Fireworks Read online

  I’d been right about Olivia. Nervous as she was, she strode right up to the front desk and introduced herself to the woman standing behind it—all confidence, just like I’d known she’d be once we made it in here. “Hi,” she said as another muffled roll of thunder rumbled outside. “I’m here for the audition.”

  I ran around the corner to the bathroom while Olivia filled out an attendance sheet; when I got back she was having her Polaroid taken, her hair somehow immaculately smooth in spite of the humidity. My ponytail was a lank, ratty mess. “Have a seat,” the assistant told us. She was tall and black and elegant looking, dressed in a starched white button-down. A watch with a brown leather strap hugged her narrow wrist. “I’ll call your name when it’s your turn.”

  The waiting room was full of girls around our age—mostly white, mostly beautiful, mostly wearing expensive-looking dance clothes. I felt myself shrink a little, glancing down at my fraying jean shorts and dollar-store flip-flops. I’d seen Olivia in any number of plays and concerts and recitals, flanked by willowy girls in full stage makeup, but it was different to be surrounded by them. It was like accidentally wandering into the middle of a pat of flamingos.

  “I know,” Olivia said quietly, reading my mind as we walked over. “They’re horrible. And you see the same ones at every audition down here. A bunch of fake bitches in Capezio trying to out-nice one another.” As if to illustrate, she pasted a grin on her face. “Lauren!” she cooed, opening her arms to a brunette in a pink velour sweat suit. “Hi!”

  I shook my head, smirking to myself. No matter how many times I saw Olivia turn it on like that—pitching her voice a couple of octaves higher, smile going wide like she had Vaseline on her teeth—it never failed to surprise and sort of impress me. Showbiz Olivia, I called her, as if she were a different person entirely. Sometimes she’d do it just to make me laugh.

  It was a long, tedious afternoon. The assistant, whose name was Juliet, called name after name off her clipboard; girls headed down the hallway and emerged less than five minutes later looking either pleased or gutted, a dramatic tableau. Some of them hugged their waiting mothers—it was all moms here, I noticed, all of them the same shade of pale and plucked and sanitized, like grocery-store chickens—and others simply stalked out the door. I perched on the arm of a leather sofa and wished Mrs. Maxwell had come with us. At the very least we would have had a snack.

  The rain had finally stopped; I was about to ask Olivia if she thought we could go outside for a while when the door to the audition room slammed open and Guy Monroe himself—or at least, a man I assumed was Guy Monroe—strode into the waiting room and surveyed the crowd of hopefuls, looking impatient. “Who’s next?” he demanded. “Actually, more to the point, is there anybody here who is not planning to completely waste my time?”

  I snorted in disbelief—I couldn’t help it. There was something about him that struck me as funny—cartoonish, almost, like he should have been smoking a cigar and wearing a solid gold watch, a walking, talking Looney Tune. In reality, he was just an average-looking guy in his forties with a bit of a paunch around his middle, starting to lose some hair on the top of his head. But he had the bearing of someone much bigger, and so everyone acted as if he were. There was a lesson to be learned there, I thought in the millisecond before I realized that just as I was staring openly at Guy Monroe, sizing him up for my own amusement—he was staring openly back at me.

  “Who are you?” he wanted to know.

  I froze where I was sitting. For a second I actually forgot how to speak. “Oh,” I said once I’d recovered, feeling myself blush and not entirely sure why. “I’m not—I’m just here to—I mean, I’m not auditioning.”

  “Why not?” Guy shrugged and made a face like, don’t be difficult. Then, without waiting for me to answer: “Can you sing?”

  I hesitated. The short answer was No, of course not. The long answer was Kind of, but only the backup parts. On the car ride down here—and for as long as I had known her—Olivia had sung the lead. I glanced over at her now, both of us wide-eyed, then back at Guy. “A little?”

  “A little,” Guy repeated, sounding bored. “What’s your name, girl who can sing a little?”

  “Dana Cartwright,” I managed after a moment. My tongue felt too big for my mouth.

  “Finally, we have a straight answer. Dana Cartwright,” he announced to Juliet, who was standing to his side like a lieutenant. “Come with me.”

