When the Beat Drops Read online

  The words claw at my neck.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks.

  I can’t believe she doesn’t know. “Alden Family MVP?” I ask.

  Mom looks from me to the sign, and her eyes go wide. “Oh, I didn’t mean it like that!” She shakes her head. “Oh my god, you don’t really think that, do you? It’s just because of the championships…. You know, how she was state soccer MVP last year?”

  “It’s fine,” I shrug it off, playing it cool. “It’s a cute sign. She’ll love it.”

  Mom reaches over to pat my shoulder. “You know you two are both my best girls, right, Mir-Bear?” she asks.

  “I know,” I repeat. Although I don’t, necessarily. Not always.

  But Mom’s already craning her neck at the escalators, looking for Britt. “There she is!” she cries, her voice rising up the scale. I catch a glimpse of my sister in a navy blue Pepperdine T-shirt and cutoffs, half-hidden behind a couple with a wailing baby.

  “Britt! Britt, honey! Right here!” Mom waves her hand and I feel people turning to stare. But then her arm drops, and the smile falls from her face.

  “Oh my god,” she whispers. “What did she do to her hair?”

  As the couple and baby step off the escalator, I get a better look. Half of Britt’s long, tight, always-perfectly-moisturized curls are gone, the entire left side cut close to her skull with spiral designs shaved into the soft black fuzz. From the expression on Mom’s face, you’d think Britt had tattooed QUEEN BITCH across her forehead.

  “Wow, you guys made me a sign!” Britt’s smile is a flute refrain, clear and playful and sweet. She spreads her arms for a hug, but Mom stops her.

  “What happened to your hair?” she demands.

  Britt’s smile flickers. “I cut it?” she says, like it’s a question. “Am I seriously getting the third degree before I even get a hug?”

  Mom clenches the sign at her side. “It’s a bit of a shock. I thought you loved your hair.”

  Britt rolls her eyes, embracing Mom’s stiff shoulders. “The girls in my dorm think it’s cool.”

  “I think it’s cool,” I add.

  “Well thank you.” Britt disengages from Mom and pulls me in. She smells like airplane peanuts and vanilla body spray. “See?” she says to Mom. “Other people like it.”

  I link my arm through hers and she chats about finals on the way to the car, then calls shotgun while Mom’s still loading her bags into the trunk.

  “You’re making your own mother ride in the back?” Mom asks, pretending to be annoyed. But I can tell, now that the shock of Britt’s hair has worn off, she’s happy to have her older, favorite daughter home again. She’s already leaning forward as I pull out of short-term parking.

  “I hope you’re ready to teach your old cardio classes,” she says, patting Britt’s shoulder. “That stupid Crunch may have all sorts of shiny machines, but they don’t have you.”

  “Mmm,” Britt says, poking at the stereo. She finds a pop station that fills the car with wailing auto-tune, and even though this is my car and I normally hate cheesy pop, I put up with it now because it’s Britt and I haven’t seen her since September. Mom, in the meantime, launches into a story about how she ran into Britt’s old soccer coach and he offered to work with her over the summer.

  “For free!” Mom sounds triumphant. “Isn’t that great?”

  “You talked to Coach?” Britt’s head whips around.

  Mom nods, pursing her lips. “He wants you to have a good season. We all do.”

  Britt shifts in her seat, the vinyl sucking against her thigh. “I just wish you’d talked to me first.”

  I watch in the rearview mirror as Mom’s eyes cut to Britt. “I’m talking to you now.”

  “Right. Sure.” Britt turns up the radio and chats off-handedly about finals and her flight until our wheels sigh into the driveway and Dad runs out to greet us, still in his athletic shorts and purple Gym Rat T-shirt. Late-afternoon sun glints off his shaved head, bringing out the coppery undertones in his deep-brown skin.

  “Dad!” Britt leaps out of the car and rushes at his open arms.

  “Baby!” He picks her up easily, swinging her around until her legs fly out behind her and she squeals to be set down. “Missed you.”

  “Missed you too.”

  He holds her at arm’s length, evaluating. His smile falters when he gets to her hair. “That’s a new look.”

  She shrugs. “Mom hates it. Right, Mom?”

