Still, I couldn’t help but imagine what it was like. My stomach kicked thinking about it, yet . . . those men had been waiting for her. They were waiting. In a line. Too focused on their turn to even notice the basement door crack open and then closed. What did that feel like? Powerful? Beautiful? Was it the Kissing Potion lip gloss that had given her that hold over guys? Maureen’s cousin in Maple Grove said boys couldn’t resist you if you wore it. It transformed even the dullest lips into stud magnets. I’d immediately bought my own tube of Cherry Smash. I’d hidden it from my dad like it was drugs, but the rollerball had accidentally popped out. Ruined my favorite pair of purple cords.
“Thanks, man,” Ed said, taking the pop Ricky offered him. He pulled a brown Anacin bottle out of his inside coat pocket, tapped out three tablets, dropped them in his mouth, and started chewing.
He caught me staring. “Want one?” he asked, offering me the bottle, looking at my chest rather than my face.
Good luck finding anything there.
“Picked up the habit in Georgia when I was in the service,” he continued, undaunted. “Keeps my teeth from hurting. There’s nothing better to wash down Anacin than God’s cola.”
When I didn’t put out my hand, he twisted the cap back on the bottle, slid it into his coat pocket, and took a swig from his pop. I glanced at his wrist, searching for the glint of the copper bracelet I’d seen on that man last night, his hand tangled in Maureen’s hair.
But Ed’s wrists were bare.
BETH
Beth figured she’d have one chance to swing the lantern at him.
The chamber pot was too light, the water jug too unwieldy.
It had to be the lantern.
She would smash it upside his head with enough force that his brains spilled out. Not only was she a long-distance runner but also she’d spent the summer slinging trays loaded with heavy diner plates. She knew she had strength enough in her arms as long as she surprised him, as long as she could get at him before he threw up an arm to shield himself.
She crouched behind the door in the unbroken darkness.
When her legs began to cramp, she paced the corners quietly, listening for any sound, anything besides the soft padding of her own feet.
It was going to feel so good to hurt him.
Heads bled. They bled a lot. She remembered that from health class.
She wouldn’t stay around to see it. She’d heave the lantern, and then she’d run. She’d charge out that door and down that hall and it didn’t matter where she came out. She would keep running and running forever. The police would need to travel to Canada to question her about this guy and his bloody, goopy brains spilled across the dungeon floor.
The North Pole, maybe.
CHAPTER 12
The air was thick with the smell of mini doughnuts and popcorn. People hollered and laughed, their conversations punctuated with midway sounds—a bell clanging as someone’s hammer made the puck fly all the way to the top of the High Striker, the whirring delirium of the Skee-Ball machines, the ring toss carny’s singsong voice as he ordered people to “step right up and win” a giant stuffed gorilla.
We were ready to play on the main stage.
The Girls, coming to you live.
It’d been my idea to form the band. The drums had been my refuge since second grade. Before that, I was a gray kid. You know the kind, invisible unless they get in your way. Then the phone call came. I’d been digging in the backyard sandbox, burying treasure that I dredged right back up. In the background came the telephone ring specific to our house, followed by Mom’s muffled voice, and then the back door opened. Mom appeared, the handset cradled to her chest, a kerchief over her hair. She was wearing coral lipstick even though she had no plans to leave the house.
“Heather,” she called out, “Mr. Ruppke needs someone to play drums in band. You want to play drums?”
“Sure.”
That’d been that.
I joined band and then orchestra, even strapped on the snares for summer marching crew. I was happy with whatever music I was asked to play until I stumbled across Fanny on American Bandstand on August 3, 1974. Watching those four women—four women—play rock and roll like they had every right, smashing and smiling through “I’ve Had It”？ Well, there was no going back. I grew desperate for a band, a real one all my own.
Brenda had the voice and Maureen the garage, and the rest came together like chocolate and peanut butter. Brenda’s parents donated a musty roll of lime-green shag carpeting, and I brought all my posters, Fanny and the Runaways and Suzi Quatro, enough to line the garage walls. Once we got our instruments and lava lamps set up and lit some nag champa, it became a cozy club. The Girls was meant to be a temporary name. So stupid it was clever, you know? But we’d never gotten around to changing it.