Audition & Subtraction (4 page)

“Levels of like?”

“Because there are different ways to like a guy.”

Lori grinned. “So, what would Level One be?”

“Level One,” I said, thinking a second, “is when you like a guy as a friend.”

“Sort of like you and Aaron?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Level One means no kissing. Ever. Unless it's a funeral or something, because everyone kisses at funerals.” I suddenly thought about Aaron puckering today and his lips. … Then I flashed on the two of us at a funeral … Aaron leaning in close …

I shook off the thought.
Okay, super awkward.

“What's Level Two?” Lori asked.

“Level Two is when you
maybe
like a guy.”

She gathered her pillow into a hug. “Or when you
could
maybe like him—as in future potential.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Which means Level Three is the highest level, and that's when you
like-like
a guy. He's all you ever think about, and you get nervous just being around him.”

“And when he smiles, you want to scream,” Lori said.

“And when he kisses you, you want to faint.”

Lori shuddered. “I would hate to faint. Just all of a sudden fall over?”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “You'd hit the floor and break bones. And I'm guessing there would be drool involved.”

“It would have to be a really good kiss,” she said.

Neither one of us had ever been kissed. I figured Lori would be first now that she'd turned beautiful. “Remember,” I said, “if you ever kiss a guy, you promise to tell me before anyone else.”

“And you, too.” Her eyes glowed like minilanterns. “But I'm not kissing anyone anytime soon. It was just a car wash, Tay. Once Michael gets to school on Monday, Stace and Alesia will be all over him.”

“You're nicer, smarter—and prettier than they are, too.”

“I am not,” she said, ducking her head. But I could still see her smile.

“So are you and Michael Level One?” I asked, my breath catching as I waited for her answer.

She gave an easy shrug. “Definitely.”

I resumed breathing as she glanced back toward my closet. “You mind if I try on your jeans? I want to see if they fit.”

“Now?” I said. “Okay.”

“Andrew's not going to walk in on us, is he?”

I shook my head. “He's at Emily's.”

A second later, she flipped through the stack of jeans I kept on a shelf in the closet.

“If they fit, can I wear them on Monday? Just for something different.”

“Sure.”

She pulled a pair of jeans loose and shimmied into them under her sleep shirt.

“Brandon is having a party,” I said. “At the hotel during Band Night Out.”

“As if I care what that idiot is doing.”

Brandon was one of the guys who'd made fun of Lori's weight all through grade school. He made fun of my hair, too, but I still wanted to go to his party.

A second later she turned, wearing my faded jeans with a rip over the right knee. She held her sleep shirt bunched in one hand and smoothed the other hand over her hips. “They almost fit.” She stared at herself in the mirror hanging on my closet door. “He doesn't know I was fat.”

“Huh?” She'd spoken so softly, at first I wasn't sure I'd heard her.

“Michael,” she said, still looking at herself. “Everyone else in the whole school still sees me as the fat girl who lost weight. To him, I'm just thin. You can tell by the way he looks at me.”

I didn't get what she meant, but I nodded like I did. As far as I could tell, everyone looked at her now like she was thin.

She slid out of my jeans and set them on her pile of stuff under my desk. “What a great day,” she said, climbing back into bed.

“It's going to be an awesome last two months—Band Night Out and then summer vacation.”

“Don't forget District Honor Band,” she said. “We'll get to perform at the downtown art center.”

I crossed my fingers. “If I still make it.”

“You will,” she said. “How's the duet coming?”

“Okay, but I do better when we practice together.”

“We will. First you have to get the notes down.” She yawned, and it made me yawn, too.

“I've got brownies in my teeth,” I said.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Me, too.”

We slid out of bed and went into the bathroom. We stood over the sink, brushing until both of us had white foam spilling out of our mouths. We spit at the same time, which would have been disgusting with anyone but Lori. I pointed to the sink. “Does that remind you of anything?”

“Curdled milk?”

“That, too, but I was thinking of the day I threw up on your sandals.”

She half groaned, half laughed. “That was the worst.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “But it was also the best.”

