6

Look, there they are,” said Caroline, palming the wheel.

She pulled the sedan to the side of the road by Maple Hill, and they all piled out. Fiona cracked her neck and went to get Betty from the trunk while Caroline rubbed her butt awake; as a rule, when her post-charity caffeine rush dropped, she lost feeling quickly.

Rita, Keller, Horace, and Penny Kim waved to them from atop the hill, shaded by the huge maple that overlooked the old graveyard. Penny was the new girl from North Carolina, and upon the gang’s approval of her, Rita had decided that she needed the grand tour of Hamm (Meaning maybe five places, thought Fiona with a smile, including this hill). Horace and Rita had played tour guide while the others were busy—Caroline and Fiona at the soup kitchen, Keller at SAT prep—but they’d promised to swing by for the picnic at the end. Fiona brought Betty and a Tupperware of leftover fried chicken while Caroline hauled pillows and sodas.

As they climbed the hill, she heard Horace in animated conversation with Keller. For every part of Horace that was sharp and spicy, Doug Keller was round and sweet; he had big cheeks that got chapped in the winter and wore a ratty army jacket around his chubby frame. He glanced up at Fiona and waved her over as she approached.

“Fiona, you’re a good judge of character,” he said. “Please talk Horace out of this party he’s going to spin.”

“This Tess Baron’s party?” asked Fiona, plopping down next to Horace and giving him a peck on the cheek. “That I had to hear about from Will Hokes today?”

Keller put up his palms. Horace sighed. “It is. Sorry, she only asked me yesterday. Guess word got around. But it could be cool, right?”

“I mean…it’s cool that people are talking about your DJing skills,” said Fiona.

“But!” chimed Keller.

“But…Tess Baron?” she said.

“It’s not like I’m getting offers left and right! And besides, Tess has a lot of connections who…” He caught Fiona’s cocked eyebrow and deflated with a sigh and a smile. “Okay, yeah, she’s the worst. You’re right.”

“Whoa, she’s right?” cried Keller.

“I say do it anyway, though,” said Fiona, breaking Betty out of her case. “Who cares who’s throwing the party? It’ll be great exposure.”

“I’d harangue you for encouraging him,” said Keller, “but you look too cool with that guitar for me to give you any shit.”

They dug into the chicken and sodas. Horace had brought some empanadas and ocopa sauce from the restaurant, much to everyone’s delight. Caroline recounted Fiona’s freak-out at Calvin Hokes, which made Fiona blush and Horace hug her a little tighter. The sheer amount of rage she’d vented on Cal made her feel like a high-maintenance psychopath, so she turned attention away from that morning and asked Penny what she thought about Hamm.

“Oh, it’s an awesome town!” responded Penny. “Winston Pond is really pretty. It has so much character.” Everyone glanced at Rita, who’d no doubt used that word earlier. “Oh my gosh, you have a guitar? Totally rad.” Fiona nodded, swallowing a laugh. Okay, so Penny was a little overeager. She just needed time.

And Rita was a good teacher. As her friend flattened her skirt, dished out food, and poured soda into jam jars, Fiona found herself deep in admiration of Rita’s style. Maybe she preferred her bands in ill-fitting tuxedo pieces and untied Doc Martens rather than Fiona’s full-on leather pants and skull belts, but Rita was pure rock and roll. Everyone else was always so thirsty, chomping at the bit for whatever was newer, better, more; Rita was content to show the new girl around and throw a picnic overlooking a defunct cemetery.

Fiona hoped Rita got out of Hamm. She had noticed that sometimes her other friends played at an edginess that Rita did for real. That wasn’t an insult, but simply one of those facts that carried a hint of sadness with it. As everyone ate and recounted local legends to Penny—the night Keller’s older brother drove his car into the Lidells’ pool, that time the entire town got sick from Old Lady Bierstock’s brisket at the fair, the Great Halloween Fail of three years ago— Fiona recognized that most of her crew would stick around and grow into the small-town lives that had colored them as people, and Hamm would be a better place for it. Keller would take over his dad’s firm and become perhaps the only contractor in the world who could belch a Shelley poem. Horace would run the best Peruvian restaurant in small-town Ohio. Caroline would eventually place her long-distance track trophies on a shelf at the bank or in her own local law firm. And even after they traded their ripped vintage clothes and vulgar bumper stickers for comfortable shoes and dad jokes, they would be strong, earnest, beautiful, and happy.

But Rita had a fire in her, a flame of glamour and mystique that would burn her alive if she tried to smother it with the compromise that was necessary to living here. Fiona didn’t want that for Rita. She wanted Rita to be cool until the day she died, surrounded by her lovers and pugs in a Paris loft.

And her? Fiona gulped, feeling suddenly alone among her friends. Graduation was in May, then the year off that she’d fought so hard to convince her parents to allow her, a year making money and experiencing new things while figuring out college…and then what? What if everything went wrong, and no schools accepted her, and she was alone without a plan? Would she end up back here in Hamm, teaching music?

Would Fiona Jones be the head of the town council?

Would it someday be her crouching in the dark, threatening a boy’s life if he ever showed his face in Hamm again?

“What’s that building over there?” asked Penny, pointing.

All eyes turned to the distant structure, blurry in the afternoon light. Even by day, it seemed cloaked in mist, as though perpetually cooling off. Fiona hadn’t even noticed it, but now that Penny had pointed it out, it dominated the landscape in her eyes.

Rita made a point of chewing and swallowing before she answered. “That’s the old Goring Steel Mill. We don’t go there.”

“Why not?” asked Penny.

For a second, everyone seemed to be asking themselves the same question, digging through their memories for why exactly the mill was off-limits.

