or be drowned in blissful confusion, part 2

[orbedrowned]

< part one

Master Post


[most recent update begins here.]

Kris spent Saturday practicing viola forever, talking idly to his dad about soundproofing their guest bedroom with that foam eggcrate stuff (something they often talked about when Kris was in the middle of a difficult orchestra piece), and going to Charles's house to play Really Lazy Football (which was mostly just throwing spiral passes to each other, but had a couple extra rules and sometimes involved croquet mallets, if they were already out on the lawn) before it got dark. He also spent the day vaguely thinking of making a mixtape of his own. The tapes he'd made in the past had mostly been random stuff taped off the radio, featuring annoying DJ banter or with the beginning of the song cut off because it took time to scramble for the record button on the stereo. He liked Adam's notes, and the process they represented, and the idea of making notes of his own, of thinking about what song should go where and maybe having a theme, was growing on him. He opened a notebook with good intentions after dinner, and sat down next to his stack of CDs, but he couldn't decide on a theme, or even if there should be a theme, so he did some of his homework and listened to Revolver instead.

On Sunday, Katy came home from church with the Allens, accepted Kris's mom's offer of an apron to wear over her church clothes, pulled a recipe card and a jar of peanut butter out of her purse, and commandeered their kitchen.

Kris raised his eyebrows as high as they'd go at her jar of peanut butter until she noticed he was doing it. "What?" she said. "I wasn't going to come over here and use up all your family's peanut butter on these cookies! That would be totally rude."

"What else do you have in there?" Kris said, peering into her purse. "Please say bread and strawberry jelly."

"Where do you keep the flour?" Katy said, ignoring him completely.

Kris's mom dropped in occasionally to help find the blades for the hand mixer or remind them that baking powder and baking soda were different things. Kris figured there was some kind of special Mom Codebook that let moms know how they were supposed to supervise teenage baking. He wondered if there was a table of contents, and whether this information was under "teenagers" or "baking." Baking from scratch was easier than he'd anticipated, and soon they had two trays of cookies in the oven and a giant stack of dirty dishes that Kris decided he would ignore for the time being. Katy dusted her hands off on her apron, all perfectly domestic-businesslike, and shivered as a draft blew across the room.

"That always happens when someone opens the front door," Kris said, stepping up behind Katy and wrapping his arms around her, resting his chin on her shoulder. "My mom hates it. Wanna go stand over by the oven?"

"Okay," she said, and without disentangling, they did a backward shuffle-walk until Kris bumped into the handle of the oven door. He spun them around so Katy was closer to the warmth radiating from the stove.

"You got different shampoo," Kris said, because Katy's hair was tickling against his nose, smelling like some kind of candy or fruit he couldn't quite---

"It's supposed to be pomegranate," Katy said.

"I like it." His voice was muffled in her hair, and he ran his hands over her upper arms, a little too softly to be the brisk, warming-up gesture he'd originally intended. The fingertips of his right hand grazed the outside curve of her breast, mostly by accident, and she pressed back against him a little harder, her shoulderblades pressing sharply into his chest, so he did it again, more firmly this time, his fingers curled delicately in an arch that made him think of seashells, of cartoon mermaids wearing clamshell bras, of Katy swimming in someone's pool that summer, her hair almost colourless and plastered flat to her head.

And she inhaled like she was surfacing, but quietly, not like she'd been holding her breath for that long, and whispered "Your parents are right in the next room," and slipped out of his arms, sliding across the room back to where her purse was sitting on the counter next to the toaster oven. She pulled a spool of red curling ribbon out of her bag like someone performing a magic trick. "I brought ribbon," she said, a little too loudly. She had a bright, excited look in her eyes, like someone who'd gotten away with something, and Kris wanted to echo it back to her, but he still felt sort of...underwater, interrupted. "So we can package the cookies when they're ready."

"I can never get the curling thing to work," Kris said.

"You just hold it against the blade of the scissors---"

"No, I know how it's supposed to work," he said. "But it just...doesn't work for me."

"I'll show you," Katy said, and he let her open every drawer in the kitchen looking for a pair of scissors before he went and got some for her from the table in the living room with the phone on it.

____________

The next morning, Kris ended up trying to juggle the a paper shopping bag full of cookies, his viola case, and a duffel bag full of his just-washed gym clothes that he was bringing back to school.

"I'll hold your viola for you if you give me a cookie," Daniel said, after just standing there and watching Kris try not to drop anything for a while as they waited for the bus.

"I can't give you a cookie," Kris said. "They're all in little bags for the bake sale."

"So open one," Daniel said, taking Kris's viola case from him.

"Fine," Kris mumbled, and grabbed a bag of cookies. He felt a little bad about pulling off the cute little twist of curling ribbon, and he stuck it in the pocket of his jacket. He handed Daniel a cookie, twisted the top of the bag shut, and put that in his pocket, too.

They sat together on the bus again, not saying much. Kris wondered if this was something they were doing, now, or if it was just that he'd been carrying baked goods around with him recently. He didn't ask, and when they got to school, Daniel handed him his viola case back and he was juggling again until he got to the bake sale table in the lobby. Adam was writing out labels for everything on folded pieces of paper, but he looked up when Kris put the shopping bag of cookies down on the table.

"These actually are from scratch, this time," Kris said as Adam peered into the bag. "Katy's aunt's recipe or something."

"See, now you're making me feel like I cheated," Adam said. "I just made muffins from a box. These look really good. They smell really good." He started arranging the individual bags of cookies on the table.

"You can have one," Kris said, putting his viola case on the floor so he could reach into his pocket for the opened cookies. "Here." He held one out to Adam, who was writing a little tag (it read peanut butter cookies! not from a mix!), and leaned forward without looking up to absently take a bite out of the cookie. While Kris was still holding it.

"These are amazing," Adam said, and Kris just stared down at the partial-cookie in his hand, which Adam had bitten into a sort of crescent moon shape and Kris thought vaguely that's what shape Adam's mouth is so he looked at Adam's mouth, instead, just for a second, and he knew that Adam had freckles, lots of them, but he even had a couple of them on his bottom lip, which Kris hadn't even known was somewhere you could get freckles and he made himself look up at Adam's eyes, like a normal person.

"Did you want the rest of this?" His voice sounded a little weird, like he was hearing it from far away.

"Yeah, thanks. Sorry," Adam said, shaking his head a little and taking the crescent moon cookie from Kris, with his hands this time.

"Don't tell Katy. Uh, that I opened some of the cookies. I had to bribe my brother to hold my viola case on the bus."

"My lips are sealed."

"Thanks," Kris said. "I...do you need any help? Because I have to go to my locker, but I can come back..."

