Better Than Perfect Page 15

  Thinking about how busy I’d been back in third grade was strange, like stumbling upon a room I’d once lived in but hadn’t entered in years. My mom, standing by the car at pickup, a bagged snack in her hand. Let’s go, Juliet! She must have said that to me a million times in my life. Ten million times. Come on, Juliet.

  Juliet, we have to go.

  Juliet, we’re going to be late for dance.

  For piano.

  For tennis.

  For swimming.

  Had I ever just gone home from school and hung out? I tried to remember, but I couldn’t really remember anyone in my family just hanging out. We were all always doing something. Squash. Piano. Homework. Planning a vacation. Packing for a vacation. Unpacking from a vacation. Running errands. Making reservations. Organizing play dates. Soccer. Little League. Swimming. Redecorating. Visiting colleges.

  The only moments of stillness I could think of were my mom, sitting in the living room in the evening, a glass of white wine at her side.

  An IM popped up, the ding startling me. It was Jason. He was downstairs doing his physics homework, spread out at the kitchen table. I’d left him there because I was sure if I stayed downstairs, I’d get distracted. Now I was glad for the distraction.

  Jason: whatcha doin?

  Me: Latin.

  Jason: need help?

  Me: maybe later. how’s physics going?

  Jason: done. calc.

  Me: J?

  Jason: yeah?

  Me: does this ever feel pointless.

  Jason: what?

  Me: idk. everything. school. homework. SATs. college.

  Jason: college isnt pointless. it’s your future.

  Me: my future is where i go 2 college?

  Jason: u know what i mean.

  Me: lets not go.

  Jason: go where?

  Me: college. let’s just ditch it.

  Jason: ha-ha.

  Me: im serious.

  Jason: and do what?

  Me: Sinead asked me 2 join the Clovers 2day. i cud be in the band. u cud be a groupie.

  Jason: tell me u r high right now.

  Me: u just dnt like the idea of me being a rock star.

  Jason: since when do u WANT to b a rock star?

  Me: idk. it might b cool.

  Jason: i don’t like that guy sean.

  Me: so don’t u b in a band with him!

  Jason: u know what i mean.

  Me: forget sean. can u see me in a band w/o sean?

  Jason: not really.

  Me: u r not even trying.

  Jason: this is dumb.

  Me: not 2 me. try.

  Jason: try what?

  Me: try 2 picture me in a band.

  Jason: u don’t have time.

  Me: i’d make time. it wud be fun.

  Jason: u dnt have time for fun.

  Me: i’d make time 4 fun.

  Me: hello?

  Me: hello?

  I waited, but Jason didn’t write anything. A text came in from my aunt, and I glanced at it. Hey, just to let you know Dr. Gulati’s really happy about how your mom’s responding to her new meds. These may do the trick. Call me when you can. I pushed my phone away. I was busy. I didn’t have time to get my hopes up about my mom.

  Me: J? r u there?

  Me: J? r u there?

  Me: just forget it what i said, k? jk!

  And then I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  Jason was standing behind me. “I thought if you were making time for fun, I’d better take advantage of it.”

  I stood up and he put his arms around me and we started kissing. Neither of us said anything else about my joining the band, but somehow between when we started making out and when Jason went back downstairs to finish his homework so his mom wouldn’t get suspicious that we were having sex, I made a decision.

  I was joining the Clovers.

  20

  There was no way I could ask Declan about rehearsal. Sofia had said the Clovers rehearsed Monday nights. But I didn’t know where, and I didn’t know when, and I couldn’t ask him.

  I knew I’d have to talk to him if I joined the band. Obviously I’d have to talk to him if I joined the band. And I was pretty sure I could talk to him as long as Sinead was around. Better yet, as long as Sinead, Sean, and Danny were around. But one on one with Declan felt off-limits, so I let him walk out of English class without asking him when and where the Clovers were rehearsing, and when I saw him walking with Willow in the parking lot at lunch, I didn’t ask him then either. They were holding hands, and her long, blond hair fanned out behind her like a bridal veil.

