Lola and the Boy Next Door

chapter twenty-one

I love watching Max onstage. He’s playing his current favorite cover. The first time he sang “I Saw Her Standing There”—Well, she was just seventeen/You know what I mean—with a mischievous glance in my direction, I thought I’d die. I was one of those girls. Girls who had songs dedicated to them.

It’s still thrilling.

Lindsey and I are at Scare Francisco, an all-day, twelve-stage Halloween rock festival in Golden Gate Park. It’s Saturday, and I’m still grounded, but we’ve had these tickets for months. Plus, Norah is inescapable. After being denied every low-income apartment in the city, she made arrangements to move in with her friend Ronnie Reagan. Ronnie stands for Veronica, and she is a he, and the only problem is that Ronnie’s old roommate won’t be moving out until January. My parents feel rotten and guilty about this. So they let me come today.

Per annual tradition, I’m wearing jeans, a nice blouse, a black wig with straight bangs, and red sneakers. Lindsey is wearing a fifties housewife dress, a vintage apron, four-inch heels, a blond wig with a flip, and large sparkly clip-on earrings.

We’re dressed as each other, of course. I wear pretty much the same thing every year. She’s always something new.

Amphetamine finishes on stage four, and they take apart their gear while the next band, Pot Kettle Black, sets up. I fan myself with a flyer for a haunted house, trying not to draw attention to the fact that I’m fanning my armpits more than my face. But I don’t want to smell gross for Max. He hasn’t seen me yet. The sun beats down, and my nose is burning, despite my SPF 25. The city tends to get its rare heat waves in the autumn.

“I can’t wait until you’re a detective, and I get to wear your badge,” I say. “I’d totally arrest any girl who came here dressed as a sexy cat. Snooze.”

“I can’t wait until your podiatrist forbids you from wearing heels.”

“But you look fabulous, darling.”

“Lola?” a girl calls out from behind us.

I turn around to find Calliope, head tilted to the side. “That is you. You were right.” She looks over her shoulder, and I follow her gaze as the other Bell twin appears from behind a monstrously large Hell’s Angel. Or a guy dressed as a Hell’s Angel. I fan my cheeks with the flyer, feeling hot again. I’m not sure which twin is more troubling “How could you tell?” Calliope continues. “She looks so . . . normal.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Lindsey whispers to me.

“She always looks like Lindsey on Halloween,” Cricket says. Neither twin is costumed, but Cricket’s hand does say BOO. “Cool outfit, Lindsey. You look great.”

For all her I-don’t-care-ness, Lindsey looks pleased by the compliment. “Thanks.”

He’s having trouble looking directly at me. Did he see Max’s band? What did he think of them? The only contact I’ve had with him since Berkeley was that same night when I received a text from NAKED TIGER WOMAN asking if I’d made it home okay. If anyone else had done that after a fight, I would have found it insufferable. But Cricket seriously cannot help being a nice person.

I can’t tell if Calliope knows that I visited him. I assume not, since she’s speaking with me. Thank goodness for small miracles.

“Hey,” I say, kinda sorta meeting Cricket’s eyes. “What are you doing here?”

“Same thing you are.” Calliope’s voice is clipped. “Listening to music. Practice was canceled. Petro is sick.”

“Petro?” Lindsey asks.

“My coach. Petro Petrov.”

Lindsey and I stifle our laughter. Calliope doesn’t notice. It’s odd, but I suddenly realize that I haven’t seen the twins stand beside each other in ages. They have a similar body shape, though Calliope is the petite version. This still means she’s taller than her competitors. After her growth spurt, it took several years for her to adjust on the ice. Cricket once told me that when you’re tall, your center of balance is also higher, and this accentuates mistakes. Which makes sense. But now her confidence and strength are forces to be reckoned with. She could kick my ass any day of the week.

I feel her noting the extra space and awkwardness between Cricket and me, and I have no doubt that she’s considering it.

“Why didn’t you guys dress up?” Lindsey asks.

“We did.” Calliope cracks her first smile. “We’re dressed as twins.”

Lindsey grins back. “Hmm, I see it now. Fraternal or identical?”

“You’d be surprised how many people ask,” Cricket says.

“What do you tell them?” Lindsey asks.

“That I have a penis.”

Oh God. My cheeks burn as they all burst into laughter. Think about something else, Dolores. ANYTHING else. Cucumbers. Bananas. Zucchini. AHHHH! NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. I turn my face away from them as Calliope fakes a yakking sound.

“Definitely time to change the subject,” she says.

“Hey, are you guys hungry?” I blurt. SERIOUSLY? I’m so thankful that mind readers aren’t real.

“Starving,” Cricket says.

“Says the guy who just ate three taco salads,” Calliope says.

He rubs his stomach. His bracelets and rubber bands rattle. “Jealous.”

