Page 16 of Hidden with a Rockstar
My two best friends have spent three years building a shrine to a band, and the bassist at the centre of Marnie’s favourite spread is my older sister, and not one of them has any idea. I react with a heart.
I send the group chat an excited GIF and then, without deciding to, I’m in a different app with my thumb over Rhonda’s name.
What is she doing? Is she feeling better? How is her conversation with Jo?
Instead I type:
How are you?
And then delete it.
I close the app, put the phone face down, and open the spreadsheet.
Saturday, Ravita’s living-room floor is a crime scene of glue sticks and glossy four-by-sixes. Marnie has laid out three years of Sirens shows in chronological order and is defending her filing system like it’s on trial.
“Dublin goes before Manchester,” she says, “because that’s when Riley changed her cymbal setup and the whole feel of the band shifts, and if you put Manchester first the spread doesn’t tell a story.”
“It’s a scrapbook, not a documentary,” Ravita says, already reaching for the washi tape.
“Everything is a documentary if you love it enough.”
I’m supposed to be doing the Jani pages. I have a stack of photos of my own sister mid-bassline, hair in her face, and a pair of safety scissors, and I keep not cutting. My phone is face down on the carpet and I can feel it there the way you feel a held breath.
“Lena.” Ravita is looking at me. “You’ve trimmed the same photo four times. It’s a circle now. It’s basically a coaster.”
She plucks the over-trimmed photo out of my hand and holds it up beside my face, one eye shut, appraising. “Has anyone evertold you that you and Jani have the same face? Like, the exact same face when you concentrate. It’s uncanny.”
“We do not.” I take the photo back a little too fast. “I have a rounder face.”
“If you say so.” She’s already losing interest, reaching for the washi tape, and I get to breathe again.
“Sorry. Miles away.”
“You’ve been miles away for weeks.” She says it lightly, but she holds my eyes a beat too long before Marnie hauls her back into the Dublin-versus-Manchester war.
I glue Jani’s face into the centre.
I spent three days of picking up my phone and putting it down. Of opening the text app and closing it. Of composing messages in my head that range from breezy to stupid to honest, and deleting all of them before they exist anywhere but my brain.
I think about the vending machine at the airport. How close she stood. How she smelled up close—bergamot, vanilla and a curl of sandalwood. How if I’d turned my head three inches I’d have been at her neck. My ears go hot.
On the next morning, I couldn’t take it anymore, I type:B7 or C3?
I press send and put the phone face down. If she’s forgotten, I can call it a wrong number and take it to my grave.
I hear a notification and pick it back up.
Rhonda: Always B7. Pretzels are not snacks.
I grin at my phone.
I type back. She types back. I type again. She answers before I've finished the sentence.
Pretzels are healthy, and fun to chew.
I'm telling you pretzels are for suffering, they have no joy.
All food is joy if you eat it right.
