A Song to Take the World Apart Read Free Page A

between the well-behaved girls they’ve always been and the independence they’re just starting to claim. It’s like watching the tide pulling away from the shore only to come rushing right back.
    Lorelei has never felt that particular pull. Her mother let her go when she was a baby, first to Oma, and then, later, to the school system and her classmates’ parents. She’s always been able to separate herself from her family.
    Chris’s mother stands and smiles at him, and for just a moment it undoes the primness of her face. She wraps her arms around his broad shoulders and musses his hair. He smiles back, radiant. Lorelei looks away from them. It seems private. When she turns back, Mrs. Paulson is shouldering her way through the crowd, and her mouth is set in a long, firm line again, and Chris is looking past her. This time, Lorelei meets his gaze without being able to stop herself.
    It takes a few minutes before he finds a way to drift over. He makes it look casual.
    “I feel like I know you,” he says.
    It’s just a line. Lorelei is disappointed to realize that he doesn’t remember her, but why would he? It was five minutes, one time. She pretends like she doesn’t remember him, either, and tries to play it cool.
    “I know,” she says.
    “Do you, um, do you go to Venice?”
    “Yeah,” she says. “I’m a sophomore.”
    “Cool.” Chris rocks back on his heels and smiles at her. “I’m a senior there. What did you think of the show?”
    “It was
great,
” Lorelei says. She wonders if she’s being too enthusiastic, and bites down hard on her lower lip to keep it from trembling, or from smiling too widely. “I mean, you know. You guys sounded—um—really good.”
    “Good or great?”
    Zoe elbows her in the ribs. “I’m Zoe, by the way,” she says.
    “Lorelei,” Lorelei offers.
    “Laurie?”
    “Lorelei,”
she says again. She can hear her voice getting lost in the room.
    “Okay,” he says. She isn’t sure he’s gotten it at all. “Chris.”
    “Cool,” Zoe says. “I’m gonna get one more drink—you guys want anything?”
    “Nah.” Chris holds up a water bottle. “I’m cool.”
    “Uh, me too,” Lorelei agrees. Panic lances through her, and she frowns hard at Zoe’s retreating back. She has no idea what to say to Chris, how to talk to boys or how to talk about music, and she can’t talk about
school.
    “Have you seen us play before?”
    “No,” Lorelei admits.
    “Probably for the best. We’re, uh, well…This is for sure our best show to date. Bean—our drummer—he’s new, he’s great.”
    “Yeah,” Lorelei agrees. “Where did you guys pick him up?”
    “Harvard-Westlake, if you can believe it.” Chris shakes his head. That makes Bean a private-school kid, an alien from the other side of the city. Lorelei has only just learned to recognize the names of these places, which uproot people from their neighborhoods and gather them into little rich-kid knots. “But he’s talented, so whatever.”
    “Yeah.”
    There’s a silence. Lorelei feels the gap in their conversation like a physical thing.
    “You guys gotta head out soon? Catching a ride?” Chris asks. Lorelei flushes and then flushes harder, embarrassed, even though she knows that it’s invisible, under her makeup, in the blue and purple light. It’s so careful,
catching a ride,
so that neither of them has to admit that someone’s parents will be picking her up.
    “In a minute.” Soon, actually. The show ran late and the movie they’re supposed to be watching ends in half an hour. It will take them fifteen minutes at least to hike back to the theater to meet Zoe’s mom.
    “I gotta load out,” Chris says. “And, uh, I guess I wouldn’t ask you to help carry equipment, anyway.”
    “I’m tough,” Lorelei tells him, puffing up under the worn leather of her borrowed jacket.
    “Sure,” he says, laughing. “But I’ll see you at school, maybe? Say hi in the halls?”
    “For sure,” Lorelei says. She