The next morning before school Henrietta found Stan and his friends and told them that they would play at Wendy's party. She was alone-Georgie was asleep in the back seat of her car, Evan didn't want to go near Stan, and Dylan stayed behind with him for moral support. The two of them shivered on the asphalt and glared at Stan from a safe distance.

"That guy is such an ass," Dylan said, and Evan grunted his agreement. They both redoubled the intensity of their glares. Stan didn't even look awed by their formidable rage or anything, which was infuriating.

The bell rang while Henrietta was still talking, and she shrugged and turned away. Kenny waved at her cheerfully before he went to follow Stan, and Dylan could tell from several yards away that she was rolling her eyes.

She made her way back over to Dylan and Evan at a leisurely pace, unconcerned with the bell or the flow of student traffic around her. "The party is in three weeks. Stan says we'll only have to play for, like, an hour or something because after that Wendy will be too drunk to notice if he just puts in CDs."

"So we need to come up with an hour's worth of songs?" Dylan asked.

Henrietta nodded. "I'm thinking covers. Lots of covers."

Dylan resisted the urge to groan. Evan was getting a familiar look in his eyes. A plotting look. And with that one look Dylan could tell that he was formulating a list in his head of the exact songs he wanted to cover and once that list was complete he absolutely wouldn't budge from it. Which would be fine, usually. Dylan had grown used to going along with Evan's plans with minimal protest. The only problem was that Henrietta had the exact same look.

"I'll go get Georgie," he volunteered, mostly just so that he could escape before he got sucked into anything.

Dylan thought about it all day long. He was so preoccupied that he didn't even notice his Statistics teacher yelling at him until she was halfway through lecturing him about paying attention and doing his work.

Anyone who even took the time to assume anything about Goth kids in general thought that they all listened to the exact same bands. To an extent it was even true. Similar music taste was half the requirements for becoming a non-conformist, after all. Coupled with matching pessimistic worldviews, it was even what had brought the four of them together in the first place.

But even counting all of that, they were still different people with different ideas, ideas that would make an argument over which songs they should cover imminent. Dylan thought that arguing about things was boring and pointless at the best of times, but now that the fate of his band's first show hung in the balance they were especially uncool.

Things became even more worrying at lunch. They were sitting in their customary spot behind the school when Georgie informed everyone that he'd actually been working on lyrics for a lot more songs than they thought they'd had before, meaning that there was only space for one or two covers after all. Dylan braced himself.

"It has to be The Cure," Evan announced immediately, to no one's surprise. "There's literally no other band it could possibly be."

"What about Skinny Puppy?" Henrietta protested, taking a sip of lukewarm coffee from Dylan's Thermos and narrowing her eyes at Evan.

"I wanna cover The Gothic Archies," Georgie announced, looking up from where he'd been messing with the radio. Neither Henrietta nor Evan even bothered to acknowledge that, much to his dismay.

Dylan, who wouldn't have minded covering The Smiths but knew that he'd get shot down immediately in the face of Henrietta and Evan's superior obsessions, stayed quiet and waited until the three of them got tired of arguing and settled on Bauhaus. It took less time than he'd thought it would and no one got really angry, which Dylan considered a triumph.

Then Georgie said, "so which song will it be?"

Dylan sighed loudly and stretched out on the cold asphalt, using his jacket for a pillow. He gazed up at the sky, opaque and gray with no sun forthcoming. After about five minutes of listening vaguely to Henrietta exonerating the merit of Kick in the Eye while Georgie insisted that it had to be Muscle in Plastic and Evan told them they were both crazy, Dylan was so zoned out that he barely noticed Evan reaching down to tug on one of the still-faded red parts of his hair. "Dylan, back me up," he said.

Dylan shrugged idly, exhaling in an attempt to remain Zen about this whole thing. It was so cold his breath was visible, a frozen white cloud against the dull sky. "Evan is right and you guys are wrong," he said in a bored monotone, because he knew that if he didn't Evan would bother him about it in his own passive-aggressive way for far longer than any normal person would.

Henrietta and Georgie let out identical groans and Dylan heard Evan say, "see? I told you," before he tuned out again. Evan's hand lingered even though he'd stopped pulling, absently petting Dylan's dye-stiff hair like he was some kind of dog or something.

"Woof," Dylan said sarcastically, but he didn't bother to twist away. Instead he closed his eyes as Georgie turned their radio to whatever weird band he was into that week in the hopes of enticing Evan and Henrietta into wanting to cover them while the two of them ignored the music in favor of trying to pick a song, getting lazier and lazier until they were finally just quoting lyrics back and forth at each other until the bell rang.

