SIXTH SENSE SAYS…

Tuesday, 4:34 P.M.

I didn’t know how much rehearsal time we’d wasted by the time I found myself sitting cross-legged on the floor in Zander’s living area, wedged between Nelson and The Beat, a B.B. King record crackling in the background. Stevie sat on the couch between Zander and Kevin, her boots kicked off on the floor like she owned the place.

“And then I told the sound guy—” Stevie dissolved into laughter. “You tell it,” she gasped at Zander.

“Okay. Wait. No. You tell it. It was your guitar.” Zander’s toes curled around the ropy lip of the couch cushion.

“No, you tell it!” Stevie opened the second of two bags of Swedish Fish she’d unearthed from her suitcase. The relentless crinkle of the cellophane made my left eye twitch.

“No, you—”

“Will one of you just tell it?” I blurted, lurching forward. My funny bone slammed into the cold marble edge of the coffee table, and I chomped down on my tongue.

“Ohmygod, are you okay?” Even a mouthful of Swedish Fish couldn’t mask Stevie’s new round of laughter.

“I’m fine,” I snapped. At least the radiating pain in my elbow provided a momentary distraction from my migraine and eye twitch.

“Okay, okay. I’ll tell it,” Zander decided. “So then she tells the sound guy—”

“I SAID, IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE AN E FLAT!” the two yelled at the same time.

The Beat leaned forward and slapped Stevie five, and Nelson grinned. Even Kevin stopped drooling over Stevie long enough to crack a smile. Clearly, I was the only one in the group with a functional sixth sense. And that sixth sense was screaming that Stevie from Seattle was trouble with a capital GET OUT.

I was suddenly furious with Zander, but I couldn’t decide why. To be fair, I had a million reasons to choose from. How he’d let some random chick waltz into the loft and take over rehearsal. How two seconds after Stevie arrived he’d put out the best kind of fancy Whole Foods almonds, when he knew it would take an hour of flossing to excavate them from my braces.

“So how long have you been in the band?” Stevie focused her cat-eyed gaze on me. “Zander’s been talking about Gravity since the school year started, but he never mentioned you by name.” She yanked up her sleeves, revealing a leather cuff bracelet identical to Zander’s.

“Um, a couple of weeks,” I said distractedly, unable to take my eyes off that stupid bracelet.

“Then she went on a little hiatus.” Kevin’s dark eyes flashed.

“I was—I had a lot going on,” I said, glaring at Kevin.

Stevie shot a warning glance at Zander. “Commitment issues?”

“That’s not it. I—” Wait. Why did I feel like I had to explain myself? She was the outsider. I was Kacey. Elisabeth. Simon! I sat up straight and visualized myself in the Channel M studios, sitting at my anchor desk and prepping for an interview with a hostile source. I was in charge. This was my show.

“So, Stevie. What is it, exactly, that you’re doing here?” Keeping my tone journalistically neutral was taking every ounce of my strength. “And how long did you say you were gonna be in town?”

“I didn’t.” Stevie shrugged. “But a couple of weeks, I guess.”

“Her dad’s interviewing for a job as a prof with U of C,” Zander added proudly. “Gabe. You guys’ll love him.”

“Cool.” Nelson cracked his neck on one side, then the other. “I bet they’re putting you guys up in a sick hotel, huh?”

“Actually, we’re staying here.” Stevie curled her feet underneath her and sank back into the sofa cushions, a few inches closer to Zander than before. “Our parents are old friends, so Vann and Lily invited us to crash at the loft.”

Vann and Lily? I’d never even heard Zander’s parents’ names, let alone met them. “Wait. You’re staying here. At the loft.”

“Yep.” She nodded smugly.

There were so many things wrong with that arrangement, I’d already lost count. For one thing, the loft was basically one giant room. Which meant that no matter where Stevie slept for the next two weeks, she and Zander would be sleeping in the same room.

“Oh, and we thought it would be cool if she came to school with me,” Zander was saying. “If they decide to move here, she’d be going to Marquette anyway, so…”

Move here? “Don’t you have homework?” I interrupted, half curious and half desperate. “Like, from your actual school?” I couldn’t even process the part about a possible move. I would rather let Ella tighten my braces with a corkscrew than matriculate with Stevie.

“We’re on spring break for two weeks. My school is year-round, so we get longer vacations.” She popped the last of the Swedish Fish into her mouth. Kevin watched her toss them back with a look of dazed admiration.

“So, Kacey, you can introduce her around, right? Like to”—Zander shifted uncomfortably—“your friends?”

