Mom and I pull up to the campus and there’s a big banner that says WELCOME TO GERTRUDE NIX ROCK CAMP FOR GIRLS. Mom puts her hand on my shoulder as she turns the wheel like, Here we go. She parks the car and the entire time I think, Let’s just turn around, let’s just leave.

“Honey, you’re going to be okay. Come on,” Mom says. Possibly she can hear my thoughts, or more likely, I look like I’m about to puke. She takes my backpack out of the trunk and passes it to me. She’ll roll the big suitcase. She must feel bad for me. Mom believes that you should only pack what you can carry. Right now, I must look like I could carry a water bottle.

We follow signs to this long line and my heart starts to beat a thousand miles a minute and I grip my backpack with both hands to keep from falling over. All the other girls seem to know each other already. They’re running around and hugging and shrieking, and it’s the first day of kindergarten all over again, except this time there’s no Chocolate and no cubbies. Counselors are coming up and down the lines introducing themselves; the girls seem to know all of them too. A woman with curly green hair and another with a shaved head and a cheek piercing that hurts to look at are heading to me and Mom.

“Hi!” they say in creepy unison.

“I’m Ginger,” says the green-haired one.

“I’m Jane,” says the shaved head.

“It’s nice to meet you,” says Mom, who has apparently become an entirely different person and seems totally at ease in this super-weird situation. “I’m Donna and this is my daughter, Sparrow.” Donna. My mother just introduced herself as Donna.

“Hey, Sparrow!” says Ginger. “Cool name.” I think I manage to nod my head. I do not manage to look up. I am expecting a soft elbow in the ribs from Mom to get me to look them in the eye. Instead, she puts her hand on my shoulder. “She’s a little shy,” she says. Camp is apparently an alternate universe.

“I am too,” says Jane. I don’t buy it. Shy people don’t shave their heads. “The shaved head’s just a ruse,” she adds. I smile a little bit, not that either of them can see it, since my eyes are glued to my shoelaces. They continue down the rest of the line.

“It’s going to be okay,” Mom says. I think she’s said it about eight million times in the last twelve hours. I look up and up for the birds, just to see if I can do it. I close my eyes and wait for the swoop swoop feeling that I know won’t come, and it doesn’t. Mom says, “Sparrow, your turn,” and puts her hand gently on my back to guide me toward the table at the front of the line. There are two more counselors at the front, registering people. The black one has almond-shaped brown eyes that peer up at me kindly from under a baseball cap. “Hi, Sparrow. I’m Ty. You’re in Nina with me; let me show you where it is.” I can’t tell if Ty is a man or a woman, maybe something more like both. Ty is handsome and beautiful and takes my backpack with strong arms and leads us up to the dorm.

“Who’s Nina?” I finally manage to ask.

“It’s our hall. Every hall is named after an important female musician, like Nina Simone.”

“I haven’t heard of her.”

“You will.”

Ty takes us down a long hall with a brown-and-white linoleum floor. My door is the last one. There’s a little bird cutout on the front that says Sparrow on it, and a yellow cutout in the shape of a spike that says Spike on it in black marker. Ty opens the door, and the room is tiny twin beds and nothing else except this girl and her entire freaking family and what seems like every instrument ever invented. She’s setting up a drum set in the corner and has, like, four different guitars with their own particular stands and straps, and it’s just me and my mom and my stupid pink rolly case that she got me when I was six.

“Hi,” the girl says, bounding over to greet me, “I’m Spike.”

“Hi,” I say.

“This is Sparrow,” Mom helps.

“Cool. Nice to meet you,” she says. “Is it your first time at GNRC?”

“Um, yeah.”

“I’ve been coming since I was eight. It’s cool; you’ll like it.”

I don’t know what to say, and so I say nothing. In my head I say, Sparrow, how come you can’t even carry on this simple conversation? That doesn’t help.

“Spike, give me a hand with the hi-hat, please.” That’s Spike’s mom. Or … I think it is. There are a lot of people in this room. Mom is at my bed, taking sheets out of my suitcase. A girl comes by, wearing a ripped plaid vest and a white tank top, and jean cutoffs. I understand immediately that she’s cool.

