Free The Locket by Stacey Jay Page B

“my” people backstage.
    “Then we could hang out and make fun of all the rhinestone denim.”
    I laughed. “Surely there won’t be rhinestone denim.”
    “Oh you know there will be. Mrs. Pruitt thinks she’s country music royalty because she had that one-hit wonder back in the seventies,” Sarah said, digging her keys out of a hobo bag nearly as big as she was. “The denim will be copious and the rhinestones plentiful.”
    “Well, I wouldn’t want to suffer through that alone. You have to do it.”
    “Perfect.” She smiled. “I’ll tell her I’m in tomorrow. Talk soon.” Sarah gave me a quick hug and started toward her car, but twirled back around almost immediately. “Oh, and I was going to tell you—Mitch is inside.”
    “Oh?” I hesitated for a second, my hand lingering above the door handle before I remembered I had no reason to be nervous about seeing Mitch today. “Good.”
    “I’m not sure. He doesn’t look too good. I said ‘hi,’ but . . .” Sarah shrugged. “Maybe he would want to talk to a friend.”
    “You’re his friend.”
    She raised one eyebrow. “Not his best friend.”
    Cheesy or not, the words made me feel warm all over. “Got it. I’ll check on him.” I waved goodbye and headed inside, grateful to still be able to call Mitch my “best friend.”
    The locket had done that, given me that gift. It was silly to worry about little things like a cracked mirror in the girls’ bathroom or a new sign outside the coffee shop. The things that mattered were all the same, and the locket was just stuck, not “trapping” me. It was Gran’s necklace. She would be able to help me take it off when she got here.
    In the meantime, I was going to stop stressing. There was nothing to fear but fear itself. And denim and rhinestones.
    The thought made me smile as I scanned the cozy, wood-paneled room for Mitch, but my smile vanished when I spotted him. He seemed nearly as upset as he had the first time we’d lived this day, when the tragedy of our ruined friendship had hung around him like a dark cloud, making his brown eyes look bruised.
    My stomach twisted. I rethought the wisdom of dumping a peppermint mocha on my already tumultuous tummy and headed straight for Mitch’s table.

Chapter Six
    MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 3:54 P.M.
    T here’s something intimate about watching someone when they don’t know you’re looking. Even though I was standing two feet from his table, Mitch didn’t notice me, and for some reason I didn’t feel the need to announce myself right away. I sort of liked watching him like this, seeing him unguarded, without the goofy faces and crazy, funny Mitchell Birnbaum persona in full effect.
    He looked . . . softer, older and younger at the same time.
    He was humming beneath his breath while he scratched away in a battered red notebook, the same one he’d used for his songs since tenth grade. His writing wasn’t much better than the names carved hastily into the scarred table beneath his hands. I wouldn’t have been able to read a word of what he’d written, even if I’d been looking at the page right side up.
    As far as penmanship was concerned, Mitch was on track to becoming a doctor just like his dad. His grades were great too, and he’d already finished a handful of college courses over the summer—things like college-level chemistry and statistics that frightened me with the size of their textbooks—and received early acceptance to the pre-med program at Vanderbilt.
    Mitch was brilliant, the kind of person who was meant to heal people and cure diseases. Too bad he didn’t seem nearly as excited about doctoring as his dad. I knew he would have preferred to spend his last summer before graduation writing songs and playing with his band, not locked away in a Vanderbilt classroom.
    Maybe that was what was bothering him.
    “Coffee for your thoughts,” I said.
    Mitch jumped and slammed his notebook closed, blushing like he’d been caught doing something