Harriet found her brothers collected around the park bench and decked out in concert garb, which consisted of denim for Larry, fake leather for Joe, and huge amounts of hair gel for Sam.
Joe sat cross-legged on one end of the bench, his eyes closed and his hands palms up in a meditative pose. Sam sat next to him, swiping at his phone. Larry knelt on the ground, frowning and fiddling with an amp.
“Hi, guys!” Harriet chirped.
Joe snapped his eyes open and glared at her. “Harry! What are you doing? You know I’m in the zone!”
“I know. I just wanted to see how it’s going,” Harriet said. “And see if I could get you guys to sign this—”
“So stupid!” yelled Larry, standing and giving the amp a kick.
“I’m sorry!” said Harriet. “But you don’t have to be mean—”
“Not you,” Larry said. “The amp. It keeps glitching, turning on and off.”
Sam glanced up from his phone for a second. “Did you try unplugging—”
“Of course I tried unplugging it!” Larry interrupted.
“What about jiggling the—” Sam said.
“Sam! I tried jiggling the thing!” Larry was fully exasperated. “It’s fried! The stupid thing’s more fried than a drumstick at Nantucket Fried Chicken!”
“You mean Kentu—” Harriet started.
“Everyone,” Joe scolded, eyes squeezed tight. “Respect the zone!”
“Well, there’s nothing we can do about the amp now,” said Sam in a whisper. He touched the top of his hair gently to make sure it was still shellacked into place. “We don’t have another one.”
Larry sighed loudly. “I’ll go set this up on stage. But I wanna go on record that this is going to be a disaster.”
“It’s on the official record,” said Sam.
Harried jumped in front of Larry and shoved the T-shirt and gold marker into his hand.
“Before you go, sign this super fast, would you?” she asked. “Use my back.” She spun around and flattened her back into a suitable writing surface.
Larry sighed again, even louder this time, but he dutifully signed, then handed the marker to Sam, who did the same without even taking his eyes off his phone.
“Give Joe the marker,” Harriet told Sam.
“He’s in the zone,” Sam warned.
“He’s in zone overtime!” Harriet replied. “The show was supposed to start twenty minutes ago.”
Sam pressed the marker into Joe’s open palm. “Harry says you gotta sign the shirt.”
Joe opened one eye, then the other. He looked accusingly at Harriet, who, still in flattened-back position, shuffled over to the bench so that Joe didn’t have to move.
“Remember our show at the Salt Factory?” he asked Harriet. “Last spring?”
“Yeah,” Harriet replied. “But, Joe, that was because you had a sore throat. It would’ve happened no matter what.”
“It was because I was in the zone and I got interrupted!” Joe snapped. “So I got jinxed, and I sounded like Kermit the Frog. And let me remind you that I did not choose those words—the reviewer did when she blogged about it.”
“I know—” Harriet said.
“Kermit the Frog,” Joe repeated, uncapping the marker. “Those were her exact words.”
He leaned over and signed his name hurriedly on the bottom of the T-shirt, then handed the shirt and the marker to Harriet, who stood and stretched her back out.
“My zone has been completely broken now, Harry,” said Joe, and his voice was somber. “There’s no stopping the jinx now. I only hope I don’t get struck by lightning.”
“Sorry, bro!” called Harriet over her shoulder as she ran out of the backstage area. “Good luck!”
Harriet found Val standing next to the merch table, making unhelpful observations that were clearly driving Resa to the brink of her sanity.
“What you need is a system,” said Val.
“I’ve been saying the same thing,” muttered Didi, not as quietly as she’d intended.
“We have a system!” Resa shot back at Val.
“You call that big old heap of shirts a system?” asked Val, her eyebrows raised.
“Yes!” Resa spun around to face Val so suddenly that her arm accidentally hit an open bottle of lemonade that Amelia had set down on the table. It fell over, directly on top of the shirts, and was half empty by the time Resa had the presence of mind to grab it.
“No. Way.” Amelia lifted a T-shirt from the pile to check out the damage. There was a huge wet splotch on the side, and a stream of lemonade trickled down onto the table.
“This is my point exactly,” said Val, putting her hands on her hips.
Resa turned to face Val again, this time with excruciating slowness.
“If you’re not out of my face in five seconds…” growled Resa.
She didn’t need to finish her thought. Val beat a hasty retreat, though not before grabbing her marker and signed T-shirt out of Harriet’s hands.
“Why would you leave a bottle full of lemonade right next to our product?” asked Resa.
“Oh no, you don’t.” Amelia shook her head firmly. “This is all on you.”
“Please!” Didi pleaded. “Let’s just clean up the mess!”
“Hello, Market Street!” boomed Joe’s voice. Harriet breathed a sigh of relief. The concert was starting. The crowd, too, seemed relieved. They let out a roar of appreciation.
“Are we ready to—”
Suddenly Joe’s booming voice dropped out. A second later, it boomed back, midsentence. “—arty started!”
There was some scattered applause, but the crowd seemed confused. So were the girls at the merch table.
“What’s up with the sound system?” asked Amelia as she wrung out a drenched T-shirt.
“They’re just having some amp problems,” Harriet said. “No big deal.”
She heard Sam hit his drumsticks together and count off: “A five! Six!…”
In the silence that followed, someone in the crowd yelled, “Did you forget how to count, dude?”
“Oh no,” Harriet moaned. “Joe was right! It’s the jinx!”