“About damn time,” Jake says when I finally inch my way down the sidewalk and reach him. He leans against the side of the van, eyeing me up and down. “Where’s your stuff?”
“First things first.” I look pointedly at the urn in my arms. “You mind—?”
“Oh. Right.”
He opens the doors in back, hops in and drags forward an old trunk with scratched, peeling bumper stickers slapped all over the top of it. The lid pops up to reveal two thick blankets inside. When he reaches for the urn, he looks to me for permission first, and I relinquish it to him, carefully, watching as he swaddles it in blankets so it won’t move around. Clearly he’s given the storage of the urn some forethought.
I return to the house to grab the rest of my things. Suddenly, it hits me. The note. The all-important note. Somehow in all of my preparations, I forgot to write one. I rip a sheet off the notepad in the kitchen. The problem: I’m suddenly struck with a massive case of writer’s block. I don’t know what to write. Nothing seems adequate. but I guess I could try to be honest.
I’ll be back in a while, I write. I don’t know how long. I’m okay. With Laney. I’ll call you. Don’t worry.
Leaving it in the kitchen is a bad idea; it’ll be discovered too soon. I tape it to the mirror in my bedroom instead, knowing it’ll take longer for them to find it, that it’ll buy me more time.
I need as much of a head start as I can get.
Jake’s van is rickety and loud and smells like cigarettes and pine trees—the pine scent due to a cardboard freshener that hangs from his rearview mirror. When I climb into the passenger seat, I have to kick aside a heap of CDs scattered on the floor in order for my feet to have any room. He pulls out onto the road, and as he drives, I pop open the glove compartment. It’s overflowing with more CDs and cassette tapes. Who in the world needs to store this much music in their car?
“What are you doing?” he snaps, irritated, eyes flicking over to me as I dig through his array of music.
“Geez, are you trying to open up a Sam Goody in here or what?”
“If you think that’s a lot, you should see my bedroom.”
Is he trying to make me blush? Because it’s not going to work.
I click the compartment back shut. “You know, if you got an iPod, you could save some serious space,” I point out.
He frowns. “I like having something to hold in my hands. Plus, they have artwork, liner notes. There’s nothing exciting about getting music off the internet.”
“If you say so.” I don’t really see how buying music is exciting in the first place. “Your collection is impressive. Benefits of working at the Oleo, I presume?”
“You could say that.”
I direct him down Laney’s street. As he approaches her house, he flips off the headlights, puts it in Neutral and coasts into her driveway. We sit waiting, Jake already reaching for a cigarette, and when he lights it, I notice some movement at the side of the house.
It’s Laney, tossing a bag out of the upstairs window. And then another. And another. A second later, she eases through the window space and crawls down the trellis. She’s had plenty of practice from nights of sneaking out. Even in her plaid skirt and sandals, it takes only a minute or so before she’s scaled all the way down and drops the last few feet. She gathers up her two suitcases and extra bag and bustles into the van, breathless and grinning.
“Three suitcases?” Jake twists around in his seat to gape openmouthed at her. “Are you kidding me?”
“Um, no?” Laney shoves the luggage into the far back and looks over her shoulder at him. “What do you expect me to do, carry around one garbage bag? I’m not some hobo! I need my things.” She pauses, nose wrinkling. “Ew, why does it smell like a forest fire in here? Are you smoking? Harper, you know I hate that.”
Laney hates the stink of cigarettes. I don’t really blame her for that, either. But hey, she has her rebellion—boys and beer—and this is mine. She can get over it.
“Get used to it,” Jake says as he backs out of the driveway and blows a stream of smoke in her direction, just to be an ass. I punch him in the shoulder.
“Gross.” She shudders. “Have fun with your lung cancer, emphysema, yellow teeth and perma-bad breath. The rest of us will be over here, enjoying our health and maintaining our good looks. But you wouldn’t know much about that, would you?”
He rolls his eyes at her in the rearview mirror. “Oh, that’s funny. You should be a comedian.”
“What a coincidence. That’s actually my backup plan, you know, in case the acting thing doesn’t pan out.”
