First published in the USA in 2006 by Alfred A Knopf,

an imprint of Random House Children’s Books,

a division of Random House Inc, New York

First published in Great Britain in 2014

by Electric Monkey, an imprint of Egmont UK Limited

The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN

Text copyright © 2006 Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted

First e-book edition 2014

ISBN 978 1 4052 7243 8

eISBN 978 1 7803 1500 3

www.egmont.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this publicattion may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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EGMONT

Our story began over a century ago, when seventeen-year-old Egmont Harald Petersen found a coin in the street. He was on his way to buy a flyswatter, a small hand-operated printing machine that he then set up in his tiny apartment.

The coin brought him such good luck that today Egmont has offices in over 30 countries around the world. And that lucky coin is still kept at the company’s head offices in Denmark.

To Martha and Real Nick

Electric Monkey books by David Levithan

Every Day

How They Met and Other Stories

Two Boys Kissing

Written with Rachel Cohn

Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Front series promotional page

1. NICK

2. NORAH

3. NICK

4. NORAH

5. NICK

6. NORAH

7. NICK

8. NORAH

9. NICK

10. NORAH

11. NICK

12. NORAH

13. NICK

14. NORAH

15. NICK

16. NORAH

17. NICK

18. NORAH

19. NICK

20. NORAH

THE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS PLAYLIST

Back series promotional page

The day begins in the middle of the night. I am not paying attention to anything but the bass in my hand, the noise in my ears. Dev is screaming, Thom is flailing, and I am the clockwork, I am the one who takes this thing called music and lines it up with this thing called time. I am the ticking, I am the pulsing, I am underneath every part of this moment. We don’t have a drummer. Dev has thrown off his shirt and Thom is careening into feedback and I am behind them, I am the generator. I am listening and I am not listening because what I’m playing isn’t something I’m thinking about, it’s something I’m feeling all over. All eyes are on us. Or at least that’s what I can imagine in my stageblindness. It’s a small room and we’re a big noise and I am the nonqueer bassist in a queercore band who is filling the room with undertone as Dev sing-screams, Fuck the Man / Fuck the Man / I really want to / Fuck the Man. I am punctuating and I am puncturing and I am punching the air with my body as my fingers press hard into the chords. Sweat, malice, and hunger pour from me. This is release, or maybe it’s just a plea for release. Dev is wailing now and Thom is crashing and even though my feet don’t move I am traveling hard. I look past the light and see people shaking, people jumping around, people watching as Dev takes the microphone into his mouth and keeps yelling the words. I throw the chords at them, I drench them in the soundwaves, I am making time so loud that they have to hear it. I am stronger than words and I am bigger than the box I’m in, and then I see her in the crowd and I fall apart.

I fucking told her not to come. While she was busy ripping me into pieces, that was the one fragment I begged to keep. Please don’t come to the shows. I don’t want to see you there. And she had said yes, and it hadn’t been a lie then. But it turned into a lie at some point, because here she is, and my fingers are losing their place, and my buzz is losing its edge, and everything about me goes from crying out to just plain crying – all in the time it takes for me to see the shape of her lips. And then I see – oh fuck no – that she’s not alone, that she’s with some guy, and while she’ll say she’s come to watch me, there’s no doubt in my mind that she’s come so I can watch her. It’s over, she’d said, and wasn’t that the biggest lie of all? I am stumbling through the notes and Dev is onto the next verse and Thom is playing a little faster than he should, so I have to catch up as she leans into this guy and rocks her head like I’m making this music for her, when if I could, I would take it all away and give her as much silence as she’s given me pain.

I try to keep up with Dev and Thom. We’re called The Fuck Offs tonight, but that’s a new name and it’ll probably only last three gigs before Dev comes up with another. We’ve already been Porn Yesterday, The Black Hand-kerchiefs, The Vengeful Hairdressers, and None Of Your Business. I don’t really use my vote, except to veto Dev’s stupider ideas. (“Dude,” I had to tell him, “nobody wants to see a band called Dickache.”) Dev’s out to pierce the pierced, tattoo the tattooed, and have his way with the messy punk boys who come to our shows not knowing they’ll end up wanting to mess around with the guy challenging How big is your cocker spaniel? into the mic. Dev’s from a town in Jersey called Lodi, and that makes perfect sense to me, since he’s nothing if not an idol in reverse. Thom’s from South Orange, and has only had an ‘h’ in his first name for the past two months. I’m from Hoboken, as close to the city as you can get without actually being in the city. On nights like this, with a chance to play in front of more than just our friends, I’d swim across the Hudson if I had to, in order to get to this cave of a club. At least until Tris shows up and I find myself bleeding invisibly across the stage.

Take the Power / Fuck the Man / Take the Power / and Fuck the Man. Dev is taking the song somewhere it’s never been before: a fourth minute. I’m rutting now, waiting for the wind-down. Thom looks like he’s on the verge of a solo, which is never a good place for Thom to be. I move my feet, turn away from her, try to pretend she’s not there, which is the biggest fucking joke I’ve ever not laughed at. I try to get Dev’s attention from the periphery, but he’s too busy wiping the sweat on his chest to notice. Finally, though, he gets a burst of energy strong enough to end the thing on. So he throws out his arm and howls and I run us into the ground with a final lurch. The crowd sends us a burst of their own noise. I try to hear her voice, try to separate that single pitch from the shouts and applause. But she’s as lost to me as she was the night I cried and she didn’t turn back to see if I was okay. Three weeks, two days, and twenty-three hours ago. And she’s already with someone else.

The next band is at the side of the stage. The owner of the club is motioning that our time is up. I am not so gone that I’m not gratified by the calls for more, by that little sound of letdown when the lights go up to show the crowd a clearer path back to the bar. I am the equipment bitch for this gig, so while Dev jumps into the crowd to find his most willing admirer and Thom blushingly retreats to his understanding-but-emo boyfriend, I have to immediately detox so I can pack up our gear. I go from chords to cords, amped to amps. One of the guys from the next band is cool and helps me recover the cases from the back corner of the stage. But I’m the only one who can touch the instruments, putting them carefully to bed for the night. Then I offer to help the new band set up, and am glad when they say yes so I can be connecting them to the soundboard instead of spending all my energy resisting her.

