Free Secret Star by Nancy Springer Page B

the van,” Joshua suggested, smiling the way Kamo was.
    â€œCan you bring the stool, Tess?” Kam called.
    There was so much wonderfulness she couldn’t carry it all at once. Floor tom-tom, snare drum, foot pedals, sticks, extra sticks with plastic tips. Kam came to help.
    â€œHey!” He looked at her face and hugged her again, longer this time. “No big deal, Tess. Just helping the dude clean out his garage. C’mon, try it out.”
    Her heart was aching fit to split right in her chest, because she was feeling two things at once: Lord-God happy, because Kamo was giving her this wonderful thing—and deep-purple sad, because she knew she and Daddy needed other things more, and maybe she ought to sell the drums, maybe doing that would bring enough money for—some of the bills or something ...
    â€œTickle it, Tess!” Kam urged.
    She was going to play it at least this once, right there on the front lawn. She settled her bottom on the stool, hugged the snare drum between her legs, positioned her feet on the pedals, balanced the sticks in her hands and closed her eyes a minute to think how she was going to do this, because it had been awhile since she had played on anything except scrub buckets. But the rhythms were jumping like lottery balls in her head, and she started the big, thick ride cymbal going right along with them, eight quick beats to the frame.
    Then she got the bass going, twos and fours. Then she started to fill in left-handed with everything else that was bubbling in her brain, and her left foot was pumping the hi-hat in time with the snare, and as usual she couldn’t quite quick-lick it all in but she was cooking, she was smoking hot, she kept getting closer and closer, which was just about as good as it gets, and she didn’t care how the hi-hat’s telescoping stand kept sinking down or how she looked with her big butt bouncing around on that stool—the little drum angels were dancing like popcorn behind her eyes, and just because she felt like it she smacked the crash cymbal and boiled into a riff, chopping on the side of the snare and whacking an open-mouth ping out of the hi-hat and skittering the sticks all around the set like witches whirling under a full moon.
    Standing there, Kam arched his back and threw back his head so his hair trailed down. “Whoo-eee mama!” he yelled to the sky.
    â€œ Rock steady,” Joshua said, crouching on his haunches and listening. He had been smirking when Tess started, but she could see he wasn’t anymore, and now Tess knew she was real.
    She knew she couldn’t sell the drum set, damn it. Not for any money. Some things were more important than—than …
    She stopped drumming. Swiveled around on her stool to look at Daddy. He hadn’t spoken, he hadn’t ordered Kamo or the drum set off his land—yet.
    Benson Mathis had been thinking. Since the night Kamo had said “Rojahin” to him he had been thinking a lot.
    There was what he wanted, which was for Kam to go away and things to be like they were before. But then there was what he knew to be true, which was that things would never be the same. There was what he feared, which was that Tess would hate him when she found out. But then again there was what he knew to be true, which was that he had to let Tess grow and he had to let her go.
    In strong moments he was getting to the heart of the matter, which was not so much what to do or what might happen as what it meant for him to be a man.
    Nothing had prepared him for this. Back when he had legs he could stand on, being a man had meant carrying the most weight, earning a bigger paycheck, holding his own in a fight. It had meant getting through boot camp okay, serving his country and coming home again and not talking about it too much. It had meant winning his woman. It had meant defending and protecting her. Right up to the minute they had put him in this wheelchair he had known