“You want to act?”
She fluffs out her hair and says, “I’m going to be the next Marilyn.”
Laney does, actually, sort of have that Marilyn Monroe, classic Hollywood look. She dresses the part in her thrift-store attire, and then there’s her wavy, finger-combed golden curls, the generous curves, the long dark lashes. On top of that, Laney has something my mother would call presence. It sets her apart from the other girls at school, makes the boys turn their heads when she walks by them in the halls.
“Laney is obsessed with old movie stars who died tragically in the prime of life,” I explain to Jake. She shoots me a concerned look as soon as the words slip out of my mouth, and I smile enough to let her know I’m not offended or anything. It does make me think, though, about that photo of June on our refrigerator, the one where she looks almost like Natalie Wood or something. The swimsuit came from Laney, something she’d bought that was too small for her and too revealing for me, and so she’d offered it to June.
I don’t know how, exactly, Laney feels about June now. She has an older stepbrother from her father’s first marriage in college on the East Coast, but her relationship with him was never like mine with June; they barely know each other. And as my best friend, she spent a fair amount of time around our house. She and June treated each other almost like siblings. Even though it can’t be the same, I wonder if that’s what it feels like to her. Like she lost a sister, too.
“Wasn’t Marilyn Monroe a little past her prime when she died?” Jake asks. I punch him again, and he scowls. “Would you stop doing that? You’re gonna run us off the road!”
I squint out the window as he turns onto the exit leading to the highway. “So what, exactly, is the game plan?”
“I have to make a stop in White Haven,” he says. He switches on his blinker and merges into the highway lane. “One of my friends has something I need to pick up. He said we could spend the night if we want. I haven’t been there but he said it’s not out of the way, so don’t worry.”
White Haven is a beach town by Lake Michigan, less than an hour away. I’ve only been a few times. Laney’s grandparents have a vacation cottage there. The water isn’t as pretty as it gets up north, but it’s a nice beach with some big dunes. Peaceful.
“Hey, maybe we can go to my grandparents’ place later this summer,” Laney says to me from the back. She must be thinking the same thing.
I nod. “Yeah, maybe.” Too bad when I get back home, I’m going to be grounded for life.
I really don’t want to think about it right now. Jake, probably bored by our conversation, flips the radio volume up a few notches. The song that blasts out is one I recognize.
“This is ‘Thunder Road,’ right?” I ask after a moment.
He looks at me. “You like Bruce Springsteen?” I like the note of surprise in his voice. The fact that there’s something about me he, the eternal enigma, doesn’t have all figured out.
“My father loves the Boss,” I say. “He likes to delude himself into thinking he grew up in a mining town in Jersey instead of the Michigan suburbs.”
“Your dad’s got good taste then.”
“Obviously you haven’t met his girlfriend.”
Jake’s mouth quirks into a half grin. In the back, Laney wrestles with the seat belt, grunting as she yanks at the stubborn strap.
“What is with this thing?” she g
rouses.
“I’ve been meaning to get that fixed,” says Jake. “You’ll have to sit on the other side.”
“Joplin’s not so infallible after all, huh?” I smirk at him. “What’s with that name, anyway?”
“She’s named after—”
“Janis Joplin,” Laney pipes up from the other seat. She’s busy buckling herself in. “Right? Though I don’t know why you’d name your van after her. Wasn’t she ugly?”
“But she had the music,” Jake says fervently, fist clenched and pumping the air. He sees my and Laney’s matching bemused expressions and sighs. “Never mind. Harper, grab that CD off the floor. The one on top.”
I double over and snatch the first CD case from the top of the pile—another mix. I hand it to Jake, who takes one hand off the steering wheel, ejects Bruce and slides in the new disc. Almost immediately I hear a woman’s scratchy voice, caterwauling on and on about a man named Bobby McGee. It isn’t pleasant, per se, but it’s raw and growling and full of conviction.
I love it.
“That’s Janis,” he explains.
“Oh,” is all I can say.
