Being Friends with Boys - Hardcover

Terra Elan McVoy has held a variety of jobs centered around reading and writing, from managing an independent children’s bookstore, to teaching writing classes, and even answering fan mail for Captain Underpants. Terra lives and works in the same Atlanta neighborhood where her novels After the Kiss, Being Friends with Boys, and Pure are set. She is also the author of The Summer of Firsts and Lasts, Criminal (an Edgar Award nominee), and In Deep. To learn more, visit TerraElan.com and follow Terra on Twitter at @TerraMcVoy.

Chapter One

I’m on my way up the stairs to my locker Monday morning when Abe comes down the other direction. He sees me and goes, “Trip’s out of the band,” over his shoulder, halfway past me on the staircase already.

“What?” is all I say back. Really, I’m thinking three things at once:

1. Oliver is such an asshole for not discussing this with me first.

2. I knew I should’ve gone to practice on Saturday. And,

3. Why didn’t Trip call me?

Abe sees my face and points down the stairs. “I know. But I gotta head.”

“Later,” I holler. Only his leather satchel, flapping behind him, hears me.

I get to my locker and spin the combination. What the hell? What. The. Absolute. Hell? Has Oliver forgotten he never could have started a band without Trip? Or that I don’t have anyone else to— Which is when Lish walks by. She doesn’t stop, and she’s wearing the same noncommittal, straight-lipped smile she’s been offering me since that lame phone call of hers last weekend. But I can’t think about her right now. Trip, Trip, Trip, is the main thing. I’ve got to find out what happened between him and Oliver over the weekend, and how he feels about it. Unfortunately, though, I’ve also got to get to homeroom and then class, while simultaneously finishing last night’s reading assignment.

“I know, I know,” Trip says when I round the corner after first period. His hands are automatically up at the sight of me, like I’m going to arrest him. “But it’s no big deal, I swear,” he assures. “Creative differences is all. It was mutual.”

He’s so smooth, it’s like he’s selling cars. Or, more, like he practiced telling me this. Which makes me feel even more left out of the decision.

“What happened?”

He shrugs. “We were getting stale together.”

Which isn’t true. Sure, they’ve been low-energy since school started. Even I told them so Thursday. But that doesn’t mean the band has to break up.

“But what are you going to do? What are we going to do?” I squeak.

It’s impossible to imagine Trip and Oliver not being together during 100 percent of their free time, and me with them 80 percent of that. Now Trip will need to find new ways to avoid his father too. But, more importantly, there’s the Halloween dance we’re playing at. Coming up. In not much over a month.

“I’ve got my own stuff,” he tosses back, pretending to adjust his glasses.

I know he doesn’t. Not, at least, from what he’s been telling me in the notebook. He has the band. And his music obsession. And talking to me on the phone or online. And sometimes a dense Russian novel.

“Yeah, but what about Sad Jackal?” I can’t keep my voice from rising even higher.

“Everybody in the band will manage. Manager.” He tries to make me smile, but I just can’t right now.

“But we—” My thoughts are racing.

“Hey.” A hand on my shoulder. “I’ll reassure you all about it while I’m in French, I swear.”

I reach in my satchel, give him the five-subject spiral notebook we’ve been filling with notes to each other since August. This morning in English all I wrote, in really big letters, was WTF? Are you okay? And Why didn’t you tell me? Standing here with him in the hall, my alarm feels both exaggerated and appropriate.

“Okay, but—” I start again.

“Okay, Mom.” He pats me on the head. “Get yourself to inferior algebra.” He raises his eyebrows toward my class door. “And here.” He holds out a CD for me. “A little more old-school electronica, since you liked a few on that last mix.”

It’s amazing how easily this makes me unmad at him. “Thanks, I—”

“Eh.” He shrugs. “It’s all part of my self-serving plan, convincing you you can’t do without me.”

“I already know I can’t do without you. Because without these”—I lift the CD—“I’m stuck listening to my stepsisters’ crap all the time.”

He points to the ceiling and winks, right as the late bell rings over our heads. I watch him stroll off, unconcerned, in his dopey splayed-foot walk.

All I can think, before opening the door to face my fellow math torture companions, is I am going to kill Oliver.

After a month of school, most of my teachers have already figured out my deal: I am the definition of an average student. I am who they need to keep the grading curve in check. This is my second round of Algebra II, though, because apparently, being too comfortable with “average” can lead to failing if you’re not careful.

Still, I can’t focus, even more than my usual amount of not being able to focus. I’m steaming about Oliver making this decision without talking to me about it first. I mean, if you’re going to cut out the guy who creates the tunes, shouldn’t you tell the girl who writes all the words? Not to mention who coordinates practice, handles PR, schleps equipment, and makes sure there are enough energy drinks around? Couldn’t I have had a hint? And seriously, why is Trip out? He’s a great guitarist. There’s no way we’ll find someone as good as him in time for the dance, even if we have auditions every day.

