When the Beat Drops Read online

  But it’s not Shay standing behind me.

  It’s Derek.

  Derek, with the ice-blue eyes and rainbow tattoos. Derek, who’s currently making me feel as warm and soupy as the first time we met.

  Suddenly my heartbeat is the loudest thing in the lot.

  “You didn’t tell me you’re a DJ,” he says.

  “I’m not.” I’m way too aware of my knobby legs in jean shorts, my dorky blue pocket tee and makeup-free face and swollen, humid cloud of hair.

  “Sure looks like it from here.” He cocks his head, taking in my headphones, my laptop, the music coming through the speakers.

  “Um. I’m just messing around. Filling in for a friend.” My words tumble over each other. I can’t tell if I’m saying too much or too little, talking too slow or too fast.

  “Sounds like you’re doing more than messing around.”

  My palms go slick. Derek’s smile seems to distort the air around us, to make time move at a different rate.

  “Who’s your manager?” he asks. “Whoever it is got damn lucky.”

  “Manager?” I can’t help laughing. “Are you kidding? I just learned how to do this last week.”

  “Reeeeeeeeally.” He draws out the word: a slow, sexy drawl that hits below my stomach.

  I shrug and he leans forward, a new intensity in his eyes. “You seriously just learned how to spin last week?”

  His irises are blindingly blue. I turn back to my laptop so he can’t see me trembling, and spend longer than I need to cueing up the next track. After the transition I can almost hear the music over my heartbeat again, and I sneak another glance his way.

  He’s inched closer. I feel dizzy.

  “You really are new to this, huh?”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “Only because of that.” He points at my software. “Otherwise I’d swear you’re a pro.”

  “Oh, well,” I shrug, braving a smile. “Guess I’m busted.”

  His laugh is low and smooth, a sports car revving to action. “Next time you’ll just have to cover your tracks.”

  My stomach spirals. “No pun intended.”

  He’s just eased into a husky laugh when the ice cream truck heaves and Shay comes rushing in, her pink hair wild and her flight cases banging against her knees.

  “Mira, I’m so sorry oh-my-god my ride broke down and I was on the phone with triple-A for an hour and I didn’t see your texts and I can’t believe you’re actually covering for me and—”

  She sees Derek and her stream of words freezes.

  “Oh,” she says, her voice suddenly flat. “You’re here.”

  “Shay.” He takes a step back, away from me. “Of all people.”

  “You guys know each other?” I choke.

  “You could say that.” Derek turns to me. “I gotta bounce. See you around.”

  He gives me a brief, bright smile. Then he’s gone.

  “Jesus, I’m sorry,” Shay says again, heaving a flight case onto the table. “I can’t believe they made you fill in for me. Did you tell them you’ve like literally never done this before?”

  “I don’t mind,” I tell her. “This is fun.”

  “Well, thanks. I owe you. And look, they didn’t even notice.”

  She gestures offhandedly at the ice cream truck’s window. People have started trickling into the party, milling around the bar sharing hugs and cigarettes and leaning in close to talk over the music.

  “I can take over now,” she says, settling her pink rhinestone headphones over her head. “At least I’ll get the last ten minutes of my own set.”

  I fade into the background and let her do her thing as she cues in her first track, only reappearing at her elbow when she unplugs my laptop. As she hands it to me she opens her mouth like she wants to say something, like it might be important.

  Then she seems to change her mind, and instead we just stand there together, bouncing to the music and watching the party slowly fill through the ice cream truck’s windows.

  CHAPTER 11

  Half the lot is in shadow when Britt and Yelena return, slurping up the dregs of iced lattes. I join them in one of the alcoves, now filled with a mattress and heaps of cheap, bright pillows. Yelena air-kisses both my cheeks and says Derek told her I saved the day with my DJ set. I fight the urge to grill her for details, and a moment later she sees someone she knows and goes screeching off, leaving me alone with Britt. My sister leans back against the pillows, releasing a soft puff of air. She seems a little spacey, kind of blissed out.

