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  “I could help you with algebra, if you want,” Will said.

  “Nah, don’t trouble yourself,” Tig said. “I’m fine.”

  “Oh, but Will is so great at algebra!” Olivia said. “He’d be glad to help you!”

  “I couldn’t ask you to do that,” Tig said. “Really.”

  “I don’t mind,” Will said.

  “Then it’s settled,” Olivia said. “Tig, Will is going to tutor you in math, and we won’t hear another word about it! We’ve got to keep those grades up if we want Pandora’s Box to thrive.”

  “You know how much I want the band to thrive,” said Tig. And she did. More than anything.

  But spending more time with Will wasn’t likely to help that cause.

  At her drum lesson that afternoon, Tig’s concentration was shot. “This shouldn’t be such a difficult pattern for you at this point,” her teacher, Lee, said. “Everything all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Tig said. “Just a little distracted, I suppose.”

  “Anything I can help with?”

  “I doubt it,” said Tig.

  “Oh, so it must be boy trouble,” Lee said.

  Tig blushed. “How’d you know?”

  “I didn’t. But from the look on your face right now, I’d say it was a pretty lucky guess.”

  “Don’t worry,” Tig said. “No boy is going to distract me from my music.”

  “As far as distractions go,” Lee said, “love’s one of the better ones.”

  Tig blushed again, and Lee chuckled. Then he reset the metronome and resumed counting: one and two and three and four . . .

  Chapter Seven

  “Exactly how bad is your algebra grade?” Kyra asked that night on the phone.

  “It’s not that bad,” Tig said. “I’m in C territory.”

  “Yeah, but C territory is unstable. One dumb move and you’re in D territory.”

  “Or one smart move and I’m in B territory.”

  “What if you stay in C? Will your mom ground you?”

  “Not for a C. Not if she feels like I’m doing the best I can.”

  “Well, at least Will is going to help you,” Kyra said. “He’s totes smart.”

  “Yeah,” Tig said.

  “Aren’t Will and Olivia just the cutest couple ever?”

  “Cute as a button,” Tig said. She hoped the sarcasm in her voice hadn’t been as biting as she thought it was.

  “Isn’t it funny that he started liking her back, after all that time? I mean, she was so hung up on him for so long, and it was like he didn’t even know she was alive. Then all of a sudden, coupledom! I guess it just goes to show that persistence pays off.”

  “I guess so,” Tig replied.

  “See, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all these years. If we just keep on being nice to Regan and her friends, we will eventually wear them down, just like Olivia did with Will.”

  “I’m not interested in wearing anybody down,” Tig said. “Man, Kyra, why do you care so much about being friends with the Bots, anyway?”

  “We’re never going to be friends with them if you don’t stop calling them the Bots!”

  “Fine by me,” Tig said. “But that’s what they are—little robots with shiny hair and the same uniform. They all do everything Regan programs them to do. It’s like Haley and Sofia and the rest of them have never had an original thought in their lives.”

  “You’ve got to admit that Regan has been a lot better to you this year,” Kyra said.

  “Yeah,” Tig replied. “I don’t get that. Why is she talking to me and stuff all of a sudden?”

  “Maybe it’s because she likes you,” Kyra said.

  “Or maybe it’s just another one of her plans to try to destroy Pandora’s Box,” Tig replied. “Have you forgotten that she buddied up to Claire all those months last school year just to try to keep her from singing lead for us?”

  “Yes, but now that we’re a real band and people think we’re cool, Regan wants to be our friend.”

  “Has she been nice to you?”

  “No, not yet,” Kyra said. “But I’m sure it’s just a matter of time. I mean, I am the bass player.”

  “About that,” Tig said. “Have you been practicing?”

  “I’ve been pretty busy this week,” Kyra said.

  “Doing what?”

  “Well, helping with the laundry and stuff. Mom’s been gone so much with her sick friend that it’s just been Dad and me. I’ve been busy.”

  “Get unbusy,” Tig said. “By practice Thursday, you need to show some serious improvement.”

  “Whatever,” Kyra said.

