Page 7

MY FIRST MEMORY was of a concert.

Mom and Dad had taken the weekend off so we could go to a festival in the mountains.

It was late summer, and the August wind shook the trees and carried with it the sound of classic rock to the thousands of people there.

At the time, I didn’t know that the man singing had been Roman Fell or that, once upon a time before I was born, Mom had sung onstage with him.

I just knew that a rainstorm came up during his set, though it’d been cloudy all day, and while half the people on the lawn raced for cover, my parents stayed.

The rain was cool and welcoming, the grass soft and green, and during a folksy rendition of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” Mom pulled Mitch up from the ground and spun him around on the grass, and Dad put me on his feet, and we danced.

But as soon as Mom started to sing, I couldn’t take my eyes away.

I knew she could, but that was the first time I really heard her voice. Really listened .

As she sang, her voice mixed with the rain, as if she summoned the storm.

The wind picked up and pulled through her long hair, and though chaos swirled around us, she looked so happy, her eyes shimmering with the far-off stage lights.

She sang through a smile as wide and bright as a summer dawn, and it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

My first memory was a concert, but I didn’t remember Roman Fell and the Boulevard at all.

I just remembered the wet green grass, and spinning in the puddles, and singing with that wild, reckless abandon of people who didn’t care who watched.

It was the first time I really experienced music.

The first time I understood it—what it was, what it meant.

And what it meant to me.

In that moment, I realized that music could be everything. It was the feeling of existing, dancing, reveling in the pouring rain.

It was magic .

The kind of magic that whispered, You have a hundred years to live , in that joyous infinite yelp that tricked you, for a moment, into believing that you could be infinite, too.

And what an enchanted thing music was, to persist long after its performers.

Perhaps that was why I loved my parents’ old music hall so much, why it felt like home when little else did, because in the darkness and the silence, I could still hear the reverberations of all the songs that came before me, and the possibility of the ones after. It made me feel not quite so alone.

It reminded me, even now when I felt the edges of my soul tinged with dread, that I was alive .

Mom didn’t drop my or Gigi’s hands until we had passed through the Revelry’s lobby, its walls lined with grainy photos of musicians who had stopped by in the music hall’s long and illustrious life.

Some were famous, some not so much—but it didn’t matter.

They all papered the walls with their faces and signatures.

Once, when I was bored of mopping the hardwood floor near the doors, I’d looked through the hundreds of photos and googled the people I didn’t know.

Roman Fell was there, looking moody as ever even thirty-odd years ago with long curly brown hair, acid-washed jeans, and an unbuttoned vest showing off his skinny torso, tucked in beneath an Elvis impersonator and the Indigo Girls.

As we wove past the ticket counter, down the short hallway to the doors to the theater, Mom shouted happily, “Hank! Hank! You wouldn’t believe who I found on the sidewalk—battered! Broken! Destitute! ”

I rolled my eyes, letting her lead me. “I was not —”

“She crawled all the way here from the far-off land of lost angels!”

“I took a plane,” I deadpanned, but inside, my heart warmed at the familiar joke. Mom was so many things—but most of all she was dramatic .

The Revelry was a long building. The lobby was at the front, the box office in the middle with two ticket windows, and on either side were hallways to the restrooms. There were stairs leading up to the sound booth, and past the stairs were metal doors that opened onto the theater.

The bar was in the middle right when you got in, shelves lined with every kind of alcoholic beverage and mixer you could think of, and most nights there were tables spaced out through the general admission standing area.

On the far side was the stage, the curtains faded black, golden tassels at the ends.

There were steel bars in the rafters, and a bird or two who had found their way inside and nested up there.

The floors were a deep, scratched cherrywood, and the walls were a dusty red brick, and there was nothing quite like this place when it was packed shoulder to shoulder with a song swirling all around you.

Mom went straight to the bar. The counters were a red mahogany, marked up from years of broken glasses and sentimental drunks carving their names into it.

A soft yellow glow came from the under-shelf lights in the liquor cabinets behind it.

There were flickering neon beer logos and song lyrics, and a single framed dollar bill above the cash register.

People always asked what it was for, but Mom would only shrug and say, “I bet an old friend they’d come back. ”

Though, with the dollar still framed, it was clear they never had.

Who that old friend was, neither Mitch nor I had a clue, and when we finally asked Dad, he shrugged and said he’d forgotten.

We didn’t believe him.

“Hank! Are you even listening?” Mom went on, marching over to where Dad was setting out the peanuts for the night, tugging me along in her righteous indignation.

“Huh?” he asked, popping a nut into his mouth. “Did you say something, dear?”

Mom threw up her hands. “Unbelievable! I found your only daughter outside on the sidewalk, cold and hungry and destitute, and you’re in here eating peanuts!”

“That’s not very fair, I haven’t had dinner,” he replied, fixing his thick black glasses.

They were the kind that made his eyes comically large, because he had such bad eyesight, but he refused to spend any money to get newer lenses.

That, coupled with his impeccable sense of western fashion—button-down shirts and cowboy hats and decorative ascots and a pipe he rarely left home without—often made him look like he’d walked right out of some wacky sitcom.

He blinked at Mom and then recognized me behind her and gave a gasp. “Wyn! Why didn’t you tell me our long-lost daughter came home?”

I rolled my eyes. “Surprise,” I said flatly, making jazz hands, “I’m home.”

He flipped a bar towel over his shoulder and hurried around the counter, throwing out his hands. “Daughter!” And he pulled me into a hug. “You should’ve told me you were coming!”

