The band that is playing at The Hole tonight is awful. Lila warned me ahead of time that they would be, but I still wasn’t prepared. Their sound is similar to that of a bunch of raccoons crawling into a garbage compactor. This isn’t music. It doesn’t even count as noise. I want to leave, but Lila says that the next band, which used to be called The Cigarillos but is now The Gold Teeth, is going to blow up soon.

“They’re going to be big. I mean really, really big,” she announces, with real conviction. In between songs, the singer’s eyes wander our way and Lila flashes him her best sexy-smile.

Lila and I dress the same -- ripped jeans, big shirts, plenty of eyeliner -- but thatdoesn’t mean we look the same. Lila is what I guess you would call tragically beautiful, with big, anguished eyes the color of celery and cheekbones you could cut yourself on. I don’t expect anyone to so much as look at me while she’s around.

I am drunk but she is drunker. She is holding onto my hand as she tries to dance, shaking her head and hips even though there is no real beat to shake them to.

The band finishes and my ears are grateful. The members give each other high-fives and fist-bumps as they clean up their instruments. The guitarist nearly trips over himself as he leaves the stage. He’s heading our way. Lila pinches my arm in excitement.

He has dark hair and a tattoo of a snake on his forearm. His lips are chapped and his pupils are like saucers.

“Hey,” Lila says, standing right in front of him. He grins back.

“Hey.”

“Great show. We’re big fans.”

“Thanks. That’s always nice to hear.”

Lila giggles hysterically, as if he has just cracked the world’s most hilarious joke. I don’t roll my eyes. Amateur rock bands are God’s gift to nerdy boys to help them get laid. If he wasn’t holding an electric guitar, she wouldn’t look at him twice.

“So, you like the Hole?” he asks.

“Yeah. I come here all the time.”

“Have you ever been backstage?”

The Gold Teeth are getting ready to play. Everything in this room is so goddamn loud. The clanking of glasses, the shrieks of the girls in the back, the tinkling of Lila’s earrings as she shakes her head, all make me want to clamp my hands over my ears and scream. But I can’t leave, not now, with a guitarist looking at my best friend like she’s something he’d like to eat. I have to at least try to protect her.

“C’mon."

The way he says it makes me want topunch him. No one deserves to be that confident.

Lila looks at me. For what? Permission? I try to mouth the word “no” as subtly as I can. She just keeps on smiling. “Lets go,” she hisses. “It’ll be fun.”

No, I know it won’t be. It’ll be more arrogant boys who think they can make music, more girls fawning over drum sticks and guitar strings, more loudness, more stupidity.

But he is already wrapping a thin arm around her waist, and she is already walking away, and there is nothing I can do to stop it.

Lila, I want to say. Can’t you tell? He doesn’t care about you at all. It doesn’t matter that you’re beautiful, or that you’re smart, only that you are willing.

But she’s already gone, leaving me standing like an idiot in a crowd of people I don’t know or like. I wish I could be angry, but mostly I’m just tired. I have nowhere better to go.

I put my drink down on one of the tables. A girl with eyes like whirlpools is buying a t-shirt from a boy so stoned he can barely hand her the change.

I realize that I’m still holding Lila’s jacket. I rummage through it. The leather feels soft and expensive and cold in my hands. Her cell phone’s dead and she has no money. I put a twenty in the inner pocket and fold it as neatly as I can. Then I walk home by myself through the dark.