Sammy Keyes and the Showdown in Sin City

  She nods. “Let’s do it.”

  Opening the door and stepping in is like entering a dark cave with a searchlight behind us. I can see a tall slice of light to our left, but where we are is dark except for the light coming in from outside.

  “Quick, close it!” I tell Heather.

  She does, and as we hurry to the left like we’d planned, she nods at the tall slice of light. “That’s the stage!” she calls over the music.

  And yeah, there’s no doubt about it—we are backstage at a rock show.

  There’s also no doubt that we’ve been spotted by security. “Gorilla at two o’clock,” I tell Heather.

  “Two o’clock?” But then she sees him. And where he’d just been watching us before, now he’s coming at us.

  “What do we do?” Heather says in my ear, and I can tell she is freaking out.

  “We stay cool!” I tell her back, and instead of trying to ditch it through the dark somewhere, I move toward him.

  “Third door down!” he shouts over the music.

  “Thanks!” I shout back, and even though my heart is beating louder than the drums onstage, I head off in the direction he’s pointing like everything’s cool.

  When we’re in the clear, I sneak a grin at Heather, and she sneaks one back.

  We have infiltrated the House of Blues!

  TWENTY-TWO

  There was no way I was going down to the third door.

  That’s where the real caterer had to be!

  And since the first door we came to was propped open, I ducked inside without looking back.

  Which turned out to be a classic case of jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. There were three scruffy-looking guys hanging around on couches. Maybe none of them were Gorillas in red shirts, but they had a really, uh … hungry look to them. Like they were amped and armed and ready to slay dragons.

  Or in this case, girls with food trays.

  “Dude, you’re serious?” one of the guys says, instantly moving from sitting on the couch to standing on it.

  The guy next to him eyes us, but instead of jumping up, he slouches farther into the cushions. “They got the wrong room,” he grumbles. “Darren Cole’s having an after-party.”

  The first guy springs off the couch and hurries over to close the door. And while he’s doing that, the third one perks up like he’s caught the scent of warm blood. And then the first guy checks out my tray and cries, “Dude, it’s sushi.”

  “Hang on!” I snap. “You’re not getting this for nothing.”

  “Oh, really?” the first guy says, and he obviously thinks I’m hilarious.

  “Oh, you can steal it from us,” I tell him, “but then we’ll sic the Gorilla Gang on you, and good luck with them!”

  “The Gorilla Gang?” the third guy says.

  “Security, doofus,” the Sloucher calls over.

  The first guy stares at me like he can’t quite believe I’ve got the guts to go up against three scruffy guys with tattoos. So I tell him, “Look, all we want are badges.”

  “Badges?”

  I point at the laminated backstage pass hanging from a cord around his neck. “Two of those,” I tell him, “for two trays of sushi.”

  “Dude!” The main guy laughs as he looks at the other two. “They’re groupies!”

  The Sloucher calls, “Not for Hallowgram.”

  “Who’s Hallowgram?” Heather asks.

  “The guys out there rocking the house down?” the main guy snaps. “The opening act?”

  “Oh,” Heather says, not sounding at all impressed.

  “See?” the Sloucher calls. “We get squat.” He eyes the main guy. “And I know you’re a big fanboy, but I’m getting pretty tired of hauling their gear for beer.”

  “So let’s have sushi!” The main guy whips off his badge and looks at the others. “Who’s giving up their badge to share this feast with me?”

  Suddenly badges are flying at us and our food trays are being taken and the main guy is giving me a crooked smile, saying, “Our little secret.”

  So while they turn their backs on us and descend on the food, Heather and I whip off our turquoise shirts, stuff them under a couch, loop backstage passes over our heads, and hurry out of there.

  “This is awesome!” Heather squeals.

  “Stay cool,” I tell her as I lead her farther away from the outside door we’d come through.

  “Do you think we can get into Darren Cole’s after-party?”

