Head On Collision
The pool party ends later that afternoon, and we are all sent back inside to change into our dresses for the elimination ceremony. Charlotte gives me a head start on the other girls, and I’m one of the first ready. No doubt the whispers of favoritism will increase.
I go down into the kitchen and find Henry sitting there alone on a barstool, AirPods in his ears instead of the usual earpiece. I sit next to him at the kitchen bar, bunching up the skirt of my lacy off-white maxi dress awkwardly.
“What are you listening to?” I ask.
He pops an earbud out and offers it up to me. I put it in my ear. A Future song is playing. It swaps over to Blink-182 and then Yellowcard. Taking Back Sunday, Dashboard Confessional, a completely out-of-place Japanese Breakfast song, and then back to Future.
“Emo much?” I finally mutter with a smile.
“I grew up in the aughts. What do you want from me?” he says, his gaze still straight ahead. I think we might still be in a fight from earlier.
“Oh, man, I know we’re both old, but to hear you speak of the early 2000s? Might as well give it up, Foster.”
I see the anger ebbing away from him, the way he sinks into the conversation. “You know the one thing that really makes me feel old lately? Apparently, men don’t wear socks with tuxes anymore. All the contestants show up with these cropped pants and no socks. Like, what is that about?”
I laugh so loudly, it startles me, and then he does, too, an easy silence following while another verse plays.
“God,” I say, at the end of it. “I love music so much.”
He glances over at me, smirking. “It’s just a playlist, Jacqueline.”
“No, it’s not. I miss . . .” I search for a word, one big enough for what I’m feeling. “Art,” I say, “and having things that aren’t this. I miss being alone in my bed with my dog and reading a new book. I miss spending an entire weekend on the couch watching HBO, and maybe that makes me pretentious as all fuck, but hot damn, is it good to hear New Found Glory again.”
Apparently, he can’t help but say more. “I used to be in a band back then. The 2000s? We mostly played covers.”
“Are you kidding me?” I ask, delighted at this new fact I’ve uncovered.
He shakes his head, and the smile on his lips is so genuine, I want to keep it forever, like that is exactly how I’ll remember him, withholding nothing.
“What instrument did you play?”
He frowns. “I’m not telling you that. You have to guess.”
“Oh, come on,” I say, sizing him up as Fall Out Boy bangs on in my right ear. “Lead singer?”
“How dare you,” he says.
“You were a drummer,” I decide then.
He agrees. “Of course I was a drummer.”
“God,” I say. “I bet you were so hot.”
Our eyes meet, and it’s joking and it’s not, and we both know it. He almost says something else, but stops himself. “You want to hear anything else?” he asks me.
I shake my head and just start listening again. I like the silence. I like him hearing half the song and me hearing the other half, both of us humming along badly, mouthing the words in the most intense parts. I like sitting next to him, easily, feeling like I’m seeing through a lens that is only Henry.
The content way he sits makes me think he likes it, too.
Hannah goes home that night, all the girls standing around her, hugging her and crying as she says goodbye. She deliberately walks past me, meets my eyes, and I know enough to know that moment will be featured on televisions in approximately three months. None of the other eliminated girls get their dramatic moment, destined to disappear into the annals of “was that girl even on the show?” history.
We see Marcus for the time it takes to film the elimination ceremony and then he’s gone again, leaving us all with metaphorical blue balls. Afterward, the producers gather us around Becca and Brendan.
“So,” Becca says to the ten of us left. She’s wearing an over-the-top sequined quarter-length black dress with the midriff cut out and a slit up most of her leg for this elimination ceremony, almost too obvious in her attempt to overshadow the less dazzling contestants. “What do you say we take this show on the road?”
The girls scream and carry on. That is not deemed an appropriate level of enthusiasm, so we are all forced to amp it up tenfold on the next take.
“Marcus is dying to take you all to his hometown of Chicago!” Brendan announces and we must blow our loads all over again. “So go pack your bags—we’re leaving right now!”
We are not in fact, leaving right then, the producers quickly inform us. We are forced to pose for a few more shots, then are told we’re allowed to go to bed to get three hours of sleep before being up to leave for Chicago at the crack of dawn.
Henry keeps shooting me looks. Something changed between us and he knows it and I know it, and we can keep dancing or we can stop. I don’t know what either option will mean.
“What?” I ask him, when he’s been looking at me too long.
The other girls are dispersing. A couple have decided to stay up all night and drink until it’s time to go to the airport, while Kendall and a smaller posse are racing upstairs to try and claim the bathroom first so they can go to bed.
“Are you excited?” he asks me, trying to do his old thing. But that’s over now. I know him now, and his power is gone. “For Chicago?”
I stare out the window; it’s dark, but still in my mind’s eye, I can see the brown mountains all around us. “It’ll be nice getting a break from all this depressing scenery.”
He laughs, despite himself. “Only you would find the LA scenery depressing.”
I don’t laugh. Instead, I gaze at him for a second. “Not only me,” I say quietly, and we both see it. A hundred years ago and a thousand lifetimes before sitting across from a stranger at a bright bar on a bright day and looking for something else.
Statement made, I leave him there alone and walk back through one of the hallways that leads toward the back of the house. It’s quiet; I’m the only one back here, looking for solitude, in the chaos of packing up for Chicago. Until—the sound of footsteps, quiet behind me. I turn.
