Chapter Twenty
Joanna pulled up to Trina’s house and noticed that she was no longer grateful that Trina lived in the wide, unobstructed country where she was never in any danger of hitting other cars or people. Not that she wasn’t grateful, she just wasn’t, like, obsessed with it.
She was getting good at driving Granny’s boat.
She got out of the car and went around to unbuckle Rosetta from the front seat. She knew it was weird and unnecessary, but she didn’t care. It was too hot to put Rosetta in the trunk. Which was not technically true, but again, she didn’t care. She was a weirdo for her guitar, even more so now that she was actually playing it.
All she needed to do to get back into music was play a crappy gig in front of a hundred kids at the library. Who knew?
Truth be told, it wasn’t the worst gig she’d ever played. And it wasn’t even the least she’d gotten paid. She got a pretty nice dinner out of it, and afterward. . .
Afterward she’d smooched the hell out of the librarian. Or had he smooched the hell out of her? And then there was last night . . . She’d have to watch herself or she’d start to like him.
She walked in Trina’s front door—because this was Halikarnassus, where nobody locked their doors—and headed out back to the barn. Rick and the kids were in the yard, kicking a ball around. Or Rick was trying to kick the ball around; the kids were working on their cartwheels.
“Hey, guys!” she shouted, because she was in a good mood, dammit.
“Joanna!” Max shouted back.
“Fluffy butt!” Hazel added.
“I’m gonna kill you for that song!” Rick shouted.
“Sorry!”
“No, you’re not!”
“I know!”
“Quit shouting, would you?” Trina shouted from the door to the barn.
Rick jogged over and gave Joanna a quick peck on the cheek. Then she almost hit the ground because Max and Hazel gave her a stealth leg-hug attack that she was not expecting. She held up Rosetta protectively.
“Watch the guitar, monkey children,” Rick warned his kids.
“Monkey children!” they shouted, and ran circles around each other until they fell into a giggling heap.
“Seriously, whose kids are those?” Rick asked Trina.
“I don’t care as long as they take a nap later.”
“What do you care, you’ll be out here blaring your rock and roll. You guys! You’re getting the band back together!” Rick was possibly more excited than Trina and Joanna about their decision to revive Delicious Lies, if only for the summer. They both missed playing music, although Joanna had a feeling Trina was doing it more as a favor to her than anything else.
Whatever, she was itching to play. She was still feeling a little gun-shy on account of the record deal with the devil, but that didn’t mean she was ready to retire Rosetta. Messing around in a barn with her best friend sounded good to her.
Rick joined the kids in their cartwheeling contest, which was an alarming sight, but, she had to admit, kind of charming.
Charming. God, she was getting soft.
“Before we start, there’s something I should tell you.” Trina was standing in the doorway to the barn, her arms outstretched as if she was blocking Joanna’s path.
“What? Did the kids destroy your drums?”
“No . . .”
“Did Rick destroy your drums?” Joanna had a hard time imagining that happening and Rick still standing. Although at the moment, he was lying in a post-cartwheel heap on the grass. But still, they hadn’t acted like a couple that just had a major blowup because one of them decided to destroy the other one’s dreams.
Not that music was Trina’s dream. But still. It was, like, a hobby.
“Okay, stop thinking about ways to kill Rick and let me finish,” Trina said.
“I wasn’t!” Joanna protested, even though she was pretty sure that was the next path her thoughts were going to take.
“Just listen. I invited someone else to play with us.”
“Okay.”
“Really?”
“Is it Hitler?”
“Yes, Joanna, I resurrected the ghost of Adolf Hitler and asked him to join our band.”
“Not cool, Trina.”
“Shut up. This is a real person.”
“Hitler was real.”
“A not-dead person. Jesus, what is with you today?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re, like, giddy or something.”
“I am?” Oh, God. Did she have a postcoital glow? Granny hadn’t said anything when Joanna snuck into the house early that morning. But then, she didn’t have to because Joanna was sneaking into the house early in the morning.
“It’s weird. But . . . listen, I want you to hold on to that giddy feeling, okay? This is not, like, a permanent addition to the band. We’re just jamming.”
“Okay, geez.”
“Do you promise?”
“I promise to hold on to that giddy feeling.”
“Just . . . just don’t freak out, okay?”
“Fine! I promise not to freak out!”
“Thank you. Come on.”
Trina led her inside the barn. As they climbed up to the loft, Joanna half expected Liam to be there. She wasn’t sure why; she was pretty sure he didn’t play. And she wasn’t sure why Trina would expect her to freak out at that, except that Joanna was a generally unpleasant person who didn’t react well to change that she did not initiate herself. This was an unfortunate truth about her, but clearly Trina knew it and accepted it and prepared for it.
Besides, playing with Liam wouldn’t be terrible. I mean, it wouldn’t be terrible to spend more time with him, dork that he was. He probably had a whole pile of sheet music he practiced from.
Thinking about Liam’s dorkiness made her smile, so she was smiling as she climbed the oversized ladder to the loft with Rosetta strapped to her back.
Her smile froze on her face when she saw who was up there waiting.
She’d promised Trina she wouldn’t freak out.
Every fiber in her being wanted to throw a fit. It was all she could do not to just back down the ladder.
