Chapter Five. Sam #2
The moment Mackenzie turned to see me, her face fell so flat someone might have pressed it like a penny. But it did nothing to dull the blue flame of her eyes. It was clear in an instant—she didn’t just hate me. She despised me.
“I’ve heard of him,” she said coolly.
Right from the start that anger in her eyes felt like an electric spark. I wanted to test the current.
“I didn’t realize Taylor Swift had a tiny feral cousin,” I said.
She looked me up and down slowly. “I didn’t realize you’d look like a knock-off of yourself up close.”
A grin split across my face. It was rare anyone mouthed off at me in those days.
“Heard we’re going on tour together, Sparkles.” Her face stayed hard at the nickname, but I didn’t miss the quick twitch of her nose. “First time for you, huh? Maybe you’ll learn a thing or two from this knock-off.”
Mackenzie pressed her pointer finger into my shoulder, nudging me out of the way of her door. She leaned in so I could feel the heat of her sweat, smell the citrus of her shampoo.
“Oh, buddy,” she said. “ I’m going on tour. You’re just old news coming along for the ride.”
A few hours later Thunder Hearts joined us onstage for our last number, a cover of “Should I Stay or Should I Go.” The plan was simple: the bands would sling a few choice insults back and forth before the performance and between verses.
Divya and Serena riled the crowd with dueling guitar riffs.
Rob and Hannah battled over the drum kit, each taking turns showing the other one up.
But Mackenzie avoided me like the plague. I was irritated. She was disrupting the plan.
Then the last chords of the song played.
I lifted the mic back to my mouth to announce our joint tour, but she ran up from behind me, launched herself onto my back, and yelled into my mic, “Our label is making us tour together against our will! Tickets went on sale five minutes ago! Anyone using the code ‘Candy Shard Sucks’ gets entered for a VIP package contest!”
The crowd roared. Mackenzie shifted to slide off me, but by then my arms were hooked around her legs, holding tight. I felt her tense in surprise, her breath hitching but her arms tightening around my shoulders.
“Candy Shard’s new single is also dropping tonight,” I said into the mic. “A portion of the proceeds will go to teaching these newbies how to keep up with a real band.”
Mackenzie let out a sharp cackle into my ear. “We’ve got nothing to learn from a has-been like you.”
It was innate, what happened next. I tilted my head toward hers, looking right into her waiting eyes. A hush fell over the crowd.
“Don’t you?” I asked lowly.
Our lips were inches apart, but neither of us moved. She smelled like sweet chocolate and salty sweat, the heat of her pressing so tight against my back I could swear I felt her heart picking up speed.
But her lips curled into a wolfish smirk. She spoke into my ear instead of the mic, so only I could hear.
“Oh, it’s going to drive you nuts, isn’t it?” she said. “That I want nothing to do with a guy like you?”
I have no idea what kind of expression I made.
Only that people were screaming the word “kiss” before the words were fully out of her mouth.
The bands may have been in a rivalry, but it was our heat that fueled its fire.
People loved to watch us hate each other.
It was the greatest un-love story ever told.
“Dad Dad Dad Dad!” I hear a voice calling from the front.
A grin splits across my face. Hearing those words never gets old.
Ben darts into the back a moment later, abruptly dropping his Brooklyn Cyclones backpack on a small table, which means Kara must not be far behind.
Whenever one of us picks Ben up from school we let him sprint ahead into the bakery once he hits our block.
I reach out to ruffle his hair, Lizzie’s curls in the same dark shade as mine, but he grabs the top of my hand, pressing it to his head and staring up at me accusatorily.
“You didn’t tell me you know Mackenzie Waters.”
Well, that’s it. I will never know peace.
“Oh boy,” says Twyla, entirely too entertained.
Ben scoots out from under me to grab my phone off the counter and type his birthday in the passcode, opening Spotify to one of the playlists we made for him. It’s almost all Thunder Hearts. If this has bruised both my ego and every punk rock bone in my body, I have kept it to myself.
“I saw a picture of you hugging Mackenzie Waters at recess, and when Hunter got time-out for having his phone, our teacher said there’s a whole song you two wrote together,” says Ben in an indignant rush.
He taps the button to play it. The sweet bite of Mackenzie’s voice fills the space, so satisfying that it sneaks up on me, hearing my own voice join in on the chorus.
Ben taps the phone to pause the song, staring at me expectantly.
“I know Mackenzie Waters,” I concede.
Ben’s eyes widen. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he demands. “You know she’s my favorite.”
That’s right. Somehow Lizzie and I not only created a tiny jock who insists on a “birthday pizza” every year instead of cake, but one whose favorite singer once taped a fake tarantula to my water bottle in the middle of a show.
“I hadn’t talked to her in a long time,” I say.
Ben raises his brows in an uncannily Lizzie-esque manner. “You’re in a fight with Mackenzie Waters?”
Twyla cackles. I keep my face as even as possible. “Nah. We’re just—not that close.”
Ben pulls in a breath to ask more, but then Kara finally catches up to him.
She’s as unmissable as Twyla, wearing her usual outfit of neon leggings and a Sugar Harmony T-shirt, her box braids pulled back in a giant scrunchie.
She gives my back a quick scratch of hello and nods at Twyla, then says to Ben, “Got any idea where your cleats are, champ? We’re going to be late for practice. ”
Ben perks up. “They’re on Mom Side.” He slides off his seat, then points a finger at me. “I have lots more questions.”
