When no one was looking, I pressed my hand to my ribs again, feeling part of something very big and very old and, yes, even sacred.
Damon caught my eye and winked. I ducked my head, but I was smiling.
Olivia wasn’t in line outside the lodge when I arrived, but a bunch of other Treble Cliff girls were: Shauna and Toni, Adeline and Candace.
“Hey, Melly,” Shauna said, waving me over. “Guess who’s got two thumbs and just finished writing her first song of the summer?”
“Guess who hasn’t shut up about it since?” Candace said. Shauna pouted, and Candace added, “I kid, I kid!”
“Is it about a country woman fighting the patriarchy?” I asked.
“Yes!” said Shauna. She started stomping her foot and sang in a drawling voice.
Hey mister, I don’t like this plan yer pitchin’
You want me barefoot and pregnant, slavin’ in the kitchen
I got my own job, and I got my own truck
You got a problem with that, then yer outta luck
“How old are you, again?” I asked.
“Thirteen. Why?”
“Well, the job. And the truck. And the pregnancy.”
“I never said it was autobiographical,” Shauna said. “Anyway, it’s the principle of the thing. If women don’t stand up for our rights, who will?”
She had a point.
“Hey, Melly,” said Adeline, “I missed you at the lake today.”
“Really?” I said, surprised she’d noticed, surprised she’d cared—but glad, too. My stomach did a little flip. “I went right after B-flat, with Toni.”
“Darn. We must have just missed each other.” She grinned. “One of these days.”
“Absolutely!” I said. It came out louder than I meant. Everyone’s eyes landed on me. This. This is why you should never, ever open your mouth.
To my relief, the line started moving. As we all grabbed a table together, Olivia ran up, skidding across the floor to squeeze into a chair between Shauna and me. “Hey,” she said. “Miss me?” Her bangs were damp, and under her ponytail, sweat sparkled on her neck.
Would I sound like a bad friend if I said, No, not really? I’d been too busy to miss her, too busy to think about anything but what I was doing. Instead of answering, I said, “I’m glad you told me about the percussion workshop. I got to try a talking drum from West Africa. Its heads are connected by this leather cord. You hold it under your arm as you play, and depending on how tight you squeeze, it raises or lowers the pitch. It was so cool.”
“It sounds like it,” she said.
“What about you?” I asked, as bowls of turkey tetrazzini and green beans started making their way around the table. “Were you playing the entire time?”
Olivia plopped a heap of gooey noodles onto her plate. “Basically. We had to take a break in the middle because someone else signed out the room. So we just hung around outside until we could get back in.”
“Nice,” I said. I wasn’t sure what else to say.
“Noel and I—we click, you know?” said Olivia. “It’s just like you and me, except different. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like there’s this fizzy energy when we start playing. Like we’re the only two people in the room.”
“What about Brick?” I asked, nibbling a forkful of green beans.
“Oh, Brick. He’s fine. And Noel invited this other guitar player, Mickey or Mikey or someone. He couldn’t solo his way out of a paper bag. But it was okay because he was mainly playing rhythm. Noel’s so much better.”
“What kind of music did you play?” I asked. “More classic rock?”
Instantly Olivia’s eyes were on her plate. She stirred her noodles. She mumbled something.
“What?” I said.
She raised her chin. “Don’t laugh, Melly. Promise you won’t laugh.”
“Um. I promise?”
“The thing is, we played a lot of Grateful Dead.”
“The Grateful Dead?” I repeated. “Didn’t you once say they’re a total grandpa band? Didn’t you say their songs are the musical equivalent of stale bran muffins?”
The whole table went quiet. “Well,” Shauna said, “tell us how you really feel.”
“I’m sorry,” I said in a low voice. “No offense to any Grateful Dead fans.”
Everyone laughed—except Olivia. “All right, maybe I said those things,” she said. “But nobody’s perfect, right? And it doesn’t really matter what we played. The point is we clicked.”
“I know. I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m glad you clicked.”
