Beige (18 page)

“I’m sorry about what happened,” I say.

“That’s cool,” Lake says. “No problem.”

She doesn’t get it. I wasn’t asking for her forgiveness. I was saying it as a hint, for her to follow my lead for once. I was saying it like,
I’m sorry you were drunk, that sucks for you. You must be so embarrassed. I would be.

Now I’m mad. I want to explode.

I am standing in the middle of my room trembling as I watch Lake sit on my bed as per usual with my guitar. She looks up at me.

“Fuck it. I said I’m over it,” she says, leaning toward me. As though she’s being earnest.

Doesn’t she know I wiped puke off her face? Held her hair back? Gave her a soda? Let her lean on me because she could hardly walk?

“I’m totally hungover,” she says. “But I’ve got to jam. Wanna come?”

“No,” I say. I start swallowing a lot. I’m burning up.

“What’s up?” she says. “You look weird.”

Great. She’s finally noticing something besides herself.

If she were my real friend, then she would have known. Or seen. Or remembered.

I just wanted to be with Leo. I didn’t want to take care of her.

If she were a real friend, I could tell her. Tell her about Leo and me. It would be nice to talk with someone, because I feel confused. If she were a real friend like Leticia, I could talk to her about it.

If she were a real friend, I could ask her, what does it mean when you make out with a guy all night at a party? Does it mean something?

“Speak,” Lake says.

But I don’t want to share this feeling with her. She’ll drown it.

I squeeze my eyes shut. I don’t want to cry.

“Beige.
What
is up?” she asks.

I don’t say anything.

“OK! OK! I know! I’m a dick. I got drunk. I made a scene! I’m
sorry,
” Lake says.

She means it. She is sorry. She said it.

It doesn’t make me feel better.

“Did I do something? Did I puke on you?” she asks.

“No.”

“Well then, what?” she says. “I didn’t fight with you, right? I fought with the Grown-Ups.”

“I was hanging out with Leo,” I say finally. “But then I had to stop and take care of
you.
”

“This is about Leo?” Lake asks.

“No,” I say.

Yes, it is. It is about Leo. And how I’m
not your friend.
I want to say it. I could say it. But I don’t. Because she is like my not-friend. Like Los Angeles is my not-home. And the nice girl inside of me can’t be too mean.

“You didn’t have to do that. Take care of me,” Lake says. “I can handle myself. I’m
housebroken.
”

I count to ten before I speak. I try to calm myself down.

“Who else was going to do it, Lake? You had your head down a toilet. You hate your band. You’re a bitch to everyone. You have no friends.
Everybody
needs friends.”

My voice is getting louder and higher. I hear the pitch changing as I get more breathless. I sound crazy to my own ears.

I can’t believe I said it, but it’s true,
I think. Even I need a friend, which is why I’ve tolerated Lake all summer.

“I
have
friends. They’re just not in high school. They’re musicians. Real ones,” Lake says. “And I have you. You’re my friend.”

“I’m not your friend for real. We’re temporary,” I say. “And now Leo thinks I’m lame because he thinks I’m your friend.”

“Oh,” Lake says. “I see.”

“Oh?”

Lake just sits on the bed. She kind of looks at the black nail polish on her fingers. She kind of looks off out the window.

“Let me tell you something about Leo, as your
temporary
friend. He’s a player. He’s a jerk. And he’s an asshole.”

“How would you know?” I ask.

But I know how she knows. I saw them by the pool, through the lorgnettes, fighting like they were more than friends.

“You have something going on with Leo, don’t you?” I ask.

“I did,” Lake says. “It’s ancient history.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I don’t like him,” she says. “I needed to get material for my songs. I can’t write about nothing.”

“What does that mean?”

“I just needed him for the angst,” she says. She seems flustered.

“You used him?”

“Yes. I mean, no. It was
fun.
But he’s not, like, ever going to be the love of my life. He’s not a kindred spirit or anything. He’s not even my
type.
”

“You’re a user,” I say. “You use people.”

“I just haven’t met my tribe yet,” Lake says.

“What?” I say. It sounds like something I might think.

“Do you know how frustrating it is to be, like, a twenty-six-year-old trapped inside a sixteen-year-old body? I can’t do anything that I want to do. I can’t do anything that I’m ready for. I have to wait and get this whole teenage thing out of the way before I can go and do what I want. I figure I might as well find
something
to write about,” Lake says. “So yeah, I had a thing with Leo during the school year. Big deal. I just needed him for the angst. For my
songwriting.
And then he got all attached. And when I started hanging out with you, he tried to make me jealous by putting the moves on you.”

She’s wrong. She must be wrong. He likes me. He said so. I can’t believe that he looked at me with those eyes and said those things and kissed me like that just to get back at Lake.

“That doesn’t even make any sense. It wouldn’t work. You would never be jealous of me, because I’m
beige,
” I say.

“You know, you have a lot of angst,” Lake says. “I bet you’d write great lyrics. You should maybe try it. Jot stuff down, get some of that rage out of you.”

“I don’t think so,” I say. “I’m not the angry person. You are.”

Lake starts laughing. Really laughing.

“Right, Beige, you’re not repressing anything,” Lake says. “Sure you don’t want to write a song now?”

I shoot her a look.

