And then the lights went out and the applause began, and Bev was trying not to smile but I didn’t care about seeming cool. Instead I grabbed her hand and we wove our way through the crowd, getting as close as we could to the stage. Usually I think that’s a jackass move, which is why I always get to shows early and sit down on the floor for an hour before the opening act goes on. I like to be in the front but I don’t believe in cutting. There are a couple loopholes to this etiquette, though. One is if the band you are seeing is your favorite band and you arrive late because you have to finish cleaning your room before you leave the house, and another is if rumors of the band retiring are swarming across music magazines and blogs everywhere and this might be your first and only chance to see them up close and possibly be graced with a drop of hot girl sweat by one of the two singer/guitarists. Both of these were true for Bev that night, so I took her by the hand and said “excuse me” about forty times.
We ended up right next to a giant speaker, and my ears would be ringing for days but I didn’t know that yet. All I knew was that Bev was also grinning by now, and Corin strummed her pretty gray-and-white guitar and sang these elastic, ecstatic notes, and Janet’s drums sounded like a cross between kids clapping in unison and the best punk drummer there ever was, and right above us, so close that we could have hopped the barrier and touched her, Carrie played her guitar and sang responses to Corin’s phrases, and every now and then she would squint into the lights and do these lazy hops and kicks like she was feeling mellow and dancing in her living room.
“I have such a crush on her,” Bev said, staring as Carrie stood above us, her hand strumming fiercely, gazing out into nothingness.
I said, “You’re gonna have to fight me for her,” and we both laughed and looked back to the stage where Carrie was now moving her ankles around in some weird part-march, part-moonwalk way.
For the rest of the night, Bev hardly looked at the other two, even during Janet’s drum solos, even though Corin had the cutest porcelain doll face and did things with her voice I didn’t know were possible. I watched Carrie sing “Modern Girl,” which was slower and had lyrics I knew by heart because Bev had been listening to it on repeat for months. When “Modern Girl” ended and the raucous, catchy songs resumed, I pulled out the sketchbook I carried and started a list of things we’d need to have so that Bev could start her band. Guitar. Amp. Drum kit. Bass and/or second guitar. Another amp. Songs (four to start). At least two more girls.
Thirty miles out of San Francisco, I am hit with a realization: “Our tickets!” I say to Bev.
I started looking at prices and flights a year ago but Bev didn’t want to get them too far in advance. Prices were high and Bev kept talking about her cousin who always gets last-minute flights for cheap, especially when the tickets are only one way, like ours are. We know that we want to leave right after tour, but we don’t know when we’ll want to come home, or even where we’ll be by then. We’ll be gone for at least a year, so maybe we’ll be living somewhere unexpected, like Norway, or, I don’t know, Cyprus or somewhere.
“I should call my dad right now and have him pay for them,” I say, and I get this rush when I think about him pressing “purchase” on the website for these tickets with Bev’s name and my name on them, tickets that will take us to Paris and leave us to wander Europe by ourselves.
“Grab my phone?” I say to Bev, and she opens the glove compartment where we had tossed our phones earlier so they could sit with Uncle Pete’s random objects: a pocketknife and several cassette tapes, a blue feather and a gray stone carved with the Chinese character for Patience, his membership cards to the Vintage Volkswagen Club of America and the Sunset Table Tennis Club—an affiliation I’m going to have to ask him about at some point. I’ve never even heard him mention table tennis.
“No service,” Bev says.
“Really?”
She nods and after a minute she says, “I have to pee.”
I exit the freeway and pull into a McDonald’s lot, and I’m about to check for a signal on my phone when Bev asks me to come inside with her and buy her a shake while she uses the bathroom.
So I stand in line for a vanilla shake, Bev’s dessert of choice since forever, and she emerges just as I’m collecting the change. I hand her the shake.
“Thanks,” she says.
I take a few steps toward the door and turn around. She’s still standing at the counter, watching me.
“Did you want fries, too?”
“No,” she says.
“You did want vanilla, right?”
She nods.
“Ready, then?” I ask, and she finally steps forward and follows me out.
Bev tells me that she’s feeling tired; she needs to sleep before tonight’s show, so she opens the passenger door and takes out her stuff, and then moves to the backseat. Which means that now I’m alone in the front. Alexa offers to come up to copilot, but I tell her that as long as she can keep track of where we are from the middle row she can stay where she is. I’m an only child; I’m used to spending time by myself. And really, pretty much all I want to do is think about Bev and me in Europe right now, so I pull back onto the road and as soon as I have Melinda up to an acceptable speed—something that does not happen quickly—I can relax and space out for a while. We have fifty more miles on 101 before we need to start looking for the next road.