Page 39 of Fade into You

I’ve had classes with them on and off over the years. To my memory, they never gave me any crap, but I kind of lump all high school girls who don’t fuck with me for being queer into the silent supporter group. I try to slump more, hoping they don’t recognize me.

“Jessa, right?”

They recognized me.

“Oh yeah, what’s up?”

Dwayne looks delighted. I am in hell.

“She’s in our journalism class,” Paige tells Dwayne.

“She does love writing about music. Gonna have aRolling Stonewriter here one day,” he says, and puts a proud, protectivearm around me. “Just hope she mentions my shop when she’s all big and famous.”

I could kill him.

“Yeah, I read some of your stuff in theBulletin. I liked your take on Third Eye Blind’s new release,” Brianne responds. She actually said something without a grain of snark. To me. This is new.

“Thanks, dude, that’s cool of you to say,” I manage.

“Hey,” says Paige, “we’re headed to Six Roots to get some coffee. Wanna join?”

“Oh, uh…” I think this is the first time I’ve been invited anywhere by a high-school-age person who isn’t Dade.

“She’d love to!” Dwayne crows, shit-eating grin reappearing on his face. I am definitely gonna steal all his limited-edition LPs and make them mine for this.

“Yeah, uh, I guess,” I say, and knock Dwayne with the pricing gun a few more times for good measure. His arm is now on sale for the low, low price of $5.99.

“It’ll be good for you,” he whispers, handing me my side bag. “Mingle with the locals, can’t hurt to learn a little high school culture.”

“You sound like my dad,” I snap back.

“Ouch!” he says, and playacts taking a bullet and dying. As cool as he can be, Dwayne is not without the ability to embarrass the shit outta me as if he really were my big brother.

“I’ll meet y’all at Six Roots,” I tell the girls. “I drove and it’s close to home, so…”

“Okay!” Paige says, cutting off my rambling nervous dialogue,and snags the now-paid-forTitanicCD. I appreciate Brianne looking at it much like a dead rat that didn’t jump ship from theTitanicbefore she grabs her industrial rock album.

As I head out, Dwayne mouths,Good luck!and I hear the strains of the Butchies singing me out.

“Her kiss was never yours…

You can’t make us break our hearts apart.”

Six Roots is quiet, guess everyone else has better plans this afternoon, or is still recuperating from last weekend’s homecoming. It’s just me, Paige, Bri, and a gaggle of ravers grabbing their caffeine fix before they drop X and dance until dripping-sweat gross. I heard that shit can eat through your skull or make you vomit for hours, so I choose to avoid that particular experimentation.

“So, have you picked a format for your zine yet?” Paige asks as she sips from an overfull mug of something creamy.

“Kind of, a blend of music and poetry.”

“Of course there’s poetry,” she says, and rolls her eyes. I bristle a bit. I’d have to be blind to miss the weird tension between them and Bird, but I usually don’t touch girl arguments with a ten-foot pole.

“Hey,” Brianne says, resting a hand on Paige’s arm. “She didn’t do anything, we asked her to choose and she chose.”

“Thewrongchoice,” grumbles Paige.

“Okayyyy, apparently I’m in the middle of something I’m not supposed to be….”

“No, I’m sorry,” Brianne says, and she’s actually believable. For a second I stop looking for buckets of pig’s blood perched inthe ceiling rafters. “Look, Bird’s actually a nice person, it’s Kayla we’re really pissed at.”