“Spike!” she shrieks. They run to each other, hug, do a chest bump, and then go into an intricate handshake. The other girl doesn’t look in my direction. I usually like being invisible, but this doesn’t feel awesome. “Come on, you’ve got to come say hi to Alyssa, she’s been asking about you all morning.” They scamper out of the room holding hands. Her family manages an awkward “Nice to meet you,” and they leave too. They probably have their own friends to go visit.

Mom’s made up my bed, and now she pulls me to it. She holds my hands in hers. She looks into my eyes. “You listen to me,” she says softly. “You’re going to be just fine, I promise. I know this is a lot of people and a lot of new things at once. I know you’re scared. You’re doing just fine.”

My eyes start to water. “No, I’m not, Mom. I’m not doing fine. I can’t even have a normal conversation with any of these people, and they all know each other already.”

She wipes my tears and I feel like I’m about four years old. “This was always going to be the hard part. You just introduce yourself when people talk to you, and try to look at them when you can.”

“God, what is wrong with me?”

“You’re shy. You’re anxious. Lord knows you come by it honestly. You’ve never done this before. I know you want to go stand by the wall like the first day of school but—”

“The cubbies. I didn’t stand by the wall; I hid in the cubbies.”

“All right, the cubbies. I know you want to go hide, but instead you’re here. You’ve already won.”

“It doesn’t feel like it.”

“Winning doesn’t sometimes. Now, I should leave. So dry your eyes, and get ready to go to lunch. You can call me every day if you need to. I’ll see you in four little weeks.”

I nod. It’s all I can do. I hug her with everything I’ve got.

She puts her hands on my shoulders firmly. “You can do this. You’re already doing it.” She kisses me on the cheek and closes the door after herself.

I lie on my bed facedown and cry for what feels like hours. After a while, I hear Ty in the hallway. “Food time, guys, let’s go!”

I file out of the dorm with everyone else and head to the cafeteria, in a different building a few doors down from Nina. “Welcome to Heart, kids, this is where we eat. Go grab a seat.”

Go. Grab. A. Seat. I hate those words. They make everything seem so simple when it’s so freaking complicated. We all wait in line for food. It looks like there are hamburgers, veggie burgers, sweet potato fries, and cookies. I don’t care, I don’t have a lot of faith in my stomach’s ability to hold anything down right now anyway. When it’s my turn, I take some fries and turn around to face my doom. Tables filling up with girls who are chatting, smiling, finding a place because they know where to go. It’s like everyone got a map but me.

Ty taps me on the shoulder. “There’s a spot for you there, Sparrow,” and points me to a table that’s half-filled with girls. I walk over because what else can I do? I sit down. Conversation stops. I should never have come. “Hi,” they say. They. It’s like one big talking girl head.

“Hi,” I say, staring at my fries.

“What’s your name?” the big girl head asks. I hear my mother tell me to make eye contact. I look at them.

“Sparrow.”

“Cool,” they say, and then they turn into seven different girls and introduce themselves. Liz, Lizzie, Katie, Kim, Maia … I am paying so much attention to looking at them and trying to seem like a normal person that I miss who the rest of them are. I smile as much as I can, which probably makes me look like a robot, and say hi again after they all finish introducing themselves, and then I kick myself for being such a weirdo. I turn my attention to my fries. Finally, someone approaches a microphone that I hadn’t noticed was on the stage. I hadn’t even noticed there was a stage.

She stands there for a second. She’s small, white, not much taller than I am, and just as skinny. She’s got freckles and a long red braid down her back. She’s wearing a polo shirt and khaki shorts. Honestly, she kind of looks like a dweeb.

Then she opens her mouth.

“WHO’S READY TO ROCK?” she shouts at the top of her lungs. Everyone who’s been here before screams their heads off. Everyone else looks away awkwardly.

“Dammit, no. Too often girls are told that they can’t, that they shouldn’t, that they should be quiet and be pretty. People like Gertrude Nix, you might know her as Ma Rainey, were pioneers for girls making noise, and each of you is here because there’s something in you that’s dying to get loud, even if it doesn’t have any words. Your feet might want to get loud, or your fingers, or your voices. So I’m going to ask you again, WHO’S READY TO ROCK?”