"I think I'm good." Adam surveyed the bake sale table like he was overseeing the construction of a cathedral. "But you should come back anyway. If you have time. Alicia said she made a coffee cake with raspberry filling."

"Aren't people going to need forks and plates to eat that?" There had actually been a debate at a GSA meeting about whether it was a good idea to have stuff that required utensils at a bake sale. The general consensus had been that it wasn't. This issue ranked right up there with the cinnamon rolls and the giant paper snowflakes on the list of stuff Kris couldn't believe anyone would actually bother arguing about.

"That's what I said! But it sounds really good, so I sort of don't care."

"Good point," Kris said, and picked up his viola case. "I'll be right back." He'd forgotten to tell Adam about "Satellite of Love," he realized as soon as he was a little way down the hall. He'd started figuring out how to play it on his guitar on Friday afternoon, and working on it now and then had been a fun break from his stupid orchestra music all weekend. But when he got to the music wing he got cornered into helping decide on a time for the next viola section rehearsal, which took forever, and then he had to go to his non-band locker to put away his jacket and get his books and there was no time to go back to the lobby before homeroom started. He felt like he was standing Adam (and the coffee cake) up, somehow.

It bothered him all through English class, until he was on his way to math and Megan ran up to him and grabbed his backpack strap to get his attention. "Adam said you play guitar," she said.

"Yeah, I do," Kris said, cautiously.

"Would you play guitar for me at an open mic? It's on Friday, and I know it's really short notice, but the girl who usually plays guitar for me has bronchitis. I was going to do 'Big Yellow Taxi.'"

"I don't think I know that song," Kris said.

"It's about paving paradise and putting up a parking lot," Megan told him, rummaging through her bag.

"Oh. Didn't Counting Crows---"

"Yes," Megan said, apparently disgusted. "And it needs to be reclaimed. I have the guitar tabs, and the CD, and I might be able to get you the sheet music, if you wanted." She shoved a CD case and some folded pieces of computer paper at him. "Just look at it, and let me know."

Kris glanced over the tabs, which looked manageable. "Can I tell you tomorrow? I have to see if I can actually play it first."

"Sure. Or you can call me," Megan said, grabbing back the printed-out guitar tabs and scribbling her number on them. "I will love you forever if you say yes."

"Okay," Kris said. He was overwhelmed, but also intrigued. He loved playing guitar, like loved it, but the thought of playing in front of a room full of strangers scared him a little. He played viola in front of people all the time, but guitar was another thing entirely. Even just the idea of of it felt different, and he couldn't tell yet if it was good-different or bad-different. Kris always sucked at paying attention in math, but today he was a totally lost cause. He tucked the guitar tabs for "Big Yellow Taxi" into his notebook and looked at them, shaping chord fingerings on his desk with his left hand.

He stopped by the bake sale on his way to orchestra, planning to ask Adam or Megan more about this open mic, but Clare and Zoe were the only ones there. He said hi anyway, and asked them to set aside a piece of raspberry-filled cake (which Alicia had apparently cut and wrapped individually in slices at home. Kris had been imagining a whole cake on a plate, and he was a tiny bit disappointed) for him.

The slice of cake, which looked both delicious and slightly gory, was waiting behind the cashbox when he and Katy sat down during their lunch period.

"Is this for you?" Katy said. Zoe-or-Clare had labeled the cake RESERVED FOR CHRIS!!! in pink marker.

"Yeah, I asked them to save us a piece."

"Are we going to need forks?"

Kris laughed. "That's what---never mind. I'll go get forks."

He was on the verge of telling Katy about the open mic thing several times while they sat at the bake sale table eating lunch and selling cookies and doing vocabulary homework, but he kept stopping himself. He knew she'd be thrilled that Megan had asked him, but he wasn't sure if he wanted her to be thrilled just yet, when he hadn't decided if he actually wanted to do it or not. He mulled it over through history and his second bake sale shift, when he wasn't taking notes or playing Slapjack with Becky, who had a deck of cards in her bag and thought it was a shame to let the mostly-empty baked goods table go to waste. Kris hardly ever played cards, and it was weirdly engrossing. He was actually a little startled when the warning bell rang.

"Next time I'll teach you how to play Egyptian Ratscew," Becky said. "It's more complicated, but it's awesome."

"...You're making name that up. Egyptian Ratscrew?"

"Scout's honor." Becky held up her hand, Boy Scout salute style.

"I was hoping Adam would stop by," Kris said, gathering up and shuffling his pile of cards before handing them back to Becky. "I wanted to talk to him about something."

"Go to the music wing," she said. "You can meet him when he's leaving his theory class."

"I think I will, actually," Kris said, grabbing his backpack. "Thanks."

He left Becky dealing herself a hand of solitaire and walked through the pleasantly empty halls to stand outside the choir room, where he was pretty sure the music theory classes met. He leaned up against the cool concrete blocks of the wall and tried not to feel like this was a stalker-type thing to do, hanging around outside Adam's classroom waiting for him. The bell rang, and people started wandering out of the various rehearsal rooms and into the hall. Kris turned to wave to some of the orchestra's trombone section, and then Adam was standing in front of him, grinning sunnily.

"Hey," he said, and Kris felt warm and not stalkery at all. "Did Megan talk to you?"

"Yeah," Kris said, "That's actually why I came to find you."

"Is it okay that I told her to ask you about the open mic?" Adam looked anxious. "I probably should have talked to you first, but---"

"No, it's not that. It's fine. It's cool. I just...I don't actually play guitar in front of people that much. So I don't know if I'm really good enough to---"

"Don't worry about that," Adam said. "It's super laid-back. Honestly, people are just there to listen to their friends and then talk and drink coffee the rest of the time, so no one will be like, judging you. And I'm sure you're fantastic."

Kris pushed away his impulse to point out that Adam had no way of knowing that, having never heard him play. It was a nice thing of Adam to say, in any case. "Wait, so is this at that coffee place?"

Adam nodded. "Yeah, Pony Espresso. Which is a completely ridiculous name, and they have this half-assed western decor...you should totally come, it's fun. And they make really good chai tea."

"I have to see if I can play the song first," Kris said. He decided not to ask what a chai tea was. "I wish I had my guitar."

"There has to be a guitar around here somewhere. Someone from the jazz band probably has one..." Adam looked around, apparently searching for someone he could ask.

"I have to go to class, though," Kris said. He'd never hated his business class more, and he usually hated it pretty fervently.

"So do I, actually," Adam said. He sounded slightly surprised, like he'd forgotten all about it. "And Ms. Ostrander will notice if I cut, too. Damn."

"You have English?" Kris said, as they started walking down the hall together.

"'Creative writing,'" Adam said, making air quotes. "What about you?"

"Intro to Business."

