Moving in Reverse (3 page)

Sometimes, when I was with Blake, it
felt like I was flying. Like I was untouchable, soaring from place
to place, light as a feather. Everything seemed to light up when he
was around, and there was something reassuring about how easily
everything came to him — as if it might just rub off on me, if I
stayed close enough.

We reached my dorm in a few minutes,
and Blake hesitated at the door.

“
I’ll wait here,” he said,
winking at me.

Darby and Blake got along fine, but
having a boy unexpectedly walk into our shared double was pretty
high on the List of Things That Would Cause a Fight with Darby
Later. She was the kind of girl who wore make-up to the gym, and
didn’t appreciate being seen without it.

Which was funny, because I saw Darby
without makeup on a regular basis, and she was beautiful either
way. Just not quite so preened. Which wasn’t always bad.

On the other hand, sometimes I
wondered what she thought of me, tumbling out of bed and heading to
class nearly every morning in grubby jeans and my favorite Columbia
sweatshirt, the one that my parents had gotten me when I’d been
accepted early decision the year before. The first morning I’d
overslept, she’d raised an eyebrow at me.

“
Isn’t Blake in your
English class?” she’d asked.

She didn’t need to say anything
else.

But Blake had spent the whole summer
seeing me first thing in the morning, sharing a bathroom with four
other people (only one of whom brought along a hair dryer — and I
wasn’t about to borrow it from April), on a few hours of sleep.
Granted, I’d been wearing borrowed designer clothes from Moving
Neutral’s drummer, Sophie, most of the time. But he didn’t seem to
mind my faded jeans, oversize t-shirts or messy ponytails.
Inexplicably, from day one, Blake just seemed to really like me.
And I hoped that a few morning classes without eyeshadow weren’t
going to put much of a dent in that.

I left Blake outside reluctantly, and
took the elevator to our sixth floor room. The hallway billboards
were littered with fluorescent-colored flyers for events, speakers
and meetings for every student group you could imagine. I’d once
joked to Blake that I was going to start a student club for
brunette cello enthusiasts from Middlesex County, except he
reminded me gently that I couldn’t play the cello.

Blake’s room wasn’t in my
dorm — he’d accepted his admission to Columbia at the last minute,
less than a week before freshman orientation, and he’d been
assigned the last available room on campus. Fortunately for him,
Columbia guaranteed housing for freshmen, so at least he had a
room. But he was sharing a double with a skinny guy from New Jersey
named Ethan who spent every free moment screaming into his
computer, playing World of Warcraft with people he listened to
through headphones. Blake told me he’d be drifting off to sleep at
night, when all of the sudden Ethan would scream at the top of his
lungs, “
I’m Polymorphed
.”

We spent an entire dinner trying to
figure out what that meant — finally we googled it, and it turned
out to be a spell that turned the other player into a sheep for ten
seconds. It was even more amazing than any of the options we’d made
up.

I wasn’t entirely sure why Blake had
decided to live in the dorms in the first place, but I guessed he
wanted to jump into college wholeheartedly, and having your
freshman year roommate be a little loony was part of that whole
process.

I slid my key into our lock, hoping
Darby was still on the phone with her mom so I could be in and out
in a few minutes. As I opened the door, I could hear a Carrie
Underwood song coming from her iPod stereo, so I guessed she was
off the phone.

“
Hey,” she said, pushing
her chair back from her desk and grinning at me, her laptop open to
Microsoft Word in the background. “Jen from Kappa called a few
minutes ago — they’re having a party tonight and wanted us to
come.”

“
Oh,” I tried to look like
that was good news, unzipping the dress she’d lent me with one
hand. “I actually,” I paused, hesitating. “Well, I promised Blake
we could go to this concert tonight.”

Darby’s smile faded. “I thought you
were studying?” she asked, eyes narrowed.

What difference did it make? I
wondered. Either way, I wasn’t going to a sorority
party.

