“That’s not mine!”
I held it out of reach and flipped over another CD. “Then why is the full Phantom of the Opera soundtrack here too?”
He’d gone so red I thought his head might explode. The car wobbled, almost going over the centre line.
I laughed, hard. “Oh my, you are actually Troy Bolton from High School Musical, aren’t you? You secretly want to sing?”
“Shut it!”
He grabbed the CD case off me and stuffed it into the side compartment. “I don’t want to sing, okay? I can’t even sing. I never have been able to…I…I…” He sighed, and stared hard out the windscreen, slowly turning the wheel as we slid round a curve. “I just like music with stories in it, okay?”
I smiled harder.
“Stories?”
“Yes, like epic stories. But in song. I know it’s not cool, but I like musicals, all right? And, like, modern music is all ‘I wanna smack you, hoe’ or ‘I love you now I hate you, I hate how much I love you and I love to hate you more’.” He sang all this in a weird falsetto voice, and I knew he wasn’t lying about not planning to become a singer. “Where’s the narrative in that? And…” he continued. “I don’t, like, only listen to musicals, I listen to other stuff too. I just want it to have a story. Like, have you ever listened to The Mars Volta?”
“Mars whotta?”
“Volta. They’re a band. They do concept albums.”
“Concept what now?”
Kyle was finally smiling, his face all lit up like someone had put solar panels in his hair. “A concept album. It’s, like, not just a collection of songs. The whole album is a piece of art that you’re meant to listen to as a whole. The Mars Volta do incredible ones. But even albums by, like, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, they tell stories, you know? You’re not supposed to listen to random tracks in Let It Bleed. You’re supposed to sit down properly, get the vinyl out, pour yourself a glass of something, and then really concentrate on the whole record – start to finish – and listen to the story they’re trying to tell you.”
Another curve in the road; Kyle confidently steered us around it. We’d gone from mountains, into highway interstate tarmacness, through long straight stretches of parched desert, and now we were back to driving into mountains again. Camp felt so far away, though it must be getting closer. I didn’t want it to get closer.
“So you like stories, huh?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Is that because you don’t think you have a story yourself? Or the one you do have is so overtold or something, that somehow it doesn’t count?”
Kyle took his eyes off the screen and really looked at me, his face all soft.
“Are you trying to psychoanalyse me, Amber?”
“Oh, yeah. Of course. I mean, I’m a seventeen-year-old art student. I’m so very qualified.”
He laughed. “And what kind of stories do you like, Amber?”
I thought about it, thinking through books I’ve read, books I’ve discarded – films I’d borrowed that made me happy, or annoyed.
“I think I like the stories that don’t try and sugar-coat the truth, you know? So, no fairy tales. I like the grim stories, where nothing really happens. At least they’re honest…” I trailed off.
“That’s funny…” Kyle said. “Because my favourite stories are the ones where everything comes good in the end, against all the odds.”
“You like a happy ending?”
He snorted. “Oh yeah, I’m an American. You know they reshoot bits of English films sometimes, to make them happier, and show us that version over here?”
“No way!”
“Oh yeah. Remember that Keira Knightley film of Pride and Prejudice? Well, I read somewhere that in your British version, they didn’t kiss at the end or anything. Whereas, in the USA version, it was a right-on happily-ever-after snog-fest. ‘Snog’? That’s a British word, right?”
I couldn’t stop smiling. Little bits of the smart guy who’d got an academic scholarship to college were beginning to shine through. I was starting to get him, even in just a day. The only problem was it made me want to kiss him more.
“Do you think maybe the Keira Knightley version of Pride and Prejudice is a microcosm of the differences between us?”
Kyle laughed. “God that would be depressing.”
“Evie, my friend back home, she would probably know that fact. She’s a massive film buff.”
The automatic car clunked into a lower gear as we wound up a sharp incline in the road.
“Your face goes all glowy, you know?” Kyle said. “Whenever you talk about your friends back home. Tell me about them.”
And I could feel my face glow, the muscles around my cheeks twitching, as I pictured Lottie and Evie – what they’d say if I told them about this weekend, how much they’d care.
“Well, the most important thing I guess, is that we’ve started a feminism grass roots campaign group called The Spinster Club.”
As the car climbed upwards, through clouds, past expanses of forest, I filled him in on the bits of my life that weren’t all just the crap between me and my mum. I told him about Evie’s relapse last year, about the constant academic bashings Lottie gave us at every Spinster Club meeting, teaching us all the big and important ideas she’d read about. I dug into my purse and pulled out my Spinster Club membership card – I’d made one for each of us, and Kyle even stopped the car on the side of the road so he could admire it properly. I told him how the college wanted to start it up as a proper club the next school year, inviting other students to join… They’d found out about us after we protested against a rape pop song being on the canteen’s jukebox. Kyle seemed almost proud of it all as I spoke. The way he looked at me made me want to freeze time so I would always be looked at like that for ever. And when I went off on one of my many rants about women’s issues, he didn’t try and get pedantic about the facts I was using, or say stuff like “Well, it’s hard for men too, you know?” and all the other crap I get thrown at me by guys whenever I dare bring up girl rights.
“It’s just so great you’re doing this,” he said, instead. “I have two younger sisters. I don’t want them growing up in a world where they’re leered at, or put down all the time.”
“You shouldn’t only care about feminism because you have sisters.”
“I get that. You should just care about feminism because it’s the right thing to do.”
And again, I asked myself why I wasn’t kissing him. Honestly, why the HELL wasn’t I kissing him? Instead, I said: “You didn’t seem very feminist when Melody was dancing like a stripper around the campfire.”
It came out just as bitter as it was.
But, surprisingly, Kyle didn’t look ashamed. He just rolled his eyes.
“She pulled me out the crowd, Amber. What was I supposed to do? Humiliate her? Tell her I didn’t agree with why she was doing this? Tell her she was letting women’s rights down?” The car lurched into an even lower gear. “I know you’re pissed that I kissed her, I get it. I’m annoyed I did too, as it’s so obviously screwed things up between us. But, like, have you ever considered why Melody feels she has to do what she does?”
I didn’t answer at first. Initially because I was angry. Then hurt. Then angry at myself that he might be right…