I honestly can’t imagine how Trip and Oliver have gone from “We have to spend every weekend together and even dress alike” to “Yeah, well, we’re not doing the band anymore.” I mean, bad couple of rehearsals or no, they can’t have both forgotten the awesomeness of Our Golden Summer. All we did was hang out at Oliver’s house. They’d play and I’d help them play better. It was so perfect, I didn’t care that Lish was gone half the time in California. I didn’t care that my sister was busy with college dorm shopping, texting her new roommate, and having farewell experiences with her high school friends. The guys stopped caring about their stupid nights in the cemetery and neighborhood pranks. They almost stopped caring about girls. After that last gig at Nimby’s went so well, Trip was so ramped up about the future that you could practically see the sparks coming out of his ears. It was all happening, and we all felt it.

And now this. Now Trip is out. And if Trip won’t tell me what really happened, I’ll make Oliver do it.

Unfortunately, today I only see Oliver at the end of the day, in the hardest class I have. There won’t be any good conversation until later, because our teacher is merciless. Sometimes she asks for our notes without any warning, so if we’re just writing bullshit or drawing pictures or whatever, trying to make it look like we’re concentrating when we aren’t, we’re totally screwed. She’s tricky and scheming like that. But, as a result, I think I’m doing better in her class than anyone else’s so far.

Still, I can’t resist sneaking glances at the notebook again while Ms. Neff starts class with a short film. Trip’s new entry is long: a lot of it a goofy list of Things Charlotte Can Do When Not Taking Care of Sad Jackal (including a pottery class, which could be cool), but also he insists I don’t need to worry, and nothing will change between me and him. Which would be reassuring if I halfway understood what changed between him and Oliver, and how I didn’t see it coming.

When Ms. Neff turns the lights back on, it’s time to fake my interest in those class-participation points that she says will count so much. In between people raising their hands (me included), I scrawl a note to Oliver: What were you thinking? I pitch it expertly to his desk, which is one over and one behind mine. When it comes back it says: I just want more options, man. We need to have auditions. This weekend. You do a flyer?

And you didn’t tell me, why????????? I shoot back as soon as Ms. Neff’s not looking.

It takes him a long time to answer, and when he does, I’m at first angered and then embarrassed by what it says: Because I knew you would freak.

As calmly and clearly—and not freaking—as I can after class, I explain to Oliver all the ways in which this is a terrible decision. I tell him he’s crazy and we need to ask Trip back.

“It wasn’t like I fired him or anything,” Oliver says when I’m done. “And is it so wrong if I don’t want to sound like everybody else?” He bangs the back of one shoe against the toe of the other.

“But Trip is just so good at coming up with the melodies and—”

Oliver’s face twists for just a second. “Maybe it’s because you always show him the words first.”

I cut him with my eyes. This is so not about that. It’s not my fault that Trip asks me questions about what I’m doing more than Oliver ever has.

“Or maybe,” I huff, “it’s because he’s been playing guitar for longer than you have, I don’t know.”

He presses his stick-up bangs back from his forehead and yanks his fingers through them. “Don’t you trust me? Trust Trip if you don’t. He’s the one who left.”

Because if you gave any indication that you didn’t want him anymore, he’d sense it and take off, I want to say. I’ve learned at least that much about Trip in the last eight months. But then I see Oliver’s let-down face, how disappointed he is that I’m not automatically taking his side. How, since summer, I’ve been doing more of that lately. Siding with Trip. And I do need to give Oliver more credit. I wouldn’t be involved in this at all if he hadn’t liked those poems I did in English last year, and then asked me to help coordinate. Plus, he is great on rhythm guitar, and without him there’s no singer. I mean, Abe’s wicked on drums, but he can’t sing to save his life. And Oliver is . . . well . . . Oliver is the face, too.

“You’re not out, are you, Charlotte?” For a second he looks actually worried that I might be.

I snort. “Of course not.”

“Good. Because just me and Abe, decisions will never get made.”

We both laugh. Kind of at ourselves, kind of at each other.

“I still don’t like it.” My arms are crossed in front of my chest, like some housewife with a rolling pin. I drop them to my sides.

He hooks his arm around my neck and steers me down the empty hall. “I’m telling you, it will be okay. This is the right thing to do. Even Trip said so, right?”

I think about the calm, even tone of Trip’s stuff in the notebook today. Of his hand on my shoulder, squeezing lightly. “Well, he just said that—”

“I know what he said, because I talked to him. It’s not like we’re not friends anymore. So it’s all cool, okay? Now let’s get out of here. There are lists to be made! People to call!”

