Either way, now I had to explain the rest of it to Mama. “It wasn’t a big deal,” I told her in the most casual voice I could muster. “I found her in the water and pulled her in to shore. She wasn’t moving, so I did CPR on her. It didn’t take much. She coughed up water after a couple compressions.”
Push hard, push fast.She wasn’t a CPR dummy. She was a dying human, so small, and I didn’t know how hard to press. What if I broke her? What if I screwed it up?
It was the scariest thing I’d ever done in my life.
“Mother of God,” Mama whispered, clutching her chest. “Itold your father those CPR classes were important. Thank you, Saint Gregory!”
Here come the saints. Gotta wind this up andfast. “Anyway, her head was bleeding—”
So much blood. I thought she was dead.
“—and she was out of it. Someone called an ambulance.”
“By then, the band stopped because people across the lake had noticed what was happening,” Eddie added.
“The ambulance came and took her away, just to monitor for concussion, or whatever. They said she’d be okay,” I assured Mama. They said she might have memory loss.
She might not remember that I pulled her out of the dam.
“Hero!” Eddie said, slapping me too hard on the back for the millionth time that night. I slugged him in the arm, and he staggered. “Ow, dude. That hurt, you freak.”
“Calm down,” I told him. “You’ll wake the twins.” If our brother and sister woke up, then Dad would be next. I couldn’t handle him right now.
Mama shook her head slowly, holding her mouth as if she couldn’t believe it. “Who, my baby? Who was the girl?”
I gave Eddie a quick but dirty look:Don’t blow this.Then I told Mama, “No idea. Just some summer girl, here for the festival.” Summer people: what we called the out-of-towners who flew, drove, and carpooled to turn two thousand of us into two hundred thousand by late July.
“You don’t know her name?” she asked, dark hair frizzing wildly around her temples.
And here’s where thereallying began. I knew exactly who she was. And I knew why she was at the dam: she was one of Eddie’s devotees who treated him like he was some kind of Pope.
I didn’t get it. He farted in his sleep, told dumb jokes, and had the worst taste in music. Yet, he could do no wrong. And it wasn’t just girls. His teachers adored him too. The only reason he even graduated from high school was because he charmed his way through makeup tests. I’d bet everything in my wallet that he couldn’t name the current US president; he thought Switzerland and Sweden were the same country.
And yet, one smile was all it took, and he had a passing grade. My dad was one of the most important people in town, but you wouldn’t know it. Eddie Sarafian was the real star.
“Who is this girl, Eduard?” Mama asked. “Was she with you?”
For once, Eddie had enough sense not to elaborate and incriminate himself. He just shook his head. A little too much, maybe, but he didn’t say anything. Like we’d rehearsed in the car. Like he’d begged me.I asked her to come to the dam. People are going to say this is my fault because that’s how people are. Cover for me, bro,he’d said, crying a little. I hadn’t seen him cry since we were kids. I wasn’t sure if it was the beer, or if he was scared of getting caught, or if he was upset about the girl because he genuinely liked her. Maybe all three, but it was still weird.
My mom’s brown eyes glinted in the moonlight as she stared at him, then me. My pulse sped. I didn’t think she was buying it. Why should she? Everyone knew Eddie, and Eddie knew everyone.He even knew the girl who almost drowned. He shouldn’t. She was my age—too young for Eddie. But I saw them talking earlier that night. Then I saw her crying.
That was a few minutes before she fell in the water.
Look. I’m not saying he was to blame. I didn’t even know what the two of them did. Eddie damn sure wouldn’t tell me. But Ididknow if Mama found out he was hitting on a sophomore, she’d be pissed. And she would explode in white-hot fury if she knew who the girl was.
Jane Marlow, the chauffeur’s daughter—Mad Dog Larsen’s chauffeur.
Oh, yes,thatMad Dog. The famous rock producer. Owner of Rabid Records.
Forget his Grammys. Forget the fact that he’d produced some of the biggest albums of the last couple decades. The problem was that Mad Dog only spent the summers here at Condor Lake because my dad sold him the dream of this town like he sold it to everyone, a fairy tale in the Sierra Nevada. My father was the last of the great music promotors. Serj Sarafian.
My dad created one of the biggest indie music festivals in California.
But he’d have lost the amphitheater and festival grounds that hosted it if he didn’t have a cash infusion from a major player. His nightmare was being forced to sell the whole thing off for half of what it was worth to a national events promoter.
Unless someone with a lot of money was willing to invest. Someone like Mad Dog.
And he came. He brought his family and his name to a multimillion-dollar summer house on the other side of the lake. And he started working with us, little by little. But the contract for the amphitheater was coming due in two years.