That was the day we met for the first time. It was also the first day of third grade. We'd just moved to Phoenix, and I knew how it would be. Everyone else would already know each other, and by the end of the day, I'd be one of the leftovers. I'd make friends with another leftover, but it wasn't the same as a real friend. Leftovers were like Velcro—you were stuck together. With a real friend, it was like a zipper—you fit together.

Andrew had it easier because he was good at sports. He could go up to a crowd of boys at recess and say, “I can pitch seventy miles an hour,” and have instant friends.

That day I'd felt sick to my stomach with nerves. Mrs. Denton, the teacher, asked us to stand in a circle and share something we knew. I stood next to a biggish girl with blond hair, blue eyes, and a round face. It was Lori, only I didn't know it yet.

When it was my turn, I said I had a telescope, and I knew all about the stars. I said the earth spins around like a top that never slows down. Mrs. Denton looked so impressed, I started to spin like I was in orbit. I spun three times before everything in my stomach orbited right up my throat and all over Lori's sandals. It turned
out I didn't have a case of nerves. I had a case of stomach flu. I stayed home for two days.

On the second afternoon, my mom made me go to Lori's house. I stood on the front step, and when she came to the door, I gave her a new pair of pink sandals my mom had bought.

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn't know I was sick.”

She turned the shoes over in her hands. “It's okay,” she said. “Mrs. Denton let us spend the whole morning in recess while they washed the carpet.”

She rubbed a finger over a white plastic flower on the buckle. “Do you have a dog or a cat?”

I shook my head. “I had a hamster once.”

Her eyes brightened. “Me, too,” she said. “Mine died.”

I gasped. “So did mine!”

For a second, we just smiled at each other. Then she said, “There's an empty seat next to me at school. If you want.”

I said that sounded okay. But it was better than okay.

That day reminded me of flying with my dad and getting to sit in the cockpit. You look out the window, but it's just tons of clouds—thick clouds everywhere so you feel like you could get lost inside them and never find your way out. But then, there's this instant when the nose of the plane breaks through the clouds, and the world is suddenly full of sun.

That's how it felt, standing on Lori's front porch. Like the sun had just come out.

Ever since that day, Lori had been my best friend. It was like we were family—better than family. Because while stuff at home was falling apart, Lori was always there.

We climbed back into bed, and I stretched out beneath the cool sheets. “'Night,” I said.

“'Nigh,” she said, the end of the word getting swallowed up in a yawn.

Then it got quiet so all I could hear was the sound of us breathing. I had this trick where I tried to match my breath with Lori's so it sounded like we were one person. It always relaxed me so I could fall asleep.

I was just on the edge of a dream when I heard Lori murmur softly, as if to herself, “Level One, but serious potential for Level Two.”

It took me a long time to fall asleep after that.

Five more minutes. I watched the clock over the band room door, my heart keeping tempo with the second hand. Not much longer now.

It was Monday afternoon, and nearly time for rehearsal to start. Aaron sat next to me, pretending to wet his reed. I did the same thing, even though my reed was already as soggy as an old bowl of Cheerios. But with our reeds in our mouths, we could secretly talk trash about whoever we wanted.

Like Michael Malone.

He stood at the podium talking to Mr. Wayne. Neither of us knew how his audition had gone today or where he'd be sitting. But we'd know in a minute.

If he'd get his butt moving.

I leaned right as Frank lumbered up the risers, banging his clarinet case on a chair. I winced at the noise. It
was already loud enough in the room to make my ears cry. Kevin Marks, a trumpet player, had decided to do duck calls with his mouthpiece, and Tanner was playing “Chopsticks” on the xylophone. Everyone else was either talking or warming up their instruments. Something flew past my face, but I didn't take my eyes off Michael to look. Probably one of José's drumsticks.

“Is he in any of your classes?” Aaron asked from behind the screen of his reed.

“Nope,” I said. “He's not in any of Lori's classes, either, but we saw him at lunch.”

“How did that go?”

