“Nothing will happen.”
“Right, because in all my years of working with musicians I haven’t heard that before.”
“This time it’s true. I promise you. I’m going to friend-zone Grace so hard, before you know it, she’ll be wearing oversized volleyball sweats with a hole in the crotch and stains she can’t explain.”
Tucker sighed like a man who’d seen it all before. But it was also a sigh signaling he was going to reluctantly allow it to happen again.
“Okay,” he relented. “One chance. But if you so much as touch her…”
“I won’t,” I interrupted him, eagerly jumping all over his change of heart. “You won’t regret this.”
“Oh, I already do. I’ve bet my whole career on trusting good-looking, young talent like you.”
“Well, there you go.”
“It wasn’t a compliment, Higgins.”
19
RORY: IN MY FILE
THE PAST
Icould see the light flashing in my eyes. Could hear a calm female voice beckoning me back. Instinctively, I knew I was safe in this place with no pain. Which could mean only one thing: Hartman was gone. Nikki too. I fought through the haze, knowing full well that outside of my head was safer than inside, but the bad memories kept sucking me in.
* * *
Rory, ten years old
I was bored. Nothing to do but toss a small rubber ball at the ceiling after the morning supervisor took my sticks away. She said I could get them back if I apologized, so I did… and then she didn’t give them back. I asked the night supervisor, and he said I was destructive and that I’d caused dents on the refrigerator after I used it for a drum solo. That was a lie. Not the drum solo part—the dents.
This morning I told one of the social workers who stopped by that they’d stolen my sticks, and she promised to get them back, but before she left, she told me I couldn’t have them until I learned to be still and to not drum on every single surface.
So I was never getting them back.
I hated this place. Nikki said I should feel lucky because this group home was meant for younger kids and brothers and sisters like us. She pointed to the colorful walls and the toys and the extra staff that she said were for kids like me, but I didn’t feel lucky. I was mad because they took my sticks away. And I was mad at my sister. Nikki was the reason we got kicked out of the last foster home, and wherever she went, I went. It was in my file. This was the first time I wished it wasn’t. If they split us up, then I could go back to my last foster home, where there was a mom and not a bunch of supervisors. I was the youngest kid in here, and Nikki was never around anymore. She was always out with her friends, and I was stuck in here without my sticks and nothing to do.
I didn’t want to cry, but I did anyway. I missed Patty. She was my last foster mom, and Nikki and me lived there for eight whole months. A record, Nikki said. A miracle, I thought. Patty was strict but not mean. She made me go to school and do chores and finish my homework, but she also read me stories and cooked me dinner every night. And she had Riley, the floppy-eared brown dog who liked to sleep in my bed at night. Patty didn’t hate when I made noise. She even let me practice my drums on some old buckets in her garage.
I would’ve stayed forever, but Nikki hated her. They got in fights all the time, and then one day Nikki hit Patty, and a social worker came and made us pack up. Patty wanted me to stay, but the lady wouldn’t separate Nikki and me. It was in my file. So, I had to say goodbye to Patty and to Riley and to my drum buckets in the garage. I wiped the tears off my cheeks. Nikki said I shouldn’t cry. That the bigger kids might hurt me for it. But she wasn’t here now. So I cried.
The door flung open, and Nikki pirouetted into the room, the giant smile on her face making my tears instantly dry up.
She jumped on my cot. “Guess what?”
“You got stuck in a revolving door?”
She giggled, smacking my face back and forth between her hands. “Try again.”
“You cut the tag off the mattress?”
“Ugh. You’re so annoying, Rory. I’ll just tell you. I’m going to be a star.”
“Like in the sky?”
“No. You’re not very smart for a ten-year-old, are you? Like in Hollywood, I mean.”
“How?”
