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“You guys, we made a wrong turn!” Brenda howled from the backseat of Stephanie’s clunky car. The map was stretched out across her thighs, and her blue hair reflected starkly in the rear view mirror.
“Seriously?” Stephanie sounded frantic. Her hands clutched the steering wheel so powerfully that her fingers were white. Around them, New York City traffic bumped along, clearly uninterested in the fact that three teenagers from Nantucket hadn’t a clue how inner-city traffic worked.
“Calm down.” Ella collected the map from Brenda’s lap and inspected the route they’d made that morning before ditching school after fifth period. “We just missed the turn. If you turn right up here, we can swoop back around and find that street again.”
“Oh my God. We’re going to die,” Stephanie groaned.
“Will you stop that?” Ella snapped. “Look around you, Stephanie. Seriously. Look!”
“I can’t look! I have to watch traffic, Ella!”
But at the traffic light, Stephanie allowed herself to turn her head from side to side to take in the splendorous views of downtown Greenwich Village, an artistic haven in a chaotic city so far from home. It was now seven-thirty at night, and the city had flung itself open for a dramatic night of art, music, fine restaurants, copious drinks, and lots of trouble. Ella wanted to lap up every moment of it, especially because it was so unlike her ordinary life. This was the daydream she used to get her through her life at The Copperfield House— yet here it was, right in front of her. She was living it.
It was a struggle to find a parking place close enough to the music venue. Even then, they had to pool together their cash to pay for it. As Stephanie clicked quarters into the parking meter, she muttered, “Brenda, your brother better let us play tonight.”
Brenda kicked the curb sadly. “He said it was a maybe. There’s no guarantee. I told you that.”
“That’s better than what we normally have to work with,” Ella reminded them. “Normally, we’re just stuck playing in my practice room. We need a real audience! We need real ears to hear what we’ve been working on all this time!”
The corners of Brenda’s lips curved into a smile. Ella grabbed her guitar from the trunk and watched as Brenda adjusted the strap of her bass case over her shoulder. They hadn’t bothered with a drum set, thinking that Stephanie could just use whatever set the venue had.
The Greenwich Village venue was called “The Toast.” According to Brenda’s older brother, The Toast was where all the punks and indie music kids hung out on the weekends. According to legend, Green Day had performed there when they had just been coming up on the scene.
From the outside, The Toast looked like any other dive bar. It was shadowed and dank looking with graffiti on the door and had only one window. Several twenty-somethings stood outside the bar, smoking cigarettes and chatting in a way that made them look very bored but also very cool. As Brenda, Stephanie, and Ella approached, Brenda’s brother stepped out of the bar and placed a cigarette between his lips.
“Well, well, well. I can’t believe you really made it,” said Brenda’s brother, Chris. Ella had always thought he was a terrible musician and an even worse person. He gave Brenda a half-hug and nodded at Stephanie and Ella, who he probably thought of as little kids. “Sneaking off the island for a bit of city action. Ella, Brenda tells me that you can really slay that thing.”
Ella wanted to roll her eyes but decided against it. “Are we in for tonight, or what?”
Chris pressed his palms against his thighs. “Just be patient, little girl. I’ll get you a slot sometime tonight. I’m in with the guy who makes the schedule. I can’t promise you any longer than twenty minutes, though.”
Ella told herself that twenty minutes would have to be enough. “Okay. Thanks.”
They entered the bar behind Chris. The guy at the door who was there to check everyone’s IDs didn’t bother to glance at them at all. They passed the bar counter, where a woman in a belly shirt talked to an older guy with her hand on her hip. In the corner, a couple made out passionately despite the earliness of the hour. It was difficult for Ella to imagine what kind of world existed beyond the confines of Nantucket Island— yet here it was. Was she ready for it?
Backstage, Chris showed them where they could put their instruments and hang out before their gig. There were plenty of beer bottles on a table, along with bags of chips and pretzels. Two twenty-something guys with bad tattoos talked to one another in the corner and managed to ignore the pack of teenage girls altogether.
“The first concert is at eight,” Chris explained. “You can either hang out back here or in the crowd, but don’t get yourself into any trouble. If Mom finds out, she’ll kill me.” He eyed Brenda knowingly. He then glanced toward Ella to say, “Although I guess if you got into any trouble, it would just be par for the course in that family of yours.”
Ella’s jaw dropped with surprise. Chris snickered to himself and hustled out of the back room, leaving Ella with her hands in fists.
“What the…” Stephanie’s eyes widened. “Brenda, your brother is a piece of work.”
Brenda rolled her eyes and placed a tender hand on Ella’s shoulder. “You okay, hun?”
Ella shuddered. “Yeah. Fine.” She sniffed. “As long as we get to play, I don’t care what that guy says. We’re here, aren’t we? We made it.”
Stephanie, Brenda, and Ella shared a secretive smile before stepping back out into the crowd to watch the first band. The band was made up of five guys on the early side of their twenties. They played bad punk music and hardly stayed on beat. Ella mostly rolled her eyes throughout the entire performance, uninterested in guys who only did the whole “music business” thing because they wanted to pick up chicks.
Brenda and Stephanie, on the other hand, jumped up and down throughout this performance and the next. Ella was mystified.Didn’t they hear just how bad this band sounded? Were they on the same page when it came to music?Or were Brenda and Stephanie just the only girls in Ella’s grade who cared about music at all?
Being eighteen was difficult for many reasons. Most of all, though, Ella felt as though she hovered between two realities. There was her time at The Copperfield House, with her family and her best friends in the band, but then there was this other life that awaited her wherever it was she ended up going. That big-time music career was somewhere out there. But she had to be patient on her quest.
The fourth band who stepped up on stage was yet another four-piece of guys. Ella muttered into Stephanie’s ear to say, “It’s like there are no girls who can actually play around here.”
The first chords of a punk song began to play. Stephanie called out over the sound. “Brenda’s brother said that girls are supposed to be in the crowd, not on stage.”
“That’s so stupid!” Ella screeched.
