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“
Bianca
did?”

“She went to church without us this morning because she's the only one who isn't okay with skipping ever, and she came home crying or something about how she thinks God hates her because she isn't Bianca-ish enough or something? And Dad took it as some kind of personal affront that Bianca would say that God hates her so of course the answer to that is to yell at her. Freudian parallels much, Dad?”

“Ouch. What happened at church?”

“I don't know, I wasn't there. I told my parents I was sick and went to Bellevue.”

There's a lot of things I want to say to that but none that aren't bitchy and so out of line or so completely not
fair
, because, like, how dare you have a boyfriend, James! How dare you care about something besides Bianca? I mean, come on. The last thing Bianca needs is us making her into the kind of delicate little heroine we need to drop our lives to protect. The problem is that I don't like to think about what might happen to her if we
don't
, and maybe that's a lot more important than making sure she's not too codependent. I'll take codependent over starving herself until she's locked in some institution, or worse, y'know?

I'm just saying that all of that: the moral of the story is that we can't babysit Bianca! stuff would be nice and all, but I'm not willing to sacrifice my friend to it. If she needs this, I'll be this.

I have a little sister. This isn't new.

(This is a reason not to fall apart.)

And James should be okay with this too, and I'm sorry if that's unfair, except that I'm kind of not.

So I just say, “How come Ian never comes here?”

“Because here is such an exciting place!”

“Like Bellevue is.”

“You have a point.”

“Seriously, though, Bee misses having you around and I do too. And I know Mason does. He calls me all like ‘let's talk about Mrs. Hampdon being a bitch' and I am like ‘Mason I do not go to your school.' ”

He laughs. “She isn't even a bitch, she's very nice, actually. Mason just never shows up and then is all indignant when she fails him.”

“Damn educators.”

“Seriously.”

I say, “She's not doing well, is she?”

“Yeah. I don't . . . It's not like she ever was, y'know? She's not you.”

“I think for a while I thought everyone in my group was there to get better.”

“Yeah, most people are forced into it. She used to pout in the car the whole way home after.”

She doesn't try.

Why did I think that I would be the thing to save her? All I can do is watch.

But it's better than her going down alone, you know? If I can't pull her up, and if I refuse to get pulled down with her, the least I can do is hold her hand.

“I want to meet Ian,” I say. “I only even know his name because I've been creepy and weird about it.”

“He wants to meet you too! I talk about you.”

“You do?”

“Hey, you're my friend.”

“Bring him to a prep session sometime or something. Bianca and I have been practicing our asses off. She makes me sing until my throat's sore.”

“Your throat wouldn't be sore if your technique was better.”

“Ew, you sound just like her.”

“How about I bring him to a non-prep session? There's an Irish pub by our school. You know it?”

Like there's anywhere I don't know in this town. “Yeah, I know it.” It's pretty close to Cupcake. I should take everyone to Cupcake after. I am
so not being serious
, I do not want them to catch airborne STDs.

“There, tomorrow night? You want to tell Mason or should I?”

“Is this your way of asking about our relationship?”

“So there is a relationship.”

“I don't know.” I pull off my shoes and find some nail polish. If we're going to gossip about boys, I'm going to paint my toenails, thanks. “I don't think so.”

“Do you want there to be?”

“Nope. I'm happy, he's happy, we're having fun. Why, has he been hinting around at something?”

“I don't know, I don't think so. He's generally fine with casual.”

“See, I am too. Everyone wins.”

He pauses. “It seems like you should want more.”

“Do you have any idea how gay you sound right now? You meet the right guy and immediately want to get married. Are you sure you're not a lesbian?”

“Hey, you'd know better than I would. Expert.”

“What does a lesbian bring on the second date?”

“Uh, what?”

“A moving van.”

He laughs. “I wouldn't even need a moving van. Back of the pickup truck: mattress, piano, Bianca, good to go.”