  I told myself I didn’t care. That had been my deal with myself if I joined the Clovers: No more thinking about Declan like that.

  I’d had some idea that I’d run into Sinead or Danny and be able to ask them if there really was a rehearsal tonight, but even though I’d been sure that if I was looking for them, I’d run into them, I didn’t. By the time Sofia and I were walking out of swim practice, I realized that my dramatic decision to join a band was being foiled by logistics.

  “What are you up to tonight?” Sofia asked, squeezing the wet ends of her hair between her fingers.

  I shrugged. Now I was glad I hadn’t told Sofia I was going to try singing with the Clovers. How dumb would that have been? “I don’t know. Home, I guess. Then homework.”

  She cocked her head. “Hmm,” she hummed, and then she smiled as if she had the answers to my math homework in her backpack.

  “What?” I asked, irritated.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  “Such as?”

  Her face cracked into a grin. “God, you’re such a bad liar. Eleven twenty-two Larkspur Lane. Seven o’clock.”

  We stared at each other. Sometimes Sofia and I had a crazy mind meld, so I didn’t even ask her how she knew what I was thinking.

  “It’s off Webster,” she added. “In case you were wondering.”

  “I was, actually.”

  “No need to thank me,” she said. “But I’ll take comps to your first show at Madison Square Garden.”

  The address Sofia had given me was a rambling old farmhouse with a small bronze plaque next to the front door that said BUILT IN 1784. There were enormous rosebushes along the front porch. Danny opened the door, looking surprisingly unsurprised to see me. “Come on in,” he said. “We’re still waiting for Sean.” I followed him down a wide hallway past a brightly lit kitchen. The whole house felt chaotic in an orderly way, by which I mean there were books everywhere and a pile of shoes by the front door but no spiderwebs hanging from the ceiling and no dust on the banister that I trailed my hand down as we headed to the basement.

  “Guys,” Danny called, bounding down the steps ahead of me. “Jules is here!” He took the last three steps in a giant leap.

  I followed him and found myself in a low-ceilinged room lit by long fluorescent bulbs. There was a huge square rug on the linoleum floor, dark green and fraying at the edges, as if someone had ripped it off an even larger rug. The room smelled warm and basement-y. Danny’s drum set sat in one corner. Along the wall with the staircase, Declan was stretched out on a red pleather sofa. Sinead was sitting in a battered recliner by a built-in, empty bar.

  As soon as she saw me, she stood up and dropped the sheet music she’d been reading. “Oh my God, Sofia did it.” She clapped her hands with excitement.

  “Don’t give credit where credit isn’t due,” I said. “I did this all on my own.”

  “Does this mean you owe Sofia fifty bucks?” asked Danny, going over to sit behind his drum set.

  I couldn’t believe it. “You promised Sofia fifty bucks?”

  “Only if you survived at least one full rehearsal,” Declan said from the sofa.

  “And what do I get?” His shirt had come up a little bit, and there was a strip of stomach showing above his jeans. I pretended he was Sean and that I didn’t even notice.

  “Um, fame and fortune?” Declan of
fered.

  “Our eternal gratitude?” suggested Sinead.

  The door at the top of the stairs banged open loudly enough that I jumped, and then Sean’s voice boomed down the stairs. “Okay, you wankers! Let’s get this party started.”

  I looked from Declan to Sinead and then to Danny. “I’d say Sofia got the better deal.”

  “Jules, sweetheart,” Sean said, stopping the song for what must have been the fiftieth time. “You sound like you’re singing in the church choir.”

  “I’m an atheist,” I snapped.

  “Yes, but—” Sean interrupted.

  “I think what Sean means,” said Sinead before he could define punk rock as succinctly for me as he had for Anika, “is that you want to sound a little nastier.”

  “Nastier like you’ve gotten laid at least once in your life, not nastier like you’re a bitch,” elaborated Sean.

  “And thank you very much, Sean,” said Sinead, turning on him. He made a face at her, and she growled a warning at him before returning to face me. “Hear how I’m doing it?” She curled her upper lip and ripped out the opening of the song. “One way or another I’m gonna find ya. I’m gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha.”

