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We wind up Telegraph Avenue, the busiest street in downtown Berkeley. It’s the most San Francisco–like place here, with its bead stores, tattoo shops, bookstores, record stores, head shops, and Nepalese imports. But it’s also overrun with street vendors selling cheaply made junk—ugly jewelry, tie-dyed shoelaces, bad art, and Bob Marley’s face on everything. We have to walk through a group of dancing Hare Krishnas in sherbetcolored robes and finger cymbals, and I nearly run smack into a man wearing a fur hat and a cape. He’s draping a supertiny table with velvet for tarot readings, right there on the street. I feel relieved that Norah’s distaste for costumes means at least she doesn’t look like this guy.
There are homeless everywhere. An older man with a weatherhardened face comes out of nowhere, limping and staggering in front of us like a zombie. I instinctively jolt backward and away.
“Hey,” Cricket says gently, and I realize that he caught my reaction. It’s comforting to know he understands why. To know I won’t have to explain, and to know he’s not judging me for it. He smiles. “We’re here.”
Inside Blondie’s, I insist on paying with Andy’s twenty. We sit at a countertop overlooking the street and eat one slice of pesto vegetarian (me) and three slices of beef pepperoni (him). Cricket sips a Cherry Coke. “Nice of Andy to give us dinner money,” he says. “But why pizza?”
“Oh, the pizza place was on the way,” I say. He looks confused. “On the way to Lindsey’s house. They think I’m with Lindsey.”
Cricket sets down his drink. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
“No. It was easier than explaining to Andy . . .” I trail off, unsure of what the rest of that sentence is.
“Explaining that you wanted to hang out with me?”
“No. Well, yeah. But I don’t think my parents would mind,” I add quickly.
He’s exasperated. “So why didn’t you tell them? Jeez, Lola. What if something happened to you? No one would know where you were!”
“I told Lindsey I was here.” Well, I told her later. I push the Parmesan shaker away. “You know, you’re starting to sound like my parents.”
Cricket hangs his head and runs his hands through his dark hair. When he looks up again, it’s sticking up even taller and crazier than usual. He stands. “Come on.”
“What?”
“You have to go home.”
“I’m eating. You’re eating.”
“You can’t be here, Lola. I have to take you home.”
“I don’t believe it.You’re serious?”
“YES. I’m not having this on my . . . permanent record.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means if your parents find out you’ve been here without their permission, they won’t like me very much.”
Now I stand. He’s nearly a foot taller, but I try to make him feel as small as possible. “And why are you so concerned about my parents liking you? Is it necessary to remind you—AGAIN—that I have a boyfriend?”
The words are cruel, and I’m horrified as soon as they leave my mouth. Cricket’s blue eyes become startlingly angry. “Then why are you here?”
I’m panicking. “Because you offered to help me.”
“I was helping you, and then you just showed up. In my bedroom! You knew I was coming back next weekend—”
“You didn’t come back last weekend!”
“And now I require your permission to go somewhere? Do you take pleasure in knowing I’m over there . . . pining for you?”
I throw my half-finished slice in the trash and flee. As always, he’s on my heels. He grabs me. “Lola, wait. I don’t know what I’m saying, this conversation is moving too fast. Let’s try again.”
I yank my arm from his grasp and resume my race toward the train station. He’s beside every stride. “I’m going home, Cricket. Like you told me to.”
“Please don’t go.” He’s desperate. “Not like this.”
“You can’t have it both ways, don’t you get it?” I jerk to a halt and sway. I’m talking to myself, not to Cricket.
“I’m trying,” he says. “I’m trying so hard.”
The words shatter my heart. “Yeah,” I say. “Well. Me, too.”
Confusion.
And then . . . “You’re trying? Are you trying in the same way as me?” His words rush out, toppling over each other.
Life would be so much easier if I could say that I’m not interested, that he stands no chance with me. But something about the way Cricket Bell is looking at me—like nothing has ever mattered more to him than my answer—means that I can only speak the truth. “I don’t know. Okay? I look at you, and I think about you, and . . . I don’t know. No one has ever so completely confounded me the way you do.”
His difficult equation face. “So what does that mean?”
“It means we’re right back where we started. And I’m back at the train station. So I’m leaving now.”
“I’ll go with you—”
“No. You won’t.”
Cricket wants to argue. He wants to make sure I get home safely. But he knows if he comes with me, he’ll cross a line that I don’t want crossed. He’ll lose me.
So he says goodbye. And I say goodbye.
And as the train pulls away, I feel like I’ve lost him again anyway.
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, Lindse
y 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.
