For a moment I’m too surprised to respond, half bracing myself for a punch line. But there isn’t one. There’s just Oliver and his eyes so unwavering on mine that my cheeks flush and I do something I almost never do—I look away first.
“Thanks,” I say, tossing my hair. “It’s going to look even nicer while I’m running circles around you today.”
Oliver straightens up like he’s rising to the challenge. “We’ll see about that.”
Georgie comes out to hand us our Check Lists, but each of them has a ticket attached to it. I gasp before Oliver even registers what’s happening, seeing the words Greek Life—the name of Gloria Dearheart’s show—in familiar bold font. Just under it is this week’s Thursday premiere date.
“You’re not required to attend, but you have the option,” says Georgie curtly.
“Not required?” I blurt. I’d sell my own kidney to get into this theater. “How is this even happening right now?”
She raises an eyebrow, and if I’m not mistaken, almost seems pleased that we’re out of the loop on something. That she gets to be the one to clue us in. “It isn’t public yet,” she says, “but Tyler Dean Bassey was offered a pilot. So Baron’s taking over the role of Poseidon for the Broadway run.”
“Holy … shoot,” I say, catching myself just in time.
She turns away, but not before I spot the little smirk playing at the edge of her mouth.
“Well,” says Oliver, “this just turned into the least boring day of our lives.”
I haven’t been this excited since our school got those discount tickets to see Hamilton on a field trip freshman year. At least this time I managed not to scream.
“Tell me about it.”
We finally glance down at our Check Lists, and I’m almost disappointed to see that there isn’t anything highlighted on them. In fact, after all the commotion of the morning, I barely run into Oliver all day—he skips right past his own lunch to leave as early as he can to help his brothers set up.
I head home and knock on Teddy’s door, but he doesn’t answer. It occurs to me that he might still be with Chloe, so I decide not to text him just in case. Heather’s also out, with a note saying she stocked up on my favorite frozen pizza and that she’s downstairs in the club if I need her. For a moment I just stand in the kitchen and soak in the rareness of having a moment all on my own.
Usually I feel like these moments are stolen. I use them to belt my face off or practice a really weird monologue and savor the fact that nobody’s around to see me make a complete ass of myself. But right now all I can think about is how quiet it is and how loud my brain feels. Like the emptiness of the apartment left too much extra space for me.
I open up Heather’s laptop, going back to the Madison admissions page. I stare at the rosy-cheeked faces of the students in the pictures. A girl standing under a spotlight as Olive in Spelling Bee, her mouth open in song and her arms wide with feeling. A group of students caught in midjump dancing onstage. The tagline you see under the school’s logo before you even scroll down the page: Become the person you’re meant to be.
A little grandiose for an undergraduate program, maybe, but the words have stuck in my head since I first saw them. I know I’m impatient. I know I don’t have the answers yet. But that’s the kind of thing you don’t find out until you leave your old life behind, right? How am I supposed to know who I am if all I’ve done the past few years is figure out what I’m not?
The sun is starting to set outside, and I’m itching. Restless. I keep glancing over at the desk in the living room where my dad usually works during the day, the quiet nucleus of the apartment. At the chair where Heather curls up with her knees to her chin and has stashed so many blankets that I’m not entirely certain what color the chair is anymore. At the spot in the middle of the couch that’s mine, right between Dad and Heather, anchored between them as far back as my memory goes.
I get up abruptly, without even really thinking about a where or a why. A minute later I walk into the Milkshake Club and slide my way back behind the ice-cream bar, in a little spot where I can see the stage and some of the crowd, but nobody would think to look back and see me. My timing is spot-on—Carly just finished her final quick mic check and nodded at someone. I glance over and see that the “someone” is none other than Oliver, flanked by all three of his brothers. They huddle together in this incongruous bubble, all four of them dressed so differently from one another that you’d never guess they were part of the same band, let alone brothers. Then Oliver nods and the light in the venue shifts and people start looking up from their ice cream toward the stage.
Elliot hops up first, wearing mismatched denim and hauling an electric guitar that just about dwarfs his scrawny fourteen-year-old self. He reaches for the mic before the other two even fully get on stage, grinning unabashedly, his eyes bright like he’s already sucking up energy from the crowd.
“Get your SPF fifty ready, because we’re the Four Suns,” he announces.
The crowd gives out a few whoops—the Tuesday-night opening act is a notoriously tough slot, particularly at the last minute—but Elliot doesn’t miss a beat, and neither do his brothers.
“I begged you not to introduce us that way,” says David, the lead singer and the brother a year older than Oliver. He just graduated from Cornelia, so I recognize him from the halls, and also from the trademark bright colored cotton joggers he always seems to be wearing (tonight’s are neon blue).
“Well, guess you got burned, bro.”
David tries to swipe the mic from him, but Elliot ducks. Then their oldest brother, Hunter, a sophomore at Marymount Manhattan tall enough to make Teddy look regular-size, puts his hands on the top of both of their heads and pretends he’s going to bop them together. They both protest, and Elliot puts up a hand to shield his eyes as if the sequins on Hunter’s jacket are blinding him, but it’s clearly all part of the routine.
“Please excuse these numbskulls,” says Hunter, his voice low and quiet but somehow all the more commanding for it. I can see the calculation in his eyes, the intensity in them—it’s more subtle than Oliver’s, but they’re clearly birds of a feather. “They really do love each other. In fact, we’re going to start out tonight with a number that truly represents the heart of our band—a celebration of brotherly love. This is called, ‘You Ate My Taco Bell, Prepare to Die.’”
The club laughs. Hunter takes his seat behind the drums, leans forward, and deadpans into the mic, “That wasn’t a joke. One, two, three—”
Then Hunter jerks his head forward in a nod and they kick off, the younger two following Hunter’s beat, Elliot jumping up and down and in the occasional circle with his guitar as David walks up and down the tiny Milkshake Club stage, delivering lyrics to his brothers and to the audience. Elliot joins in for the occasional harmony, and Hunter adds low, ironic commentary in the middle that people often miss and then laugh at a second later when it lands.
“Blood may be thicker than water, but not as thick as a chalupa,” David half sings, half says into the mic. Elliot punctuates it with his guitar and jumps in on the harmony for “I am my brother’s keeper but not if he keeps my chalupa!”