My eye is still used to searching for her in a crowd. My breath is still used to catching when I see her and the light is angled just right. My body is still used to hers moving next to mine. So the distance – anything short of contact – is a constant rejection. We were together for six months, and in each of those months my desire found new ways to be fueled by her. It’s over can’t kill that. All of the songs I wrote in my head were for her, and now I can’t stop them from playing. This null soundtrack. I’m tired, she’d said, and I told her that I was tired, too, and that I wanted to take some time for us, too. And then she’d said, No, I’m tired of you, and I slipped into the surreal-but-true universe where we were over and I wasn’t over it. She was no longer any kind of here that I could get to.

I keep my back to the crowd as I store the equipment and instruments somewhere safe. Then comes the moment when I can’t keep my back to it anymore, since there’s only so long that you can stare at a wall before you feel like an idiot. I am saved by the next band, which cranks the volume even higher and soon engulfs us all in beautiful chaos. They’re called Are You Randy? and the lead singer is actually singing instead of moaning and Ramoning. I dare a glance into the crowd and I don’t see her anymore. I don’t see very many hers at all – it’s a sea of hims pressing and crashing against one another as the lead singer tells them the state of things, breaking into bits and pieces of “I Want You to Want Me” and “Blue Moon” and “All Apologies” as he dances through his own seven veils.

I think Tris will like this band, and the fact that I know this stabs me again, because all the knowledge of what she likes is perfectly useless now. I wonder who the guy is. I wonder if the two of them knew each other three weeks and three days ago. I’m glad I didn’t really see him because then I’d think of them naked. Now I just think of her naked, and it’s such a vivid touch memory that my fingers actually move to take it in. I turn my head, as if I’ve been actually seeing her, and see Thom and his boyfriend Scot making out to the music in a corner-of-the-universe way. Dev, I figure, is still at the bar, still performing. We’re underage, but that doesn’t matter here. The crowd is mostly older than us – college or should-be-in-college – and I’m aware of not really fitting in. Some of the older guys in the crowd check me out, give me a nod. It’s not like I wear a Badge of Straight or anything. I nod back sometimes, when I think it’s a musical acknowledgment and not an invitation. I always keep moving.

I find Dev at the bar, talking to a guy our age who looks familiar in that Type kind of way. When I get to where they’re standing, I’m introduced as “the bass god, Nick,” and he’s introduced as “Hunter from Hunter.” Dev thanks me for being equipment bitch, and from the way the conversation doesn’t continue from there I know I’m interrupting. If it was Thom, my agitation would probably be noticed. But Dev needs you to spell emotions out for him, and right now I’m not in the mood. So I just tell him where I left the stuff and pretend I’m going off to search for a clear spot on the bar to summon the bartender from. And once I’m pretending that’s the truth, I figure it might as well be the truth. I still can’t see Tris, and there’s a small part of me that’s wondering if it was even her in the crowd. Maybe it was someone who looked like Tris, which would explain the guy who didn’t look like anybody.

Are You Randy? stop playing their instruments one by one, until the lead singer croons a final, a cappella note. I wish for their sake I could say the club falls into silence at this, but in truth the air is one-half conversation. Still, that’s better than average, and the band gets a lunge of applause and cheers. I clap, too, and notice that the girl next to me puts two fingers in her mouth to whistle old-fashioned style. The sound is clear and spirited, and makes me think of Little League. The girl is dressed in a flannel shirt, and I can’t tell whether that’s because she’s trying to bring back the only fashion style of the past fifty years that hasn’t been brought back or whether it’s because the shirt is as damn comfortable as it looks. She has very pale skin and a haircut that reads private school even though she’s messed it up to try to hide it. The next band opened for Le Tigre on their last tour, and I figure this girl’s here to see them. If I was a different kind of guy, I might try to strike up a friendly conversation, just to be, I dunno, friends. But I feel that if I talk to someone else right now, all I’ll be able to do is unload.

Thom and Scot would probably be ready to go if I wanted them to, but I’m pretty sure Dev hasn’t figured out yet whether he’s coming back with us or not, and I’d be an asshole to put him on the spot and ask. So I’m stuck and I know it, and that’s when I look to my right and see Tris and her new guy approaching the beer-spilled bar to order another round of whatever I’m not having. It’s definitely her, and I’m definitely fucked, because the between-band rush is pressing toward me now and if I try to leave, I’ll have to push my way out, and if I have to push my way out, she’ll see me making an escape and she’ll know for sure that I can’t take it, and even if that’s the goddamn truth I don’t want her to have actual proof. She is looking so hot and I am feeling so cold and the guy she’s with has his hand on her arm in a way that a gay friend would never, ever think of, and I guess that’s my own proof. I am the old model and this is the new model and I could crash out a year’s worth of time on my bass and nothing, absolutely nothing, would change.

She sees me. She can’t fake surprise at seeing me here, because of course she fucking knew I’d be here. So she does a little smile thing and whispers something to the new model and I can tell just from her expression that after they get their now-being-poured drinks they are going to come over and say hello and good show and – could she be so stupid and cruel? – how are you doing? And I can’t stand the thought of it. I see it all unfolding and I know I have to do something – anything – to stop it.

So I, this random bassist in an average queercore band, turn to this girl in flannel who I don’t even know and say:

“I know this is going to sound strange, but would you mind being my girlfriend for the next five minutes?”

Randy from Are You Randy? insists the bassist from the queercore band is a ’mo, but I told him No, the guy is straight. Whether or not he’s responsible for his band’s shit lyrics (Fuck the Man / Fuck the Man – what’s that trite crap?), I have no idea, but he’s no ’mo. Trust me. There are certain things a girl just knows, like that a fourth minute on a punk song is a bad, bad idea, or that no way does a Jersey-boy bassist with Astor Place hair who wears torn-up, bleach-stained black jeans and a faded black T-shirt with orange lettering that says When I say Jesus, you say Christ, swing down boy-boy alley; he’s working the ironic punk boy–Johnny Cash angle too hard to be a ’mo. Maybe he’s a little emo, I told Randy, but just because he doesn’t look like a Whitesnake-relic-reject like all of your band, does not automatically mean the guy’s gay.

