The Friendship Song Read online

  I got to her door and I was going to tell her the spook music was floating in the air again or maybe just skip that and make fun of Mr. Kuchwald instead, but as soon as I saw inside her room I forgot everything I was going to say. Because there on her wall was a giant poster of the two hottest guys in the world, and they were Nico Torres and Ty Shaney, with the words NEON SHADOW shining over them.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  What I thought was the worst day in my life turned into one of the best ones ever.

  For starters, Rawnie had the Neon Shadow cassette tape. So the first thing we did after I was done jumping up and down and screaming was we listened to Ty and Nico singing “The Friendship Song.”

  Hey, I remember when

  We were desperadoes

  You had a guitar on your back

  And I had a gun in my hand

  And when it came down to the end

  You took the bullet they meant for me

  And smiled ’cause you could see

  I was gonna be okay

  Friend.

  Hey, friend, my friend,

  You’re my father, you’re my mother

  And my sister and my brother

  Neither one of us owns the other

  Both of us just stay together

  Hey, we’re sun and wind

  We’re yang and yin

  We’re friends.

  Hey, back when we were cops

  On them mean streets in Chicago

  And somebody sold you out to the Mob

  But you knew it wasn’t me

  I wanted you to run and hide

  But you knew you had to stay and fight

  And I stood by your side

  That’s the way we died

  Friends.…

  “That is so intense,” Rawnie whispered when it was over. She pressed the rewind button to play it again.

  I felt the same way. When I listened to that song it was like I wanted something clear down to my bones. But it was hard for me to talk about the way the song started me dreaming. I just said, “Do you think they’re really like that?”

  “Ty and Nico?”

  “Yeah. Do you think that’s the way it is for them?”

  We were both on Rawnie’s bed, which was a big one, and we lay there and looked at the poster, which was almost as big as the bed. Nico and Ty looked back at us as if they could really see us. I looked mostly at Nico. He was the dark one, and when he sang, it was like a black fire burning. People said he was part Cuban, part Navaho Indian, part Greek, and part Korean or something. I didn’t care what he was. His face wasn’t like anybody else’s, and it was so perfect it made me want to cry. There was something secret looking out of his eyes, like he had been hurt bad once and hadn’t forgotten. He hardly ever smiled. Ty Shaney had a big, sweet smile, and sky blue eyes, and hair like a lion’s blond mane. He was sort of warm and golden all over. I guess he was mostly Irish, but who cared. When he and Nico stood next to each other and sang, they would put their heads together, and their hair would mix, black and blond.

  Rawnie reached out and turned the song on again. Then she stared up at the ceiling. When she finally said something, it was quiet, like in church. “I think they’re all the way friends, yeah.”

  “That’s what I think too. Like in the song, like they’ve been together since they were little kids and played games that they were cops and cowboys and stuff.” There were kids I’d known since I was little, but none of them were real real friends. I felt like I’d missed out on something already, because once I grew up I could never say I had a best friend I had known since I was in kindergarten.

  Rawnie swiveled her head to look at me. “Is that what you think they’re talking about? That they grew up together?”

  “Well, uh, yeah.” Wasn’t it?

  “I always thought it was more for real. Like they really were desperadoes together once, maybe a hundred years ago.”

  I just lay there and gawked at her, and Ty and Nico sang, “What we always been is what we’re always gonna be.…”

  “Wow,” I whispered. What Rawnie had said hit me almost as deep as the song did.

  She sat up. There was something shy about the way she held her head, but something proud too, as if she’d always see things through. Rawnie was never going to be cute like a lot of the girls I knew. She was too beautiful to be cute.

  Looking at Ty and Nico instead of at me, she said, “I think it’s like the song says, they’ve always been together. I think they were cops together and really got killed together, like they said. And the lifetime before that they were desperadoes. And before that, maybe soldiers. And before that—”

  “Explorers,” I said. “Sword fighters.”

  “Maybe. Or Indian warriors.”

  “Yeah,” I whispered. I could imagine them almost as far back as there were people on earth. They would have been knights who rode to the Crusades together. Musicians helping each other out of tavern brawls. Outlaws rebelling against an evil king. Gladiators who wouldn’t fight each other. Charioteers, both of them behind the same team of horses, one driving and one handling the spear. Hunters going out to face a ten-foot bear.

  Rawnie said, “When they were Indian warriors, I think it would have been, like, Nico got captured and tortured by the enemy Indians, but Ty rescued him.”

  I knew just what she meant. Nico had that look about him, as if there were scars on his back. But he wasn’t like a victim, more like a survivor. I said, “Don’t you think probably Nico rescued Ty sometimes too?”

  “Yeah. Probably a lot.”

  “Probably they saved each other hundreds of times.”

  “Not just each other.”

  “No. Other people too. They would have always been, you know, heroes.”

  The tape went on to the next song, which was about true love, and I sighed and said, “I wish I was a boy.”

  Just knowing Rawnie loved Neon Shadow too, and talking about Ty and Nico with her the way we had been doing, had turned the whole rotten day around. But now she looked surprised, and she said, “You’d want to be a boy? What for? Boys are jerks.”