Adam crinkled his nose. "Sorry about that."

"Me, too," Kris said, "I'd rather be playing guitar."

"Definitely. Well, if I could play guitar, anyway. Or I'd rather be listening to you play guitar, or...something."

"Or something," Kris echoed. They'd reached the end of the music wing. "I'm going this way," Kris said, gesturing to his right. The English classrooms were to the left, so he and Adam said their see-you-laters went their separate ways.

Kris fidgeted and thought about his guitar, and maybe teaching Adam to play E minor because it was really easy, and what a coffee place with western decor would look like all through a boring "basics of PowerPoint" class and his bus ride home. He practically dove for his CD player as soon as he got into his house. The CD Megan had given him was a compilation from a music festival in 1970, and he had to skip almost all the way to the end (which pained him a little, there were so many songs he was missing) to find "Big Yellow Taxi." He listened once, just to hear it, without even taking his guitar out of its case. The singer hit some piercing high notes that he sort of hoped Megan wasn't going to sing, because he thought they might get annoying after a while, but in general, he liked it. He was tapping his foot along without realizing it, and the strumming pattern sounded like fun. Once he started playing it, it was fun. He tuned his guitar and practiced the chords, and then played along with the song---first with both headphones on, and then with only one over his ear, so he could hear his own playing better---for almost two hours without realizing it. He stopped playing reluctantly, feeling sort of dizzy at having interrupted his own intense focus. It had been a while since he'd expended this kind of time and energy all at once on a single song, and he'd forgotten how all-consuming it could get. It made him exhausted and exhilarated at the same time, and he wasn't sure whether he wanted to lie down and listen to a slow song or go outside and run around the block. He opted for a couple slow songs, followed by some staring blankly at his math homework, followed by dinner.

After dinner, he went straight back to his guitar and the CD. He'd been playing for fifteen minutes, tops, when Daniel opened his door without knocking.

"Are you actually getting worse at guitar, and that's the only song you know now?"

"Yes," Kris replied, putting the CD on pause. "And I'm going to play it nonstop until I die, so get used to it."

"I'm trying to do my Spanish homework." The rule in their house was that no one (meaning Daniel) was allowed to complain about Kris practicing viola because it was for school. The guitar was just Kris's hobby, so Daniel was theoretically free to be as much of a jerk about it as he wanted, especially if he was going to claim it was interfering with his school-related stuff.

"Fine, I'll go out to the garage," Kris said, putting his guitar down on the bed and pulling on a hoodie from his laundry pile. The garage was freezing.

"Thank you," Daniel said, and went back to his room. Kris slung his guitar over his shoulder and picked up his CD player and the guitar tabs. He grabbed the portable phone on his way through the living room. He wanted to run through the song a few more times first, but in his head he was already calling Megan and telling her that yes, he'd play guitar for her on Friday.

____________

Theoretically, a guitar case was supposed to lend the person carrying it a kind of mystique, an aura of fascinating and untouchable coolness. In reality, it just prompted a lot of stupid questions. Kris had agreed to meet Megan in the music wing after school on Tuesday so they could practice the song together, which meant he had to bring his guitar to school. Which meant trying to cram his viola into his backpack (it didn't really fit, so he had to leave his backpack partially unzipped) and carrying his guitar case on the bus and through the halls, which would have been annoying enough, but everyone Kris had ever met suddenly wanted to ask him things like "is that your guitar?" or "oh, you play guitar?" He felt bad about snapping "No, I'm just carrying it around so people will ask me about it," at Marissa the second chair oboe player, but only a little bad.

"Why do you have your guitar?" Katy asked him when he met her at her locker, and the fact that this was a relevant question was a complete relief.

"Megan needed someone to play for her at an open mic on Friday, so we're going to practice after school."

"Really?" Katy gave him a one-armed hug with the arm that wasn't holding her history textbook. "That's amazing! It's so cool that she asked you."

"Yeah," Kris said, and he couldn't help smiling hugely. In some way, this whole thing only seemed real now that he was telling her. "Do you want to go to an open mic on Friday? It's at that Pony Espresso place. Adam says they make good...some kind of tea."

"What time is it?"

"I think it starts at seven."

"I'm supposed to babysit on Friday night," Katy said. "Starting at six. This sucks, I want to see you play guitar."

"You see me play guitar all the time," Kris said.

"This is different," she said, which was true, but he didn't want to agree out loud and make her feel worse about it. "Are you going to carry that all day?" she said, gesturing at his guitar case.

Kris sighed. "I really don't want to, but it won't fit in my locker."

"Why don't you ask Mr. Shapiro if you can leave it in his office or something? Or maybe there's a spare cello locker."

"You are a genius," Kris said, and kissed her on the cheek. "I'm going to see if I can find him before homeroom."

Mr. Shapiro, the orchestra director, sent him over to Mrs. Durand, who directed the jazz choir and jazz band, and she let him leave his guitar with the jazz band instruments. (Adam was right about the jazz band's stash of guitars, they had three or four different ones that Kris was hoping would be left unattended after school so he could try them out.) Knowing his guitar was in the building, even locked in a storage closet in the music wing, was amazingly distracting. Kris found himself fidgeting all day, tapping his pen on his notebook or kicking the heel of his sneaker against the legs of his chair, hearing the chords of "Big Yellow Taxi" over and over in his head, so vividly that it almost felt like a hallucination. He thought about asking Katy if she wanted to eat lunch in the music wing, but he didn't want to bother Mrs. Durand about opening the closet again, so he let himself get distracted by the sweet, low-key spectacle of Katy getting her hair french braided by some girl from the lacrosse team.

By the end of the day, the sight of his guitar case leaned up against the wall of the jazz band closet was such a relief Kris thought it should probably be levitating, bathed in an unreal golden glow and soundtracked by a celestial choir like a cartoon Holy Grail. Its weight dangling from his hand was welcome for once while he stood around in the hall waiting for Megan. Two more people asked him if he played guitar, but he felt much less annoyed about it than he had this morning. Megan rushed over to him, the flapping tails of her fabric headband giving the impression that she was flying.

"Hi," she said, a little breathless. "I thought we could go to the choir room, no one's using it today."

"Sure," Kris said. "I was thinking we should do it along with the CD a couple times, just to make sure the tempo is right and everything. They have a CD player in there, right?"

"Yeah," Megan said. "And thank you for doing this. You rock."

"Don't thank me yet."

Megan punched him on the arm, lightly. "Shut up, this is going to be awesome."

And it actually was. They started with a few bumpy run-throughs during which both of them stopped a lot and apologized to each other, both of them obviously feeling self-conscious, and people who were in the music wing for whatever reason kept leaning into the choir room to see what was going on, saying they were sorry for interrupting, and ducking out again.