  “Staaaay cooool. First we have to find a place to disappear for a while.”

  “Disappear? Why? We have backstage passes! We can go anywhere!”

  Right then the catering guy steps out of Door Number Three. Luckily, we can see him a lot better than he can see us because of the light coming out of the room he was in. So I grab Heather and move deeper into the darkness of the big backstage curtain while he hurries by.

  Heather’s neck cranes around as she watches him go. “Do you think he’ll notice the trays are missing?”

  “Stop looking!” I tell her. “We just need to disappear!”

  When we get to the end of the backstage curtain, there’s another clear view of the stage, and since there’s nobody standing in the wings, I move in a few steps to see if I can figure out where my mother might be. There are huge speakers and other equipment between us and the band, so it’s actually really easy to sneak a little ways onto the stage and still be totally hidden. Trouble is, the stage lights are really bright, which makes looking past the stage hard to do. What I can see is that there’s a big standing area in front of the stage and a whole raised level of seating that curves up and back to a big open balcony. Like a theater where the bottom got dropped down to make room for a giant dance floor and a stage.

  And really, all this tells me is that the place is huge.

  Then Heather’s in my ear saying, “If the guy in the fringed jacket has anything to do with Darren Cole or his band, they’ll be in the greenroom.”

  “What greenroom?”

  “You know—Door Number Three? Where all the food was getting delivered? They’re probably hanging out there right now, waiting for these guys to be done playing.” She nods past the stage. “You’ll never find her if she’s out there. And why would she be out there if she got in early?”

  Which all made sense.

  But still.

  Something about going into Darren Cole’s greenroom scared me.

  “Sammy! Come on! Do you want to find her or not?”

  “I can’t just walk in and say I’m looking for my mother! So what do I say? What’s our story?”

  “Why can’t we just walk in and look around?”

  “We’re thirteen! Someone will ask what we’re doing there! And if we blow it and get busted, there goes my chance of finding her.”

  “You worry too much. Come on. We’ll just wing it.”

  “No!”

  She grabs me by the sleeve. “Come on!”

  The next thing I know, Heather’s yanking me through Door Number Three, and there we are, two thirteen-year-olds, in the middle of at least a dozen over-thirty-year-olds. There’s a guy noodling on a guitar, another guy lacing up his black running shoes, another guy tapping drumsticks on the arm of a couch, and a whole bunch of women doing a whole lot of nothing besides showing skin.

  “She’s not here,” I whisper to Heather. “And I don’t see a fringed jacket anywhere.”

  “So let’s ask.”

  “No! Let’s get out of here!”

  “Why are you so weirded out?” she asks me when we’re safely outside.

  “I don’t know, okay? I’m … I’m …” But everything’s a jumble and I just can’t put it into words.

  “You’re what? A few minutes ago, you were playing hardball for backstage passes. And now you’re totally wimped out! What happened?”

  “I’ve … I’ve got this really weird feeling. Like a panic attack, only … only I don’t know why!”

  She studi
es me a minute. “Maybe you don’t really want to find her.”

  Something about that felt close. And then out of my mouth comes “Or maybe I just don’t want to know who she’s with.” I shake my head. “I need to sit down.”

  “Sit down!? You don’t sit down at a rock concert!”

  And really, I couldn’t explain why I felt so weak and pukey and confused all of a sudden. It was like this force had come over me and broken up all the steely bonds that had been holding my anger molecules together.

  My mom had secrets from me, but maybe she had secrets for a reason.

  Maybe I really was better off not knowing.

  So I tell Heather, “Go and do whatever you want. I need to find a place to sit down. I’ll meet you out at the box office after the show.”

  She grumbles something I can’t understand, then grabs me by the arm and yanks me along until we’re way past the stage and she sees a set of stairs on our left, going up. “Here,” she says, sort of pushing me down on a stair tread. “Sit.”

  And then she sits next to me.

  “Maybe it’s just too loud?” she asks, checking me over.

