Didn’t matter they were my little sister, Junie, and our friend Claude-rhymes-with-howdy. The two of them sat at the front of the garage for nearly every single one of our practice sessions, including today’s.
“Here it comes, Heather!” Brenda yelled over her shoulder.
I grinned. She’d remembered my drum solo. Sometimes I took them spontaneously, like when Maureen sneaked a smoke or Brenda forgot the lyrics, but this one was for real.On purpose.I’d practiced the heck out of it. When I played it, I straight-up left my body, the garage, planet Earth. It felt like I set myself on fire and put myself out at the exact same time. (I’d never say that out loud. I was no Maureen.)
My heart picked up in anticipation, matching the beat.
The song was Blue Swede’s “Hooked on a Feeling.” It shouldn’t have had a drum solo, but who was gonna tell us that? We were three teenage girls playing balls-out rock in a garage in Saint Cloud, Minnesota, on a warm early-August day, the deep-summer green so thick you could drink it.
I quick-blinked against a momentary twinge, the sense that I was flying too high, feeling too good, too big for the world. I’d later wonder if that’s what cursed us, our boldness, ourjoy, but in that moment, it felt too good to stop.
Maureen brushed her streaked hair over her shoulder and tossed me a sideways smile. I hoped it was a sign that she was going to follow me right to the door of the solo. Sometimes she did. When we hitit together, it was really something to hear. Brenda would even stick around to watch us riff off each other.
But that’s not what Maureen’d been signaling.
In fact, she wasn’t smiling at me at all.
A shadow had fallen across the driveway.
Tucked in the back, I had to wait until he showed his face.
CHAPTER 2
The guy Maureen had been smiling at had an all-right mug if you didn’t know him. Shaggy brown hair. Hazel eyes a little too close together, like bowling ball holes. I’d thought he was cute back in grade school. A lot of us did. He was the first boy in Pantown to get a car. Plus, he was older.Toomuch older. At least that’s what I’d told Maureen when she’d asked me a couple days ago what I thought of him.
Heinrich? Heinrich the Gooseman? He’s a chump.
Better a chump than a snore,she’d said, then laughed her calliope laugh.
I should’ve guessed he’d show up to our practice eventually, given her question and the extra care she’d been putting into her appearance, her hair always curled, lips extra glossy.
Heinrich—Ricky—stepped to the middle of the open garage door, giving us a good gander at his bare, patchy-haired chest above peek-a-ball cutoffs. He was grinning over his shoulder at someone just around the corner. Probably Anton Dehnke. Ricky and Ant had been hanging out a lot lately, along with some new guy named Ed, a non-Pantowner Maureen swore was “sexy as hell” who I had yet to meet.
Brenda kept singing even though Maureen had stopped twanging her bass the second she’d laid eyes on Ricky.Right before my drum solo.Brenda gave it a few more bars and then offered me an apologetic smile before quitting, too.
“Don’t shut it down on account of us,” Ricky said into the container of sudden quiet, glancing again at whoever he’d come with and chuckling, the sound like two pieces of sandpaper rubbed together. He was called the Gooseman because he’d always pinch girls’ butts and then laugh that dry laugh. His grab-hands act had never been cute, but it was gross now that he was nineteen and still in high school due to learning difficulties. (Everyone who attended the Church of Saint Patrick knew about the high fever Ricky’d had when he was nine years old; we’d done a donation drive for his family.)
“Screw you,” Maureen said to Ricky, flirty-like, as she lifted the strap of her bass over her head and rested the instrument in its stand.
“You wish,” Ricky said, his grin lopsided and wolfish. He sidled over to Maureen and hooked his arm around her shoulders.
Brenda and I exchanged a look, and then she shrugged. Iboom-boomed my kick drum, hoping to steer us back into practice.
“Ant, what the hell are you doing hanging out there already?” Ricky asked, calling toward the front of the garage. “Stop lurking like a weirdo and get in here.”
A moment later, Anton loped into view looking sweaty and embarrassed. I wondered why he hadn’t just walked in with Ricky in the first place. At least he was wearing a shirt, a plain blue tee above gym shorts, yellow-striped tube socks pulled to his knees, and sneakers. He had blue eyes—one larger than the other like he was Popeye squinting—and a wide Mr.Potato Head nose, the orange one with nostrils. His mouth was nice, though, his teeth straight and white, his lips full and soft looking. Ant was in the grade above me, but like all of us, he was a Pantown kid, which meant we knew him better than his own grandma did. He was mostly nice, though he had a quiet mean streak. We figured he got it from his dad.
Ant stood near shirtless Ricky and bright-eyed Maureen for a few seconds, stiff and uncomfortable like the exclamation point at the end ofdork!When neither of them said anything to him, he slunk into ashadowy spot inside the garage and leaned on the wall, smushing up against my favorite poster, the one of Alice de Buhr, Fanny drummer, her mouth open, half smiling, on the verge of telling me a secret.
I glared at him. To my surprise, he blushed and stared at his sneakers.
“You girls sounded good just now,” Ricky said, sucking on his teeth. “Maybe good enough to land onstage.”
“We know,” Maureen said, rolling her eyes and ducking out from under his arm.
“Did you know I got you a gig?” Ricky said, scratching his bare chest, thescritch scritchimpossibly loud in the garage, a gloating grin cracking his face.
“It wasn’t you,” Ant said from the shadows. “It was Ed.”
