Friend Is Not a Verb (14 page)

But that was my problem, not his. He’d earned the right. He
deserved
to be a dick. I was just jealous. I may have been an “adult,” but he was a grown-up brat, and he could get away with it. I wanted what he had, times a million. And like he said, I didn’t want to have to practice bass a lot to get there, either.

Boy, was I insightful. Yes. Kudos for me.

That’s the wonderful thing about being so miserable: It allows you to see your faults with perfect clarity and still feel detached enough to be okay with them.

I dropped Emma’s letter on the coffee table. Then I picked up my bass and left.

You want to know what’s
really
funny? Even after all that, I still wished that my dad were more like him and Emma’s dad. I really did.

“Dude!”

Somebody was pounding on my bedroom door.

“Dude!”

I blinked several times.
Petra?

“Wake up, already!”

It
was
Petra. But she never showed up at my place unannounced. And she never used the word “dude” unless something wonderful or miraculous had happened.

“HEN!”

“Coming,” I croaked. My skull was pounding. Sometime since I’d last been conscious, Petra’s voice had acquired the destructive force of a jackhammer. I lurched out of bed, squinting in the sunlight. The blinds were drawn, but they didn’t
help. I really needed some curtains in here. Heavy, black, velvet curtains. That, and a vat of industrial-strength aspirin.

“You’re not gonna believe this,” she said as I threw open the door.

“I…what?”

She scurried past me and hit the eject button on my stereo, then dug into her bag and yanked out a loose CD. “We were up until four, tweaking it,” she murmured excitedly. “I haven’t even slept…” She dropped in the CD and pressed play. Nothing happened. She stomped her foot on the floor. My brain vibrated in painful sympathy. Ouch. I should have worn earplugs last night. If we played any more gigs, I’d be deaf before I was twenty-one. Either that or have a permanent migraine.

“Listen,” she whispered.

The next instant, my walls were shaking with what sounded like a Parliament Funkadelic outtake. My head spun. I grabbed the doorframe to steady myself. She turned the volume all the way up. It was loud enough to drown out my creaking joints, my rumbling empty belly—even the traffic outside.

“What are you
doing
?” I shouted.

She raised a finger to her lips. I glared at her. She smiled back. Her eyes were puffy. Suddenly I realized she was wearing the same black cocktail dress she had worn at the gig. In the glare of the sunrays, her outfit had a shimmering, hallucinatory quality. I wouldn’t be surprised if her dad had secretly drugged me when he’d patted my shoulder last night and sent me off on a very, very bad time-delayed trip. Didn’t a famous Beat
Generation novelist once compare a bad headache to the more sinister effects of psychedelics? I thought I remembered reading that in a book Sarah had once lent me…

“He’s gonna tu-r-r-rn his mu-tha out,” a silky female falsetto sang. “He’s gonna turn his mutha…OUT.”

My mouth fell open.

“Oedipus Wrecks.” It wasn’t Parliament Funkadelic. It was
us
.

We were unrecognizable. Petra sounded like Mary J. Blige. The bass had a crisp bite. I could hear every note. The instruments were all distinct, but the different layers blended perfectly—the fuzz of the guitar, the click of the hi-hat, the pounding bottom…. This couldn’t have been recorded last night. No way. I shook my head as the song bounced to its climax. There was a measure of tight, razor-sharp quarter notes:
chink, chink, chink, chink
—then
crash!
—it was over, followed by applause.

More than three people were clapping. A lot more.

She turned down the volume knob. “I pasted in a sample of some crowd noise,” she said with a proud grin.

I shook my head in awe. “I don’t get it,” I whispered. “How did you do it?”

“Bartholomew has a special effects sampler. It’s part of the ACID Pro package. It’s got a laugh track and boos and a bunch of other—”

“No, no,” I interrupted. “How did you fix the recording? How did you make us sound so good?”

Petra couldn’t stop smiling. “It’s that software Bartholomew
has, that stuff he’s been telling you about! He showed me how it works last night. But we played much better than I thought, anyway. Rehearsing every day helps. The gig was really tight. Your bass playing killed, too, sweetie.” She smirked. “Well, up until your string broke.”

“I had no idea,” I said. My headache evaporated. I’d never loved Bartholomew Savage more than at that moment. I wanted to plant a sloppy kiss right smack on his handsome face. He was a genius. No wonder horrible live bands sounded so good in the studio. There was nothing a gifted sound engineer couldn’t do. Absolutely nothing. They were Rumpelstiltskins, all of them. They could take straw and spin it into gold.