  “It’s not my favorite.” Mom brushes past us, one of Britt’s bags tucked under her arm. “Lee, did you start dinner? I need protein, stat.”

  He grabs her and plants a kiss on her cheek. “It’s almost ready. Let’s get these inside.”

  Britt and Dad each take a suitcase before I can offer to help. I follow them into the house, closing the screen door behind us with a piercing squeal. Our house is small and painted a dingy yellow, chosen mostly for its bargain-basement price and proximity to The Gym Rat. The stairs whine under our feet and the door to Britt’s room opens with a musty pop.

  “Aw, it’s exactly the same!” Britt looks around at the smiley-face comforter on her neatly made bed and the row of soccer trophies on her dresser. Her room is tiny (we used to share, but Dad put up a wall when Britt started high school so we could have our own space), but it’s impeccably organized. Unlike mine, where every surface is cluttered with books and sheet music and the walls are covered in gray egg-crate foam that I stapled up so I wouldn’t drive the rest of the family nuts practicing the trumpet.

  Dad frowns. “You thought we’d redecorate?”

  Britt laughs and unzips her suitcase. I linger in the doorway as Dad leaves, watching her remove armloads of wrinkled clothes and dump them into her hamper: a jumble of Pepperdine and Coletown tees, limp jeans and tangled socks and underwear. But there’s other stuff mixed in there, too, stuff that seems very un-Britt: a pair of rainbow knee socks covered in unicorns, some neon green booty shorts, a black top that’s sheer except for a pair of Xs over the nipples.

  “What’s this?” I ask, intercepting something blue and slinky.

  Britt turns, and her lips twitch into a smile. “Just a dress. It’s fun, right?”

  I hold it up. The dress is smaller than my T-shirt, and covered with cats shooting lasers from their eyes.

  “Since when do you wear stuff like this?”

  “Since college.” Her smile widens. “Try it on. It’d look cute on you.”

  “Absolutely not.” I lob it at the hamper, missing by a good two feet. Britt laughs, retrieves it, and lands it in a single, graceful arc.

  “Can I borrow your car tonight?” she asks, tossing balled-up athletic socks into a drawer.

  “Where’re you going?”

  “Just out. Meeting up with a friend from college.”

  “Can I come?” I ask, falling into our old rhythm as if she hadn’t just been gone for almost a year. In a minute she’ll look up at me, smile, and tell me “next time.” Except there won’t be a next time—there never was. Britt and I may be sisters at home, but once I got to high school we were practically strangers in public. She hung out with the jocks, I had Crow and Nicky, and our orbits rarely crossed beyond a secret smile when we passed in the halls.

  She says something, and I nod automatically. “Sure, next time,” I say, still lost in the past.

  “Um, Mira. Hello?” Britt laughs, a tinkling laugh that always goes one note up before falling down a chromatic scale: a-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. “I said yes.”

  “Wait, what?” I return to the present. “Really?”

  “Sure.” She’s grinning, smoothing wrinkles from a purple mini tutu that just emerged from her luggage.

  “Since when do you invite me to things?”

  “Since college.” She tosses the tutu into her closet as I try to process this new side of Britt, a side that wears purple tutus and is willing to tolerate her dorky little sister tagging along when she goes out. “Seriously, you should come. It
’ll be fun.”

  “I guess I can clear my schedule,” I say, trying to play it cool even as my heart begins pounding.

  She throws a pillow at me. “Thanks for penciling me in, dork.”

  “Anytime,” I shoot back. Then I change the subject quickly … before she can change her mind.

  CHAPTER 3

  “I’m driving,” Britt announces as we leave the house.

  “But it’s my car!” I protest.

  “But I know where we’re going,” Britt counters, reaching for the keys.

  I hold them above her head. “I know how to use Google Maps.”

  “But …” Britt stands in front of the driver’s side, blocking the door. “But I’m your big sister who you love and haven’t seen in nine months and who really, really wants to drive your car right now!”

  I can’t help it. I crack up.

  “Fine,” I say, handing her the keys. “But stay under the limit and no checking your phone.”

  She nods, already sliding into the driver’s seat.

  “You’re sure you want me to come?” I ask for the thousandth time as she pulls out of the driveway. I spent all of dinner boiling over with excitement, but now doubt is beginning to creep in. If Britt’s college friend is anything like her buddies from high school, she’ll be some gorgeous, polished jock who spends the whole night pretending I don’t exist.

