Freefall (16 page)

Kendall looked across the way at me and raised her eyebrows, as if to ask if I’d known they were going to do this. I shook my head in answer.

“I don’t schedule the shows or have any say over which bands play here,” Mom said, smiling at Xander and Taku in an “oh you poor kids” kind of way. “But I’ll be sure to pass this on to the guy who does.”

“Thank you,” Xander said. “We really appreciate that.”

Kendall laughed. “Are you guys serious? Do you
really
not have any idea who you’re talking to here?”

Xander and Taku looked at each other and then at Mom, trying to figure it out, but they had no clue. I decided it was probably time I got Kendall to stop torturing them, so I went over.

“Oh, hey, Seth,” Xander said when he saw me. “What are you doing here?”

“Eating dinner.”

“What a weird coincidence.” He grinned at Mom. “This is Seth McCoy, our bassist. He’s played here with the Real McCoys, and they’ve pulled in a good crowd on quite a few occasions.”

Kendall laughed some more, and Xander and Taku gave each other questioning looks again, this time tinged with annoyance.

“Oh, I know Seth McCoy all right,” Mom said, smiling. “He’s one hell of a bass player, I tell you what. He took a few lessons when he was a kid, and then taught himself the rest by sitting in his room listening to the radio and playing along to every kind of song out there. Or so I’ve
heard
.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. The radio thing is true, but it’s embarrassing when she talks about it. “This is my mom, you guys.”

“What?” Taku said at that same time as Xander managed a
“Huh?”

I went on. “Mom, Xander and Taku are in the band I’ve been playing with.”

“I kind of figured that out,” Mom said.

Jared was the one who told her I’d quit the Real McCoys and joined a new band. She hadn’t said much of anything about it to me, but I could tell she didn’t get it. She kept smiling, though. Mom pretty much always kept smiling. “Baby, you could have told me your new band was looking for a show. You know Will can get you on without all the usual hoop jumping.”

“I might have if I’d actually known we were doing this.” I gave Xander a pointed look. “Can I talk to you guys for a quick second?”

They followed me over to a booth.

“I must have heard you wrong, because I thought you said that was your
mom
,” Xander said, shaking his head. “You meant to say ‘sister,’ right? Because there’s no way she could be
anyone’s
mom.”

“Except, maybe, like, an infant’s,” Taku said.

“You didn’t hear me wrong,” I said.

“Why didn’t you tell us your mom worked here?” Xander asked.

“It never came up.” Which was true. When
would
it have come up? “Why didn’t you tell
me
you were going to book shows for us? It’s kind of something I’d need to know, don’t you think?”

“We thought you’d be glad if we did all the legwork,” Taku said. “But I can see now that it would have been smarter and saved us some steps if we’d had you do it.”

I was on the verge of losing it. “I’ve only been in the band a few weeks. Why are you in such a hurry?”

“Taku and I
have wanted to do this for a while,” Xander said. “Then the stuff we’re doing in IC class gave me the push I needed to stop waiting around for something to happen. Now that we’ve brought you in, we can move forward.”

“Does Brody know?” I asked.

“Brody is what you might call ‘resistant to change,’” Taku said. “But he’ll come around. He always does.”

Xander nodded. “We aren’t going to commit to anything unless you and Brody agree. This whole thing is just about us putting some feelers out there and seeing what kind of response we can get.”

“Well, I don’t think we’re ready,” I said.

“Most places book a few months out, right?” Xander said. “So you don’t have to worry. You already know our songs almost as well as we do. By the time our first show comes along, you’ll know them even better.”

He was missing my real issue, but I didn’t want to spell it out. If I was lucky, Will would take his time about giving us a show. And if he didn’t?

Well, I had no idea what then.

7:17
P.M.

Kendall and I hadn’t even left my driveway yet, and the whole homecoming deal was already a pain in my ass.

“You’re going to be talking about me every chance you get, so you’ll need to remember to use the words ‘hot,’ ‘sexy,’ or the equivalent,” Kendall said as she followed me down the steps. “Also, you have to seem jealous when other guys hit on me. But not
too
jealous. It might get complicated if people believe we’re a true couple. And anyway, I don’t want anyone to think I have bad enough taste to be with some controlling asshole, you know?”