“I come every summer.”

“ Heh ,” Gigi snorted, coming up to the bar, and I threw her a glare.

Dad asked, “Who picked you up?”

“Your other daughter,” Gigi said.

He beamed. “Our favorite daughter.”

I gave him a look of utter betrayal.

Dad’s watch went off, and he stopped it with an extravagant press of a button.

“You have perfect timing, daughter,” he said, though it wasn’t clear whether he was talking to Gigi or me.

Probably both of us. “It’s time! Gi, could you take the bar tonight?

” he called, power walking to the front of the venue.

The doors always opened at seven o’clock sharp.

Ever since I was little. The doors would open, and a flood of patrons would swarm in.

As Gigi slipped behind the bar, tying on an apron, I asked, “Where’s Mitch? Doesn’t he usually bartend on weeknights?”

“He’s picking up the band. They had a tire blow up near Kitty Hawk.”

“Oof, that sucks,” I muttered. “Who’s he picking up?”

Mom took her normal seat at the corner of the bar. “The Bushels.”

I sat down beside her. “The who?”

“A cover band.”

“What do they play?”

“Covers,” she supplied, “of Kate Bush songs. Honestly, the last time they were here, the audience kept requesting for them to play ‘Running Up That Hill’ over and over and over. By the end of the night, the Bushels were more like twigs. Terrible time. I hope it happens again.”

I gave her a look.

She popped a roasted peanut into her mouth. “Don’t deny a dying woman her pleasures.”

“ Mom— ”

“AND WE’RE OPEN!” Dad called.

I turned in my seat, expecting a flood of people.

The Revelry was a tourist destination. It was featured in music videos, on Food Network for our pickleback fried pickles, in brochures and Outer Banks guides.

Our crowds were full of both longtime patrons and new ones, so when Dad shouted that the doors were opening, I braced myself.

But … no one walked in.

I kept checking my watch every minute, until five minutes passed, then ten—

“Is … this normal ?” I asked Gigi, who started cleaning out the dishwasher.

She hesitated, as if wondering how best to answer, and decided on a shrug. “Sometimes? You know how Thursday nights are.”

“They’re usually packed,” I replied. “Thirsty Thursdays and all.”

“Maybe there’s another concert somewhere else,” she said, and then went to go put the glasses up on the shelves, though I think she left a little too quickly to just be doing chores.

Huh. Strange.

Dad would be up at the box office until just after the show started, so I reached over for a peanut and asked Gigi for a beer.

She slid over a cider and turned away to reply to a text.

It was probably Mitch. I tapped my fingers against the cold condensation of the bottle and took small sips.

Gigi said that they were short-staffed tonight, but this was …

a skeleton crew at best . What happened to sound checks?

Roll call? Any of it? Mitch wasn’t supposed to be the one to go and get a band if their van broke down—it was Mikey’s job, or Jay’s.

And what about Gigi being behind the bar?

Where had Claudia gone? How about the tech crew—Miguel and Nona and Beans?

And where the hell were the patrons?

It was almost eight o’clock now, and only a few stragglers had shown up, gotten a drink, and taken a seat at a table.

I didn’t remember it being this bad during the holidays in December, but then again I didn’t really come to the Rev then.

We were all just a little distracted between Mom’s diagnosis and my hit song.

Everyone tried to concentrate on that part, but the joy felt hollow.

“ Annnnd your savior has arrived! ” Mitch cried as he threw open the emergency exit doors, the headlights of the Revelry’s decrepit van behind him.

My brother was handsome in that Danny Zuko way, or so Gigi claimed.

I didn’t see it, and I was thankful that I didn’t.

He was ten months older than me, with short jet-black hair and our mom’s brown eyes, and we always joked that he got his physique from the milkman because Dad was not nearly as broad.

He had a birthmark between his first and second fingers in the shape of a heart and cried in the first ten minutes of Up , and his favorite band was, unironically, Nickelback.

He was okay, I guess.

Mom clapped enthusiastically. “Our hero! Bravo! With ten minutes to spare!”

He bowed. “Thank you, thank you. Now I need some help with the equipment—stat,” he added, jabbing a thumb behind him to the van. As he left, he did a double take at me. Then squinted. “Jo?”

I nudged my chin toward him in greeting. “’Sup, fart-head.”

He blew me a kiss.

As it turned out, the Bushels managed to pull in a decent crowd by the time they were scheduled to play. “Running Up That Hill” really was a hit again thanks to Stranger Things .

Once Mitch had finished setting up the stage for the band, he returned to the bar and greeted me properly with a hug. “Nice to see you home, sis.”

Dad cleaned his glasses with a rag from his pocket. “Good, everyone’s here. There’s something your mother and I want to tell you.” He put his glasses back on and looked at the three of us. Gigi was, by and large, part of the family anyway.

“Tell us what?” I asked, exchanging a curious look with Gigi.

Mitch scratched his chin. “Now? The band’s about to come on.”

“It won’t take long,” Mom soothed, and asked Gigi to sit, too.

She did, and we all faced Mom and Dad on the other side of the counter.

I squirmed nervously, but both Gigi and Mitch looked more morose than anything.

Like they knew what it was. Mom took Dad by the hand and squeezed it tightly.

“Your father and I have been thinking about this for a while, but I think it’s the right choice.

You might not agree, but it’s for the best.” Then Mom took a deep breath and said without a shadow of a doubt, “At the end of the summer, we’re closing the Revelry. ”