as there’s no fruit in it—I do not want my happiness being ruined by anything even approaching a vitamin—plus Twinkies and Diet Coke…no wait, not diet, not today.”

  “Enough sugar to send you to an early death—got it,” said Adrian. “And how many pizzas? Is that Savannah girl going to be coming?”

  “She’s not coming,” I said. “And”—this was surprisingly hard to say—“neither is Lacey.”

  “Not coming to your birthday? Why not?”

  “Because they’re going to a Karamel concert,” I said, feeling really very bleak. “It’s my fault. I got them tickets.”

  Mo
m started to ask some probably very sensible question, so I held up my hands. “Just…don’t.”

  “So it’ll be you and Amanda?”

  “I dunno. I mean, I had this whole night planned, with NOW albums one to thirty-seven and dancing and stuff. But if Lacey’s not going to be there, it’s just you and me, Mands.” I sighed. “You probably won’t want to…”

  Which was Amanda’s cue to say that of course she wanted to, that we didn’t need Lacey, that my big sis would be looking out for me, making absolutely sure that even though things had gone a little bit wrong, my birthday would still be completely great.

  “Well, if you’re not interested,” said Amanda, fiddling with a piece of abandoned tissue paper. “Maybe we should forget it for this year.”

  What? No!

  “I mean, you’re getting a little old to dance around in your bedroom anyway, aren’t you?”

  No, no, no!

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “Okay then,” said Amanda.

  It was interesting, because as I was unwrapping my earrings, I thought I’d never be unhappy again. Now, less than twenty minutes later, I was.

  And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my special day.

  Oh, no, wait—I missed the whole other middle part. Probably because I’ve been trying to block it out.

  I did consider taking a sick day, but I knew Lace would have something special planned. And since I wasn’t seeing her that evening, I thought I should let her make a big deal about me during the day.

  My uplifting birthday breakfast meant I was running really late. So late that even though I got ready in double-quick time, I had to run if I wasn’t going to miss the bus. Running is hard work, especially now that I’m getting older.

  “Happy birthday, by the way,” said Jaz as we took our places, her in the back seat, and me wheezing and sweating in the next row up—because, while I aspire to be a back-seat person, I don’t think I’m there quite yet.

  “Thanks,” I said, slightly surprised that she even knew about it.

  “So”—Jaz folded herself up, her boots completely defying the sticker that said Please Keep Your Feet off the Seats—“what does Katie do to celebrate her birthday?”

  “I, um, have a dance party,” I said, worrying a little that Jaz would think I was a complete child, but somehow it was too early in the morning to think of a decent lie. “Me and Mands and Lacey all jump around to some vintage pop. Well, that’s what I normally do. Only, this year…” I trailed off. “That’s what I normally do.”

  Jaz considered the supreme patheticness of a Katie Cox dance party.

  “That sounds bearable. What time?” Jaz? At my dance party?

  “Um, it’s not really…a you kind of thing. It’s more for me and Lacey and Amanda. You know.”

  “Yeah, I know,” repeated Jaz, staring out the window as though she was bored to death, which she probably was.

  Then, because I hadn’t been taking the bus for very long, and it’s important to find out this stuff, I asked, “Do you guys have any special birthday rituals I should know about?”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, if it was your birthday, we used to do this thing where you got thrown into the canal.”

  “Oh. Right. No,” said Jaz. “I mean, we couldn’t do that on the bus anyway.”

  “No,” I said. “It would have to be something humiliating but nonmessy. I guess we could draw all over someone with eyeliner. You’d have to hold them down first, but—” I stopped myself. “Or we could just be nice to whoever’s birthday it is. Like normal people.”

  “Nah,” said Jaz. “Hey, you guys.” She was talking to the sixth graders. “Hold Katie down, okay? And, Nicole, get your eyeliner.”

  • • •

  “Happy birthday,” said Lacey as I arrived in the classroom, my face wet and covered with tiny flecks of toilet paper, plus quite a lot of Nicole’s eyeliner.

  “Thanks, BFF,” I said, settling down at my desk. Then, in a whisper, I said, “Um, Lacey? Just how bad do I look right now?”

  “Pretty bad,” said Lacey. “Your face is gray and splotchy and covered with pieces of white stuff—what is that? And your bangs are all over the place. Why?”

  I pretended to examine my fingernails. “Because Dominic Preston is looking at me.”

  Lacey peered over her bag. “He is,” she said. “You should smile or something. Look casual. But interested. And happy.”

  “Like this?”

  “What are you even doing with your mouth?”

  “This is my casual-interested-happy smile,” I hissed.

