Exit Stage Left (17 page)

I point to the pretty two-story brick house at the end of Linden Court. “That’s it.”

Harrison parks in front of a neighbor’s yard. The Grimaldis’ car, in all its hooptie glory, is taking up the entire curb in front of Trevor’s house like usual, and Trevor’s car is parked at the end of the driveway.

“I don’t see why we had to come over here. They can get rehearsal space at school,” Harrison complains as he double-checks the door locks. Because this neighborhood of smiling scarecrows from Walmart and leaf bags placed carefully at the ends of driveways is exactly where you’d expect someone to steal the hand-me-down stereo out of your hand-me-down car.

“Only if you’re an actual band,” I tell him. “Which Misfit Turntable will be, after today. This is just an organizational meeting.” I suppose, anyway.

“And since when did you start writing songs? I don’t remember that
being on The List,” Harrison says as I lead the way up the driveway.

“Since yesterday. It’s not that hard. And since when do future members of Misfit Turntable wear khakis and polo shirts? Really, Harrison, you could’ve at least made an effort.”

“What? What’s wrong with khakis?” He stops in the middle of the driveway to check his pants.

“Never mind.” At least
some
of us take the time to tear a couple of holes in our second-favorite pair of skinny jeans and steal our brother’s leather jacket. Again. Eric thought he’d left it at work, when really I had it balled up in my backpack before he even woke up this morning. I just had to dodge him all day at school so he wouldn’t see me with it on. It’ll reappear in his room . . . sometime.

I knock on the garage door and step back when I hear the motor start.

“Hey, Case,” Trevor says as soon as the door’s up high enough.

“Hey, you.”

He immediately reaches for me, and I mold myself into him. Being here, with him, is just . . . how it should be.

Harrison’s still standing in the driveway, mouth open at the contents of the garage. I never brought him over here before—or Amanda either, for that matter. But maybe I should.

“Whoa,” Harrison says. He hasn’t moved an inch. If it wasn’t for the giant door and the concrete-block walls, the garage could pass for a family room. There are couches, a TV, rugs, plants, a space heater, and even a mini-fridge tucked into the corner between the two couches. “This is . . . My garage does
not
look like this.”

Trevor proudly surveys the room. “Perks of being an only child.”

Harrison finally moves inside, and the garage door slides down in a clatter.

Steve-o’s lounged in his usual spot on one of the couches. He’s got the automatic door opener and a joint in one hand, and a game controller in the other, like some kind of slacker multitasker. His brother is passed out on the other end of the couch. The TV’s paused on some fighting game—one guy’s leg poised in midair, about to knock the crap out of the other guy. It’s the same one they play every time they’re over here.

I sit next to Trevor in our usual spot, on the smaller couch that’s angled out like an L from the wall. Harrison squeezes in beside me, even though there’s space over between Steve-o and the sleeping Johnny. Not that I blame him at all.

“So, uh, where’re the guitars and stuff?” Harrison asks.

Steve-o jerks his head toward the back of the room, where a single guitar case sits on a chair. “Relax, dude. We’re not gonna play anything today. Just going to talk about what you guys have to offer. Right, Casey?” He gives me that creepy smile before raising the joint to his lips.

I involuntarily scoot closer to Trevor, who kicks Steve-o in the knee. “Knock it off, jackass. Casey brought some songs she wrote.”

“And what about you?” Steve-o asks Harrison.

“I, uh . . .” Harrison trails off.

“Harrison sings too,” I fill in.

“We probably don’t need another singer,” Trevor says.

“And he plays sax.”

Steve-o laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. Johnny stirs on the couch next to him but doesn’t open his eyes, not even when Steve-o turns the game back on at full volume.

“Drums,” Harrison says in a loud voice. “I can play drums.”

“Pounding out a drumline on a park bench doesn’t really count,” I whisper in his ear.

He shrugs. “Can’t be that hard, right? It’s just rhythm. If you can morph into a songwriter, why can’t I suddenly be a drummer?”

He’s got a point. So I nod and smile. It’s not exactly what we wanted—songwriter and drummer—but it’s better than nothing. It’s still a band.

Trevor taps the notebook I’ve been holding on my lap. “Can we see what you’ve got?”

