Chasing Midnight (18 page)

“Whatever,” he says, moving as far away from me as possible in one step.

Okay.

I give up on trying to appease him and start shoving wrappers into an empty sack before jumping to my feet, figuring he’ll snap out of his mood soon, just like he’s done in the past.

“You’re such a tease.” James is suddenly right beside me, his voice in my ear. He rips the bag out of my hand and crumples it into a ball. “I’ve seen you with him. You get all flirty every time he comes around.”

I stand back. “I do?” What is he even talking about? I’m pretty sure I’m the least flirty girl in the whole school. Just last week I would’ve voted myself least likely to flirt, even if the flirtee was Zac Efron.

But now that I think about it, about Saturday, when I bantered back and forth with Cale in the park before racing him on the monkey bars . . . it makes me wonder if James
does
have a point . . . a small point, at least. Is the new Mackenzie Love a flirt?

Suddenly I feel small.

James shakes his head.

I don’t know what to say to reassure him without feeling like a fraud. And I’m still in shock at how James Odera, the king of the school—the guy who can have any girl he wants—is jealous of Cale Blackburn.

I want to laugh again but am silent as I stand there beside him, watching him move about, gathering up his things while some kind of storm brews in his head.

All because of me.

“Hey! Were you guys trying to ditch us, or what?” a voice calls to us from across the quad, cutting through the tension, at least a little bit.

Katie, Liv, and Morgan are strutting toward us. Katie immediately leaps ahead of the others, her long legs carrying her faster than anyone else. She stops behind James and ruffles his hair, then jumps on his back. Her own dark hair sweeps across her eyes in thick, heavy strands, barely brushing the tops of James’s shoulders.

He tilts his head upward and focuses on her momentarily. A part of my heart stings the way he looks at her, the way he is supposed to look at me. While I watch their interaction from only a few feet away, he seems to sense my scrutiny and turns his head away from her until our own eyes meet. The look on his face is hard and his eyes like bricks of coal. He blinks twice—slowly, like a robot, never looking away.

It feels like a challenge, like he’s trying to make me jealous.

And it’s working.

As if sensing imminent doom, Tanner turns to James. “Are we on for tomorrow night, bro?”

I’m the first to look away. The slightest smile appears on James’s face, and his eyes come to life again as he puts Katie down. “Yep. Jared’s arranged the whole thing.”

“Sweet.”

“He’s bringing the drinks and firewood. Everyone else divide up the rest.”

“Is this an open-invite thing, or just us?” Morgan asks, pulling out her phone.

Liv reaches upward for her sunglasses propped atop her messy hair and slides them over her eyes. “Yeah. Like, do we need to get the word out?”

Katie has settled into the open spot next to James since I’m not there, her shoulder rubbing into his, her dark eyes blinking at him. Mesmerized.

“It’s mostly us,” James says. “You can invite a few, but Jared said to keep it small. We don’t want the cops coming this time.”

“Sick,” Tanner says, throwing his arm around Brecke’s shoulders.

“Can I invite someone?” I ask, the only one standing alone.

They all stop and stare at me, eyes agape as if I admitted I was a Communist.

“Like who?” Brecke asks, her voice suspicious and drawn out. Please. Does she really think I’d still invite Cale after all this?

I look at James. He seems a mile away from me over there next to Katie, his dimples aimed at her, not me. I prefer him at my side, whispering sweet things in my ear, his fingers grazing mine.

Ugh, what is wrong with me?

“Um . . . I don’t know . . . ,” I say, thinking of Aly, wondering if I can make the past up to her by making her one of us, thinking maybe it’s worth a shot.

“Not your
art
friend?” Liv shoots me a look.

Tanner clears his throat and pulls Brecke toward him. James whispers something to Katie. She laughs.

“No, not him. Just a friend. A girl.”

“What friend?” James asks me.

Sheesh, what is it with everyone today? Do I need to present Aly’s birth certificate or something? Bring a urine sample? “Why does it matter?” I ask, unable to hide my irritation anymore.