The incidental fact of his straightness doesn’t mean I want to be NoMo’s five-minute girlfriend, like I’m some 7-Eleven quick stop on his slut train. Only because I am the one loser here who hasn’t lost all her senses to beer, dope, or hormones do I have the sense to hold back my original instinct – to yell back “FUCK, NO!” in response to NoMo’s question.

I have to think about Caroline. I always have to think about Caroline.

I noticed NoMo loading equipment after his band’s set while his bandmates abandoned him to score some action. I understand that scene. I am that scene, cleaning up everyone else’s mess.

NoMo dresses so bad – he has to be from Jersey. And if Jersey Boy is equipment bitch, he has a van. The van’s probably a piece of scrap metal with a leaking carburetor that as likely as not will pop a tire or run out of gas in the middle of the Lincoln Tunnel, but it’s a risk I have to take. Somebody’s got to get Caroline home. She’s too drunk to risk taking her on the bus. She’s also so drunk she’ll go home with Randy if I’m not there to take her back to my house where she can sleep it off. Groupie bitch. If I didn’t love her so much, I’d kill her.

She’s lucky my parents love her just as much; her dad and stepmonster are away for the weekend, they don’t give a fuck what she does, so long as she doesn’t get pregnant or date any boy from a non-six-figure-plus-income household. Jerk-offs. My parents, they adore Caroline, beautiful Caroline with the long caramel hair, the big cherry Tootsie Pop lips, the juvenile delinquent arrest record. They won’t care if she stumbles from my room into the kitchen tomorrow afternoon all disheveled and hung over. She’s the one, not me, who meets their expectation of what the daughter of an Englewood Cliffs-livin’, fat-cat record company CEO should be: wild.

Caroline’s not a Big Disappointment like their Plain Jane, comfy-flannel-shirt-wearing, tousled bowl-head-haircut-courtesy-of-a-$300-salon-visit-with-Mom-(Bergdorf ’s)-and-a-$5-can-of-blue-spray-paint (Ricky’s), straight-edge, responsible valedictorian bitch daughter. I’ve chosen a gap year on a kibbutz in South Africa over Brown. WHY, Norah, WHY? I wrote my Brown admissions essay about all the music Dad appropriated from The Street then goddamned ruined to make profit for The Man. I am not a fuckin’ corporate hippie, Dad said, laughing, after he read the essay. Dad won’t deny that he’s responsible for giving Top 40 radio a disproportionate percentage of its suckiest hits, yet he’s proud he indoctrinated me from childhood in the sounds of every other kind of music out there so that now, at age eighteen, I can be a badass DJ when I want, but I am also an insufferable music snob. My parents have also done me the misfortune of being happily married for a quarter century, which no doubt dooms my own prospects of ever experiencing true love. Gold is not struck twice.

My parents would disown me if they knew I was in this club tonight. Hell, I could be scoring weed in Tompkins Square Park right now, on my way to a bondage bar on Avenue D, and my parents would only applaud. But this club, this is the one joint in all of Manhattan I’m supposedly forbidden from going to, owing to a long-simmering feud over a bad music deal between Dad and the club owner, Crazy Lou (who used to be my godfather, Uncle Lou, until all that business leading Lou to be rechristened Crazy). Lou’s such an old punk he was around when The Ramones were junkie hustlers first and musicians second, when punk meant something other than a mass-marketing concept designed to help the bridge-and-tunnel crowd feel cool.

But Mom and Dad would move past disowning me and outright kill me if they thought I wasn’t looking after their beloved Caroline. She inspires that kind of devotion in people. It’s nauseating, except I am totally under Caroline’s spell, too, her lead minion, have been since nursery school.

I look around the club as the between-set mass of people swarm past/through/into me like I’m a ghost with the inconvenience of malleable flesh getting in their way on the way to the beer. Damn, I’ve lost Caroline again. She is big on Randy tonight, which is cool – Are You Randy? don’t completely suck – but Randy himself is big on E tonight, and I gotta make sure he doesn’t get her alone in a corner. But I’m only 5-foot-4 on tippy toes, and 6-foot NoMo is standing in front of me, blocking my view, waiting to find out if I want to be his five-minute girlfriend and looking like that lost animal who goes around asking “Are you my mother?” in that kid book.

From behind him I don’t see Caroline but I do see that stupid bitch, Tris, rhymes with bris, cuz that’s what she’ll do to a guy, rip apart his piece. She’s doing her Tris strut with her big boobs sticking out in front of her, wiggling her ass in that way that gets the instant attention of every dumb schmo in her wake, even the gay boys, who seem to be highly represented here tonight, NoMo notwithstanding. She’s coming right toward me. No No NOOOOOOOOOOO. How did she find out Caroline and I would be here tonight? Does she have lookouts with text pagers set up every place Caroline and I go on a Saturday night, or what?

Boyfriend to the rescue! I answer NoMo’s question by putting my hand around his neck and pulling his face down to mine. God, I would do anything to avoid Tris recognizing me and trying to talk to me.

FUCK! I didn’t expect NoMo to be such a good kisser. Asshole. See this, Randy? NO. MO. Confirmed. But I am not looking for chemistry here, just a ride home for my girl. I am also not looking for tongue, but NoMo’s wastes no time sliding its way into my mouth. My mouth revolts against my mind: Umm, feels good down here, steady girl, steaaaady!

No matter how good he tastes, this five-minute girlfriend still needs a few seconds to come up for air. I separate my mouth from his, hoping to catch my breath and hoping to catch Tris walking away from us without having noticed me after all.

WOW. I feel like in this riot of people, I have been kicked in the stomach, but by the giddy police. Forget about the need for oxygen. My mouth wants to go back to the place it just left.

