“No,” I lie.

He gives me an I don’t believe you at all smile.

It’s a nice smile. I move us on from it. “You want to be a musician?”

He shifts position so he can face me better. “We’re really doing this thing?”

“What thing?”

“What Fifi told us to do. The get-to-know-each-other thing.”

“If there was a ballroom dance mafia, Fifi would be the kingpin. Our lives will be easier if we just do what she says.”

“I feel you,” he says with a quick laugh. He looks back at the clubs as we pass them. “I’m a musician already. What I want is to be a rock star. I want world domination. I want the big stadium. The sold-out shows. The cover of Rolling Stone. The induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”

“The groupies,” I interject.

He laughs and shrugs.

“But the odds are so against you,” I say.

“Yeah, so I’ve heard.” He sounds defiant and tired at the same time.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to tell him that his probability of making it is low. I wonder how his parents feel about his big dream. Parents don’t usually love it when their kids take risks with their futures.

“You know what, though?” I say. “If everybody thought about the odds, there’d be no rock stars in the first place.”

His smile comes back, and I’m happier about it than I probably should be.

Our bus pulls up to a stoplight. A few pedestrians wave like we’re the actual celebrities.

“So you moved out here to become a rock star?”

“That’s part of it.”

“What’s the other part?”

He examines my face for a few seconds. I get the feeling he’s trying to decide how much to trust me with. “A friend of mine died last year. Clay. He was our bassist.”

“Oh, X, I’m so sorry.”

He nods down at his hands. “Me too.”

I don’t think he’s going to say anything else, but then he does. “The band was me, Clay, Jamal on drums and Kevin on keys. We almost called ourselves The Lonely Onlys.”

“How come?”

“Not a whole lot of Black kids in the Lake Elizabeth school system,” he says with a smile. “Clay and I knew each other from middle school. We met Kevin and Jamal at band tryout freshman year of high school. We said it was a miracle that there were four of us.” The memory of the day is in his eyes. “And before you give me a hard time again, I didn’t pick the name X Machine myself.”

“When did I give you a hard time?”

“Seriously? You don’t remember? When we first met. Your exact words were ‘So the band is named after you?’ ”

“Are you sure?” I ask, even though I remember perfectly. “That doesn’t sound like me.”

“You have an evil twin sister?”

“No.”

“Then it was you.”

We grin at each other.

“Clay came up with the name. He said since I was front man and the band was my idea, it was only right. We all thought X Machine sounded like we were from the future.” He drops his head back against the headrest. He swallows once and then twice, like he’s trying to hold down something that wants to come out. “It happened so fast. One minute he was there, and the next he was gone.”

Now I get it. I understand why he says yes to everything and why he tries to live in the moment. It’s because his friend died. He’s not being pretentious, like I thought he was. Like I hoped he was. He’s smart and thoughtful and funny, maybe even a little philosophical.

I need for him to be altogether less…everything.

I need for him to have a secret stash of toenail clippings or nose hairs.

The bus makes a wide left turn. I slide along the seat and my shoulder presses into his. I have to wait for the turn to end before I can pull away again.

“We were planning to move out here after high school anyway. After Clay died, me and the guys decided to seize the day. We dropped out of high school.”

“Wait. You dropped out of high school?”

“Yeah.”

“But aren’t you a senior? You only had one semester to go.”

“Some things can’t wait, Evie.”

“Is that why you broke up with Jess?” I ask. “To move out here and become a rock star?”

“Wow, I’m surprised you remember her name,” he says.

“I have a good memory for names,” I say. I mean, I don’t actually, but it’s better if he thinks I do.

“Jess and I weren’t going to work out. We didn’t fit.”

There’s so much I want to ask about why they didn’t fit, but I definitely should not be delving into his love life. Now’s a good time for a topic switch, I decide.

“How do your parents feel about you dropping out of school?”

“Poorly,” he says. He turns to look at me. “You ever wanted something so bad you couldn’t wait?”

“Yeah,” I say, but I don’t elaborate. The day I rode from school all the way to Santa Monica to try to convince Dad to come home was the most I’ve ever wanted anything.

We spend the rest of the tour mostly lost in our own thoughts. “Sorry we didn’t see any stars,” I say as we’re getting off the bus.

“No worries. Still got something out of it.”

“What?”

“We did the assignment and got to know each other a little.”

Fifi. Right. I kind of lost sight of the reason we were hanging out in the first place.

“We might even become friends,” he says.

“Fifi said we had to get to know each other, not like each other,” I say, teasing.

“Yeah, but you like me. I can tell.”

“Have you ever heard the expression ‘She rolled her eyes so hard she saw her own brain’?”

He slaps his hand to his chest and laughs a loud, wide-open laugh. It’s a great laugh.

“Can we at least agree that you don’t hate me?” he asks.

“I don’t hate you,” I say.

He throws an arm around me and grins. “Well, that’s a start,” he says.