  “I know you did not just ‘whatever’ me!” Tig said. “You think just because we’re cousins, I’m going to keep covering for you, but I’m not. I will make the tough decisions if you force me to.”

  “Okay, okay,” Kyra said. “I believe you.”

  But Tig knew Kyra didn’t really take her seriously at all.

  Chapter Eight

  Olivia decided that Will would tutor Tig every Tuesday after school for half an hour in the library. Try as she might, Tig couldn’t find a way out of it.

  At the first tutoring session, Olivia walked with Will to the library to meet Tig. “She’s probably going to be a tough one,” Olivia said to Will, right in front of Tig. “You wouldn’t believe how hard she fought this whole tutoring idea. She must really hate algebra!”

  “Yep,” said Tig. “I do hate me some algebra, all right.”

  “Well, good luck, Will,” Olivia said. “Call me later?”

  “Sure,” Will said.

  Olivia left, and Will sat down next to Tig and opened his algebra book. “Did you bring your book with you?” he asked.

  “No,” Tig said. “Forgot it.” She really had forgotten it, but she wished she hadn’t.

  “You can look on with me,” Will said.

  He moved the book, and his chair, closer to Tig. His shoulder touched hers. Regan had been right: it felt like an electric shock.

  “Okay, these kinds of problems are all about multiple operations,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Tig said. She knew exactly how to work the problems; they were easy, in fact. But she needed to play dumb. “I mean, what do I do first? There are so many numbers and letters.”

  Will looked at her and narrowed his eyes. “Tig, why are we even doing this?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Tutoring. Me, tutoring you in algebra? “You’re as good at algebra as I am.”

  “No, I’m not,” Tig replied. “I’m really having a tough time.”

  “Whatever you say,” Will said. “Now then, with this one, you have to remember to change the negative to a positive because of the negative sign inside the parenthesis.”

  They worked on about a dozen problems, Tig feigning ignorance the entire time. It was excruciating to work such easy problems so slowly, but she couldn’t tell Will the truth; that she’d lied about her algebra grade in order to cover up being rattled by Regan.

  The timer on Tig’s phone went off. “That’s thirty minutes,” she said. “Gotta run.”

  “Same time next week?”

  “You know what? I think I’ve had a real breakthrough. It all makes sense now. You really don’t have to tutor me anymore.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Totally. Everything is going to be fine. I know now what I’m supposed to do.”

  What I’m supposed to do, Tig thought, is stay as far away from you as possible.

  Chapter Nine

  Tig tried her best to convince Olivia that Will was so brilliant, he’d explained all the mysteries of algebra to her in thirty minutes and that no further tutoring would be necessary. But Olivia wouldn’t have any of it. “Your grades are too important,” she said. “I say we stay with the tutoring at least until the end of the grading period.”

  Tig had little choice but to go along with it. Once a week until the term was over, it would be just Tig and Will, alon
e after school in the library for thirty minutes. As if Tig didn’t have enough on her mind with the band. She decided to put the whole tutoring problem out of her mind until the next Tuesday. Maybe before then she would find some way to stop liking Will and the problem would be solved. Better to focus on each day as it came.

  Tig was already on edge about Thursday’s practice because she doubted that Kyra had practiced. She worried about how much longer the other girls would continue to tolerate it, especially Robbie.

  But when Robbie showed up, she wasn’t alone. She’d brought a girl, who was carrying a guitar, with her.

  “Guys, this is Paris,” Robbie said. She introduced each girl by name.

  “Great to finally meet you,” said Tig. But nothing about it felt great. In fact, Tig immediately disliked Paris, just from looking at her. Paris had thick, shampoo-commercial hair loaded with curls that came past her shoulder blades. She was wearing makeup on her eyes, and her jeans clung to curves neither Tig nor any of her friends had yet. Paris looked more like a sixteen-year-old than an eighth grader.

  “Nice to meet y’all, too,” Paris said. Tig decided she didn’t like her voice. She dragged out the i in nice too much.

  “So, tell us about yourself, Paris,” Olivia said.