Unfortunately, Tris is standing right in front of us, hanging on to her latest slobber victim, who is near enough now that I can positively ID him as one of Caroline’s recent rejects; he’s buddies with Hunter from Hunter, whose band, Hunter Does Hunter, is scheduled to play next (you’re welcome, Hunter, for the introduction to Lou). Tris clutches her arm tight around the guy’s waist, probably squeezing out whatever remaining life that soul-sucking skank hasn’t yet gotten out of him in the three weeks or so since Caroline gave him the heave-ho.

Tris says, “Nick? Norah? How do you two, like, know each other?”

That bitch should not be in a club like this. As if her language is not enough indication, there is also the matter of her Hot Topic mallrat outfit: short black leather skirt with buckles up the side, mass-produced “vintage” Ramones T-shirt, and piss-yellow leggings with some horrible pair of pink patent-leather shoes. She looks like a neon sign bumblebee by way of early Debbie Harry rip-off.

I’m going to need another talk with Uncle Lou about standards vis-à-vis owning and operating a club. The guy can snag great new talent – the raw, hungry kind who are ready to bleed their intestines or other useful body parts onto Crazy Lou’s stage for the opportunity to perform on it – but he doesn’t know shit about how to run this business. Look at the underage Jersey riffraff he lets in! He probably even comps the beers for the band members! LOU! Why do you think so many of these assholes are alcoholics and junkies? They’ve got the music right. They can play the core punk songs with conviction – hard, fast, angry – but they haven’t wised up yet to the fact that the real punk goes down now with a straight edge: no alcohol, no drugs, no cigarettes, no skanks. The real punk now is the only punk left after all the madness: the music, the message.

Well, dudes, drink up, because when I get back from South Africa next year and take over managing this club as Uncle Lou has promised instead of reapplying to Brown as I promised my parents, there’s gonna be a new sheriff here on the Lower East Side, my friends. Have your lecherous, skanky fun now, because the clock is running out on you.

I may reconsider the future make-out ban, however. The making-out part is nice, it has possibilities, with the right pair of lips.

I don’t know why, but I do that thing Caroline does to her male victims, where instead of taking the hand of NoMo, I place my hand at the back of his neck and scratch the nape softly, possessively, while Tris watches. My fingers scan the buzz cut of his hair back there, and I feel goose bumps rising on his neck. I likee. There is some satisfaction in seeing Tris’s bottom lip nearly fall to her chin in shock. That’s the thing about Tris: She’s never subtle.

Whatever I’m doing, it works. She storms away, speechless. Phew. That was easier than I expected.

I look at my watch. I believe my new boyfriend and I have about two minutes forty-five before we break up. I close my eyes and do the slight head turn, angling for another visitation from his lips.

Caroline says I am frigid. Sometimes I think she’s teasing me to repeat the party line of my Evil Ex, so I clarify: You mean I’m not easy? She clarifies: No, bitch, I mean you intimidate guys with a look or a comment before they can even decide if they want a chance with you. You’re so judgmental. Along with frigid.

NoMo must know this about me, because he doesn’t come back in for more mouth-to-mouth contact. He says, “How the hell do you know Tris?”

Then I remember. Tris called him NICK. Noooooooooo. That’s him ! NICK! The Hoboken boy! The guy who wrote all the songs and poems about her, the best goddamn boyfriend the rest of us at Sacred Heart never had, the band-boy stud Tris hooked up with after meeting him on the PATH train at the beginning of the school year and has lied to and cheated on ever since. Does NICK not think it’s weird that he dated her that long and never once met any girls from her school? IDIOT!

But of course Tris wouldn’t introduce him to us. She wouldn’t be worried we’d rat out her indiscretions to her boyfriend – she’d be afraid he’d fall for Caroline. Tris can have Caroline’s rejects, but she’d never offer up one of her own to Caroline. Tris is so Single White Female, we like to joke that Caroline should get a restraining order against her, except Tris provides us too much amusement to completely let her out of our reach. It’s like a love-hate thing we have going with her. We don’t feel guilty about it because there’s only a month of school left and I can’t imagine we’ll ever see her again after our “have a great summer, good luck in college” phony sentiment yearbook finales. And karmically, I have repaid my mean-girl debt to Tris many times over. If she passed Chemistry and Calculus this year, it’s because of me. Fuck, if she graduates at all, it’s because of me.

I don’t bother answering Nick’s question about how the hell I know Tris. I’ve got to find Caroline.

I stand up on the barstool. That’s the only way I’ll find her with all these people and this loud music and this stink sweat and this beer energy and this never-ending day that feels like it’s only beginning in the middle of this night. I place my hand on Nick’s head to steady my balance as I scan the crowd, and my hand can’t help but rummage through his mess of hair, just a little.

There she is! I see Caroline huddling with Randy at a corner table by the brick wall just off the stage, to the right of Hunter from Hunter Does Hunter, who is now taking the mic. I don’t know what song his band had prepared but the lyrics Hunter sings are clearly being made up on the spot and have nothing to do with the fast and furious guitar chords: Dev, go home with me, Dev Dev Dev, I want you to fuck this man.

I jump down from the barstool and take off toward Caroline, but Nick’s hand clenches my wrist from behind me, pulling me back to him.

“Seriously,” Nick says, “how the hell do you know Tris?”

His grip pinches the watch on my wrist, and the ow of the pinch turns my eyes from looking for Caroline to looking straight at him. I notice how lost he looks, yet eager for me to stay with him, his eyes kind and angry at the same time, and the noticing makes me remember a lyric from some song he wrote for Tris that she passed around in Latin class because she thought it was so lame.

The way you’re singing in your sleep

The way you look before you leap

The strange illusions that you keep

You don’t know

But I’m noticing

Fuck Tris. I would give body parts to have a guy write something like that for me. My kidney? Oh, both of them? Here, Nick, they’re yours – just write more for me. I’ll give you a start: boy in punk club asks strange girl to be his girlfriend for five minutes, girl kisses boy, boy kisses back, boy then meets girl – what did you notice about this girl? Nick, let’s hear some lyrics. Please? Ready. Set. Go.