Now everyone screams. Except me, of course. But I want to, maybe. There’s a tiny squeeze in my throat—is that the me that’s dying to get loud?

“I’m Kendra; I’m the head of music here. We’re going to break you up by age group. Eight to ten, you’ll be over on the right with Ginger. Ten to twelve, you’re with Jane. Twelve to thirteen, you’re with me. Fourteen to sixteen, you’re with Ty.” I feel a little relief that at least I’m with Ty. I head over to Ty’s table.

“Okay, guys, I’m Ty. My pronouns are he/him/his. I’m in charge of your age group, which means if you’re having trouble with your band or on your hall, I’m the person you come to. Okay? What we’re doing today is breaking up into bands. Ren?”

A tall Asian woman with a shaved head and glasses with round bright blue frames gets up. She has navy designs down each of her arms. I notice that most of the adults here have tattoos. “Hi, guys, I’m Ren; my pronouns are she/her/hers. It’s nice to see all of you. Listen up for your groups.” She reads a list of groups with four kids in each. Somewhere in there, I hear her say, “Spike, Sparrow, Lara, and Tanasia.” Tanasia. My heart drops to my sneakers as I look up and see her. She’s wearing her hair in two braids down her back, a white T-shirt and ripped jeans. She smiles at me and waves a little. I look back at my sneakers. I never talked to her after the talent show, and there were two full weeks of us sitting next to each other in English, her looking at me and me looking anywhere else. And now, of course, we’re in the same band. With Spike. If this could get any more awkward, I don’t know how. But I’m sure it will. It always does with me.

“Hey, Sparrow,” Tanasia says as we head over to the table to get our classroom assignment from Ren.

“Hi,” I say.

“Funny that we’re both here, huh?”

“What?” I’m so distracted and nervous I feel like all the blood in my body is rushing through my ears; I can barely hear her.

“Never mind.”

“Y’all,” says Ren, “these are your bandmates. You do not have to like each other, but you do have to love each other and you have to support each other fiercely. Your day works like this. Every day, you will have practice together for two hours—an hour of songwriting and an hour of playing together. You will then have an hour and a half with the other people who are learning the same instrument as you. Depending on the day, you will have a workshop in the morning or the afternoon about leadership or women in rock history. You will eat breakfast with your hall for the next three days. Then, it’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner with your bandmates every day starting Tuesday. Any questions?” There are no questions. “Okay, then, counselors, grab your bands. Let’s do this thing.” She looks down from her perch on the table to me, Spike, Tanasia, and Lara. “You guys are with me.”

Ren takes us to yet another building. I’m starting to think that I’ll never learn my way around this place. Then I would just have to stay in my room the whole time. “Guys, this is ESG; we’re on the third floor.” At least the building is named for music I like; maybe it’s a good omen. I’ll take what I can get right now. We head up to the third floor.

“Okay,” says Ren, unlocking the door to our classroom. “You’re a band; you’re going to get to know each other real, real well. But first, we’re going to brainstorm.” On huge pieces of paper stuck to the walls we each write down what we think of when we think of rock and roll, who our favorite bands are, and what instruments we know how to play or would like to know how to play. This is easy; it’s even a little fun. I like the ones on the rock-and-roll sheet—words like heart and grit and power. I add hard to ignore and top of my lungs. The bands are the same ones I would pick and I wonder if it was Tanasia who wrote down the Smiths. I add TV on the Radio and Patti Smith. On the instrument sheet, I write one word: bass. When we sit back down, Ren has us introduce ourselves by our names and our halls. Tanasia lives on Palmolive and Lara lives on Yoko. Spike, obviously, has the luck of living with me on Nina. Ren tells us that today is a short day because it’s the first day (how is it possibly still the first day?) and so we’re going to divide up by instruments soon. She asks who plays what, and Spike says she plays everything, and Lara says she plays the drums, and Tanasia obviously plays guitar. “And you, Sparrow?” she asks.

“I don’t play anything.”

“Ah, so you must be … ” She’s looking at the instrument wish list. “… bass?”

I nod.