  I hesitated. Normally I wasn’t the kind of person who was easily intimidated, who let herself be bossed around by noisy, hawkish men she didn’t know. On top of which, this was Olivia’s thing. But already it felt impossible to argue with Guy, like the force field around him was too strong to be resisted by mere mortals. When I looked at Olivia again, she nodded once.

  Guy and Juliet led me down the hall and through a doorway into a big room with shiny hardwood floors and one whole wall lined with mirrors. Two other people sat behind a folding table, pens poised to take notes—a guy in his thirties who introduced himself as Lucas, a voice coach, and a Hispanic woman named Charla dressed in dance clothes. Guy took his seat at the end of the table, looking at me expectantly.

  “I didn’t bring anything to sing,” I explained, unsure why I was having so much trouble communicating the reality of this ridiculous situation. “Like, I really wasn’t planning to audition, I just came here for my friend.”

  “Like, sing ‘Happy Birthday,’” Guy said, imitating me in a voice that was decidedly unflattering. “I don’t care.”

  That made me mad, the idea that this guy was trying to cow me. Who the hell did Guy Monroe think he was? I wasn’t here to impress him, or any of them. He was the one who’d dragged me back here to begin with. I felt my spine get straighter. I pushed my shoulders back. “Fine,” I said, hearing more than a trace of attitude in my voice and knowing they could probably hear it, too. Good, I thought. Let ’em hear. “‘Happy Birthday,’ then.”

  It was unremarkable, all things considered. At least I didn’t have to worry about forgetting the words. My voice cracked on the third birthday, and I couldn’t keep myself from wincing, but all four of them just kept on watching impassively, their faces impossible to read.

  “Um, okay,” I said when I was finally finished. The coaches were still peering at me silently. It was probably the strangest moment of my life. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you, Dana,” Charla said. “We’ll let you know.”

  Yeah, I thought, shaking my head a little. I’ll bet.

  Olivia’s eyes were big and bright as UFOs when I came back out into the lobby. She scooted over to make room for me on the leather couch. “I cannot believe that just happened,” she whispered.

  I was about to reply, but Juliet had followed me out into the lobby, looking right past me as if I were completely anonymous, like the last ten minutes had all been a dream. “Olivia Maxwell,” she called, looking at her clipboard. “You’re up.”

  It was pouring again that night as we hunkered down in our hotel room, which boasted HBO and a view of the half-flooded parking lot. There was an indoor pool, according to the girl behind the check-in desk, so in theory we could have gone swimming despite the weather, but Olivia didn’t want to. “I hate indoor pools,” she said, kicking off her sandals and flinging herself onto the bed. “It’s like being inside somebody’s mouth.”

  “You’re so weird,” I told her, but I humored her anyway, and we sat in the air-conditioning on crisp white sheets, flipping channels. My whole body ached with exhaustion. Juliet had asked us both to stay on through the dance portion of the audition—because they’d known we came together and hadn’t wanted to kick me out onto the street, I guessed—and once we were done we’d eaten dinner at a Chili’s near the hotel, slurping Diet Cokes and splitting a basket of tortilla chips.

  “This was better than job interviews, wasn’t it?” Olivia asked me now, leaning her head on my shoulder and peering up at me with a hopeful, shit-eating grin. “Huh?
Huuuuh?”

  “I mean, yes,” I allowed, laughing a little, “but ask me again when I’m destitute.”

  “You won’t be destitute,” Olivia said, reaching over and flicking the light off. “You’ll be with me.”

  THREE

  Back in Jessell Friday night we headed over to Burger Delight just like we always did, our weekly routine since junior high. Olivia picked me up and we drove together, hot wind ruffling her shiny dark hair as the orange sun disappeared behind the low-slung houses to the west. The bells above the door jangled as we walked in, the sub-zero air-conditioning a chilly relief after the dry, still heat outside.

  “You came!” Becky called when she saw us, raising her soda cup in our direction. There they all were, clustered in our usual pair of four-top booths at the back: Keith and Kerry-Ann and Jonah, Tim and Sarah Jane—the same half dozen faces we’d been looking at since kindergarten, the ones we’d been sneaking beers with since we were twelve. “Thought maybe you went off to Hollywood already.”