I was starting to think it would have been better just to pick up extra shifts at the car wash instead of putting myself through this dance crap.

“You don’t care if
I
think you have bad enough taste to
waste your time trying to make some douchebag jealous who won’t even go out in public with you?” I asked.

Kendall wrinkled her nose. “Make sure you don’t have
that
expression on your face all night. People need to think we’re having a good time, or this whole thing is pointless.”

“Whatever,” I said, pulling my keys out of my pocket.

Mikey’s truck came kicking up gravel around the corner. His headlights shone in my eyes for a temporary blinding, but not before I’d seen that there were three people in the cab.

Fan
tastic. Now I really was wishing Kendall had stuck to our original plan and met me at the dance instead of having her mom drop her off here to ride with me. Jared and Daniel had both chilled out some since I’d talked to them after my first night closing with Mikey, a little over a week before. Still, I could have lived my whole life without them finding out about this. As far as I knew, no one had a clue about That One Night, and I wanted nothing more than to keep it that way.

Mikey gave me a wave while Jared and Daniel climbed out. Then he drove off, leaving the four of us in the driveway.

The light on our porch was bright enough to show the surprise on Jared’s and Daniel’s faces. “You two going to a dance or something?” Jared asked.

I would have thought it was obvious from our clothes. I mean, I was just wearing black pants and a button-down shirt Kendall had forced on me, but it was still a big step up from ripped jeans.

“It’s homecoming,” Kendall said, hooking her arm carefully
through mine as though she didn’t want to squish the flower thing on her wrist that she’d bought for herself. “Seth asked me to be his date at the last minute.”

I glanced at her, trying to try to figure out why she’d said that, but she seemed to be making a big effort not to make eye contact with me.

“Oh Jesus,” Daniel said, laughing. “Dick sure is getting good at doing weird and unexpected shit lately, isn’t he?”

“I don’t exactly take ‘weird and unexpected’ as a compliment,” Kendall said.

“You’re right,” he said, checking her out. “What I should have said is that he’s lucky you were free. You’re looking hot tonight, Eckman.”

Kendall did look good, all done up like some glamorous old-time film actress in a slinky red dress. She’d changed her hair again, and it was the first time since freshman year that I’d seen her with her natural dark brown color. During her on-again/off-again thing with Isaac, her hair had always been Marilyn Monroe blond.

Jared lit a cigarette and smirked at Kendall. “What kind of blackmail did my loser brother have to use to get you to go out with him?”

“Ha-ha,” I said.

I was
really
ready to leave now. But then Kendall made things worse by starting to laugh for real. “No blackmail. Just lots of begging. Right, Seth?” she said, elbowing me.

I moved away from her. “Yeah, right.”

Daniel was still looking at Kendall. “You should come see me after the dance.”

She raised her eyebrows. “
You
should keep dreaming.”

“Every night, Eckman,” he said. “
Every
night.”

I expected Kendall to snark at him, but she just rolled her eyes and headed for the Mustang. I followed and climbed into the driver’s side, leaving her to open her own damn door. This wasn’t a real date, even if she was suddenly faking like it was.

7:31
P.M.

I managed to keep my mouth shut until after I’d backed out of the driveway. Then I turned to Kendall. “You didn’t say anything about this acting shit. And you definitely didn’t say you’d be trying to make it sound like I’m desperate for you.”

She reached over and patted my arm. “Yes, I did. And you had to have known that I wasn’t going to let anyone think
I
was the pathetic one here.”

“Would it have been so pathetic for you to just say that you asked me because we’re nonenemies or whatever?”

“Yes!”

I pulled out onto the main road, and Kendall started messing with the stereo. It drove me crazy when people changed the music in my car—especially without asking—but I didn’t
bother saying anything. It wasn’t like she was going to stop, anyway.

“Why do you care so much that I told them you asked me?” she asked, still scanning through radio stations. “Are you that embarrassed to be seen with me?”

