look that I knew meant something like You’re in trouble with this one. Which of course I knew.
Dee yelled for Gaby, and a moment later she emerged from the back.
“This is Ruby, from Sweets, that band,” I said.
“Oh, hi! I’m Gaby. I’ll give you a proper tour.”
I trailed along after them as Gaby showed Ruby where they usually set up the stage, and where they could plug in their amps, and explained how the sound system worked. They talked through Dee’s proposed cover charge, and Ruby agreed that five dollars a head (two for the band and three for the shop) seemed fair. Then Gaby started giving Ruby a mini lecture on women-centered safe spaces, and I started to worry we were losing her. “Our doors are open to all identities at Triple Moon, but cis men are sort of…low on the priority list,” she said. “I hope the young men in your band will be respectful of the fact that they’re only here because you’re here, and because I trust Quinn’s judgment. Their voices are secondary.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” said Ruby. “I never let them forget that.”
Gaby smiled, which made me beam. I had nothing to worry about. Ruby fit in here, just like I knew she would.
The show date was set for two Saturdays away, and when Ruby and I got back in my truck we were giddy and triumphant.
“Two dollars a head!” I exclaimed. “If fifty people come, that’s a hundred bucks!”
Ruby smiled patiently. “And divide that by four…”
“Oh, yeah. Well, it’s not about the money, really. Right?”
“Right,” said Ruby. “That part can wait.”
Oh no, I worried inwardly. Does she think Sweets is going to, like…make it big?
“So you think you guys’ll stay together after graduation?”
She shrugged. “I hope so. I feel like we’ve finally figured out our sound—”
“Totally.” I nodded.
“—but David wants to go to school in New York, and Ben thinks we should focus on Portland, so we’ll see.”
“What about you?”
She sighed. “Stanford.” She said it so boredly, and definitively, like she was already in.
“Oh. Wow. Are you…did you…”
“I’m pretty sure. My parents went there, and they donated, like…a building,” she explained. “Part of a building? I don’t remember.”
“Oh sure,” I said, like I had also donated several buildings myself. “My friend Ronni is going there too,” I added proudly, a little jealously.
“Soccer?”
I nodded. “I heard you got a perfect SAT.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You heard that? From who?”
“Alexis,” I said.
“That bitch knows everything,” she said admiringly.
“I know.”
So it was true. Ruby was rich and beautiful and brilliant. And straight. What was I doing here again?
“You don’t seem very excited,” I said. “You know Stanford is kind of a good school, right?”
She smirked. “Yeah, I think I’ve heard that. No, I mean. It’ll be fine. I would have preferred to go to school in LA, but my parents pretty much told me I’d ruin their lives if I didn’t go to Stanford, so, whatever. It’s four years.”
“And it’s Stanford.”
“You think I’m a brat.”
“No,” I said. “A little.”
I looked over to make sure she wasn’t mad at me, once and then again. I could get used to her sitting there, I thought. I could survive off the intermittent eye contact alone.
“Fine,” she said. “Where do you want to go, then?”
“The University of North Carolina,” I said—definitively, though I still hadn’t heard anything more from their recruiter, and had not yet gotten around to actually applying. But I would, and I had to.
“Uh, the best women’s soccer program in the country.” I knew I sounded defensive, but I didn’t want her to think UNC was some shitty country-kid school just because it wasn’t an Ivy League, or in a big city. It wasn’t easy to get into, either.