Free Freefall by Mindi Scott Page B

finger. “You aren’t cutting yours off too, are you?”
    Rosetta watched her hair in Carr’s hand with her eyes slightly narrowed. “No.”
    “Good.” He let go, and the long, black strands unraveled and fell back in place.
    I thought about moving to get away from them, but I’d been here first. I wasn’t going to let them run me off . . . or keep distracting me from my problem. Which, I realized then, could be solved if the guys found a new bass player to take on the road. One who wasn’t closely related to the lead singer/dictator. One who was out of school. One who was into the rockabilly scene. One who didn’t have incapacitating stage fright.
    Vicki was still yammering while I tried to think of someone who could take my place. No one was coming to mind. What Jared said was kind of true: good bass players can be toughto find because most dudes take up guitar instead to get all the glory, solos, and chicks.
    There was movement across from me as Vicki and Carr got up.
    “Thanks for the help,” Vicki said, running her fingers through her hair. “Hopefully, the next time you see me I won’t look like such a freak.”
    Rosetta laughed. “You don’t look like a freak!”
    Carr reached for Rosetta’s hand. “How about joining me for lunch at the golf course?”
    She smiled up at him but left him hanging. “No thanks. I have something to do this afternoon.”
    “Like what?” he asked.
    “Just stuff for school.”
    “You’re always so mysterious,” Vicki said. “What are you up to?”
    “It’s
nothing
,” Rosetta insisted. “You two go do your things. I’ll see you later.”
    Carr looked like he wanted to keep bugging her, but Vicki pulled him to the escalator.
    The second they were gone, Rosetta jumped up from her own couch and sat next to me. “I wonder who has it worse,” she said. “Kids who are forced to move a lot growing up, or the ones who are stuck around all the same kids their whole lives?”
    It was an off-the-wall thing to say, but I was getting the idea that this was how she usually started conversations.
    “I have no clue,” I said.
    “Me neither. I’venever liked moving or having to make all new friends. But I’m noticing that people who go from elementary school to middle school to high school with the same kids never get a chance to start over. Like, maybe a certain guy will always be seen as a troublemaker, while some new girl can move to town and be accepted because no one knows her. It doesn’t seem fair.”
    After dealing with Kendall’s lies—or
omissions
, as she would call them—for so many years, Rosetta’s openness blew me away.
    “If you’re wondering if I’m jealous that you’re in with Vicki and Carr, the answer is no,” I said. “I figured out a long time ago that they’re not worth my time.”
    Rosetta blushed. “Oh. I was speaking purely hypothetically, obviously.”
    “Obviously,” I said.
    So much for her being open.
    We sat in a silence that can only be described as uncomfortable. Rosetta chewed her bottom lip and watched the couch cushion between us like she was worried it was going to come to life and attack her. I flipped the magazine to a random page to keep up with my fake reading.
    “Do you want to go to the café downstairs?” she asked. “Maybe get some hot chocolate?”
    I had no doubt that she was talking to me, but I looked over my shoulder anyway to see if someone was watching, if this was some kind of joke. “Hot chocolate?”
    She smiled. “Oh, don’t even try to convince me that you’re acoffee drinker. You and me? We’re nonconformists. And as nonconformists we don’t give in to the Washington State coffee obsession. Right?”
    She didn’t look like much of a nonconformist in her pale blue shirt and khaki slacks; in fact, she looked like every prep I’d ever seen. But there
was
something about her, something not quite like the rest of them.
    “I thought you had important school stuff to do,” I said.
    “Exactly.