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 cheery 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.
A shadow had fallen across the driveway.
Tucked in the back, I had to wait until he showed his face.

CHAPTER 2

The guy Maureen had been smiling at had an all-right mug if you
didn’t know him. Shaggy brown hair. Hazel eyes a little too close
together, like bowling ball holes. I’d thought he was cute back in
grade school. A lot of us did. He was the first boy in Pantown to get
a car. Plus, he was older. Too much older. At least that’s what I’d told
Maureen when she’d asked me a couple days ago what I thought of
him.
Heinrich? Heinrich the Gooseman? He’s a chump.
Better a chump than a snore, she’d said, then laughed her
calliope laugh.
I should’ve guessed he’d show up to our practice eventually,
given her question and the extra care she’d been putting into her
appearance, her hair always curled, lips extra glossy.
Heinrich—Ricky—stepped to the middle of the open garage
door, giving us a good gander at his bare, patchy-haired chest above
peek-a-ball cutoffs. He was grinning over his shoulder at someone
just around the corner. Probably Anton Dehnke. Ricky and Ant had
been hanging out a lot lately, along with some new guy named Ed, a
non-Pantowner Maureen swore was “sexy as hell” who I had yet to
meet.
Brenda kept singing even though Maureen had stopped
twanging her bass the second she’d laid eyes on Ricky. Right before
my drum solo. Brenda gave it a few more bars and then offered me
an apologetic smile before quitting, too.
“Don’t shut it down on account of us,” Ricky said into the
container of sudden quiet, glancing again at whoever he’d come with
and chuckling, the sound like two pieces of sandpaper rubbed
together. He was called the Gooseman because he’d always pinch
girls’ butts and then laugh that dry laugh. His grab-hands act had
never been cute, but it was gross now that he was nineteen and still
in high school due to learning difficulties. (Everyone who attended
the Church of Saint Patrick knew about the high fever Ricky’d had
when he was nine years old; we’d done a donation drive for his
family.)
“Screw you,” Maureen said to Ricky, flirty-like, as she lifted the
strap of her bass over her head and rested the instrument in its
stand.
“You wish,” Ricky said, his grin lopsided and wolfish. He sidled
over to Maureen and hooked his arm around her shoulders.
Brenda and I exchanged a look, and then she shrugged. I
boom-boomed my kick drum, hoping to steer us back into practice.
“Ant, what the hell are you doing hanging out there already?”
Ricky asked, calling toward the front of the garage. “Stop lurking like
a weirdo and get in here.”
A moment later, Anton loped into view looking sweaty and
embarrassed. I wondered why he hadn’t just walked in with Ricky in
the first place. At least he was wearing a shirt, a plain blue tee
above gym shorts, yellow-striped tube socks pulled to his knees, and
sneakers. He had blue eyes—one larger than the other like he was
Popeye squinting—and a wide Mr. Potato Head nose, the orange one
with nostrils. His mouth was nice, though, his teeth straight and
white, his lips full and soft looking. Ant was in the grade above me,
but like all of us, he was a Pantown kid, which meant we knew him
better than his own grandma did. He was mostly nice, though he
had a quiet mean streak. We figured he got it from his dad.
Ant stood near shirtless Ricky and bright-eyed Maureen for a
few seconds, stiff and uncomfortable like the exclamation point at
the end of dork! When neither of them said anything to him, he
slunk into a shadowy spot inside the garage and leaned on the wall,
smushing up against my favorite poster, the one of Alice de Buhr,
Fanny drummer, her mouth open, half smiling, on the verge of telling
me a secret.
I glared at him. To my surprise, he blushed and stared at his
sneakers.
“You girls sounded good just now,” Ricky said, sucking on his
teeth. “Maybe good enough to land onstage.”
“We know,” Maureen said, rolling her eyes and ducking out from
under his arm.
“Did you know I got you a gig?” Ricky said, scratching his bare
chest, the scritch scritch impossibly loud in the garage, a gloating
grin cracking his face.
“It wasn’t you,” Ant said from the shadows. “It was Ed.”
Ricky lunged, hand raised as if to smack him. Ant shrank even
though five feet separated them, but then Ricky laughed like he’d
been joking. He blew on his knuckles and shined them on an
imaginary shirt, directing his words to Maureen. “Me and Ed came
up with the idea together. We’ll be comanagers of you girls.”
“We’re not—” The sentence froze in my mouth. I’d been about
to say we weren’t looking for a manager and we hecka sure weren’t
looking to play in front of strangers, but the way everyone whirled
on me wicked the moisture right out of my mouth. I tugged my hair
forward to hide my deformity. Habit.
Thankfully, Brenda was there. “We just play for fun,” she said.
“That’s all.”
“Do you think it’d be ‘fun’ to play at the Benton County
fairgrounds?” Ricky asked. “’Cause me and my buddy Ed were doing
some work out there, setting up the stage, and overheard that the
opener for the Johnny Holm Band dropped out last minute. They
need a replacement band. Friday and Saturday shows, no payment
but good exposure. You’ll be like Pantown’s very own Runaways. The
Pantaways!” He laughed his raspy laugh.
I didn’t want to tell Ricky I loved the Runaways almost as much
as I loved Fanny. I didn’t want to tell him anything. But it was too
late. I could see it in Maureen’s face as she spun on Brenda,
pleading.
“Oh, you guys,” she said, her hands clasped in prayer as she
bounced up and down, “please say you’ll do it. We could get
discovered!”
Brenda was still wearing her guitar. She turned to me. “What do
you think?”
Her voice was even, but her eyes were hot and shiny. She
wanted this, too.
I scowled.
“Come on, Heather,” Maureen said, her voice syrupy with
begging. “We can do one show, right? Just the first one, and if we
don’t like it, we don’t have to play the second.”
She glanced over to Ricky, whose mouth had tightened. He
didn’t like that idea, didn’t like Maureen deciding if and when we
showed up. He was offering a gift, and we had to take it, all or
nothing. Maureen and Brenda must have read the same message,
because their shoulders slumped.
I exhaled through tight lips. “Fine,” I said as ungraciously as
humanly possible.
The thought of playing in front of a crowd terrified me, but I
didn’t want to let Brenda and Maureen down. It wasn’t only that
they were my friends, my bandmates. It was also because the year
that separated us—they were going to be juniors, me a sophomore
—had stretched into an impassable canyon lately, their side all about
boys and short skirts and makeup. I couldn’t figure out how to cross,
so I’d been doing my best to pretend I was already over there.
“But we’re gonna play an original song,” I demanded. “Not just
covers.