"Maybe we should sit with our backs to the door," Megan said. "That way we won't see them so they won't interrupt us."

They spun their chairs around and started again, and at some point, Kris just...got comfortable with being there. He forgot that he was at school with people wandering by in the hallway, that the longest conversation he'd had with Megan before this afternoon had been not very long and about cupcakes, that he was sort of in trouble for not doing part of his math homework. Everything that wasn't the two of them and this song faded into background noise, and the process of figuring out what worked, what didn't work, how to fix it, and listening to it come together better the next time lit up the inside of his head like a string of Christmas lights. He wanted to sing along, he could feel the melody of the song coiled up in his throat, waiting. He liked Megan's voice, it was big somehow, and quirky and bright and fun, and she swayed and smiled while she sang, and Kris swayed and smiled back, and he had a blindingly bright moment of wishing that Katy was a singer, because he couldn't even imagine what it would be like to share this with someone he was already more familiar with, more connected to. He thought of Adam, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel and saying we should have a band.

"I don't know if I should sing that line about DDT," Megan said, collapsing into the chair next to Kris. "It's sort of...irrelevant. Didn't they stop using DDT in the 60s or something?"

"But it rhymes with 'bees' and 'please,'" Kris said, "So unless you want to rewrite the whole verse..."

"Oh my god, I really don't," she said, slouching down further in her chair. "I'm sorry for making you play the same song for like, ever, by the way. I hope you're not bored."

"How do you think I learned how to play guitar?" Kris said, strumming an E quietly. His fingertips hurt, and for a second he was there again, thirteen and miserable and trying to play Green Day's "Good Riddance" until he fell asleep holding the guitar, so he let his hands fall into his lap. "It doesn't bother me. It's...I've never really accompanied anyone before. It makes it different. Good-different," he added as an afterthought.

Whatever Megan was about to say next was lost in a wall of piano-noise. Once he got over the initial startling-ness, Kris recognized it as part of "Great Balls of Fire."

"You are so obnoxious," Megan said, addressing this to whoever was playing. She got up and walked to the front of the piano. Kris followed her, swinging his guitar around so it was resting against his back.

"You love it," said the guy sitting at the piano, who had curly hair in a semi-mohawk.

"There are at least two other pianos in this school," she said, leaning against the lower half of the keyboard and creating a dissonant smash of notes.

"But this one is my favourite," the guy said, punctuating it by playing a fluttery trill in the piano's upper register.

"Kris, this is Matt," Megan said, sitting down on the edge of the piano bench. "He'll be there on Friday, too. Matt, this is Kris, he's playing---"

"Harpsichord, right?" Matt interrupted. "I can tell because he's holding a guitar."

Megan shoulder-checked him, hard enough that he slid a few inches to the right on the bench. "Go away," she said. "I can't sing over your Jerry Lee Lewis greatest hits collection."

"Are you taking the bus?"

"Yeah, why---oh, shit," Megan said, looking up at the clock next to the door. Kris looked up too, and he wasn't really surprised to see that it was already 2:50. The after school buses left around three. "I guess I can't sing anymore right now, period."

Matt stood up and cracked his knuckles. "I'll see you on the bus, I have to go to my locker first," he said, tugging one of the tails of Megan's headband. "I can't wait to hear your harpsichord masterpiece, man," he said to Kris.

"It will blow your mind," Megan said, her eyes wide and dramatic.

"I'm like a harpsichord prodigy," Kris said, trying to look serious about it. "The guitar is just a side thing."

"Very cool," Matt said, and left the room. Kris went to put his guitar back in its case.

"So should we meet here again tomorrow?" he said.

"Definitely," Megan said. "Or---wait, tomorrow is the GSA meeting."

"Right, tomorrow is Wednesday," Kris said, putting on his jacket. "But I have an orchestra thing on Thursday." The orchestra thing was the viola section rehearsal, for which Kris had done zero practicing so far.

"What if we met here, practiced for a while, and if we have enough time we can stop by the meeting and say hi to everyone?"

"That works." Kris shrugged his backpack on, and winced as he felt his books and his viola case shift around against his back. "Can you make sure my viola isn't going to fall out of my bag?"

"Sure," Megan said, throwing her own bag over her shoulder and fiddling with the zippers on Kris's backpack. "There, I think you're good. Sorry to make you carry around two instruments. I didn't even think about that---I'd make Adam give you a ride so you don't have to have all this stuff on the bus, but he already went home."

"It's okay," Kris said as they headed out the door and down the hall. "The after school bus is less crowded anyway. If I really played the harpsichord, then I'd be screwed."

When he got home, he left his guitar in the living room and forced himself to do homework and play viola. Trying to do non-guitar stuff was easier now than it had been all day at school, so he had time after dinner to run through "Big Yellow Taxi" with his dad a couple of times and see if he had any suggestions. His parents both seemed pleased, if also a little bit confused, about his playing for Megan on Friday. Daniel just wanted to know if Megan was the hot girl with the short dreadlocks. (She wasn't, obviously. Kris was pretty sure Daniel was talking about Katy's friend Jess, but he feigned cluelessness.)

____________

Waking up and going to school on a Wednesday when he knew he'd be missing the GSA meeting (or most of it, anyway) was strange and slightly disappointing. Kris hadn't realized how much his Wednesdays hinged on the meetings, how many times he sort of thought yay, it's Wednesday and happily imagined sitting around room 215 at the end of the day, eating Cheez-Its and offering his semi-serious opinion about forks or cinnamon rolls or whether playing the entirety of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon was a good idea at a Wizard of Oz themed dance. And he had the same nagging feeling, every time he thought yay, it's Wednesday and remembered he wasn't going to the meeting, that he'd had on Monday morning when he hadn't been able to stop by the bake sale again, the feeling that he was standing Adam up. However comfortable Kris felt with Adam (and he was comfortable enough with Adam that he kept forgetting they'd only officially met a couple months ago), they weren't friends the way he was friends with Charles, they didn't have any classes together or hang out on weekends, so the GSA meetings were the only time they reliably saw each other. He momentarily considered seeing if he could leave his study hall early and going to meet Adam in the music wing again, but that seemed sort of crazy, especially once he realized that that Megan and Adam were friends like Kris and Charles were friends and Megan must have told him they were practicing again today. So there was really no reason to go find him and be all oh, hey, just stalking you to let you know I won't be there today when there was every chance Adam would just blink at him and say ...yeah, I know.