I don’t want to hear her lies about Leo anymore. I want to giggle with someone over him. I want to be excited. She doesn’t know anything about anything. She wasn’t there. She wasn’t in his arms. He wasn’t whispering in her ear. He likes me. For me. Not Lake.

“For what it’s worth, I told him to stay away from you,” she says.

I turn away from her.

She sighs big.

“OK, then, he’s not an asshole. He really does like you. Don’t believe me. Whatever. Maybe he is your true love. But I’ll bet you one of my Guitar Center gift certificates that you don’t hear from him anytime soon. It was a party. He used you. That’s it.”

“It’s not like that,” I say.

But deep down, I know it is.

“Maybe you’re just jealous that I met a boy who really likes me.”

Lake rolls her eyes.

“Come on, Beige. Let’s go kick out some jams,” she says.

“No,” I say. “I’m going to stay here.”

“The jam space makes everybody feel better,” Lake says.

“So does the sun,” I say. “But ultimately, it gives you cancer.”

“HA! Those would make good lyrics,” Lake says. “Actually, I’m going to write that down!”

She pulls out her notebook and scratches down what I said. Then she sticks her hands out for me to pull her up. I ignore her.

“You coming?” she asks.

“No,” I say.

“Suit yourself,” she says, and then she gets up and blows out of my room.

I wonder, though, what I would write down. I think about how I am feeling. Hurt. Hopeful. Giddy. Sad. Happy. Lonely. Frustrated. Betrayed. Girlie. In love. Dumb.

I see him the next morning, in the pool, doing his laps earlier than usual. My heart jumps. I rush to get dressed. I put some lip gloss on. I pinch my cheeks. I check myself out in the mirror. I look pretty good.

I go down to the pool to meet him.

“Hello,” I say. I say it like a heroine. I say it like a leading lady. I say it like his true love.

He looks away from me and adjusts his goggles.

I start to tremble. Maybe Lake isn’t a liar. No. She can’t be right.

“Leo,” I say, more insistent. More desperate. I can’t help it. I don’t want Lake’s version to be the truth. I reach my hand out to touch him. He moves away.

“Why are you ignoring me?” I ask.

He takes three long steps and dives back into the pool.

I stand at the edge and watch him do his laps.

It’s not that I don’t want to leave. I’m just stunned. Stunned into staying in place. I’m still standing there when Leo finishes his set and pulls himself out of the pool. He takes his towel and dabs his eyes, then dries himself off.

He has to pass me to get out of the pool area. He walks toward me. I won’t let him through.

“What’s going on?” I say.

I thought you liked me,
I think.
All those things you said while we were kissing. Doesn’t that mean anything to you? There must be something I can do or say that will make you be like you were at the party.

He stops. Shakes his head.

“Just because we hooked up at the party doesn’t mean I
like
you,” he says.

He pushes by me and I offer no resistance.

My heart feels heavy, like it’s being pulled under. I feel like I’m drowning.

I shudder. Then I start to cry.

“I knew you’d eventually find your way here,” Lake says. She is on the floor of the jam space with the paper cutter, slicing Grown-Ups handbills into fourths. “Move that merch stuff and help me.”

Why does she have to be right? Why does she have to know that I’d make my way here and that it does make me feel better?

“Why do you have all this merch?” I ask, moving one of the boxes to join Lake on the floor.

“That’s how we’re going to make money for my demo.”

“Wouldn’t it just be easier to ask your dad to pay for it?”

“Merch is also about creating a buzz, getting our name out there,” Lake says. “You don’t get it.”

No. I don’t. I don’t get it. I still don’t get it. It’s like the millionth thing I don’t get. What I should get by now is to just keep my mouth shut. I fall back to doing what I know how to do best, being quiet. It’s easier. I stop what I’m doing and go sit on the couch and start reading.

“Excuse me. Weren’t you, like, helping me?” Lake says.

“Now I’m reading.”

“The other Grown-Ups girls were supposed to get here like an hour ago,” Lake says. “I don’t think they are coming.”

How is this my problem? Why do I have to pick up their slack?

“Why do you play with them? You don’t even like them. They’re not even helpful.”

“I had to get a new band after I kicked everyone out of my old band,” Lake says. “At least this time they know how to play their instruments.”

Lake seems to kick a lot of people out of her life. I wonder if she’s planning on kicking me out. I bet she won’t bother. She just thinks of me as a sidekick. No one kicks a sidekick out of their life. It’s not even worth the trouble.

I submit to my fate, slide off the couch, and pull a stack of the handbills toward me. I start cutting them into fourths. Now that I’ve taken over, Lake dusts herself off and picks up her guitar, plugs in, and starts noodling.

Under her breath, Lake sings the same lyrics over and over again:

The lyrics kind of sneak into my head. It’s how I feel about Leo. But not quite.

“Shit!”
Lake says. Even though I’m used to her outbursts now, she startles me and I slip with the cutter. I draw blood. I suck on my finger. I don’t complain. But I shoot her a look.

I stop cutting handbills. I’m thinking. There is no harm in asking her what the problem is. At least talking to her about her problem would distract me from thinking about Leo. It hurts to think about him.

“What’s the problem?” I ask.

“The thing is about music is that there are only so many combinations. Or maybe it’s that I only know a certain number of those combinations,” Lake says. “This one sounds a little like the Go-Go’s song ‘We Got the Beat.’”