“It’s okay.” She sighed. “Hopefully tomorrow we’ll play something better.”
I wondered if Noel had already asked her to jam again on Wednesday, or if Olivia was simply assuming. Either way, I didn’t need to ask if she’d missed me. The answer was obvious. What I wasn’t sure about was how that made me feel.
At the end of dinner, Damon took the stage to announce the next night’s open mic and coffeehouse. “No actual coffee involved,” Shauna said. Performing was a privilege reserved for junior high and high school campers, and even then there was a lottery. Everyone who wanted a chance to play could drop their name into an empty pickle jar, and Damon would draw the winners at breakfast.
“Remember, this event isn’t just for solo acts,” Damon said. “If you’ve got a group of friends you want to play with, it just takes one lucky winner to put you all on stage. There’s one catch: to make sure as many people as possible get a chance to play, you can only perform once. And remember, if you don’t get a turn this time, we’re having another open mic next week.”
Olivia grabbed my arm. “I am so going to put my name in. And if I get picked, I’ll bring you on as my drummer. You should do it, too, Melly. We’ll double our chances.”
I remembered how I’d frozen at my audition, those measly five minutes with Donna in the practice cabin. Then I imagined myself freezing onstage in front of the entire camp. No thanks. Maybe by next week I’d feel ready, but I sure didn’t now.
Besides, what if Olivia and I were both chosen? We wouldn’t be able to play together. I’d have to ask David to be my bass player, and he’d probably tell me to forget it. If he even bothered answering.
Or what if Noel and I were chosen, and Noel wanted Olivia, too? What would happen if Olivia had to choose between us? Before today, I knew who she would’ve chosen. Now I wasn’t sure. It was safer to keep my name out of the pickle jar.
“Maybe next week,” I said.
Olivia joined the mob of campers writing their names on slips of paper with a Sharpie and tossing them into the pickle jar. Almost the entire table went up there, actually.
Adeline turned back. “You don’t want to enter, Melly?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think I’m ready.”
“Are you kidding? You’re great.”
Now, that was a heap of baloney. I was barely keeping myself together during practice, much less the rest of the band. Adeline’s tofu tetrazzini—tonight’s vegetarian option—must have gone to her head. Still, I blushed. “Maybe next week,” I repeated.
“Okay,” Adeline said. “But if my name gets pulled, I’m asking you to be my drummer.”
Suddenly I was presented with a new hypothetical: what if Olivia’s and Adeline’s names were both picked from the pickle jar?
Ten
Olivia wasn’t picked for the open mic. Neither was Adeline. Neither was anyone else who possibly would’ve asked me to play with them.
But Noel was one of the chosen few, and of course he asked Olivia to be his bass player. Her eyes sparkled as she turned to me. “Did you hear that, Melly? He wants me!”
“It would’ve been stranger if he’d asked someone else,” I said. “It’s not like he’s been rubbing elbows with any other bass players.”
“I know, I know. Still, there’s something about hearing him say it, out loud, in front of all these people. It’s like it’s more real.”
�
�Too bad he didn’t call you up onstage first. Then everyone really would’ve heard him,” I teased. “Anyway, I thought you were only in this for the music.”
“Fine, mock me,” Olivia said, sticking out her tongue. “I’ll have you know, if someone you liked asked you to play, I’d be jumping up and down, shouting, ‘Rah, rah, sis-boom-bah.’”
“In that case, thank goodness no one did,” I said.
After running through our songs from Monday and Tuesday, Donna passed around our third chart. This time, I didn’t recognize the name of the song. I didn’t even recognize the name of the band. And when Donna pressed Play, I knew I’d never heard it before.
It started with tense, thumping drums. An electric guitar began to whine, softly as a mosquito, then growing in intensity, before breaking into chords as buzzy as a swarm of yellow jackets. The beat couldn’t have been much simpler, like an exercise we might have played in fifth grade band. But the sound was anything but: distorted and dirty, jagged and rusty. It made yesterday’s Metallica sound like polished chrome. And when the vocalist came in, her voice was a whiny holler.