The next few weeks ran together in a blur of school and practice. But mostly practice. The four of them had taken to skipping class even more often than they usually did in favor of hiding out in Henrietta's garage and perfecting the songs that Georgie and Henrietta wrote. By the time Monday of the third week rolled around, Evan's voice was hoarse and Dylan's fingers were calloused and Henrietta had lost three pounds from being so stressed out she couldn't even stress-eat.

The only one who didn't seem worried at all was Georgie. Sometimes he would skip practices altogether or just mysteriously disappear for hours at a time, always looking far more cheerful than he would usually consider acceptable the next time he showed up.

Henrietta was going crazy with suspicion. With her, of course, all this meant was that from time to time she made remarks about Georgie not being around, but Dylan and Evan both knew her well enough to recognize the signs. It took all of their combined efforts to stop her from following Georgie the next time he disappeared.

The two of them figured that whatever it was he was getting up to they might as well just leave him to it, especially since he was getting much better at playing drums and also turning out songs like there was no tomorrow.

Most of them were Evan's poetry with a fair amount of Henrietta and Dylan thrown in, but every now and then Dylan noticed a phrase or two he didn't recognize that sounded like it might have come from Georgie, who never volunteered to read anything when the others were sharing their poetry. In fact, none of them were really sure whether or not he wrote any at all. Dylan figured this must be his way of getting it out there without actually having to admit to anything.

Henrietta was satisfied with no such explanation. It was Monday night when she finally broke down and asked Georgie where he'd been.

She, Dylan, and Evan were sitting in her room after practice just like they normally did, each complaining in turn about the detentions they'd been given that day in homeroom for missing so much class when Georgie, who hadn't shown up, walked through the door and took his usual place on the bed, grabbing one of Henrietta's pillows and propping his chin on it.

"Hey," he said, like nothing weird was going on at all.

Dylan cut Henrietta a look, but she pretended not to notice. "You didn't come to practice," she said. Outwardly she seemed as calm as ever, but Dylan could tell by the way she exhaled a thin stream of smoke from her clove cigarette like a dragon that she was mad. He nudged Evan warningly, and Evan nudged him back.

Georgie just shrugged. "Got busy," he said. Dylan noticed that his lipstick was gone, and fervently hoped that Henrietta wouldn't.

She stubbed out her cigarette and folded her arms. "You know Wendy's party is in six days, right?"

Georgie glared at her defensively. "I do all the shit you ask me to, so what's the problem?"

Henrietta lit another cigarette and pointedly refused to look at him. "Whatever."

Dylan and Evan watched the exchange silently. As generally angry with life as the four of them were, it was pretty rare for them to bother arguing with each other, let alone have real fights. The stress must have been getting to everyone.

Dylan wondered miserably if this meant the band was breaking up before they could even play a show. He supposed it was true that Georgie didn't have to tell them where he was every second of every day, but he also knew that Henrietta was only concerned and also probably angry that Georgie wouldn't tell her where he'd been even though she was the only one who ever really remembered that he was still a freshman and tried at least a little bit to keep him out of trouble.

Dylan was getting tired just thinking about it. Fights were exhausting, even if you weren't participating in them. Maybe even especially then. He nudged Evan again, this time for a drag of his cigarette, and Evan passed it silently.

Georgie and Henrietta were locked in a staring match the likes of which Dylan hadn't seen since Evan's parents got divorced. Finally, Georgie broke his gaze and climbed off the bed with a muttered, "whatever," and left, taking care to slam the door on his way out.

"Puberty," Evan told Henrietta in a vaguely consoling way. She rolled her eyes, but took some coffee when Dylan passed it to her.

When he left Henrietta's house that night, Dylan was concerned. They all knew how strong-minded Henrietta could be, and being youngest had made Georgie pretty stubborn himself. He could easily see them refusing to work together on the band if they didn't make up soon. And that would be disastrous not only because they wouldn't get to play the party, but because they were the ones who wrote all the songs in the first place. Dylan had a feeling that if songwriting duty was left to him and Evan, the Manic Episodes would suck even harder than they did already.

Dylan worried all throughout school on Tuesday before he realized at lunch that he shouldn't have wasted his time. Georgie was as silent as usual and Henrietta was just as bored-looking, but when he approached their lunch spot they were sitting there next to each other and staring intently down at the radio like they hadn't fought at all.

This, of course, lead Dylan to believe that Georgie had come back to Henrietta's house after he and Evan had left and they'd had some kind of heart-to-heart. He vaguely considered making fun of them for it, but he figured that he probably shouldn't risk it. Besides, it appeared that the band was back on, and that was currently the important thing.

"Practice at your house tonight?" Evan asked Henrietta, apparently wondering the same thing as Dylan.

"Obviously," she said. "There's only five more days left and we still sound like dog shit."

Dylan tried not to look too relieved. They practiced so hard for the next four days that he forgot to re-dye his hair.