I eyed them, rolling around the idea of Chris in my mind. It had potential, I supposed. “Maybe...”
Mrs. Griffiths came in the room then, and everyone slid into their seats.
Erin jotted a note and slid it over to me. You were really good Saturday night. Have you thought about finding a band to play with for real? You were cool.
She’d underlined cool about six times and I grinned. I traced my finger over the words. It had been fun, that was for sure. But it had been fun mostly because of Rafe.
Hadn’t it?
* * *
I decided to do it. To take control. To own my life. Or at least get a date for the semi that didn’t involve any lies or fake boyfriends or anything like that. Just me.
I called Chris on Thursday night. I hung up the first three times I dialed. Then I called Erin, got a pep talk, and then called him again.
He answered almost right away. “S’up?”
I cleared my throat. “Um, Chris?”
“Yeah. Who’s this?”
I almost hung up again, but made myself answer. “It’s Lily. From the band.”
“Hey, Lil.” His voice warmed up immediately. “I thought I recognized your voice. Great job Saturday night. You bailed before I could tell you.”
“Yeah, um, curfew.” I rushed on before he could bring up the incident with Rafe. “So anyway, I’ve got this semi-formal dance at my school Friday night and I was wondering if you wanted to go with me.” I rushed through the invite so fast I wasn’t even sure he’d understand what I’d said.
“This Friday?”
“Yeah. It was the only time we could get the location we wanted. I mean, usually it’s a Saturday, but we picked Friday so we could have it at the Red Pines Country Club. It’s owned by the dad of this girl in my class and the food will be so good and they have this great dance floor and—”
“Relax, Lily,” he interrupted. “You don’t need to convince me to hang out with you. I’m there.”
I caught my breath. “Really? Just like that?”
He chuckled. “Yeah, just like that. Rafe’s an idiot. I’m not. I’m all over it.”
“Oh.” I leaned back in my pillows and uncurled my fingers from the phone. Relief eased through me, and my lungs started working again. That wasn’t so bad, right? Asking a guy to go with me? “Well. That’s great.” This was good. The start of my new life sans fake boyfriends.
“What time does it start?”
“Eight.”
He was silent for a sec, and I felt tension sliding through me. He was going to bail on me, wasn’t he? “How about I meet you there?” he said. “We’ve got band practice until eight. I’ll bring my stuff and jet over and meet you.”
I noticed that he didn’t ask if I was going to practice. Guess I’d been fired.
Dumped by two fake boyfriends and fired from the band.
My lucky week. But at least I had a date for the semi. Things were looking up. Rah, rah. “Yeah, that’s fine to meet me there.”
“Lily? What’s wrong?”
I twirled my hair around my finger. “Nothing.” I wouldn’t allow anything to be wrong. The Rafe thing had to be history, and I wasn’t going to let it wreck my first semi-formal. Chris was nice and cute, and he was psyched to go, and that was all I was going to let myself think about.
“We’ll have fun, I promise.”
He sounded so sincere, I actually smiled. “Okay.” For the first time since Saturday night’s disaster, I felt a little bit of hope that maybe I wasn’t going to have the social life of cow dung for my entire high school career. “Thanks.”
“Good. Be prepared to dance. I’m a great dancer.”
“I’m sure I’m better,” I shot back.
He laughed. “You’ll just have to prove it on Friday then, okay?”
“Deal.”
We hung up after that, and my elation faded almost right away. I didn’t want to go with Chris. I wanted to go with Rafe.
Too bad for me, right?
I tossed the phone aside and stared at my JamieX poster for a while, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Rafe.
So, finally, I got up and went downstairs to the piano.
I tried Mozart for about one minute, then switched over to the music they’d played at the piano bar.
I played for an hour, until I was sweating and singing and even feeling a little better. Weird. Piano had never made me feel better about anything before. Only worse.
It was Rafe’s fault.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
On Friday night at eight fifteen, I was standing by the door of the Red Pines Country Club ballroom. I was wearing a new black dress with spaghetti straps and a silk sheath that glided over my skin. My rhinestone-decorated high heels gave me at least four inches, and my hair was glistening with blond highlights that made my dirty-blond hair look outrageously gorgeous.