We spend the bulk of the day reminiscing, passing scrapbooks back and forth between the couches that just barely fit all of us,thigh to thigh. Maybe it’s intentional that Renee sits beside me, or maybe it’s just the luck of the draw. Either way, my concentration splits between the pictures and the few smooth inches of Renee’s thigh touching mine. I’m certain my leg has a heart of its own, the way all the blood rushes there, spilling heat throughout my body on its way. Gin’s voice rings clear in my memory.You can just be honest and hope for the best.
Every photo tweezes out a long-buried memory. The summer of the notorious prank war, then the following summer of peace as aresultof the prank war that we swore never to speak of again. In fifth grade, when I insisted upon a talent show and the band made up a dance to ABBA’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!” I still don’t have a clue where four grown men found tutus on such short notice. Growing up at the Outpost was like being raised at the kids’ table, but all the kids were adults, making records and memories, and Mom carefully scrapbooked every summer but one. The summer I spent at band camp. There’s no evidence on the page of the failed intervention. Mom only documented the good times, but we can’t erase the rest, so she still tells the story, even though her voice shakes. The mistakes and the missteps, the trying and failing, are all a part of what got us here.
Somewhere between revisiting my middle and high school years, Renee presses her leg a little harder into mine. When I turn, our noses are just inches apart, so close that I have to squash an impulse that scratches in my chest.
“Do you remember how you said I have a theater face?” Renee murmurs.
It takes a second for my brain to make the multiple leaps to catch up with hers, but I do remember. I picture her dancing inmy living room and prattling on aboutGrease. The look on her face was the same then as after the park district show, when she kissed my temple and I floated the whole way home. I could live a hundred lives and never forget that look.Glowy. Confident. Like the world is made out of hope.
“I remember.”
“Good.” Renee nudges my leg a little harder, and the goose bumps fly. “Because I think you have an Outpost face.”
The implication shakes every branch of my nerves, but as she often is, Renee might be right. This place is written in my DNA. It’s what music has always been about for me—creating something honest with the people I care about. My heart soars toward an idea, a future I could build for the Outpost that’s not so different from its past. If I only get one life, I don’t want to spend it working with the Solas Callaghans of the world, regardless of what Aidan thinks it could do for my career. It’smycareer, and I admire Aidan, but I want to build something that matters tome.
It’s a liquid-gold feeling, but it shrinks away at the sound of Chrissy’s cackle, then disappears entirely when she plunks one manicured finger on a scrapbook page, pointing to something I can’t see. “That,” she says, “that right there is Classic Alice.”
Shame spills through me as Chrissy passes the scrapbook. Gin laughs, and so does Rishi, and I’m almost too afraid to look. I brace for the worst, but when the scrapbook lands in my lap, my mind erases like a whiteboard, leaving only one giant question mark behind.
I haven’t seen this picture in years, but it’s one of my favorites: I’m thirteen years old, tucked behind my upright bass at my last middle school orchestra concert. I’m wearing the same pressedred polo and black dress pants as everyone else, but my slacks are tucked into a pair of glittery teal cowgirl boots. It is, I would argue, Classic Alice, but not the way Chrissy has used it in the past, so I have to ask.
“What…what do you mean by that, Chrissy? When you say something is…Classic Alice?” The words turn to ash on my tongue, but Chrissy doesn’t hesitate.
“Oh! You just do your own thing, y’know? You’re a rule breaker. A rock star. I mean, I know you’re not arock starrock star anymore, but it’s still in you, ya know?” With a wink, she adds, “Maybe it’s genetic.”
My brain stalls. My breath freezes. I feel like I’ve been staring at an optical illusion for an entire summer and have only now been told this rabbit is actually a duck. I turn to Gin, waiting for her to disagree. Instead, a smile creases the corners of her lips, and something unfolds inside me. A map smoothed flat. An answer key to my own secret code. All this time I assumed Classic Alice and Blackout Alice were the same, but I was wrong, and maybe Gin was right. I’m not defined by my worst moments. None of us are. When I pass the scrapbook to Renee, my eyes skate across the tattoo on her wrist. The moon is meant to change, and so are we.