My cell phone started ringing. It was still in my pants’ pocket, in a pile on the floor. I fished the phone out with one hand and yanked the corduroys over my boxers with the other, eyeing the caller ID. Sweet. It was Bartholomew Savage.

“Hey!” I said excitedly. “What’s up? This is karma! Petra is playing me our demo right now. Thank you so much! You gotta come over and—”

“Hen?” He sounded annoyed.

“Yeah?”

“I can’t play with you guys anymore.”

The words floated right by me. I must not have heard him correctly. I was too giddy. “What was that?” I said.

“I quit.”

My grip tightened around the phone. I glanced over at Petra. She furrowed her brow.

“I’m sorry, you
what
?”

“You really made me look like an asshole last night,” Bartholomew Savage said.

I swallowed. “Wait. I don’t—”

“Sid just called. I can’t believe you told him to screw himself. He did
us
a favor. I have to go back there and pay him myself. You owe me sixty bucks, by the way. Sid is really pissed at my brother. Irene is pissed, too, with all the wackness you talked. Victor might lose his job. I hope you’re happy.”

My stomach twisted. Good God. I had no idea what to say. Had I behaved
that
badly? What “wackness” had I talked? And who was Irene?

“What’s going on?” Petra hissed.

I waved her off. “Look, I’m really sorry,” I murmured urgently. “Why don’t you give me Sid’s number and let me call him to explain—”

“Forget it,” Bartholomew Savage interrupted. “Just come over and bring sixty bucks. Or give it to Petra. She can give it to me.”

There was a loud click. I flinched.

“Hello? Hello?”

“Is that Bartholomew?” Petra demanded.

I stared at the phone. My jaw hung slack. The line was dead. He’d hung up.

“Well?” she pressed.

“It
was
,” I muttered. I shoved the phone back into my pocket.

“What did he want? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I sat down on the edge of the bed and ran a hand through my hair. “I think he just quit the band.”

“He just quit the band,” she repeated.

I nodded. I felt sick.

“Why would he do that?” she asked. Her voice was oddly colorless.

“I…uh, I think it has something to do with Sid, the guy who made the recording. And somebody named Irene.”

“Somebody named Irene,” she said.

Our gazes locked. Her face darkened. “Loser” played softly on the stereo. Luckily, the song had just begun. My D string wouldn’t break for several minutes. I opened my mouth to apologize—but the door swung open and Dad walked in.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said. “I wanted to see what all the ruckus was about.”

Petra and I kept staring at each other. Both of us were breathing heavily. The song had reached the guitar solo: the best part, maybe even the highlight of our set. Petra copied the melody of the chorus in Biggie Smalls’ “Hypnotize,” the part where the female voices sing “Biggie, Biggie, Biggie, can’t you see?” She played the riff note for note, only with heavy delay, so it sounded as if three guitarists were playing together in the back of a cathedral. The effect was incredible, very trippy. My expression softened.

Petra reached over and snapped the power off.

“What music is that?” Dad asked.

“It’s…um, our band,” I muttered.

“Really?” He sounded surprised. “
Your
band?”

“Yeah. We made a recording of our gig last night.”

He smiled. “Well. I’m very impressed. I’d love to hear the whole thing at some point. Please don’t blast it so loudly, though. I’m working at home today. I’m sure the Wood family got a sampling of it. The whole block did.”

My mood abruptly screeched around in a 180-degree turn. Ha! I flashed Petra a triumphant smile. The situation wasn’t so dire, after all. If
Dad
said he liked it, then it
was
probably worthy of immediate release on a major label. It was the first time he’d ever complimented anything musical I’d ever done.

“What are you doing here, anyway, Hen?” Dad asked.

I laughed. “I live here, remember?”

“So you really liked it?” Petra asked him, ignoring his bizarre question. Her tone was suspicious.

The phone rang again before he could answer. My heart jumped. I didn’t recognize the number. Maybe Bartholomew Savage was calling from a different line and had changed his mind.

“Hello?” I answered breathlessly.

“Is that Hen?”

I blinked. It was Mrs. Abrahmson. She’d never called me before.

“Hi,” I said.

“Do you plan on walking the dogs today? Or can’t you be bothered?”

Uh-oh. I glanced around the room. My eyes zeroed in on the digital clock on the stereo. 11:51. My heart thumped. I should have been at her place over three hours ago. I was already late for the
second
walk. I’d forgotten it was Thursday. I had just assumed it was a Sunday, because last night felt like a Saturday.

“Wow, I’m really sorry—”

“If I were smart, I’d say that you should look for another job,” she remarked, “but I rather like you, Hen Birnbaum. I assume you had a gig last night?”