  “Not quite,” Olivia called with a grin, going up to the counter to put in our order—chicken fingers and a chocolate milk shake for me, a small basket of fries and a Diet Coke for her—while I slid into the booth next to Sarah Jane, across from Becky and SJ’s sometimes-boyfriend, Keith.

  “How was the road trip?” SJ asked, pushing her onion rings in my direction. I’d known her even longer than I’d known Olivia; she’d lived around the corner from me since we were little, the sound of her mom’s yelling echoing up and down the block. She was tall and blond and heavy, the kind of girl who took up space and didn’t care if you liked it or not.

  “It was fine,” I said carefully, picking a bit of fried batter out of the bottom of the basket and crunching it between my teeth. “Liv did amazing.” I didn’t tell them what had happened with Guy, about getting picked to audition out of nowhere myself. I wasn’t sure exactly why. It would have been a good story, after all; it would have set everybody laughing. But some small secret part of me didn’t want to play it for comedy, wanted to keep it for myself. “She did awesome.”

  “Of course she did,” Becky said as Olivia slid into the adjoining booth along with everyone else. “Should we go ahead and get your autograph now, or . . . ?”

  “Shut up,” Olivia said, but she was laughing. “There were, like, a million other girls there.” She glanced over at me, seeming to understand by telepathy that I hadn’t said anything about my part in the whole proceedings, and thankfully not calling me out. “So what have you guys been up to?” she asked, turning to the others.

  We fell into the easy rhythm of every Friday night, the boys rehashing some drunk fight a couple of football players had gotten into at a party while we were gone, and Sarah Jane filling me in quietly about her latest fight with Keith. “He’s being an asshole,” she reported when he got up to go to the bathroom, and I made sympathetic noises without entirely hearing what she was saying. The truth was, I felt oddly restless tonight, like I couldn’t settle back into how things usually were.

  “Thanks, Linda,” I said distractedly as the waitress came and put our orders down on the table. She was always absurdly patient, considering how many years we’d been testing the limits of how little they’d let us get away with ordering and how long they’d let us stay. When she’d turned and gone, I looked around at the restaurant for a moment—the red vinyl booths held together with duct tape, the grimy fluorescent lights overhead. Usually they felt comforting, familiar. Tonight, they just made me feel bored.

  When Sarah Jane got up to go to the bathroom, Tim slid into the booth beside me, smelling of cologne and, underneath that, of cigarettes. He was wearing an Atlanta Braves cap on backward, a tiny gold cross around his neck. “Hey, stranger,” he said, and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

  “Hey.” Tim had been trying to date me since middle school, when he’d slipped an actual paper valentine into my locker, a picture of purple grapes with the caption I LIKE YOU A BUNCH. We’d kissed a few times sophomore year, but I’d never let it get any further than that; still, it seemed to be taking Tim longer than average to get the memo that we weren’t about to live happily ever after.

  “Any luck finding a job?” he asked, helping himself to one of my chicken fingers. I wasn’t finished eating, but it didn’t seem worth it to protest.

  “Not yet.” I shook my head. “I’ve got a bunch of interviews, though.” That was a lie. In reality I hadn’t been able to bring myself to look at the applications on my desk since we’d gotten back from Orlando a couple of days ago.

  “Could come work with me,” Tim joked, throwing a casual arm around the top of the booth, just brushing my shoulders. I fixed him with a look like, come on, dude, and he hastily pulled it away.

  “Oh yeah?” I asked, like nothing had happened. “You guys need help down at the garage?”

  “Well, not fixing cars,” Tim said, like that much should have been obvious given my gender. “But in the office, maybe.”

  “Thanks. I’ll think about it,” I said, glancing around for somebody else to drag into the conversation, but Becky had gotten up to talk to Kerry-Ann and Olivia at the next table, and Keith was, as always, about as useless as a stump. I sighed. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Tim—not exactly. He was a nice guy; he had pretty brown eyes, and I knew that if anything real ever happened between us, he’d be sweet to me. The problem was that I could picture so clearly what our lives would be like together—a decrepit house not far from my mom’s place, a thirty rack of Budweiser cans in the fridge at all times, and three kids by the time I was twenty-five, both of us miserable and silent to varying degrees. It was true that I couldn’t see much of a future for myself, not really. But I could see enough to know I didn’t want that.

