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Blowin' My Mind Like a Summer Breeze, page 1

 

Blowin' My Mind Like a Summer Breeze
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Blowin' My Mind Like a Summer Breeze


  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Side One: A Week on Lake Michigan

  Track Zero: I Am So Not Ready

  Track One: Pirouetting to Nowhere

  Track Two: A Charcoal Sky Dotted with Occasional Stars

  Track Three: A Girl with Black Hair Walks By

  Track Four: Like Lightning That Doesn't Stop

  Track Five: Off to the Races

  Track Six: A Cloud I Get to Climb On

  Track Seven: The Song Juliet Would Take to the Moon

  Track Eight: A Big Fat Line Through Number Four

  Track Nine: The Talking Piece

  Track Ten: Blowin' My Mind Like a Summer Breeze

  Track Eleven: Something is Broken Inside

  Track Twelve: Flowers Blooming as You Walk By

  Track Thirteen: Stupid

  Track Fourteen: Will It Hurt?

  Track Fifteen: The Opposite of Ordinary

  Track Sixteen: A Bubble Balanced on the Tip of My Finger

  Track Seventeen: Nowhere, That's Where

  Track Eighteen: A Word That Rhymes with Dictator

  Track Nineteen: Things I Wonder About

  Side Two: The Treehouse Tapes

  Track One: My First Pen Pal

  Track Two: Gently Snag the Butterflies

  Track Three: A Partnership is Born

  Track Four: The Treehouse Tapes

  Track Five: Are You Joining a Biker Gang?

  Track Six: Lying is Easier

  Track Seven: We're Looking for a Keyboard Player

  Track Eight: Chicken in Heaven

  Track Nine: Songs About Being a Girl

  Track Ten: Something Liberating About Going Too Far

  Track Eleven: A Little Delay

  Track Twelve: I Was Here, and Now I'm Not

  Track Thirteen: You're Not Pretty Enough

  Track Fourteen: I Have Something to Say

  Track Fifteen: How to Be Happy Anyway

  Track Sixteen: This is a Song I Wrote

  Track Seventeen: What Did I Do Wrong?

  Track Eighteen: They're Worse Than Girls

  Track Nineteen: Look Out World

  Track Twenty: This Probably Sounds Really Stupid

  Track Twenty-One: He Has His Moments

  Track Twenty-Two: That Song Could Be About Me

  Track Twenty-Three: A Good Music Manager

  Hidden Track: Crazy Thoughts

  Acknowledgements

  About Benjamin Roesch

  More from Deep Hearts YA

  Deep Hearts YA

  Blowin’ My Mind Like a Summer Breeze

  Benjamin Roesch

  Copyright © 2022 by Benjamin Roesch

  Cover design copyright © 2022 by Chloe White

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Developmental editor: Margaret Larson

  Proofreader: Francisco Feliciano

  Published July 2022 by Deep Hearts YA, an imprint of Deep Desires Press and Story Perfect Inc.

  Deep Hearts YA

  PO Box 51053 Tyndall Park

  Winnipeg, Manitoba R2X 3B0

  Canada

  Visit http://www.deepheartsya.com for more great reads.

  For Red

  And for my students.

  Side One:

  A Week on Lake Michigan

  July, 1995

  Track Zero

  I Am So Not Ready

  Hotel ice chips are melting down my knuckles. Juliet’s warm breath is on my neck. Our eyes meet in the bathroom mirror. Our lips wear the same shade of purple.

  “Harder,” she says.

  I jam the ice chips harder against my flesh, wondering if I’m doing it right, then feel them beginning to slip. I can’t feel my nose anymore. My fingertips are tingling.

  How do I slow my heart down?

  “Are you remembering how to punch yet?” she says, pushing her black hair away from her face.

  “Almost,” I say.

  “Good,” she says. “Right in the balls.”

  I laugh in the uncomfortable way I do.