“This is honestly the gayest conversation of my life.”

“Making you homesick?”

“A little bit!”

“Call Rachel.”

“Ughhh.”

“Aren't you guys getting somewhere? Call her.”

“I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't push it.”

“Do you, um. Have a thing for her?”

I sigh. “It's complicated.”

“That means yes.”

“No, it doesn't, it means it's complicated.” What am I even supposed to say? I don't have a thing for her unless “having a thing for her” means “having a life that revolves around her” way more than it means anything sexual. If I picture a happy relationship with anyone, the thing is . . . the thing is, it's Danielle, this girl-turned-memory who's sitting in New York drinking espresso or reading her psychology textbook or whatever she's doing up there. It was simple with her. Until it wasn't. It's different with Rachel. It always has been.

The irony of the entire situation is that I think if Danielle were still in Nebraska I wouldn't be running quite as fast, at least. Or maybe we would have broken up even without the move. Seventeen-year-olds don't tend to stay together until death do us part, no matter what our sweet baby James here seems to think.

“Maybe you should invite her out with us,” James says.

“I'm really incredibly not going to do that. Mason, remember?”

“I thought you weren't a thing.”

I am not going to say that Rachel is only talking to me because she thinks I'm dating James's sister. Nope.

So I just say, “Do your parents know about you and Ian?” even though I know the answer.

“Oh God no. Oh
God
no.”

“Be caaareful.”

“Yeah, I'm in my room, door locked, et cetera.”

“Bianca's not going to tell them?”

“Of course not. Bianca's Team Me Against the World. Always has been.”

“Always will be.”

“Yeah.”

The thing is that we have no idea what “always” is going to end up meaning for Bianca. Maybe I'm just now starting to get that this girl is really sick.

Like, physically, bone-deep sick.

“Tomorrow night,” I say.

“Yeah, you got it, kid.”

•  •  •

It's becoming clearer and clearer at school that something's going on with Kristina. I think maybe there's some ramifications of whatever went down with that boy, and a lot of the stuff I'm seeing from her friends is pretty disgustingly similar to stuff that's been happening with me this year. Do not taunt my sister when she's getting her books, you assholes, I will end you.

Except before I get over to her, Rachel's there, all of a sudden, putting all of her sixty-eight inches between Kristina and the freshmen, talking their shit down. And they finally back off and Rachel turns to Kristina and wraps her in this hug.

IAN, JAMES, AND BIANCA ARE
already at the pub when I get there, and Mason shows up a while after. (I'm the one who told him, but I was coming from chorus so we didn't come together. It doesn't mean anything.) We pull an extra chair up to this little circular table and I have my fake ID ready but the waitress clearly doesn't care and brings a pitcher of beer to the table, whaaat why do I never come to this place? It helps that Mason looks pretty old. Mmm, he looks good tonight.

There's a piano in the corner and after two glasses of beer James shows us why he needed to bring his piano in his fantasy moving van and damn, he is good. Bianca leans her head against my shoulder and we listen while he bangs out songs and sings and the other people in the pub are at least good-natured about it and I say to her, “How come you don't play piano, huh?”

“I took violin for a little but I hated it. Mom let me stop.”

“Ugh, my mom never let me quit anything.”

“You quit ballet.”

“Yeah, when I was too old for her to stop me. And she never had to talk me into that in the first place. Plus, I dug my shoes up, so who knows. Potentially un-quitting.”

Bianca sits up. “You did?”

Ian says, “Wait, were they actually buried?”

“Yeah, in my backyard.”

“Aren't they all full of worms or whatever?”

“No! My best friend and I buried them and we made a coffin and everything. Wrapped duct tape around a shoe box, buried it, made a little gravestone. ‘Here lies Etta's subjugation to the masculine ideals of beauty.' ”

Mason says, “You guys blame us for everything.”

Ian says, “That's what ballet's about?”

“I'm beginning to think maybe not,” I say.

