Dedication
Dedicated to Joe—
Melly wouldn’t have been a drummer
without you
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
One
The Camp Rockaway brochure promised every kid was a rock star waiting to happen, but they never met me. We hadn’t even arrived, and I was ready to turn around and go home. My heart beat faster and faster, like the world’s worst metronome, until it froze—until I couldn’t feel or think or breathe. Then, just when it felt like nothing but a jumble of clockwork bits, it stuttered to life again.
Mom’s car zipped along the highway. Billboards dwindled by the minute, farmland giving way to forest the farther north we went. In the back seat, my best friend, Olivia, leaned over and whispered, for what had to be the fifth time, “Are you sure you’re okay?”
I shrugged. I hadn’t cried in over an hour. That had to count for something, right?
She squeezed my hand. “You’re going to get through this. Only two weeks, and I’ll be with you the whole time. We’ll rock so hard you’ll forget the rest of the world exists.”
I nodded. I couldn’t expect Olivia to understand.
She wasn’t the one who’d woken up yesterday to the sweet smell of Dad’s homemade waffles and fresh-squeezed orange juice—like it was somebody’s birthday, except it wasn’t, which should’ve tipped me off. She wasn’t the one whose parents had, at the end of breakfast, announced, “We’ve decided we’re better off apart.” She hadn’t shuffled like a zombie through the past twenty-four hours as Mom took her shopping for a new swimsuit and Dad scanned apartment listings on his phone.
It wasn’t the next two weeks I was worried about. It was the rest of my life.
I knew Olivia had more to say, but we couldn’t talk about anything important on the ride because Mom was right there. Instead, we sang along to the radio and talked about music. Which is to say, Olivia talked. She always knew who’d put out a new album, who was dating whom, who’d trashed a hotel room, who’d checked into rehab. She sucked up gossip like a sponge.
I only half heard what she was saying, my eyes stuck on the empty seat next to Mom. Dad was supposed to be sitting there, singing “Crazy on You” in an off-key falsetto and passing around the road atlas to see who could find the funniest town names: Sweet Lips, Tennessee, or Elephant Butte, New Mexico. Instead he was back in Kalamazoo, looking for a new place to live.
The scenery along the highway faded, and I was back in the kitchen, morning sun streaming through the window. I’d dropped my fork with a clatter, and it lay dripping syrup on the white tile floor. My tuxedo cat, Maki, licked at it cautiously. “We both love you very much,” Mom said as I stared. “We want you to know you absolutely did not do anything wrong.”
I knew that! But you don’t just wake up and say, Good morning, honey, let’s eat waffles and get divorced. It’s not like I was expecting a drum roll, but shouldn’t there have been a sign something big was coming? Where had the arguments been, the screaming, the glares and cold shoulders? The signs that something was terribly wrong? I searched my memory and came up empty. The night before, they’d finished a crossword together.
“But why?” I’d croaked.
They’d exchanged a glance. Dad said, “It’s because—” at the same time Mom said, “That’s not important right now, sweetie.” And we listened to seconds tick by on the clock, the one shaped like a flying chicken, with fried eggs on the hands, that Dad picked out at the art fair one summer. He’d picked it out, but Mom had laughed, too, imagining it on our wall. We’d laughed so hard.
How could this be happening? And why the day before I left for camp?
Maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised about that part. My parents always had the worst timing. Like when Dad told me Grandma Goodwin was in the hospital with a fractured hip ten minutes before my pre-algebra test. I got a D, I was so distracted. Or when I was six and Mom slipped the truth about Santa on Christmas Eve. I cried myself to sleep and refused to open my presents in the morning. They sat wrapped under the tree until December 26.
I couldn’t believe they expected me to pack my suitcase as if everything were normal. But Mom said, “Trust me, Melly Mouse, by the time you’re back home, the news will have sunk in, and we’ll all be ready to talk calmly and rationally about what this means for the future.”