“
I know,” I said, “but, um
— I actually know the band that’s playing. So I’d feel bad not
going.” Darby didn’t have to know I was stretching the truth a
little. “Tell them I had fun today, okay?”

She looked like she was about to say
something, and then pursed her lips. “Sure,” she clipped, turning
back to her computer. “Hang the dress up in the closet,
okay?”

I slipped off the bright pink fabric
and pulled on one of my own tee-shirts, soft and worn in and not at
all pastel or Rush-appropriate. I found a pair of leggings in one
of my dresser drawers and pulled them on, slipping my feet into
ballet flats. I did my best to muss up the ringlets that Darby had
spent all morning on, trying to shield my body behind the closet
door so she didn’t notice. Picking up my copy of The Crying of Lot
49, the book we were discussing in class on Thursday, I slipped it
into my bag.

“
Bye,” I called over my
shoulder, pretending not to notice the silence from Darby that
followed. I shut the door softly, the ambient voices in the hallway
a welcome respite from country music. Turning to make sure the door
was locked, I walked quickly past the other closed doors on our
hallway, to the elevator, down to where Blake was waiting for
me.

Chapter Four

We got off the subway at Union Square,
Blake cutting through the crowds faster than I could. A woman in a
black tee-shirt stopped me as we cut across the north side of the
park, walking briskly to keep up our pace.

“
Excuse me,” she said, and
I was torn between the natural, polite reaction of listening to her
and the New York-appropriate reaction of pretending she didn’t
exist. “Who cuts your hair?” She asked.

I paused, hesitating for a moment. I
didn’t think my hair was particularly special, but just as I was
opening my mouth to tell her about the little salon in Rockland,
Connecticut that my mom had been taking me to since I was a kid,
Blake pulled my arm to keep me moving.

He grinned over his shoulder at me,
cracking a smile. “She’s trying to sell you something. Any day,
there are, like, a dozen people in Union Square, walking around
asking that same question.”

How did Blake, who’d grown up in Los
Angeles and only come to New York a few times a year for shows,
know more about this city than I did? I curled my lips into a mock
pout.

“
I thought maybe she
really liked the curls Darby did,” I said, laughing as Blake threw
his arm around me.

“
Where did I find you?” he
joked, slowing down as we got to the door of the venue. Blake
bought our tickets and then headed down a side hallway to get
backstage. It was a half hour before the show started, but people
were already starting to arrive. There were fans staked out at the
front of the audience, claiming their spots, but the rest of the
floor was empty.

Blake led me to a door at the end of
the entryway, punching in a code and opening it for me. He waited
for me to walk through and then followed, closing it behind him. On
the other side of the door was the room where the band would wait
just before going on stage — a sparse, empty room with some plastic
folding chairs and four guitar amps, stacked on top of each other
next to the window. A girl wearing a headset glanced over at us and
then did a double take, her eyes widening as she recognized
Blake.

“
They through here?” Blake
asked, ignoring her reaction.

She nodded without saying anything,
and I thought of my own star-struck reaction the first time Blake
had spoken to me, my inability to form words had lasted almost a
minute. I smiled sheepishly at the girl as I followed Blake through
another door on the opposite side of the room.

The next room, where the band was
getting ready, was the type of dressing room that I’d become
completely familiar with the summer before. This would have been a
pretty small show by Moving Neutral’s standards, but the dressing
rooms were mostly the same, no matter how large the venue. A few
mirrors, dim lights, makeup and loose papers and electrical cords
littering every available surface. And sitting on one of the
couches, his feet resting on a cooler of beers, was
Nate.

“
Blake,” he broke into a
grin the moment we walked into the room. “Hey, man, thanks for
coming.”

“
Wouldn’t miss it,” Blake
said. “You remember Casey, right?”

Nate gave me a look that I couldn’t
read, and I smiled uneasily. “Right,” he nodded to me, turning back
to Blake. “So how’s college?” he asked with a smirk, lighting a
cigarette.