  The music from the bedroom is so loud I can feel it rattling my chest. Wailing guitars and vocals drenched in reverb. I can’t decide if I want her to turn it down—or turn it up. Either way, her music is starting to grow on me.

  Juliet has yet another swig of her grape soda. I do the same, determined to keep up, wincing as I swallow. How much vodka did she put in here?

  “Will it hurt?” I ask.

  She says something in response, but I’m so dazzled by the snap and glow of her lighter flame as she plays it across the stud’s sharp metal point that I don’t hear.

  “That’s enough ice,” Juliet says, then draws the tiniest X on my left nostril with a blue pen, an action I can barely feel from the numbness, then hands me the freshly sterilized stud.

  “Ready?” she asks.

  I take another sip. I am so not ready.

  “I think so,” I say.

  “Push really fast and really hard,” she says.

  “Fast and hard,” I say, as if this advice is supposed to make me feel better.

  I try to hold the metal point still above my nostril, then press it against the X on my skin, yanking my hand back in terror the moment I feel it. It’s not pain. Not yet. Just a horrible pressure.

  “I don’t think I can do it,” I say. I hate myself for being so afraid.

  Juliet takes my shaking hand and looks into my eyes, and, it feels like, all the way down into my soul where nobody has ever been before.

  “I’m right here,” she says.

  • • •

  Push the rewind button. Right there. Stop.

  Track One

  Pirouetting to Nowhere

  I quit.

  Two words. Two stupid little words. Subject + verb = I get a whole new life.

  So why are they so hard to say?

  The backstage green room of The Groovy Rhino, the past its prime nightclub in downtown St. Louis where The Cobb Family Band is playing tonight, has stained carpets and lazily graffitied walls. Back in the seventies, my parents played palaces, places like Carnegie Hall in New York City and The Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, but I don’t really remember the good old days. Instead, I’m stuck in the unimpressive present.

  The remnants of our dinner lay scattered on a geriatric folding table: Domino’s Pizza, wilted bag salad, and a jug of Sprite. My family already went out, which leaves me here alone, staring into a dirty mirror and trying to summon the courage to say two stupid little words. I quit.

  “Rainey?”

  I jump at the sound of my mom’s voice. Our eyes meet in the mirror, until I look away.

  “It’s time,” she says. “Let’s go.” I haven’t seen the size of the crowd yet, but I can tell by her impatient tone that it’s small. Again. The last four shows we’ve sold a total of twelve CDs.

  “Okay,” I say. She turns to go. “Wait, Mom?”

  “What?”

  I quit. I quit the band. I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m sorry your life didn’t work out the way you wanted, but it’s not my fault. I want a different life.

  “Rainey? The house lights are already down, so if you have something you wan—”

  “When we get home,” I blurt out, too nervous to even form a coherent thought, let alone say the two words I’d intended.

  “When we get home—what?”

  “At the end of tour. When we get home. I want to take a break. From this. The band, I mean.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I want to say more, but my words get tangled in my brain like hair in a drainpipe.

  “I can’t talk about this right now,” she says, and then she’s gone.

  “That went well,” I tell the girl in the mirror.

  I hurry out to the stage and sit down behind the piano, which at sound check earlier I discovered is way out of tune, has three—three!—broken keys, and a seriously janky bench that feels like it’s about to drop me on my ass at any second.

  The Cobb Family Band plays a patented blend of R&B with a country flare, and a bit of straight blues on the side. The first few songs are a blur, and I have trouble disappearing into the music. Usually, the second my fingers touch the piano keys, I forget about the fact that I’m a girl with no friends who’s never set foot inside a school. That the long and winding career of Luce and Tracy Cobb, my famous parents, is on life support, and I’m forced to sit bedside and watch it slowly die.

  My mom barely looks at me the entire set, and when she does, her eyes burn with confusion and disappointment. I’m relieved the last song is an old blues standard instead of one of my parents’ hits. I tickle out the opening chords I know so well, then feel the drums and bass slide in behind me. I close my eyes. Fill my lungs. Then sing the tale of a woman scorned.