“Fair enough,” I say, saluting him.
Kara leans in. “Meant to warn you an interrogation was coming, but the kid went supersonic. You’re set with the open mic tonight?”
Usually, Kara helps me with sound check and moving the tables around, but once a month she performs one of her own spoken-word poems and uses the prep time to make last-minute adjustments.
“Rocket can help if I need it,” I tell her.
A lot of businesses in the city have cats, but Sugar Harmony has an overemployed, underpaid twenty-year-old skateboarder.
Rocket sits at the front table of the bakery chugging coffee and working his freelance internet jobs during the day, then performs his offbeat songs in our open mics at night.
Even if we didn’t love him, he’s good for business—he’s got that “everybody’s little brother” vibe that has all the regulars charmed.
Kara nods. “Also, the Go-Gurts are on Dad Side, right?”
“Top left drawer,” I confirm.
She follows Ben to the side door behind the bakery counter, which leads upstairs to Mom Side and Dad Side—Ben’s words for our adjoining apartments.
I live in one apartment on my own, and Kara and Lizzie live in the larger one beside it, but only on paper.
We installed a wide door between the apartments that stays open all day, so Ben just dashes back and forth between either side before he goes to bed on “Mom Side” in the room closest to “Dad Side.”
Dad. The word still hits me in the solar plexus. The way Ben says it as easily as he calls Lizzie “Mommy” and Kara “Mom.” No matter how Ben feels, I’ll always feel like I’m making up for lost time. I’ll always worry I might fail him the same way my own dad failed me.
The guilt of that goes deeper than anyone knows.
I’ve kept it to myself, but after the news about Ben blew up two years ago, my dad tried to get in touch.
I never knew him growing up—or at least I thought I didn’t.
Turns out I know his name the same way half the country does.
He’s even more famous than I am. Caspar is such a prolific rock star that I’ve never heard anyone bother to use his last name.
So prolific that when he got my mom pregnant, he chose music over me before I was even born.
My stomach sinks as I watch Ben tear off for practice, nearly knocking into Lizzie as she walks back in with the lookbook.
“Maybe I could just do something low-key. Anonymous, even.” I reach for my phone. “Like what Seven does.”
Twyla yanks the phone out of my hand before I can pull up the Tick Tune app.
“Absolutely not. First of all, that app is setting any career-minded musicians up to fail,” she says.
“And I know you, Sammy boy. You can’t work in a vacuum anymore.
You’ve been running this open mic, but that’s not going to scratch your itch forever. It’s time to get back out there.”
I can’t deny it. Only it’s less of an itch now and more of an ache. I miss being part of a team. I miss the exhilaration of a crowd. I miss that magic of noise coming together, and everyone being a part of it.
I miss performing with Mackenzie.
But that doesn’t change a damn thing.
“These articles popping up make me think working with Mackenzie might make too big of a stir,” I say.
Twyla shakes her head. “That’s exactly why this is your best bet.
We give the people what they want. We keep the focus on the two of you, and off your private life.
” She grabs the cupcake lookbook from the table.
“So get to my party on time for once and use that handsome mug of yours to get her on board.”
The idea still feels like too much to absorb, but not because it’s complicated. Because it’s simple. Because Twyla is right.
“You’re going to regret this when she maims me in front of all your friends,” I say.
Twyla beams as if I’ve just agreed to the whole thing. “I’ll start thinking up album concepts.”
After Twyla leaves, I walk over to the bowls, hoping for a distraction. But Lizzie grabs a drying towel and gets to work right beside me.
“I think we all know the media focus is well off Ben by now,” she says carefully. “So if you’re really thinking about Ben in all this—what he needs is for all of his parents to be happy.”
I set the bowl down, startled. “I am happy,” I tell her. “You know that, right? Ben is the best thing that ever happened to me. I wouldn’t trade this for the world.”
This isn’t a life I ever imagined, but it’s more than I ever deserved. My days are a blur of baked goods and soccer games, music and mayhem. All these little, quiet moments of my life that did one thing the big, loud ones never did, and built me a home.
Lizzie nods. “What I mean is—Kara and I are living our dream. You’re allowed to go back to yours.” She tilts her head at me, searching my face. “Maybe Mackenzie’s a part of it.”
The duet is tempting. All of it. Especially for the fourth reason I didn’t say out loud—one that I can’t say out loud. One that’s every bit as much a reason to do it as a reason to stay away.
I’ll never be over Mackenzie. It’s a problem I learned to live with. But if I’m not careful, I might fuck up and make it her problem, too.
Lizzie pulls me out of my self-pity before I can indulge in it, tweaking my arm on her way to the front of the bakery. “If that’s not enough motivation to get her on board, well—consider that Ben might run away from home, get a Thunder Hearts tattoo on his forehead, and disown you if you don’t.”
I sit with it the rest of the day, going around in circles in my mind. One of them leads me right back to that crease in her brow. The thing is, I only ever saw that crease when she was writing a new song. I only ever saw that crease when she was thinking about something that broke her heart.
I know better than to think I could ever be a reason. The best I could ever do with Mackenzie’s heart was rile it a few hours at a time when we were on tour. But that never stopped me from wanting to know the shape of it—apparently not even now.
“Damn it,” I mutter to myself.
They say the definition of stupidity is making the same mistakes twice. But they don’t say anything about how good it feels when Mackenzie Waters is one of them.