Jean Haus - With the Band

One thing I could tell from his list—the guys in Luminescent Juliet were slobs. There was a whole section of bullet points about who was supposed to clean up what . . . and when. I wrinkled my nose at that part. There were definitely going to be drawbacks to my spending the next six weeks with four musicians on a bus. Especially given that one of them couldn’t stand me.

I tap my foot to Nirvana’s “All Apologies” playing from my iPod deck on the desk and glance over the huge pile of things on my bed. I’ve gathered everything on the list, plus my camera gear and computer, and I can already imagine Romeo, the apparent micromanager, saying something about all the stuff. Just as I’m debating whether I can squeeze one more outfit into my suitcase, my roommate and cousin, Jill, comes into the room, holding two frosty margaritas.

She wiggles her blonde eyebrows at me.

I smile. Starting when Jill and I were both about eight years old, we got into the habit of telling people we were sisters. Since we both have brown eyes and blonde hair, everyone usually believed us. Then, by the time we were around thirteen, I started putting on weight. We didn’t look like sisters again until our senior year of high school, after I got serious about dieting and exercising. Of course, these days we don’t tell anyone we’re sisters, but we still look alike. We both keep our long, straight blonde hair cut a few inches past our shoulders. We dress similarly, partly because we share our closets. I fit into most of her things but not all. And unless I starve myself, which I refuse to do after too many years of strict dieting, I’ll always weigh more than she does. Jill is an inch shorter than me, and she’s built thin. I’m a little curvier. But after struggling with my self-image for years, I’m okay with my curves. So what if I have to buy bigger-sized jeans in certain styles? Size is just a number. There are worse things than being bootylicious. Like being obsessed with what a scale says.

Jill goes over to my desk and turns down the music. “The girls are coming over,” she says, holding a margarita out for me.

I don’t reach for the glass. “I’m supposed to go out with Bryce,” I say. “He’ll be here any second.” I’m already dressed in a gauzy, flowing, sleeveless dress, and all that’s left for me to do is to put on mascara.

Jill pushes the drink into my hand. “Practice always runs over,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Baseball is so boring that I don’t know how it can run late, but it always does. You can have a few while you wait.”

I take the drink from her.

“He’ll like you nice and easy,” she says with a wink.

I give her a dirty look and take a sip. “I’m never easy.”

She smirks and tosses her hair back on one shoulder. “Didn’t seem like it that time I walked in on you two.”

“The infamous Saint Patty’s Day session,” I say, rolling my eyes. “You’re never going to let me live that down.” I don’t regret it, exactly, but I’m still embarrassed that Jill had walked in on us after we’d done several rounds of green beer pong and were in a full make-out session on the couch, with various pieces of clothing removed. Bryce and I had waited another month until we had sex. Thoroughly still embarrassed, I flick some salt from the rim of my glass at her. “Who’s coming over?”

She swirls a straw in the slush of her drink. “Ashley and Jules, of course, and probably Sara. Maybe Gwen.”

“Fun,” I say. “Almost wish I could skip the date and hang out with you guys.” It’s true. I love our group of girlfriends. It’s made up of Ashley and Jules, who lived across from us in the dorms freshman year—and whom we still see all the time, partly because Jill works with Jules at the student coffee shop. I met Gwen when I started working at Tony’s, a local Italian restaurant, making desserts and occasionally waitressing. She instantly fit in with our group and started hanging out with us all the time. She almost killed me when I told her I was temporarily leaving the restaurant job to tour with Luminescent Juliet. It’s possible they’ll hold my job until I get back, since I’ve worked there for three years. But I’m not worried either way. My future career as a journalist is far more important than making giant-sized portions of spumoni and cannoli or serving up heaping plates of spaghetti.

“We’ll just be forced to get smashed without you,” says Jill, laughing.

Usually, we reserve Fridays for our ladies’ nights, no guys allowed. Sometimes we hang at one of our apartments. Sometimes we go out. Tonight is a Wednesday, so it’s a spur-of-the-moment gathering.

I take a long sip of the frozen drink. A few moments later, brain freeze has me rubbing the bridge of my nose. I sit down on the edge of my bed.

Jill’s expression is curious. “Are you okay?”

I admit, “I’m still nervous about Sam.”

Jill’s upper lip curls. “Please. What’s he going to do? Destroy your reputation on a bus? Make you cry? You’re over all that. Definitely tougher now.”

Jill, of course, knows about everything that destroyed my senior year. She had gone to high school with Seth and Sam, had been the one to introduce me to the fraternal twins. Back then, her life had seemed so much more fun than mine, even though she lived in serious farm country in the thumb of Michigan while I lived two counties over, in a town that drew tons of tourists each summer. But the fact was, Jill was just more social than I was. She had way more friends, and got invited to all the parties. So after I’d lost weight my senior year, I made the drive to her parents’ place on weekends and let her drag me around with her. And on one of those nights, I’d met Seth, at a barn concert.

“Seth was the one who ruined my reputation. Sam was just an asshole,” I recall, though both had hurt me in one way or another.

“Still is,” Jill says. “He’s an ass of the highest degree, like ass to the power of infinity. Ignore him.”

I sigh. “I plan to. I just don’t like remembering all that drama, and hurt.” The giggles behind my back throughout the day at school, the nasty comments on Facebook, the writings on bathroom walls, and my self-confidence in the gutter are painful memories I don’t like to linger on.

She plops down next to me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “Fuck Sam. Fuck Seth. You were young, screwed up, and those two were to blame for everything that went down. Especially moody, stupid, egomaniac, rumor-spreading Seth.” She clinks her glass with mine. “So let it go.” She flutters her lashes at me. “I’ll always love you.”

Grinning, I clink my glass back. “Love you too.”

She glances at the huge pile of stuff I still have to pack, behind us on the bed. “This summer is going to suck without you here.”

“I wish you could come with me.” I smile. “But honestly, other than dealing with Sam, I’m so excited to be going on a tour. With three bands!” I say, lifting my glass and clinking it with hers again.

She shakes her head and smiles. “You’re one lucky bitch, but who better than you?” She waves a hand at the wall by my desk, which is plastered with old concert posters, guitar picks, an original Ramones T-shirt, and several album covers, including a signed copy of the Stooges’ Raw Power , all framed and sealed under glass. My grandfather was a bouncer at a punk club in Detroit years ago, and he gave me all the stuff. He met and saw many of the early bands perform live, from the Clash to Black Flag.

A knock sounds at the door, and Jill hauls me off the bed.

“Come on, that has to be Ashley,” she says. “You can at least hang out with us for an hour until loverboy gets here.”

Two margaritas later, Jill and Ashley are reenacting my first meeting with Bryce in the middle of the kitchen while Sara, Gwen, and I sit at the counter bar on the other side in the dining area. Jill, wearing a baseball hat, smacks into Ashley, whose features twist in terror. She lets out a yelp, falling clumsily onto the floor. Jill immediately drops to her knees and starts waving her arms frantically. I can’t stop myself from laughing.