Maggie
“They don’t hide,” I sing. “They don’t hiiiiiiiide. They don’t hiiiiiiide from each other.”
I really belt out that last line, my fingers still pressing on the keys as the final chord of the song rings out, along with
the shimmer of a cymbal crash and the bright bounce of a guitar strum.
The crowd goes nuts. Shana, Ember, and I exchange grins.
Angry Baby is back.
It’s our first performance since our set at the wedding, which, as you might imagine, didn’t go so great. I can’t even tell
you what we played. Carter had just dashed off, so I was trapped in my head the whole time, thinking about what a horrible
person I am, all the relationships I’d ruined, as Shana and Ember carried me through the set.
Vivian did not watch.
Afterward, I tried to give Mom and Ron their money back. They insisted we’d earned it.
That was a month and a half ago, but it easily feels like it could have been a year. And now, here we are, playing a set in
Shana’s backyard for the graduation/going-to-college party her parents are throwing her. Mom and Ron are here, standing toward
the back, beaming. It’s nice to see.
This is probably the first moment since their ceremony that I haven’t felt like a pile of rotting garbage. My days have not
been wonderful.
Vivian and I haven’t talked much since the wedding. I texted her a long apology that night. She responded: Thanks. That felt a little worse than if she hadn’t written back at all. Then she unexpectedly decided to go stay with Dad for a
little while. That’s when I knew things were very bad.
A few days into her time there, I sent a rambling, eight-minute voice memo.
She texted back: It’s ok, Mags. I just need a minute.
When she finally came back to our place a week or so later, she and I hugged and started talking again, mostly about the unsettling
lack of hand soap in Dad’s home and not at all about Carter.
No, we don’t talk about Carter.
Soon after that, Vivian left yet again, this time to go backpacking in Europe with a few friends. We got a postcard from Venice
last week. By 2040, maybe all cities will be like this! she wrote. Miss you, fam. I felt bummed that I didn’t get my own message, but maybe that would’ve been the case even if I hadn’t dated her ex-boyfriend
and never told her about it.
Carter, meanwhile, doesn’t talk to me. That night after the wedding, I ran to his house to apologize in person, my attempt at a big, bold gesture of love (and
also because my car was blocked in). His mom answered the door and said, with an expression not dissimilar to the emoji yeesh
face, that Carter didn’t want to see me. It was a really fun walk home.
I texted him every day after that. Never any response. Then I switched to every other day, and then finally, a couple weeks
ago, I gave up. I don’t really blame him. I probably wouldn’t respond to a rotting pile of garbage either.
But I miss him a lot.
“I love our band so much!” Shana shouts now as Ember and I stand up from our instruments and meet Shana in front to do an awkward bow, which I guess is Angry Baby’s thing now. People hoot and cheer some more, and Ron does his two-fingered whistle, loud enough to cut through everything.
“I love you guys,” I say to Shana and Ember.
They are great friends. Even in the moments when I’ve become the literal manifestation of our band name.
“Hey,” Ember says, nudging my elbow with their drumstick as the applause ends and people return to loud conversations. “That
new song killed. It was really beautiful.”
“Thanks,” I say, not even trying to conceal how meaningful it is to hear that. “You both sounded so good.”
“In full agreement about the new one,” Shana says, putting an arm around my shoulder, “but must be honest, love: I missed
playing ‘Stuck.’”
“Same,” Ember says.
“I know, I know,” I say. “I do too. But . . . I’m glad we didn’t play it. Performing a song about him when he’s not even talking
to me feels kinda gross.”
“Rock stars probably do that all the time,” Ember says. “If that makes you feel any better.”
“It doesn’t, but thank you.”
“Come on, though,” Shana says. “Lots of boys get stuck lots of places, you know? We could just say the song is about, I don’t
know—”
“A boy stuck in earthquake rubble in Morocco,” I say.
“Yes! Totally! That’s brilliant!”
“Shane. Ember. We’ll do ‘Stuck’ again one day. Just . . . not now.”
Shana squeezes my shoulder hard. “Integrity looks good on you, girl.”
“Thank you so much,” I say, giggling for the first time in a while.
“Well, that was damn impressive.” It’s our old pal Marigold, her faux-hawk now light green instead of light blue.
“Yeah. Really incredible.” Chord appears from behind her, looking as handsome and impeccably dressed as ever, and I have a
moment of panic before I remind myself that things with us are okay now. In my recent attempts at being a less horrible person,
I sent Chord a lengthy text explanation about why I broke up with him, including everything that had happened with Carter.
He was surprisingly sympathetic.
“Thanks, buddies,” I say, giving Marigold and Chord hugs. I spot Mom and Ron over Chord’s shoulder. “I’m gonna go say hi to
my mom.”
“Go for it,” Chord says. “I think I see a passionfruit LaCroix with my name on it anyway.”
The new song Angry Baby played, “They Don’t Hide,” was, of course, written for Mom and Ron—a redo of the one we never even
ended up playing at their wedding—inspired by the way they literally didn’t hide from each other that morning before the ceremony.
And figuratively don’t hide from each other either.
“Oh, honey,” Mom says as I approach, rising from her seat at an umbrella table and giving me a hug. “That was so wonderful.”
“Did you . . . like the song I wrote for you?”
“Are you kidding? We loved it. Ron was bawling.”
“I was,” Ron says, nodding proudly behind her. “The whole set was . . . It was even tighter than the one at our wedding.”
“Well, that’s not hard to do,” I mutter.
“It really was fantastic,” a familiar voice says, and then, screw my new song, I have the desperate urge to hide. Somewhere. Anywhere. Beneath the table! In Ember’s bass drum! In that big-ass beverage cooler over there!
“Ah, why are you here?” Mom says, giving Vivian a huge hug. “I thought you were back tomorrow!”
“I switched my flight to come home a day early,” Vivian says. She’s wearing a sleeveless black top and hoop earrings and somehow
looks stunning in spite of traveling here from another continent. “I mean, after missing Maggie’s first two performances,
I couldn’t miss this one too. That felt unacceptable.”
“You were watching?” I asked, sounding dazed even to myself. “I didn’t see you.”
“More like lurking. I didn’t want to distract you.”
“Oh,” I say. “Thanks.”
“Glad you finally got to witness the magic for yourself,” Ron says.
“Me too,” Vivian says.
“Can we talk?” I ask, the words popping out of my mouth like it’s a jack-in-the-box.
“Me and you?” Vivian has this panicked look in her eyes that people other than me probably wouldn’t notice. “Of course, sure.
You mean right now?”
“I do,” I say.
“Okay. Yeah. Let’s talk.”
We look around Shana’s backyard, scoping out a spot for this conversation we’re both terrified to have. Finally, I take a
few steps, and Vivian follows.
I would still prefer to hide in that gigantic cooler with the seltzer cans, but I keep moving forward instead.