Free The After Girls by Leah Konen Page A

happen?”
    Ella looked down at her purse, fished around but then looked back up. “I’m fine,” she said. “It’s just that it’s the first show since …”
    “Since Astrid died,” Sydney interrupted. “I know,” she said. “You don’t have to remind me.”
    Ella just stared at her — deer in the headlights.
    Next to them, Ben and Carter started talking about football. The two had always been friendly — they’d been science partners in 8th grade or something — but in the past couple of years, their friendship had turned into a full-on bromance.
    “Did you at least bring it?” Sydney asked.
    Ella narrowed her eyes, and then it seemed to dawn on her. “Oh,” she said. “Yeah.”
    “Sweet,” Sydney said, trying to sound at least somewhat cheerful. “Bathroom break.”
    The walls were covered in Sharpie phone numbers, cracked paint, and Xeroxed flyers for shows that had already happened and beginner guitar lessons. Ella pulled the nail polish remover out of her purse, and Syd walked into the first stall, jerking on the roll of toilet paper and scrunching it into a ball.
    She grabbed the remover from Ella, poured a little on the paper, and began to work on the X on her hand. It was a trick they’d cultivated long ago, after they’d fully pissed off the bouncer by covering the backs of their hands in so much Vaseline that his pen wouldn’t even work. This way, they took their underage Xs with smiling, innocent faces and scrubbed them off when safely out of sight. You only had to be sixteen to go to shows at The Grove, and once the marks disappeared, no one gave you any trouble.
    Syd scrubbed harder, and the paper in her hands began to turn black as her skin cleared, turning just the slightest bit red. When the X was nearly gone, at least gone enough to pass in a dark room, she poured some more remover and handed it to Ella.
    “I don’t know,” Ella said, somber. “I’m not sure if I want to drink tonight.”
    Sydney crossed her arms. She knew that Ella would never adopt the party-girl persona that she so readily embraced, but still, Ella had always had fun at her shows. When their set was done, they’d all drink a beer together and imagine that Sydney had finally made it big, trading fantasy stories of cute, bespectacled groupies and sketchy tour buses that would inevitably come along with fame.
    “Geez, El,” she snapped. “What the hell happened?”
    Ella looked down, then shrugged. “It’s just been a rough week,” she said.
    “I know,” Sydney said. “All the more reason to drink.” Sydney forced a smile and held the wad of paper out to her.
    Ella shrugged again. “I don’t really work that way, Syd.”
    “It’s been hard for me, too,” Sydney said. “Obviously. But this is our first show of the summer, and it’s our only show before the fair. I just want to have a good time. Please.”
    Ella hesitated.
    “
Please,
” she said. “I need this.”
    “Okay,” Ella said. “Alright.” And she took the wadded up tissue. “You’re going to be great,” she said, as she scrubbed her hand. “I know you are.”
    “I hope so,” Sydney said, and after a moment, they walked back out. They headed straight to the bar and ordered their first beers.
    • • •
    It felt good to be up on stage again. The three of them were six songs in; they had just a couple more to go. Sweat beaded on her brow, and her heart felt like it was beating right along with the strumming of Max’s guitar. The lights were bright on Sydney’s face, red and blue and shining strong so that the crowd in front of her became one mass of swaying, vibrating bodies, and she could tell that they liked what they were hearing. Sydney wasn’t drunk, really. She wouldn’t be until later, after their set was over. But she’d had just enough to make her blood pulse fast and her body feel warm and light, the music natural and
alive
, as if her bow were simply an extension of her hand.
    The problems she’d had in