Okay. Maybe Petra’s father
had
drugged me. Nothing made sense. Dad was being kind about my music, and Mrs. Abrahmson suddenly knew I was in a band. I’d never once mentioned Dawson’s Freak to her. At least I thought I hadn’t. We hardly ever spoke. She was usually on her iPhone for those three seconds when she opened her door and handed me the leashes.

“You are a musician, right?” she asked.

“Well, yeah. But I—”

“I can spot them a mile away, you know. My husband tries to be a musician when he isn’t practicing law. I play a little tambourine, myself. We’re obsessed with the classics. Why do you think we named our dogs after John Bonham and John Entwistle?”

Bonzo and Ox.

The names suddenly clicked. Bonzo: the nickname John Bonham’s friends and band mates gave him. “The Ox”: the
moniker the Who’s bassist, John Entwistle, had given himself (why, I don’t know).

My God. I never would have made that connection. Glenda Abrahmson wasn’t supposed to know the aliases of classic rock icons. She wasn’t supposed to be cool. She was supposed to be an eccentric, overpampered nightmare. But now…

Incredible. The Unseen Hand was poised for a high-five.

All at once, anything seemed possible. Emma’s father
could
get us a recording contract. Why the hell not? And so what if I’d talked “wackness” in front of Sid and Irene, whoever she was? (Aha: the sour bartender.) That was my prerogative. I’d happily pay the sixty bucks I owed Sid now, too. Besides, I bet Bartholomew Savage would come crawling back to Dawson’s Freak once Emma’s father was on board. Even if he didn’t, we’d find another drummer in no time. The label could find us a drummer, for God’s sake.

“Ah, the price of age,” Glenda Abrahmson said with a wistful sigh. “I suppose you’re too young to remember Zeppelin or the Who. Or I’m too old to talk about them. Bloody hell. Better not get me started. Are you coming over, then?”

It took me less than fifteen minutes to get to Thomas Street by cab. There was hardly any traffic. I hummed the Who’s “My Generation” to myself the whole way. A glorious new phase of my summer employment was about to begin. Mrs. Abrahmson would finally invite me inside the hallowed sanctuary of her apartment. She would show me her tambourine, and we would
analyze her husband’s best Zep bootlegs….

But none of that happened.

Mrs. Abrahmson simply opened the door—iPhone against her cheek—handed over the dogs, and shut me back out with a smirk, as if to say,
Don’t screw up again.

That was it.

When I got to the dog run, Emma was nowhere to be seen, either.

I sat down on the bench and checked my watch. It was a little past 12:30.

The dogs settled into a heap at my feet and abruptly began to snore. I peered into the brown paper bag my mom had handed me on the way out the door: a tuna sandwich, soy chips, and a Poland Spring.

I should have been hungry. I hadn’t eaten yet. I should have been a lot of things: worried, freaked out, sorrowful, upset, bothered, angry, curious. But I was none of the above. I was an empty glass. Even my old pal Jim Forbes had disappeared. Maybe there was nothing left to say.

My mood only got progressively stranger, my metaphorical glass as empty as could be, until I shambled home from the midday dog walk.

Then, well…everything changed.

Emma was in my bed. When I trudged up the stairs and opened my bedroom door, I found her there—stretched leisurely out on top of the covers, barefoot, in a flowery spaghetti-strap sundress. Her head was propped up against my pillows…and what do you think she was doing? Well, well, well. That Emma Wood. Reading my stolen copy of
Diary of My Life on the Lam
, by Gabriel Stern.

She glanced up from the pages.

Neither of us spoke.

“I read the whole thing,” she blurted out.

For whatever reason, that lit the fuse. Ka-boom. It wasn’t just a laugh attack. It was a breakdown. It
hurt
. I understood what the term “sidesplitting” meant now. It came in waves. Just when I thought I was getting a grip, I’d look at her lying there, and the hysterics would start all over again. We must have laughed for two straight minutes.

“Good lord,” she gasped once it was over. “Listen, Hen, let’s make a pact, all right? Let’s not talk about this diary right now.” She tossed it onto my nightstand. It bounced off the clock radio and fell to the floor, facedown.

A final giggle escaped my lips. I nodded and took another deep breath. “Deal.”

She heaved a shaky sigh of relief. “Good man.”

“Emma, do you think I’ve changed since Sarah came back and disappeared again?” I asked suddenly. That wasn’t how I planned on starting a new conversation. But the question popped out of my mouth, so we were forced to work with it.