Kris's guitar, when he went to the jazz band closet to retrieve it at the end of the day, didn't have quite the same Holy Grail quality it had yesterday, but he was still glad to pick it up, meet Megan and settle back in with her and his guitar and the song. It was amazingly good, after another day of sitting around tired and bored and taking notes on things he didn't care about, to do something else, something better, something that meant something to him. The process had lost a tiny bit of yesterday's magic, and they were both ready for a break after twenty minutes or so, so they ran through the catalog of songs to which Kris knew the chords and Megan knew the words. They came up with a bunch of Beatles stuff, so they did "Here Comes the Sun" and some of "Ticket to Ride" and considered trying "Back in the U.S.S.R." (but that needed a piano, and Matt was nowhere to be seen today). Kris sang along this time, because he was absolutely and joyously helpless to resist. ("You didn't tell me you could sing," Megan said. "Next time we're doing a duet." Kris tried to stay noncommittal about that, but it sounded pretty much like the best idea ever, right then.)

They went back to "Big Yellow Taxi" for a bit, and then some of the GSA---Katy, Jess, Marie, and Alicia, who was holding hands with a really tall guy with spiky hair---walked into the choir room around 2:45, when Kris and Megan were sitting around in between run-throughs of the song and talking about what music their parents listened to, for some reason.

"We were going to come find you guys in a little while," Megan said, spinning in a slow circle on the room's sole spinny chair.

"We came to find you instead," Katy said, sitting down next to Kris and offering him an open bag of Goldfish crackers. "We brought snacks."

"And we love you for it," Megan said, leaning over Kris and grabbing a handful of Goldfish.

"We do," Kris said, taking his hand off his guitar strings and winding some of Katy's hair around his fingers before taking some crackers for himself.

"Where's Adam?" Megan said. Kris had been wondering the same thing.

"He was with us..." Katy looked over her shoulder at the door to the choir room. "I guess he's still talking to Rob in the hall."

Kris looked in the direction of the door, and waved to Marie and Jess, who were sitting down at the piano. One of them started playing "Für Elise." Alicia and her tall, spiky friend took this as permission to play with the other instruments, and the two of them curled up in the corner with some bongos that Kris hadn't even noticed before, which prompted Megan to go on an ultimately successful search for one of those sticks with jingle bells on it that the percussion section sometimes used for Christmas medleys and join them in their corner. No one was playing loudly, so the collection of sounds was almost pleasant, if odd. Kris watched all of this with amusement and a mouthful of Goldfish.

"How's the song going?" Katy asked.

"Good," he said. "I think we've pretty much got it down."

"Are you still nervous?"

Kris grabbed more crackers and considered this. "A little," he said. "It's stupid. I've played viola solos a million times and this isn't even like that. No one will be paying attention to me. Megan is a really good singer."

"Someone will be paying attention to you," Katy said. "You're so cute when you play guitar."

"Which is obviously why I do it," Kris said, brushing the crumbs off his fingers and striking what he imagined was a parody of a cute guitar-playing pose. Katy threw a cracker at him.

"I'm trying to find someone else to babysit for the Martins on Friday so I can go," she said. "But no luck so far."

"Are you just planning on going to throw more food at me? Because I think we could get banned from Pony Espresso for that." Kris was trying to see where the thrown Goldfish had landed, and when he looked up, Katy was waving at Adam, who had just walked into the room.

"We should meet in here all the time," he said, taking the empty spinny chair next to Kris and looking around the room. Megan waved her bell-stick at him in greeting.

"It might be hard to actually talk about anything," Kris said. He slid his left hand over the neck of his guitar, wanting to play some chords and add to the noise, but Katy was always telling him it was rude to play guitar while someone was trying to talk to him, so he didn't. He had the idea that Adam wouldn't think it was rude, though. Adam looked happy about random piano music (they'd moved on from "Für Elise") accompanied by jingle bells and bongos, after all. He might take Kris's random chords and run with them, turn them into an impromptu song, and Kris wanted that, all of a sudden, it made complete sense in his head, he knew exactly how it would feel, but just like that the moment was past, things were moving on.

"We could become a musical ensemble instead," Adam mused. "Actually, 'Gay-Straight Alliance' isn't a horrible band name. It's better than Sonic Pork Chop, anyway."

"Sonic what?"

"Sonic Pork Chop. They're these three girls from that Catholic school---"

"Saint Isidore's?"

"Yeah. And they have a keyboard, but not a good one, one of those table-top ones from the 90s, it's like this big," Adam held his hands about a foot and a half apart. "And an upright bass, and one girl just keeps hitting a triangle, and they...chant stuff. We're pretty sure they think they're being ironic, but it's really hard to tell. You might get to see them on Friday, actually." Adam looked really excited about all of this, his eyes were bright and he was sort of waving his hands around, and it sunk in for the first time that he would be at the open mic on Friday, maybe sitting next to Kris just like this, telling stories about everyone who was there to perform, and suddenly Kris was excited about Sonic Pork Chop, too, but something kept him from saying so.

"How was the meeting?" he said instead.

"Pretty good," Adam said, and Katy nodded her agreement. "We were missing a lot of people because there's this big meeting for the winter play today, but that was okay."

"You're not in the winter play?"

"Nah, I'm sticking to stuff where I can sing this year. So's Megan---who, by the way, is like, in love with you right now. Not in a romantic way," Adam said, glancing over at Katy. "Just in a musical way where I think she wants you to follow her around like a wandering minstrel and play guitar all the time."

"I did not say 'wandering minstrel'," Megan said. She and Alicia and Tall Spiky Guy had abandoned their percussion corner and come to join the discussion. "Don't listen to him," she said to Kris. "He's the one who---I mean, I think he's trying to sabotage me."

"Yes," Adam said, "I secretly want to drive you away from the open mic so we can hear more of that sea shanty guy."

"That guy," Megan said, with something like affection. Kris was getting more curious about this open mic every minute.

"...Sea shanty guy?" Katy said. She was obviously curious, too.

"Don't ask," Alicia advised, but it was too late.

"He's great," Megan said. "He sings all these weird songs about working on a ship and sometimes he wears this whole pirate costume..."

Someone knocked on the open door, and Kris turned around to see a couple guys standing in the doorway, dressed for a sports practice.

"Sorry, no one told us it was queer singalong hour," one of them said, and then snickered at his own joke.

"We need to ask someone about moving the choir risers in the auditorium," said the other guy.

"What, you can't figure them out? They have wheels, dumbass. You roll them," Alicia said.

"Mr. Wallace is probably in his office," Adam said, and he sounded sort of sharp, dismissive. It made Kris a little nervous. "You can ask him."

"Thanks," mumbled the second guy, and they left.

"This is clearly the worst singalong ever," Adam said after a moment. "We're not even singing."

"We could be," Marie said, and picked out the melody to the chorus of Ace of Base's "The Sign" on the piano. Adam grinned.