I want to stomp my foot in frustration – for him, and for me. Because I know that whatever Tris did or said to him, it’s what’s given him that haunted puppy-dog look of pathetic despair. She’s the reason he will probably become an embittered old fuck before he’s even of legal drinking age, distrusting women and writing rude songs about them, and basically from here into eternity thinking all chicks are lying cheating sluts because one of them broke his heart. He’s the type of guy that makes girls like me frigid. I’m the girl who knows he’s capable of poetry, because like I said, there are things I just know. I’m the one who could give him that old-fashioned song title of a thing called “Devotion and True Love (However Complicated)”, if he ever gave a girl like me a second glance. I’m the less-than-five-minute girlfriend who for one too-brief kiss fantasized about ditching this joint with him, going all the way punk with him at a fucking jazz club in the Village or something. Maybe I would have treated him to borscht at Veselka at five in the morning, maybe I would have walked along Battery Park with him at sunrise, holding his hand, knowing I would become the one who would believe in him. I would tell him, I heard you play, I’ve read your poetry, not that crap your band just performed, but those love letters and songs you wrote to Tris. I know what you’re capable of and it’s certainly more than being a bassist in an average queercore band – you’re better than that; and dude, having a drummer, it’s like key, you fucking need one. I would be equipment bitch for him every night, no complaints. But no, he’s the type with a complex for the Tris type: the big tits, the dumb giggle, the blowhard. Literally.

You wanted easy – well, you got it, pal.

I extract my wrist from his grip. But for some reason, instead of walking away, I pause for a moment and return my hand to his face, caressing his cheek, drawing light circles on his jaw with my index finger.

I tell him, “You poor schmuck.”

When Tris passes by me, it’s like the world is no longer three-dimensional. The third dimension falls away, then the second, and all I’m left with is one dimension, and that dimension is her.

But of course there’s another dimension, too, and that dimension is time, and it keeps going and Tris keeps walking and all the other dimensions come back, and even though there are now more, it feels like a whole lot less.

And I’m left with this girl, this Siren of Mixed Signals, this Norah. She’s a fuck-good kisser, but clearly has some massive consistency issues. I ask her how the fuck she knows Tris, because that is leaving me completely confused, and at first she’s looking at me like I’m this guy she didn’t just start kissing out of nowhere, but then she’s got her hand on my arm in a way that makes me really notice I have an arm, and then she’s making to run away, and at the same time looking at me like I’m some cancer child. Then I take hold of her arm and she resists without really resisting. Finally she pulls away, only to touch my face in this way that reminds me exactly of her kiss.

Then she calls me “you poor schmuck.”

And like some poor schmuck, I’m like, “Why?”

I can tell she knows something, but she’s not saying. Instead she tells me, “I’ve got to get my friend.”

“I’ll come with,” I volunteer. I know Tris is somewhere behind me, maybe watching. And it’s not like I have anything better to do than follow a fuck-good kisser wherever she wants to go. Dev is climbing onto the stage now to be Hunter’s dancer, and Thom and Scot are nowhere in my line of vision.

“I’ll tell you what,” Norah says. “You give us a ride, and I’ll give you two extra minutes on your original offer.”

“Seven’s my lucky number,” I tell her.

And she just looks at me. Y. p. s.

“But really,” I say. “How do you know Tris?”

“I fucked up her Barbies in fifth grade,” she tells me. “And that’s the way it’s been ever since.”

“You’re from Englewood ?”

“Englewood Cliffs. Englewood is the one with reasonable houses.”

She’s pushing through the crowd now, and I’m following.

“She was just here a second ago,” she says.

“Who?”

“No one. Caroline. I mean, just shut up for a second so I can think, okay?”

Like if I’m quiet, she’ll suddenly be able to hear every fucking footstep in the club.

While she’s peering around, I make the idiot move of looking behind me, and see Tris and the new model making out. She looks so hot in her Ramones shirt and the gold stockings I always asked her to wear because they make her look like something out of a Marvel comic. I remember taking that shirt off of her, those stockings off of her – her yelling careful, careful! as I started to get past her thighs. And now it’s some other guy’s hands that are thumbing their way over Joey’s face and down Dee Dee’s chin and – oh, fucking hell – dropping down between the A and the M, going right for the V under the H&M-meets-S&M miniskirt.

And she’s looking at me the whole time. I swear she’s looking at me.

I turn away and Norah isn’t there, but luckily she’s only a few feet away. And the girl she’s diving for looks kinda familiar. Not in a Didn’t We Go To Camp Walla Walla Together? way, but more like, Didn’t I Step Over You To Get To The Men’s Room Last Night? Right now she’s hanging on to the guy from Are You Randy? like she’s auditioning to be a pocket on his jacket. And I can tell he’s about ready to sew her on. Only my Seven-Minute Girlfriend stands in the way. She’s saying Caroline’s name like an older sister would say it, and from the resentment that flashes back in Caroline’s eyes I’d believe they were sisters if Norah hadn’t already called Caroline her friend. I also think for a millisecond that they might be a couple, but something in Norah’s expression makes it clear that they’re friends without benefits.

Caroline’s about to say something really harsh, but suddenly Hunter and Dev launch into a fucking Green Day cover, and we’re all seven years old again and dancing like we spit out the Ritalin while Mom wasn’t looking. We become this one flailing paramecium mass, fever-connected as the guitarist riffs electrons. Even Tris must be a part of this, and if we’re both a part of it, then that means we’re still in some way connected. Everyone in this room is connected, except Norah – she’s the kind of statue they don’t ever make, a statue of someone totally defeated. Caroline’s dancing against the guy from Are You Randy? like God or Billie Joe Armstrong meant her to do it. I try to obliterate myself in the song, but there’s something in me that just won’t combust. I think my seven-minute girlfriend is standing on the fuse.

“What’s up?” I shout. And she looks at me like she’s forgotten that I exist. This means she’s also forgotten to guard herself from me, so I have a moment when I see the sentences behind her eyes. I can’t do this. This is too fucking hard.

