The Reece Malcolm List (16 page)

“I hear he wears
guyliner
.”

I don’t know how to tell Kate Logan not to call it that so I just kind of shrug.

At her house in her piano room, I sing through “Like It Was,” wishing I could have used it for my initial audition instead of “Now You Know,” which is bigger and faster and showier. I’m not sure how I can blow anyone’s mind with this one.

“So here’s the thing, sweetie,” Kate says when I’ve completed the song to her very barebones accompaniment. “You, of all people, should stop worrying so much about hitting the right notes. Of course you’re going to! Try to feel the song more.”

Normally it’s like I can’t
stop
feeling things to my very core. Real life things, at least. It’s hard to wrap my brain around needing the opposite for music.

“I feel like you’ve got the sadness down,” she says. “But there’s more in there, you see that when you think about it, right? Anger? And also a sense of humor about it?”

I nod as my brain catches up with that.

“Also, you don’t need to”—she flings her hands into the air—“attack each note with such
gusto
! This phrase here . . .”

I lean over her shoulder to follow along in the sheet music.

“What if you let that be a quiet moment? Trust me, I used to be scared of those, too, and I probably would have forsaken them even more if I’d had your pipes.”

“Yours are—”

“Oh, please! You have such the gift. But we won’t forget that if sometimes you dial it back a notch.”

I’m not sure about that, but I try again, keeping all of what she said in mind. Afterward we both laugh because it’s seriously so so so terrible. I’ve never sung so badly in my life—and in front of
Kate Logan
. You’d never think I could just laugh, but I guess Kate is right about a lot. I know I have something, and one bad rendition isn’t going to disprove anything.

“You are thinking way too hard,” she says. “Just absorb it all, and let it go.”

I raise an eyebrow at that.

“My God, you look exactly like your mom when you do that. Come on, let’s walk around the house, get your mind off of this for a minute.”

I follow her out of the room and down the hallway. By the time we’re back in the piano room, I don’t feel any more ready to tackle the song again, but I don’t really have a choice. This time, though, I start actually understanding what Kate means. This time I do feel it all.

“That was amazing,” she tells me. “Okay, let’s do it again.”

“But—” I feel weird that it’s supposedly amazing but I have to sing it another time.

“If this is how good you are after a few tries, imagine how you’ll be when it’s effortless,” she says. “Just because you’re brilliant doesn’t mean you can’t be better.”

This might be kind of dumb, but it’s a revelation to hear. Obviously practice isn’t just for people who aren’t that great, but I generally sail through songs so easily on my first attempt.
Of course
there are levels of greatness, of nailing it. For caring so much, maybe I’ve been kind of complacent.

So I go through “Like It Was” at least five more times with Kate, and then “Now You Know,” even though I don’t need it for tomorrow. My head feels hollowed out, between the complacency revelation and working my voice harder than ever before. But who knew utterly drained and lightheaded could feel so good?

Kate drives me back home, where Brad is putting dinner on the table and my mother has her MacBook on top of her empty dinner plate.

“You’re just in time,” Brad says to me, which is a nice way to be greeted. My mother doesn’t look up but she does wave. “I’m relieved someone will talk to me during dinner.”

“I’m almost finished with this scene,” my mother says. “Thanks for cooking. And putting up with me.”

Brad laughs. “Devan, how was school?”

I think about telling them I got a callback, but I don’t know if it sounds like a very big deal to a TV writer and a Pulitzer Prize winner. So I just say it was fine, which I guess it was. My mother eventually does close her computer and let Brad serve her spinach quiche and salad, and Brad tells us a story about getting really great sandwiches for lunch but makes it sound way more exciting than sandwiches should be. They let me do the dishes—completely on my own—after we eat, which feels like a big step in helping them out, and then I head up to my room to do my homework.

When I check my phone there’s a missed text from Elijah.
u have time to talk?
I don’t, but it’s enough that he wants to. (I have another text, too, from Justine, about The Tenor, but it doesn’t feel like a response is required.) I text back an apology to Elijah, and he gets it, because he’s nice, and so I concentrate on my English lit.

My phone rings a couple minutes later, and I wonder if Elijah didn’t actually get it, but it’s not him. It’s Sai.

I answer right away.