One thing you could say about Kendall: the girl never had a problem coming up with ways to make
me
sound like the jerk in any given situation.

“I don’t want anyone getting the idea that I’m trying to get with Isaac’s ex-girlfriend.”

She left it on some hip-hop crap. Typical.

“Isn’t it about time you stopped thinking of me in relation to Isaac all the time?” she asked in a sad-sounding voice. “Isaac and I first got together a year and a half ago, but you knew me a
decade
and a half before that. To me, you’re not Isaac’s friend. You’re my former neighbor and nonenemy. Can’t I be those things to you?”

Kendall did have a point; we’d known each other practically since we were born, and Isaac hadn’t moved to town until sixth grade. Changing my thinking wasn’t as simple as she made it sound, though. “We can’t go backward just because Isaac isn’t around anymore,” I said. “If he were alive, I know you wouldn’t be in this car hanging out as my former-neighbor/nonenemy right now. You’d have found some other guy to help you make your secret boyfriend jealous or—more likely—you’d be back with Isaac and heading to this dance with
him
.”

“You’re
wrong about that last part,” she said, shaking her head. “When I broke up with him, it was for good.”

I couldn’t tell if she believed that or if it was another lie she was telling herself. But Isaac hadn’t believed it.

“Quit looking so skeptical,” Kendall said. “Isaac cheated on me a bunch of times, which I’m sure you know. With one of my so-called friends, even. I kept taking him back, but the last time it happened, I was so exhausted and pissed off that I decided I couldn’t do it again. And that was
it
.”

This was the first I’d heard about
Isaac
cheating. “But
you
messed around with Daniel before that, right?”

She sighed. “No. When the Daniel thing happened, Isaac and I had just broken up for the third time because I’d found out about him and some girl at a party.”

It sounded like their relationship had been way more screwed up than I’d ever known.

“So was Daniel your way of getting back at him?”

“You can call it that if you want,” she said, shrugging. “I think of it more as me trying to move on and get over Isaac. Which was the whole reason I went to that party in the first place—to hook up with Daniel.”

The idea that Kendall had preplanned hooking up with Daniel floored me. Daniel was into Kendall in the same way that he was into all hot chicks, but Kendall walking away from him in my driveway was a classic example of how
non
seriously she seemed to take him. “How did that even happen?” I asked. “I mean, why Daniel?”

She covered her face and laughed a little, like she couldn’t believe we were having this conversation. “Okay, this isn’t going to make me sound honorable, but I guess part of it was because I was thinking I wouldn’t mind if it got back to Isaac so he could feel what I was feeling. And since I was rebounding—and Daniel
is
rebound guy—I thought I’d see if it was true what everyone says about him, you know, having all the moves down. As it turns out, he totally does. So, yeah. Um.
That’s
why Daniel.”

I stared at the taillights in front of me, feeling anxious all of a sudden. If Kendall could talk about what sex had been like with Daniel, what was she telling people about me? What was there
to
tell?

While I was trying to figure out whether I wanted to know, Kendall started talking again. Calmer now. “You probably don’t believe me, but I want you to know that I honestly thought Isaac and I were over when everything happened with Daniel. I’m not a cheater.”

I waited a few seconds before saying, “I believe you.”

The thing was . . . it seemed like she really was telling the truth. I just had no clue how I could have had things so mixed up.

I turned into the school lot—which was about half-full—and pulled into the first empty space. Kendall switched on the dome light and flipped the visor down to look in the tiny mirror. “I’m glad I finally got to tell you my side,” she said as she touched up her lipstick. “Thanks for listening.”

“What else was I going to do? I’m trapped in a car with you.”

She laughed and punched my arm. “Prick.”

Peaceful times between us had been rare, and I didn’t know when the next would be coming. So I decided to just throw the subject out there. “I’ve been wondering about that night. You know, when I played my last show with the Real McCoys?”

She stopped puckering her lips at herself but didn’t take her eyes off the mirror. “What about it?”

“Well, all I remember is getting wasted and then waking up next to you. You’re the only one who knows what went on during the hours in between. I kind of want to know how it happened. I mean, not a play-by-play. Just the basics.”