Luke and Dave are in the second row when I arrive. Antony Barellan and his mates are in the front, sneaking eggs out of their underwear. The Barellan kids aren’t the only ones getting ready to yell and throw, either. It’s a tradition in this town. By the time the acts start, the place will be packed.
“Rose!” Dave calls, and points at a seat next to him. Luke doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even turn around. I shuffle past the other kids. “Charlie not here yet?” I ask. A glass smashing makes me jump.
“Not yet.” Dave passes me a packet of chips. “Everyone else in town is, though.” He looks behind him. “I reckon there’s at least a hundred.”
“A hundred and fifty,” Luke says, and the two of them start punching each other as if the one who hits the hardest will be right.
“Oh God,” I say.
“What? Your mother doing her Madonna act again?” Antony turns around from his spot in front of me. I ignore him and point to the board next to the stage. Dave’s and Luke’s eyes find what mine have. “Shit,” Dave says.
“Uh-uh.” Luke shakes his head, turning round to check out the packed pub again. “I think you mean ‘Fuck.’”
Charlie’s name is written in red chalk on the board. She’s act number two, in front of Mrs. Danon and her dancing dog, Elvin. “What do you know?” Antony says. “Two dogs in a row.”
“We have to stop her,” I say.
“Maybe the crowd will like her act.” Dave’s too hopeful for his own good. “It doesn’t say what she’s planning on singing.”
“The blues.” I point at the long row of Barellan kids and their friends. A local talent quest is something no self-respecting kid does, at least not in our town. Charlie’s come a long way in the self-respect department lately. It’s my fault she’s getting up there. I’ve driven her over the edge.
“Maybe she really can sing and play the guitar,” Dave says.
“You ever heard her?” I ask.
“No. But just because we never heard her doesn’t mean she can’t.”
“Yes it does, Dave. People who are good at things do them. Charlie’s been pretending she can play the guitar and write songs and sing because she wants people to like her.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Why would she get up there in front of everyone if she can’t play?”
And finally I’ve reached the moment of truth. “She’d humiliate herself to prove something to me.”
“I don’t get it. Why would she do that?”
“The same reason she stole the cigarettes and went with Luke and Antony to the quarry. She thinks I used her.”
“But why would she think that now?”
“I can explain later, but we have to stop her from getting up there.”
“Tell me now, Rose.”
I don’t even know where to start. “Mrs. Wesson helped me apply for this scholarship last year, and I got it. But I needed someone to help me get to the city. Mum and Dad were always at me to hang out with Charlie. I needed to go so badly.…”
“And you thought Charlie would be the perfect ride out of here.” He finishes my sentence for me. “I asked you so many times.”
“I only lied at the start.”
“As if that matters. You’ve got everything. A great family. Friends. Charlie had nothing. She trusted you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry you got caught.”
Dave’s yelling and Antony’s laughing and Luke’s watching and I want to run. I want to leave this place where the local talent quest and someone who wants something bigger than here, bigger than themselves, are the jokes of the town. But if I run, then Charlie gets on that stage. Better me on fire than her. Dave looks at Antony shining an egg on his trousers like it’s a cricket ball. “If that hits her, it’s your fault.”
Luke leans across Dave and takes hold of my hand. “Easy. She made a few mistakes.”
“Well, it’s time she fixed them.” Dave pushes me up. “We’re going backstage.”
“Are you coming, Luke?” I ask.
“I’ve got something I need to do here. You’ll be okay, Rosie,” he says. I walk with my eyes on my feet so I don’t trip.
When we get backstage, the first act has started and the crowd’s laughing. Charlie’s sitting between Mrs. Danon and Elvin, looking like she’s realized the clear blue ocean she’s about to go swimming in is swarming with sharks.
Dave catches me by the arm and drags me around the corner before I can speak. “Tell her she can do it,” he says.
“What?”
“Go back and tell her she can do it.”
“You’ve seen what happens to people on that stage, Dave. Antony’s in the middle of the front row. If Charlie goes out there, she’s dead.”
“She’s dead if she doesn’t,” he says. “Tell her she can do it, Rose.”
I move back to where I can see Charlie. She’s reaching for her guitar with nervous hands. I walk toward her as the first act slides past us off the stage. “Hey. You’re probably still mad, but I wanted to say good luck.”
“I’m more nervous than mad now.” She stares through the curtain. “I think Antony has an egg.”
“He took it out of his pants.”
“Like I said, it’s his brain.”
She laughs. “Shit. My hands are shaking. You think I should go out there?”
Dave hovers in the background. I turn my back so it’s me and her. “Do you think you can do this? You’re not lying like you did about Dahlia?” It’s brutal, but brutal’s what it is. Better to face this now than out there. “I don’t care. If you let me, I’ll be your friend either way.”
She looks at me and at Dave. She looks out the curtain and strums her guitar. “Yeah,” she says. “Oh yeah. This I can do.”
“Then I think you should go out there.”
Dave walks over as they announce, “The lovely Charlie Duskin.”
“Don’t look so nervous, you two,” she says, and goes onstage.
We watch her walk into the spotlight she’s been hiding from most of her life. Sure, friendship is all about believing in someone so hard they believe it, too. Sure, it’s about trust. But if anyone hurts her tonight, it’s about ripping them apart with my bare hands and really enjoying it.
“You tell her she could do it?” Dave asks.
“She told me. She’s got a little attitude going on.”
“Hi, everyone. My name’s Charlie Duskin. And this,” she says, smiling, “is a song I wrote for tonight.”
For a second, I think it’s going to be okay. Charlie doesn’t look new out there. She looks like she’s lived forever and this is the test of how much she knows. But then she strikes up the first chord, and her hand slips on the strings.
“Get on with it!” Antony yells. “I’m bored already.”
Her hand slips again.
“Charlie Dorkin thinks she can sing,” he calls. If I could reverse time and take back that stupid name, I’d do it. I’d give up my scholarship. I’d stay in this town forever if only Charlie would sing right now and shut Antony Barellan up for the rest of his dumb life.
She sucks in her breath. That guitar hangs round her neck like a noose. Dave stands next to me with his hands in fists. “You better hope she starts,” he says. “Because if she doesn’t, I’m going out there and you’re backup.”
Dave knows two songs all the way through. “J.Lo?” I ask.
“Beyoncé.”
“Shit.”
“We will be,” he says, and then the smallest sound starts.
It’s so soft at first that it’s hidden under yelling and glasses clinking. It’s like feeling the cool change come through your window on a night when you’re hungry for a summer breeze. It’s singing the color of sunrise. I’ve never heard anything like it before, sad and hopeful at the same time, like the beginning and the end all mixed in together.
“She’s amazing,” I say, half not believing it. They’re still calling out stuff over the top of her. She slowly gets louder. Her voice is sweet and even. She knows what she wants to say, and she’s saying it.
Before she’s finished, the whole place is quiet. “I thought that stuff only happened in the movies.” Dave doesn’t answer. It’s hard to talk with your mouth hanging open. He’s got it bad for her, and I can see why. Charlie makes all of us look like shadows tonight. It’s not just because her song is funny and sad and beautiful. It’s because she’s all of those things, too. That’s kind of hard to resist.
When she’s finished, she takes her guitar off and looks out into the audience. I think everyone’s still in shock that such a big voice came from the shiest person in the room. “Shove that up your arse, Antony Barellan,” she says into the microphone, and the whole place goes wild. Charlie’s a little late for Antony, though. She was too caught up in her song to notice that he went quiet before the end. Luke grabbed him by the collar and dragged him out the back. It’s why I started applauding way too early.