immediately overcome with visions of crooning old people and squawking middle-aged ladies and a whole lot of drunks who can’t carry a tune and … oh no. So much for our quiet study session. At least the school year is pretty much over.
“I’m Trish Roxby and I’ll be your host,” she continues. Noticing our less-than-enthused expressions, she juts her thumb toward the bar. “Y’all didn’t notice the signs? Carlos told me he’s been advertising for a couple weeks now.”
I glance toward the bar. It takes a minute, but then I notice. On the chalkboard by the door, above the listing of daily specials, in messy handwriting, someone has scrawled the words: JOIN US FOR WEEKLY KARAOKE, EVERY TUESDAY AT 6:00, STARTING IN JUNE.
“So, think you’ll be joining in tonight?” asks Trish.
“No,” Jude and I say in unison.
Ari just bites her lower lip, eyeing the binder.
Trish laughs. “It’s not as scary as it sounds. I promise, it can be a whole lotta fun. Besides, girls like to be serenaded, you know.”
Realizing she’s speaking to him, Jude immediately starts to squirm. “Uh. No. This is my twin sister.” He tilts his head toward me, then gestures between himself and Ari. “And we’re not…” He trails off.
“Really? Twin sister?” says Trish, ignoring whatever he and Ari aren’t. She looks between me and Jude for a moment, before slowly nodding. “Yeah, okay. I can see it now.”
She’s lying. No one ever believes that Jude and I are related, much less twins. We look nothing alike. He’s six foot one and skinny like our dad. I’m five five and curvy like Mom. (Our grandma loves to joke that I took all of Jude’s “baby fat” when we were in the womb and kept it for myself. I never found that joke particularly funny when we were kids, and it has not improved with age. Insert eye-roll emoji here.)
Jude is blond and super pale. Like, vampirical pale. His skin burns within thirty seconds of stepping into the sunlight, which makes living in Southern California not completely ideal. I, on the other hand, am brunette and will be sporting a halfway-decent tan by the end of June. Jude has cheekbones. I’ve got dimples. Jude has full-on mood lips that make him look a bit like an Abercrombie model, though he hates when I say that. And me? Well, at least I have my lipstick.
Trish clears her throat awkwardly. “So, you ever done karaoke before?”
“No,” Ari answers. “Though I’ve thought about it.”
Jude and I exchange looks because, actually, we have done karaoke before. Lots of times. Growing up, our parents used to take us to this gastropub that had family-friendly karaoke on the first Sunday of each month. We’d belt out Beatles song after Beatles song, and my dad would always end “his set,” as he called it, with “Dear Prudence,” then call us all up together for “Hey Jude.” By the end of it, the entire restaurant would be singing—Naaaa na na … nananana! Even Penny would join in, even though she was only two or three years old and probably had no idea what was going on. It was sort of magical.
A little nostalgic part of me lights up to think of Dad’s slightly off-key rendition of “Penny Lane” or Mom’s over-the-top attempts at “Hey Bulldog.”
But then there was one time, when I couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven years old, when some drunk in the audience shouted—Maybe that kid should spend less time singing and more time doing sit-ups!
We all knew who he was talking about. And, well, the magic was pretty much ruined after that.
Come to think of it, that might have been the start of my public-speaking anxiety, and that all-encompassing fear that everyone will be watching me, criticizing me, waiting for me to embarrass myself.
“Well, you kids just think it over,” says Trish, setting the binder down next to the chips. She takes a pen and some slips of paper from a pocket and sets them down, too. “If you find a song you wanna sing, just write it down here and pass it up to me, all right? And if the song you want isn’t in the book, you let me know. Sometimes I can find it online.” She winks at us, then wanders off to the next table.
We all spend a few seconds staring at the binder like it’s a poisonous snake.
“Yeah,” Jude mutters, and starts tossing his things into his backpack. “That’s not going to happen.”