You weren’t allowed to smoke indoors
in New York City, but I wasn’t about to get into it with
him.

He and Blake sat back down on the
couch, already engrossed in some conversation that I could barely
hear over the music that someone had put on. They were playing a
song I didn’t recognize, cranking up the volume on little four-inch
iPod speakers till the sound was tinny and impossible to ignore.
Looking around, there were a lot more people here than were ever
backstage before a Moving Neutral show — Fall Guy was an all-guy
band, but there were some girls around too, clustered in a group in
front of one of the mirrors. I sat down next to Blake, feeling out
of place.

“—
was talking to Sophie
before we left,” I caught the end of Nate’s sentence, my ears
flickering when I heard Sophie’s name. Sophie had been basically my
best friend all summer, taking me under her wing in a way that made
me feel like more than just Blake’s girlfriend — like I’d actually
fit in. But she hadn’t spoken to me since the night I took April’s
place on stage, a night that went from the best night of my life to
the worst in the space of about two hours. Blake had forgiven me
for lying to him all summer, but Sophie was still giving me the
cold shoulder.

Although it was pretty clear what she
was mad about now — and it wasn’t the same thing. Because of me,
Moving Neutral lost their lead guitarist, the person who’d written
every single one of their songs. Blake.

Blake’s eyes flickered down for a
moment, and then he looked up, trying to seem enthusiastic. “How’s
the search going?”

Moving Neutral had been trying to
replace Blake since we’d started school in August — it was starting
to seem like they were never going to find anyone.

“
You know,” Nate shrugged
his shoulders. “Still looking.”

I felt like Yoko Ono. Blake loved me,
but to everyone else, it seemed like he’d given up something
special to do something completely ordinary — and left his best
friends in the lurch at the same time. All because of
me.

“
I’m going to run to the
bathroom,” I whispered to Blake, standing up and squeezing his
shoulder. For better or worse, Blake had made his choice, and it
wasn’t necessarily a bad one. But there weren’t any easy answers
anymore. Not by a longshot.

I didn’t actually have to go to the
bathroom, so I walked back out the door into the main entryway,
where people were gathered around a bar or talking excitedly in
little groups. For lack of anything better to do, I went up to the
bar and ordered a coke.

“
Just a coke?” the
bartender asked me, winking. He was tall and skinny and wearing
tight black jeans — either an uncannily well-disguised undercover
cop, or he didn’t really care whether I was underage.

“
Rum and coke, actually,”
I agreed. I knew I could always drink beer backstage with Nate and
the rest of them, but for the moment, I just wanted a minute to
myself. Which was getting tougher as the crowd started to fill the
entry space.

“
Hey,” a girl slid up
alongside me, skinny and tall, her hair pulled into a side braid.
“Aren’t you Blake Parker’s girlfriend?”

I suppressed a sigh. Since when did I
mind being known as Blake Parker’s girlfriend? I’d spent senior
year of high school sitting in my bedroom, listening to Moving
Neutral’s album over and over. Being Blake’s girlfriend was a dream
come true. Literally — I’d had that dream at least twice my senior
year. It was always sad to wake up.

“
Yeah,” I said, giving the
girl a half-smile.

“
That’s cool,” she said,
her eyes brightening. “We’re the opening band — we’re stuck out
here trying to sell CDs and tee shirts before the show. But make
sure Blake doesn’t miss us, okay?” She winked at the bartender,
cocking her head in a flirty way. “You’re not going to charge Casey
Snow, are you?”

He grinned, more to her than to me.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“
Thanks,” I murmured
awkwardly.

“
Want to come see our
booth?” the girl asked me, looking like she was actually excited
about it. “Or do you have to get back to Blake?”

I thought about the group backstage —
the groupie-type girls and the guys who thought I’d broken up
Blake’s band. “I have a few minutes,” I said lightly. If it were up
to me, I’d rather watch the whole show from the
audience.