Calm and rational. Like this conversation? She was like a newscaster reporting a devastating earthquake. The entire studio could be crashing down around our heads, and she’d read the headlines in a pleasant voice, ignoring the dust and debris raining on her suit. At least Dad looked sorry, every part of him drooping, from his round shoulders to his black mustache.
I knocked back my chair, sending Maki skittering from the room, and stumbled, blind with tears, to the basement where my drums were. I played as hard and fast as I could, all the loudest, most-likely-to-aggravate-my-parents songs Olivia had loaded onto my phone. My right foot on the bass drum was the boom of thunder. The hi-hat sizzled like lightning. My sticks rolled across the toms like rain on the roof, clattered across the cymbals like hail on the window. For a wonderful time, the rest of the world was washed away. There was only music, with me in the eye of the storm.
But in the end—when my phone died and my arms grew sore and I really had to pee—I’d had to climb those stairs again. Quietly I packed my suitcase. Without drums, Melly Mouse was just that: a mouse. And now, like it or not, I was on my way to camp.
Mom caught my eye in the rearview mirror. Her forehead creased. I looked away. At least she had the decency not to smile at me.
We turned from the highway onto a curving country road, swooping over low hills, past marshes and prairie. Then, a few miles later, onto a bumpy dirt road lined by tall trees—hundreds of them, thousands, placed so thick I couldn’t see what lay past them.
“I didn’t expect there to be so many trees.” The words tumbled out of me.
Olivia said, “Of course there are trees. It’s camp. What were you expecting?”
“I’m not sure.” Not this, this crush of green all around us.
“Camp equals woods. Woods equals trees,” Olivia said.
“I know,” I said. “But I’ve never seen trees like this.”
“Yeah,” Olivia said, softer. “Me neither.”
Neither of us had really spent time in the Great Outdoors—capital G, capital O. In Kalamazoo, trees stood in well-behaved lines along the parkways and held tire swings in people’s backyards. Aside from field trips to the nature center, to walk around the bog and see rehabilitated owls and turtles, the wildest place I’d ever been was the Grand Canyon—and that was about as far opposite the woods of northern Michigan as you could get.
We turned once more, and the road opened up into a bright parking lot. Gravel grumbled under the tires. Dust puffed up in clouds. Mom always ran early, but it seemed everyone else was just as eager. As we
parked, car after car pulled in around us.
I dipped my forehead against the window, staring without meaning to. I’d be here for two whole weeks with these people, and I didn’t even know a thing about them. Every car was like a package on the front step, what was inside a mystery.
Olivia had already thrown open her door. I slowly followed her into the hot, muggy July air. Mom popped the trunk and started heaving luggage onto the packed dirt. A suitcase, sleeping bag, pillow, and mosquito netting for each of us, plus Olivia’s bass guitar.
Camp Rockaway provided drums, amps, and plenty of other instruments and gear, but there was no way Olivia would settle for anyone’s bass but her own. It was fretless, and stained the color of cherry cough drops. When Olivia’s fingers danced along the neck, her dark hair swishing in time to the music, she looked like a real rock star. And that was before Camp Rockaway.
My only gear was my leather stick bag, which I slung over my shoulder.
“Ouch!” Olivia cried, hopping around and slapping at her ankle. “Something bit me.”
“Hold on,” Mom said. She fumbled in her handbag and pulled out a bottle of bug spray. There was another bottle somewhere in my suitcase. Olivia squirted herself.
The air was thick with the sound of bugs I didn’t recognize. I knew the whine of mosquitoes, the buzz of houseflies. This was a whole orchestra. It hummed in my ears, pulsed in my brain. My skin vibrated like the skin of a drum. My fingers flexed as if grasping imaginary sticks. For the first time in over a day, I forgot what was going on at home.
Mom waved the bug spray at me. “You’d better put some on, too, Melly.”
At her voice, I remembered everything and frowned.
