Getting Over Jack Wagner by Elise Juska

Author:Elise Juska
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2003-10-15T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

This statement, as it turned out, was truer than I could have known. The minute I was in the door of the all-band bash/function—at the house of a clarinetist named Judy, whose parents were in the Poconos and liked chintz—I was marked as a nonband member. All across the miles of painfully patterned living room, band members were trading band jokes, humming band songs, swapping photos from their band trip to Niagara Falls. The real “Rock Me Amadeus” was playing on the stereo. In front of the fireplace, a tall, pimply boy was doing his well-honed impression of Mr. Franklin, complete with walkie-talkie.

Some kids were wearing cummerbunds, for kicks.

“Are you sure I’m allowed to be here?” I whispered to Hannah.

“Nothing you can do about it now.” This was true, but didn’t exactly inspire confidence. Attached to Eric’s hand, Hannah was legitimate. I, on the other hand, was a band bash crasher.

“Hey!” shouted a guy by the umbrella stand. He was waving inexplicably in our direction, and wearing jeans, a complicated Escher print T-shirt and a plumed hat. “Yo!” he called. “Boomer!” It took me a minute to realize he was talking to Eric, whose “1812” stint had apparently earned him an official band nickname.

“Hey, it’s The Boom!” another guy shouted, and suddenly people were crowding us from all sides. For a guy who didn’t know any band members, Eric was a popular man. The three of us were handed plastic cups of pee-yellow beer, half of which I gulped down on the spot. I was starting to have second thoughts about this whole scheme, and having visions of Jordan Prince wearing a chin strap.

As Hannah was getting introduced to Boomer’s new friends, I slunk away. I couldn’t bear the awkward moment when “The Boom” tried to explain who I was and what I was doing there. I headed for the kitchen, where four girls were blending bright pink daiquiris. They were also wearing straw hats a la “Sailor’s Hornpipe,” which felt meanly reassuring. If these were the girls I was up against, my chances were looking good with Jordan Prince.

I aimed for the back door, hiding behind my beer. On my way, I scanned the chintzy dining room on my right, the chintzy den on my left. Maybe, I reasoned, Jordan Prince was too cool to be here. Maybe, like me, he’d rather be somewhere (anywhere) else. But when I stepped too confidently onto the patio, there he was, sitting on the edge of the pool.

He was shirtless, of course. He was also deeply tanned, which made his light hair even lighter and his eyebrows practically invisible. Fortunately, he wasn’t wearing any band paraphernalia. Unfortunately, the girl beside him wasn’t, either. She’d opted for an orange-striped bikini as big as a Band-Aid.

Damn.

My heart sank as I watched Bikini operate. For the record, there was no earthly way this girl was in band. First she pulled the splash-her-feet move, just enough to get Jordan Prince wet and make him splash her in return (tramp).

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