“Hey!” he says. “You aren’t nervous about tomorrow, right? You’re gonna nail callbacks. You’re the best singer in Nation.”

We’ve never talked on the phone before, but I love how you’d never know that from how normal Sai makes it. I’m sure he’s never been awkward one day in his life.

“Thanks,” I say. “And, no, I’m not really nervous. Are you?”

“Probably more than you. Not used to being in the chorus; afraid that’s what I’ll get stuck with. But it’s all good. Character-building? That’s what people say?”

“Yeah, sure,” I say.

“Heard something about you and Cross,” he says.

Who would have told him? Travis? (Probably.) I wish Sai didn’t know. Is that bad? “Oh, um. Yeah.”

“Yeah? Didn’t know you were—”

“It just kind of happened,” I say, which is—well, as my mother would say—a-
ma
-zing. When Justine arrived home from choir camp and told me about the first night she made out with The Tenor, that’s how she put it. And I listened faux-enthusiastically when all I could think was,
How does anything like that
just happen
?

“Yeah, I know how that goes,” Sai says.

Of course he does.

“I know it’s kind of weird,” I say so he knows that I don’t think it isn’t. “Especially because of Lissa or whatever. Maybe I shouldn’t have—”

“Him and Lissa aren’t official or anything, far as I know. I don’t think you did anything wrong. Not sure you could do anything wrong if you tried, Dev.”

It’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me. And Sai isn’t just
anyone
. I never felt the way I feel about Sai with anyone else. I know it’s bad, but to be fair I never felt the way I do about Elijah with anyone else, either. Sai might be gorgeous and confident and talented and a not-so-secret nerd, but I know I could never just lean in and kiss Sai. Elijah has a lot going for him, too.

Still, it’s amazing Sai thinks such kind things about me.

“Man,” Sai says. “Bad night.”

“Are you . . .”

“Am I what?” he asks after I fade out. Somehow Sai can smile with his voice.

“Are you okay?”

“My dad just, ya know . . .” Now it’s Sai who fades out. “Spent a lot of tonight yelling at me. It sucks because you’d think the one tradeoff for it happening all the time is I’d get used to it.”

I shrug, even though that’s stupid over the phone. “I got used to it. From my stepmom, I mean. But, like, only that I expected it. It’s not like it ever felt any better.”

I say it before I think about it too much. My old life isn’t something I want people at New City to know about, because its disappearance is pretty much required for me to seem normal. But sometimes it’s like Sai isn’t part of my New City world at all. My brain stores him somewhere else, somewhere I can’t even pinpoint.

“That sucks,” he says. “Dunno. Still think maybe you got to a better place with it than me.”

“Maybe so,” I said.

“I only have two more years,” he said. “Less than. Gotta get through school, and I’ll be okay. But it—” His voice breaks only a little but I feel it like I’m being choked. “It gets worse. He hates me a lot more than he used to. And don’t try to be nice and say crap like I’m wrong, he doesn’t hate me, I’m his son so he doesn’t hate me. Trust me. He does.”

“I wasn’t going to. I was going to say I was sorry.”

He’s silent for a while. It’s a good thing that thanks to my mother I’ve grown comfortable with silence, so that I don’t blurt out anything annoying like
are you there? can you hear me?
“Thanks, Dev.”

Out of nowhere, I think about nights like this a billion years ago, or really just a few months back. I wish I had a grimy old key to a music room to offer out to Sai right now. Those nights I slipped off with Justine saved something in me. It seems silly that Sai could need that kind of salvation, but I still wish I had it to give to him.

It’s weird how at this moment, it’s not Justine but the key that I miss—well, what the key brought me, because technically the key is strung on a ribbon and tucked into my jewelry box. Back when the key was the only escape we had—me from Dad and Tracie, her from an empty house because while her parents were great, they weren’t always around a lot—I figured I’d never feel so connected to anyone as I did to her. And now all of it is gone: the key, the connection, and me.

Chapter Twelve

Things I know about Reece Malcolm:

26. She knows she’s someone who has to be put up with.

27. She trusts me enough to help her out (a little).

My previous schools didn’t usually do callbacks. Even if there were a lot of people who wanted to be in the musical, I think teachers usually found it easy to choose who was good enough to be cast. (Sometimes I was pretty sure they picked the show based around who they wanted to cast.) But at New City we’re being whittled down, and even though maybe it’s silly, it makes me feel closer to someday doing this for real.