“It’s so unfair. Cricket eats all day long, the most horrendous things—”

“The most delicious,” he says.

“—the most horrendous and delicious things, and he doesn’t gain a pound. Meanwhile, I have to count calories every time I swallow an alfalfa sprout.”

“What?” Lindsey says. She’s as baffled as I am. “You’re in perfect shape. Like, perfect.”

Calliope rolls her eyes. “Tell that to my coach. And to the commentators.”

“And Mom,” Cricket says, and Calliope cuts him a glare. He glares back. It’s spooky to see that they have the same glare.

And then they burst into laughter. “I win!” Cricket says.

“No way.You laughed first.”

“Tie,” Lindsey says authoritatively.

“Hey.” Calliope turns to me, and the smile disappears. “Isn’t that your boyfriend?”

Oh. Holy. Graveyards.

I’ve been so thrown that I forgot Max would be here any second. I want to shove Cricket back behind that Hell’s Angel, and he looks like he wouldn’t mind a disappearing act either. Max slinks through the crowd like a wolf on the prowl. I raise my hand in a weak wave. He nods back, but he’s staring down Cricket.

Max pulls me into his tattooed arms. “How’d we sound?”

“Phenomenal,” I say truthfully. His grip is tight, forcing me to point out the well-dressed elephant in the room. “This is my neighbor Cricket. Remember?” As if any of us could have forgotten.

“Hi,” Cricket says, shrinking up.

“Hey,” Max says in a bored voice. Which isn’t even his regular bored voice. It’s the mask of a bored voice that says, See how much I don’t care about you?

“And this is his sister, Calliope.”

“We saw your show,” she says. “You were great.”

Max looks her over. “Thanks,” he says after a moment. It’s polite but indifferent, and his coolness disconcerts her. He turns back to me and frowns. “What are you wearing?”

The way he says it makes me not want to answer.

“She’s me,” Lindsey says.

Max finally acknowledges her presence. “So you must be Lola. Well. Can’t say I’ll be sorry when this holiday is over.”

I’m aghast. Cricket’s presence has made him reckless.

“I think they look terrific.” Cricket straightens to his full height. He towers over my boyfriend. “I think it’s cool that they do it every year.”

Max leans over and speaks quietly so that only I can hear it. “I’m gonna load some stuff into the van.” He kisses me, quickly at first, but then something changes in his mind. He slows down. And he REALLY kisses me. “I’ll text you when I’m done.” And he leaves without saying goodbye to anyone else.

I am so mortified. “Groups . . . make him uncomfortable.”

Calliope looks disgusted, and my insides writhe, because I know she thinks I’ve been stringing along Cricket to keep dating that. But that was not my boyfriend. The disdain in Cricket’s expression makes me feel even more humiliated. I imagine conversations in which Calliope uses this as proof that I’m shallow and not worthy of his friendship.

I turn to Lindsey. “I’m sorry. I’m sure he didn’t mean it like that.”

“Whatever.” She rolls her eyes. “You know he hates me. I’m not crazy about him either.”

I lower my voice. “Max doesn’t hate you.”

She shrugs. I can’t bear for the twins to hear any more of this, so I take Lindsey’s hand and lead her away. “We have to go, sorry. There’s a band on stage six I’ve been dying to hear.”

“Good, we’ll follow,” Calliope says. “You know these local bands better than us.”

I’m howling on the inside as they follow a dead-silent Lindsey and me across the grass and through the skeletons, ghosts, and pirates to stage six, where a mediocre punk band is butchering “Thriller.” I squint at the bass drum. My colored contacts are an old prescription. “The Flaming Olives?”

“The Evening Devils,” Lindsey corrects, annoyed.

“That’s a stupid name,” I say.

“Olives would be worse,” Calliope says. “I thought you were dying to hear them.”

“I thought they were gonna be someone else,” I grumble.

“Ah,” Cricket says.

It’s a disbelieving ah, and it furthers my shame. I stand my ground and try to lose myself in the band, but I can’t believe my boyfriend just treated Lindsey like dirt. I can’t believe Cricket just saw him treat Lindsey like dirt. And I’m glad he stepped in before Max could do further damage, but why did it have to be him? It should have been me. The orange sun beats down, and I’m sweating again. My wig is trapping heat. I wonder how bad my hair looks underneath, and if I can get away with removing it. At long last, I catch a break as a cloud passes over the sun. I release a tiny sigh.

“You’re welcome,” Cricket says.

And then I realize that he’s standing behind me. Cricket is the cloud.

He gives an oddly grim smile. “You looked uncomfortable.”

“This band blows, and my feet are killing me,” Lindsey says. “Let’s go.”

My phone vibrates in my pocket. A text from Max:

@ marx meadow near first aid. where are you?