  “Would you be here if I didn’t?” Britt rests her elbow on the open window, looking as effortlessly cool with her new hair as if she were in a music video. Still, my palms start to sweat as shopping plazas, car dealerships, and fast-food restaurants whip past. A couple of towns over, in a leafy neighborhood full of big, old houses, Britt pulls up to a sprawling Victorian and honks the horn. A second later the door bursts open and someone comes swooping down the front walk like a giant bat, a nest of dark, tangled hair trailing behind her. She opens the passenger’s side door, sees me sitting there, and shrieks—a perfect A-sharp.

  “Oh, look at you!” she cries. “You could be Britt’s twin, she didn’t tell me she had a sister who could positively be a twin. You two are so goddamn beautiful it’s unfair! And can I have shotgun? I hate riding in the back seat. I say it’s because I get carsick but actually I just like being up front. Do you mind?”

  I turn to Britt, my jaw falling open. This girl is so different from Britt’s high school friends, it’s hard to believe they’re the same species.

  Britt tries to suppress a laugh. “Mira,” she says, “this is Yelena. My friend from college.”

  Yelena is skinny and skittery as a daddy longlegs, with porcelain skin and huge amber eyes. She’s wearing a black bandeau top, a vinyl miniskirt, and giant patent leather boots that come up to her knees. A thin silver belly chain shivers as she talks.

  “It’s my car,” I mutter. But still, I unbuckle my seat belt. When I step outside I notice Yelena’s wearing a backpack made out of an old baby doll. A zipper bisects the body; there are straps sewn crookedly to the shoulders and its round blue eyes stare blankly into the distance. If this were a horror film, it would definitely come to life and terrorize a group of coeds.

  “This is Emma.” Yelena catches me looking. “I made her myself. Isn’t she freaky? Say hello, Emma!” She moves Emma’s arm in a jerky wave and then folds herself into the passenger’s seat, rummaging in the doll’s belly and pulling out a phone. A moment later a blast of drum machines tears through the car, racing at nearly two hundred beats per minute. It makes my entire body go rigid but it also suits Yelena somehow; she seems like the kind of person whose life should have a soundtrack.

  “So where’re we going, anyway?” I ask for the zillionth time as Britt puts the car in drive. But the music drowns me out and Britt turns to Yelena, chattering at a mile a minute about her plane ride home and a bunch of people I don’t know as we pull onto the highway. We pass one exit, then four, and by the time we cross the border from Connecticut into New York I can’t keep my questions to myself anymore.

  “Where are we going?” I yell over the music.

  Yelena pokes Britt. “You told her, right?”

  “Umm.” Britt bites her lip. “Maybe not exactly.”

  “Oh, please tell me she’s a virgin!” Yelena bounces up and down in her seat. “I love breaking in virgins. They usually freak the fuck out!”

  A million alarm bells ring in my head. “Excuse me?!” I shout.

  “Not that kind of virgin,” Britt says quickly.

  “A warehouse party virgin!” Yelena screams, flinging her arms in the air and laughing.

  “A what-house what-what?” It sounds like Yelena said “warehouse party,” but that can’t be right. Maybe she meant a house party, like the kind Britt was always going to in high school.

  “Oh, she’s a virgin!” There’s a manic sparkle in Yelena’s eyes as she turns to me. “You’re going to love this. Everybody loves their first warehouse party. It will absolutely change your world.”

  “What if I don’t want my world changed?” I mutter as Britt slows at a tollbooth. I realize we’re almost to the city, and little pinpricks of dread start to puncture my excitement. When Britt invited me out I pictured the kind of party she was always telling me about in high school: finished basements, rum and Cokes, sloppy make-out sessions, and tearful confessions in the bathroom line. A warehouse party sounds way out of character for Britt.

  Then again, so are purple tutus and a half-shaved head.

  “Oh, you definitely want your world changed,” Yelena assures me. “Even if you don’t know it yet.”

  Britt flicks her turn signal and we peel onto an exit, snaking through a labyrinth of industrial streets. Everything around us is gray: the cracked sidewalk, the pockmarked pavement, and the endless low buildings that, at this time of night, sit silent as dozing bears. Only sickly yellow streetlamps punctuate the gloom, puddling light on the concrete.