  “Did you take drugs?” I ask.

  She sighs. “I wish you’d stop saying ‘take drugs’ like I’m smoking crack or something.”

  “But … they’re drugs,” I remind her.

  She shakes her head. “This is different.”

  “Fine.” I roll my eyes. “Did you ‘drop molly’?” I form air quotes around the words, borrowing a phrase I heard from Shay. “Are you ‘rolling’?”

  “I wish you’d stop judging.” She settles back on her elbows, arching into a long stretch that shows off the muscles in her arms. She’s wearing a purple terry-cloth romper, and the long side of her hair is twisted into dozens of tiny braids with baby barrettes on the ends.

  “I’m not judging,” I lie. “I just want to understand. Why … ?” I gesture at the party and her pupils, which are growing larger by the minute.

  “Do you promise not to be all judgy if I tell you?”

  I shrug. “I’ll try.”

  She opens a pack of gum, sticks a piece in her mouth, and sighs as it hits her tongue.

  “You know how I was always so competitive?” she says after a few contemplative chews.

  I think of Britt on the soccer field, unstoppable until the ball nearly turned the goal inside out. I think of the hours I sat in her room watching her try on outfit after outfit before a party, nothing quite good enough until there was a pile of clothing up to my knees on the floor.

  “I was trying so hard to be the best,” she continues, still not looking at me. “And like, after a while I wasn’t even sure I was happy anymore.”

  “But you always seemed happy,” I say.

  Her jaw works around the gum. “Sure. But then college happened.”

  She pauses and the music pauses with her, electric violins floating through the air like dust motes. I never knew any of this about Britt. Everything was always so easy for her. She was the girl who had it all.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  Britt takes a long breath. “So like, the coach was really mean. And so were the other girls on the team.”

  “Mean to you?” I can’t keep the surprise out of my voice. Nobody has ever been mean to Britt. She’s the golden girl, popular wherever she goes.

  She nods. “They all hated me because I had a scholarship. Even Coach—he thought I should be trying twice as hard.”

  That sucks,” I say, wondering why she never told me any of this before. Every time we talked online she said things were fine. Great, even. Was I just not asking the right questions?

  She runs her hand over her romper, mussing the terry cloth. “So then Yelena came along and she was like the only person who’d been decent to me in forever. She invited me to my first party, and it was like this whole other world opened up. The people there were nice. It felt like one big happy family where everyone loved each other and nobody was a dick. And she said it was because of molly.”

  I remember the cluster of people in the warehouse who helped me to my feet when I fell, the girl who gave me her bandana and the guy who offered me a hug.

  “So you tried it?” I ask, feeling fascinated and sick.

  She shakes her head slowly. “Not right away. Yelena worked on me for a while. But then I finally did and I just got it. And it made everything so much better.”

  “Better how?” I’m leaning forward, watching her rub her hand more forcefully along her romper.

  “Better like … I liked people again. And I could f
orgive them. Even those bitchy girls on the soccer team. You just, like, feel like you understand people, and people understand you. It’s like, everything just seems to make sense in this really beautiful way.”

  I sit back, letting her words roll over me and wondering what it would be like to forgive Gabriella Lawson and the rest of the cretins at Coletown High who call me Sad Trombone. But when I think about them all I feel is anger, the same minor chords played long and low and loud. Could a pill really fix that? Would I take it if it could?

  Britt shakes her head like she’s clearing it, a smile playing across her face. “But enough with the philosophy already,” she says, pushing herself up to standing. “Let’s go dance.”

  This time, I don’t even try to argue. I let her pull me to my feet and drag me onto the dance floor.

  CHAPTER 12

  The sky is the color of strawberry ice cream by the time the third DJ goes on. The fairy lights above the bar twinkle to life like colored sprinkles, and a wave of sound surges through the speakers. This DJ cranks the sound as loud as it’ll go; my ears scream in protest, but nobody else seems to mind. The dance floor pulses, a mass of bodies with Britt and Yelena lost somewhere in its depths. I fumble in my pocket for the earplugs Derek gave me; I’ve felt silly carrying them around since the warehouse party, a slightly linty token of something I can’t quite put into words, but now I feel like a genius. I’m about to pop them in when an arm swoops in, stopping my hand.

