ON WEDNESDAYS, LUCIA AND SYDNEY WENT TO THE Girls Rock Institute, which was basically rock camp but after school. Rock camp and GRI were housed in a former machine shop between a trailer park and an industrial intersection; inside the warehouse, the warren of rooms were painted blue and purple and green or paneled in cheap fake wood, the industrial carpet was wrinkled and dirty, and the walls were covered with posters and printouts of women musicians. In the blue room, a wall of gear held shelves of pedals, picks, cables, and mics. The practice rooms were tiny former offices tricked out with seasonal fans or space heaters on the floor, amps, and drum kits. There were power strips everywhere.
Rock camp was the anti-school. In school, Lucia did all her work and tried to keep a low profile as she ate lunch with her handful of friends. There were some unpleasant girls in the fifth grade this year who already fancied themselves mature and who’d taken their new seniority and precocious puberty as endowed power. Sydney had lucked out in the school lottery and attended Buckman, the arty elementary school in Southeast. But at rock camp, you were just whoever you were, or better. You didn’t have to be cool to be cool. The counselors and band coaches and interns liked you. Campers argued sometimes but no one got to be the queen of anything.
The Tiny Spiny Hedgehogs set up in their preferred practice room, a closet-sized space at the end of the hall. It was cramped, but it had a hefty amp Lucia liked, plus a window that overlooked the warehouse’s narrow parking strip and the thick wall of blackberry bushes looming behind it. The bushes were off-limits now because a camper had found used syringes there during the outdoor silk-screening workshop.
While Sydney set up her keyboard and their band coach, Shannon, turned on the amps, Lucia played “Stethoscope” on her unplugged guitar.
“Is that new?” Sydney said. “I like it. It’s fast.”
“It’s not mine. It’s by some band called the Cold Shoulder.”
“I remember that band,” said Shannon, digging a patch cord out from the back cavern of an amp. “God, I haven’t heard that name in forever.”
“Did you know them?” Lucia asked.
Shannon sat back on her haunches. “Not really. They were a guy band that played around town for a while. There were a lot of those. That must have been the mid-, late nineties.”
“Were they good?”
Shannon shrugged. “I don’t even remember. They were one of those bands where for a minute it seemed they were going to break out and be really big. Then they broke up. I don’t know that song you were playing but it sounded good, coming from you.” She held up the purple cable. “You guys need to put these away on the gear wall when you’re done, by the way. Don’t just stuff it in the amp.”
“Sorry,” Lucia said. “Do you know Jesse Stratton?”
Shannon laughed. “Nope. Just stories.” She stood and brushed off her knees.
“What stories?”
Sydney gave Lucia a skeptical look. “Why are you obsessed with this old band? Can we practice now?”
“A girl I knew went on a date with him once, and he was playing his own album on the tape deck when he picked her up.”
Sydney stamped her foot. “Let’s go, Luz.”
One hour, two minor arguments, and half a new song later, the Tiny Spiny Hedgehogs packed up their gear. Sydney’s mom was always late to pick them up, and they secretly liked it. They’d sprawl on the donated couches by the entryway, reading battered copies of Bitch and Bust and Rolling Stone and eavesdropping on the teenage interns, their idols.
Today while they waited, Lucia told Sydney about the record with the picture of her guitar on it. Yes, she was totally sure it was her guitar. No, she hadn’t asked her mom about it. “I started to at dinner but she got all awkward and changed the subject. It makes me think there’s something going on.”
Sydney started to fidget with excitement. “We have to find out ourselves. Let’s research.” Sydney seized any excuse to get on a computer.
They begged Ariel to let them use the iMac in the recording studio, claiming they had to look up the lyrics to a song they wanted to cover. Ariel was eighteen, with a lip piercing, dark shaggy hair, and a denim vest stenciled with the name of her band on the back. Though she was a monster on the drums, she was gentle as a bunny and always danced with the kids during lunchtime shows at camp. They loved her.
“As long as you promise not to touch anything but the computer,” Ariel warned as she unlocked the door. “Or it’s my ass in trouble.”
They promised.
The studio had carpet and fake-wood paneling, microphones with round mesh screens hovering in front of them, PAs and mixing boards and hundreds of levers and knobs that they didn’t know how to use yet—you had to be fourteen. Lucia inhaled deeply. The air was thick and smelled like gear and something quiet but alive.
They squeezed into a broad rolling office chair together and wheeled up to the desk. Sydney commandeered the computer and swiftly verified that the Cold Shoulder Lost EP cover did indeed depict Luz’s guitar. “Holy buckets of rats.”
“I told you!”
They turned up a handful of photos of the Cold Shoulder, three guys posed in various configurations. But they could find no evidence anywhere of Jesse Stratton playing the blue Telecaster.
“Maybe 1999 was before the Internet,” Lucia said.
“People still took pictures.”
Lucia wrenched the keyboard away from Sydney and typed jesse stratton.
They learned that after the Cold Shoulder, Stratton had released one record under his own name, then moved to Brooklyn and continued to make music as a solo project called Deep Dark Woods. He seemed to mostly play a Rickenbacker or an acoustic. His website turned up a 404 error page.
“This is weird.” Sydney drummed her fingers on the desktop. “Wait, did you read the inside thingie of the record? Who took the picture?”
Lucia realized she had only glanced at the insert long enough to see that it didn’t have any lyrics printed on it.
Back home, she took the record from behind her bed and pulled out the insert. The single square sheet had a collage of black-and-white photos of the band playing. A brief list of thank-yous. And at the very bottom, photo credits—first for the live shots and head shots, and then there it was: Cover photo and design by Andrea Morales.