He pulls me out into the blinding sunshine, down the walkway to the parking lot. I’m grateful to be squinting, so he can’t see in my face that I both love and hate how he was right about me freaking, and also right about how maybe things aren’t going to be as bad as I think they will. How we both know this but aren’t saying anything about it. More than that, I love and hate that I’ve already got ideas for this audition flyer.

By the time my stepsisters and I get home from school, though, some of my enthusiasm has gone out the window. Darby and Gretchen tried to outcomplain each other in the car, and then halfway home Gretchen got in another fight with her wrestler boyfriend, and we almost drove off the road when Darby reached over to turn off Gretchen’s phone. Home still feels strange, anyway, even though Jilly’s been off at college almost a month. I make myself a bowl of chips and onion dip and go upstairs, pretend I might do my homework, but our room—my room—isn’t any good, because I’m not used to Jilly not being in here. Not used to her bed being made and empty instead of crowded with her, splayed out, talking on the phone or, more likely, studying. I’m not used to my sister sharing a room with someone new off at college: someone cooler and crisper and who won’t fight about whose turn it is to do laundry.

The sun slants in through my blinds and I stretch my hands out into it, making my arms into zebras. If I’m honest, Lish is missing from this afternoon too. I don’t know if there’s volleyball practice right now. I just know that if I try to call my former best friend, all I’ll get is a couple of rings and her voice mail.

To fill the room with something, I put in the new CD from Trip. How did I spend my afternoons, before? Before Lish came back from her summer with that slanty bob, and then school started and she was suddenly talking about her volleyball friends D’Shelle and Kiaya all the time and plans she never involved me in.

It wasn’t that much of a surprise when Lish ditched me for real, actually. She’d been quiet on the drive to school for days, and had bailed on sleepover plans two weekends straight. When my phone trilled my ringtone for her that weekend, it was only so she could tell me her mom was uncomfortable with her driving so many people around, since she’d just had her license a few months. Lish didn’t even pretend not to still be driving Bronwyn to school, and I felt a small pang inside that I didn’t want to feel. The three of us had been talking about Lish getting her license (and her mom’s old convertible) since last October. We planned stops at the QT to get creamy cappuccinos, and blaring the music with the top down, even in winter. While she was talking, all I could think was how we’d yet to do anything like that.

It’s not like she was mean. She was just—not the old Lish. I could’ve tried to argue with her or beg, but I know—better than anyone—that once someone’s made up her mind to leave you, there’s nothing you can do to make her stay.

Not having any classes with Lish this year makes her even more invisible. But this whole semester has turned out weird, anyway. I don’t have classes with Abe or Trip, and just the one with Oliver, plus lunch. I don’t understand, exactly, how everyone’s kind of evaporated—not just Jilly, off at college. I mean, even if I do catch sight of Lish in the halls, it’s like she’s a different person. She’s got her equestrian boots and her skinny skinny jeans, her shiny hair. And then there’s me: twice as big as her, in my thrift-store pants; my untucked, unironed button-downs; my long, tangly hair. Sometimes she truly doesn’t even see me. It’s like a giant wall has been lowered down between us. We’re not, apparently, going to talk about it. There’s no crowbar to pry it up. I’m glad I have Trip, and the notebook, and band practice with Oliver, but now even that’s messed up.

Before I can truly sink into despair about it, though, my phone chimes from the depths of my bag.

I drop down on my bed to answer. “Usually, by this time of day, we’ve hung up the phone and moved to the computer.”

“Yeah, I know,” Trip says. “But when I got home, Dad was all like, ‘Son, I feel like we haven’t spent enough time together lately. Here’s these flies I tied and these new rods, and what do you say we do some fishing?’”

“Yeah, right. So then you reminded him you’re a vegetarian?”

He tries to hide his chuckle from me. “Are you suggesting the love of my own father wouldn’t be enough to convert me to carnivore?”

“Well, my love of chicken wings and cheeseburgers hasn’t seemed to convince you yet, so yeah, maybe.”

He clears his throat. “Just giving you enough time to talk to Oliver.”

“Oh. Well, that was thoughtful.”

“So, did you?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, then, so?”

I am not sure what he’s asking me. “So, what?”

“So, you going to abandon ship and form a band with me instead?”

I laugh. “What, a band of one guy on guitar and a silent girl with a tambourine?”

“Well, or a cowbell. And you sing, don’t you?”

“No way. Not like that, anyway.” I shift down to the floor, put my back against the bed frame. “You’re going to be on your own, I’m afraid. At least while I’m busy trying to keep Sad Jackal afloat.”

“Ah. Well, maybe I’ll take up ne...