  “Not—I don’t mean like the creeps in school.” Not like Brent Pimpleface and the other buttheads. There was so much difference between the boys I was used to seeing and the kind of boy I was talking about that they might as well be different species. “I mean—I mean like Nico and Ty.”

  It seemed to me that boys had some special sort of magic for being with each other. Even the obnoxious boys I knew—the heads or the jocks or the bikers or the skaters on the parking lots together—stuck with each other, it seemed to me, like nobody would ever stick with me. They did dangerous things together, and helped each other out. They were strong. Some of them were sports stars.

  Rawnie didn’t quite seem to understand. All she did was look at Ty and Nico and sigh and say, “They’re hot, all right.”

  I burst out, “It just seems to me like girls don’t do anything.”

  “Except their hair.” Now she was getting it.

  “And Nair.”

  “And hassle each other.”

  “Over boys.”

  “Who are jerks, like I told you before.”

  “Except for Nico and Ty.”

  “Well, yeah.” Rawnie lay back against her pillow again. “Which one do you like best?”

  “Nico. I mean, I like them both, but I—Nico—”

  “I get the idea.” She grinned at me. It was a world-class grin, though she didn’t seem to use it very often. “I like them both, but I, uh, really like Ty. At least we don’t have to fight over which one we like.”

  “As if either of us is ever going to get near either of them.”

  “Hey, we’ll be within a mile of them when they come to the Arena week after next.”

  “What?” I sat straight up. “They’re coming here?”

  “Didn’t you know that?”

  “No! Oh, my God!” Out where I went to school before, nobody knew anything. I
hopped off the bed and jumped up and down on the floor. “Oh, my God, we gotta see them, we gotta get tickets!”

  “In your dreams, Harper! I tried. Tickets were sold out months ago.”

  It was happening again. This day reeked. I opened my mouth and wailed like a baby.

  “But you better believe I’m gonna be there outside the Arena to see them go in,” Rawnie said.

  “I’ll be with you.”

  Before I went home she lent me the Neon Shadow tape and the Neon Shadow issue of Spin too. So it was still a super day after all. Then she walked down to the front door with me.

  “So I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Hey, at least you’ll have books to carry in front of your chest this time.”

  I didn’t give that comment the sort of smart-mouth retort it deserved, because I wasn’t listening to her, I heard something strange and familiar. She had the door open, both of us were out on the stoop, and way off in the darkness it was happening again. Off behind Gus’s big house, it might have been just beyond the creek or six miles behind, but somewhere out there, dim lavender lights were floating and flickering. And there was the distant, heartachy sound of what was maybe a guitar, but maybe not. And maybe more than one. But who could tell?

  I said to Rawnie, “Do you see it? Do you hear it?”

  “Yes.”

  I told her between my teeth, “I am going to find out what is going on.”

  “Okay. Me too. Now?”

  She was willing to come with me again? But it had been too long a day already. Also, I’d been thinking. “No, not now. Let me do my research first.”

  “Huh?”

  “Gus.”

  “Yeah,” she said real soft, and she came down the steps with me so we could talk and her sister wouldn’t hear. “Yeah, it’s got to have something to do with her. She is so odd. I mean, she’s nice, but she’s just really strange.”

  “I’ll say.” Though in fact it was hard to say what was so strange about Gus. So what if she wore men’s clothes and welded pieces of metal together and knew how to paint a car? She was allowed. Lots of women did things like that, teachers said. Though I myself had never actually met one before.

  “It’s not just the stuff she does,” I added, meaning the folk art, if that was really what it was. “Women can do stuff like that if they want to.”

  “Yeah. But she never does anything else. Not stuff like other people do.”

  “She just stays home all the time?”

  “Yeah. She really keeps to herself.”

  We stood listening to the music for a minute. Right then it sounded like breaking glass. I couldn’t recognize a song.

  “I don’t think she has any kind of job,” Rawnie said softly. “I mean, that’s all right, but what does she live on? Like, how does she pay the taxes on that big place and everything? My dad works his butt off and still can’t keep up with the bills for our house, and it’s littler than hers.”

  “She sells folk art,” I said.

  “Come on. Nobody ever buys that much folk art.”

  I knew this was true, because I’d heard Gus say so herself. So I tried to come up with another answer, but it was hard to think with the distant music singing like wolves under a cold full moon. Or like wild geese far up in the sky. I’d never heard anything like that spooky music. It scared me, but it called me too. It tugged at something buried in me even deeper than my heart.

  Rawnie said, “And another thing, Dad says he can’t figure out why they let her keep all that junk around the house. I mean, there are ordinances and codes and things in the city. And some of the neighbors have complained. So why don’t the police come around and make her clean up?”

  “Her junk’s clean,” I objected.

  “Clear out, I mean.”

  “I don’t see why people have to complain. I think her stuff is kinda neat.” Jeez, what was I saying? But it was true.

  “So do I! I’m just telling you what’s been going on, okay?”

  “Okay.” I really liked Rawnie, and the way I smiled at her was to let her know it. “Don’t mind me. I get cranky when people grab my chest.”

  “Anybody tries that tomorrow, I’ll hit him.”

  I think she would have too.

