I bolted to the ladies’ room, then hid inside a toilet stall for thirty minutes until I finally gained the courage to leave. It had never dawned on me that I was a show-off. I hadn’t meant to be. I was just doing what I loved most. Singing.
Ron had saved me when I got home. “Forget those ugly biddies. They’re just jealous their daughters don’t sing as well as you do. We’ll show them. One day we’ll start our own singing group.”
Livy’s house was only eight minutes from mine. She lived in one of those groovy gargantuan mansions on Belvedere Boulevard, the kind with a carriage house in the rear and oversize rooms in the main. Playing hide-and-seek at Livy’s as a ten-year-old was like getting lost in the fun house at the Mid-South Fair.
With a firm grip on the steering wheel, I inched up the Fosters’ pencil-thin driveway and parked underneath their porte cochere. I leaped from the car, then flew to the trunk to grab my stuff.
“I love you, honey,” Mama called, scooting over to the driver’s seat. Normally she would have accompanied me to the door, even at seventeen, but this day decided not to. Relieved, I leaned in the window and kissed her cheek, dropping the keys inside her palm. I ran up the porch steps and watched her back down the driveway.
The Foster home was the one place I could forget about the rules in my life.
My finger had barely touched the doorbell when their housekeeper, Lorraine, opened the door. I greeted her with a friendlyhello, then noticed Mrs. Foster heading my way.
“Suzannah!” she cried, stepping onto the porch to wave at Mama, who was waiting at the base of the driveway. She took the Parcheesi board from underneath my arm, and we walked inside the foyer. “What’s this for?” she asked, shoving the door closed with her hip.
“Mama thought we could all play tonight,” I said, my cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
With a tilt of her head, Mrs. Foster gave me a saucy smile. “We can do that. You girls just stay in.”
“And miss Katy’s party? No way.” I hadn’t told my parents about Katy Collier’s party. They would have called her parents to make sure they would be home, which would have humiliated me to no end. It was yet another reason to lie. Livy’s mom would cover for me, though. I knew that as well as I knew my own name.
She patted the guitar case. “I’d rather hear you sing than play Parcheesi, if you wanna know the truth.”
The Friday night before, I’d played her two of my favorite Beatles songs, and she’d loved both. The whole Foster family knew singing was my life’s calling. Whenever I sang for them, I felt good about myself. And dreamed about my future as a folk-rocker.
She pointed up the grand center staircase. “Livy’s in her room. Need help toting your stuff up?”
“No ma’am. I’m okay.”
“Dinner’s at six. We’re having spaghetti. And there’s Ro-Tel cheese dip ready in the kitchen.”
Ro-Tel and spaghetti were my favorites. “You’re so good to me,” I said, throwing my arms around her. The smell of her signature scent—Chanel No. 5 mixed with cigarette smoke—reminded me I was in a safe place.
Mr. and Mrs. Foster were much younger than my parents. He’d grown up in an Irish Catholic family in Massachusetts, but she’d been raised in the house where we were standing. Ten years earlier, when her parents had died in a tragic car crash, she’d inherited the home. Dad and Livy’s grandfather had been dear church friends since they were boys. Fortunately for me, that was all it took to gain my parents’ approval of Livy. They knew nothing about Mrs. Foster’s new lifestyle, though. Or Livy’s.
I bounded up the stairs, two at a time, then burst into Livy’s room, where I found her on the phone, propped up on her bed. “Hey,” I whispered, not wanting to interrupt. I dropped my stuff down in my corner.
After a finger wave, I thought I heard her say “I better go,” like she was hiding something, but the hum from the window unit made it hard to know for sure. She placed the handset into the cradle of her pink princess telephone resting next to her on the bed. She was the only friend I had with a phone in her room.
“Who was that?” I asked, not to be nosy. We knew everything there was to know about one another.
Livy hesitated, then reached up to twirl her hair. “Marianne.” I looked at the floor, instead of her, so she changed the subject. “Did you bring your money?”
“It’s in my suitcase.” We’d been saving forRevolver, the new Beatles album, due in record stores the next day. As thrilled as I’d been to get my hands on it, the mere mention of Marianne Gentry took away my joy. Livy knew how I felt about that hussy. It really teed me off that they were still friends after Marianne had spread the rumor about Livy and John Dearing going all the way and blaming it on me. The betrayal had nearly killed me.
In her usual authoritative manner, she sat up straight, swinging her legs off the bed. The trail of smoke from her cigarette circled underneath her bedside lampshade. “I called Pop Tunes. We need to get there byseven in the morning if we want a prayer of owning the record. The manager suspects a really long line.”
“Then we should get there at six,” I said, heading straight for Livy’s closet, where my go-go boots were tucked safely inside. Last February, when Nancy Sinatra had introduced the world to her tall shiny white boots, Mrs. Foster had taken us out to buy pairs of our own. She’d even bought a pair for herself.
Livy was already wearing her go-go boots and a baby doll dress that flared at the hem. Her hair was cut into an adorable bob. She looked just like Twiggy. My father hated the new bob, so he commanded that I keep mine in aGidgetflip.
After zipping up my boots, I picked up her teasing comb and primped, all the while watching her drag on her cigarette through the mirror’s reflection.
“I just hung up with David,” she said, trying to mimic Twiggy’s British accent. “He’s meeting us at Katy’s party.” David was Livy’s latest crush—captain of the football team. He’d never given me the time of day.
I put the comb down, then dived onto the bed next to her, propping myself up on my elbows. “David’s such a hunk.” I said it in my British accent, which sounded much more authentic than hers.
“So is his friend, Jack.” She lifted her brows, like she wanted the two of us together.