We drive on, and Janis’s song fades to make way for another. I realize each song has a name in it: Bobby, Eileen, John, Stephanie, Daniel, Layla, even one about a boy named Sue. Johnny Cash, Jake tells me when I ask who the singer is. I like it and tell him as much.
“You’d have to have no soul to not like Johnny Cash,” he says.
The next song is about a girl named Ruby Tuesday. At first all I can think about is the chain restaurant, but then a lightbulb goes on in my head. That voice—it’s the same swaggering male voice from June’s CD, the first track with that startling guitar riff.
“Who is this?” I ask.
Jake stares at me like I’m the stupidest person he’s ever had the misfortune of coming into contact with. “The Rolling Stones. Mick Jagger. Only one of the most legendary front men ever. You seriously don’t know who he is?”
Laney leans up from the back, propping her elbow against my headrest. “Some of us like to live in the now.”
“Yeah, okay, Ms. Monroe.”
“That’s totally different. This stuff is, like, ancient. Don’t you have any music from the past decade? Jay-Z? Snow Patrol? Kelly Clarkson? Something relevant?”
“Everything on the radio is crap,” snaps Jake. “It’s fast food for your ears. It doesn’t make you think. It isn’t even about anything—not anything real. Don’t you think music should say something?”
“So people have different tastes. So what? You don’t have to be a jackass about it. Just because pop music doesn’t say what you want to hear doesn’t mean it doesn’t say anything,” Laney says. She falls back against her seat with a groan. “God, you’re like a douche-baggy hipster music snob with the tastes of a forty-year-old white guy.”
“Douche-baggy? Is that even a word?”
“See!” Laney gesticulates emphatically toward Jake with one hand. “Snob!”
“Look,” I interrupt, trying for my most diplomatic tone, “if we have to listen to your classic rock, can we at least listen to the Beatles?”
Jake relaxes his hands on the wheel. “You’re in luck.”
He flips a few tracks ahead, and a second later, “Hey Jude” comes pouring out of the speakers. Finally, something I know and love. I grew up with this music. My mom’s a big fan of the Fab Four, owns all of the albums. She used to sing “Yellow Submarine” as a lullaby when I was a baby. I wonder what she’s doing now, if she’s come home yet, how she’ll react when she discovers my note. The thought of it brings on a pang of guilt, heavy in my chest. I try my best to ignore it.
It’s easier to do when I have music to fill the silence. Jake sings along around his cigarette, his voice surprisingly on-key, and after a little while, I join in too, unsurprisingly off-key. Even Laney quits pouting long enough to chime in with the nah-nah-nah-nahs at the end.
Joplin hurtles down the highway, each mile taking us farther from Grand Lake and carrying us closer and closer to California—and to my sister’s last chance at salvation. Maybe it’s my last chance, too.
chapter five
The bungalow in White Haven is nestled on the side of a high dune, only two flights of wooden stairs away from the beach bordering Lake Michigan. Overgrown bushes in the small yard shroud the front of the house, and Jake drives past it twice before I point out the numbers on the mailbox and he realizes it’s the right address. There are two cars parked in the narrow drive, another right on the curb.
“It’s a sweet pad, isn’t it?” boasts the boy who answers the door. He’s young, not far from our age, with long, ratty dreads and a T-shirt that reads Free Palestine. “My grandpa left it to us when he kicked it a few months back. My dad’s itching to sell the place, but I convinced him to let me have it for the summer. Better than having me around his house.” He directs an affable grin at Laney and me. “I’m Seth, by the way.”
“Harper,” I reply, then motion to our bags. “Is there somewhere we should—?”
“Yeah, yeah. Sure. I’ll show you the room.”
Seth hefts two of Laney’s suitcases and leads us down a hall to a guest room. It’s more of a glorified closet, with only enough space for one frumpy twin bed to be squeezed in. That alone takes up three quarters of the room.
“Sorry it’s kinda tight,” Seth says.
Unfazed, Laney drops her suitcase and plops onto the bed, testing the mattress. “It’s cool.”
“I’d give you the bigger room, but Gwen’s taken it over—”
“Gwen?” Jake snaps to attention. “Gwen is here?”
