Free Secret Star by Nancy Springer Page A

and she wasn’t grounded after all, yet Tess didn’t feel as if she could go see Kamo. She went back inside and sat staring at the clutter spread everywhere because Daddy couldn’t reach things if they were put away, and the scars on the paneling and doors from his wheelchair, and the blank screen of the TV, and Mom’s picture on top of it staring back at her. Daddy kept her studio portrait there. Sometimes when he forgot Tess was around she would hear him talking to the picture. “Miss ya, babe,” he would say. “Ain’t nobody never been so beautiful.” Her name was Teresa Riordan Rojahin Mathis, and she was spectacular. Green eyes, honey-colored hair, sweet face with a tiny Mona Lisa smile. “But I’m doing okay,” Daddy would tell her. “Hanging in there.”
    Dumb, Tess scolded herself. She had been stupid to think Butch could actually like her. Stupid to think even in her wildest dreams that anybody was ever going to love her the way Daddy still loved her mother. Why did I have to turn out like a palomino ox instead of like her? Looking at Mom didn’t make Tess feel any better. She didn’t remember her. Looking at her was like looking at a photo in a magazine.
    Lunchtime came and passed, but there was nothing to eat except leftover French toast, so nobody ate. Daddy sat at the kitchen table playing solitaire with a deck that had a joker instead of an ace of hearts. Tess sat where she was.
    Outside, the day was the color of dirty hubcaps. Getting set to rain.
    In the gray light an orange blob pulled into the weedy gravel driveway.
    â€œWho the—” Tess looked. It was an old VW bus, what kids call a hippie bus. There was a black guy with dreadlocks driving. Somebody got out of the passenger side: Kam.
    â€œOh, my God.” Her first thought was that he’d give Daddy a heart attack just by being there. She bolted up and ran out to tell him to go away before Daddy saw him. But something about his face stopped her. He was smiling. Downright grinning, his wide mouth and one eye as happy as a long day of sunshine. She had never seen him like that before.
    â€œHey, Tess!” He hugged her, then let go again before she could blink. “Meet Joshua.” The black guy was opening the back doors of the van. He smiled and waved at her. Kam said, “Give us a hand?”
    â€œWith what?”
    â€œYou’ll see.” Kam led her around back of the van and lifted out—a drum.
    It was a metallic-blue Pearl-brand bass drum. Kam handed it to Tess and said, “Happy birthday,” even though it wasn’t her birthday. Then he reached into the van again and pulled out—a tom-tom.
    And Joshua was standing there with lengths of chrome-plated drum stand in his hands, saying to Kam, “Where should we set it up, man?”
    Kam looked at Tess, but her mouth was stuck in a half-open position and wasn’t functioning. He looked at the house, where Daddy had wheeled his chair into the doorway, maybe just to watch but maybe to block it—and then Kamo smiled even wider and said, “How about right here in the yard?”
    â€œYou say so.” The two of them moved to the center of the crabgrassy patch in front of the house and started setting up—it was a drum set, a whole hot-rockin’ four-drum set with crash cymbal and ride cymbal, the works. Tess had never gotten to play on a real complete drum set in her life, not even in school.
    â€œYo! Tess, bring that bass,” Kam sang. Tess walked but felt as if she were floating, as if the sound of his voice carried her to him. She loved his voice. Usually it was made of shadows, but that moment it was made of rainbows and silver.
    He looked the drum over before he set it in its place. All the dampers were there on the insides of the skins. “Not bad for secondhand,” he remarked.
    Not bad? That sparkly-blue, heaven-colored drum?
    â€œGrab the hi-hat out of