Being Friends With Boys by Terra Elan McVoy

Itmakes me stumble over myself. “Well, it’s really great of you and—”
    “Calm down, Coastal. It’s all good. I’ll just see you Monday. No big.”
    His binder is heavy in my hand. I still feel guilty, even though it doesn’t seem like Benji really cares.
    “Good luck with your project. Better hurry along, by the looks.”
    He gestures again toward Oliver, who’s talking to a few other guys but still glancing obsessively over at us.
    “Well, thanks. I mean it.”
    “You’re good,” he says, reaching out to squeeze me, once, on the arm. Under his hand, I’m aware how squishy I am.
    “Thanks again.” I hurry off then, mainly because I don’t want Benji to see how flustered that whole exchange has made me.
    “Everything okay?” Oliver wants to know when I get to his car.
    “Let’s just go,” I tell him, getting in and slamming the door, hard.
     
    When we get to the house, I realize we didn’t give Whitney a ride home from school today, that she wasn’t even at Oliver’s car this afternoon.
    “What up with Whitney?” I try to be casual.
    Oliver shrugs and opens the fridge to find us something to eat. “I told her we had to practice.” He’s so blasé about it.
    “And she was okay with that?”
    “Sure,” he says, in a way that makes me think Whitney doesn’t know, exactly, who “we” is today. But whatever.
    We heat up some Hot Pockets in the microwave, pour big glasses of Coke, and take them downstairs, where Oliver’s two guitars are set up on their stands. I’m surprised to see the acoustic one out.
    “You really were experimenting last night, huh?”
    He bites off about a quarter of his Hot Pocket and talks around it. “Just trying a few things out.”
    While we eat, he takes out my lyric sheets and spreads them between us on the couch. We look at the words, talk about what sort of tone we think each song should have. It’s strange to be talking to Oliver like this, but also wonderful. He and Trip were always the frontmen, and I was just the girl who ran around covering the details. Now I’m in Trip’s seat. I’m here making Sad Jackal what it is. It’s kind of awesome. But at the same time, I know I need to prove myself. So I try to remember what Trip’s taught me about music, to think like he might, and picture the songs as sound pieces and not just thoughts in my head.
    “‘You’re Ugly, Too’ can be your angry-sounding one, if you want,” I say.
    Oliver’s face is not sure I will be much help, after all. “I don’t want angry.”
    “Oh. Well, I just thought that you were going for—”
    “That was just playing around. Most of it was Eli’s idea.”
    “Got it.” I’m not going to push it further. “At any rate, this one should be faster. Frustrated. But ‘Foreign Tongue’ has got to sound dark and European.”
    “No matter what Eli says, I am not playing the accordion.”
    We both laugh at this.
    “You don’t have to. But you know what I mean.” I let my bangs drop toward my face, pretend I’m inhaling deeply from a cigarette, and make my eyes sultry. “Moody.”
    “Moody I can do.”
    This is a joke, kind of. When Oliver’s mom first heard them play, she pursed her Mary Kay’ed lips together, smiled, and said, “Why, it’s so moody , honey.”
    “It’s called Sad Jackal, Ma,” Oliver had said.
    And true to the name—which Oliver and Abe and Trip just came up with; I’m still not sure what it’s supposed to mean—the band’s sound is mostly that: moody. It occurs to me that maybe this is part of why Oliver wanted new members, to at least bring in another emotion or two.
    He goes for his electric. “Let me show you what I was thinking for that.”
    I watch him plug in, mess around a little, sing. He’s just showing me the rough lines of the sound, but it’s still good. I tellhim, when he’s finished, to do it again, so that I can listen for alternate paths the melody might take. He nods and starts right in, sings a little more