The Reece Malcolm List (6 page)

“I’m glad you have a normal house.”

“God, me, too. Come on.” She jumps out of the car and walks up the driveway, me right on her heels. “I should warn you . . .”

“What?”

“They’re a lot to take. Separately, together, in groups, one-on-one. They’re my best friends, but I won’t act like that isn’t true. So.” She rings the doorbell.

The door opens so quickly it’s like someone was waiting on the other side. A woman at least a few years older than my mother with very artfully messy light brown hair and huge green eyes who all at once looks just like Kate Logan and yet smaller and different, somehow, rushes out and throws her arms around my mother. Up until then I truly couldn’t imagine
anyone
hugging Reece Malcolm. Maybe when you’re famous you can get away with more?

Actually I guess to most people, Kate Logan isn’t super famous. She’s been in, seriously, dozens of Broadway shows (if you count the ones that only lasted a few performances) and sung on a ton of cast recordings. Now she lives here, obviously, and acts in TV shows and sometimes little parts in movies. Probably a lot of people won’t know who you’re talking about if you mention Kate Logan, but to me she’s a huge star.

“Hey, sweetie, you look great,” she says to my mother. “I presume cohabitation is treating you well.”

“It’s feeding me well, at least. This is Devan. Devan, this is my friend Kate.”

“Devan, it’s so wonderful to meet you.” Kate grasps both my hands in hers. “Come on in, dinner’s very nearly ready. Brad couldn’t make it?”

“Don’t ask,” my mother says.

“I’m not asking right now.” She giggles at her own joke, when a man I recognize as Vaughn—thank you, Google—walks into the room. He’s also shorter than I expected. His brown hair is thinning a little, which you can’t tell in photos, but his smile is one of those mega-watt ones I’d kill for, and he moves with ease, like nothing in life is uncomfortable.

I’d kill for that, too.

“Malcolm, good to see ya.” He crosses the room to join us and leans in to kiss my mother’s cheek. “Where’s your English schoolboy?”

“Shut up, Vaughn. This is Devan. Devan, this is Vaughn Sinclair, who I’m ashamed to tell you is also my agent.”

I pretend like that’s news to me and shake his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too, kid. How’s L.A. treating you? You see anything besides the Valley yet? A shame your mom settled herself there, but if I could figure out the weird stuff people do, I’d go be a shrink. Drinks, cocktails, wine? Full bar as always.”

“She’s
sixteen
,” my mother says.

“Right, you never drank at sixteen.” Vaughn makes his way to the bar at the back of the living room. And when I say “living room” I mean giant space decorated entirely in an Art Deco style, with the kind of light fixtures and divans and whatever else I’ve never seen in a real house before. Compared to this, my mother’s house is down-to-earth and homey, though weirdly enough this feels way more my style. If you’re going to keep your house like a magazine spread, at least make it one you’d want to read, right?

“It’s weird, huh?” Vaughn says to Kate once he gets a drink for my mother and a Diet Coke for me.

“Be nice,” my mother snaps.

“It’s just that she’s a total mini-Reece,” he says. “That’s all I’m saying. You looked just like this at sixteen, didn’t you?”

Very slowly, my mother nods. “Yeah.”

“Bad news, kid,” Vaughn says. “That’s definitely you at thirty-two.”

Thirty-two?
Holy crap. I don’t like that math at all. It’s one thing knowing she’s young; it’s another to actually pin this number onto it.

“Bad news? Reece looks amazing,” Kate says, which I guess is true, not that I know exactly what a thirty-two-year-old should look like. I only know that a thirty-two-year-old is not what I expected to get as a mother. “Devan’s very lucky with those genes. And Reece’s mom looks amazing for her age.”

“Please, my mom’s had a lot of work done,” my mother says. “There’s nothing we can gauge from her except a different set of priorities.”

I wonder what this plastic surgery–getting person is like.
My grandmother
. Dad’s parents lived far away, on the other side of the state, so we didn’t see them very often, only once a year at Christmas. Dad clearly inherited his ways from them because I could never figure out how to get close to them, either.