James comes back to the table and kisses the top of my head, then Bianca's, then Ian's, then, after a shrug, Mason's. Mason laughs and tackles him back into his seat. “Mason plays piano,” James says while Mason's sitting on him to pin him down.

“You do?”

“Uh-huh, he's really good. Play us a yarn, Mason.”

Mason rolls his eyes and heads over to the piano, and I don't know what he's singing (it's not show-tuney, huh) but
it's nice, especially with all the beer. I rest my head on James's shoulder.

“So you two,” Ian says, gesturing between James and me, “must be soul mates of some kind?”

“Whaaat?” I kiss James's arm. “No such thing.”

“Etta is our fairy godmother,” James says.

I say, “Etta's making this group
slightly
less white.”

“Nah, come on, you know why I say that,” Ian says.

I say, “No, we really do not.”

“Come on! Etta James!”

“Ha!” James says, and then he and I burst into “At Last” together, obviously. Bianca joins in, sinking into the low notes, and Mason's immediately playing it on the piano, and I see Bianca smile at Ian and then James, and maybe it's not as good as smiling at Ian and James
together
, but this girl is trying so hard. And I can tell she really does like Ian, and that this would be a different issue if she didn't. But she does, and she wants to like them together, and maybe that's all that this takes. I look at Mason. Maybe we really don't have to think this much. After all, Bianca obviously hasn't touched the beer (not that we'd let her, eating disorder aside, come on! Fourteen!) and she still looks loose, happy.

“Brave girl,” I say into her hair, and she smiles.

“So!” Ian says. “Audition! What are we doing?”

“ ‘At the Ballet.' ”

“Sheila?”

“Yep. I've got the disenchanted overqualified dancer thing down. Maybe I can convince them it's true!”

James says, “You are totally overqualified where dancing's concerned.”

“But I am
not
disenchanted.”

Bianca says, “ ‘Let's Hear It For the Boy.' Like always.”

“I'm out,” Mason says. “But it's all right.”

“Okay, but I knew all of those already, I'm bored,” I say. “What about you two?”

James groans. “I don't knooow.”

“He does something different every time,” Bianca says. “It's dumb.”

“You're not afraid they'll get sick of you?” James says. “Like, every year this girl shows up and sings ‘Let's Hear It for the Boy.' ”

“No. I know I'm good at it.”

James says, “Yeah, I guess it did get you in.”

I say, “What?”

“I didn't tell her that,” Bianca says, narrowing her eyes at him.

He says, “Sorry, sorry,” but obviously doesn't think it's a big deal.

She rips at her napkin a little. “Yeah, well. I got in last year.”

“Did you go to New York?” I say, like that's the important part, God, Etta.

She shakes her head. “Chicago for the final audition and then I got in.”

“Why didn't you go?”

“That wasn't a scholarship.”

Oh.

“She was too sick, anyway,” James says, tucking her head against his shoulder. “We might not have even let her.”

She just shrugs.

God.

“That's so shitty,” I say. “That sucks.”

“You'll get in this year, Bee,” Mason says. James nods, and I think,
she was sicker than this last year. She has been sicker than this.

Or at least that's what they're telling themselves.

“I just wish it were in Nebraska,” Bianca says.

I don't get that. I just don't get that so much. I'm going for this audition full speed ahead now, I guess, but I still feel pretty crappy sitting here and knowing that what these guys want so much is to be singers and to go to that school and soak it all up and what I want is just to be in New York. Like, come on, Etta, this is their dream and you're using it as your Get-out-of-Nebraska-free card. I guess I can at least take solace in the fact that there is no way I'm going to get in over them. No harm, no foul, right?

“So what are you going to sing?” I ask James.

“Right now I'm leaning toward ‘Santa Fe.' You and Mason inspired me.”

Mason and I start singing it again and I say, “Ooooh. Can you do the octave jump at the beginning?” to James.