Page 5 of Never Been Shipped

He directed his words to Frankie, but then he was catching Steve’s eye, returning a smile. Ryder was right next to him, but he didn’t turn to acknowledge him in any way, although maybe Micah was reading into that. He glanced over at Bobbi, seeming to understand by process of elimination that she was the one running the meeting. He cleared his throat, sliding the papers in front of him closer.

And then, in a suspended moment that sent a shiver down Micah’s spine, even though she’d expected it, even though she’d been trying towillit to happen—he looked right at her. She felt the years between them in that one look, was somehow able to flash back to the very first time they’d met in seventh-grade homeroom, then through the rest of it—the friendship and the band and the aftermath and the long, lonely years that had unspooled from there, bringing them back to this moment right here.

“I’m over all of it,” John said.

Chapter

Three

John wanted todrink her in like the water he’d just gulped down. But he knew he had only about three seconds before he made it weird, so he tried to take in everything at once so he could move on.

Three.Her strawberry-blond hair was tucked up in a bun at the back of her head, a little askew, like maybe she’d been resting against the car seat on the way over here. He assumed it was still long—longish, at least, long enough to put up in a bun—but not the waist-length hair she’d been known for during ElectricOh!’s height. When he’d walked behind her, she’d turned her head, giving him the perfect view of the tendrils that had slipped out, the dandelion tattoo half-hidden under the collar of her shirt, bits of the fluff going up her neck.

Two.Her nails were still ragged around the cuticles and bitten down to the quick, only a few small chips of black to suggest she’d once had them painted. She used to paint her nails all the time on the bus, opening a window to waft out the smell,although it would still linger. She said she did it to stop herself from chewing on them, but it never seemed to work.

One.She was looking right back at him, the directness in her sea-glass-green eyes almost a challenge.

John dropped his gaze first, pretending to study the papers in front of him before his eyes focused and he got pulled into reading them for real. There was a full itinerary for the cruise, which already seemed like too much—the band would play twice, a three-song set and then “If Only” during the prom on the last night of the cruise.

Bingo?he mouthed to himself.

He felt at a disadvantage, coming in so late, because it was obvious that they’d discussed some of this before he got there. He’d had ample time to get to the record label office after leaving the music shop, but then he’d stopped at a traffic light and noticed the temperature gauge in his car creeping over the red line. He’d tried every trick he could think of—changed his route to minimize the number of lights he would hit, turned the heat in the car all the way up and rolled down his windows to compensate. He’d sweated all the way through the nicer button-up shirt he’d decided to wear for this meeting, and then gotten grease all over it when he’d used it like a rag while checking out his engine, which was too hot to do anything with, anyway. Eventually, he’d left his car on the side of the road and walked the last two miles.

“There are other optional activities,” the woman with the bright red lipstick was saying. “Like it would be great if you’d make an appearance at the opening-night panel. There will be a section cordoned off for all the talent so you’ll be able to watchwithout worrying about being bothered by anyone. There will be official photographers who work for the cruise company on the ship, taking pictures for the website and other—”

“Oh, Micah loves pictures,” Ryder said from next to John. “Don’t you?”

John had never been a fighter. He’d spent his childhood trying to make himself as small and quiet as possible, wanting toavoida fight. If his dad could forget that he existed, then maybe he couldn’t hurt him. Even times when he’d gotten picked on in school, he’d always found other ways to deal with it. He’d refused to react, ignoring the bullies until they left him alone, or else he’d worked around it, taking another route to the bus stop, finding another place to sit at lunch, whatever it took.

But god, he thought it might feel incredible to punch Ryder right in that smug little mouth. Just once.

He glanced across the table at Micah, expecting to see a storm in her eyes. She’d always had the most expressive face. But she was looking down, intent on some doodle she was drawing on the paper in front of her.

She used to fill in the open parts of letters on every handout a teacher gave them, sometimes in the textbooks themselves. Once she’d gotten in-school suspension for drawing on a desk, and he’d “broken” her out of the classroom where kids were sequestered for that purpose so that she could eat lunch at their usual table. They’d really thought they were getting away with something, but only now did he realize the teacher had probably just been too apathetic to care.

He and Micah had met first. With two last names starting withP, they’d been in the same homeroom from seventh grade through sophomore year of high school, which was the last onethey’d attended before the band had taken off and they’d finished their education with a combination of virtual classes and tutors.

“Micah Presley—no relation,” she’d said to introduce herself, and then, when John hadn’t immediately replied, “Elvis? He was a—”

“Singer from the fifties,” he’d said. “I know.”

“Well, spanning a few decades, technically,” Micah had said. “But yeah. And you are?”

Maybe memory had exaggerated his recollection of the awkward length of his silence after her question, when he’d just stared at her, but he didn’t think so. It was less that he didn’t know about Elvis—although he was nowhere near the expert Micah was, he’d learn later; she was low-key obsessed because of the name thing. And certainly less that he didn’t know hisownname, which he’d been carrying around for twelve years, the junior of another John Populin—verymucha relation, he was sorry to say, when he had to call the local bar to see if that was where his dad was. It was more that he was so used to sitting in the back of classes, a novel tucked into his textbooks, ignored by teachers and students alike. He could go whole days without saying a single word at school. And here was this strange girl, this strange and almost impossibly beautiful girl, just…talking to him?

It had been two weeks before he’d gotten up the nerve to tell her his name.

Micah had met Frankie later, in high school, and had encouraged them to learn the bass specifically because she and John had talked about starting a band. It was a joke at first, mostly an excuse to come up with funny or lewd potential bandnames, but quickly became serious before they’d even written a song together. They’d found Steve after Micah asked around if anyone knew a really good drummer, and someone had seen him play a basement show with his punk band.

Then it was Steve who’d brought in Ryder, a guy he knew from around the music scene. He’d been the last to join the band but, at three years older than the rest of them, already a senior and with way more experience playing in other bands, it wasn’t long before he became the lead guitarist and the de facto leader. John hadn’t minded that at the time. He just wanted to play.

“No rehearsal,” Micah said now, cutting into his thoughts. He realized he’d missed the last couple minutes of what they’d been talking about, but Micah’s pronouncement had obviously come as a shock, because everyone was just staring at her.

She cleared her throat. “We can practice our parts separately, and then find a few hours to rehearse together once we’re on the boat. I don’t see any reason to do more.”

Frankie frowned. “I think we’re going to need more rehearsal than that. We haven’t played as a group in—”

“To be honest,” Steve said, cracking his knuckles, “the less PTO I have to use, the better. Although I don’t think I’m getting paid for it. At least not by Best Buy. Wait, does it count as PTO if someone else pays for it?”

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