Morgan, Katie, and Liv laugh, as if this is all a game.

“Because it does,” Morgan says, her eyes narrowed, challenging me.

“Forget it,” I say, losing my nerve.

But I still can’t shake the idea from my mind, especially after school when I see Aly standing under a redwood tree with her longboard in hand, waiting to cross the street. All alone. Blood rushes through my veins and up into my ears, practically blocking out every other sound. My hands are shaking. I think I might faint.

I follow her for a little bit again, feeling every bit the stalker I’ve become. I can’t believe my life has come to this—following my former best friend to work, hoping she doesn’t discover me before I gather enough courage to approach her.

FYI: Last time didn’t go so well.

She turns the corner, which means I only have about a minute before she disappears inside Vinyl Underground. But I’m in no mood to face my old boss right now; he isn’t exactly the welcoming type—especially to random teenagers trying to patch things up with their ex-best friends—so, as Aly glides past the yogurt shop, I panic and spin around, running in the opposite direction.

And then I stop.

Force myself back.

It’s now or never—and I know it. This is the perfect opportunity to start fresh. How bad can it be? What’s Aly going to do? Pull out her semiautomatic and gun me down?

Relax, Mackenzie.

Relax.

She slows as she approaches the door, ready to pull on the handle.

“Aly,” I say, my own voice sounding like it belongs to somebody else.

It’s enough.

She comes to a stop and whirls around, a look of confusion marring her face, her eyebrows angled inward as the corners of her lips pull into a frown. When she sees me, she widens her eyes in surprise. Or panic.

I leave about a foot in front of her, afraid to bridge the last square of sidewalk between us. Weeds sprout up through the cracks.

“What?” she says, the wind blowing hair into her face as she kicks up her longboard and rests it against her legs.

“Look. I know you hate me. I don’t blame you, either. It’s just . . .” Shoot, now what? I had an idea in my head about what I wanted to say, but now that the moment has arrived all my words have run away, leaving me with nothing but an itching on my tongue.

“Apology accepted. I have to get to work,” she says simply, turning around.

I grab her arm.

She acknowledges the connection and then finds my eyes again. I recognize that look; it’s a good sign. I know she’s annoyed, but that her heart has softened a little. That maybe she still has room enough in there for me.

“Aly. Please, let me make it up to you. I want us to be friends again.”

She lets out a short-lived laugh and then rolls her eyes. “Why? After all this time, why now?” she asks, tilting her head and folding her arms. Still no smile, no sign of the Aly I used to know.

I drop my gaze to the ground, afraid to find my reflection in her eyes. They are so bright, so blue.
So Aly.
“I don’t know. I feel bad. For what I did. I don’t know why I did it.”

“That’s nice and all, but it doesn’t change the past. Or the last two years of you completely ignoring me.”

I know. I know!

“You don’t have to believe me. I get it. But all I can say now is I’m sorry. And I would do anything for us to be friends again.”

Her face is a mask; she takes it all without any sort of reaction, leaving me without knowing which way she’ll fall.

Toward me, please.

“Anything,” I say again, hoping she knows how much I mean it.

Another gust of wind attacks, this time throwing her hair into my face. I blink, shutting her fan of hair out. When I open my eyes, her lips have lifted into a hesitant smile, the edges of her eyes creasing.

She’s smiling!

Sort of.

Still, my heart nearly spins out. I’m so relieved, so happy that I forget about my aversion to my old boss and ask Aly if she knows whether or not I can find a particular Love and Rockets album inside. She looks at me funny when I explain about my
stupid art project, probably the same look I gave Cale when he tried explaining himself to me, too, that first day.

And then she opens the door and holds it for me as I step inside, behind her.

I survey the rows of shelves and tables loaded with records, wondering where to start looking, trying to remember where Cale said he found it.

“Aly, is that you?” a gruff voice calls from somewhere inside the store. Shoot. Before I can escape, my old boss emerges from behind one of the shelves, his tanned, leathery skin gleaming under the florescent lights.