  Paris launched into her life story, which Tig found completely boring. She lived on a farm with her parents, brother, and sister, and her hobbies included caring for goats and baton twirling. “I make soap from the goats’ milk,” Paris said. “It makes your skin really soft. I brought all of you some!” She opened a backpack and pulled out little cellophane-wrapped bars of homemade soap. Some were lavender, some were ivory, and some were swirls of lavender, green, and blue. “I add oils to them to scent them,” Paris explained. “And sometimes coloring to make them look pretty.”

  “Ooh, look! Mine’s lilac!” Kyra said, reading a little handwritten tag.

  “Mine’s vanilla!” said Claire. “How lovely!”

  Paris handed one to Tig. “I left yours unscented and dye-free,” she said. “Robbie said you had sensitive skin.”

  “Thanks,” Tig said, thinking, It’s not that sensitive. Besides, why would she want to bathe with something that had come out of a goat? Gross! Didn’t anyone else think it was gross? They didn’t seem to. They were too busy oohing and ahhing over their color-swirled, sweet-scented bars.

  “Did you say you twirl baton?” Tig asked.

  “Yeah,” Paris said. “I’m going to try out for majorette next year when I start high school. I hope I make it!”

  Tig looked at Robbie. “Aren’t majorettes those girls with the big hair and all the makeup who prance around in those skimpy outfits?” Robbie must have forgotten all that. If there was anything Robbie hated, it was the objectification of women. No way would Robbie want to be friends with a majorette!

  Paris looked confused. “I mean, I guess you could look at it that way,” she said. “But I don’t. It’s like stage makeup. On the football field, you’re so far away that people can barely see you.”

  Tig waited for Paris to address the skimpy outfits, but she didn’t. And strangely enough, Robbie let it slide right by. But Tig couldn’t help imagining herself and Paris, side by side, in majorette uniforms. The contrast would be stark, to say the least.

  It was all so weird. What could Robbie Chan possibly have in common with this majorette-wannabe who milked goats?

  “What’s say we run through ‘It’s Only Rock ’n Roll’?” Robbie said.

  The girls had chosen this song because the Rolling Stones spanned so many generations of fans, it would be good for a set list to include something from them. Plus, their songs tended to have basic chord progressions that wouldn’t be too tricky to learn. Robbie had suggested “It’s Only Rock ’n Roll” with the idea that Paris could simply strum eighth notes while Robbie tackled the fast chord changes between A and G. Tig could handle the drums, but the bass was no picnic on this song, and she doubted Kyra would be able to handle it.

  As Tig had feared, Kyra was all over the place. Before they even got to the first round of the chorus, she was lost.

  “I take it you practiced this not at all?” Robbie asked.

  “What makes you say that?” Kyra asked.

  “Well, let’s see. First of all, you’re overplaying.”

  “What does that even mean?” asked Kyra. “Like, playing too well?”

  “No, it means you’re playing too many notes. You’re supposed to be part of the rhythm section. The bass is a percussive instrument. And on this particular song, you have to play the melody because the guitar parts are mixed throughout the song, so the bass has to stay consistent to keep the core of the song anchored.”

  “Listen, Kyra,” Tig said. “All you’ve got to do is plunk a few root notes. But when you’re just that one beat off in the chorus, it gets me all turned around, and then the whole song’s a train wreck.”

  “Chill out, y’all,” Kyra said. “I had my teacher show it to me just last week. I haven’t had a lot of time to perfect it, okay?”

  “And have you practiced any on your own since your music lesson last week?” Tig asked.

  “I’ve been busy,” Kyra said.

  Robbie let out a big sigh. “Paris, you did great,” she said.

  “Thanks,” Paris replied. “Funny how the little bit I learned from those lessons in elementary school kind of came right back to me.”

  “Oh, sure, fawn all over the new girl to try to make me look bad,” Kyra said.

  “Nobody’s trying to make you look bad, Kyra,” Robbie snapped. “Trust me, you do a fine job of that all by yourself.”