  Once Sarah Jane came back, I extricated myself and wandered over to Olivia with my milk shake in hand, sliding into the booth beside her and snagging one of her fries, which—I saw with a frown—she’d barely touched. “Thanks for the assist there,” I said, bumping her shoulder with my own.

  “What, with your future husband?” Olivia teased. “You seemed to be holding your own.”

  “Mean!” I said, stung, feeling weird and sensitive tonight and not entirely sure what to do about it. It was like leaving town, even just for a couple of days, had unlocked something in me—had shown me a glimpse of this whole other world that left life in Jessell looking depressing and drab. I should have just stayed home and looked for waitressing jobs like I’d planned.

  I took another fry, nodding down at her basket. “Are you gonna eat those?” I asked, and Olivia rolled her eyes at me.

  “Yes, Mom.” She made a face, but she pulled the basket toward her, dipping a fry into the delicately mixed ketchup-mustard concoction she insisted was necessary for any kind of potato consumption.

  “Thank you,” I said sweetly. I knew it sounded like a scold, but I didn’t particularly care. It was part of our tacit agreement, since middle school and possibly even longer. I didn’t tell anyone—didn’t tell her mom—when Olivia wasn’t eating. And in return I got to do whatever it took to make sure she was.

  “Can I ask you something?” That was Sarah Jane leaning over from the booth behind us, speaking quietly into my ear. “Who exactly is gonna be the food police for her once she gets the hell out of Dodge?”

  I turned to look at her, scowling; she held up both hands in surrender, and I shrugged, reaching for my milk shake. Sarah Jane had a point, I admitted to myself as I slurped noisily. After all, it wasn’t like I’d never thought of it before. Our arrangement worked as long as Olivia and I were joined at the hip, like we were here in Jessell. I had no idea what would happen once we were apart.

  I was tired suddenly. I wanted to go home.

  “Hey,” Olivia said. She’d been chattering with Becky and Jonah but turned around and looked at me now, urgent, as if somehow she’d read my mind. “You ready to get out of here?”

  “Definitely,” I said, setting my half-finis
hed milk shake down on the chipping Formica table and sliding out of the sticky booth. “Night, y’all.”

  “Aw, fallen soldier!” Tim chided, pointing at the milk shake, but I ignored him.

  “Bye, guys!” Olivia called, hurrying after me. “You okay?” she asked quietly once we got outside.

  “Yeah,” I promised, sounding like I was full of garbage even to my own ears. “I’m great.”

  Olivia rolled her eyes. “Okay, not convincing. Try again.”

  I sighed, looking out across the parking lot. Burger Delight was way down at the far end of what passed for a main drag in Jessell, across the street from a used-car dealership ringed with chicken wire and an empty lot advertising space for lease. I stared for a moment, watching as a waxy paper cup skittered a few yards in the hot wind before finally getting caught against the chain link. “You don’t really think that, do you?” I finally asked, turning to face Olivia in the neon light from the restaurant sign. “That I’m going to wind up with Tim?”

  Olivia’s eyes widened. “What? God, no,” she said, shaking her head at me across the roof of the car. “I was just teasing. Shoot, I’m sorry.”

  I shook my head. “No, it’s fine,” I said as she unlocked the car doors and I settled myself in on the passenger side, getting a familiar whiff of vanilla from the little cardboard tree dangling from the rearview. “I know you were. I guess since we got back from the trip I’m just feeling weird.”

  “Weird about . . . ?”

  “Me staying and you leaving, I guess.” I felt stupid and embarrassed admitting it, but Olivia just nodded, no judgment or pity on her face at all.

  “I know,” she said quietly.

  “I mean, it was one thing when you were just going to school down the road like a normal person, but now odds are you’re going to do something amazing and be actually famous and I’m just going to stay here and marry some guy with a truck and wind up like my mom—”