Kate, Vaughn, my mother, and I eat dinner in a huge dining room off fancy square plates with heavy brushed-silver forks and knives. The longer I’m here, the less ridiculous it seems. Where and how else
would
Kate and Vaughn eat? Afterward, my mother and Vaughn promise to clean up, so Kate and I are free to head to the music room. I’m not sure what I’m expecting, considering the rest of the house, but this is just a simple room holding a piano and a shelf’s worth of sheet music.

“I’m good at warm-ups.” Kate sits down at the piano. “Actual music, less so. Isn’t that unfair? Five years of piano lessons, but I finally had to accept the truth.”

“I’m not any good at it, either,” I say. “But doing scales is totally all I need.”

So she launches right into some, and my voice just sort of flies out of me, like it always does. I feel the past days’ events rise off of me like steam on a cold day. Nothing feels wrong or bad or hopeless when I’m singing. The whole world is just music.

“Oh my God,” Kate kind of squeals when we’ve gone through a few different warm-ups. “
Your range
. I’d kill for it.”

“Yours is amazing, though,” I say, my first acknowledgment that I know who she is. “Mine’s no better.”

“Oh, sweetie, trust me, it is. Maybe not better than when I was your age, but now, yes. It’s hard maintaining it, since I can’t even remember the last musical I did.”

I can, but decide it would be creepy to mention.

“So.” She grins up at me from the piano bench. “You must have nosy questions for me about Reece, right?”

“Um.” I find myself grinning against my will. (Okay, my will isn’t
that
strong.) “Um, I don’t know. Not really.”

Kate snorts. “Devan. You either need to think harder or stop being so restrained.”

Obviously I have a lot of questions, but they aren’t for Kate. And I’m not sure how much I want to hear the answers anyway.

But I guess I have to ask something. “Is it weird I’m here?”

“Oh, Devan, I’ve lived through a lot weirder stuff.”

It’s a yes, but a nice one at least.

“She’s as tough as you think,” Kate tells me. “But a person can be so many things at once. You know?”

I don’t, not really. It sounds encouraging, though.

She pats the piano bench, and I sit down next to her. Three inches from a fairly famous person. “I’m here if there’s more you want to talk about later, okay? So if you need anything at all, you just have to let me know.”

“Um, thanks.” I can’t exactly imagine dialing up Kate Logan for random advice. Still, celebrity or not, it’s a nice thing to hear.

My mother and I go home not long after, since my audition is early and all. It’s another quiet drive, but obviously I’m already used to it. And the weird thing is—okay, I’m still terrified of Reece Malcolm, but this silence doesn’t feel the same as sitting in a silent car with Dad or Tracie.

And because of that, I feel safe enough to speak up as she pulls the car into the garage. “Thanks for taking me tonight. I think I’m way more ready for my audition now.”

“Good,” she says.

A lot of things are flooding my brain, but for the moment, I make myself smile at her before I head inside.

Chapter Five

Things I know about Reece Malcolm:

13. She’s thirty-two.

14. Therefore, she was sixteen when I was born.

15. Her friends are also nicer than she is.

My first “real” audition was in seventh grade for
Bye Bye Birdie
, which is one of those shows I think everyone has to perform in school at some point. Teachers had been telling me I had a beautiful voice in any class where singing was involved (like up to and including dumb stuff like “The Star-Spangled Banner”) so I didn’t even realize I
should
be nervous. And even though (like every girl there) I tried out for Kim (the lead role), I got cast as Rosie. And like every girl who didn’t get cast as Kim, I started off a little disappointed. But I realized how much of a better fit Rosie was for my voice, and I started thinking about that, who I’d be best at, not who’d get the most songs to sing. After that I always landed the role I went in for.

Of course, I’ve never stood near the cutest guy on the planet pre-audition before.

“Hey!” He jumps up from his chair as I walk into the music department waiting room at New City School. His hair is nearly black and kind of swooped forward, somewhere between really preppy and a little punk. It is Very Serious Hair. I think about how it would feel to run my fingers through it. (Good, obviously.) “You’re auditioning too? Not just me?”

Now I’m face-to-face with his chest, since 1) the room is pretty small and 2) he’s several inches taller than me. (When you’re 5’3” a lot of people are several inches taller than you.) It’s a nice chest. He’s wearing a totally normal T-shirt from the mall or whatever, but it hangs on him like the shirt has fulfilled its sole mission in life.

The guy is staring expectantly with his dark blue eyes, and I realize he’s probably
not
a hallucination and definitely talking to me. And it’s
possible
likely
true I’m just staring at him.

