Page 10 of Caught in a Storm

For parents, the drawback to loving their children so much is the anxiety that comes with it—like love’s neurotic cousin—and Billy grips the car’s fender, bracing himself for something terrible. “Cay, what’s wrong?”

“Shit, Dad,” he says. “Just, like, promise you won’t be mad, okay?”

* * *

—

Forty-five seconds later, they’re speed walking.

“Jesus Christ, Caleb.”

“Dad, you said you wouldn’t get—”

“Maybe here’s a good topic for our next lesson,” says Billy. “Proper use of the goddamn Internet.”

“But, Dad.”

“What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t thinking, remember?” Caleb says. “I was stoned. So I pretended to be a little girl and I invited her here. I mean, you had them just sitting there by the cereal. You know I love gummy bears, Dad. I couldn’t resist.”

Billy nearly trips over a pigeon. “Would you keep your voice down?” he says. “How about we don’t yell about your piano-teacher dad accidentally getting his teenage son stoned on weed gummies?”

“Whatever, it’s Baltimore,” says Caleb.

“What was your endgame, anyway?” Billy asks. “Fool a drummer into coming to Baltimore? Then what?”

“Okay, see my previous comment about being stoned. But hear me out for a second. I thought if she just got the chance to meet you…”

They turn onto Thames Street. Charm City Rocks is just up ahead. A line of cars negotiates around a delivery truck. “What, Caleb?”

“I think she’ll like you.”

Billy stops walking. “You think she’ll what?”

“Yeah, you know, you’ll be charming or whatever. And…she’ll like you.”

“Like me? Caleb, are you…are you still stoned?”

They start moving again; Caleb is a step behind. “You’re awesome, Dad. I mean, you’re kinda being a dick right now, but you’re really cool usually. You know a ton about music, and so does she. You’re a decent looking dude. And you’re tall. Not like me tall, but you’re definitely not short. Seriously, give me one reason why she wouldn’t be into you.”

Billy stops at the door to Charm City Rocks. He grips the handle and takes a deep breath. “Caleb, just please stop talking.”

Chapter 5

Back when Burnt Flowers was together, journalists used to ask Margot what she was like when she was little. It always struck her as casually sexist—did anyone care about male musicians as kids? Either way, she knew what they wanted to hear: that she’d been an ill-behaved hellion who didn’t give a shit and punched her classmates and drew pictures of unicorns with fangs. Rock-and-roll stuff.

She wasn’t like that at all, though. Margot was a shy, studious girl who read fantasy novels and put puzzles together and named her stuffed animals after her neighbors’ pets. To call her quiet would’ve been an understatement. She was so slow to speak conversationally that her parents feared something must be wrong with her.

“Got anything good to say, Margie Pie?”

Her dad asked her this all the time, to which Margot usually just looked up and shook her head or shrugged. “Eh,” she might say.

Then, when she was ten, her parents lost track of her one Sunday afternoon at a thrift store in Queens. Margot had wandered off to the back where there were a bunch of old instruments. She sat at a drum kit and traced “Margie” in the dust on the snare with her finger. The high-hat cymbal had broken off, but she didn’t know enough about drums yet to miss it.

The sound she made with those two sticks in her small fists brought her parents and everyone else in the store running. What they found wasn’t the remnants of an explosion or a thrift store avalanche. What they found was little Margie Willis, laughing as she wailed away, practically screaming.

Later, as the owner of the shop helped her parents maneuver the drum kit into the back of their Volvo station wagon, he suggested that maybe they should get their daughter lessons. “Girl’s got some raw talent,” he told them. “Sounded like she was hitting these things with a couple of old hammers.”