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complexion.
    “Maybe it’s a sign,” Jeff said. His face was working its way back to pale.
    “What?”
    “The fact that Ella is a drummer and goes to your school and works here.”
    “Sign of what?”
    “I don’t know, Street. Help me out here.”
    “I don’t believe in signs.”
    “You don’t?”
    “My dad told me to beware of things that a lot of people believe.”
    “He’s probably right about that,” Jeff said.
    “So if you believe in signs, you probably believe in God,” I said.
    “No, not really.”
    “Because you’re not going to get anywhere with me, talking about God. I get too much of it at home.”
    “Your mother is religious?”
    “AA,” I said. “There’s a lot of God talk but it’s vague. God of your understanding and all that.”
    “It doesn’t rub off on you?”
    “God is not understandable to me.”
    “Well, isn’t that the point?”
    “I don’t know what the point is, Jeff.”
    “I think it’s pretty obvious there’s some kind of plan. Ascheme, a system. Numbers have taught me that. All those X’s and O’s. You don’t have to know what the system is to understand it. I mean, the idea that we keep inventing systems, algorithmic and whatnot, means we’re modeling it after something that already exists.”
    “You’re losing me.”
    “We’ll pick this up tomorrow,” he said. “So little time, so many pizzas to make.”
    Right before I punched out, I got up my nerve and approached Ella. I didn’t think she and I had said more than twelve words to each other in the whole year we’d both been working at Peace. Which was why I didn’t know she went to Laurel Hall. She was shoving a pizza into the oven and her back was to me but somehow she saw me anyway.
    “What do you want?” the back of her head said to me.
    “Oh, I just wondered … I was thinking … I’m Blanche.”
    “You’re thinking you’re Blanche?”
    “I know I am.”
    “I know you’re Blanche, too.”
    “Well, we’ve never actually talked.”
    “Eight people work here. Two are girls. I figured it out.”
    “Okay. So I just found out you go to LaHa?”
    “Yep.”
    Still with her back to me.
    “I go there, too,” I said.
    “You are telling me things I know. Do you want to explain prime numbers or gravity next? I’m working.”
    “I write the music column.”
    She turned. Her face was small and fierce. Her dark eyeswere piercing and her hair was almost short enough to be considered a buzz cut. She reminded me of Sinead O’Connor, who was an Irish singer famous for a Prince song called “Nothing Compares 2 You.” She got even more famous by tearing up a picture of the pope on
Saturday Night Live.
    “I’ve read your column,” Ella said. “You know a lot about old music. You’ve got a lot of opinions, too.”
    “Oh, thanks.”
    She shrugged. “It seems like a waste of time.”
    I said, “Why do you go to LaHa? I’m a scholarship kid.”
    She stared at me for a while.
    “I got kicked out of all the others.”
    “What for?”
    “Breaking the rules. Being weird. Who knows.”
    “Jeff said you play the drums?”
    She shrugged. “I fool around.”
    “Well, I need a drummer.”
    “What for?”
    “I’ve been thinking about something. I thought I’d run it by you.”
    She waited.
    “Okay?” I asked.
    “I’m waiting.”
    “I want to start a band.”
    The sentence came out, just like that. I was startled myself. I wanted to put it all the way back in my mouth and down my throat. It was the scariest thing I’d ever said out loud. But the idea was finally taking over me and I knew there was no going back. Research, I told myself. Experience, not art.
    Her expression didn’t change.
    “Covers?” she asked.
    “Well, no. I would want to do original stuff.”
    “You write the songs?”
    I gulped.
    “Yes. Well, I fool around with lyrics. I’m more interested in the music. Performing. I need some stuff on my résumé.”
    She ignored this fumbling and I was grateful.
    “Who