As I rubbed repellent on my arms and legs, I watched a white taxicab roll into the lot and lurch to a stop. It looked out of place amid the minivans and SUVs. A girl with tawny brown skin and dark brown hair braided into rows jumped out of the passenger seat. The driver opened the trunk. He pulled out a large duffel bag, bedding, mosquito netting, and an acoustic guitar. It was in a cheap case, the black cardboard kind, covered with stickers.
Who came to camp in a taxi? Where were her parents? The girl handed the driver money and shook his hand, as if it were an everyday thing for her. As she turned from him, she saw me watching. She smiled at me—a big, braces-flashing smile.
I blushed and looked away. I needed a shirt for times like this. It would say, Don’t mind me, I’m just socially awkward. I handed the bug spray back to my mother.
“No, you keep it,” Mom said. “If it’s this buggy all the time, I want you to have extra.”
The girl from the taxi walked past us. I sneaked a look at the stickers on her guitar case. “Peace Love Music.” “More cowbell.” “WUPX: The pulse of the UP.” “This machine kills fascists.” I didn’t get that one at all. I remembered from our World War II unit that Mussolini was a fascist, but I couldn’t remember how he’d died. Still, I was pretty sure it had nothing to do with guitars.
It didn’t seem possible she could carry all her luggage at once, but there was her duffel across her back. There were her sleeping bag and netting in one hand, her guitar case in the other. If she felt weighed down by all that stuff, you couldn’t tell. She looked as carefree as if she were carrying a bundle of balloons. As if she had only to wish it, and she’d skim across the parking lot, her toes barely stirring up swirls of dust. I couldn’t help staring as she floated away.
A small voice inside me said, Remember, your life is in pieces. You shouldn’t be here. You should be at home, under the covers, crying.
But another voice chanted louder, merging with the chorus of bugs in the trees, Forget, forget, forget.
Two
We towed our luggage across the lot to the growing mob of campers and their families. Sprinkled in were Camp Rockaway staff wearing black T-shirts and holding clipboards. A woman with wispy blond hair, glasses, and a sunburned nose made her way over.
“Hi, welcome to Camp Rockaway!” she said. “I’m Poppy. Let me get your names, and we can figure out where you’re headed.”
“Olivia Mendoza,” Olivia said.
“What do you know?” Poppy said, making a checkmark on her clipboard. “You’ll be camping up in Treble Cliff with me.” She turned to me. “What about you?”
“Melissa Goodwin,” Olivia said, before I had even processed the question.
“Looks like you’re in Treble Cliff, too. Welcome, Melissa. Wait, I see a note here that you go by a nickname.” Poppy pushed up her glasses and squinted at the page. “Sorry, Damon—our director—has terrible handwriting.”
I thought about telling her, yes, I did have a nickname: Lissa. Lissa sounded so much more sophisticated than Melly. A name for a rock star, not a mouse.
Then Olivia said, “She’s Melly!” and that little fantasy fizzled out.
Oh, well. It’s not like I would’ve had the guts to say something anyway.
“Melly. Olivia. Terrific. You two can put your stuff over by that post. The ranger will drive it to the campsite. Hold on to any personal instruments until after your audition.”
My stomach twisted. This was the first I’d heard anything about an audition.
Poppy saw my panic. “Don’t be scared. We call it an audition, but it’s more of an interview. It’s our way of learning a little bit about you. Nobody’s judging you. Nobody gets sent home for not being good enough. Okay?”
She pulled out some maps from under her clipboard and began making circles and X’s. “We’re here. The practice cabins are where the auditions take place. Afterward you can take your instruments up to the lodge. We’ve got lockers there. Finally, here’s Treble Cliff. It’s a bit of a hike, I know, but it’s gorgeous up there. The best campsite at Camp Rockaway.”
She grinned as she handed the maps to Olivia and me. “See you up there.”