I change my question. I say, “What’s wrong?” And just like that, her sentences are shut behind a screen. But I’m curious. Yes, I’m damn curious.

“Not a fucking thing,” she says. “And I think maybe our time is up.”

“You don’t need a ride anymore?” I ask. I’m not above using my wheels to angle for some more time with a complicated girl.

“Fuck.” The song’s ended now and everyone is cheering. I barely hear her shout, “Wait right here.”

Dev and Hunter take their bows like they’re already spooning, Dev curved over Hunter’s back as they dip in unison. While the guy from Are You Randy? uses his hands to clap, Norah puts her hand on Caroline’s shoulder and leans in to shout in her ear. What follows is one of those ropeless tugs of war, measured in centimeters of pull and pull away. I can’t hear any of it until Caroline screams, “I am not trashed!” which of course means she is, because who the hell else would use such a completely wasted phrase? The guy from Are You Randy? is starting to catch on and is trying to catch up by catching hold. But his instinct totally defeats him, because his hand swerves somewhere near her breast, which isn’t really the terrain he needs to keep his ground. Norah’s yank trumps his hairy palm in this contest, and Caroline is soon stumbling in my direction.

Before I really know what’s happening, Caroline’s tilting into me and I’m catching her. Then she’s heaving down, and I’m sure she’s about to puke all over me, but instead she rises and looks at me and says, “You have really ugly shoes.”

Norah’s next to me now, saying, “Let’s go.” She leaves Caroline there for me to carry as she yells, “Get the fuck out of my way” to people, uncrowding them with her snarl. My heart understands the direction we’re going in, because it starts pounding like it’s got something really damn important to say, and by the time I’m out of my head enough to really use my eyes, there’s someone in our way, and that someone is the girl who took the key to my heart and swallowed it with a smile.

“I need your car,” she says.

And it’s like I’ve forgotten that the word for “What?” is “What?” because I just stand there and look at Tris and think she’s talking to me and somehow translate that into she’s giving me a chance.

“I need to go somewhere,” she tells me. “I promise I’ll bring it back.”

I’m reaching for the keys in my pocket. I’m thinking I’ll go with you. I’m thinking of passenger-seat conversations and making song dedications in my head. Her face lit by that nighttime driving light – two parts dashboard, one part headlight strobe from the opposite lane. I am remembering that so much.

Fuck, I loved her then. And then is blurring into now. I’m thinking why not? I’m thinking we’re still the same people. And a voice outside of me is saying, “I’m afraid the car’s already full. No room for you, Tris. Sorry.”

This Norah girl’s grinning now, all transparent sweetness and light.

“Excuse me?” Tris asks.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t clear. Let me try again. FUCK OFF.”

“I think turning off to fucking is your department, Norah. Now why don’t you take Drunkzilla here and go find some nice Weezer fans to rock-tease. I’m talking to Nick, not you.”

And I’m thinking: She’s fighting over me. Tris is fighting over me.

But for some reason it’s Norah who’s putting her arm around me and putting her hand in my back pocket.

I’m about to shudder her off, but then Tris says, “Come on, Nick – we’re really late and need the car. I’ll pay you back for the gas.” And I know right away that I’m not a part of her “we.” I’ve been fucking exiled from her “we.”

“I’m going to find Randy,” Caroline decides.

“Hell, no, you’re not,” Norah says, taking her arm from my shoulder and linking it around Caroline’s elbow. Which leaves us in this weird we’re off to see the Wizard pose, with Tris blocking us like the Wicked Witch of the Past.

She could have me so easily. But instead she snorts and says, “You can take him. I only wanted his car.”

And with that, Tris leaves me for good. Every time I see her, from now until I die, she will leave me for good. Over and over and over again.

Norah takes her hand out of my back pocket and steadies Caroline with her full body. It’s my turn to lead now, and I can barely do it. It’s not that I’m drunk or stoned or spiraling high. It’s just that I’m defeated. And that’s impairing all of my senses.

There’s only one hopeful chord in this cacophony, and it’s this girl I’m following. I know I could tell her to get a cab – I have a feeling she can more than afford it – but I like the idea of leaving with her and staying with her. She says good-bye to the club manager as we reach the door and are released onto the street. The sidewalk is full of smokers, talking or posing their way to ash. I get the nod from a couple of people I vaguely know. Ordinarily if I left with two hot girls, there’d also be some looks of admiration. Maybe it’s because of the clear anger between Norah and Caroline, or maybe it’s because they all think I’m gay – whatever the case, I get no more congratulations than a cabdriver does for picking up a fare.

I know I should offer to help Norah propel Caroline forward, but the truth is that I don’t feel like I can carry anyone but myself right now. The streets are empty. I am empty. Or, no – I am full of pain. It’s my life that’s empty.

I stumble for my keys. Tris will not be waiting for me inside the car. Tris will not be waiting for me ever again.

I shouldn’t have come here. I shouldn’t have been anywhere that she could find.

We’re at my car.

“What the fuck is that ?” Norah asks.

I shrug and say, “It’s a Yugo.”

So this is what my promising life has been reduced to. The Jewish princess from Englewood Cliffs, fucking valedictorian who chose a Catholic girls’ high school to accompany her best friend through the experience, who chose to turn down Brown, the girl whose possibilities now that she’s about to be let loose upon the world should supposedly be infinite, is sitting through the middle of an April night in the passenger side of a Yugo that smells like Tris’s patchouli aromatherapy oil. Perhaps it’s only the vehicle that won’t start, but it feels like it’s my life that won’t start. Yes, this Yugo with the passenger-side seat metal coming through the torn seat fabric, scratching against the back of my thigh, this Cold War relic that won’t respond to Nick’s turn of the ignition key, is like a fucking metaphor for my sorry-ass life: STALLED.

