Jump A Little Lighter: Chapter 8

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She is now sat differently in her seat, turned towards the audience like she has chosen them as her allies – but, of course, The Host is not an enemy, he is a powerful friend, and she laughs hard at his jokes before playing a dumb game and pretending to enjoy it. I don’t know, maybe she did like it, but it doesn’t make it less banal to have to open boxes live on TV and call it a game. Is this really what passes for an interview? Why is this major network taking journalistic cues from Buzzfeed?

Rosalita Jacobs is not the only guest on this programme, and soon she’s sat next to the director of a hot new comedy blockbuster, laughing at his jokes as well as The Host’s. She’s a perfect ornament in the world of these faux-homies, boys who seem to laugh at nothing at all except each other. They bring her into the conversation, but barely.

The Director interrupts his own flow to ask her, “You know Quentin Tarantino?”

“Oh, yeah, we’re besties, he texts me all the time.”

“No, really?” gasps The Host.

“Not at all,” she’s forced to say, and with a laugh.

“Wowowow you’re so convincing, maybe you should give her a job on one of your films?”

They all laugh once more, and go back to some advice Quentin gave years ago that The Director was too drunk to remember until, would you credit it, he needed to promote this exact movie. The Director waves like a goof and walks out back to the green room to applause at the next commercial break. He’s got a highball in his hand before the ads are even running.

***

Chapter 8: September 2017

Rosie, Britney and I are staring at our handiwork as it dries, hoping to God it turns out like we imagined. The cheap high-waisted denim shorts and cropped denim jacket we found at Goodwill are tumbling round the dryer, and there’s not enough stillness for us to see what’s happening.

“It’s definitely green. I’m seeing all green, no pale denim.” says Brit.

“Jesus, let the dye not have stained the washer – my mom will kill me if it has!” I say. “We have to put the bedsheets in after this, if they go a little green I think it’ll be fine.”

Rosie says nothing at all. She’s stood, biting her nails, staring at the dryer in the cold, concrete space between my kitchen and my garage that I’ve never known what to call.

“I still think you’ll need to embellish it more.” Brit says, but she’s looking at me not Rosie, who is lost to the world, “Are we sure stonewash was the right call?”

“A hundred percent,” I assert, “cause it will hide any patches where the dye is uneven by making it look intentional.”

“Ooh, girl you gonna look so CUTE! I LOVE a co-ord! Let’s put studs on it for a rock-chick look.”

“UNIQUE is what you’re going to look, by the time we’re done it’ll look couture, dahhling, a perfect stage outfit, and nobody will know it was thrifted.” Brit gives me the eyeball for that, for voicing what is clearly Rosie’s fear. I was just testing if she was even listening, and she shows no sign of it.

We stand there for a full hour-and-twenty cycle, Brit and I talking to Rosalita via each other. Every time it falls silent, except for the hum and muffled thuds of the dryer in front of us, I know each of us is praying in our own way. Me? I’m praying we don’t have to find a hundred bucks to fix this if it’s a mess – either to spend on decent clothes or buy my mom a new washing setup if we’ve broken hers.

***

When Rosie was younger she performed with various acts. Her mom put a stop to it in high school, knowing Rosie would choose music over study any day, but those stage outfits are stuck in my mind. Country tween chic – flannels and jeans – would do back then, but Rosalita’s aims are loftier now than singing the National Anthem at a college football game. She spent three months touring the dust bowl states with a Christian rock band, her mom doing the driving and a sulky Bobby kicking her from the backseat, and for that she wore something with butterflies on every night. Her mom wouldn’t let her wear the yin-yang sign like she wanted, cause she said it was pagan and looked like something Natalie Maines might wear, but she wore in on a t-shirt she borrowed from me for good luck when she sang on a radio station in Denver. She never performed new songs at these gigs – maybe she’d sing with the headline act on one of their original pieces, but her mom said the crowd wanted to have a good time and that meant surely playing songs people’d know – classics from country, rock, and some clean-cut teen-friendly pop acts. The crowd always loved Rosalita’s big smile and big sound, and she grew up knowing how applause tasted as well as just how she could get it.

Now that Rosie was close enough to adult to enlist she had an image in her mind of who she wanted to be. Being compared to Avril Lavigne was good, but being compared to P!nk was not what she wanted; Faith Hill was too sophisticated, but Kelly Clarkson wasn’t polished enough. I could never understand the nuances she picked out of any idea – but then, I never really tried. Whilst Brit and I drew anime boys in the back of our notebooks or passed notes in class, Rosie made lists of yeses and nos – clothes, comparisons, adjectives – or what each type of person (sophisticated, edgy, girly, intellectual, anything you could think of) should know, or what it represented to like a thing, what type it made you. It was like playing Barbie in the Mattel development lab. When we began trying to get into AP classes or quizzing each other for our end-of-unit tests, Rosie began teaching herself to write – first country, then emo, then learning to understand the conventions of all kinds of genres. She’s a real musician’s musician, and all that’s grown out of appreciation for what came before. There was always the bare minimum emphasis put on anything that wasn’t connected to her music, but you could never say she didn’t put her nose to the grindstone. It was music over school, just like her mom feared. Nowadays Rosie was versatile enough to write rap as well as country, and knew just how to be just trendy enough whilst being her own thing. I think she felt ready. It certainly felt, even there in my utility nook with my feet cold, like the first steps to something bigger.

***

She tried them on right there in the kitchen, as soon as they were done. Thank God, they came out just like we imagined, and Britney was given the task of finding the right way to bedazzle the set so it didn’t just look like khakis you could buy at the mall. We let her wield those scissors like a demon, whilst we took to her sneakers with Sharpie. She’d told me what lyrics to write on them already.

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PLAYLIST OF SONGS

• [David Bowie, Starman]
• [Charli XCX, Spring Summer 26]
• [Avril Lavigne, Complicated]
• [P!nk, Hazard To Myself]
• [Faith Hill, Cry]
• [Kelly Clarkson, Breakaway]
• [Lloyd Cole, To The Church]