Free The Hop by Sharelle Byars Moranville Page B

her dad back inside. In the kitchen, on the island counter was a pile of laptops, BlackBerrys, pagers, and iPods. Her dad put his cell phone in with the rest and called upstairs, “Meg? You ready?”
    As her mother’s footsteps moved overhead, her dad said, “You’ve never witnessed The Great Turning Off.”
    Taylor’s mom came into the room wearing an old pair of sweats, her hair still damp from the shower. Her parents high-fived, bumped each other’s hips, and began turning off everything on the counter. With a series of dying notes, beeps, hums, and sign-off ringtones, all the lights went out and the lids went down.
    â€œThere,” Taylor’s mom said with a sigh. “Isn’t that nice? We’ll just bring along our personal phones so we can call each other and Eve.”
    Her parents linked fingers and swung their hands kind of like Taylor and Kia did sometimes at the mall when they were having a lot of fun.
    It was extremely weird.
    A while later, when she was supposed to be finishing packing, Taylor sat on her bed and opened the scrapbook that her grandmother had given her when they’d said good-bye. Some of the photos were cracked, and the newspaper clippings were yellow with age.
    The first page had a formal portrait of a fat, bald, toothless infant in a little ruffled dress. Me as a baby, Eve had written below the picture. And now I’m bald again. She had made a smiley face.
    Then there were a few snapshots of Eve growing up. One when she was about Taylor’s age, standing on the sidewalk with a girlfriend. One in front of a Christmas tree with a young man in hippie clothes. The first Christmas Ryan and I were married, the caption said. Taylor had to peer at the picture of the woman with the long, wavy hair and bell-bottom jeans to find any trace of the grandmother she knew.
    Then there were pages and pages of clippings about the bands her grandfather had played in. Local papers with stories about their own Ryan Murphy going to Nashville. His band—Ryan and the Rompers. Places they’d played. Clippings from newspapers in Detroit and Dallas and Shreveport. A clipping about a recording contract.
    Then a picture of him in a uniform with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He had his hand up to shield his face from the sun, and Taylor couldn’t see his eyes.
    Then his obituary.
    Now Taylor knew why her grandmother had cried. And how she knew about protests. And why she understood about people and things going away forever no matter what you did.
    Then there was a picture of Eve, her long hair half hiding her face, gazing down at a baby in a pink blanket. Megan Ryan Murphy, born November 15, 1965.
    â€œWhat are you up to?” Taylor’s mother asked.
    Taylor wished her mom wouldn’t sneak up on her.
    â€œOh, that’s me,” her mom said. She dropped a stack of folded towels on the foot of Taylor’s bed. “Let’s see,” she said, sitting down.
    Taylor scooted over, making room.
    â€œCome and see this, Jim,” her mother called.
    Taylor’s mother reached across her, turning pages. Taylor felt her mother’s breath on her neck. “I thought my dad was the handsomest, most magical person who had ever lived. Of course I never even met him. Still…” She paged back to a newspaper clipping that showed Ryan Murphy in front of a microphone, cradling a small, sleek guitar, his head thrown back as he sang. “Wasn’t he something?”
    Before Taylor knew it, the book was on her mom’s lap and she was paging ahead.
    â€œThis is where I met your dad,” she said, pointing to a newspaper story about a reunion of rock-and-roll bands. “Mom took me when I was seventeen. Right here, in this hotel, in the ballroom when they were playing ‘Lollipop.’”
    â€œWho said lollipop ?” Taylor’s dad demanded from the doorway.
    â€œI was just showing Taylor the place where we