  The dread that began back at the tollbooth blossoms into full-on, chest-pressing panic. I’m far from home, in an unfamiliar neighborhood, with no way to escape. Coming out was a bad idea. Not only should I not be here but I don’t think Britt should, either.

  “We’re clearly in the wrong place,” I announce. “We should go. Like, home.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Yelena chirps. “It’s right around the corner.”

  Britt turns onto a street that looks like it hasn’t been touched since 1920. Trolley tracks run down its center, and the LeSabre’s wheels patter a drumroll over cobblestones. Old brick warehouses with broken windows and peaked glass roofs rise up on one side of us; on the other, the East River flows silently behind a concrete divide, Manhattan’s lights rippling softly on its surface.

  “Grab this spot.” Yelena points to a gap between a rusty Honda Civic and a VW Bug painted in psychedelic swirls. Britt crookedly parallel parks. The engine sputters to a halt as she grabs the backpack she brought with her: the one I’d assumed, based on Britt’s going-out habits of the past, was full of rum and fruity mixers.

  “Here.” She tosses me a ball of slithery blue fabric. “Put this on.”

  The fabric pools on my knees, and I see that it’s the dress from earlier: the one with the cats shooting lasers. “No way!” I tell her. “This thing is tiny.”

  “Come on. It’ll look cute!” Britt pulls her Pepperdine T-shirt over her head, revealing a bright red tube top.

  “You’re wearing that?” I choke.

  “Hell yeah she is!” Yelena lines her lips in heavy black pencil. “That thing is the shit, Britt. Whoa, I just made a rhyme!”

  Britt rests her foot on the dashboard and adjusts a striped sock around her knee. “C’mon, Mir-Bear, put it on already. You’ll thank me later.”

  I know that voice. That’s the let’s-draw-on-the-wall-withcrayons voice, the swap-Mom’s-almond-milk-with-heavycream voice. But I’m not falling for it this time.

  “Nope.” I set the dress on the seat next to me. “Absolutely not.”

  “Fine.” Britt uses the
rearview mirror to apply a thick coat of glitter to her eyelids. “God, I forgot how stubborn you are.”

  “Are you ready?” Yelena is practically jumping up and down in her seat. “I can hear the party from here—I totally have so much FOMO right now.”

  “Fear of Missing Out,” Britt explains. “It’s Yelena’s greatest affliction.”

  I turn the phrase over in my mind, conjuring images of Windham Music Camp’s vaulted concert hall and spacious, sunny practice rooms. Fear of Missing Out could basically describe my whole summer.

  Britt snaps a gold fanny pack around her waist and opens the car door. Yelena slings the baby doll backpack over her shoulders and gives me a what-are-you-waiting-for look.

  My legs feel like cement as I step outside. I can hear the party somewhere ahead of us, bass chattering the cobblestones.

  “C’mon!” Britt takes my hand and pulls me down the street, the bass growing louder with every step. I look up and see one of the warehouses is lit from within; green and purple lasers leak through its grimy windows, chasing each other across the sky.

  When we reach it, Yelena yanks open a heavy black door and we duck inside. We’re at the end of a long, dark corridor that smells like damp concrete and old cigarettes. A graffiti arrow directs us around the corner, and suddenly we’re at a folding table littered with paper printouts, strips of wristbands, markers, and a cashbox. A girl with a constellation of piercings in her left cheek smiles at us through orange lipstick while Yelena hands her a fistful of bills.

  “Welcome to Electric Wonderland.” She stamps our hands. “Have a great night!”

  “Electric Wonderland?” I repeat as we push through the doors. I don’t like electric anything. I’d still be composing to gaslight if I could.

  Britt opens her mouth to respond, but the party swallows her words. The party swallows everything.

  The bass, which was loud outside, is now a full-body experience. It stops me in my tracks, vibrating into my feet and radiating up my legs, pumping my heart and pulsing blood through my veins. The beat feels ancient and futuristic at the same time, and as my eyes adjust to the thick smoke-machine fog I can see the way the dancing crowd flings itself toward the music as if the beat is the moon and they’re the tides, pushed and pulled by its rhythm until their bodies are no longer their own.