Everyone in every choir seems distracted, but Mr. Deans doesn’t call us out on it, just makes us sing pieces five and six times instead of two and three, and I know he must understand. At lunch (inside again) I don’t bother to eat and instead stare at my sheet music. It’s not that I’m nervous, but I have to know I did everything I could to be ready.

“Hey.” Elijah sits down next to me with a soda and a sandwich. “You need to be alone to get into the callback zone?”

“I don’t have a callback zone,” I say. “And hi.”

He kisses me, very softly, totally okay on school grounds. I still hope no one sees us. “I expected some kind of haze. Glazed eyes, foaming at the mouth, the whole thing.”

“You are weird,” I say. “I’m actually totally calm about auditions.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it.”

“Shut up.” I grin and look back to my music. I think about last night, and my mother’s computer-covered plate while Brad and I started dinner. I guess we’d both postpone food for art. (Also lots of food—especially anything with dairy—can make your throat mucusy. Gross but true.) “Sorry I couldn’t talk last night. I had sort of a voice lesson in the afternoon, so I still had all my homework left.”

Also obviously I talked to Sai for like an hour but that has nothing to do with anything. Right?

“It’s cool,” he says. “Maybe you can hang out tonight, though?”

“I can ask my mother, sure.” I do want to be alone with him again, where we won’t have to worry about anyone seeing us kiss, where I can let myself be someone who kisses a boy she doesn’t really know but—maybe breaking laws of logic—likes a lot anyway.

After school we crowd into the Music Hall, but it’s a much smaller group than last week. Even though the list was publicly hung in the hallway yesterday morning, there’s still a lot of scoping out the competition. My whole lunch table—minus Elijah, of course—has made it this far. It makes me feel kind of special until I remember whatever’s going on with Elijah means they’re not really my lunch table anymore.

“Whoa,” Travis says, as the door opens and Elijah slips in. “Devvie, did your boyfriend get a callback?”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I say really quickly, hoping that Lissa and Mira, who are sitting on the opposite side of the room, didn’t hear that. Well, or Sai. Except of course Sai heard. He’s sitting right next to me.

“Hey.” Elijah walks over. “I had to see it for myself, you actually calm.”

“She’s an old pro,” Sai says, resting his hand on the back of my chair.
Old?

“Yeah, I know,” Elijah says.

“You’re not in the choir room with her every day,” Sai says.

“I still
know her
,” Elijah says, in the sexy way he says things sometimes. I really hope Sai doesn’t think Elijah means
know
know.

“What are you doing after this?” Elijah asks.

“Ooh, coffee, maybe,” Travis says. “We could all compare notes on—”

“I was,” Elijah says, “talking to Devan.”

I do my best to subtly glance over at Lissa and Mira. Their eyes are not so subtly trained on us. “Um. My mom’s picking me up. When I’m finished. But, um, later, maybe? After dinner?”

“Yeah, just call me.”

I nod, feeling my face flood with heat as he retreats from the room.

“Devvie.” Travis shakes his head. “You have no game.”

“What’s she need
game
for?” Sai asks. “That guy’s got it bad.”

“Text him and tell him you’ll definitely hang out later,” Travis says. “And then just let your mom know.”

“She doesn’t have to,” Sai says. “Not if she doesn’t want to.”

“Lissa Anderson, Jasmine Murray, Devan Malcolm.”

“That’s me. See you guys.” I get to my feet, way way way grateful for the interruption. It would be better, obviously, if Lissa wasn’t being called at the same time.

They call Jasmine into the choir room first,
of course
, so I’m left alone in the quiet hallway with Lissa.

“Hey,” she says.

“Um, hi.”

She nods, tucking her hair behind her ears. “I can’t believe how E and Sai were acting in there.” She nods toward the waiting room of sorts. “Peeing all over you.”

“What?”

Lissa looks back to me, a smile slowly sliding across her face. “Marking their territory. That’s what I meant.”

“Oh!”

“It’s Mira’s joke; I just lifted it.” She shrugs a little. “So you’re not hanging out with E after this?”