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.