  “Well, maybe if all I had to do was stand there and strum eighth notes while you did all the heavy lifting, you’d think I’d done a great job too,” Kyra said.

  “She has a point,” Paris said. “What I was doing really wasn’t that hard. Kyra, do you want to try it?”

  “What do you mean?” Kyra asked.

  “I’m just saying, if you want to swap, you can use my guitar, and I’ll give it a try on the bass. I’ve always kind of thought the bass was cool.”

  Kyra looked at Tig as though this were some sort of a trap. Tig shrugged. “Okay, fine,” Kyra said. She handed Paris her bass, and Paris handed over her guitar.

  “You just bought that guitar and already you’re letting someone else use it?” Tig asked.

  “It’s rent-to-own,” Paris said. “I figured, why sink a bunch of money into a guitar if this doesn’t work out?”

  “Good thinking,” Tig said. She didn’t add, And with any luck, maybe it won’t work out, but she thought it.

  “Can we take ten so I can show Paris the bass line?” Robbie asked.

  “Sure,” Tig said. “Anybody want to go in the house for some sweet tea?” They all did. “I’ll bring some out for y’all,” she said to Paris and Robbie.

  When they got to the kitchen, Kyra launched in. “As if she’s going to be able to teach Paris that bass line in ten minutes!”

  “I know,” Tig said. “That’s kind of ambitious.”

  “Maybe she can,” Claire said. “I thought it was nice of Paris to offer. Didn’t you?”

  “I think she’s just trying to show off,” Kyra said. “The bass is a lot harder than it looks.”

  “Does anyone else find it weird that Paris and Robbie are friends?” Tig asked.

  “Weird how?” Olivia asked.

  “I mean, I just wouldn’t have put the two of them together,” Tig said. “What could they possibly have in common?”

  “Summer camp?” Claire offered.

  “An interest in music?” said Olivia.

  Tig gave up. Obviously, they didn’t see how mismatched Robbie and Paris were as friends. “Guess we’d better get back.”

  In the studio, Tig handed a glass of tea to Robbie and one to Paris. “How’s it going?” Tig asked.

  “Pretty good,” Robbie said. “I think she can hang for the first stanza at least. But on this next r
un-through, everybody just keep going when the bass drops out.”

  “Agreed,” Tig said.

  Tig counted off and waited for the catastrophe. But it didn’t happen. Paris was able to play the first several bars of the song, and when she couldn’t play anymore, she stopped as the rest of the band continued. She’d played only a short portion of the bass line, but she’d played it accurately. Meanwhile, Kyra had flubbed the rhythm guitar eighth notes that were supposed to have been such a cinch.

  “Told you Paris was a quick study,” Robbie said after the song was over.

  “Remember that time at camp when I had to tie that knot in, like, ten seconds?” Paris said. She and Robbie laughed. Tig felt completely left out. She resented that this newcomer—with her salon-perfect hair and swimsuit-model figure—had entered her studio, insinuated herself into her band, and was now having inside jokes with her cool friend.

  They ran through the song twice more. Both times, Kyra messed up the rhythm guitar part, and Paris kind of nailed the bass line.

  Much to Tig’s dismay, it looked like Paris would be sticking around.

  Chapter Ten

  “So?” Robbie asked Tig the next morning at school.

  “So what?” Tig knew exactly so what but wanted to delay the inevitable as long as possible.

  “So how great is Paris? I told you she was awesome.”

  “Yeah, she’s nice,” Tig said.

  “What’s the deal, Ripley?” Robbie said.

  “What deal? There is no deal.”

  “Of course there is. You think I don’t know you well enough to know when there’s a deal?”

  “It’s fine,” Tig said. “Your friend Paris is nice. What else do you want?”

  “You don’t like Paris!”

  “I did not say that.”

  “You didn’t not say it.”

  “I like her fine.”

  “Why don’t you like her?”

  “I just said I like her fine.”

  “Ripley.”

  “I mean, she’s nice. I just . . . I don’t know. She’s not someone I would have pictured you being so attached to. She’s just so different from you.”