I grip the edges of the notebook until the spiral rings dig into my palm. I’m nervous. Which is stupid, really, because I’m
good
at this. “Shouldn’t we wait for him to wake up?” I point at Johnny, who mumbles something.

“He heard you were coming and decided to borrow some of Trevor’s mom’s Valiums. He won’t be awake for hours.” Steve-o glares at me like I personally shoved the pills down his brother’s throat.

“Oh” is all I can say.

“It’s not her fault that he’s hung up on her,” Harrison says.

“It’s not?” Steve-o pauses the game again and gives Harrison his full attention.

Okay, this is getting weird. “I’m thirsty,” I say a little too loudly.
“I’m really, really thirsty. Does anyone else need something to drink? Harrison, you look like you could use some water.”

“Can you grab them some drinks so we can get on with it?” Trevor says pointedly.

“Right.” Steve-o tosses his controller onto the table and reaches down to the mini-fridge. He slams a water bottle down in front of Harrison, and then tosses one to me—a little too hard. It rolls out of my hands onto Trevor’s foot.

“Dude, lay off,” Trevor says as he hands me the water.

“Four months,” Steve-o says. “I give it four months till she ditches your ass again.” He glances at me as he picks up his controller. “Don’t worry, Casey. He doesn’t exactly get bored as he waits for you to come back around.”

“Excuse me, but none of that has anything to do with you,” I inform him. I don’t add that the last part is, basically, the reason I end things when we are together. And that it’s him who comes back around, not me. I loop my arm through Trevor’s and wait for him to jump in, but he doesn’t. I kind of wonder whether Oliver would have.

And, I need to stop comparing Trevor to Oliver.

“So, the songs?” Trevor asks, before Steve-o can say anything else.

My phone chimes, and I fish it out from my purse.

Ike says he saw you wearing my jacket today. I WANT IT BACK.

“You got another boyfriend?” Trevor asks. When I look up, he’s smiling at me.

“Ha, no. It’s my brother.” I pocket the phone in Eric’s beloved
jacket and open my notebook. But not before turning to Harrison and mouthing
boyfriend
. Trevor doesn’t use that word lightly, since we’ve never really been official or anything. Harrison rolls his eyes.

I turn back to the page in front of me. “Okay, so this one’s called ‘My Love Is a Christmas Tree in January.’”

Steve-o snorts and starts his game again. Johnny snores. Good to know I’ve got a captive audience here.

“Go on,” Trevor says. He squeezes my knee, and I fight the urge to throw my notebook on the floor and pick up right where we left off in the car on Saturday night.

When you left me

I felt like a tree.

Half-dead and with needles

Pointy like church steeples.

“Are you serious right now?” Steve-o asks as he triggers a roundhouse kick to the beefy-looking guy on the screen.

“You don’t know how hard it is to find something that rhymes with needles,” I inform him.

“Steeples doesn’t rhyme with needles,” Harrison says.

“I
know
it doesn’t.” I give him a good kick in the ankle. Pointing out the flaws in my songwriting isn’t exactly going to get us into this band. “I’m totally open to suggestions, you know.”

Trevor leans over my shoulder, reading the rest of the song under his breath. Which is tickling my neck and making it really, really hard
for me to remember there are other people in this room, much less what I’m doing right now.

My phone chimes again. I pull it out as Trevor reads, Johnny sleeps, Steve-o swears at the game, and Harrison cleans his glasses with his microfiber cloth.

It’s Eric, again.
You have 15 mins.
No more words, just a picture of a lighter with a dancing blue flame precariously close to my script of
The Sound of Music
.

Whatev
, I type back.
Got it all memorized
.

“What else have you got?” Trevor asks, trying to turn the page in my notebook.

I hand it over. “That next one’s called ‘My Pillows.’ And then there’s one I named ‘Hearts are Bleeding All Over the Place.’ I didn’t write any music to go with them, but I picture the chorus on that one going like this.” I hum a few notes.

Steve-o laughs so hard that Johnny pulls a pillow over his head. Harrison looks about ready to pound Steve-o, which is saying something, since it’s Harrison.

“What have
you
written lately?” I ask Steve-o. “Better question, can you write at all?” Then I turn to Trevor to get the only reaction that really matters.