“Oh. You brought a friend to work?” he says to Aly before eyeing me blankly. I wish I could shake him to remind him I used to be his employee. But that was in another life.

It seems so long ago.

“Uh . . . ” I scan the place, feeling out of sorts. I remember how much Tony hated it whenever I brought Aly to work with me, so I know how bugged he is.

“You lost or something? The yogurt shop’s next door,” he says, sticking his thumb out.

“She’s only here to look around,” Aly says, dropping her bag on the desk.

“Look. I’m a busy person. And so is she,” he says, pointing to Aly. “So, how ’bout you either buy something or leave so my employee here can do her job.
Capisci?”

I ignore him, my eye already on the studio door behind him, just hanging wide open, waiting for someone to come inside. “Can I check out your studio for a little bit?” I ask.

“You play?” Aly says. I almost laugh because we used to take lessons together. But that was before.

I nod my head.

“Me too,” she says with hesitation. “Except I quit in ninth grade.”

I know.

Tony steps aside.
Finally.
“Have a look for yourself. It’s
twenty dollars a half hour.” He checks his Rolex for the time. “You got fifteen minutes before my first lesson.”

I brush past him, stopping in front of the door and peeking inside at the rich mahogany baby grand filling up most of the space. I turn and hand Tony a twenty and then step into the room. He’s all smiles, now that my cash is in his hands.

After shutting the door, I settle onto the bench and start playing the first thing that comes to mind—which I thought would be Pachelbel’s Canon in D—but somehow Tchaikovsky springs from my fingers instead. I don’t even remember learning it, either—yet it still comes to me seamlessly, flawlessly.

After that, I move onto whatever else comes next—Chopin, Pachelbel, Mozart, Jon Schmidt, and even “Charlie Brown.” I keep on going, too, not even knowing half the time what song it is until a quarter of the way in; it’s as if every song I ever learned is rushing from my brain and out through my fingers, my body a sieve.

When I’m in the middle of impressing myself with Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto Numero Uno, Tony kicks me out, never mind that I’m not finished. A little kid stands beside him at the open door with a pile of books in his hands.

Reluctantly, I leave them to their lessons and go to find Aly. She’s standing between two shelves, a stack of records under her arm. “I couldn’t find the Love and Rockets record in this stack,” she says, sliding a seventies disco album into the shelf and handing me another pile of records. “Check these, though. They came in last week.”

I almost miss this. My old job.

Working.

Hanging out with Aly.

We stand side by side in silence, each of us thumbing through records at our own pace. The stillness makes for a bit of awkwardness, but I can’t think of anything to say to break up the static.

Aly speaks first, pricking a hole in my anxiety. “I’m still freaking out about this, you know.”

“About what?”

“That Mackenzie Love is sort of decent.”

Her words sting, hitting my heart directly. But I laugh, trying to make light of it. “Who would’ve thought?” I say, my eyes focused on the row of records straight in front of me, too afraid to look at her directly.

I stop at the next record. A huge grin engulfs my face.

Here it is!

The same album Cale stole from me a few days ago . . . a whole other life ago. I can’t believe it’s here in my own hands; I almost expect Bird Lady with her Mohawk hair to materialize in front of me, fairy dust on her heels, only to zap it away from me.

“Hey, is that it?” Aly asks, leaning over. Genuinely enthused.

I search her eyes, finding a shade of the old Aly somewhere in there—the Aly who was never humiliated by me in ninth grade—and for a second I don’t care what James or Brecke or the rest of the world thinks. For a second I decide to do what I want to do. What I
need
to do.

She looks away briefly, so I wait until she looks up again, and then I go for it.

“What are you doing tomorrow night?” I ask, telling her all about the bonfire. I’m terrified she’ll say no when I invite her to come, especially considering her botched history with me and the lucky ones.

“You really think I want to put myself in that kind of situation again?” she asks, frowning.

“I promise it’ll be different,” I say, a little ray of hope peeking over the edges of my horizon.

“I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”

I guess it’s better than a no.