presumably ironically, but only a couple of others picked it up, and it died off, embarrassingly, within thirty seconds. Without the cue of dimming lights, it was hard to know when to start making noise. A girl shrieked, “WE LOVE YOU, DAVID,” and everyone else at her table immediately hunched over giggling. My heart thrummed with excitement. I was, quite literally, on the edge of my seat. I couldn’t wait to see Ruby. I couldn’t stop asking Jamie questions I didn’t want her to answer.
“Who’s she dating now?” I said, sounding as bored as I could manage.
“Natalie?”
I ground my teeth into dust so I wouldn’t scream. “Yeah.”
“She’s not,” said Jamie. I waited, and finally she glanced my way. “She was seeing this girl at camp, but they broke up.”
This is it, I thought. This is what dying feels like. I leaned an elbow onto the counter behind me to keep myself upright, but still the room tilted and swayed.
“What girl?” I asked.
“She goes to a different school,” said Jamie.
“Sounds made-up,” I said. I took a panicked slurp of my coffee, which was now mostly water, and raised my hand to my neck, surreptitiously feeling for my pulse.
“I mean, I know her,” said Jamie. “Her name’s Sami Lerner, if you wanna look her up.” She nodded at my phone, faceup on the counter, and I flipped it facedown.
“What instrument does she play?” I asked, absurdly.
Jamie raised an eyebrow. “French horn…?”
I nodded, like that explained everything. Jamie half laughed, half scoffed, and we returned to staring at everything but each other. I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth, and jabbed at my neck with my middle and ring fingers until I was satisfied my heart wouldn’t explode. So Natalie Reid likes girls too, I told myself. This doesn’t change anything for you, and it doesn’t necessarily change anything for Jamie, either. I was clutching my neck again, I realized. I wedged my hands into the crooks of my elbow, locking myself in place. Along with the hollowed-out-husk feeling spreading through my body, there arose a wrenching, not unpleasant satisfaction. You called it.
I sat up straighter, scanning the crowd for that telltale orange beanie, but Natalie was short, and the crowd was denser now, and I couldn’t find her, which was just as well. Finally the curtain came to life, puffing out and retreating like a wave as people scrambled into place behind it. A few seconds later, the entity known as Sweets emerged from backstage to whooping applause. David led the pack: floppy brown hair, tight jeans, tight T-shirt, an illicit under-eighteen tattoo of what appeared to be a cheeseburger on the forearm he now used to tune his baby-pink electric guitar. I had to give it to the shrieker: he was, like, totally dreamy onstage.
But I didn’t look at David for long. In fact, I hardly looked at him again for the rest of the show. As far as I was concerned, Sweets had no guitarist, no bassist, no drummer. They had only a singer.
Ruby’s lips were painted a deep, vampy purple, and her silver hoop earrings nearly touched her shoulders. She wore baggy jeans over Timberlands and a red Mickey Mouse T-shirt she’d cropped at her belly button. Boy-style boxers peeked over the top of her waistband, which caused me to feel briefly dizzy, this time in a good way. Her hair was twisted into tight French braids, the tips freshly dyed emerald green. She was texting me when she was applying that dye, I thought with substantial satisfaction. I had previous and direct knowledge of that dye. Who else here could say that? Who could think of Natalie Reid when Ruby Ocampo was onstage? Certainly not me. Not very often, anyway.
I watched Ruby as she smiled at the crowd, took a drink from a water bottle, turned to say something to the guys. I felt Jamie look at me and quickly away but I couldn’t and didn’t take my eyes off Ruby. The palpable excitement in the crowd bordered on impatience. Someone in the audience shrieked, “SWEETS!” The boys stayed serious, focused on fiddling with