Chapter 1 #5
She is very thrown off by Kyle’s presence in her back seat.
She doesn’t know what to do with herself.
And the addition of Eliza is an extra layer of awkwardness.
Eliza is too pretty to be in her car, she keeps thinking, and then corrects herself: Both Eliza and Kyle are.
She’s not sure why Eliza’s prettiness feels louder to her, but it does, as though each part of Eliza is screaming at her. Eyes! Mouth! Body! Body! Body!
On the highway, Susan drives exactly one mile over the speed limit while sports cars race around her until finally she’s turning off and navigating through a town that’s eerily similar to her own: the same chain store logos flicker on in the dusk, the houses all built in that unfortunate architectural era of the ’80s, as though all of Long Island is different shades of one idea.
Young people dressed in black are strewn about the parking lot of the Masonic temple. Everyone looks vaguely familiar; it’s a small community of teens in Suffolk County with the same taste in music.
“Very scene-y tonight,” Katie says, grinning as she looks around, and it’s obvious to Susan that she’s trying not to sound as pleased as she is.
A girl with blue hair and cat-eye glasses sits at a small desk in front of the entrance. “Five dollars,” she says.
Everyone digs around in their pockets to produce cash.
Susan opens her wallet, her stomach sinking as she realizes it’s empty. “Oh shit,” she says. “I don’t have anything on me.”
“I got you, Sue,” Katie says, turning to the door girl. “Two, please, for me and my lady.”
“Sorry,” Susan says, and Katie waves her off.
The door girl makes inelegant x’s with a black Sharpie on their hands. She looks back and forth from Katie to Susan and asks, “Are you guys sisters?”
When she marks Kyle, she holds his hand for a second too long, and as if on cue he grins at her, that disarming smile that once made Susan’s brain go smooth. Then he lifts the door girl’s hand to his mouth and kisses her fingers.
Here we fucking go, Susan thinks.
The door girl giggles. “Get outta here,” she says, smacking him away, but she’s grinning. He’s clearly made her night.
Their group starts to walk away. Susan, Katie, and Jake are a few paces ahead of Eliza and Kyle, but close enough that Susan hears Eliza say, “Dude, what the fuck?”
“You said you didn’t want to go out with me.” Kyle shrugs, infuriatingly casual. “I’m a free man.”
Eliza quickens her stride so she’s next to Susan, and Susan feels a rush of protective energy. She has the urge to put her arm around Eliza and pull her close, but she doesn’t. They don’t know each other, and it would be a strange thing to do. She keeps her arms stiff at her sides.
Only once they are inside does Susan finally relax. She feels at home here, with these weirdos who are leaning against the walls and glaring at each other, their skinny jeans and too-tight T-shirts and studded belts and face piercings and hair in their eyes. This is a world she understands.
Eliza, on the other hand, looks totally out of place. Like she got lost on her way to Juicy Couture.
The overhead lights are dimmed, making the atmosphere feel charged and somewhat romantic, like anything could happen here.
There are no chaperones. It’s filling up quickly with young people, little cliques of teens who don’t dare talk to anyone outside the groups they came with, an unspoken rule, though Susan sees a lot of people making eyes at each other across the room.
She wonders if anyone will look at her. They usually don’t.
The small stage is empty but for a drum kit, a tangle of cables, and amps covered in stickers.
Katie sits cross-legged on the ground a few feet from the stage and pulls Susan’s hand until Susan plops down next to her. Eliza, Jake, and Kyle stand awkwardly over them, eventually turning their backs and talking to each other.
“Why do I feel like we’re the kids and they’re the grown-ups?” Katie says.
“What the fuck is up with Jake bringing Kyle?” Susan whispers.
“I’m so sorry,” Katie says, putting her face in her hands. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him. I wish he had just asked first.”
“I want to hide in a hole for the rest of my life.”
“But, Suzie, I really don’t think this has to be that big of a deal,” Katie says, leaning closer because music has started to play and the room is crowded now, getting louder with talking and laughter.
“I think he really liked you. You’re the one who rejected him.
Whatever he said about you afterward, he was clearly just butthurt. ”
“It’s just so embarrassing that everyone knows I had a crush on him,” she says.
“But that’s how life goes,” Katie replies. “Humans like each other. It’s normal and good. And anyway, if it makes you feel better, Jake clearly didn’t remember. So it wasn’t everyone.”
Susan recalls how excited Katie was the first time she and Jake hooked up. How could she ever relate to Susan’s feelings of disgust and dread?
“Can we talk about something else?”
“Definitely,” Katie says. “Can we talk about Eliza?”