  I shake my head, because it is loud, but not loud enough to make me freak out like this. “Something’s wrong,” I finally say.

  “With you? With your mom?”

  “With this whole situation!”

  “Look. I’m going to go back into Door Number Three and ask if anyone knows Lana Keyes. Or the guy with the fringed jacket. And if they throw me out … well, you can go search for her yourself and I’ll meet you at the box office.”

  I blink at her.

  And blink some more.

  Then we hear the band onstage announce, “We’ve got one more for you!” And since I know I’m running out of time, I make myself stand up and say, “I’ll do it. You get down there and watch Darren Cole.”

  “Really?”

  “No sense in both of us getting kicked out.”

  She watches me head back to Door Number Three, so when I reach it, I wave her off, then go inside.

  “Excuse me!” I call, holding up the picture card of my mother. “Has anybody seen this woman?” I sort of parade it around, and since nobody’s jumping up going, Yeah! I know her! I add, “Or a guy in a fringed leather jacket?”

  The minute I say that, there’s a shift—a sudden stillness that tells me something’s changed.

  Like shifting plates way beneath the ocean.

  “Who wants to know?” the guy with the drumsticks asks, and I can tell—the waters are rising and I’m about to be slammed to shore.

  So as casually as I can, I start to backpedal.

  Or really, backpaddle.

  And while people in the room start whispering to the person next to them, I do the only thing I can think to do.

  Dive for the door!

  TWENTY-THREE

  I make a break for the stairs, and in my hurry to get gone, I plow right into Heather.

  “What happened?” she asks as I stumble around her.

  “What are you still doing here?”

  “What do you think, stupid?”

  I let it slide and charge for the stairs. I had no idea where they led, but up seemed way better than anywhere behind the stage. “Something weird is going on.”

  “What do you mean?” she asks, chasing after me.

  “The whole room went quiet when I asked about the guy in the fringed jacket.”

  “So?”

  “So when it goes from you asking questions to them asking questions, it’s time to leave.”

  “Why? Why not just answer the questions?”

  I can’t exactly tell her that my not answering questions comes from years of conditioning. Or that living somewhere illegally makes you jumpy. Especially around adults asking questions. So I just race ahead and tell her, “Because the vibe in the room went bad.”

  “The vibe,” she says, like it’s the most ridiculous thing she’s ever heard.

  “Yes!” We’re at the top of the stairs now, and since the only open avenue is a U-turn down a hallway, I zip around the handrail and keep moving. The music has switched from live and loud to canned and pretty quiet, so I can hear someone pounding up the stairs, shouting, “I think she went up here!”

  I try a door labeled JAMES BROWN, but it’s locked. “Bail out anytime,” I tell Heather as I charge ahead. “I’m busted.”

  But in this hallway there are no other doors, and there sure doesn’t seem to be any way for her to bail out.

  Especially since there’s definitely someone with a flashlight coming up behind us.

  So we just charge forward until we come to a quick little zigzag in the hallway, and once we’re through that, we find ourselves in a wide-open area with big square pillars and couches and a bar and people hanging around, laughing and drinking, checking out the outsider art that’s all over the pillars and walls or looking over the balcony at the stage.

  I search around for my mom or a fringy maroon jacket as I try to disappear between people. Everyone’s wearing a VIP badge, but besides not having one of those, we’re obviously not old enough to be hanging out in the House of Blues bar balcony. Plus, there aren’t actually that many people—only a few dozen total—so vanishing in the crowd isn’t exactly an option.

  But running is!

  Especially since I can see now that the guy following us is a Gorilla.

  And he’s got a walkie-talkie.

  “Bail out!” I tell Heather. “He’s after me, not you.”

  She stays right behind me. “He knows I’m with you!”

  “He can’t be two places at once, right? If you get the chance, bail!”

  But she stays with me as I jet across the balcony and find myself again being only able to go down a dark hallway.