I look over at him quizzically. Who is Gwen? Obviously someone he knows, seeing as the muscles in his neck have gone rigid, his hands fisted at his sides.
“Yeah, man, I thought I told you,” says Seth. “She’s been here for a week. Danny and Anna are, too. I swear I said something—”
“I think I would’ve remembered that detail.” Jake tosses his bag onto the floor and pushes a hand through his hair.
“Dude, chill,” Seth says, clapping him on the shoulder heartily. His smile widens. “I’ve got something that’ll cheer you up.”
“I told you, I don’t smoke pot anymore.”
“Not that! Hang on, let me go get it.”
Seth disappears from the room. As soon as he does, Laney grins at Jake and says, “So, pot, huh?”
“You handled the peer pressure well,” I chime in. “Your DARE officers would be proud.”
Jake scowls. “Shut up.”
Before I can think of more ribbing, Seth reappears with a plastic crate. He leafs through it and removes a slim vinyl record.
“This,” he says, presenting it with a flourish, “is for you.”
Jake takes the record and glances down at it. When he looks up at Seth again, his eyes are wide with disbelief. “No way.”
“Yes way,” Seth says.
I peer over Jake’s shoulder at the album cover. It’s a Jimi Hendrix LP—and the cover is signed in black pen. Love Always, Jimi. A real autograph. The record itself is in pristine condition.
“Holy shit!” Laney says. “That is too awesome! Is it for real?”
“One hundred percent authentic. My grandpa left it to me,” Seth explains. “He was cool. All about the Hendrix. I guess he went to this festival in Germany in ‘67, and one of his friends was an organizer, so he got backstage and met the man himself. I know you’re a fan, so—”
Jake shakes his head and tries to shove the album back into Seth’s hands. “Seth. No. I can’t take this.”
“Yeah, you can. I owe you.” Seth turns to Laney and I. “Three months ago, I’m in Detroit protesting a free trade conference, right? Some pig shoves me, I go flying into another, next thing I know I’m on the ground with a Taser in my back. I get thrown in city jail, no money and one phone call. So I call Jake. You know what this fucker did? He dropped everything, drove up and bailed me out, no questions.”
“Like I could just leave you,” Jake says. “You’re too pretty. You’re a delicate flower. They would’ve ripped you apart in there.”
“You were in jail? “ Laney sounds both curious and titillated. “What was it like?”
“Boring. Dirty. Smelled like ass,” Seth tells her, shuddering at the memory. He looks to Jake. “Keep it, man. My gift to you. Besides, it’s not like it’s Marley. In that case, it might be different.”
Jake gazes down at the album in his hands reverently, like it’s a rare religious relic. “Thanks.”
Everyone else, Seth tells us, is down at the beach, having a bonfire.
“You might want to grab a jacket,” he says. “It’s windier by the lake.”
He’s right; it’s cool outside, with the sun almost set and the stars coming out from behind the clouds. I hear the waves the moment we step onto the back deck. There are plastic fold-up chairs leaned against the side of the house, so we each pick one and make our way down the stairs, through the grassy weeds and onto the sloping beach. An orange fire roars from a pit a couple yards down. As we get closer, I overhear several people in the midst of a spirited debate.
“It’s about privilege. You can’t erase that.”
“No, but it doesn’t mean you can’t be an ally to the oppressed. If the majority is incapable of empathy—or of support—then the whole world is screwed.”
“But so many people don’t admit their own privilege! You can’t fight what isn’t even acknowledged. We have to check ourselves, and then maybe—” A tiny Asian girl with a pixie haircut suddenly notices our approach and stops mid-sentence, bounding to her feet. “Jake! You made it!”
She all but leaps into his arms as Laney and I stand back, amused. Jake does not seem remotely like the affectionate type, so to see him on the receiving end of a giant bear hug from a pint-size girl is pretty amusing. He sees us biting back laughter and glares, patting the girl’s back and awkwardly maneuvering away from her hold.
“Hey, Anna,” he says. “How’s it going?”