Nick might be a bass god but he’s also a parking god because he scored a spot right in front of the club, the unfortunate consequence of which is that now my stalled ears are receiving the listening benefit of the band playing inside the club and they’re really fucking good and that’s really pissing me off. I’m not sure if I backed into my life by getting into this Yugo with my new almost-boyfriend, or if I backed out of it by leaving the club to save Caroline once again, but whichever end it is, I’m left wanting more music. It’s still Hunter on the stage but now I can hear that the Dev dude is singing some strange harmony with Hunter on another Green Day cover, “Time of Your Life.” Hunter Does Hunter have accelerated the lite-FM classic song (because how much more punk can you go than producing an elevator song staple – bless you, Billie Joe) up to Parliament tempo and I swear there’s a DJ mixing a sample of that Michael Jackson freak moaning about how Billie Jean is not my lover, the kid is not my son into the groove. How is that possible and why does it sound so damn good and if the Yugo doesn’t start within one second I am outta here, I don’t care how tempted I am to try for another seven minutes of being Nick’s girlfriend after we’ve got Caroline back to my place. For a poor schmuck, he’s temptatiously fucking cute.

“Do you hear that?” I ask Nick.

“What? Is the engine starting?” The poor schmuck is not only cute and a great head-bob thrash-dancer, he’s probably a good guy. At least he proved deft at maneuvering a drunken Caroline goddess into the backseat of a freakin’ Yugo and making her think it was her idea. Let’s not forget the part about him being a great kisser. He deserves better than a Tris – and a Yugo.

I tell him, “No. Dude. Listen up, that rhythmic banging inside the club? It’s called drumming. It’s, like, famous as an underlying staple of sound since primitive cultures.” I play drums on the glove compartment of the Yugo. The compartment pops open from my banging. A Polaroid of Tris is taped inside the compartment. I rip it out. Bloody hell! Caroline isn’t paranoid – Tris really did swipe Caroline’s vintage cut-off white T-shirt with Flea’s autograph over the left breast area. I toss the picture out the window and turn to face Nick. “Your fucking band needs a drummer. I saw you grinding to Hunter’s earlier Green Day cover of ‘Chump’ back in the club. I know you feel rhythm more than just your heart-attack-inducing bass skills. Think about it. What would ‘Chump’ have been without Tres Cool? Get a drummer for your band, guy. Really.”

Caroline has yet to reach her warm-cuddly drunk stage, post-heave and pre-slumber, which would put her in inquisitive stage about now, and right on schedule, from the backseat, she interjects, “Really,” because Caroline is always picking up sentences where I leave ’em off. “Driver person. Hey!” She taps Nick’s shoulder from behind him. Nick looks around to her but quickly turns back around to face me. Such a pretty girl, such rancid tequila breath. Caroline wants to know, “Why would you wear such ugly shoes? Answer me, driver person. Please?”

“The shoes go with the car, Caroline,” I tell her. “Yugo drivers are required to wear torn-and-graffitied hi-top Chucks shit on their feet. It’s like a rule. It’s in the manual.” I pull the Yugo car manual from the glove compartment. A chewed-up wad of gum extends from the manual back to the compartment. I take the McDonald’s napkin stuck inside the compartment and wipe the gum away from the manual. Fucking Tris and her Bubblicious. I throw the manual into the backseat for Caroline’s perusal.

She ignores the Good Book. “Are you Yugoslavian, driver person?” Caroline asks Nick. “Norah, is that why’s he’s driving us home? He’s the taxi driver, right?”

“Sure,” I tell her. He’ll be the taxi driver as soon as his Yugo-cab will fucking start. We’re operating on a limited window of opportunity here. It took ten minutes just to get Caroline into the backseat. I can see Randy now, loitering outside the club, smoking a cigarette, talking up Crazy Lou but glancing toward the Yugo, ready to pounce on Caroline again, I’m sure, if this Yugo doesn’t blow outta here soon.

“Is there such an ethnicity as Yugoslavian anymore?” Nick asks. “Now that the country’s all broken up? That was some bad shit that went down there in Serbia and Croatia, right? Damn shame.” He shakes his head and his hand idles on the ignition key, as if he’s given up. He knocks his head against the wheel, then slams his fist against the stick shift. He’s done. Can’t take it anymore. This car ain’t going nowhere. He looks so depressed and defeated, I don’t have the heart to slam him for acting like he’s grieving for Yugoslavia when it’s so obvious he’s really grieving for Tris.

Caroline informs us, “I’m part Yugoslavian, you know. On my great-grandpa’s side.”

I tell her, “You’re part Transylvanian, too, bitch. Be quiet. I need to think.” How the hell are we going to get home now? And why do I have to get Caroline home, anyway? There’s a hot guy sitting next to me, even if he is a Tris pass-along, but he’s got potential to be molded. Here I am in Manhattan, like Dad’s favorite Stevie Wonder song goes: New York, just like I pictured it – skyscrapers, and everythang. Shit is supposed to be happening here, not stalled Yugo shit. Through the car windshield, I can see the Empire State Building, lit up in pink and green for Easter. I am reminded that Jesus died for Caroline’s sins, not mine – I’m from a different tribe – so why am I saving her ass again when I could be outside this Yugo getting some life-living going on? I never properly used up those two add-on minutes of being Nick’s girlfriend.

Caroline says, “You’re not the boss of me, Sub Z.”

It’s basic instinct, I can’t help myself. I turn around to face Dragonbreath and snap, “Don’t call me that!” She giggles, satisfied to have gotten a rise out of me.

Caroline’s giggling mercifully transforms to dozing. In the reflection off the passenger-side mirror, I see that Caroline appears to be falling asleep, her cheek pressed against the backseat window. I’ve never seen her pass out without heaving first. Nick and his Yugo may have magical properties, after all. Please, let it last till we can make it back to Jersey.

A heave-snore from the backseat announces that Caroline is indeed out. YES! Sweet Jesus, thank you – for this temporary stay, and hey, I’ll throw in thanks for the dying-for-my-sins thing, too. You ROCK, J.C.! I’m totally gonna not stress on the fact that once I get home, I’ll have to sleep next to Dragonbreath to make sure she doesn’t choke on her own vomit in her sleep. Again.

“That’s one problem solved,” I tell Nick. I place my left hand on his right hand, which is clutched around the stick shift. “Now, what are we gonna do about this other one?”