  Well, unless I want to stand around and wait for the elevator doors in front of me to open, but the Gorilla’s coming, so who’s got time for that?

  So down the hallway I charge, looking for anywhere to disappear. But it’s just like the other side—no doors at all! We’ve run in a giant U on the level above the stage, and I’m pretty sure if we don’t find a place to hide, we’ll wind up going down another set of stairs and be back near the loading dock door—back where we’d started!

  But going in a giant U and disappearing somewhere downstairs is better than getting busted, so I keep charging ahead.

  And then all of a sudden there’s a light coming toward us.

  So yeah. We’re pinned between two beams of Gorilla light.

  “Shoot!” I cry, but on our right there’s a door that says ETTA JAMES.

  In my little mental map, it seems like we’re right across the stage from the James Brown door we’d tried earlier, so I’m sure this one will be locked, too. And even if it’s not, where could it possibly go? It’s hopeless. I know it’s hopeless. We’re just flailing fish in a big Gorilla net.

  Still, with one last desperate wiggle, I try the door.

  And it opens.

  Without a word, I grab Heather and whoosh us both inside, then turn around quick and lock the door. And when I turn back, what I see is Heather with her eyes popped and her jaw dropped. And since Heather never shows much more expression than a sneer, I know she must be seeing something really gnarly, so I actually jump to get away from the corner where she’s staring.

  The room we’re in is small—about the size of a big walk-in closet—and dark except for light coming in through a sort of balcony opening, which looks like it leads to stage lights ahead and death below.

  And I’m in such a state that what flashes through my mind is that whatever’s in the corner must be vicious or deadly or horrendously ugly for Heather to be looking so scared. Like maybe a decaying corpse hung from the ceiling, or a rabid serpent with foamy fangs and beady black eyes about to strike, or a—

  And then I turn and see the monster myself.

  A monster with buggy eyes and glistening teeth.

  A monster that speaks.


  “Samantha? Samantha, what are you doing here?”

  Apparently the Gorilla Force has a key to the Etta James room, because two guys in red shirts and the guy with the drumsticks from Darren Cole’s greenroom all barge in.

  “We okay?” the guy with the drumsticks asks my mom after he sizes things up.

  My mother nods, but she’s still just staring at me, stunned.

  Drumsticks asks, “That’s her?” and when my mom nods again, he points his sticks at Heather. “Her sister?”

  “Oh, no,” my mother gasps. “Her friend.”

  Normally, I would have corrected that, but at this point I’m too confused and shocked and just weirded out to even care. I mean, maybe I’d been tracking my mother all day, but actually finding her, and finding her in this oversized closet by herself?

  It was so hard to wrap my head around.

  And then I notice that this oversized closet has an open bottle of champagne and two glasses on a table by a couch.

  Champagne?

  My mother has some quick signaling exchange with Drumsticks, who tells the Gorillas, “It’s all cool up here. Sorry for the false alarm.”

  One of the Gorillas says, “You want I should bring up skybox badges?”

  Drumsticks looks at my mother. “They’ll be with you, right?”

  My mother looks at me, then Heather, then me. “Uh …”

  “Uh?” I snap. “Really? After everything we’ve been through to find you, all you can say is uh?”

  “What I mean, Samantha, is that I’d like to speak with you privately. I just didn’t want to be rude to Heather.”

  “Oh!” Heather says. “Don’t worry about me!” She turns to Drumsticks and the Gorillas and says, “Can you get me down in the pit?”

  Drumsticks laughs. “The show doesn’t get moshers.”

  “I don’t care! I just want to be down there!”

  He laughs again. “Well, that I can arrange. Follow me.”

  So they take off, and then it’s just me and my mother. I watch as she collapses onto the couch and heaves a big, heavy sigh.

  Very un-Lady-Lana-like.

  And so is her posture. She’s—gasp—slouched.

  And her face is sagging.

  Like she’s just too tired to pretend to be perfect anymore.