The Quarry Girls(4)

That’s so weird, she thought as she crumpled toward the ground, her brain easing on down the road.





CHAPTER 1


The drums made me something better.

Something whole.

Bam, ba bum. Bam, ba bum. Bam bam bam.

Directly in front of me, Brenda wailed into the microphone, lighting up her guitar like she’d been born to it, a spotlight seeming to shine on her even inside Maureen’s dingy garage. She suddenly spun her axe behind her back, her strap hugging it snug to her butt.

Yeah you turn me on . . .

I grinned and howled along with her, driving my sticks into the skin.

To my right, Maureen cradled her bass, head tilted, sheets of feathered, green-streaked hair forming a private tent where it was just her and the music. A teacher had once told Maureen she reminded him of Sharon Tate, only prettier. She’d told him to suck a pipe.

I beamed thinking of it while matching Maureen’s throbbing beat, her bass lines all woven through and glowing with percussive thumps, each of them so throaty and strong I could see them bruising the air. Maureen hadn’t been herself lately, was all twitchy with faraway stares and an expensive new Black Hills gold ring she swore she’d bought with her own money, but when we played, when we made music together, I forgot all about the way things were changing.

I entered a different world.

You’ve felt yourself on the edge of it when a cherry song hits the radio. You’re driving, windows rolled down to the nubs, a warm breeze kissing your neck, the world tasting like hope and blue sky. Turn it up! Your hips can’t help but wiggle. Man, it feels like that song was written for you, like you’re gorgeous and loved and the entire planet is in order.

But here’s the thing they don’t tell you: That magic, king-or-queen-of-the-world sensation? It’s a million times better when you’re the one playing the music.

Maybe even a billion.

Green-haired Maureen called the feeling Valhalla, and she had enough attitude she could get away with saying things like that. Back before my accident, my mom and Maureen’s had been best friends. They’d drink Sanka and smoke Kools while Maureen and I stared at each other across the portable crib. When we outgrew that, they let us play in the living room and then, finally, sent us down into the tunnels. That’s just how it rolled in Pantown. Then Mom changed, Mrs. Hansen stopped coming around, and Maureen got boobs. All of a sudden, the boys were treating her differently, and there’s nothing to do when you’re treated differently except to act differently.

Maybe that explained Maureen’s twitchy moods lately.

But even before those, Maureen had been end-of-summer energy in a bottle. Never still, racing to cram all the good stuff in before the grind. Except she was like that year-round, shivering with something electric and a little bit scary, to me, at least. Brenda, on the other hand, was one of those girls you knew was gonna be a mom one day. Didn’t matter that she was the youngest in her family: she was born with her roots sunk deep in the ground, made you relax just standing next to her. That’s why the three of us made such a good band, nurturing Brenda our lead singer and guitarist, Maureen our witchy Stevie Nicks singing backup and playing bass, and me holding true north on the drums.

We shot onto a whole nother plane when we played music, even when banging out covers, which is what we mostly did. We called ourselves the Girls, and the first songs we learned were “Pretty Woman,” “Brandy,” and “Love Me Do,” in that order. We played them well enough that you could recognize the tune. Brenda would figure out the opening bars, and I’d lay down a steady beat. Slap the lyrics on top of that, shimmy like you know what you’re doing, and people were happy.

At least, the only two people who’d ever watched us play were.

Didn’t matter they were my little sister, Junie, and our friend Claude-rhymes-with-howdy. The two of them sat at the front of the garage for nearly every single one of our practice sessions, including today’s.

“Here it comes, Heather!” Brenda yelled over her shoulder.

I grinned. She’d remembered my drum solo. Sometimes I took them spontaneously, like when Maureen sneaked a smoke or Brenda forgot the lyrics, but this one was for real. On purpose. I’d practiced the heck out of it. When I played it, I straight-up left my body, the garage, planet Earth. It felt like I set myself on fire and put myself out at the exact same time. (I’d never say that out loud. I was no Maureen.) My heart picked up in anticipation, matching the beat.

The song was Blue Swede’s “Hooked on a Feeling.” It shouldn’t have had a drum solo, but who was gonna tell us that? We were three teenage girls playing balls-out rock in a garage in Saint Cloud, Minnesota, on a warm early-August day, the deep-summer green so thick you could drink it.

I quick-blinked against a momentary twinge, the sense that I was flying too high, feeling too good, too big for the world. I’d later wonder if that’s what cursed us, our boldness, our joy, but in that moment, it felt too good to stop.

Maureen brushed her streaked hair over her shoulder and tossed me a sideways smile. I hoped it was a sign that she was going to follow me right to the door of the solo. Sometimes she did. When we hit it together, it was really something to hear. Brenda would even stick around to watch us riff off each other.

But that’s not what Maureen’d been signaling.

In fact, she wasn’t smiling at me at all.