“So why aren’t you a famous rock star?” I asked.
“Because,” Vicky said, trying to shove her feet into the pumps, “it’s not enough to be a really good singer. You also need a band who actually shows up for rehearsal sometimes. You need to be taken seriously. You need anyone at all to book you to play a show. You need a break. I cannot control everything. I can only control what my voice sounds like. And how my rock star clothes look.”
“What did Pete say when you talked to him about the Dirty Curtains?” I asked. “Is he going to give you a slot sometime?”
Vicky made a face. “After about two hours of hanging around him, he told me to send him a demo and ‘we’ll see.’ So I sent him a demo. And I guess we’ll see. I’m not holding out hope.”
“Could Char just invite you to play some Thursday night?” I asked. “Is he allowed to do that, or does Pete need to approve it?”
“Sure, Char could invite us,” Vicky said. “But he doesn’t.”
“Why not?” I asked.
Vicky sighed.
“Has he heard you?” I asked. “Maybe if he heard you, and heard how good you guys are—”
“Oh, Char’s heard us,” Vicky said. “Pippa brought him around to band practice a month or two ago.”
“He didn’t like your music?” I asked quietly. “What a jackass,” I added, even though I had never heard the Dirty Curtains and maybe I wouldn’t like their music either.
Vicky snorted. “Please. He loved our music. That’s why he’ll never, ever invite us to play at Start. Char doesn’t share his spotlight. Not with anyone who might steal it from him.”
“He invited me to DJ with him,” I pointed out as gently as I knew how, so Vicky wouldn’t take it personally.
She nodded. “Exactly. That means he doesn’t think you’re a threat.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but before I had the chance, Vicky handed me the shoes she’d been trying to fit into and said, “I think you should buy these.”
“I don’t know,” I said, toying with one of the rhinestones on the toe. “They look like the eighties.”
“Then they’re perfect. You can play the Cure and your shoes will match. Come on, Elise. I might not be a famous rock star yet, but you are a famous DJ.”
“I think famous is a bit of a—”
“Shut up,” Vicky said kindly. “We are going places. This is just the start. Now get in that dressing room.”
So I did.
Every time I tried on something new and came out of the dressing room to model it, Vicky would sing part of a Start hit—Joy Division or the Jackson Five or Dexys Midnight Runners—and then I would say, “Yeah, I could see wearing this while that song was playing,” or she would go, “Ugh, that totally clashes with the music! Take it off.”
And she was good. Even just hearing her sing a couple lines here and there, I could telclass="underline" she really was that talented.
After Vicky approved a pair of lace leggings, I tried on a fluffy pleated pink dress that looked like it belonged to Madonna circa 1987. “Ta-da!” I announced as I emerged from the dressing room. I stuck one hand on my hip and the other in the air.
But Vicky was gazing into the distance and didn’t respond immediately. And when she did, what she said was not “You look like an extra in Footloose” but “I wish Pippa were here.”
I let my hands fall to my sides.
“Pippa would love today.” Vicky sighed. “She’d have so much fun shopping with us. Of course, shopping with her could drive even a self-respecting woman to the brink of anorexia, since Pippa spends most of her time whining about how stores never have clothes small enough to fit her. It makes me want to strangle her. At least she has the shoe size of a normal person.”
“What size?” I asked.
“Eight. That was how we met, actually. I saw her in the laundry room of our dorm—this was October—and she was trying to work a washing machine in, like, a sweatshirt and stripper heels.” Vicky laughed. “So of course I went right over there and asked her where she got her shoes, and the next thing I knew I was trying them on. They fit me like Cinderella’s glass slipper.”
I watched Vicky smiling in the mirror. “So it was love at first sight?” I said.
“No way. For starters, I wasn’t ‘supposed’ to be friends with Pippa. She lived on the sixth floor, and I was on the ninth.”
“So?” I asked.
“Ah, spoken like an outsider. What you clearly overlook is that the sixth and ninth floors in Murphy Hall are locked in bitter rivalry. Because 6 is the inverse of 9, which means that the sixth floor is…” Vicky rolled her eyes up to the ceiling, like she was thinking about this. “Bad,” she finished. “And the ninth floor is good, obviously,” she added. “Very intense prank war between the two.”
“I’d always kind of hoped that college would be more mature than high school,” I commented.
“I do want to believe that there’s some place in the world that’s more mature than high school,” Vicky said. “But I haven’t found it yet.”
“So Pippa was your sworn enemy?” I asked.
“She was definitely supposed to be. Sixth floor and all, it’s like everything the ninth floor doesn’t stand for. Or whatever. Plus, Pippa can be a bitch when you first get to know her. She was definitely a bitch to me at first. She’s suspicious of new people. Like, she had been living with her assigned roommate for almost two months and she had basically never spoken to her. They would sit at desks spaced three feet apart and just not talk to each other. So Pippa was lucky to have me. She needed a friend. Then it turned out that we both like to go out dancing, and the rest is history.”
“Why do you and Pippa like to go out so much?” I asked.
“Why do you like to go out so much?” Vicky replied.
“Because it’s dark and no one there knows me,” I answered immediately.
Vicky tilted her head. “I wouldn’t get too accustomed to that, if I were you. You’re the DJ now. Soon everyone is going to know you.”
“Oh, please. They won’t even notice me. I’m not a very good DJ,” I reminded her.
Vicky rolled her eyes again. “Look, I don’t know why Pippa likes going out. Sometimes I think she likes it just because she can drink and flirt with Char. But I like going out for the opposite reason as you. I feel like people there do know me. They see me—maybe not how I really am, but how I really want to be. They see me how I see myself. It’s like I dress the part of Vicky Blanchet, rock star, and I act the part of Vicky Blanchet, rock star, and everyone at Start is willing to see me as Vicky Blanchet, rock star. And that’s who I am inside, even if I don’t have the record contract to prove it yet.
“No one else is willing to do that. People in the daytime see Vicky Blanchet, English major, or Vicky Blanchet, fat girl. And they’re not wrong, but they’re still somehow overlooking me. Is this silly? Does this make sense?”
“It’s not silly,” I told Vicky. And I suddenly wanted to tell her more, wanted to tell her how Amelia Kindl saw me as a crazy girl whose life needed saving, how Ms. Wu saw me as a student in trouble, how Lizzie Reardon saw me as an endless source of amusement, and how I saw myself as so much more, so much brighter. But I didn’t even know how to begin, among these used cowboy boots and vintage ball gowns, how to lay out years of my life for Vicky in a way that would make sense. I didn’t want to tell her how Amelia or Ms. Wu or Lizzie or anyone else saw me, because I didn’t want Vicky to start agreeing with them.