The plan was to hang out with Max and Lindsey for a few hours and then go home at dusk. I love Halloween. The Castro used to close off the streets and throw an insane party that attracted over a hundred thousand people, but a few years ago, someone died in the fray. The city stopped closing it off and urged people to stay in their own neighborhoods. Still. As far as places to be on October thirty-first, a crowd of drag queens can’t be beat.

But now I don’t want to hang out with Lindsey and Max together. And I want to stay with my friend, but I haven’t been alone with Max in two weeks.

No. I should stay with Lindsey.

“Max?” she asks.

“Yeah. He’s ready to meet up, but I’m gonna tell him we’re going home early.”

“He’ll be pissed if you don’t show.”

“He won’t be pissed,” I say, with a nervous glance at Cricket. Even though Lindsey’s right. But the way she said it makes it sound worse than it is.

“Yeah, well, you haven’t seen him in forever. Don’t let me stand in the way of your amorous pursuits.”

I wish Lindsey would stop talking in front of Cricket.

“It’s fine,” she continues. “I’ll hang out with them for a little while longer”—she gestures to the Bells—“and then I’ll catch the bus home. I’m tired.”

She’s pushing me away out of spite. There’s no good way of dealing with her when she’s like this, except to give her what she wants. “So, um, talk to you tonight?”

“Go,” she says.

I sneak another glimpse at Cricket before leaving. I wish I hadn’t. He looks tortured. As if he’d do anything to stop me, but he’s being held back by his own invisible demons. I mumble my goodbye. As I walk to the meadow, I take off the wig. I don’t have a purse—Lindsey never carries one—so I drape it on the branch of a Japanese maple. Maybe someone will find it and add it to their costume. I shake out my hair, unbutton the top of my shirt, and roll up the sleeves. It’s better, but I still don’t look like me.

Actually, I look more like me. I feel exposed.

Max is leaning against the first-aid station, and his shoulders relax when he sees me. He’s glad I’m alone. But when I lean up to kiss him, he hardens again, and it sends a chill down my spine. “Not now, Lola.”

His rebuke stings. Is it because of how I look?

“You’re still hanging out with him,” he says.

No, it’s because he’s jealous. I’m sweating again. “Who?” I ask, buying time.

“Grasshopper. Centipede. Praying Mantis.”

It makes me cringe to hear Max mock his name. “That’s not funny. And that wasn’t nice what you said to Lindsey earlier either.”

He crosses his arms. “How long have you been seeing him?”

“I’m not seeing him. We just bumped into him and his sister, I promise.” His silence intimidates me into blabbering. “I swear, Lindsey and I ran into them, like, three minutes before you showed up.”

“I don’t like the way he stares at you.”

“He’s just my neighbor, Max.”

“How many times have you seen him since Amoeba?”

I hesitate and decide to go with a slant truth. “Sometimes I see him through my window on the weekend.”

“Your window?Your bedroom window?”

I narrow my eyes. “And then I close my curtains. End of story.”

“Lola, I don’t believe—”

“You never believe me!”

“Because you lie your ass off all the time! Don’t think I don’t know you’re still hiding things from me. What happened at Muir Woods, Lola?”

“What?”

“You heard me. Nathan was trying to get you to tell me something at dinner. He was there, wasn’t he? The neighbor boy.”

“Ohmygod, you’re crazy. It was a family picnic. You’re getting paranoid, and you’re making things up.” I’m panicking. How does he know?

“Am I?”

“YES!”

“Because one of us is getting pretty worked up right now.”

“Because you’re accusing me of horrible things! I can’t believe you think I’d lie to you about something like that.” Oh God, I’m going to hell. I’m crying. “Why are you so convinced I’m ready to cheat on you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because I’ve never seen the same you twice. Nothing about you is real.”

His words stop my heart.

Max sees he’s taken it too far. He jerks forward as if a spell has broken. “I didn’t mean that.You know I love the crazy outfits.”

“You always say what you mean,” I whisper.

He rubs his temples for a long moment. “I’m sorry. Come here.” He wraps his arms around me. I hug him tightly, but it feels as if he’s vanishing. I want to tell him that I’m sorry, too, but I’m scared to tell him the truth. I don’t want to lose him.

When two people are in love, it’s supposed to work. It has to work. No matter how difficult the circumstances are. I think about the sweet songs he’s written, the ones he plays in his apartment, the ones for my ears only. I think about our future, when I’m no longer tied to my parents. Costumes by day, rock clubs by night. We’ll both be a success, and it’ll be because of each other.

Our love should make us a success.

Max kisses my neck. My chin. My lips. His kisses are hungry and possessive. Max is the one. We love each other, so he has to be the one.

He tears himself away. “This is the real me. Is this the real you?”

I’m dizzy. “This is me.”

But it tastes like fear on my lips. It tastes like another lie.