Standing next to Trina’s drum set, a bass guitar strapped to her chest, was Kristin Klomberg.
“Are you kidding me?” Joanna asked in a tone that she hoped relayed that she was not going to freak out, as promised. She was pretty sure it didn’t. Because she really, really felt like freaking out.
“I knew she wouldn’t go for it,” Kristin said to Trina.
“What, you guys are like best friends now?”
“Jesus, Joanna, relax. Kristin’s been learning electric bass, so I thought she could join us.”
“There’s no bass in Delicious Lies.”
“That’s because we didn’t know any bass players in high school.”
“I thought you played the cello.” Joanna had distinct memories of Kristin bragging about private lessons and how she didn’t have time for the Halikarnassus Concert Band because she was in the state youth orchestra program, which was a much more worthwhile endeavor than playing in some crappy band. “I thought you were Miss Fancy Orchestra Pants,” she added, because she really knew how to sling an insult. Dang, she was getting soft.
“Nice. For your information, I gave up orchestra after high school.”
“Why, you weren’t good enough?”
“Are we really going to do this?” Kristin asked Trina.
“Joanna—”
“No! No, it’s fine. I promised not to freak out. I’m not freaking out that my best friend decided to include a prissy orchestra chick who doesn’t even play the bass to join our band.”
“Okay, first of all, we’re just messing around here. It’s not like—”
“Prissy orchestra chick! Grow up, Joanna. Don’t you think it’s time you let this whole mean girl thing go?”
“I’m the mean girl? I’m not the mean girl! You’re the mean girl!” And whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you, Joanna wanted to add. But she didn’t, because that would mean she was freaking out, which she definitely was not.
“Very selective memory, Joanna. You terrorized me as soon as I got boobs!”
“Are you kidding me? You had people calling me ‘Flat Stanley’!”
“I only said that because you would run through the halls calling me ‘Titson Walsh’!”
That was true. Joanna used to take a lot of pride in the cruel puns she came up with for Kristin’s perfect figure.
“I did not!” She denied it anyway.
“Joanna.” Trina was standing there with her arms crossed, clearly on the side of Titson. “You were pretty mean.”
“Yeah, but . . . what did that matter! Nobody liked me in high school! They didn’t care what I thought!”
“What? Joanna, you’re crazy! People picked up on all the terrible things you said.”
“Yeah, but . . . what do you care? You were cool and popular and your little minions were always saying shit about me!”
“Girls!” Trina stepped between them because somehow, they had each stepped forward and were shouting in each other’s faces. “Time out, okay?”
Kristin stepped back, like the Goody Two-shoes she was.
“Thank you. Can we just agree that you were both terrible people in high school?”
“I wasn’t—”
“Yes, Kristin, you were. Accept it.”
Kristin huffed and crossed her arms. Joanna smirked in victory.
“You weren’t any better, Joanna. You think just because you weren’t popular that your jerkiness didn’t matter, but you said some really mean stuff.”
Joanna huffed and crossed her arms. Then she realized she was standing the same way Kristin was, so she uncrossed them.
“Here’s the thing. High school was a long, long time ago. We’ve all changed a lot since then, right?”
“She hasn’t changed,” Joanna muttered. “She’s still Little Miss Perfect.”
“You don’t know anything about my life,” Kristin said.
“Oh, really, miss First Lady of Halikarnassus?”
“My husband wants me to do nothing but look good in photo ops and raise our son to be a football star. I do nothing just for myself. When I told Hal that I wanted to come over here and play, so could he clear his schedule to watch Kale, do you know what he said? He said he shouldn’t have to spend his weekend babysitting. Babysitting! His own son! Do you know how lucky you are? You never let anything stand in your way. You wanted to become a rock star, so you did. I know I’m not cool like you are, but I love to play, and I’m going to do it. It’s not babysitting if it’s your own kid!”
Joanna looked at Kristin, who seemed to be on the verge of tears. Crocodile tears, she wanted to say. Poor little rich girl.
But Hal was an asshole. Joanna had thought he was just an asshole to her because he had some weird thing against girls who didn’t fall at his feet and worship him.
But then, she’d also conveniently misremembered how she’d terrorized Kristin as much as Kristin terrorized her.
Plus, Joanna wasn’t exactly living her most authentic life at the moment.
God, she really was going soft. She was starting to see Kristin as, like, a human being.
“Okay, fine. Don’t start crying or anything.”
Trina looked back and forth between the two of them, a little unsure. “Are we cool?”
Kristin tossed her hair back in that way that used to annoy Joanna no end. It still sort of did. “Yes, we’re cool,” she said.
Joanna wasn’t sure if she was ready to commit to being cool with Kristin. It was a lot to process, finding out that the neat little box you’ve smashed someone into isn’t really the appropriate box at all. She couldn’t just shake off the whole Kristin-as-mean-girl thing. But she also couldn’t quite wrap her head around the Joanna-as-mean-girl thing. Sure, she was rude and a badass, but being a mean girl implied a certain amount of social power that Joanna was not aware she had ever wielded in high school.
It was a lot to process, especially now that she was going soft. Maybe she’d sit under a tree and journal about it later. For now, she just wanted to play.
“Let’s do this,” she said, and pulled Rosetta out.