“Why? Did your dad say something? He told me I should come up here and make myself at home.”

I shook my head. “No, no. It’s just…”

“That’s what’s bothering you?” Emma asked.

“Actually, what’s really bothering me is that Bartholomew Savage quit our band.”

She looked puzzled. “Because you’ve changed?”

“Among other reasons, I guess,” I muttered.

“Oh, well. That’s too bad. He’s cute.”

I pursed my lips, annoyed. We weren’t here to discuss Bartholomew Savage’s effect on Emma’s libido. This was my room. If she was going to invite herself in and read my stolen merchandise without permission, then she was not allowed to talk about anybody who was cooler, younger, and better looking than me.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m sure he’ll change his mind. You just got unlucky with the crowd last night. If they’d let all his friends in, he wouldn’t be so upset. You guys sounded amazing. That’s the important thing. Really.”

“Thanks.” Maybe she was right. Only now I wasn’t so sure that Bartholomew Savage would return. And we needed him back. No label would ever sign a bass and guitar duo, would they? Of course not. I hadn’t been thinking straight. I’d just been high on the recording. Finding a replacement would be impossible. Drummers in New York were like cabdrivers: only one out of every hundred was competent, English speaking, or drug free. We couldn’t afford to lose him.

“Have a seat, Hen,” Emma said gently, slapping the mattress.

I crawled onto the bed and stretched out beside her, staring at the ceiling.

She nudged me with her elbow. “Come on. What’s really bothering you?”

I lifted my shoulders a little but was thinking: Nothing ever works out the way I see it in my head. Mrs. Abrahmson had slammed the door in my face yet again. Our drummer hated
my guts. Petra would kick me out of the band way before she kicked out Bartholomew Savage. She’d probably kick me out today, in fact. Anxiety crept over me; I felt a sudden compulsion to give our demo to Emma’s dad today, this afternoon,
now
.

But why? Did I really, truly believe deep down that he could get Dawson’s Freak a recording contract? For the past few weeks, I’d based every move I’d made on the absurd premise that becoming a rock star would bring Sarah back and make my family normal again (or close enough). It wasn’t laughable—it was psychotic. I was slipping deeper and deeper into the abyss, and I knew it.

“Can I tell you something?” Emma murmured. “When I left the dog run yesterday, I noticed another dog walker on her way in—a girl with a bunch of little puppies. She was our age, kind of an indie-rock chick, and she had a Steal Your Parents’ Money pin on her hat. I was thinking: What’s her story? Is she in a band, too? Is she a wannabe artist? A fauxhemian? Is she writing a memoir about how
she’s
the actual unsung mystery genius behind that slogan?”

“Everybody’s the actual unsung mystery genius behind that slogan,” I mumbled.

“I
know
. But it’s like, everybody wants to be famous—but nobody has that thing that is gonna push them over the top…that aura, that drive, whatever. And when I saw you guys last night—even though nobody was there, even though you might not have been happy with how it went—I just saw that you had it. And this girl didn’t. I could just tell. Don’t ask me how. But
something big will happen to you sooner or later, Hen. I’m not just saying that. I’m not being sarcastic, either. I haven’t had a single beer. I really believe it.”

I tried to muster a smile. I felt like crying all of a sudden. Emma was a bottomless pit of goodwill. How could she volunteer at a homeless shelter—a job she’d gotten solely for my benefit, no less—deal with her insane father, listen to my messed-up ramblings…and still manage to be so
sweet
?

“I didn’t say it was going to be easy,” she teased.

“I know,” I said. “But it’s funny. Something weird happened to me just now. Mrs. Abrahmson told me that she named her dogs after members of Led Zeppelin and the Who. Mrs.
Abrahmson
. And I was, like, whoa—this is a sign, an omen that amazing things are on the horizon, that there’s this connection, that my family will finally tell me—” I stopped midsentence. I didn’t even know what I was trying to say.

Emma laughed. “You think that’s something new?”

“What do you mean?”

“Hen, you see signs and omens in everything. That’s the way you are.”

“Is that bad?” I asked nervously.

“It’s cute.”

I wasn’t sure if I liked that adjective. It was the second time she’d used it.

She patted my knee. “You see these connections, and you believe in them, and that’s what makes them real.”

Her fingers stayed put. I watched them there, comfortably
nestled in the folds of my corduroys.

My thoughts drifted, billowed by Emma’s closeness. I thought about that letter she’d written Petra. I thought about
Hen Birnbaum’s Super-Awesome Nineties Nostalgia Mix!!!
I thought about how she’d found the stolen manuscript because she knew exactly where to look, and how she was sure we’d have a blast going to that stupid Journey concert with her parents, because we would. “The Age of Aquarius” hummed quietly in my brain.

