“This is for every aspiring songwriter out there. If you’ve written a song, send it my way. It could become the title track on my next album. All the details are up on my websi—”
Drake’s voice blasts out of the radio.
“Mom—”
She keeps spinning the dial, as though trying to find the bandwidth furthest from the one Mona spoke on. “Don’t even think about it.”
I plant my elbow on the armrest and glare out my window.
“I can hear you thinkin’ about it, Angie.”
Finally Mom turns the radio off, and the silence is so loud I wish she’d just tune in to her classical station already.
“Don’t you see this is a calculated move to get her hands on other people’s talent?”
I don’t retort that maybe Mona genuinely wants to help a person, because Mom won’t hear me. She’s deaf and blind to all of Mona’s good qualities.
In complete silence, we drive past the Belle Meade Plantation, take a couple of turns, then veer down a road lined with massive houses.
“Mom, I told you I’ll bike over to Rae’s.”
“I’m not dropping you off.” Her tone is slightly more supple than earlier. There’s still an edge to it, but I can tell she’s fighting to calm down. She’ll probably go into cleaning mode the second we get home. That’s her favorite pastime when she has steam to blow off. Dust bunnies, beware.
“Okay.” I sigh. “So where are we going?”
“I wanted to show you my new project.”
She glides the car in front of a mammoth wrought-iron gate, then powers my window down and leans over me.
“This?” I gape at the gray stone mansion with its white-framed bow windows overlooking a sloping, manicured lawn planted with cedars and sharp hedges. “Whoa. It’s huge.”
I shouldn’t be surprised, really. Since the feature she landed in Architectural Digest last spring, everyone with money and four big walls calls to hire her.
“Who bought it?”
“A man called Jeff Dylan.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s an entertainment lawyer.”
I gather my wavy shoulder-length hair and lift it off my neck, then coil it into a topknot. Even without an elastic, it holds. “Is he, by any chance, hot and single?”
“This is a job, Angie, not a first date. Besides, I’m not looking for a boyfriend.”
This is one of the reasons I believe she must’ve loved Dad … she’s never replaced him.
After a couple more seconds of ogling her new project, she pulls the car back into the street. “I saw Jasper the other night.”
“Yeah?”
“You two used to be such good friends.”
My hackles rise, because I sense what she’s getting at. Mom and Jasper’s mom are best friends and they secretly—okay, they’re totally not subtle about it—wish that Jasper and I get together someday. That’ll never happen, though. He’s a jock. I don’t date jocks. I don’t date anyone, for that matter. I don’t need any distractions.
“Is he still at the top of your ‘Hot List’?”
I whip my neck to the left so fast it cracks. “Mom!”
“What?” she asks, all innocent.
“How do you know about that list? Did you go through my things?”
“My biggest pet peeve is a messy room. You want to keep me out? Clean it up.”
“It’s my bedroom. Mine. Not yours. Besides, I like my mess.” I hook my finger into the switch to power up my window. I tug so hard I half expect it to pop right off. “And it’s not that messy.”
It sort of is. I call it organized chaos.
“I didn’t mean to look at the list. It fell out when I was evening out the stack of LPs you use as your nightstand.”
I glance at her, still irritated. “And you just had to read it?”
“I like to know what’s going on in my little girl’s life. Would you rather us be Snapchat friends?”
My eyes go vinyl-wide. “No way.”
“You don’t have to tell me everything, Angie, but don’t shut me out either, okay?”
I relax in my seat. “I wrote that list when I was a freshman. Jasper’s more in love with his biceps than he is with any girlfriend. Plus, he’s dated nearly every girl in our grade.”
“Glad to know my daughter doesn’t date players.”
Amusement trumps irritation. “According to Rae, my standards are too high.”
“That, you got from me.”
“So Aidan was exceptional?”
I don’t bring up my father every day, but whenever I get an opening, I’ll throw in a question—or three—and hope she says something sweet about him. He couldn’t have been all bad.
She grips the steering wheel tighter.
Could he?
2
The Boy with the Princess Band-Aids
After I pull on a pair of cutoffs and a white tank top, I holler to Mom, who’s vacuuming every surface of our two-story house, that I’m off. I power the garage door up and hop onto my electric bicycle. All my friends applied for driver’s licenses the second they turned sixteen; not me. Dad passed away in a head-on collision, which has made me petrified of operating large vehicles.
I turn the motor on medium so I don’t arrive panting and sweating, and pedal to Rae’s with my earbuds blasting Mona Stone’s first album. Even though she’s released eight more, her first record remains my favorite.
At a traffic light, I tap my fingers against the handlebar to the beat of the percussions and drums. When the light turns green, I swing onto Rae’s street. Adrenaline spikes through me when I come wheel to bumper with an enormous black SUV. The vehicle screeches to a halt, but still nicks my bike and sends me flying off the saddle. I yelp as my palms and knees connect with the asphalt. Thankfully the impact isn’t too violent, so my helmeted head is spared.
Hazard lights flash, and then neon-blue sneakers race toward me. I press myself into a sitting position. Both of my knees are bleeding, and bits of gravel cling to my scraped palms.
With trembling fingers, I unlatch my helmet and dust off the grit.
“Shit.” The backlit driver squats down next to me.
“I’m okay,” I say, even though I’m wobbling all over as though I were made of Jell-O.
“Did your head—”
“My head’s fine.” I blink, then squint to try and make out the still-crouched person.
Although the stranger’s voice is deep and his jaw is coated in stubble, his face still has a boyish roundness. College-aged, I suspect.
“I have water and Band-Aids in the car.” He walks back to his SUV and grabs a Walmart bag from the backseat, then crouches in front of me and squirts water over my knees. With a handful of tissues, he blots the watery blood.
I notice his hands—I always notice people’s hands. His are large with long, elegant fingers—pianist hands.
Pianist hands that are still all over my knees.
Suddenly self-conscious, I shift my legs out of his reach. “Really. It’s okay. Just scratches.”
His mouth twists as he lifts the pinked tissue and inspects my torn skin. My injuries are only skin deep, but they’ll probably still leave marks. Not that I’m worried about scars. Unlike Rae, whose plastic surgeon father made her so fearful of imperfect skin that she learned to apply sunscreen before she was even potty-trained.