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Nat thinks she might be going crazy.
And if she’s not already, this fucking song will drive her there.
“What crawled up her ass?” Rich asks as he joins her and Kevyn at their usual spot behind Muriel’s Subs, and it’s good to know her misery is so visible.
“Don’t know,” her best friend shrugs, passing the new arrival the bagged beer to go with his cigarette. “She’s been scowling since I got here.”
“You don’t have to talk about me like I’m not here,” she grumbles, flicking the ash from her own butt in the direction of the boys. “I just have a shitty song stuck in my head that’s annoying the fuck out of me.”
Both Kevyn and Rich laugh, clearly not understanding the gravity of her plight.
“What song?” the latter wonders in amusement. “I don’t know who was in charge of the music at your party last weekend, but some of the song selections were a travesty.”
“I don’t know, that’s the problem,” Nat complains, absently kicking an empty can away from them. “I’ve never even fucking heard it in my life.”
“Then how is it stuck in your head?”
“Something I’d love to know.”
“It’s probably a soulmate thing,” Kevyn offers hesitantly, glancing away when Nat looks at him.
He knows how Nat feels about soulmates and Nat knows how Kevyn feels about her. Neither of them are going to enjoy this conversation.
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“Your birthday was on the weekend,” he reminds her with a shrug, trying to play unaffected and failing miserably. “And I’ve heard that’s one way it happens. Whatever song your soulmate has stuck in their head or is singing or whatever, gets stuck in yours too.”
Nat barks out a laugh, even though she doesn’t think it’s funny.
Yeah, of all the soulmate connections she could get, of course she’d get such a stupid, annoying, useless one.
Some people get tattoos of numbers or words, others can share thoughts or heal each other or send messages back and forth by writing on their skin. She’s even heard stories of soulmates meeting up in their dreams.
But Nat gets a stupid ass song stuck in her head.
Fucking perfect.
“You could ask the music teacher.”
“What?”
“If you want to know what song it is,” Rich elaborates around a drag. “Mr. Winslow probably knows.”
Nat looks at him like he’s stupid. “Why the fuck would I want to know that?”
“Hey, man, just a suggestion,” he replies lightly, fighting a smile as he holds his hands up in surrender.
Nat gives him the finger, flicks her actual cigarette at him this time, and then stomps away.
/
Two days later and Nat needs to know, though she doesn’t know why.
It won’t make the song go away and she sure as fuck isn’t going to actually listen to it.
But she still needs to know, so she finds the music teacher and recites the same few lines of lyrics that have been playing on loop in her head for the past week.
Touch me
It's so easy to leave me
All alone with the memory
Of my days in the sun
If you touch me
You'll understand what happiness is
Look, a new day
Has begun
“Memory, from Cats,” Winslow says with a fond smile. Off Nat’s impatient look, he adds, “The Broadway musical.”
Just fucking great.
Her soulmate is a theater nerd.
Well, at least she can take comfort in the fact that they probably hate the songs Nat gets stuck in their head just as much as she does.
That’s something.
/
It continues on and Nat worries her suffering will never end.
Every week it’s a new annoying song, and every week, Nat asks the music teacher what it is, and every week it’s from another lame ass musical.
It takes until the fourth week for Nat to get a name she actually recognizes.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
At least this one is a movie and not a play, she doesn’t think.
She’s never seen it, but heard a lot about it. Enough to know it’s not completely embarrassing.
If Rich and Kevyn know why she suggests they rent it to watch while they get high that weekend, they know better than to mention it. Before they watch it, anyway.
But after it’s done, a bleary-eyed Rich wonders, “So which song was it?”
Nat decides to play dumb. “What?”
“Which song was stuck in your head?”
“Wait, this was a soulmate thing?” Kevyn pipes up, sounding predictably bummed.
Rich laughs at the other boy’s cluelessness, passing him the joint he just finished rolling. “What, did you think Nat just suddenly developed an appreciation for musicals?”
Kevyn shrugs, fighting a pout. “I don’t know, Meat Loaf is kinda rad.”