  An arm covered in tattoos.

  “Please tell me those aren’t the same earplugs I gave you last week,” Derek says.

  “Maybe. But I washed them?” I struggle to keep my voice even. I need to keep my cool.

  “Uh-uh. Still gross.” He smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “I have a ton back at my place. Take a walk with me?”

  His place? I open my mouth to say yes, but all that comes out is a thin croak.

  “You won’t miss much.” His eyes smile. “It’s only three blocks away.”

  I nod, not trusting myself to speak, and follow him through packs of dancers and out the corrugated metal door. Once we’re on the sidewalk Derek slows his pace, letting me fall into step beside him. I can’t help noticing the wiry hair on his legs, so different from Peter’s dark, downy fluff back at music camp. I gulp hard. Derek isn’t a kid like Peter. He’s a man, or almost one, and being near him makes my heart do laps and my stomach do flips and my hands want to fly away.

  The rhythm of his walk is loose and easy, with a silvery jingle whenever his right foot hits the pavement. To soothe my nerves I work on a melody to go over it, something freeform and meandering to match the roll of his shoulders and swing of his arms.

  “What’re you humming?” he asks.

  “Just something I made up.”

  I hadn’t realized I was humming. We turn onto a side street lined with auto-repair shops and old one-story warehouse buildings, and I make a mental note to enter my new tune into Sibelius when I get home.

  “Really?” Derek raises an eyebrow. “So you’re a producer too?” He stops in front of one of the buildings and fishes a set of keys from his pocket.

  “No. A composer. I write music.”

  “Right.” He gives me a funny look and leads us up a narrow flight of stairs. “Like a producer.”

  I open my mouth to argue but then think that maybe this is more electronic music language, like “track” instead of “song” and “spin” instead of “perform.” And then Derek opens the door to his apartment and I gasp.

  Spread out in front of me is the loft I’ve always dreamed of. It’s everything I picture when Crow and Nicky and I talk about getting a place off campus: huge windows, a makeshift stage and DJ booth, mismatched couches and piles of books, and kitchen cabinets painted bright, funky colors. A spiral staircase leads to a balcony that runs the length of the room.

  “Nice, huh?” He closes the door with a satisfied click.

  “It’s … perfect.” I can’t help imagining Crow and Nicky up on that stage playing one of my pieces while I listen from a beanbag chair on the floor, surrounded by instrument cases and pizza boxes. “Do you have roommates?”

  He laughs. “You think I could afford this place on my own?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrug, feeling even younger than I am. “I’m not super knowledgeable about the rent situation in Brooklyn.”

  He shakes his head. “You’re funny. Yeah, I have roommates. Four of them. They’re all at the party right now.”

  “Oh.” So we’re alone here. Just the two of us in this big, empty loft, Derek loose and relaxed and me wound so tight my spine feels like it could shoot out the top of my head.

  He brushes past me, sending sparks up my arm, and starts up the spiral staircase. “Let’s get you those earplugs.”

  With each step my pulse drums louder, thundering in my ears as he opens a door off the balcony and ushers me into his room. For a moment everything is dark, and then he flips on a halogen lamp, revealing piles of plastic bins and cardboard boxes spilling clothes and party flyers and sound equipment. His bed rests on a double layer of milk crates, and there are posters of parties and DJs and festivals tacked to the wall two and three deep. I recognize a fresh one, directly over his bed, for Electric Wonderland.

  “You threw all these parties?” I ask.

  “Most, yeah.” He perches on the edge of his bed and pats the place next to him. I pick my way through patches of bare floor until I’m next to him on the bed. Our thighs are three inches apart. Not that I notice.

