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Chapter One
Lola
I lean back in the plush chair, the airplane rumbling beneath me, still struggling to believe that I’m on a private jet. I look out the window and see only darkness, the clouds thick as we glide through the sky.
“This is crazy,” I murmur.
“I know,” Kayley says, wrapping her hands around her mug of hot cocoa. “I’m still not used to it. But if your dad offers you a private jet, what the heck are you supposed to say, you know? Is it too much?”
Kayley’s pale green eyes are wide and tinged with fear. I can read her easily by now. We’ve been friends for the last two years of college, fused together through our love of the classics, discovered when we met in a creative writing class.
Her major is in technical writing and mine is in performing arts, but that didn’t stop us from becoming best friends quicker than I could believe.
She’s got a thin build that clothes seem to hang off, a build I do my best not to envy. Her hair is sandy-blonde and she wears it in a bob around her face.
I toss my head melodramatically.
“Oh, it’s far too much,” I say sarcastically. “In fact, I’m going to judge you every day for the rest of our lives for having access to such wealth. Yes, Kayley, I do believe I hate you.”
She giggles, knowing that I’m joking. I’m always able to make her laugh when I go with my over the top voice and facial expressions, properly hamming it up like a 1950s dame.
She takes a sip of her cocoa and then places it in the holder.
“But seriously,” I add, “it’s not your fault you were born comfortable. It’s not like you lord it over people. Stop feeling so guilty all the time.”
“I’m just so excited for you to see my hometown,” she says.
“Me too,” I smile, meaning it.
I’d spent most of my holidays with my aunt, but she sadly passed last year. When Kayley offered to host me at her childhood home in rural Maine for Valentine’s weekend, I jumped at the chance.
What else was I going to do, sit around campus thinking about how I’ve never had a proper Valentine?
“And for you to sing on Sunday,” she says.
I give her a no-way look, shaking my head.
“What?” she goes on, gesticulating wildly, her baggy sweater flapping around her wrists. “What would be so wrong with singing on Valentine’s day? Would the world explode? Would you lose your tongue?”
I giggle. “And I thought I was the dramatic one.”
“Seriously,” she says, looking firmly at me. “You have an amazing voice. Surely you wouldn’t have chosen performing arts if your stage fright was that bad.”
“I know, I know,” I say. “But having a small part in a musical and being the sole performer on a stage, in a packed club, are two very different things.”
My hands get sweaty just thinking about the brightness of the spotlight, the way it would highlight every single drop of sweat on my forehead, on my upper lip. That’s all I’d be able to think about, how everybody’s secretly laughing at how much I’m sweating and stressing.
Of course, that would just make me sweat and stress more.
“It’s Dad’s club, anyway,” Kayley goes on. “So if anybody says something I don’t like, I’ll have them out of there like that.”
She snaps her fingers.
“Maybe next year,” I tell her.
She sighs. “You were the star of the show at Christmas,” she says, referencing the musical rendition of A Christmas Carol we performed on campus. “You were the best singer on that stage.”
“I was a background singer,” I laugh. “I was hardly the standout performance.”
“Yes, you were,” she says passionately. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d swear you were fishing for compliments. But I do know you. I know that fishing for compliments just isn’t your style. I know that you genuinely believe that your voice didn’t rise above that chorus.”
I turn to the window, looking out at the darkness we’re soaring across. My belly gives a lurch that has nothing to do with the passage of the plane.
“Like I said,” I murmur, “maybe next year.”
Kayley lets it drop and leans back in her recliner chair, taking her Kindle from underneath and popping on her hipster glasses.
I lean back and close my eyes, trying not to think of Valentine’s day and all that it entails.
I remember peering through the library window one rainy afternoon as the head cheerleader sat in the quad, casually tossing her unopened Valentine’s cards to the ground until she found the one she was looking for. She just left them there for somebody to clean up. I almost went out there and scooped them up, pretending that they were for me.
But that would’ve been too sad.
I try to force my mind away from Valentine’s day, telling myself it’s just a day like any other.
