“It’s two to one!” I replied.
“Hey, you guys decided this isn’t a democracy when you vetoed Grab Your Joystick without the slightest consideration.”
“Okay, we actually did vote on that, in a very democratic manner, and anyway, why ask for a tiebreaker if you’re just going to ignore it?”
Joydeep gestured to his throat. “I’m sorry. I think I should be saving my voice.” We sank into silence until the next air break.
“Hey, this is Joydeep, and you’re listening to … the radio.”
He looked my way, and I waved my hand to indicate more.
“That song was … something, right?” He paused as if someone was going to answer. “This is our show, and you’re listening to it. Which is cool, so. Thank you. Here is another song, and … hope you’re having a great day. Okay, bye.”
“You’re not ending a phone call!” Jamie squawked as I started the next song.
“And why are you talking like that?” Sasha said.
“Like what?”
She made a face. “I’m JoyDEEP, and this is the RADIO. Here is A SONG.”
“I was threading the needle!” he cried.
“You have to give like actual information, though,” I said. “You have to be, like, specific about stuff.”
“I was!”
Sasha raised her eyebrows. “That was specific? God, I hope you never witness a crime.”
Joydeep folded his arms. “Tell me, why is it ‘gang up on Joydeep’ day? Why is that what we’ve all decided to do today instead of having a very nice and fun time doing radio?”
“You were the one who said you wanted to host!” I said. “And that it was the easiest part of this whole thing!”
“Well, I’m doing my best,” he replied.
“It’s not personal,” Jamie said, in his reasonable Jamie tone of voice. “We all just want to do well. Plus Nina has, like, a legacy to uphold.”
Sasha frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” I replied quickly, shooting Jamie a look. “It means nothing.”
* * *
We parted ways in the hall after our show wrapped up for the night: (“This has been Joydeep and Sounds from the Nineties—uh, of the Nineties. Thanks for listening, and uh … yeah. Bye!”). Joydeep and Sasha headed toward the west entrance, but I followed Jamie in the opposite direction.
“Hey.”
He turned and looked mildly surprised, like we hadn’t just been sitting in a small room together for the last two hours. “Hey.”
“So. About … all that.” He didn’t jump in—though I don’t know why he would’ve—so there was an awkward beat before I continued. “Maybe, like … lay off the radio stuff?”
Jamie frowned. “The stuff that we were just doing? Where we do radio?”
I squeezed my eyes shut briefly. “I mean, like … the stuff about my dad.”
“Oh.”
“The whole … legacy … thing,” I continued. “I just … I kind of just want to leave him and everything out of it. I don’t want it to be about that. I just want to take this class and be done with it.”
He nodded. “Yeah, sorry.” He scratched the back of his head. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I just think it’s cool.”
“It’s really not.”
He nodded again, and it was quiet.
“Are you taking the bus?” he said after a moment.
“Rose is picking me up.” I paused. I couldn’t not ask. We were going to the same place, after all. “Do you … want a ride?”
Surprise flashed across his face again. “Uh … sure. Yeah, that would be great.”
* * *
Rose pulled up to the front of the school in Mom’s car, exhaust billowing out the back tailpipe, plumes of white in the cold January air.
Jamie and I piled in.
“Well, what a surprise,” Rose said, glancing back at him. “I charge by the quarter mile, you know.”
Jamie looked like he wasn’t sure if this was a joke.
“I’m kidding,” she said after a moment, and Jamie huffed a laugh.
Rose had some kind of indie band playing, soft bleating with acoustic backing. It was a far cry from the “Best of 1990”—or at least the “Best of 1990” according to Jamie—playlist we had just broadcast.
“What were you still doing at school this late, James?” she said as we pulled through the parking lot.
“Our radio show,” Jamie said.
“Oh.” Rose cut a glance at me. “That’s right. You guys are in the same group.”
I hadn’t mentioned it to her.
“How was work?” I said. A very subtle and nuanced change of subject.
“It was fine,” Rose replied. She worked at the fancy mall on Eighty-Sixth Street, at a store that specialized in weird, boho kind of clothes. That macramé stuff, my mom always joked. Rose was dressed in some of it now, thick fringe spilling out the bottom of her winter coat. I figure I’d better just lean into the whole art student thing, she had said when she first started working there. Just fully embrace it.
Rose was now in her second semester at IUPUI, at the Herron School of Art + Design. (The “+” was a very deliberate stylistic choice: “Did they workshop that plus?” Dad had asked. “I’ve been in meetings like that, and lemme tell you, they make you want to off yourself. Should we put an exclamation mark after ‘Summer Slam’? Let’s talk about it for forty-five minutes. Make sure we consider every conceivable consequence of the exclamation mark.”) She was studying visual communication design—something I wasn’t entirely sure I understood.
The secret was: She wasn’t entirely sure she understood it either.
I was the only one who knew it, but Rose had been struggling in her classes in the fall. She had almost failed a couple of them but just managed to squeak by with grades high enough to keep her scholarship. She played it off to Mom and said it was because she had been doing too much—working and all that. Mom tried to get her to cut back on her hours, and she had a bit, but I knew that wasn’t the real reason.
We never talked about it, though. It was kind of our thing, Rose and me. We could pretend with each other, and that was okay.
At least most of the time. “So how did the show go?” she said, not quite as accepting of my subject change as I would have hoped.
Unconsciously, my eyes flicked up to the mirror. I could see Jamie looking out of the window in the back.
“It was … something,” I replied.
Rose snorted. “Enthusiastic.”
Alexis had texted me partway through the show: Listening right now and I need to know if you’re holding your host at gunpoint or like what the situation is in-studio that’s making him sound like that
No offense lolol
But seriously though
“Nah, we just need a little … practice,” Jamie said. “Just gotta iron out a couple wrinkles.”
That was being generous, but that was Jamie in general. I flashed suddenly on him in second grade, when we were in the same class at Garfield Elementary. We were growing seeds once as a class project—everyone got a little Styrofoam cup full of dirt, got to press their fingers in to create divots and plant the seeds. We left them along the window ledge, everyone’s cups printed with their names. It’s wild looking back how something that sounds so boring now can be so exciting to you as a little kid, but it was. I guess when you haven’t experienced very many things, lots of mundane stuff becomes exciting simply because you’ve never done it before.