  “Never make that face again. Never, never, never.”

  “Hey, Katie,” said Dominic. “You okay?”

  “Yes!” I shouted.

  “Okay,” said Dominic, and then he went back to talking to Devi.

  Me and Lace started to giggle.

  “He is so into you,” said Lacey. “Don’t forget me once the two of you are going out.”

  “I don’t think that’s very likely.”

  “Well, maybe this’ll help you remember,” said Lace. She reached into her bag and came out holding a little wrapped box.

  “Ooh,” I said, jiggling it around, then picking it open. “Ooh…a charm bracelet! Lace!”

  “They just got them at Samuel’s,” said Lacey, looking extremely pleased with herself. “I got four charms: a guitar. That’s because of how you play the guitar…”

  “An ice cream cone!”

  “And a microphone, and one of those squiggly things you get on music sheets.”

  “A treble clef?”

  “If you say so.”

  “Aw, Lace,” I said, thinking I might cry. And then really wanting to, because it would show her how happy I was. Which meant, of course, that my eyes immediately dried up again. “It’s beautiful.”

  “I tried to get something to be our Chinese takeout, but they only had this Chinese-symbol one, and I didn’t know what it meant, so I thought I’d better not.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Like the one that Karamel lead singer has on his arm. I bet it means ‘I am a butt-face.’ Like, why have a tattoo in a language you don’t understand?!”

  “Um.” She looked away. “I realized, last night…the concert, your birthday…talk about bad timing.”

  Thank the Lord.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

  “Because I didn’t want to spoil your amazing fun night with Savannah and co.”

  “But if you’d said something at the time…” She was looking at me, her face all open and kind. “Katie, I feel terrible.”

  “It’s okay!” I insisted. “I have it all planned out! We’re going to have our regular dance party. Unfortunately Mands is unavailable, but that just means extra pogoing space, and Mom and Adrian said we can make as much noise as we like.”

  “Yay! It’s going to be terrific, Katie. We’ll bust some moves and have Coke and pizza and ice cream—whatever you want. Plus, I’ve got this major new lip stuff we need to try. It puffs up your mouth like crazy. You can’t even get it in stores—it’s that good.”

  I fastened the bracelet around my wrist. “I knew you’d understand, Lace. You’re the best friend ever.”

  “Compliment accepted,” said Lacey. “And the good thing about doing it tomorrow is that we have extra time to look forward to it.”

  “Um…tomorrow? But I thought…you would…cancel…because…”

  Her expression made me stop.

  “Katie, I can’t back out now. I promised Savannah. She booked a limo!”

  “Oh…okay.” It came out a little wobbly.

  She put her hand on my arm and looked me right in the face. “Katie, it’s just twenty-four hours.”

  “It’s fine,” I
said. Translation: It is not fine.

  Lacey speaks fluent Katie. Or I thought she did. “And I’m going to text you from the concert.”

  “Cool.” Translation: Please don’t.

  “And I’ll be thinking of you tonight. Thanks so much for the tickets.”

  “No problem. Just going to run to the bathroom before French.” Translation: I am about to burst into tears.

  So that was it, really. Katie’s Birthday Spectacular.

  By the time I got up to my bedroom—after a special dinner, hand-cooked by Adrian, of slightly-past-its-expiration-date ham-and-pineapple pizza and too much Häagen Dazs—I was pretty much over it.

  So I crawled into bed and snapped off the light, ready to sleep it off.

  It didn’t work. Maybe because it was only seven thirty.

  Fine. Maybe now was the moment to write that song for Tony.

  I pulled my guitar out from underneath my hoodie and…

  No. Nothing.

  I don’t really understand about writing songs.

  When it’s going well, it’s like the music is just there, inside of me, or maybe inside of my guitar, waiting for me to set it free. I don’t notice that I’m trying to come up with rhymes or that the chords don’t quite fit because time’s standing still and also going at triple speed.

  It’s not an easy thing to explain. All I can say is that although I know I’m working really hard, I don’t even notice.

  When it’s going badly, though…it’s like I’m made of the wrong stuff. Like my fingers are someone else’s, and the music’s all drained out of my guitar, as though words are strange, spiky tools, and I don’t know how to use them.

  No, that doesn’t even begin to cover it. There’s this sneaking feeling I get, that I’ve never really been able to write, that every other song I’ve come up with was an accident, a fluke, or maybe something I’d stolen without realizing it. It’s like when you get insomnia. You know you’ve gone to sleep before. That every night of your life until now, you just turned over and did it. Only, you can’t remember how, and the more you think about it, the more impossible it feels, like someone’s asking you to fly or turn invisible.