“So it’s gotta be a girl, right?” Rich guesses. “Any guy that’s this into musicals is probably gay.”
“You are so homophobic, dude.”
“I can’t be homophobic, I’ve sucked a dick.”
Nat starts rewinding the tape and ignores them both.
/
Not every song her soulmate gets stuck in Nat’s head is from a musical that has a movie adaptation, but after Timewarp and Rocky Horror, she starts asking the music teacher if they do.
She doesn’t rent all of them to watch, and not just because she’s poor. She doesn’t know why she rents any of them, but whatever.
Rich and Kevyn refuse to watch any more of them with her, and she’s kind of glad about that. Makes it somewhat less humiliating.
But it turns out that Grease is a classic for a reason.
/
The more time goes on, and the more research Nat does, the more Kevyn and Rich don’t get how she doesn’t wonder who her soulmate is, but she doesn’t get why they think she would.
She only just turned eighteen, and most people don’t meet their soulmates that young.
“Do you know how low the odds are that I already know them?” Nat reasons, idly pushing Kevyn’s swing from behind him.
“You don’t know that,” he argues for the sake of it, only to follow it up with, “But yeah, probably not.”
“It’s probably better you don’t,” Rich admits from the other swing, where he’s too preoccupied with reading the back of the VHS of Cabaret that Crystal from her soccer team lent her to actually do any swinging.
“Yeah, do you really want your soulmate to be any of the losers in this shithole town?”
Nat can’t disagree, but also: “They’re, like, obnoxiously into musicals, so it’s not like I don’t already know they’re a loser.”
“I’m sure that was a requirement to be your soulmate,” Kevyn teases, and Nat lets it slide because she’s just happy he’s gotten over his crush on her enough that he can laugh about it now. “Maybe they live in New York and actually go to Broadway and that’s why they’re obsessed.”
“Or they live in a really small, conservative town and Broadway is, like, their dream of getting out,” is Rich’s theory.
“Is that the plot of a real musical?” Kevyn wonders, only sounding half serious. “That sounds like something starring Barbra Streisand.”
“Don’t know, you’d have to ask our resident theater nerd over here,” Rich jokes, reaching over to poke Nat in the ribs.
Kevyn cackles as she grips the chain on his swing and sends him spinning.
“Fuck you both,” she grumbles, even though they’ve just made her point.
It could be anyone, living anywhere.
It’s not like she can just guess.
But she doesn’t have to. Soon enough, fate shows her.
/
It happens exactly four months, nineteen songs and seven movies after Nat’s eighteenth birthday.
She knocks on Mr. Winslow’s open door before she walks in like she always does, but instead of finding a balding, middle aged gay man, she finds a lone teenage girl sitting on the risers at the back of the room.
Misty Quigley looks up from the colorful trapper keeper in her lap and offers Nat the kind of friendly smile that Nat is sure nobody ever gives her in return.
She’s infamous around Wiskayok High, for all the worst reasons. Some she deserves, but most she doesn’t.
There’s no doubt that Misty is strange and offputting and very annoying, and she’s always got this look in her eyes like everything she’s saying and doing has some hidden meaning behind it, but she’s mostly harmless and always happy to help.
There are a lot worse people at school, if you ask Nat. But nobody cares about what Nat thinks, so.
“Hi!” Misty greets her brightly.
“Uh, yeah, hey,” Nat says back, looking around the room warily. “Is Winslow not around?”
“He’s on cafeteria monitoring duty today,” Misty informs her. “But he said I could still use the room to practice.”
“Oh, okay.” Nat checks the clock on the wall, debating if she cares enough to go all the way across school to find him and ask. She decides she doesn’t. “Well, thanks.”
Misty nods and waves and focuses back on whatever it is she’s practicing for, but Nat only gets about two feet out of the door before she stops in her tracks.
She recognizes the song immediately, the melody instantly familiar, even though Misty hasn’t even started singing yet.
But when she does, Nat feels the world shift under her feet.
