Free The Friendship Song by Nancy Springer Page B

“How did Spooky … How did Gus do it?” Rawnie yelled in my ear. It was loud in there already, so a person had to yell.
    â€œI dunno. Spook power?”
    â€œDon’t say that.”
    The opening band came on, and people whistled and clapped, but nobody screamed yet. These guys were okay, they had some good songs, but I think they were lip-synching or something. When they sang or when they moved around or jumped up or went down on their knees, it was like they were just going through motions. I don’t even remember what they looked like or their band’s name. They were not Neon Shadow.
    When they went off and we sat waiting in the loud crowd, Rawnie yelled to me, “I can’t stand it! I’d faint right now, except I’d miss everything!”
    â€œI’m going to cry, and I look like a sick duck when I cry!”
    Everything went black. We grabbed each other’s hands. People started screaming, and so did we. And then the spotlight came on, and there they were, and everybody jumped up and stood on top of their seats, including us. And it was Nico, Nico and Ty, only about twenty feet away from Rawnie and me, and the music was all around us, the drummer pounding out a beat like a million hearts and the guitars carrying it up, up, crying out loud, like me, and Ty and Nico were singing.
    â€œLife is sharp as a knife,” Rawnie sang along with them. “I know we won’t grow old, but I don’t see how we can ever die.” It was a song called “Scars.” We knew all their songs, but I couldn’t sing, I was all choked up. There they were, Nico and Ty, right there, breathing the same air with me; if I reached out hard enough maybe I could touch them.… When they sang, it was like a prayer, they meant it. They lived the music, they let it move them around, they surrendered to it even when it slammed them to their knees.
    â€œOh,” I whispered. “Oh.” Nico had real tears in his eyes. One crept out and shone on his face. On me it would be just a crybaby tear, but on him it looked like a jewel.
    â€œDid they look at us?” Rawnie yelled in my ear. “Did they see us?”
    â€œMaybe.”
    â€œOh, my God, you really think so? I’d die just to say hi to them.”
    I didn’t want to say hi to them—I wanted to be them. To be in a band, me and my buddies against the world, to be a beautiful rock outlaw playing hero guitar with a very all-time best friend by my side—it seemed like all I could ever want. And everything I knew I could never have.
    Lights were flashing, the guitars turned tornado colors, and the keyboards thundered. Neon Shadow swung into “Dark Ride,” which was about dying, but I didn’t care if I died someday. I did what Nico and Ty did, I let myself give in, I let tornado guitars and thunder drums take me deep, deeper into themselves, farther than I had ever gone before into a place where everything was made of raw voice and bent metal and hard rock music.
    And I was still standing on my chair, I was still stretching my hands into the air and yelling along with the song and crying, but something had changed. I could see better than ever before. I could see more than ever before. And I saw something big as Neon Shadow coiled under the roof of the stage, something waiting just above the lights, something dark. At first it seemed like a dark fog, a black smoke thing, a hanging cloud. But I kept looking at it, because it was right over Ty and Nico and because I wanted to be like them, I wanted to be a desperado, a hero, not a middle-school girl with her books over her chest. Not scared. And as I looked I could see it more clearly.
    â€œRawnie,” I whispered. There was no way she could have heard me, but I felt her hand clutch at mine. She had let the music take her deep into the same place. She saw it too.
    It was—huge, bigger than any python or anaconda, but it was made of air and