“I can see that. You’ll be a great bass player. Now, listen, guys, we have a performance at the end of the month. We have to take practice seriously, whether it’s in band or with our instruments. This is what we’re here to do. Tanasia, guitar is meeting on the second floor. Lara, drums meets right here with me. Spike, you’ll go down the hall for vocals, and our brand-new bassist, you’ll head upstairs to the fourth floor. I’ll see you guys in Heart after practice. Dinner together, remember?” I groan, but I think I manage to keep it inside.

I go up to the fourth floor to meet the other bassists. Ty is standing outside the door. “Hey, everyone,” he says, “let’s do this.” He unlocks the door to our room and turns on the light. There are six basses, one for each of us. The one I end up with is black and white with smooth curves and a red strap. I love it. It’s mine. None of us is talking; we’re all just trying on a bass, holding it, strumming it. None of has any idea what we’re doing. None of us wants to stop.

“Okay, okay.” Ty laughs. “I’m glad you guys are excited. Maybe we could go around and tell each other our names?” We go around. We’ve got Dina, Ana, Alexa, Lulu, Sienna, and me. We all live on different halls, except for me and Lulu. We exchange quick smiles.

“All right, obviously you guys are pretty excited to play. But first you have to learn about the equipment.” Turns out I will not become a bassist today. Today I will learn about frets and strings and how to turn on an amp. Still, this hour and a half is the best hour and half I’ve had for a while. It feels like a totally different day than the rest of this awful day. Until, of course, Ty marches us all back to Heart for dinner.

Spike, Tanasia, Lara, and I all eye each other warily as we head to our table. Okay, maybe I’m the one eyeing everyone warily. Dinner is kale salad, chicken, and broccoli. Mom would be in heaven. I take some broccoli and wish I believed I could eat anything else without hurling. Lara has a loaded plate and two glasses of juice. She’s chubby, but it seems like she hasn’t eaten in weeks the way she wolfs her food down, like someone is going to take it away.

Spike tries to start up a conversation. “So, how was everyone’s practice session?”

“Good.”

“Good.”

I just nod my head.

“Cool,” says Spike, looking longingly at all her friends at the other tables. No doubt wishing that she were with them instead of us silent losers. Or maybe just one big silent loser.

“It’s cool you’re here, Sparrow,” Tanasia says.

“You guys know each other?” asks Lara.

“We go to school together,” she explains. I nod and look down at my broccoli.

“Cool,” say Lara and Spike. The conversation stops. I cannot imagine doing this three times a day for the next four weeks.

After dinner, there is free time. Some girls take out their instruments and gather on the lawn to play together. Others cluster in groups, giggling. Spike doesn’t even go back to our dorm; she’s too busy with her hordes of friends, so I have the room to myself. It’s seven thirty. Good enough, I think. I turn off the lights; I don’t even change into pajamas. I just let myself fall asleep.

In the morning Ty wakes everyone up at six fifteen by blaring music. We all shuffle into the bathroom with our toiletry caddies. Some girls get into the shower right away; some line up by the sink waiting to brush their teeth. Friends make room for each other and share a sink. After the sleepiness wears off, everyone starts to chat. Hey, can you pass me that? What did you do after dinner? Do you have the new Tune-Yards album? I need a new guitar, but my mom won’t get me one. So lame. Then there’s the singing. The girls in the shower start a song and everyone joins in. It’s too much like an alternateen High School Musical in here. I can’t handle it.

I get out of the bathroom as soon as my teeth are passably clean. I don’t even stop to pee. I go back to the room. No Spike. She’s probably beatboxing for the shower girls. I dress and leave the hall as quietly as I can. Ty is nice and everything, but I don’t want him to stop me with his kind eyes and ask what’s wrong. I run down the back stairs and I push through the emergency exit door, hoping that there’s no alarm. There isn’t. The humid air hits me in the face. I thought fresh air would feel good, but now it’s even harder to breathe. My feet carry me over to Heart.

At the back of Heart is a dumpster and some tall trees and some bushes that haven’t been trimmed in years. They scratch my legs as I sneak past them. Heart has huge windows that go from the roof to the floor, but I duck behind the dumpster and into the bushes. You’d have to know to look for me to see me. Nobody knows to look. Between two scraggly bushes is a bench with cigarettes strewn on the ground. This must be where the counselors come to smoke so we won’t see them. It’s perfect. I lie down on the bench, breathing deep and looking up at the empty sky.