The tension leaves my body and I can’t help but laugh. Alex never could execute a good comeback. It’s sort of adorable.
“Good god, Mar, stop antagonizing the entire human population,” Owen calls as he bursts out of the front door below me. He claps Alex on the back and peers up at me. “Let’s go. We all need a drink.”
I don’t know about a drink, but I sure as hell need something. Climbing back through the window, I force myself to leave my phone pillowed in my blue down comforter.
Two can play the ignoring game.
Chapter Two
AFTER RIDING IN THE BACK SEAT of the Bug while Owen and Alex babble on and on about orchestra something or other—?correction: Owen babbles and Alex uh-huhs—?I decide that I do, in fact, need a drink.
Alex pulls into the dirt parking lot in front of a large grassy area that circles Lake Bree. Flashlights bob through the dark, and we can see the amber glow of a small fire, the shadows of our peers weaving in and out of the light. A bass line booms, the vibrations knocking against my feet as soon as I step out of the car.
“Ah, smell the pheromones!” Owen says, spreading his arms wide and inhaling deeply.
“I think that’s booze,” Alex says, pocketing his keys.
“Same thing.” My brother grins at the scene before him and I can see all the stress he carries most of the school year lifting off his shoulders. Owen has straight As and works his ass off on the violin. His room at home is freakishly neat and all of his schoolwork is meticulously organized into color-coded binders and notebooks. He’s never so much as been tardy to a class, let alone skipped one. He has aspirations for orchestras on Broadway and at Symphony Hall in Boston. But when he gets around his friends, he unfurls. If you ask me, he acts like a total moron at these parties, but it’s how he unwinds. Beer and jokes and bass-addled music that you can feel pulsing in your toes and fingertips.
We walk through the pine beds toward the party, Owen all but dragging me along. This is so not my scene. Not that I don’t enjoy a good time with my friends, but let’s be honest: crowds set me on edge, and dudes full of beer and bravado make me nervous.
It seems like the entirety of our little corner of Pebblebrook High School is here. It’s a big public school in Frederick, Tennessee, but it houses the Nicholson County Center for Excellence in the Performing Arts, which is a magnet program any kid can audition for. If accepted, students are bused here to the high school, train in their specific art within the magnet, and take regular academic classes with the nonprogram kids.
Tonight, as usual, everyone splits off into their art sectors. The theater and musical theater crowd, the chorus crowd, the orchestra crowd, the dance crowd, and so on. It’s not as though it’s some social faux pas to hang out with another group or nonprogram kids—?we just spend so much time with our own specialty, there’s not room for much else. Between classes and after-school rehearsals for concerts and musicals or plays, we quickly form our own little communes. Owen and Alex are always lovingly at each other’s throats for first chair violin (Owen holds that honor this semester, but Alex had it last spring), and the only reason they spend so much time with us show chorus girls is because Owen and I once shared a womb.
“Hey, guys!”
I squint through the dark and spot Hannah edging around some dancing girls I recognize from my music theory class. She’s in a loose bohemian dress the colors of a sunrise, cognac-hued leather sandals lacing halfway up her calves. The shoulders are cut out of her dress, the cool night air already purpling up her arms. As usual, her strawberry-gold hair is an unruly tangle. She wears it long with messy braids curling randomly through the locks, which drives her mother completely bonkers, but I think that’s half the appeal. Despite her genteel southern parents, Hannah’s our little hippie, all laughter and horoscopes, a wild hum running just underneath everything she does and says.
For the past two months, Hannah’s channeled her energies into my brother, which has only solidified the friendship between her and me. She was the first person I called when Charlie and I broke up—?because I couldn’t exactly call Charlie—?and she took me to Delia’s Café downtown to drown my sorrows in lavender macarons and sage tea.
“Babe, you look amazing,” Owen says, slipping an arm around her waist and nuzzling her hair.
“Do I?” She grins and winks at me.
“Did you walk here?” I ask.
“Yup.” Hannah lives in a nice neighborhood that backs up to the other side of the lake. Her family even has its own dock.
“You know, this week was super exhausting,” Owen says, still burrowing into Hannah’s neck. “I think we need to walk back to your house and lie down for a while.”
Hannah huffs a laugh and shrugs one shoulder, playfully knocking Owen’s chin. “Not right now, Romeo.”
Owen just grins wider and starts pulling Hannah toward the keg.
“Wait,” Hannah says, glancing around. “Where’s Charlie?”
“Shhh!” Owen says, clamping a hand onto her mouth. She yanks it off immediately. “Do not speak of She Who Shall Not Be Named.”
“Owen, don’t be a dick,” I say. “It’s not like that.”
“It is like that, actually. Awkwardness abounds and I’m just trying to be a loyal older brother.”
“Older, my ass.”
“By three minutes!”
“You wish.”