  Sinead sounded sexy but scary, as if she knew the person she was singing about wanted her to get him but wasn’t quite sure what would happen when she did.

  “Let’s take it from the top,” Declan suggested.

  “Okay,” I said. Declan counted us off and hit the guitar hard, blasting out the opening notes of the song. Then Danny came in, nailing the beat so perfectly it was impossible not to start moving your hips. Sean’s bass line was under it all, sewing the song together and pushing it forward.

  And then it was my turn.

  “One way or another I’m gonna find ya. I’m gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha.” I tried to sound mad, and I did sound mad. I sounded like I was going to find the person and hurt him very, very badly or possibly even kill him. It wasn’t sexy so much as it was terrifying.

  “Well, that was better,” said Sinead. She’d been smiling at me through the whole song, like she’d given up being the lead singer to be the lead smiler.

  “You can say that it sucked,” I said, slipping the mic back into the stand. “I might not know anything about punk rock—”

  “New wave,” Sean corrected me.

  “Whatever,” I said. “But I have ears. I know when something sucks.”

  “It didn’t suck,” Sinead insisted. “You should have heard me the first time I tried that song. It was pathetic.”

  “Worse than pathetic,” offered Declan. “I thought you’d be arrested for crimes against humanity.”

  “Thanks, Dec,” said Sinead. “I believe we’ve made our point.”

  “Listen,” said Sean, and there was something commanding in his voice that made us all look over at him. “Making art is never about being perfect. It’s about what Sam Beckett called ‘failing better.’”

  It seemed to me that Sean’s saying that was a sign that I’d passed some kind of test. Like first he’d tried to scare me, but now he was going to help me.

  “That’s beautiful, Sean,” I said. “I’ve gotta listen to some of his music.”

  “Whose?” Sean asked, confused.

  “Sam Beckett’s.”

  “He’s a playwright.” Sean reached over, grabbed one of Danny’s drumsticks, and mimed driving it through his heart. “Your ignorance is killing me, Jules. It is seriously killing me.”

  When I got home to Jason’s, it was almost ten. On the counter, leaning against a tinfoil-covered plate, was a note in Grace’s handwriting. Mark and I are at a fund-raiser. Here’s some dinner—you might want to heat it up. We’ll see you tomorrow. I’d texted her that I wouldn’t be home for dinner, but I hadn’t said why, and her note didn’t say anything about my having been at band practice. Had Jason told her where I was? I’d texted him also, too chicken to tell him in person that I was joining the Clovers. The possibility that now one or both of them was mad about what I’d done made me uneasy.

  “Jason?” I called. I didn’t want to yell too loudly, because Bella went to sleep at nine thirty. I walked to the foot of the stairs. “Jason?” I stood still and listened, and from the third floor I heard the sound of the shower running.

  I went back to the kitchen and microwaved the plate of spaghetti and meatballs, then sat at the kitchen counter eating it, my Latin textbook open on my lap and my notebook next to my plate. As I tried to translate, I couldn’t help being distracted by all the other work I had to do before I could get to sleep. The history paper alone could take a couple of hours. I forced myself to focus on the Latin. If worse came to worst, I’d skip the English reading and only do half the math problems—Mrs. Matthews almost never checked to see if we’d done the homework anyway.

  “Hey.”

  Jason’s coming into the kitchen startled me. My notebook started sliding off my lap, and I dropped my pen when I tried to catch it. In the end, both of them fell to the floor.

  “Hey,” I said back. He was wearing his Harvard T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, and his hair was wet. Once upon a time, I would have said Jason was as familiar to me as my own family. Now he was actually more familiar to me than they were.

  “So how’d it go?” He leaned down and picked up my book and the pen and put them on the counter next to my plate. “You going to be the next Beyoncé?” I couldn’t tell from his voice if he was mad about my going or not.

  “Hardly.” I rolled my eyes. “I kind of sucked.”