“Shh!” They both look up at Eliza, whose back is still toward them. “She has a good butt,” Susan says, eyeing Eliza’s yoga pants, unable to contain this observation.
“I know,” Katie says. “And great boobs. I think I hate her.”
“It’s like she’s from another planet.”
“Planet popular,” Katie says.
“Planet JAP,” says Susan.
“I don’t think she’s Jewish.”
“JAP is a lifestyle,” Susan says, and Katie snorts.
There’s some commotion from the stage as the first band comes out. Katie jumps up and pulls Susan by the hand with her.
The opening band is three people. The drummer is a girl, which Susan thinks is cool. The other two look like every other boy in a band.
There’s a deafening, high-pitched scream of feedback as the microphone turns on, and then the space is filled with noise.
The singing is inaudible over the roar of the music.
The audience rushes toward the stage, their heads nodding in time.
Susan’s ears already hurt, but she doesn’t mind.
She loves when her thoughts are drowned out with sound.
Susan turns to her left and sees that Eliza is the only person in the crowd not dancing. She looks almost shy. “What’s wrong?” Susan says.
“What?” Eliza shouts over the music. “I can’t hear you.”
Susan cups her hands over Eliza’s ear and shouts, “Why aren’t you dancing?”
Eliza flinches. “Ow,” she says. “My fucking eardrums!”
“Sorry.” Susan shrinks away.
Eliza puts her own hand around Susan’s ear and says, at a much more reasonable volume, “What kind of music is this?”
“Oh!” Susan says. She feels delighted. This is something she can help with. She feels, suddenly, cool, as though knowing something Eliza doesn’t gives her a certain kind of power. “Prog rock.”
“They’re from Prague?”
Susan tries not to blush as Eliza’s lips brush her earlobe.
“No, prog like progressive.”
Eliza glances around. “I don’t understand how everyone is dancing to it. I don’t hear a beat.”
Susan points to the girl in front of them, who is tapping her heel in time with the music. The rest of the movement in her body is coming from that momentum; it’s making her head bob and her shoulders move. “She’s got it,” Susan says. “Follow her heel.”
They spend the rest of the set so close they’re almost touching, heels hitting the floor in sync together.
When the opening band finishes, Eliza excuses herself to the bathroom, and Katie says to Susan, “That was nice of you.”
Susan shrugs. “It’s what you did for me, once.”
It’s true: Katie is the one who taught Susan how to dance at rock shows without looking like an idiot.
“The student becomes the teacher,” Katie says, and then Jake is wrapping his arms around her and the conversation is over because she’s turned and put her mouth on his.
Susan walks toward the bathroom. She doesn’t really have to pee, but she doesn’t want to be alone with Kyle, who was looking as awkward as she felt when Katie and Jake started going at it.
In the bathroom, a girl with a boy’s haircut wearing shorts over ripped fishnet stockings is fixing her hair in the mirror.
For a moment Susan is transfixed by the pale legs beneath the fishnets—her skin looks so soft, and her knees are bruised like peaches—but the girl catches Susan staring and she looks away.
Alone in the stall, trying to squeeze out some pee so at least she has a reason to be in there, Susan studies her blue Victoria’s Secret bikini-cut underwear, which looks like someone has used it as a tissue.
She’s used to a little nervous discharge here and there, but this is something else.
When it dries, it’ll glue her pubes together.
She hopes no one can smell it. She often feels like her vagina is her emotional spokesperson, though at this moment she’s not sure what it’s trying to say.
When she’s done and washing her hands, a toilet flushes and then Eliza emerges.
“Oh, hey,” she says, washing her hands in the sink next to Susan.
The bathroom is brightly lit and painted orange. Wet toilet paper is balled up on the floor. The hand soap is crusted over. Susan feels bad for whoever has to clean up after the all ages shows.
“Hey.” Susan wipes her hands on her jeans and leans against the wall, trying to look casual. “So what do you think of your first show?”
“Who says it’s my first show?” Eliza says. She digs into her bag and pulls out a Lanc?me Juicy Tube lip gloss. It’s sparkly blue.
“Is it not your first show?” Susan says, ready to apologize.
“No, it is,” Eliza says. “I’m just fucking with you.”
Susan laughs, surprised Eliza is funny. “Why is your lip gloss blue?”
“It’s not,” Eliza says, and when she puts it on, it shows up clear. “Want some?”
She gives it to Susan, who sniffs it. “I kind of hate lip gloss,” she says, but puts it on anyway, handing it back to Eliza while licking her lips. “It tastes like candy.”
“Exactly,” Eliza says. “It looks cute on you.”
“Should we go back out there? I think What-What is starting soon.”