Still, sometimes Fiona needed a break from Lucy's Lucyness. Apparently, that wouldn't be today.
At the coffee shop, Lucy plopped herself down on the couch right next to her and shoved a lime-green flyer under her nose. Coffee splashed across the tacky flyer-and the open pages of her Moleskine.
"Luce!" Fiona reached for the napkin dispenser and blotted away the jagged-edged stain. "Watch it."
"You dropped this," Lucy said, plucking the flyer from the floor and putting it in Fiona's lap.
Fiona gave the flyer a brief glance before turning her attention back to the notebook. "Open mic night. So what?"
"So you should do it."
"Yeah, right," Fiona snorted.
"That'd be awesome, Fiona," said David, a friend from school. "You could sing one of those."
Sitting across from her in a tattered recliner, David was pointing at her notebook. She'd been so absorbed in writing, she'd forgotten he was there.
She and David shared some classes, and they worked on the school paper together, but mostly, she knew him through Otherlands, the coffee shop David had "discovered." He was the first of their group of friends to push through the crowd of tattoos and piercings and order a latte. She respected him for that small bit of bravery.
The first time Fiona came here, she had loved the place immediately, with its battered concrete floor, mismatched furniture, and hand-painted quotes on the wall. Lucy had wondered out loud whether it was where garage sale chairs came to die.
Ever since, a random group from school would converge in the living-room-style back room-provided no college kids had claimed it first. Fiona and Lucy came a few times a week, often on Friday nights, since neither of them had much by way of a social life.
"I don't think I'm open mic night material," Fiona said now, dropping the flyer on the table.
"Because the competition's so fierce?" Lucy asked.
Lucy had a point. Like everything else about this place, the guidelines were loose. Just about anyone could perform in the every-other-Friday open mic night. People would read poems, sing, play the accordion, tell jokes, anything really.
"I don't have anything ready."
"You are single-handedly keeping those Moleskine people in business," Lucy said, pointing to the notebook in Fiona's lap. "You're telling me none of that scratching and humming has amounted to anything?"
Fiona glanced over her shoulder to the open mic "stage," a simple, harmless corner up front, framed by tall potted plants. She knew what it would look like at night, though-brighter than the rest of the coffee shop, a high black stool smack in the center so she'd be taller than everyone watching her, with her face all lit up. She cringed, not sure which freaked her out more-baring her soul or her face.
"Not really." Fiona pulled her bangs far, far forward.
"Fiona Doyle," Lucy said. "Two weeks ago somebody mimed."
David laughed. "She even got behind the microphone."
"A mime with a microphone," Lucy said, nodding with David. "That's who you're up against."
Fiona pulled her Moleskine closer in. "I don't have anything."
"You're such a chicken."
"Who's a chicken?" Ryan plopped down on the other side of Fiona, so her coffee splashed again.
"Your sister," Lucy answered. "She won't do open mic night."
"You really should, Fiona," David added. "It'd be cool to hear an original."
"Not gonna happen." Ryan looked over his shoulder at the coffee bar while he spoke. "She's my sister, and I haven't even heard any of them."
Attempting to change the subject, Fiona seized upon her brother's new weakness. "Who's that girl you keep looking at?"
"What girl?"
Fiona pointed toward the little pixie of a girl on the working side of the counter. Ryan blocked her shoulder with his, before she could turn fully. "Want to be a little more obvious?"
"So this is behind your sudden interest in my coffee shop?" Because of his soccer schedule, Ryan didn't come to the coffee shop often. He'd been here a lot over the past three weeks, though. "I thought we were bonding."
He rolled his eyes. "So what's her name?" Lucy asked.
Ryan took a sip of coffee. "Don't know yet."
"You Doyles," Lucy said, shaking her head. "The only way either of you will end up with anyone is if they knock you out with a brick and drag you away."
"Not taking advice from you, Luce," Ryan said.
"Why's that? Think I don't get how it works?"
"Oh, please. Don't make this a gay thing," he said. "You have no personal experience-boy or girl. I'm gonna stick with my own method."
"Which is what?"
"Smooth and subtle."
Lucy leaned back into the couch, propping her feet on the table. "You're so subtle, she's clueless you exist."
"I think sometimes it's best to take it slow," David said.
"See?" Ryan said, pointing at him. "David knows how to play it with the ladies."
"You guys might want to poll a few ladies," Lucy said. "It's the blind leading the blind."
"Again, you are so not a good source." Ryan plonked his mug on the table. Coffee spilled over the side, creating a little mug-shaped puddle.
"Because I'm not a lady?"
"Because you're worse than we are! You don't even like anybody." Ryan looked at Fiona. "Am I right?"
"Don't drag me into this," Fiona said, holding up her hands.
"David," Ryan said, "you like girls, right?"
All the blood in David's body suddenly appeared in his face. "Um, yeah."
"One in particular?"
"Oh. Uh. Yeah, I guess so."
David's entire head looked like it might explode from all that converging blood. Fiona felt sorry for him, but her brother didn't seem bothered. "Does she know?"
"I don't think so."
"And that's working for you, is it?" Lucy asked. "Pining for her in silence?"
"He's not pining," Ryan answered for him. "He's got a plan. There's strategy."
"Um, well, I hadn't really-"
Fiona nudged both Lucy and her brother. "Stop it." She looked at David. "Just ignore them. Lord knows I do."
"It's okay," he said with a smile. "I could use a little strategy. She's not going to fall in my lap."
"See?" Lucy said, gesturing to David.
"He was agreeing with me," Ryan countered.
Fiona shoved them both away from her. "Good Lord, give it up! Change of subject!"
Ryan and Lucy fell back against their sides of the couch. A slow smile crept across Lucy's face as she focused on Fiona. "Well played, my friend."
"Hmm?" Fiona said.
"Changing the subject." Lucy faced Ryan. "Originally, we were discussing how your sister's a chicken. Somehow we got off track."
"You used me, Fiona," Ryan said, his hand over his heart. "I'm hurt."
The speed with which Ryan and Lucy switched from enemies to allies always amazed Fiona. She tried to look innocent. "I'm not chicken. I just don't have anything."
"You're such a liar," Lucy said. "And a chicken. And the only person in the world who could probably make a song out of ‘liar' and ‘chicken.'" She then proceeded to sing-off-key-"You're a chicken who makes your friends sicken."
"That's terrible," Fiona groaned.
Ryan latched on to Lucy's truly awful tune. "And a liar who will . . ." He faded away, incapable of finishing such dazzling poetry.
"Catch on fire?" David offered.
"Trip on a wire?" Lucy said.
"Make it stop!" Fiona said, clapping her hands over her ears.
"Join a choir?"
"Break the pliers?"
"People!" Fiona yelled over the insanity of lyrics. "Leave the rhyming to the experts!"
All three looked at her, eyes raised. After an exasperated sigh, she said, "You can call me a liar. A chicken. A denier. Say it's singing I desire. I'll just wait till you tire."
They all smirked, because the truth was, Fiona's brain was made for this. Her body-spirit, whatever-was not.
"Yeah, I guess that's better," Ryan said, taking a lazy sip of coffee.
"So you're going to sing then?" David asked. "At open mic night?"
Fiona snorted. "I don't think the chicken song's ready yet."
Lucy looked at Fiona, with one eyebrow drawn down. This was the have-I-got-a-deal-for-you look. Not one good thing had ever come from it. "How about we kill two birds with one stone?" she said.