  “I doubt that,” he said. He came and stood beside my chair, toying with the tie of my shirtsleeve. “My parents were worried that you don’t have time to be in a band. My mom wanted to talk to your dad about it.”

  “She didn’t want to talk to me about it?”

  Jason shrugged. “I told her she should cut you some slack. You know what you’re doing.” He gave me a crooked smile. “I didn’t tell her about the whole not going to college idea, though. You might want to wait on that.”

  “J,” I whispered. I put my arm around his waist and pulled him toward me, burying my face in his chest, thinking about how he totally agreed with his mom but how he’d defended my joining the Clovers anyway. “Thanks.”

  He leaned his chin on my head and gently stroked my neck. “I’m worried about you, J. I don’t see how you have time to do everything.”

  I squeezed him even more tightly. “I know.”

  He put his hands on the sides of my face and tilted my head up so I was looking at him. “Really. I don’t get why you’re doing this to yourself.”

  I shook my head, but gently enough that I didn’t dislodge his hands. “I’m not . . . I’m not doing it to myself. I’m doing it for myself.” I laughed. “I sound like someone who does yoga.”

  He laughed also. “You do, kind of.” He leaned down, and we kissed on the lips very gently. “Want some help with this?” He tilted his head to indicate my Latin book.

  But I didn’t see how I could let Jason defend my being in a band and then lean on him to get through Latin. “I’m okay,” I said. “You have your own work to do.”

  “I don’t mind,” he said, kissing me again, this time not so gently.

  I kissed him back, then pulled away. “I do. I’ve got to do this myself . . . or die trying,” I added at the last minute.

  Jason took my hand. “Come work with me in the dining room,” he said. “We’ll get us some J power.”

  “Let me just put this in the dishwasher,” I said, picking up my plate. “I’ll meet you there.”

  The next morning, when I turned on my phone, there was a text from Sinead. u r gonna rock. check facebook. I clicked over to Facebook, and there was a message: Declan has shared a playlist with you. I stared at the screen, then shoved my phone into my bag, still groggy from getting too little sleep. The one good thing was that I knew I’d kicked ass on my history paper. I’d had to write about the origins of the Thirty Years’ War, and I’d
gotten really into all the stuff about politics and religion. If I hadn’t had to start it so late, I would have done an even better job, but I hadn’t finished my Latin until almost eleven.

  Jason said he’d drive so I could proof my paper on the way to class, but I was too tired and the words just ran together on my screen. I flipped to my email and remembered Sinead’s message. We were still a mile from school.

  “Mind if I put some music on?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said. “Go for it.”

  I hooked my phone up to the USB port, and the sound of Blondie’s guitarist rocked the car.

  “What’s this?” Jason shouted.

  “Blondie,” I shouted back. “One way or another I’m gonna find ya. I’m gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha one way—”

  “But why are we listening to it?”

  “I’m supposed to sound like them,” I shouted. Sinead was amazing, but Debbie Harry was in a whole different league. Her voice slashed through the words, sexy and mean and playful and cool. I stared at the picture of her—she stood in front of a line of guys in black suits. In her white dress and pearls, she looked tough as nails, as if she wasn’t afraid of anything, and anyone who was thinking about messing with her had better think again.

  When we stopped at a red light, Jason lowered the volume. “How can you edit your paper and listen to this music?”

  “I can’t,” I said. I took his hand and kissed it, then reached forward and turned the volume back up. “You can’t do anything else while you listen to this music.” The truth made me laugh, but as the light turned green, Jason was shaking his head.

  “It’s your funeral,” he said.

  But driving along listening to Blondie didn’t feel like a funeral.

  It felt like a party.

  21

  I loved being in the Clovers.

  It wasn’t just learning the songs. Since Sinead was still going to be singing with the band until January, we’d agreed I’d just do one song at each gig until January, learning the Clovers’ repertoire over the next two months. We were even working on a song to sing together until she left, a reggae version of “I Got You Babe” that UB40 and Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders had recorded. We both thought it was übercool that we were two girls singing a love song.