But I didn’t look at David for long. In fact, I hardly looked at him again for the rest of the show. As far as I was concerned, Sweets had no guitarist, no bassist, no drummer. They had only a singer.
Ruby’s lips were painted a deep, vampy purple, and her silver hoop earrings nearly touched her shoulders. She wore baggy jeans over Timberlands and a red Mickey Mouse T-shirt she’d cropped at her belly button. Boy-style boxers peeked over the top of her waistband, which caused me to feel briefly dizzy, this time in a good way. Her hair was twisted into tight French braids, the tips freshly dyed emerald green. She was texting me when she was applying that dye, I thought with substantial satisfaction. I had previous and direct knowledge of that dye. Who else here could say that? Who could think of Natalie Reid when Ruby Ocampo was onstage? Certainly not me. Not very often, anyway.
I watched Ruby as she smiled at the crowd, took a drink from a water bottle, turned to say something to the guys. I felt Jamie look at me and quickly away but I couldn’t and didn’t take my eyes off Ruby. The palpable excitement in the crowd bordered on impatience. Someone in the audience shrieked, “SWEETS!” The boys stayed serious, focused on fiddling with their instruments, but Ruby smiled and blew the yeller a kiss. I searched the backs of their heads, trying to figure out who had been so lucky, and how much I should now hate them. But then Ruby took the mic in her hand as the drummer raised his sticks to count them off, and she had me captive all over again.
Their first song was, primarily, loud. I noticed Jamie’s head bobbing in time to what I could only assume was the beat, and I followed suit. It was difficult to isolate any one instrument from the others: they all crashed into and over one another. But above it all, Ruby’s voice soared. Most of the time her singing was clear and sweet, but on the choruses she broke into a Hayley-Williams-meets-Karen-O scream. These are not my words. I stole them from Jamie.
“She sounds a little like Hayley Williams,” Jamie shouted in my ear. “And maybe a little like Karen O.”
I nodded thoughtfully and shouted back: “I AGREE.”
Ruby had a surprisingly commanding presence for someone who mostly stood still, occasionally pointing to someone in the crowd (I always looked), or thumping herself so hard on the heart I had to wonder if it hurt. She was wildly expressive, almost goofy, and if she hadn’t been so obviously sure of herself (and so hot) it might have been hard to watch. But she was, so she was a rock star. As each song came to an end she dropped down into a squat and bounced there, bobbing to the beat of the next song starting up. She smiled at David and Ben and waved to people she knew in the audience, and I found myself craning my neck like I might intercept one of these gestures for myself. I was falling a little bit in love with her.
They finished another song and everyone clapped. “WOOOO!” I yelled.
“Thanks for coming out!” Ruby yelled back. This time she saw me. She broke into a huge, gorgeous smile. “We’re SWEETS!” People screamed. I swooned.
The band started up a slightly slower song, and David sang in Ruby’s place, plaintively mumbling with his mouth pressed up against the mic while the girls in the front lost their minds. What a waste, I thought. I watched Ruby sway back and forth and mouth the lyrics into open air. It wasn’t fair, how cool some people got to be. But maybe she’d fall in love with me, and I would become that cool also. Sexually transmitted coolness. Oh my God, I was really losing it.
Impulsively I leaned over and cupped my hand around Jamie’s ear. “She’s been texting me for weeks.”
The words left a semi-sour taste in my mouth. I was openly, pathetically bragging, and so soon after Jamie’s big Natalie reveal. Surely she saw through me now more than ever. But I had needed to say it, I couldn’t not; it was only a matter of when. The relief at having said it was instant, then gone, and then I just felt gross and strange. Surely I could have come up with a more natural segue. Almost anything beat suddenly shouting something like that in someone’s ear. But it was done, I’d said it, and at least now, if something did happen between Jamie and Natalie, I could claim I’d been first to move on. And couldn’t I be proud that Ruby, the person we were all here to see, wanted to spend her rare free time talking to me? So I couldn’t help myself. So I bragged. Sue me. I just wanted Jamie to be happy for me. And maybe the littlest bit jealous, too. Or a lot jealous. A lot would actually be great.
The way Jamie actually responded, though, shocked me: she squealed. Not only that—she clasped her hands together, like an old lady whose daughter has informed her she’s going to be a grandmother. She leaned in, grinning maniacally. Maybe she was drunker than I thought.
“Oh my God! Tell me everything.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes!”
I squinted. “Alexis? Is that you?”
She deflated, relaxing back into herself. “Okay. That was over the top. But I mean it. I know I was weird about this…before, and I shouldn’t have been. I’m trying to make up for it now, so let me, okay? It’s exciting. She’s…Ruby. Tell me everything.”
But something clenched in my stomach, and in the face of her unexpected, wide-open encouragement, I found myself with nothing to say. This is what you wanted, I told myself. Jamie was happy for me, or at least supportive, which was the least she could be. There was no weird, painful tension, no snotty retort or disinterested nod. She cared. She wanted to know more. I should have been so much more relieved than I was.
“Nothing significant.” I shrugged. That sounded unpromising, so I added, exaggerating, “But it’s been a lot.”
“Are you gonna hang out?”
“Well, technically we have.”
Jamie’s eyes widened. “What? When?”
“Just the other night. We made the posters for this.” I swept my hand around the room, and glanced at the stage. The music was picking up now, and Ruby resumed her rightful place at the mic.
Jamie nodded, a small smile pulling at her face. “I thought that handwriting looked familiar.”
“You are the foremost expert.”
Jamie had once kept all the letters I’d written her in a Batman folder labeled WORLD STUDIES—for maximum discretion—beneath her bed. It was stuffed fat with my notes and printed emails, and I only found it a few weeks before we broke up. At the time, I had taken it as evidence she’d love me forever. I wanted to know if she still had it, but I really didn’t want to know if she didn’t. To keep myself from asking her I turned back to the stage, where the band was winding down. How was I going to tell Ruby which song I’d liked best when I kept missing them? I vowed to listen to the next one carefully—whatever it was, it would have to be my favorite. Ruby sidled up behind the mic stand like it was a person, pressing her body against it, and I felt my mouth go dry. Then she looked straight at me, again. She smiled at me, and I smiled back. Fireworks crackled in my chest.