“How can he keep being so oblivious when your single’s on the radio and your album’s about to drop? It’s like he wants to be in denial.” I’m quivering with sympathy for Ethan.

“He doesn’t care. You know what he said when I told him about all the interviews I’m doing? ‘It’s great that things are going well for you now. But what’s your plan for the future?’”

“He did not say that.”

“Totally said it.”

“He has no idea how huge you’re going to be. Watch when you get a million followers. He’ll be begging you to forgive him.”

“That’s not the only drama. Zeke wants to change the band’s name from The Invincibles to Ethan Cross and The Invincibles.”

“Why?”

“I think he’s trying to phase the guys out. Not phase them out, but eventually he just wants to call us ‘Ethan Cross.’ He said the band members are irrelevant. He said I’m the one people are coming to see. Which makes sense. Forever has my name on it, not the band’s.”

“Wow. Do the guys know?”

“Oh, yeah. Gage is furious. Drew and Stefan said it was okay, but I can tell they’re not happy, either.”

“I don’t blame them.”

“You don’t agree with Zeke?”

“No, I do, but . . . I mean, of course he’s right. But to put it out there like that is kind of harsh.”

“Reality is harsh sometimes. It’s not like the guys won’t be in the band anymore.”

I can’t believe Ethan’s being like this. It’s like he doesn’t even feel bad for those guys. We haven’t really disagreed on anything. But this feels like it could escalate into our first fight if we keep talking about it.

I stab another cheese fry.

Ethan looks at his watch. “We have to go soon.”

“Already? We just got here.”

“I know. But I can’t be late for training.”

My stomach fills with hollow shakiness. Today should have been epic. We’ve been waiting to hear Ethan’s first single on the radio for so long. But sitting here with him has just felt empty. The cute moments and inside jokes we always share were missing. Ethan seems preoccupied, like he’s carving out time to see me from his busy schedule. A schedule packed with priorities that are more important than me. I used to be the most important thing in Ethan’s life. I don’t feel that certainty anymore.

I must look as crushed as I feel because Ethan comes over to my side of the booth. He slides in and puts his arm around me. “Things will calm down after Forever drops. I have to tear this publicity stuff up like a beast to get enough buzz going. But we’ll get back to normal soon.” He gives me a sweet kiss on the cheek. “I promise.”

9

[861,133 FOLLOWERS]


“We are gathered here today to say goodbye to a spirit that will be missed,” Georgia intones. We’re having a plant funeral in her backyard. Her beloved ponytail palm succumbed to aphids. It wasn’t pretty.

Georgia loves plants. Her room is filled with them. She gets most of them from the farmers market. Even though she has way more plants than she probably should, when a potential new plant calls out to her, she has to adopt it. Or “him,” as she would say. That’s how it was with the ponytail palm. She was considering a more mature ponytail palm. But this scraggly little guy called out, “Pick me!” She wanted to give him a chance. Just like Charlie Brown did with that runt of a Christmas tree. She had to take him home.

Being scraggly wasn’t his only challenge. He must have been suffering from an aphid attack that Georgia didn’t notice when she was first smitten with him. She saw the fuzzy white bugs on him a few days later. No one knows where they come from. They were probably on the plant when she bought him. Or they could have been in the soil Georgia used to repot him. They could have even been in the air. That’s how they travel from plant to plant.

Georgia flew into a panic. She was freaking out that all her plants were going down. She fretted over everyone, spraying them with plant bug killer. She waited. Then she sprayed some more. All of her spraying paid off. The ponytail palm was the only casualty of the infestation.

You have to be careful about who you bring home.

We look down at the trashed ponytail palm at the edge of the woods. He had such promise.

“Although he only cost three dollars, the joy this ponytail palm brought to my room was unquantifiable.” Georgia peers at me with faux somberness. “Care to add anything?”

“No, I’m good.”

“Then tell me what’s happening with Ethan’s website,” Georgia says, walking back toward her house. “I couldn’t get on last time I tried.”

“It crashed right after ‘Night on Fire’ was released. It was down for a few hours.”

“That’s awesome!”