"Why do they need to move the risers?" Alicia asked, and the tone in the room had shifted again, and Kris uncurled his fingers from where they'd been clenched, without his conscious knowledge, around the neck of his guitar.

"They're probably on the track team," Jess said. "When it's raining they use the auditorium."

"They run in the auditorium?"

"No, they practice for pole vault and stuff."

"Oh," Alicia said. "That sounds like a horrible idea. Maybe they'll get injured." She stood up and pulled Tall Spiky Guy---who, to his credit, looked unfazed by all of this---out of his chair. "The bus will be here in a couple minutes."

"Megan, are you coming home with me?" Adam said, standing up and putting his jacket on.

"Yeah, but you have to give Kris a ride, too, because I'm making him carry around his giant guitar case and he shouldn't have to take it on the bus."

"Sure." Adam spun his keyring around on his finger. It had a little black tassel thing attached that wrapped itself around his wrist as he spun it. "Katy, I can take you home, too, if you want?"

"Thanks," Katy said, and grabbed Kris's hand as they left the choir room. They left out the back exit and jogged through the parking lot in the light rain to Adam's car. Kris was trying not to be disappointed that Megan and Katy were there, because when Megan had mentioned Adam driving him home yesterday, he'd pictured it like it had been the first time, just the two of them and Adam's music, and this was going to be different.

"Sorry about the chaos," Adam said, unlocking the passenger doors of his car. "If there's stuff in your way, just toss it behind the seats."

Megan slid the front seat forward so Kris and Katy could climb into the back, and then she handed Kris his guitar case. There were some empty takeout coffee cups and water bottles on the floor, and some jackets on the seats, as well as the box of tapes. Kris draped the jackets over Katy's legs, set his guitar case on the floor, and balanced the box of tapes in his lap, sifting through them again.

"Okay," Adam said, looking over his shoulder at Katy. "I know where Kris lives, but you're going to have to give me directions."

"You can just drop me off at Kris's house," Katy said.

"He can?" Kris said.

"Sure," she said. "We can study for our history test, and my mom can pick me up when she gets home from work."

"Okay," Kris said. "If you want."

"Okay," Adam said, and turned the keys in the ignition. Electronic music blared out of the speakers, but Adam shut it off before Kris could identify the song.

"So I met Spencer," Megan said.

"Kind of cute, I thought," Adam said, making the turn out of the school parking lot.

"...Kind of. And really quiet," said Megan. "Spencer is Alicia's new boy...thing," she said, twisting around in her seat to to talk to Kris and Katy.

"In a movie, they would have met at a punk concert," Adam explained. Kris looked up, and their eyes met for a second in the rearview mirror. "But actually they met at that gas station by the traffic circle that never cards anyone."

"Spencer was there to buy wine coolers," Megan said, her voice all fake-syrupy and her hands clasped over her heart. "And they both wanted the last envelope of strawberry Pop-Rocks."

"It's a love story for the ages," Adam said, with feeling.

"Who got the last thing of Pop-Rocks, though?" Kris asked. Adam met his eyes in the mirror again, and Kris could tell he was smiling even though he couldn't see Adam's mouth.

"He let Alicia have it. Which was sweet."

"He's such a gentleman," Megan cooed, and Adam laughed.

"We shouldn't be mean," he said. "They seem happy. And he's in a band, so that's cool. I think he's even the singer."

"Speaking of," Megan said, untwisting to face Adam. "Did you know Kris can sing?"

"He can?" Adam said. Kris studiously avoided looking up at the rearview mirror this time.

"He totally can," Katy said. She was beaming. "Is he singing with you on Friday?"

"I'm right here," Kris said.

"No," Megan said. "But only because I didn't know he could sing until today and there's no time to rearrange the song. But next time..."

"Hey," Kris said. "Let's talk about something else. How about the weather?"

"I hate the rain," Adam said, "That's why the volume was up so high on the stereo, the rain was seriously so loud this morning I could barely hear."

"Plus it messes up your hair," Megan said, reaching over to further mess up Adam's hair. He swatted her hands away.

"That, too," he said, and they all actually managed to talk about the weather the rest of the way to Kris's house.

____________

Taking his guitar to school almost seemed like just another part of the routine by Friday morning when Kris dragged it onto the bus with him for the last time. He and Megan were old friends with the song by now, so when they met after school they mostly worked on it in specific pieces as Megan added vocal flourishes and Kris messed around with the guitar part so it was less basic than what he'd started with. They were using one of the rehearsal rooms this time, and everything sounded different in a smaller space. It made Kris a little worried about how they'd sound in Pony Espresso, which would be bigger than the choir room, even, and probably full of sound-absorbing armchairs or something. Megan told him that's what microphones were for, and that Pony Espresso didn't have any armchairs.

"Don't worry," she said, patting Kris's shoulder. "The acoustics are so not your problem. Their sound setup is pretty good, all you have to do is sit down and play."

"I can handle that," he said.

"You can," Megan said. "Actually, they even have a house guitar you could play if you don't want to bring yours, but I figured you'd want your own..."

"Yeah, I do. I'm used to this one," Kris said, and glanced at his watch. They had a few minutes. "Should we do it one more time, all the way through?" There were some sections Kris knew he needed to work on when he got home, and he was still feeling wobbly about playing it in an armchair-free coffee house instead of ensconced safely in the music wing somewhere with Megan, but he thought they sounded pretty good, all things considered. "I don't have to dress up for this, do I?" he said as they walked to the buses.

"Nooo, not at all," Megan said. "Wait, Adam didn't tell you that did he?"

"No, I just---"

"Because sometimes he wears weird stuff, but that's just because he feels like it. You can just wear whatever."

"Okay, cool," Kris said, with every intention of just wearing the clothes he already had on.

He got sort of jittery after dinner though, waiting for Megan to come pick him up, so he pawed through his closet to kill some time. (Some small, easily drowned out part of his brain suggested that if he wanted to kill time he could practice his viola, which he'd been ignoring all week.) He decided on a dark green henley shirt that Katy always said looked nice on him, and was just tying his shoes and wondering what kind of "weird stuff" Adam wore to open mics when the doorbell rang. He grabbed his jacket his guitar case and got to the door in time to see his mom meeting Megan, who was standing on his front step with her hair still half in curlers.

"Hi, Kris's mom," she said brightly.

"This is Megan," he said, handing his mom his guitar case so he could put on his jacket.

"I figured," his mom said, "Hi, Megan." She handed Kris back his guitar and kissed him on the cheek. "Have fun, honey. Call if you won't be home by 11."

"We shouldn't be that late," Megan said, pulling one of the remaining curlers out of her hair.