Trevor bites his lip as he reads. My phone chimes again. Seriously, does Eric
not
realize that I’m in the middle of something here? Something that requires his jacket to give me some edge?

Bet Mom wld love to hear how you went to a bar Sat nite.

YOU drove me there, dumbass.

“What do you think?” I ask Trevor when he finishes.

“They’re, um . . . different.” He hands the notebook back to me and pushes his hair out of his face.

“Have you guys considered doing covers?” Harrison asks, not looking at me.

“
What?
” I ask. “What’s wrong with my songs?”

“You need to stick to theater. Since we all know you’re good at acting, anyway,” Steve-o says, the joint back between his lips. “We were gonna do covers before Lover Boy here got the bright idea to let you run the show.”

“
And
we decided that original songs would make us stand out,” Trevor says.

“‘My Love Is a Christmas Tree in January?’ Fuck no,” Steve-o says.

“But maybe we could do something with this last one. The bleeding hearts one.” Trevor reaches for my notebook again, but Harrison grabs it first.

“You’re right,” Harrison says. And if I weren’t concerned with what they were planning to do with my song, I’d be more in awe of the fact that Harrison agreed with Trevor on anything. “If we changed this line here, from Oreos to heroes, and then reworded this line . . .”

Trevor tosses Harrison a pencil, and Harrison starts scratching out and rewriting my song.

“Yeah, and then maybe change that one too.” Trevor leans around me to point at something in the middle of the page.

My phone chimes again, which gives me a good excuse to get out of
the middle of the Blakeman & Kaelin songwriting duo. Arguing with Eric will be a good distraction from how annoyed I’m feeling right now. Because of course Harrison is a star at songwriting. Just like he was a natural at pottery and riding horses and flying planes. The guy could probably go to any college and declare a quadruple major.

I, Casey Fitzgerald, am apparently good at nothing except coming up with the perfect outfit for every occasion, landing second-rate roles in musicals, winning Trevor back, and making other guys need a Valium-induced slumber in my presence. Oh, and irritating the living daylights out of my brother. I’m really good at that. I click my phone on and read Eric’s latest threat.

Dena from Dead-End Angels says you were all over some guy in a car after the show. Bet Mom doesn’t know that . . .

Since when does kissing equal being “all over” someone? Well, okay, maybe it was a little more than that, but still, talking about this with Eric is way too weird.
#1—I was NOT all over Trevor. #2—Who I’m with is none of yr business. #3—I just dropped guac down yr jacket. Oops.

His response comes a second later.
Blakeman? Again? Srsly, Case, that guy is a dick. We need to talk.

I send him a three-word text.
Yes. And no.

Yes. But if you get anything else on my coat, I’ll murder you 1st.

I’m just about to shove the phone into my pocket when it chimes again.

You better be here in 15, or I’m coming out to find you.

I let out a frustrated breath. And wish, for the millionth time, that I
had an older sister instead of a brother. My imaginary big sister would be psyched to hear about Trevor. We’d have heart-to-heart talks about cute boys and what we were going to do with our lives. We’d trade clothes and lend each other lip gloss. Instead, I got a brother who thinks he knows everything, wants to ruin my relationship, and freaks out if I borrow his jacket. Thanks, Mom and Dad.

“Case, come check this out.” Trevor holds out my notebook.

I take it from him and push myself back in between him and Harrison—who’ve scooted together in my absence to dissect and rewrite my song. From the amount of cross-outs and new words on the page—all in Harrison’s neat printing—there isn’t much of
my
song left.

“This is . . . um, good.” I force a smile.

Harrison beams. “So, should we try to put it to music?”

“Later, little runt-man,” Steve-o says. He looks at Harrison as if he’s daring him to say something. “We gotta get a drum kit first. And a bass. Maybe another guitar.”

“Wait, you guys don’t already have this stuff?” Harrison asks. He’s digging his fists into the couch, letting Steve-o’s insult go.

“We thought maybe Eric could hook us up with a deal at Notes,” Trevor says. He’s looking right at me.

That’s not going to happen, since Eric apparently hates him. “You could ask him,” I say. “Just, um, don’t tell him I’m in the band.”

Trevor gives me a funny look, but I smile back at him.

He shrugs. “No big deal. We don’t need it till after Christmas anyway.”