Don’t throw bouquets at me,
Don’t please my folks too much,
Don’t laugh at my jokes too much,
People will say we’re in love!
Don’t sigh and gaze at me
Your sighs are so like mine,
Your eyes mustn’t glow like mine
People will say we’re in—
“You’re back!” Misty cuts herself off half way through a line when she notices Nat standing in the doorway again. Nat doesn’t even remember moving. “Did I sound that good?” She tries to read Nat’s face but gets nothing and grimaces dramatically. “Or that bad?” she adds, snorting at her own joke.
Jesus fucking Christ.
There’s no fucking way her soulmate snorts when she laughs.
“What song was that?” is the only thing Nat can force herself to say.
“People Will Say We’re In Love from Oklahoma!” Misty shares eagerly, patting the sheet music still sitting across her thighs. “My audition is tomorrow and I need all the practice I can get. Clearly. I’m trying out for the female lead, Laurey, but I probably won’t get it. Kiffy Schumacher has a way better voice and Becky Williamson is way prettier than me. But I’m a pretty good actress, if I do say so myself, so I figure I might as well reach for the stars, right? I’ll be happy with a supporting role, though.” Misty seems to realize too late that she’s talking too much, but since Nat isn’t offering anything up, she has to keep going. She pushed her glasses up her nose and asks, “Are you familiar with the play? Or seen the movie?”
“No,” Nat finally says, unable to look away from the other girl’s curious gaze. “But I know the song.”
“Oh,” Misty nods, looking Nat up and down dubiously, as if trying to decide if she believes her. And it seems like she accepts that answer at face value, until she’s suddenly grabbing her bag and scrambling to her feet. “Oh! Oh, you’re… You…” She stops to dig through her bag and pulls out a handful of CDs that Nat can’t fully see but recognizes from the posters on her bedroom wall. So Nat wasn’t the only one doing research. “Those songs… They were…”
Nat has never known Misty to be at a loss for words - not that Nat has ever really known Misty much at all, beyond brief exchanges about cleats and knee pads on the soccer field - but she can’t blame her for being speechless.
“Yeah,” she says, too dumbfounded to lie.
“You’re my soulmate,” Misty whispers in astonishment, and Nat would deny it if anyone ever asked, but the obvious awe in Misty’s voice feels really fucking nice.
Nat always just kind of assumed her soulmate would be disappointed when they met her.
“Apparently,” is all Nat can say to that, because she’s going to need a lot more time to digest this information.
Misty, it seems, has no such problem. “You have terrible taste in music,” she tells her with stern disappointment, wrinkling her nose at the CDs she’s still holding up. “So loud and vulgar and depressing.”
The irony is enough to break through Nat’s haze, and it even gets a laugh of disbelief out of her, too.
“Yeah, well, sorry we can’t all be into show tunes,” she snarks back, but there’s no real bite behind her words. You’d never even know how many times she came close to banging her head against a wall the past few months thanks to those showt unes.
“Oh, I’m into other stuff too,” Misty insists, dropping the CDs back into her bag and zipping it up. “Do you like Céline Dion?”
“Jesus Christ.”
As always, Misty isn’t deterred by her reaction, but she does seem to actually take a moment to consider what she’s about to ask before she says it, which is much less common.
“Do you want to stay and listen to me practice?” she asks tentatively, gesturing to the row of empty chairs on her right. “I could use some constructive feedback.”
Nat can’t imagine wanting to do anything less than wasting her lunch hour listening to Misty fucking Quigley sing some song from a musical she’s never heard of, especially when she’s not even that good.
And the last thing she should be doing is indulging this soulmate bullshit any more than she already has, especially when her soulmate has a history of latching onto the smallest scrap of attention anyone gives her and never letting go.
And yet…
“Sure,” is what she says, dropping her own bag to the floor as she takes a seat.
Misty beams and hugs her backpack to her chest, bouncing on the spot, and somehow Nat doesn’t regret it.
At least not yet.
Check back with her after a couple of songs.