  She stood on her stoop and watched until I was inside my house, I guess in case the spook music bogey got me or something. I know because I looked back and waved, and there she was doing her dance steps to the rhythm of drums I could just barely hear.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  As it turned out, school went a little better the rest of the week. I carried my books hugged to my chest the way Rawnie said, and the girls all liked the wallpaper covers, and the boys gave me some trouble all right, but not the kind I was dreading. So I stayed out of Mr. Kuchwald’s office.

  I met some girls I liked, especially an eighth-grade girl named Alabaster Bowman, who was really cool. I guess some of the boys were okay too, if you said it quick. Even some of the heads. Like Benjy Jacobs, the boy who got lost in Gus’s yard once. He had real long hair and a skull painted on his jacket and a safety pin in his ear, but he was okay to talk to as long as he wasn’t with his friends. Rawnie and I walked home from school with him on Friday, and he seemed pretty nice.

  “Hey, dudette,” he said to me. “I heard about you.” Which didn’t sound nice at first, but what he meant was that he’d heard I lived with Gus.

  “I wouldn’t go near that place again if you gave me the winning lottery ticket,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I told him. “I heard about you too.”

  “I bet you did. Listen, I still feel like people are playing a joke on me. I couldn’t have been lost in there for two days. It only felt like a few hours.”

  “At nighttime?”

  “Sure, it was night. I mean, I went in there to see what I could liberate. You don’t do that in the daytime.”

  “Did you hear anything?”

  “Huh? No. Nothing special.”

  “See anything?”

  “Huh?”

  Rawnie had caught on and started helping me out with her own questions. “Did you see, like, colored lights?”

  “I wish there would have been a light! I couldn’t see a damn thing. That’s why I couldn’t find my way out.”

  “Could you find your way in?” Rawnie asked.

  “Huh?”

  I tried. “How far did you get?”

  “Not very. I was stuck the whole time like in a damn maze, if you know what I mean.”

  I knew exactly what he meant.

  “Do me a favor,” he told us when we got to his house. “Don’t say hi to Spooky McCogg for me. I want her to forget I ever lived.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Okay,” Rawnie said. “Bye, Benjy.”

  She and I walked on to the next block, where we lived, and then she told me, “Don’t always expect Benjy to talk with you like a real person. When he’s around here he’s okay, but when he’s with the other heads he’s a jerk just like the rest of them.”

  “Why do boys do that?”

  “I don’t know. They just do.”

  “Girls sort of do that too,” I said. “Especially once they get in high school.”

  “Tell me! Me’n my sister used to be real close. But now she’ll just turn against a person. If there’s a boy she wants, she’ll turn against her best friend to get him.”

  I was curious. “Does she usually get the boy she wants?”

  “Yeah. If you can believe her. Harper, that makes me think. How did your dad and Spooky McCogg get together? Did she go after him?”

  “Sorta looks that way, doesn’t it?” I complained.

  “C’mon!” Rawnie did a little dance. “Tell me how she did it.”

  “How should I know? He took this found-objects art class she was teaching, and next thing I noticed they were practically married already.”

  “You don’t like her much, do you?”

  “Well …” A week before I would have said no duh, I didn’t l
ike Gus a bit. But now I wasn’t sure.

  The thing was, as I had told Rawnie, I had research to do. I was starting to spend time with Gus, trying to figure out what was going on in her head and her backyard. I had been helping her with stuff after school, talking with her after supper, kind of spying on her. And the more time I spent around her, the more I got interested in her and all her junk. If being interested in a person is the same thing as liking her, then I had kind of sort of started to like Gus.

  I had been telling Rawnie that the junk Gus had in the yard was nothing compared with the stuff she had in some of the sheds. They used to be for cows or something, but now they were full of things like a calliope from a circus, and elk antlers, and a cadaver bag with a broken zipper, and big old wooden radios, and big old jukeboxes full of colored glass tubes.

  “She’s kind of fun,” I told Rawnie. “Come on over tonight and you’ll see what I mean.”

  So she did. As soon as she got in the front door she stood and stared at the hanging sofa, the plow-blade ship in a bottle, the fancy tin ceiling, and all the rest of it. “Radical!” she exclaimed.

  “Haven’t you ever been in here before?”

  “No! How would I?”

  “Come on in,” my father called from the kitchen. “Would you like some pizza, Rawnie?”

  She had eaten her supper, but a person can always fit in a slice of pizza. It was good, and she said so.

  “Don’t tell me, tell Gus.” Dad looked smug as a cat. I’d never seen him as mellow as he was these days. He hardly ever growled at me even when I growled at him.

  Gus called over, “I bought it at Safeway all by myself.” She was working on one of her art projects. The kitchen was sort of half her studio. It was a big room with skylights and a huge table, and we ate at one end and she messed with her junk on the other end. Right now she was mounting weird stuff on an old board like from barn siding. She had a beat-up eagle from the top of a flagpole on there, and a smashed Pepsi can, and an old license plate, Texas 231959. “What else do you think I should put on, Groover and company?” she said to Rawnie and me. “Tell you what. Let’s do this one by committee. Why don’t we go scrounge around and see if we can find something?”