“Rebel girl, rebel girl,” she wailed, “rebel girl, you are the queen of my world.”
Oh my God, Mom would HATE this! For some reason, the thought made me grin.
I double-checked the name of the band. Bikini Kill. Who were they, and why hadn’t Olivia gotten any of their songs? Adeline was already mouthing the lyrics. Even Caleb was jerking his head along to the beat. This would teach him to dismiss music by women—though no one in their right mind would call this chick music. It wasn’t the kind of girl power anthem you’d hear topping the charts, either. It was sassy and tough, just like the girl in the song, the rebel girl who ruled the neighborhood and didn’t care if people called her names.
No wonder the singer adored her. So did I! She was everything I wasn’t.
As the final chord twanged into dead air, Donna paused the stereo. She looked pleased. “Something tells me I picked a winner,” she said. “What we’ve got here, people, is an American punk classic. If I had my way, I’d make it part of the national musical curriculum. But I’ll settle for sharing it with you four. Let’s sing it through with the recording, and then we’ll dive in.”
Right. Did I mention I don’t dive? When it was time to pick up my sticks and play that noisy, don’t-give-a-fig intro all on my own, every muscle in my back and shoulders knotted. I did my best to block out the rest of the band, especially Donna, letting everything blur but the black and white of my chart. I brought down my sticks, and sound burst from my drums, but I could tell right away it was all wrong.
The drummer on the recording swaggered in torn-up jeans. She stomped in steel-toed boots. Me? I was practically tiptoeing, my back pressed against the wall.
Donna knew it, too. The rest of the group had barely joined in when she called, “This isn’t school, Melly! This is rock and roll. Pump up the volume. Loosen up.”
I knew she was trying to help, in her way. But it was exactly the wrong thing to say. My shoulders tensed even more. How could I loosen up when she was focusing all her attention on me? Maybe I was a little stiff, but at least I was playing in time, which was more than I could say for David, who was off in his own little world, or Caleb, who was half a measure ahead. Didn’t Donna get it? I was already playing as hard as I could! She could have me quiet and in control, or she could have me loud and . . . well, I didn’t know, because I didn’t do loud. Because even thinking about it made my heart beat too fast and my stomach somersault, and I heard a roar like my ears were pressed to an enormous seashell.
Maybe she realized she’d made a mistake. Over the rest of practice, she gave the others notes and told us, “Sing, people. No, scratch that, scream!” But she didn’t single me out again. She didn’t even make eye contact with me, though that might have been my fault. I kept my eyes down. I didn’t want to see her disappointment that I was the opposite of a rebel girl. I didn’t want to hear her thinking that I should be playing the piccolo instead of the drums.
Poppy handed me a letter during B-flat. I stared at it. I’d been waiting for three days, and now it was here. The address was printed in purple gel pen, in Mom’s handwriting. I didn’t want to read it. Well, I did and I didn’t. I wanted to know what it said, but I was afraid. It could say anything, anything at all.
“Just open it,” Olivia whispered.
I shoved my thumb under the flap and ripped it open. The stationery had a border of little black-and-white cats that looked a lot like Maki. Mom wasn’t much of a letter writer. She must have bought the paper specially to write to me at camp.
Dear Melly,
It’s Sunday night, and I’ve just made myself some chamomile tea and queued up Gilmore Girls. Only two hours on Route 131, but it feels like you’re on the other side of the world. Maki’s been sniffing around your room, wondering where you are.
In some ways, tomorrow will be back to normal: work, etc. Except your father has signed the lease to a new apartment. He’s spending tomorrow night there. So it will be extra quiet.
I hope you, on the other hand, are making lots of noise and having fun! Did you find the stationery? I would love to hear about your band. Do you have time for anything besides music, music, music?