"Bye, mom," Kris said, and followed Megan out to the driveway. Kris had assumed that the "we" in Megan's "we'll pick you up" was Adam, but it turned out to be Anoop, who Kris had heard about (Megan usually referred to him as "sort of her boyfriend"), but hadn't met yet. Anoop was playing Lauryn Hill on his car stereo, so Kris liked him immediately.

"I told Adam to sign us up for an early spot---not like, first, but early," Megan said, talking to Kris over her shoulder as she continued removing the curlers from her hair and dropping them into her lap.

"That way we can...well, not get it over with, but..." Kris said, drumming his fingers on his guitar case.

"Yeah, exactly," Megan said. "Then we can relax and watch everyone else."

"Are you singing, too?" Kris asked Anoop.

"He's too cool for open mics," Megan said.

"I don't think I'm 'too cool'," Anoop said, taking his right hand off the steering wheel to make air quotes.

"...And yet not too cool to have a huge collection of college a capella group music," Megan finished.

"College a capella groups are awesome," Anoop said. He looked at Kris in the rearview mirror. "They do all the instrumental parts with voices, and it's all these layers of sound and harmonies..."

"Nerd," Megan sang out, and flipped down the sun visor to fluff her newly curler-free hair in the mirror. "Long story short, Anoop has a gorgeous voice, but no, he isn't going to sing. Because he hates me, and wants me to be sad."

"Do you want the light on so you can see?" Anoop said.

"Yes, please," Megan said, sounding prim. Anoop reached up and turned the car's dome light on.

"Just because you brought it up..." he said, and switched the CD in the stereo. Megan, who was putting sparkly barrettes in her hair, groaned as the music started up.

"This song," she muttered, but didn't make a move to change the track. The lead vocal began, and Kris recognized it as the Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris," which Kris had gotten pretty sick of when it was super-popular a couple years ago, but the all-vocal arrangement made it seem new, brought back the soaring power the song had had before he'd heard it so many times it became nothing but whiny white noise. The voices swirled around each other almost dizzyingly, the volume and intensity swelled in all the right places, and the lyrics felt like words that meant something real again. For the first time, he was sad he was just playing guitar tonight.

"Okay, this is awesome," he said, during the bridge.

"Isn't it?" Anoop said. "This is Off the Beat, they're from UPenn." They spent the rest of the car ride skipping around to Anoop's favourite tracks on the CD and talking about how many people it took to get this kind of sound (not as many as Kris assumed) and whether they could organize a group like this at the high school (unlikely).

"There, you made an a capella convert, are you happy?" Megan said once they were standing in the parking lot of Pony Espresso.

"Yes," Anoop said, his hands hovering around her hair, which formed a sort of blonde halo-disc around her head like she was a saint in a stained glass window. "I know I was skeptical about the hair, but I like it."

"Good," she said. "My entire bag is full of curlers, but that makes it worth it."

"Aww," Anoop said, sounding sarcastic and pleased at the same time. He leaned forward to kiss the tip of her nose, and Kris felt a little lost for a moment, being here without Katy as they walked into the coffee shop. Kris guessed that what Adam meant by "half-assed western decor" was that aside from some weird Old West-ish stuff sporadically hung on the walls, Pony Espresso looked more or less like Kris's mental picture of a coffee shop. The lighting was dim, the walls were painted a deep red, and there were several large chalkboards with lists of various cappuccinos and lattes, whatever the difference between those two things was. Kris was never sure.

"Adam got us a booth!" Megan said, shaking Anoop's shoulder. Kris looked in the direction Megan was looking and waved to Adam, who was sitting at one of several small booths that were set partially into the wall near the windows. Megan wasn't the only one who had opted for a new hairstyle for the open mic; Adam was wearing his hair slicked back off his face, which made him look different, sort of sharper, older. "You can put your guitar over there." Megan gestured at a corner where there were some mics and chairs set up, as well as an upright piano against one wall. "What do you want to drink?"

"Hot chocolate, I guess," Kris said.

He wove through Pony Espresso's maze of tables, trying not to smack anyone in the head with his guitar case, left it in the corner with several other guitar cases and a small, square instrument case he couldn't identify, hung his jacket on the coat rack and went to go sit down. The booth Adam was sitting at had a smallish round table in the middle of a horseshoe shaped bench seat, rather than two separate benches across from each other. There was a metal cutout of a winged buffalo hanging on the wall above the table. Kris slid around the semi-circle of vinyl upholstery until he was sitting next to Adam.

"Megan is excited that you got this booth," he said.

"We're always trying to snag one of these," Adam said. "It's a whole thing. They always fill up before the regular tables."

Kris surveyed Adam's outfit, which didn't look particularly weird to him---he was wearing a black dress shirt and a shiny silver tie, and more makeup than he usually wore to school. His hair was the coolest part though, Kris thought. It was styled tall enough that Adam was probably about 6'3", and it looked sleek and ultra-black and made Kris want to pet Adam like a cat, one smooth stroke from his forehead around to the nape of his neck. Since that wasn't an option, he settled for saying "I like your hair."

"Thank you," Adam said, and as he moved his head the light caught on some silver glitter on the inner corners of his eyes. "Here, have some muffin." He nudged a giant muffin on a plate so it was sitting between them on the table.

"It's green," Kris said, eying the muffin suspiciously.

"It's pistachio."

Kris nodded. "Do you want to be in an a capella group?"

"Sure," Adam said, like this was a completely normal question he got asked all the time. "Although maybe we should aim for barbershop quartet, we'd already be most of the way there."

"I don't want to have a mustache, though," Kris said, and Adam looked confused for a second, then laughed.

"I don't think they're required for barbershop quartets," he said. "Although the button-down shirts with those armband things might be."

"I could deal with those."

Adam looked at Kris over his tall glass mug of tea. "Was Anoop playing you a capella stuff in the car?"

"Yeah," Kris said, "It sounds so cool. It made me want to sing something, you know?"

"You could," Adam said. "You have your guitar, and there's probably still spots left, the sign-up sheet is over---"

"I'm not serious! I mean, I haven't practiced anything, I really can't..."

"Just a suggestion," Adam said, "But everyone loves Beatles songs, I'm just saying..." Kris realized Megan must have told Adam about their Beatles-song-break the other day, and he had a slightly uneasy but mostly curious feeling at the thought of the two of them having a conversation about him. He was thinking about playing dumb, asking Adam how he knew that Kris had a repertoire of Beatles songs, but Megan and Anoop arrived, carrying drinks and a pastry on a plate.

"One hot chocolate," Megan said, setting down a mug that was topped with a huge cloud of whipped cream. "And we got this pastry...thing."

"It's a bear claw," Anoop said.

"How much do I owe you?" Kris asked, leaning over so he could reach into his back pocket for his wallet.