I knew Aaron hadn't been in the cafeteria today—he spent Monday lunches in computer lab with the Science Olympiad team. “Okay.”

“You sound disappointed.”

I shrugged, but Aaron was right. Secretly, I'd envisioned Michael acting like a complete loser in front of a crowd—including Lori. But he'd walked into the cafeteria with a brown-bag lunch, stopped to say hi to Kerry and Misa, then gone to sit with Brandon and the other guys from band.

I flipped the reed over. “Alesia made her move, as expected.”

“And?”

“She swung her hips—and struck out.” I sighed, a little bummed out about that, too. Michael had ignored Alesia and her hips while he talked to Brandon. And Lori had seen the whole thing.

“He's so hot, isn't he?” Lori had whispered.

After that, I'd spent the rest of the time watching Michael out of the corner of my eye—hoping to catch him with a straw up his nose or jelly stuck to his chin. But when I accidentally caught his eye, he gave me a nod back. A friendly kind of nod.

It was hard to hate someone who smiled at you from across the cafeteria. But at least I was right about his lips. They
were
pouty.

“Is he going to talk to Mr. Wayne for the whole practice?” I grumbled.

Aaron shrugged and bent down to his case. He lifted a pack of Sudoku puzzles and set it on our music stand. Aaron and I had shared a stand since the end of last year. I figured this year he'd move up a row—he was every bit as good as Angie, who sat first chair, and he played way better than I did. But Aaron must suck at auditions because here he was sitting in the second row again. I'm not sure when the Sudoku puzzles had started, but now we did one during most practices. From Mr. Wayne's spot on the podium, it looked like we were marking the music. Really, we took turns filling in the squares whenever Mr. Wayne stopped to work with the other sections. Numbers were one thing I was good at, but Aaron was better than me. He could fill out a Sudoku, keep up with the music, and calculate how many more minutes of practice, all at the same time.

“Three-star or four-star?” Aaron asked, holding the puzzles.

“Let's go easy—make it a two-star,” I said. Then a flash of movement at the podium caught my eye.
Michael.

My heart jumped, and I bit down on my reed, shredding the tip. “Snap,” I muttered.

Aaron straightened the music that didn't need straightening. Michael had grabbed a folding chair and was headed our way.

I dumped the broken reed in my case and reached for a new one. I pretended to study the different reeds while I stopped breathing and waited to see where Michael ended up with that chair.

If he sat in the front row with Angie and Brooke, that meant he was better. But if he sat behind me in the third row with Melanie, Jamie, and Frank, that meant I was better.

He stopped at the front row and my heart paused midbeat. Then he shrugged at Angie and Brooke, and climbed up one level. To my level.
To me.

“Looks like I'm playing second part, next to you.”

Next to me?

“In front?” I asked, my voice croaking. “Or behind?”

His fingers tightened around the chair. “Behind.”

Yes!

My heart kicked back into action, pumping with joy.
Mr. Wayne put me first.
I scooted my chair closer to Aaron, and we swapped smiles.
I'm better than Youth Symphony boy! It's going to be okay—I'll make Honor Band and—

Then Michael's chair bumped mine as he unfolded it. Reality hit.
I'm not better by much.
I swallowed.
What if I'm not better at all? Maybe it is a tie, and Mr. Wayne put me first because I've been here longer.

By now, everyone had begun warm-ups. I snuck a glance at Lori, and she flashed me a thumbs-up. That made me feel a little better. I straightened my reed, then tightened the ligature to keep it from shifting on the mouthpiece. My heart still beat too fast, and I took a deep breath. Something smelled like apple—Michael's shampoo? I shifted in my chair. Could he smell me? Did I smell like tacos from lunch?

I rippled through the low notes, but I had my ears tuned for Michael. He ran his fingers over the keys—his nails were short and bitten-down so the edges were a little red. The keys clacked as he played through a chromatic scale. He tapped his foot and one ragged black shoelace skated onto my sneaker. I moved my foot away, wondering if he'd at least tie his dress shoes for concerts.