Page 6

‘I need another cassette,’ Brooke said. ‘I hate driving in silence. It stresses me out.’

‘Jesus, it’s not the time, Brooke! Just drive!’ I said, my voice rising with panic.

‘I’ll drive better if we’re not sitting here in silence.’

‘Fine! I’ll do it,’ I said, slapping her hand away. ‘You just … watch the road.’

‘I’m watching it,’ she grumbled.

I picked a cassette at random, pushing the button to ejectBorn to Runand replacing it in its case. It was good to have a task to focus on. Something to distract me.

‘This is Fleetwood Mac,’ I said, sliding the cassette into the slot.

‘A classic.’

‘You have eclectic taste in music, Brooke Summer,’ I said, trying to lighten the mood.

She shrugged one shoulder. ‘I like good music. You must, too, if you’re in the choir.’

‘Eh. I’m only in the choir because –’

‘Because?’ she prompted.

‘Never mind.’

I didn’t want to go into all the excuses I had for not coming home straight after school. I could sense she was curious, but I wasn’t going to tell her anything. Not at six in the morning, anyway. My ear was still throbbing from what had happened yesterday, the pain right there if I wanted to tune into it. I did my best to tune out again.

‘Where do you even find cassette tapes?’ I asked, changing the subject.

Brooke didn’t take her eyes off the road, but I could see her quick smile. ‘Thrift stores, mostly,’ she said. ‘There’s rules, though.’

‘Rules? Tell me.’

I was distracting both of us now, and Brooke seemed to realize that.

‘They have to be original albums, not recordings,’ she said. ‘You can find lots of mixtapes at Goodwill, but most of them totally suck, recorded off the radio or whatever. Or the start of the song is cut off because the person recording it didn’t know what they were doing.’

‘Okay.’

‘And you can’t pay more than five bucks per album.’

‘How much do they cost?’ I asked.

‘It depends,’ she said. ‘Some places you can pick them up really cheap, like a dollar or less. But there’s some music stores in Seattle where people are betting that cassette tapes will make a comeback like vinyl did, and then people will want the originals. So the Goodwill on Rainier Avenue is starting to hike up their prices. You have to be careful where you buy them from, otherwise you’ll get ripped off.’

‘Does it matter who the artist is?’

‘Yes,’ she said emphatically. ‘I’m not playing terrible music in my car, Mouse.’

The way she said it made me laugh, but I wished she wouldn’t call me Mouse. I hadn’t figured out how to ask her not to. After all, it’s what everyone called me, whether I liked it or not.

‘No eBay, either,’ she said, and it took me a moment to catch up with her.

‘Huh?’

‘The tapes. You can’t get them on eBay. That’s cheating.’

This was the longest conversation I’d ever had with Brooke – a conversation that wasn’t about running away, at least – and I realized I was only just starting to scratch the surface of getting to know her.