Lola and the Boy Next Door

chapter twenty-one

I love watching Max onstage. He’s playing his current favorite cover. The first time he sang “I Saw Her Standing There”—Well, she was just seventeen/You know what I mean—with a mischievous glance in my direction, I thought I’d die. I was one of those girls. Girls who had songs dedicated to them.

It’s still thrilling.

Lindsey and I are at Scare Francisco, an all-day, twelve-stage Halloween rock festival in Golden Gate Park. It’s Saturday, and I’m still grounded, but we’ve had these tickets for months. Plus, Norah is inescapable. After being denied every low-income apartment in the city, she made arrangements to move in with her friend Ronnie Reagan. Ronnie stands for Veronica, and she is a he, and the only problem is that Ronnie’s old roommate won’t be moving out until January. My parents feel rotten and guilty about this. So they let me come today.

Per annual tradition, I’m wearing jeans, a nice blouse, a black wig with straight bangs, and red sneakers. Lindsey is wearing a fifties housewife dress, a vintage apron, four-inch heels, a blond wig with a flip, and large sparkly clip-on earrings.

We’re dressed as each other, of course. I wear pretty much the same thing every year. She’s always something new.

Amphetamine finishes on stage four, and they take apart their gear while the next band, Pot Kettle Black, sets up. I fan myself with a flyer for a haunted house, trying not to draw attention to the fact that I’m fanning my armpits more than my face. But I don’t want to smell gross for Max. He hasn’t seen me yet. The sun beats down, and my nose is burning, despite my SPF 25. The city tends to get its rare heat waves in the autumn.

“I can’t wait until you’re a detective, and I get to wear your badge,” I say. “I’d totally arrest any girl who came here dressed as a sexy cat. Snooze.”

“I can’t wait until your podiatrist forbids you from wearing heels.”

“But you look fabulous, darling.”

“Lola?” a girl calls out from behind us.

I turn around to find Calliope, head tilted to the side. “That is you. You were right.” She looks over her shoulder, and I follow her gaze as the other Bell twin appears from behind a monstrously large Hell’s Angel. Or a guy dressed as a Hell’s Angel. I fan my cheeks with the flyer, feeling hot again. I’m not sure which twin is more troubling “How could you tell?” Calliope continues. “She looks so . . . normal.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Lindsey whispers to me.

“She always looks like Lindsey on Halloween,” Cricket says. Neither twin is costumed, but Cricket’s hand does say BOO. “Cool outfit, Lindsey. You look great.”

For all her I-don’t-care-ness, Lindsey looks pleased by the compliment. “Thanks.”

He’s having trouble looking directly at me. Did he see Max’s band? What did he think of them? The only contact I’ve had with him since Berkeley was that same night when I received a text from NAKED TIGER WOMAN asking if I’d made it home okay. If anyone else had done that after a fight, I would have found it insufferable. But Cricket seriously cannot help being a nice person.

I can’t tell if Calliope knows that I visited him. I assume not, since she’s speaking with me. Thank goodness for small miracles.

“Hey,” I say, kinda sorta meeting Cricket’s eyes. “What are you doing here?”

“Same thing you are.” Calliope’s voice is clipped. “Listening to music. Practice was canceled. Petro is sick.”

“Petro?” Lindsey asks.

“My coach. Petro Petrov.”

Lindsey and I stifle our laughter. Calliope doesn’t notice. It’s odd, but I suddenly realize that I haven’t seen the twins stand beside each other in ages. They have a similar body shape, though Calliope is the petite version. This still means she’s taller than her competitors. After her growth spurt, it took several years for her to adjust on the ice. Cricket once told me that when you’re tall, your center of balance is also higher, and this accentuates mistakes. Which makes sense. But now her confidence and strength are forces to be reckoned with. She could kick my ass any day of the week.

I feel her noting the extra space and awkwardness between Cricket and me, and I have no doubt that she’s considering it.

“Why didn’t you guys dress up?” Lindsey asks.

“We did.” Calliope cracks her first smile. “We’re dressed as twins.”

Lindsey grins back. “Hmm, I see it now. Fraternal or identical?”

“You’d be surprised how many people ask,” Cricket says.

“What do you tell them?” Lindsey asks.

“That I have a penis.”

Oh God. My cheeks burn as they all burst into laughter. Think about something else, Dolores. ANYTHING else. Cucumbers. Bananas. Zucchini. AHHHH! NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. I turn my face away from them as Calliope fakes a yakking sound.

“Definitely time to change the subject,” she says.

“Hey, are you guys hungry?” I blurt. SERIOUSLY? I’m so thankful that mind readers aren’t real.

“Starving,” Cricket says.

“Says the guy who just ate three taco salads,” Calliope says.

He rubs his stomach. His bracelets and rubber bands rattle. “Jealous.”

“It’s so unfair. Cricket eats all day long, the most horrendous things—”

“The most delicious,” he says.

“—the most horrendous and delicious things, and he doesn’t gain a pound. Meanwhile, I have to count calories every time I swallow an alfalfa sprout.”

“What?” Lindsey says. She’s as baffled as I am. “You’re in perfect shape. Like, perfect.”

Calliope rolls her eyes. “Tell that to my coach. And to the commentators.”

“And Mom,” Cricket says, and Calliope cuts him a glare. He glares back. It’s spooky to see that they have the same glare.

And then they burst into laughter. “I win!” Cricket says.

“No way.You laughed first.”

“Tie,” Lindsey says authoritatively.

“Hey.” Calliope turns to me, and the smile disappears. “Isn’t that your boyfriend?”

Oh. Holy. Graveyards.

I’ve been so thrown that I forgot Max would be here any second. I want to shove Cricket back behind that Hell’s Angel, and he looks like he wouldn’t mind a disappearing act either. Max slinks through the crowd like a wolf on the prowl. I raise my hand in a weak wave. He nods back, but he’s staring down Cricket.

Max pulls me into his tattooed arms. “How’d we sound?”

“Phenomenal,” I say truthfully. His grip is tight, forcing me to point out the well-dressed elephant in the room. “This is my neighbor Cricket. Remember?” As if any of us could have forgotten.

“Hi,” Cricket says, shrinking up.

“Hey,” Max says in a bored voice. Which isn’t even his regular bored voice. It’s the mask of a bored voice that says, See how much I don’t care about you?

“And this is his sister, Calliope.”

“We saw your show,” she says. “You were great.”

Max looks her over. “Thanks,” he says after a moment. It’s polite but indifferent, and his coolness disconcerts her. He turns back to me and frowns. “What are you wearing?”

The way he says it makes me not want to answer.