“How is that awesome?” When “Night on Fire” aired two days ago, Ethan’s website was mobbed with a deluge of hits. Not being able to get on might have made a lot of people forget to try going back later.

“People are into the song.” Georgia holds her back door open for me. “It’s getting crazy. Did you see how many followers he has now?”

“Yeah.” Almost a million. Almost one million people know about Ethan. No. Way more people know about him than that. Almost one million people like him enough to follow him. Which means millions of people know who Ethan Cross is.

The first thing Georgia does when we get to her room is check her plants to confirm they’re aphid-free. I crash on the corduroy pouf. I love Georgia’s room. It has a rustic, arts and crafts feel. Big curtains with cross-stitched flowers. A tree trunk for a night table. An ancient credenza with a stubborn door that’s determined to remain crooked. My favorite thing in here is Georgia’s dark wooden desk. It’s super old and looks like it might collapse if you drop a book on it too hard. Her mom found it at a garage sale after they moved here. My room is more sparkly and polished. I like when everything is where it’s supposed to be. Georgia only cleans her room when her mom makes her.

“How do they look?” Georgia asks. She’ll never stop worrying about her plants.

“Free and clear. That was a close one.”

Georgia’s phone buzzes on her desk, rattling the compass sitting next to it. Georgia has been taking a compass with her on hikes ever since she saw 127 Hours.

She checks her phone. “Of course,” she grumbles.

“What?”

“A text from Kurt. He said he can’t go to the drive-in. He already has plans Saturday night.”

“Bummer.” A bunch of us are going to the drive-in. It’s this vintage outdoor movie theater that was renovated a few years ago. The plan is to do dinner first, then pile into a few cars for the drive-in. Georgia asked if Kurt wanted to go as a group thing. She’s been crushing on him since this summer when they both worked at Happy Mart. He usually had the shift after hers. She’d find excuses to stay late and talk to him. Georgia was getting the feeling that he liked her. I guess the group dynamic wasn’t casual enough for him. Or maybe he really does have plans.

Georgia flops on her bed, staring at her phone like she’s willing the letters of Kurt’s text to rearrange themselves into a happier message.

“We could go another night,” I suggest. “I’m sure everyone won’t mind rescheduling. What about Friday?”

“So I can ask Kurt to go out Friday and watch him reject me again? I’ll pass.”

“We don’t know if he rejected you. He probably has plans like he said.”

“Then why didn’t he offer another night to go out?”

“Because you asked him to come with us to the drive-in. If you asked him to hang out whenever, that would have been different.”

“I should have done that first. Then if he said he wanted to, I should have asked about the drive-in. I am such an idiot.”

“No, you’re not. It was better to ask him to do a group thing. That way you could feel him out.”

“I won’t be feeling any part of him now.” She glares at her phone. “Why did I break up with Andy again?”

“He’s too far away.”

“Yeah,” Georgia sighs wistfully. “Too far.”

Andy was Georgia’s boyfriend at her old school. She broke up with him before she moved. She said that a long-distance relationship between Connecticut and Oregon would never work. I have to agree with her. How can you have a relationship with someone you never see in person?

Not that I’m a relationship expert or anything. I used to only talk to boys online. I got a harsh wake-up call in tenth grade when I went to meet someone who said he was an older guy, but who turned out to be the freshman who played the triangle in band. Triangle Boy Incident was a reality check. Anonymous online connections can never lead to something real. Neither can being so distant from your boyfriend that he becomes just a voice on the phone.

I hate that Georgia is going through this. Except for Ethan, most people I know are having a bad week. There’s like this negative energy in the air. As if all the negative energy that was lurking around gathered together in a big bunch of badness. Only no one knows where it came from. Kind of like the aphids. All you can do is control what you can and hope the rest works itself out.

10

[1,154,081 FOLLOWERS]


Ethan runs up to me in the hall before lunch. He’s frantically waving his phone over his head. People stare and smile and part for him in the hall like he’s rock star royalty.

“You’re not going to believe this,” he says.

“What?”

“A major producer heard Forever. He wants to sign me for a second album. A big second album.”