“Oh, um, yeah, auditioning, I am.” To be fair, it’s more than I’ve ever said to a cute boy in my entire life, so I’m not entirely disappointed in my performance.

“You go here yet?” he asks. “I just started this morning. It’s crazy, compared to my old school. Maybe not in California, I don’t know. What about you?”

“I, um, no. I don’t.” I sit down in one of the folding chairs and hope he’ll stop talking soon. That’s right, I wish silence and lack of communication on Hot Boy. When a hot boy has never even spoken to me before, much less with so much enthusiasm. Auditions are that serious.

“Anyway, I’m Sai, S-A-I, it’s an Indian name, if you didn’t know. My mom’s half Indian and half Chinese. She named me after her great uncle, for some reason.” He pauses. “My mom’s weird.”

I nod until I realize I’m probably supposed to say something back to S-A-I Sai. “Devan.” I think about spelling my name, too, but I’m afraid it won’t sound cute, just weird. If Justine were here she’d tell me how to be cute on purpose, but she’s not.

“Awesome to meet you.” He’s pacing the length of the room, which doesn’t exactly help me maintain my usual pre-audition cool, but does at least give me a chance to watch him from multiple angles. “When do you start?”

“I don’t know yet for sure,” I say. “I just moved.”

“Me, too. St. Louis,” he says, blowing my freaking mind.

“Seriously? Me, too,” I say, then feel dumb because Pacific is not exactly St. Louis, and also maybe I’m talking too much and the laws of nature will do something dramatic to maintain the world where hot boys and Devan do not mix.

“No way.” He pauses from pacing and rocks back on his heels. “Where’d you go to school?”

A woman leans into the room with a clipboard. “Say Lawrence?”

“It’s Sai,” he says with a smile. He probably corrects it a lot. “Hey, Devan from St. Louis, let’s talk later, okay?”

“Sure!” I say wayyyy too enthusiastically, and watch him leave the room. My heart pounds and I feel vaguely crazy, and I guess lots of people go through this pre-auditions all the time. If only I had such a good reason.

Sai is back only a few minutes later. “Fastest audition ever. No clue what to think. Anyway, here’s my email. I have to get back to class, but we should talk.”

“Um, yeah.” I take the scrap of paper from him. If it still exists later I can prove he does, too. “I’ll—”

“Devan Malcolm?” The lady is back, and now my heart is racing and my breath is all shallow and I feel cold sweat on the back of my neck. Because in addition to this cute boy
handing over his email address
, New City School has mangled my name in a horrible, amazing way. New City School doesn’t know who Devan Mitchell is. New City School thinks I’m a Malcolm.

“See ya, Devan Malcolm,” Sai says before heading out of the room. (Does that count as flirting?) I follow the woman down the hallway to a choir room. A man probably no older than my mother, wearing a button-down shirt, sweater vest, jeans, and Adidas, sits at the piano. I had no idea teachers could dress like that.

“Hi, Devan,” he says, and directs me to a spot next to the piano. He goes through my range first, then hands me a piece of music to sight-read
a cappella
, and finally lets me choose from a few pieces of music to sing four bars of. (I pick some weird folk song just because I’ve sang it in a previous class, I figure no one else would go for it, and there’s this section I can belt the heck out of.) The teacher doesn’t give any indication of how I did and dismisses me without a positive or negative word.

I make my way back to the admin building, pausing for a moment at the little pond where goldfish are swimming. In Missouri my school was one big brick building, but New City School is broken up into lots of little white buildings, bright against the blue sky, with lots of tiled walkways connecting everything. What a weird school. What a weird
day
, and it’s only nine thirty in the morning.

My mother’s waiting in the hallway when I get back, reading a big promotional New City booklet. “How’d it go?”

“No idea. Do we need to do anything else?”

“Not yet. They’ll let us know if you’re accepted into any choir classes by this evening, and they’ll schedule you for classes according to that.”

We walk outside to the parking lot. Sunshine and blue skies. Again. I open my mouth to let her know about the name mistake, except that I really like the thought of being Devan Malcolm. And if I tell her, she’ll call up New City, get it fixed, and I’ll have to go back to being Devan Mitchell.

And suddenly she’s the last person I want to be.