"You don't," Megan said, pushing his hot chocolate toward him on the table and taking her own drink from Anoop. "Consider this your reward for carrying your guitar on the bus all week."

"Thanks," Kris said, and tried to take a sip of hot chocolate around all the whipped cream.

"You did the fro thing with your hair!" Adam said.

"I finished it like, five seconds ago," Megan said. "Look." She held up her open bag, which really was mostly full of curlers, although Kris could see her wallet floating around in there, too.

She handed her bag to Anoop, who put it on the seat next to him, then looked up at Adam. "Is Matt here yet?"

"Yeah, but he found some unattended girls from Saint Isidore's," Adam said, gesturing to his right. Matt was wearing a dark grey fedora and sitting at a non-booth with some girls in Catholic school uniforms.

"Wait, are they Sonic Pork Chop?" Kris asked.

"Oh my god," Anoop said. "If Sonic Pork Chop are here tonight, I swear I'm going to pelt them with silverware." He brandished a spoon for emphasis.

"They'd probably consider that good feedback," Adam said.

"Good point," Anoop said, using the spoon to stir his drink, viciously. "Maybe I'll tell them their music is just another cog in some kind of corporate machinery."

"That's the sprit," Adam said, raising his glass.

"Anoop hates Sonic Pork Chop," Megan said, her tone indicating that she thought this was adorable. "They're like his nemesis. I'm going to make him a mask and a cape so he can like, sit on rooftops in the moonlight and glare at them."

"But no," Adam said. "Those girls aren't Sonic Pork Chop. And you guys are playing...fourth, I think? You're right after sea shanty guy, and Allison is before him."

"Hey, is the mic working?" asked an amplified voice (clearly, the mic was working), and they all looked forward, toward the piano-and-chairs corner that passed for a stage. A girl wearing a red apron with a pony appliqued on it was sitting down at the piano. "I'm Stacy, I'm going to start us off tonight, so don't order any cappuccinos right now, because Max sucks at the cappuccino machine." Then, bafflingly, she grabbed a pair of pink bunny ears from the top of the piano and put them on. "'This is 'Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits' from 69 Love Songs," she said, and someone yelled "hell yeah!" The song was bizarre and clever and a little dirty. It danced around the phrase "fuck like bunnies" without ever actually using those exact words, and she sang it sort of deadpan but with a grin, and something about it made Kris want to laugh and sigh simultaneously.

"I think I love Stacy," Adam said as she played the last few notes with a flourish.

"Me, too," Anoop said.

"She has ironic bunny ears." Adam looked seriously starry-eyed.

"No one told me I was supposed to bring a costume," Kris said, trying to sound sad.

"I have all these rubber animal snouts at home," Megan said. "I should have brought those. I would let you be the alligator, even."

"Thank you," Kris said, as solemnly as possible. "I appreciate that."

"Oh, here's Allison," Adam said, patting Kris's arm in a hey, pay attention kind of way. Kris looked up at the not-a-stage where Allison, who was cute, with big brown eyes and bright red streaks in her hair, was adjusting the height of the mic stand. "She's amazing, she's in like, eighth grade, but she sings like...well, you'll see."

"This song is off our first record," Allison said into the mic. "Most people don't own it." Adam laughed, and Kris wondered what the joke was. The guy playing guitar for her played the song's opening chords, and Kris realized he had an acoustic electric, which was going to sound way better than Kris's acoustic going through a mic set up at guitar height, and he panicked for a second, thought about seeing if he could borrow this guy's guitar or something, but Allison distracted him from this line of thought when she started singing. She had a total rock-star voice, all warm and low-pitched and with appealingly rough edges. She bounced around as she sang like the teenage girl she was, but her voice seemed to belong to someone else entirely. Kris didn't recognize the song, but he liked it.

After taking a big exaggerated bow while people applauded, Allison came over to see Adam, who swiveled around so she could sit on his lap. She high-fived Megan across the table, then snuggled in, one arm looped around Adam's neck. Adam hugged her, his arms wrapped around her at shoulder height, and both of them looked so comfortable that it made Kris just a little jealous.

"Early Nirvana, that's my girl," Adam said, his voice muffled in Allison's hair. "That song is perfect for you."

"That was a Nirvana song?" Kris said.

"Dude, you haven't heard Unplugged?" Allison said, peering at Kris over Adam's shoulder. She smacked Adam on the arm. "You need to loan him Unplugged."

"Probably," Adam said. "This is Kris, by the way."

"Is he your boyfriend?" Allison looked excited about this, and drew the word "boyfriend" out so it lasted forever.

"He's here to play guitar for Megan," Adam said, sounding dismayed.

"No, we're friends," Kris said, at the same time, their voices overlapping. "You were really good," he told Allison (who was looking sheepish), to try and prevent a giant awkward silence.

"Look, sea shanty guy," Megan said, apparently with the same agenda in mind, and they all looked to the front of the room, where a middle-aged guy wearing a kind of puffy off-white shirt was taking a concertina out of the mystery square instrument case Kris had noticed earlier.

"What's up with that guy and his accordion?" Allison said.

"It's a concertina," Adam and Kris said, almost in unison. Adam looked over his shoulder at Kris and smiled.

"I asked him once," Adam said. "I mean, in a nice way, I wasn't like 'what's up with the concertina?' Anyway, he told me that he thinks he used to work on a whaling ship in a past life, and he still feels really connected to these songs. I thought it was kind of nice, actually. Weird, but nice."

"At least he sings songs with a discernible melody," Anoop said.

"It's okay, honey, Sonic Pork Chop aren't here," Megan said, putting her arm around him consolingly. "Which is good, because you don't even have your grappling gun with you."

"Why am I Batman, all of a sudden?" Anoop said, and then sea shanty guy (who introduced himself as Lloyd) started playing. Kris had been expecting something laughable (honestly, he'd been expecting that song from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, it was the closest thing to a sea shanty he could think of), but the song was interesting, kind of...mournful. Kris could hear storms in it, and the ocean, and loneliness. He thought maybe he was just a really easy audience tonight and everything sounded good to him, but Adam and Allison seemed to be nonverbally agreeing. They were gently swaying back and forth along with the song, and Kris wanted to rest his hands on Adam's shoulders and sway with them. It was almost jarring when the music stopped and Kris remembered that he and Megan were playing like, right now. He looked over at Megan, who smiled at him, nervous but bright-eyed.

"Hey," Kris said, tapping Adam on the shoulder, "We're next---"

"Good timing, my legs are getting numb," Adam said, nudging Allison off his lap and standing up so Kris could get out of the booth. "Good luck," he said, squeezing Kris's shoulder.

"Thanks," Kris said, and followed Megan up to the mics.

part 3 >