Then he starts singing my favorite song.

Suddenly, my knees go wobbly. I grip the edge of the bathtub and sit as his rendition of “Killing Me Softly” plays. God, it’s beautiful, the way his tone crests and falls, making me teary-eyed one second and smiley the next.

He performed it just for me.

Do I respond? What do I say? I’m still pissed at him and embarrassed, but I can’t ignore how good the excitement feels, my heart hammering, my hands clutching my guitar for dear life.

The entire song goes by before I make a decision. Hi.

Seconds later, he texts, How are you?

Fine.

What are you doing?

Listening to music. You?

Just got home from Seventeen mag photo shoot

Exciting

They made me pose shirtless by my Harley. I felt like a piece of meat.

poor baby

And then I found Casper had unrolled a whole roll of toilet paper.

lol. good job, Casper.

Can we talk?

I stare at the blinking cursor on my phone.

Then I stand and go back to rehearsing in front of the mirror.

• • •

Jesse keeps sending texts over the next couple of days. I haven’t responded, because I didn’t know if I want to talk. I still don’t know.

Besides, I have a bigger problem I need to deal with: my audition video sucks ass! I haven’t been able to figure out which song I should sing, nor have I recorded a clip that I can stand behind. And it’s due by October 5. By midnight tonight.

In total crisis mode, I drive my bike a mile to Dave’s house, and when I get there, his mother lets me into the foyer.

“He’s upstairs with Xander, dear.” She must be the most trusting mom in the world, or she hasn’t figured out that Dave is seeing Xander, which makes no sense, because everybody knows Dave is gay.

I hustle up the stairs to his room, moving faster than I ever have in gym class, knock once on Dave’s door, and hurl myself in. Xander and Dave startle apart from kissing on the bed and scramble to sit up.

“Maya, what the hell?” Dave asks, flattening his mussed hair.

“Emergency! I need your opinion. And your MacBook.” I sit down at his desk, open his computer, and plug in my phone. The boys untangle themselves and come lean over my shoulders.

“What’s going on?” Dave asks.

“Tell me which of these videos you like.” We run through the best of the clips I recorded in my bathroom. There’s lots of shrugging and “hmmm-ing,” which does nothing for my self-esteem. I try to keep in my mind that I interrupted their hookup and they’d like to get back to it, but this is my life we’re talking about!

After watching my sixth video, Dave drums his fingers on his desk. “Can’t you use a real live performance? A video of you in the bathroom is just so…”

“Unhygienic?” Xander offers.

“Amateur,” Dave says.

“And unhygienic.”

I roll my eyes.

“Why don’t you send in your talent show video from last year?” Dave asks.

“Because my voice cracked!”

“But before it cracked, your guitar playing was so badass. People at school were talking about it for weeks.”

“What? All I heard was them calling me ‘the Siren.’”

“Only because they were jealous. Seriously, everyone was way impressed with your guitar playing. That’s the video you gotta send in. We’ll cut it before you start singing.”

“But I have to send in a singing sample too,” I whine.

“Can you send in two videos?” Xander asks.

“No,” Dave and I say at the same time.

“I mean, can you splice together sections of your different performances?” Xander asks. “Like, one where you sound good singing?”

I shrug. “It’s not a bad idea. But my audition video can’t be longer than three minutes…and I don’t really have any recorded live performances that are good.”

“You do with The Fringe,” Dave says, leaning over Xander’s shoulder to pull up my former band’s YouTube channel. “We can show you singing backup, and if we have to, we can use one of the unhygienic bathroom clips.”

“But I’m singing metal in our Fringe videos.”

“It’s what we have to work with,” Dave says.

“Here, scooch over,” Xander says, squishing into the desk chair with me. Over the next hour, the boys help me splice together my video. And by the end, I’m pretty happy with the result. With my talent show “Bohemian Rhapsody” performance making up most of the video, it screams eighties…with a small amount of metal. But it’s not terrible.