I tilted my head slightly. Her eyes were closed. A soft, inviting smile played on her lips.

That dress!

My pulse quickened. Was it? Yes…it was. The same dress from my dream. My God. Was the Unseen Hand tapping my shoulder? It had to be.

There
was
a connection between reality and my dream life.

This was real. Nothing had ever felt
more
real. Here we were, alone in my room, side by side on my bed, joined together…. Gabriel was right.

Indescribable warmth washed over me.

Gabriel was right.

I felt it: that 100 percent certainty he knew I’d have if we’d made eye contact while I was onstage. Only now there was no wall of make-believe between us. Her eyes were closed, but that was even better. I wanted to kiss her. I
had
to. She was waiting for it; I could tell. That smile! It was no accident, either. We’d only joked with the troglodytes to mask the truth. It was
destiny. I needed to forget about all the crap in my life—not only everything that was going on with Sarah and my parents and Petra and the band…I needed to forget every preconceived notion I ever had about Emma.

Now was the time. This moment.
Now
, before it got too late or too weird or impossible, just like Gabriel said it would. She wanted me to.

Look at her lying there, waiting! She’s my best friend…

I leaned over. I closed my eyes. My lips pressed softly against hers. They melted against mine. She kissed me back—

“Hen, stop,” she breathed.

My heart galloped. I could barely hear her.

“Stop.” She pulled away. “Stop. Stop.”

And then it was over. Just like that.

The kiss lasted five seconds, ten at most. No time at all. But it was enough.
CAUTION
:
POLICE LINE
—
DO NOT CROSS
. I’d done it. I’d broken the tape, the seal protecting the one taboo that had been alluded to and avoided and joked about and danced around for our entire lives. Today. Here.
Now.

The problem was, Emma did something I never, ever imagined she would do.

She started sobbing.

No, no, no. This was all wrong.

Tears streamed down her cheeks. Her lips were trembling. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Who was I kidding? I hadn’t just imagined this exact scenario in a few dreams; I envisioned it a thousand times
awake
. Really, if I were honest with
myself, I thought about it almost every day; I just buried it on autopilot. And it was always perfect. It always transcended any comparison with a scene from a book or a film or a song I’d enshrined in my private pantheon—because it was
better
, something timeless, something (if a comparison had to be made) along the lines of Jimmy Stewart smooching with Donna Reed in
It’s a Wonderful Life
.

So what was going on? Frank Capra would not approve. But then, this was another movie entirely:
It’s a Joke of a Life
, starring Henry Birnbaum—written, directed, and produced by the same.

“Emma, I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

She shook her head and sniffed, clumsily scooting to the foot of the bed.

“Don’t worry,” she said, her voice quavering.

“Emma, I didn’t mean—”

“No, no, no, I’m just confused,” she cut in. “That’s all. It’s Gabriel’s diary. It’s everything. I get so bugged out and I don’t even know—”

“No, no, it’s my fault!” I cried. “I had this dream. I mean…” I hesitated, teetering on the brink of saying:
I don’t even like you that way
. But that was worse than a dopey, pitiful lie; it was
evil
. I was just looking for an excuse: anything to take back what I’d done, anything to erase the moment. What was I
thinking
? Emma wasn’t
attracted
to me! Dreams or no dreams, there was no destiny involved. She put her hand on my knee because she’s my
best friend
. At most, she’d been making a joke. A joke!

I’d never felt more disgusting. I was covered in slime. I’d forced my sloppy lips on hers—upon the lips of Emma Wood, my neighbor, my pal, my sort-of sister!
Eww.
Forget shame, forget travesty, forget apocalypse…there isn’t a word for it. If the Unseen Hand
were
present, it was giving me the finger.

“It’s not you, Hen.” Emma sniffled, avoiding my eyes. “It’s me. Really. I always cry for no reason when I’m confused.” She wiped her nose and glanced back at me, trying to smile. “Nothing happened.”

My mouth opened, but no words would come.
Nothing happened?
Did she really mean that? And the worst part: She’d used the same moronic cliché that she ridiculed the night Petra broke up with me. “It’s not you; it’s me.” The excuse that belonged in heinous pop songs written by fools. Meaningless. Beyond meaningless.

She bolted for the door.

“Emma, wait!” I shouted.

“Nothing happened!” she called back, scrambling down the stairs. Her footsteps echoed through the house, faster and faster—

Before I could shout her name again, the front door slammed.