Lots of love,
Mom
My heart squeezed in on itself. The letter felt like a message in a bottle, tossed into the sea a hundred years ago. When Mom was writing that letter, I was at the concert the first night of camp. While Dad was settling into bed at his new apartment with a book or his laptop, I was hiking back to my tent after firebowl. What else had happened, what else had changed, that I wouldn’t hear about for days to come?
The worst thing was realizing that by the time I got back home, Dad would be completely moved out. I imagined the house with all the pieces of him removed. In my mind, it looked like Swiss cheese, but with more holes than cheese. What were we going to eat when he was gone, anyway? Mom was probably stuffing the freezer with Stouffer’s lasagna. The fanciest meal she’d ever made involved canned tuna and mayonnaise.
Or maybe the worst thing was wondering why Dad hadn’t written to me, too.
“Everything okay?” Olivia asked softly.
I blinked back the tears that sparked in my eyes. “Yeah, I guess.” I shoved the letter back into its envelope, crumpled the whole thing into a ball, and leaned over the side of my bed, shoving it into the bottom of my suitcase.
“You want to talk about it?” Olivia said.
Part of me did. With each band practice and campfire and trip to the lake, I was piling sandbags to keep my jostling emotions at bay. But at times like this I could feel them rising. How long before one big surge sent them over the wall? Just the same, I shook my head. What could I tell Olivia besides, Life doesn’t make sense anymore, and I hate it?
She waited a moment longer, then rolled over onto her back. “So, what do you think I should wear for the open mic? I was thinking my black jeans and my Camp Rockaway shirt, the one I ordered when I signed up for camp. But probably it’s hokey to wear a camp shirt at a camp show. And it’s red. What if it clashes with my bass? What about my turquoise tank top? Basic, but in a good way . . . right?”
My stomach ached like I’d been punched. I wasn’t sure what hurt more, Mom’s letter or Olivia’s cluelessness.
I decided to go to the meadow. I could go to a far corner and bury my nose in The Beat of My Own Drum, and no one could see I was actually crying. When B-flat ended, I grabbed my book and water bottle and headed to the Fretboard to flip my pick.
Stepping along the path from the woods into the meadow was like stepping from spring into summer. The sun blazed down. The air went from cool and piny to warm and grassy sweet. I walked along the edge, where the mown part of the field met tall brush and bright spatters of wildflowers. I passed a kid shooting hoops by himself on the paved half-court, and others starting up a game of touch football.
I found my quiet corner at
the far end of the field. The shouts and laughs of the other campers faded. Insect song swallowed me whole. Cicadas and something else, maybe grasshoppers? And the whine of a mosquito! I was glad I’d remembered to put on more bug spray before leaving my tent. I settled cross-legged in the stiff, dry grass and opened my book.
But each time my eyes focused on the letters, they floated off the page, hovering and shimmering like a cloud of gnats. My heart hurt so much. How could I make it through another ten days at camp as Dad emptied out our house of his things, of himself? How could I make it through the rest of my life with my family broken into pieces? The gnats dissolved altogether as my eyes went blurry.
I didn’t hear the footsteps crunching across the meadow almost until two sneakers stopped in front of me, two white socks giving way to brown ankles. Adeline.
She set down her guitar case and knelt. “Hey. You okay?”
I closed Sheila E. “I was just reading.” My voice wavered. Stupid voice.
“Do you want to talk about what’s wrong?”
People’s parents got divorced every day. If I started telling Adeline about it, I’d probably start crying again, and she’d think I was totally juvenile. Besides, my best friend had just offered to talk, and hadn’t I told her no? Why would I turn around and share my sad story with someone I barely knew? I shook my head.
“Is it about camp? You seemed kind of down during practice this morning.”
I shook my head again.
“Okay. Because if it was, I’d be happy to knock some heads together for you. Especially if it was Caleb. In fact, maybe I’ll knock his head against something just for kicks.”
I smiled and sniffed. It turned into sort of a wet, noisy snort. When Adeline grinned instead of getting grossed out, I decided maybe I could trust her after all. “My parents are getting divorced.”
Drum Roll, Please Page 7