  “You go to NYU?” I ask, spotting a purple spiral notebook with the school’s logo.

  “Yeah.” He rolls his eyes. “Not my idea.”

  “Why not? It’s a good school.”

  “If you’re into that kind of thing.”

  “You’re not?”

  “Hell no.” He leans back on his arms, sending our thighs an inch closer. “I want to be throwing parties, not wasting time studying crap I’ll never use.”

  “What about their music business program?” For a while Crow and Nicky and I were looking at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, before we fell hard for Fulton and never looked back.

  “Yeah, I did that for a year. But it’s totally fake and corporate.” He rubs a hand over his face. “It’s all about contracts and record labels.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  “Maybe not for some people. But I’m not about that.”

  “What are you about?” I let my eyes linger on the sharp line of his chin, the dark splash of eyelashes against his cheek.

  He turns to me, his eyes lighting up. “The music, for one thing. And just the vibe, and creating something beautiful from almost nothing.”

  “That sounds cool,” I sigh.

  He grins. “It’s what I love about throwing parties—you don’t need a million dollars or a bunch of corporate guys in suits to do it. Just a good raw space and a sound system and some DJs. It’s like we’re all making it up as we go along, but that makes it so much better, you know?”

  “Like you’re improvising?”

  “Exactly.” He scratches his bicep, revealing a piece of tattoo I hadn’t noticed before: a peacock with its tail turning to fire. “You get it.”

  I nod, even though I’m not sure I do. Improvising a warehouse party seems pretty different from improvising a jazz trio.

  “So why not drop out?” I ask. “If it’s not what you want to be doing.”

  His chin dips, his eyes drifting away for a moment. “Like I said, not my idea. Now it’s my turn to ask you something.”

  My body tenses. Usually when someone’s voice dips into that low, intimate register before asking me a question, it’s about my skin or my hair. What are you, anyway? is a popular one, and even though it’s nosy and invasive (if I want to tell you about my heritage, I will), it’s still not as annoying as when people try to guess. I’ve gotten Italian, Mexican, Hawaiian, Brazilian, Israeli, and once a little kid even asked if I was Moana. I
hate it when people try to categorize me, put me in a neat box and stick a label on me like I’m a dead insect in a glass case. Like they can’t decide what they’re going to think of me until they do.

  “I’m biracial,” I explain, before he can ask. “My dad is black and my mom is white.”

  Derek sits back, surprised. “That’s not what I was going to ask. But thanks for letting me know, I guess?”

  “You weren’t?” A giddy relief seeps through me. Peter Singh assumed I was Latina the first time we met. I forgave him, but I never forgot it. “What were you going to ask?”

  “Did you really just learn how to DJ last week?”

  It’s so different from what I was expecting, I laugh. “I really did. Is that so hard to believe?”

  “Yeah, it is.” He tilts his chin, giving me a look through half-slit eyes that turns my insides to pudding. “I’ve never seen a setup crew all into the music like that. Usually they’re just running around like crazy, trying to get everything done. But you had this kind of power over them. Hell, you had this kind of power over me.”

  My hands start to sweat. “Me?” I squeak.

  “Yes, you. You could really make a go of it, if you want.”

  “How?” I ask, genuinely curious. Shay never told me how she became a DJ. I always kind of pictured her emerging from the womb in her sparkly pink headphones.

  “You know … play some parties, make some mixes, get your name out there. What’s your Instagram?” he asks, taking out his phone.

  The only pictures on my Instagram are dorky recital photos.

  “I don’t have one,” I say quickly.

  He shakes his head. “You’ll have to change that. It’s all about image. You gotta promote, promote, promote.”

  “Oh.” I deflate. “Image isn’t really my thing.”

  “Why not? It could be. You have a great look.”

  My body ignites. Is he saying I’m pretty?

  “So what is your thing, anyway?” Derek asks, leaning back on his elbows.

  “You really want to know?”

  “I really do.”

  “Fine.” My breath catches in my throat. “I want to be a jazz composer.”