He flinches a little at my touch and pulls his hand away to turn the ignition key again. Don’t know why I placed my hand on his anyway.

He wants to know, “Why would you fuck up Tris’s Barbies?” and now I’m like, Shit, is this the price of the sacrifice for Caroline passing out unexpectedly early – that Nick has taken over the melancholy stage that usually follows Caroline’s inquisitive one? “I have three sisters and I know that’s some serious business, messing with another girl’s Barbies.” Okay, maybe he’s not being melancholy because his sarcastic smile lets me know he’s back to being standard-issue band-boy irony creature. Damn him that it somewhat makes me wanna jump his bones.

Still, I can tell he’s looking for information, but I am not going into the Tris thing with him. I just can’t. Sub Z can only do so much damage to the male psyche in one night.

On the other hand, perhaps I could make a project out of Nick, detox him from Tris, rehabilitate him, put him through a good-girlfriend immersion program. I like sevens – we could go steady like all sweet and nice, for seven days instead of minutes. Then I’ll set him free, less the Tris baggage, molded and perfected into the great guy I know he is under those Tris-heavy eyes. He’ll be my gift to womankind, an ideal male specimen of musicianship and making out. I’ll send him back out into the world thoroughly cleansed of irony, no longer holding all females in contempt as potential Tris suspects. Now who rocks, J.C.?

A white van barrels down the one-way street in the wrong direction, stopping in front of the fire hydrant directly ahead of the Yugo.

“Oh, thank God,” Nick says. Interesting. We’re in tune on the divine intervention thing. Fate?

A guy emerges from the van and I recognize him as the guy who made out with the non-singing member of Nick’s band after their band’s set. I only caught a minute of their kissing before I had to look away. Sub Z is way turned on by two boys kissing. I don’t see why ogling same-sex kissing should be the exclusive domain of frat boys whacking off to lesbian action, that’s so sexist. Feminism should be all inclusive – it should be about sexual liberation, equal pay for equal work, and the fundamental girl right of boy2boy appreciation.

If not for the really hot kissing I witnessed between those two guys, I might not have answered Nick’s request to be his five-minute girlfriend by pulling his mouth down to mine. That seems like years ago, not minutes, what with Dragon-breath and the stalled Yugo since, and WHY am I giving so much thought to being suspended in time and in Yugo with this Nick guy, anyway? He’s hung up on TRIS!

The boyfriend of the band guy – he’s so emo he’s practically a Muppet – leans into Nick’s open window. He tells Nick, “Pop the hood and we’ll try to jump-start this baby.”

“Yeah,” Nick says, like it’s their routine. “Thanks, Scot.”

Scot looks my way. He says, “Thom could use some help in the van if you don’t mind.”

What the fuck? Whatever.

I shrug and get out of the Yugo while Scot pops the Yugo hood to attach the jumper cables. I pass Randy leaning against the wall of the club and I give him a shove, just because. Then I step to the passenger side of the van and see band equipment in the back. I knew Nick’s band had a van! Why didn’t I specify – van, not Yugo, back to Jersey?

The guy sitting in the driver side of the van says, “Hi. I’m Thom. With an ‘h.’”

I tell him, “I’m Gnorah. With a ‘g.’ The ‘g’ is silent. Like ‘gnome.’”

“Really?” Thom says.

“No, not really. I have an ‘h’ too. At the end. Used to be just N-O-R-A but then I had the H legally added to my name after my dad failed to sign up Norah Jones when he had the chance. I don’t like him to forget these things easily.”

“Really?” Thom says again.

Not really. “Really,” I say. “But I can’t imagine why I am in this van to talk about H’s. What’s up?”

Thom hands me a crumpled fifty-dollar bill. He says, “Scot and I chipped in. We saw that kiss between you and Nick.” Thom’s not the singer of their band, but he nevertheless can channel the Aretha, not En Vogue, version of a song when he sings out, “Giving him something he can feel!”

“I don’t get it,” I say.

The hood of the van obstructs our view, but we can hear the rattle of the Yugo engine threatening to come to life. “No time to explain,” Thom says. “Let’s just say Scot and I hate the fucking guts of Nick’s ex and we’d like to give him a little assistance with moving on with his life. So, please, take the boy out tonight, see the city, see the backseat of the Yugo, I don’t care, just please take our friend out tonight. We’ve already decided that we like you and that you’ll be Nick’s salvation. No pressure or anything.”

Flattery could get him everywhere and I am all about salvation right now, but, “Can’t,” I tell him, though I’m tempted. Really tempted. I’m curious what would happen if I dared another leap toward Nick’s hand – or other parts, like that really tasty NoMo mouth. “Nick’s giving me and my drunk friend a ride back to Jersey. She’s asleep in the back of the Yugo now.”

Thom says, “We’ve got a mattress in the back of the van. We’ll trade you. We’ll get her home if you’ll take on Nick tonight.”

I decide some living is worth doing. “Done,” I tell him. I slip the fifty into my inside shirt pocket, then scribble the directions to my house on Thom’s hand. I tell him where to find the house key under the potted plant and not to worry about my parents – they’ll probably tip him for getting Caroline home and making me go out on a date with a live male. And I am not feeling frigid about Nick at all. I can’t remember the last time I felt anticipation – not of sex (necessarily), but of getting to know a delicious new person, even if he is a poor schmuck.

So we’re settled, and I get out of the van with Thom, who enlists Scot to help him transport Caroline from the Yugo to the van. But once I’m back inside the Yugo, I have no chance to explain to Nick the new order of this middle of the night.

Because through the windshield, I see that Randy at the wall is doing the soul-brother shake with a new arrival who happens to be the mind-fucking guy who turned me Sub Z last year. Apparently Uncle Lou’s actual nephew did not survive his year on the kibbutz in South Africa. The call of the real wild – Manhattan – must have been too great for him. And fuck, the Evil Ex has seen me and now he’s at my side at the passenger door of the Yugo and he’s saying, “Hey, baby, you ready to pick up where we left off ?”

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