WHEN I got out, I was on a mission to put a stop to Betty before she did any more damage. I found her by the fence with some people I didn’t know. Her alco-meter was blinking bright red. “Saaaaarah!” she cheered, and gave me a big hug. She grabbed at my hair and stuck one finger through a curl. “You, you, you’re just so great. Did you know that?”

I took a step back and said, “Do you see your alco-meter?”

She shushed me and put a finger to my lips. “No problem. I’ll just take a few of these,” she popped a pill in her mouth, “and I’ll be better in no time!” She stood up straight, feigning properness of some kind. She was wearing a shirt that said, “Don’t Kill My” on it. She never wore anything with any kind of graphics on them. She was usually such a boring preppy. “So have you met my new friends?” I started to say no but she cut me off. “Meet them. They’re wonderful.”

I grabbed Betty by the arm. “We need to talk.” If I could get her alone at least I could stop her from ruining the party.

“Okay, Mrs. Robertson,” she said, loudly for her audience. “Ha, Mrs. Robertson. Don’t try to seduce me.”

I yanked her away toward a quieter corner. “What’s wrong with you? You’ll get yourself sick. And everyone else.”

“I’m just being friendly. Making friends. Johnny does it all the time. It’s a party,” she said, waving her arms to show me the party in case I forgot.

“Is this about Butters?”

“What? No. I’m just trying to have a good time. Can’t I have a good time while he’s out there, somewhere, alone, with no one to…” at that point she started crying so hard I couldn’t understand her. I pulled her to my shoulder and she leaked like a faucet. There was nothing I could do for her. All efforts to find Butters had turned up nothing. “Let’s talk about it later, okay. For now, stop handing out drinks or we’ll get in trouble. If not for me and Johnny, then do it for our dad. Your uncle. We all know Johnny’s the bad one in the family, right?”

“Okay,” she said, sullenly.

“And none for you either. It doesn’t seem to be helping any.”

She looked at me, blotted away some tears, and gave me another okay. Suddenly, the lights dimmed. Alessandra got on stage and Tape Deck manned a makeshift control booth to the right of the stage. The band started to set up their instruments. Rosa plugged in her amp and put on her bracelets. The rest of the band plugged in their guitars and Alice practiced hitting the drums. I knew I was mad at her because she just seemed so pleased with herself and it drove me crazy. Johnny smiled at her and she smiled back. They were so in love. It was disgusting.

After a couple of notes and some back-and-forth with Tape Deck about the monitors and vocals, the band was ready to play. Alessandra got behind the microphone. “Thank you all for coming out tonight to Doolittle Falls,” she said. The crowd cheered. “Tonight we have the first-ever live performance of Doolittle’s own, The Paulines!”

Johnny tapped Alessandra on the shoulder and whispered something into her ear. She adjusted her glasses and tapped the mic. “I’m sorry, the first ever performance of Explosive Framing Device!”The crowd cheered again, this time a little less steadily. Alessandra made a face. She was doing the breathing that I taught her, from Dangerous Girl’s drama book. Her skin flashed red, then orange, then blue and she shouted, “Let’s go!”

She burst like a human firework. Bright colors popped out of her skin and flew up into the sky. The streamers floated down over the audience and the crowd went crazy. Johnny stepped on a pedal, strummed his guitar once, and the band launched into a song that was loud and fast. Surrounded by stripes of blue, green, red, pink, and yellow, people started whooping and dancing and pushing up against each other. The sound was raucous and loud. The speakers blasted out against the crowd, hitting us in the face, and bouncing off the walls of ice. Alice, her hair flying, pounded on the drums so hard that she looked like the coolest girl in the world. Even if I was still mad at her.

The song ended with a loud clash of cymbals and a distorted guitar cord, and Johnny took the mic. “Thank you. We’re The Paulines and,” someone tapped him on the shoulder, “I mean we’re the Exploding Framing… Ah, screw it. We’re the Misshapes, you’re The Misshapes, and this is our music!”

They all looked pleased with the impromptu name change and the next song started out with a barrage of loud chords and drums like a Gatling gun. When they got to the first chorus, something strange happened. The music was so loud that it took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t just the vibrations of sound that I was feeling. It was the earth, too. But the earth was shaking in time with the music.

When it clicked, I tried to get Rosa’s attention. She saw me in the crowd and nodded at me, making a rock on sign with her hand. She thought I was dancing. Her bracelets were still on, blinking red. The stage wobbled and threatened to collapse. Once Rosa realized it, she dropped her guitar like a hot plate. But it was too late.

The cinder blocks went first. A large crack spread from her feet and spider-webbed outward until the whole stage was cut up by large lines. In an instant the blocks turned to dust and they to the ground. People screamed and ran for the exit. The cracks cut into the ground and spread across our backyard. When they hit the fence, the ice shattered and blew out over the crowd. People covered their eyes and heads. I ducked and watched as a large rivulet sliced through the earth below me. Our backyard was becoming quicksand, trying to pull the crowd down into the earth.

“Run,” I screamed. The earth below us was sinking and we all rushed away from the hole. I looked at our house and prayed it wouldn’t get swallowed up, which in hindsight, was selfish. I should have been praying that no partygoers were swallowed.When we got to the front of the house, all the neighbors were in the street. Most of them were on their cell phones. I could hear the police and fire sirens wailing in the distance. The rumbling stopped. Rosa was walking around, pacing back and forth.“Is it over?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Did you see if anyone fell in?”

“I was the last one out. We’re okay. We’re all okay.”

Alice rushed over to us. She gave me a hug. Her drumsticks pressed into my back. When she pulled away she looked at them and laughed. “I’m glad you’re okay, Sarah. That was scary!”

Johnny strolled toward us. “We can’t hide this from Dad, can we?”

“Not unless we rent a backhoe and fill the yard in a day,” I said. I looked behind him and saw Ms. Slovinsky in a pink robe, her hair in curlers, glaring at us. Her glaring didn’t bother me one bit. The band rocked and we had saved the party from certain disaster. Adrenaline was coursing through my veins. I felt like I could just jump up and fly into the air if I wanted to, but I had work ahead of me: I had to make the backyard nice and sunny so that sinkhole dried up and went back to normal.

Only one thing interrupted the sound of my thoughts. The whinny of a police siren tearing through the neighborhood. And it was stopping at our house.