For dinner, we polish off what’s left of yesterday’s biryani, then it’s off to the concert, a swarm of us descending from the house on the hill. Renee, I realize, has changed into her puffy-paint T-shirt, and I jog ahead to see what it says. When I’m close enough to read it, I stumble. My heart just might roll down the hill without me and leave me in the dust, because Renee has covered her shirt, front and back, in her favorite lyrics offSongs for Alice.
I know. I know. I know.
Mom and I peel off to join the band backstage in a greenroom a fraction of the size they’re used to. We all suffer through shots of zero-proof whiskey in Dad’s honor, then Nathan—the rhythm guitarist—is the first to pull me in for a hug. “We miss him like hell, kid.” He thumps me on the back. “And we’ve missed you, too.”
My heart is a guitar string wound too tight, and my voice comes out accordingly taut and high pitched. “I know” is all I manage to squeak out before I’m biting back tears. Karl, the bass player, squeezes my shoulder before roughing my hair. Kurt folds me into a hug. And last but not least, the new lead singer steps up to shake my hand.
Julie must be ten or twenty years younger than the rest of the band. Her denim coveralls stack over a pair of turquoise cowboy boots, and beneath a vintage The Handful trucker hat, her shaggy brown hair is cut a lot like mine.
“It’s an honor to meet you,” Julie says brightly. “Your dad was a legend.”
“I know,” I tell her. “He always will be.”
Mom hangs back with Kurt and the rest of the band, but I’m ready to find my place in the crowd. The theater is packed beyond capacity—even the overflow seating spills over, averaging two people to each metal folding chair. Eight or nine rows up, I spot the neon puffy paint on Rishi’s black T-shirt—he waves his arms overhead, and I take the steps two at a time. They’ve saved a seat for me next to Gin, and when I arrive, Chrissy cheers loud enough to momentarily confuse the audience into thinking the show has started.
“Sorry! False alarm!” Chrissy alerts anyone within earshot—which, for her, may well be the entire county. Not a split secondlater, she’s yelling again. “Oh my God, Renee, would you get off your damn phone?” She swings her handbag into Renee’s gut.
“Sorry, sorry,” Renee grumbles, eyes still locked on her screen. “Work stuff.”
“But you don’t have a job!” Chrissy whines. “Wait, sorry, is that okay to say?”
“Yes, Chrissy. That’s true. It’s fine.” Renee drops her phone into her purse, but before the screen dips to black, I swear I see a flash of a familiar picture. I reach for my own phone and confirm it. The Galena Playhouse website, the same photos from the brochure. My mind whirs like a coffee grinder. It could be nothing. Or it could bework stuff. My thoughts criss and cross, but I set the tangled knot aside when the house lights fade and this little theater puts on its stadium voice.
The band takes the stage with humble waves, and it’s all so familiar—I’m every age at once. And then Julie struts out, and it could only be now.
“We’re The Handful,” she growls, “and we’re gonna play loud enough that Ricky Pierce hears every note.”
What follows is nothing shy of a baptism. Songs I’ve heard a thousand times sound brand new with Julie’s vocals, but the words still fall off my lips like they’ve been waiting there all year. Julie doesn’t try to sound like Dad; her warm, round tone is nothing like Dad’s gritty, broken tenor, but itworks. At least once every song, she holds the mic out to the crowd and lets us take the vocals. It feels less like Dad has been replaced and more like we’re all stepping into the space he left behind.
When The Handful kicks off the title track fromSongs for Alice, I’m soaring, ascending to the rafters while my feet stay firmlyplanted on the ground. The chorus comes around, and even a few seats away, I can hear Renee singing along, her voice cutting through the noise like a comet through the sky. She catches me watching, but I surprise myself. I don’t look away, and neither does she. The rest of the crowd falls away, and for those last few bars, there’s only us, and Renee is singing just to me. I let myself feel it—this golden moment I’ll never be able to replicate. This woman I am absolutely certain about.I know. I know. I know.I may not know if it’s possible, this thing with us. I don’t know if she feels the same, but the way she looks at me, I don’t feel like I’m holding on to hope; it feels like hope is holding on to me.