  As the audience claps, I open my eyes, no longer a woman scorned with revenge in her heart, but a thirsty girl with sore fingers. My mom and brother go backstage, but my dad comes over and asks if I’m okay. He can always tell when something’s not right.

  “C’mon, Rain Man,” he says, “spill it.”

  “I’m fine,” I say. “I’m just going to stay out here and get so
mething to drink.”

  “Willful teenager,” he says.

  “Grumpy old man,” I say, then drift alone through the sparse crowd, studying the floor.

  I smile meekly at Estelle, the punk bartender with the blue hair and the biker chick tattoo. Her eyes go to the stage, then back to me. I can feel her wondering how old I am.

  She fills my glass with Coke from the spray gun and glides a lime wedge around the rim, nodding her head to trendy grunge on the house speakers. “Killer set,” she says. “I knew your parents were awesome, my mom used to play their records, but your voice is insane.”

  “Thanks.” I suck down a gulp, enjoying the burst of lime before the bubbly sweetness.

  A guy in a Cardinals cap steps up. Estelle pours him a golden beer in a tall mug, and he drops his change into a jar on which a picture of Mr. T warns I PITY THE FOOL THAT DON’T TIP! Trendy grunge fades and a U2 song starts.

  My brother, Walden, plops down on the stool next to me at the bar. The black X on his left hand matches mine. We sometimes joke we’re in a secret gang called Black X.

  “What happened with you and Mom?” he asks.

  “What do you mean?”

  He eats some peanuts from a bowl on the bar.

  “Mom hasn’t said a word since the set ended,” he says, “and you’re here by yourself.”

  “It was nothing,” I say.

  In a Day-Glo mural behind the bar, a rhino in a pink tutu dances beneath a glimmering disco ball, eyes blissfully shut. U2 becomes the Ramones becomes trendy hip hop.

  “Do you ever think about what it would be like to be a totally different person?” I ask.

  Walden sips his Coke. “Not really,” he says. “Do you?”

  I shrug. I’m closer with Walden than anyone in the world, but even he doesn’t know how bad I want to quit the band. The houselights dim. My dad plugs in his white Telecaster. My mom picks up her bass, then tap-tap-taps the microphone.

  “Be careful what you wish for,” Walden says, “because with these crowds, we’re all going to end up working at Sears. C’mon, time to rock and roll.”

  When I was a little girl and first starting to realize who my parents were, I’d stand on the side of the stage and watch them play. I’d feel the audiences loving them and dream of the day when I could be out there too. I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world.

  Estelle comes back over, wiping the bar with a white rag.

  “Do you like being a bartender?” I ask.

  “It’s okay,” she says. “I get to meet a lot of cool people.”

  I smile. “Were there other things you wanted to do?” I ask. “Before?”

  “Um, yeah, a million other things.”

  Walden slaps his snare drum, a cue that I need to hurry up. “Gotta go,” I say.

  I sit down behind the piano and look at my mom, who doesn’t look back.

  My dad calls out the first song and my hands kick into my parents’ only top ten hit, “Tell the Truth,” my fingers banging the keys, my foot keeping time. I start singing, harmonizing with Dad’s lead. The audience presses forward. I watch them watching me.

  Behind the bar, the dancing rhino is still stuck on the wall, pirouetting to nowhere.

  Track Two

  A Charcoal Sky Dotted with Occasional Stars

  A few hours later, somewhere between St. Louis and our next gig in Louisville, I’m lying in my saggy bunk in the back of the RV reading Jane Eyre, trying to block out Walden’s snoring. That’s when Howard the Duck, which is what I call our Ford Econoline Mallard RV—clever, I know—trembles hard enough to shake me in my bed. I open the curtains and squint out into the endless prairie night for signs of mischief, wondering what happened. Then I feel it. We’re slowing down.

  Walden awakens with a snort. “What happened?”

  “You snored so loud the world broke apart and we all died,” I say. “This is heaven.”