“It used to be an illegal venue,” said Fiona.

“Oh yeah!” said Horace. “They threw insane raves there back in the day, right?”

“Exactly,” said Rita. “If you can believe it, this was a rough town for a little bit. The mill was a hot party spot for the area, but it brought in some shady characters.”

“Define ‘shady character,’” said Keller.

“You,” said Caroline.

“Burn,” said Horace.

“Like, drug dealers, gangbangers…the usual rough crowd,” said Rita. “Don’t get me wrong, this is all kind of hazy. We were, what, nine back then? It was right after the winery went under, and the town was going through serious changes. I just remember my folks being freaked out by the graffiti on the walls and drug vials on the ground.”

“So, what happened?” asked Penny.

Fiona held her breath. Rita had an incredible mind for news and gossip—did she remember? Had she heard rumors about the night the Pit Viper had wiped Hamm clean?

Rita popped a piece of empanada in her mouth and said, “There was a tragedy, and everyone stopped coming.”

“Didn’t some kids OD or something?” asked Caroline.

Fiona felt a minor chord in her heart and decided she might as well get in front of the bad news. “My cousin.”

Rita nodded with an apologetic smile. “Jake,” she said. “I remember him.”

“Right,” said Caroline, face-palming with an audible smack. “Sorry, Fiona. Totally forgot. I’m an idiot.” The gang all echoed the apology. Keller reached out and patted her elbow; Horace put his face in her hair.

“It’s okay,” she said, waving them back. “It was a long time ago. Anyway”—it was a perfect transition, a chance to steer away from the truth—“that’s why they shut it down and the town got cleaned up.”

“Well, obviously,” said Keller a little too quickly, pointing a chicken wing at the distant mill. “Some people tolerate that kind of shit, but our nutty suburban parents? That’s like Fiona in a band right there—not gonna happen.” He gave her a slight nod; she gave him the finger. “The minute their kids get messed with, they take action. Like a mother bear.”

“Yeah, but…still, you gotta wonder,” said Horace.

“About?” asked Caroline.

“Well, obviously, that—what happened with your cousin, that was horrible,” he said, “and it’s good they shut the place down. But…”

“Horace,” warned Rita, “I’d watch these next few words.”

Penny laughed nervously. Horace glanced at Fiona, and she looked back at him expectantly, hoping he didn’t put his foot in his mouth.

“Just that the folks in this town can be a little white-bread and closed-minded,” said Horace with a shrug. “And obviously, whoever messed with your cousin, hon, he deserved to be run off. But what about the chill kids? Maybe some of them were just having too good a time, or they dressed a little weird, and they got chased away by the xenophobic town council.”

“Excuse me?” said Caroline, rearing her head back. Fiona felt tension move through the gathered crowd. The calm heat of the autumn day was suddenly irritating. She plucked out a sour-sounding note on Betty.

“No offense!” countered Horace. He squeezed Fiona’s arm. “Sorry, was that out of line? My bad. I’m a dumb-ass.”

“You should pay more attention to your girlfriend’s feelings,” snapped Caroline.

“Okay, Caroline,” said Fiona.

“No, come on, Fiona!” It was obvious Caroline was more upset about Horace taking a shot at the council than she was at his treading heavily on Jake’s memory. “You know our dads are on that ‘xenophobic’ council, right? You think they just chased off some kids because they wore bright colors? That was Mr. Jones’s nephew who died in there. The Hamm town council isn’t the fucking Klan.”

“Let’s keep this party polite,” said Rita firmly.

“I didn’t say anything about the Klan,” cried Horace. Fiona felt him pull back from her, and she hated it. Being caught at the center of an argument bothered her. At least the sadness she’d felt at their earlier conversations was sweet in a way, like a Johnny Cash song; this was just a combination of embarrassment and anger.

“I mean, I can understand what you’re saying,” said Fiona, trying to help Horace out of the hole he was digging. “I know there were some cool parties there.”

“You don’t need to do that, Fiona,” said Caroline.

“No, really. There was something…special about it, even if it did get ugly.” She scrambled, and before she knew what she was doing, it came out of her mouth: “The Pit Viper performed there once.”

Everyone’s attention turned toward Fiona, backed by a general outcry.

Oh crap, thought Fiona, oh crap, crap, crap.

“Really,” said Rita, incredulous.

“Oh my God, have you heard the album?” chimed in Penny. “It’s so insane. So fun and danceable, but deep, too.”

The news rippled over the gathering of her friends. They pressed in around her, asking her questions. She immediately backtracked, freaked out by this very unexpected type of attention. “It’s just a rumor I heard. Not a big deal.”

“Kind of a big deal, honestly,” said Keller. “I mean, that album is huge. I don’t know anyone who isn’t obsessed with it.”

“Did anyone bring some speakers?” asked Caroline. “We should listen to it now!”

As the gang pulled out their phones and began searching for the album, Fiona stared off at the mill. It wasn’t like she could tell them the truth—that the Pit Viper had somehow shut down the mill with a party, that her and Caroline’s fathers had beaten him up and driven him out. They’d be heartbroken, and who knows—maybe word would get back to her and Caroline’s dads. Maybe they’d go looking for him.

But it wasn’t just that. The Pit Viper was her story, the thing that had changed her into somebody special, somebody who wanted to get out of Hamm. She selfishly didn’t want that to be just another part of the breaking trend.

Caroline put on the album and dropped her phone into an empty jar, creating an impromptu speaker. As the breeze was filled with throbbing electronica and her friends’ heads began to bob, Horace leaned in close to Fiona’s ear. “You never told me that before.”

“I didn’t think it was important,” she lied.