“Totally,” I said through a tight smile. “I’m sure Molly would love that.”

“Whatever. I doubt your little friends would be my kind of people, anyway.” Stevie shrugged at me. “No offense.”

My throat closed up. “Obviously,” I mumbled.

Stevie hopped to her feet. “So, let’s hear you guys jam.”

The boys scrambled after her into the breakfast nook while I trailed reluctantly behind. I couldn’t decide which was worse—being stuck here with Stevie or the knowledge that as soon as rehearsal ended, Zander and Stevie would be alone. In an empty loft.

“Hey, Goose.” Stevie climbed onto the island in the kitchen and drew her knees to her chest. “Does this place kind of remind you of—”

“I was just about to say.” Zander laughed as he tuned his guitar and Nelson tried a few notes on the keyboard.

“About to say what?” I adjusted my mic stand, even though the height was fine.

Zander pulled his stand closer to mine. I looked smugly at Stevie, but she was picking at a thread in the cuff of her jeans.

“Before we got Hard Rock Life together, I was thinking about just doing a solo thing,” he explained.

“But I kept trying to convince him to team up,” Stevie added from her perch. “I knew a couple of good musicians, but nobody plays guitar like this one, you know?”

“Duh,” I said into the mic. My voice boomed across the loft.

Zander rolled his eyes at the compliment. “Anyway, I was gonna call myself One-Sided Truce.”

“That’s the worst. Name. Ever,” I informed him.

“That’s what I told him.” Stevie laughed.

“I was eleven,” Zander protested. “Anyway, I’d booked my first gig at this bookstore on the waterfront. Two stories, a cool loft setup kind of like this one. I was pumped. Put an ad in the paper, on Facebook, everything. I even had some flyers printed, and Stevie offered to post them around town. But when I got to the gig, no one was there.”

“How come?” The Beat asked.

“Funny you should ask.” Stevie drummed her fingers together mischievously. “It seems there had been a little… typo on all the publicity materials.”

Zander groaned. “Instead of saying ‘One-Sided Truce,’ the promo stuff read—”

“ ‘—One-Legged Goose,’ ” Stevie finished proudly, with a slight bow at the waist. “Obviously, nobody showed up, because who wants to see that?”

The Beat tapped the cymbals as the guys burst out laughing.

“Dude. You got played!” Kevin roared.

“And from then on, he was Goose,” Stevie said.

Skinny Jeans was a way funnier nickname, but whatever.

“I think that was my best prank ever,” Stevie mused. “Definitely top three.”

“And she’s pulled some good ones,” Zander said.

“He wouldn’t speak to me for, like, three days. Finally I told him, ‘Give this group thing a shot. We’ll play one show, and if you want to go solo after that, you can.’ ” Stevie lifted her arms in a sweeping, dramatic gesture. “And the rest is history.”

“Actually, I probably wouldn’t have started Gravity if I hadn’t loved HRL so much, you know?”

“You’re welcome.” Stevie winked at me.

I blinked back. “Is story time over? I’m ready to play.”

“Atta girl.” Zander grinned, strumming the intro to a song he’d written several years before. He’d played it for me last week, and it was the perfect song: romantic and smack-dab in the middle of my range. By the time I was done with the first verse, Stevie would run crying back to the West Coast.

My lips parted, and I took a slow, easy breath.

“Hold up. Hold up.” Stevie lifted her hands in the time-out symbol.

The microphone amplified my sharp inhale.

“What?” I whipped my head toward Zander, but he suddenly seemed fascinated with his nail beds.

“Oh. I was just wondering where your guitar is.” Stevie’s voice was saccharine, the same tone Molly used with Paige. Only amplified.

“I don’t play,” I mumbled. “Yet. I’m—”

“She’s gonna learn,” Zander said lamely.

“You play?” The Beat rapped a drumstick in triple-time on his thigh. “Let’s hear it!”

“But—”

The sound of the guys’ cheers cut me off.

Stevie slid off the counter. Zander handed her his guitar—the prized guitar he never let anybody touch—and she let loose.

“Oh, I’ve got this feeling. Like I’m spinning, dancing, reeling.” Her voice was low and easy, uninhibited and powerful at the same time. She stared directly at Zander as she rocked out. It was as if everyone but him had disappeared. “And it happens every time he looks at me. And I can’t breathe. He sets me free.”

Stevie shifted her gaze to me. She smiled innocently, but I saw through the hardness in her stare. Her look told me to watch my back.

I gritted my teeth and matched her smile. My sixth sense had been wrong. Stevie from Seattle wasn’t as bad as I’d thought.

She was worse.