  Our two bunks are 39 inches apart, about the length of a guitar, closer than any girl should have to sleep to her own brother, especially one who snores and recently developed an unfortunate cologne habit.

  “Another breakdown,” I say.

  “You suck, Howard,” he says. “This band seriously needs a new mode of transportation.”

  Every year before our summer tour, my parents go RV shopping and Walden and I perch by the window, salivating over the thought of a gleaming new Airstream with beds that don’t sag and a working microwave. But every year without fail, Howard the Duck limps back up the driveway and my parents are fighting.

  I go out with my dad to have a look, holding the heavy Maglite while he pops the hood and inspects Howard’s coiled metal guts.

  “What do you think?” he asks, lighting a cigarette and scratching his graying beard.

  “Battery?” I say, heat coming off the engine like a dying fire.

  “Yeah, probably,” Dad says.

  I used to love helping Dad fix the RV. He taught me how to change tires and oil, how to replace a spark plug and jump a battery. We’d laugh at how dirty our hands always got. It made me feel so close to him, like we spoke a secret language no one else understood. It never even occurred to me what it actually meant was that our RV broke down all the time and we couldn’t afford a new one.

  “What now?” I ask, remembering how we already used the backup battery weeks ago.

  Dad holds up his thumb and points it toward the road.

  “Shit,” I say.

  “Yep,” he says. “Shit.”

  Dad and I perch ourselves by the side of the highway and stick our thumbs out. I look over at Howard where my mom sits in the darkness of the passenger seat, watching us, biting her nails to nubs. During load out behind The Groovy Rhino, we had an awkward moment where she pulled me aside and said, “I didn’t mean to snap at you earlier. It’s just not a good time, okay? You’re only fifteen, Rainey. And we couldn’t do this without you.”

  “Okay,” I told her, too scared to say more, not realizing I was walking into a trap set to keep me right where Luce and Tracy Cobb really needed me—behind a piano.

  With every set of headlights that approaches, I stick my thumb out further, hoping it will catch some of the light. But every car flies right by us and up the length of I-64.

  I stretch out my road-battered body. Throbbing piano hands. Aching back from hauling amplifiers. Strained singing voice. By the end of every tour, I’m as creaky as an old lady.

  A heavy sigh slips out of me.

  “Uh oh,” Dad says, “it’s the ‘I wish I was born into a different family’ sound.”

  “There’s no sound for that,” I say.

  “Sure, there is,” he says. “It sounds like this.” He imitates me, placing his palm dramatically on his forehead. He’s trying to lighten things up, but I’m not in the mood.

  “Dad, stop,” I say. “I don’t wish that. I’m just ready to go home.”

  “I know, Rain Man,” he says. “Look at it this way. You’ll never run out of stories to tell, even if you live for a hundred years.”

  Stories. Like the time I watched Stevie Nicks brush her smooth golden locks with a pearl handled hairbrush like it was a holy ritual. “Take your time,” she told me. “Until it’s soft as silk.”

  Stories are what I have instead of friends. My bizarre birthright.

  But what good are stories if you don’t have anyone to tell them to?

  “So, what would you do?” he asks. “If you took a break from the band?”

  I snap my head toward him. “She told you?”

  “Don’t be mad. I pried it out of her.”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. Nothing. It’s stupid.” All the energy has drained out of me.

  Just when we’re ready to give up, a pick-up screeches onto the shoulder. A guy with a ZZ Top beard pops out and says, “Y’all look like you’re in a tight spot.”

  As he clamps cables to batteries, ZZ Top keeps looking at my dad as if trying to remember the name of an old friend. I know what’s coming. After Howard’s battery is happily humming, he says, “Hey, buddy, aren’t you Luce Cobb? As in Luce and Tracy Cobb? That’s her in the camper, isn’t it?” He points at my mom. “I used to love your music when I was younger, man. But hell, I didn’t even know you guys were still playing. You on tour? In this old rig?”

 
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