We found the post for Treble Cliff, one in a line of eight. There was one for Bass Cliff, too, of course, and for Carole Kingdom and Buddy Hollow. Each name was punnier than the last. Olivia and I rolled our eyes as Mom chuckled. I felt a pang. I wished Dad had been the one to drive us. Nobody appreciated a good (or bad, depending on how you looked at it) pun like Dad. We piled up our things, pillows balanced on top of sleeping bags on top of suitcases to keep them out of the dust.
Mom snatched my map. “This way to the practice cabins,” she said, and started walking.
My feet stuck to the ground. “Um, Mom? I don’t think you’re supposed to go with us.”
“What do you mean, Melly? Of course I’m going with you.” She waved the map toward the trail. “Look at all these parents going with their kids.”
Olivia and I exchanged a glance, as if to say, Should you tell her, or should I?
Olivia gave a polite cough. “Only the little kids,” she said.
“Oh, good grief,” Mom said, but she looked around and saw what we’d seen: all the other kids our age were already hugging their parents good-bye. SUVs and minivans were backing out of their spaces to make room for the next round of arrivals.
Mom sighed. “Are you sure, Melly?”
I wasn’t, not really. Once Mom left, Olivia and my sticks would be the only familiar things I could hold on to. But I couldn’t show up to my audition with my mother in tow. I had enough to worry about without the other campers thinking I was a scared little mama’s girl.
“I’m sure,” I said. “We’ll be fine. You can go.”
“Yes, we’ll be fine,” Olivia said. “I promise we won’t get lost. I’m an excellent navigator.”
She reached for the map, and for a second I thought Mom wasn’t going to let go. Her grip tightened, rumpling the paper’s edge. Suddenly it slipped from her fingers. Mom looked sad, and I wondered if she was thinking about driving home to an empty house. Well, that was her fault—hers and Dad’s. I refused to feel sorry for her.
“Fine. I’ll go,” Mom said. “But only because you two can’t start camp in a state of humiliation. I can’t have
that on my conscience.” She drew me into a hug. I stood stiffly at first, but then instinct kicked in, and I sank into her soft embrace.
“Use lots of sunscreen,” she said into my neck. “Your fair skin burns so easily.”
“Okay, Mom.”
“Eat your fruits and vegetables. Don’t stay up all night talking.”
“Okay, Mom.”
“And write, please. I put some stationery in the pocket of your suitcase, and some envelopes—already stamped. If you want to write to your father, I’ll make sure he gets it. I know he’d love to hear from you, too.”
This time I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to make a promise I wasn’t sure I could keep.
Fortunately, Olivia chose that moment to say, “I need a hug, too, Mrs. Goodwin!”
Mom released me and held out her arms to Olivia. “Come here, and give me a squeeze.” Their embrace was so uncomplicated. Nothing was changing between the two of them.
Suddenly I wondered if the divorce meant Mom would change her name. It was sort of old-fashioned that she’d changed it to match Dad’s in the first place. But she’d been Mrs. Goodwin all my life. Was she going to be Ms. Schiff from now on?
And what would happen to my name now that Dad was moving out? Would I stay Melly Goodwin, or would I become Melly Schiff? Would I even have any say in the matter?
“One more hug, and I swear I’ll go,” Mom said. She hugged me so hard I was pretty sure there’d be finger marks on my ribs. “Have fun,” she whispered. “Don’t worry about Dad and me. Just think about yourself, and I’ll see you in two weeks, sunshine. I love you.”
I think she was waiting for me to say I love you back, but I didn’t. Finally she let go, kissed me on the cheek, and turned toward the parking lot.
“Wait!” I called. She turned back eagerly, but all I said was, “Pet Maki for me.”
She smiled, but it looked pasted on. “I will. I’ll give him lots of extra playing with his feather toy.” Then she disappeared into the crowd.
Olivia and I watched her go. Olivia said, “Well, I guess camp’s officially begun!”
“I guess so,” I said, and pasted on my own smile.
Drum Roll, Please Page 1
