by Anna Hecker
I look around for Derek, but he isn’t here yet. Shay marches up to one of the booths and consults with the DJ, then motions for me to take the other. My hands tremble as I climb the stairs, standing off to the side until the DJ makes his transition and turns to me.
“You’re Mira Mira?”
I nod. Hearing my new DJ name from a stranger’s lips feels strange and not altogether bad.
“Cool, so you can mix in after this track,” he says. “We’re green, by the way.”
He returns to the rig before I have a chance to ask what that means. My heartbeat rises in my throat, nearly choking me. For a moment I want to turn around and run out of this tent and all the way to the parking lot, to jump in the LeSabre and not stop driving until I hit Windham Music Camp where everything is familiar and safe. If I leave now I could still make it for the recitals. My life could almost go back to the way it was before.
But it’s too late. The DJ is bringing in his last track, wishing me luck as he jogs down the stairs. At Shay’s suggestion I left my laptop at home and brought my music on thumb drives—she said they’d have CDJs like hers here, and she was right. But now I’m missing my laptop, the familiar glow and pulse of my DJ software and the comfort of the keyboard beneath my fingers. My hands are shaking so hard it takes me two attempts to plug in my thumb drives. I slide on my headphones and check the levels on the CDJs and mixer, noticing that the split-cue function is on so I’ll hear what the audience hears through one ear and my upcoming track in the other.
I scroll through my music library, scanning for my first track. I want something lighthearted and easy, as much to calm my own fraying nerves as to get people dancing. From the corner of my eye I catch Britt and Yelena down on the dance floor, pretending to jostle each other out of the way so they can get the best spot in the vast swatch of empty space in front of my booth. They grin up at me, their headphones glowing green.
Green. That must be what the other DJ meant. Which means that Shay, looking cool and confident in the booth across from me, is blue. She catches my eye and shoots me an encouraging smile, which only makes my heart pound faster. Why, of all the DJs in the world, do I have to be up against her?
But then I can’t think about it anymore, because it’s go time. I let my first track enter quietly, tiptoeing in behind the one that’s fading out. But, like an impish child, it can’t stay quiet for long. It’s whispering, then giggling, then letting out a belly laugh of rich, rumbling bass as the old track beats a retreat. The music takes my hand and won’t let go—it wants me to roll down hills and play in giant piles of leaves and not let up until I’m covered in grass stains and my face hurts from laughing. As the beat fills my ears and the melody takes over I feel my stomach unclench and the sweat dry on my palms. My face relaxes into a smile. My hips start to move.
I cue up the next track and sneak a peek at the dance floor. Yelena’s chatting with a half dozen people who are clearly her friends; to my surprise, there’s a small line forming at table where they hand out headphones. Britt’s still dancing, gazing up at me with an unmistakable sparkle of pride in her eye. Warmth spreads through my stomach, soupy and rich. Britt has always come to my recitals, always clapped and cheered and told me I did a great job. But I’ve never seen her look at me quite like this before: like I’m finally doing something she not only understands, but loves.
Buoyed by her smile, I choose a track with a complex Afro-Brazilian beat and a female MC rapping in Afrikaans. I love the organic sound of the drumbeats, the rooster crows that have been warped and distorted until they’re barely recognizable as animal sounds. But when I look up, three quarters of the growing crowd has their headphones set to blue. I glance at Shay, who is grooving hard to the beat in her ears, pumping her fist in the air as the audience dances along.
A hot blast of adrenaline streaks through me. I don’t know what Shay is playing, only that I need to top it. It has nothing to do with her and everything to do with the feeling that this crowd belongs to me, that there’s nothing more important than winning them back. I scroll through my tracks until I find the perfect banger, a remix of a pop song that must be in the Top 40 because it plays on The Gym Rat’s Pandora station at least five times a day. I hate the song itself—it’s the musical equivalent of saltines, dry and bland—but the remix strips its boring beat and replaces it with a frenetic mix of wood block and snare, distorts the vocals until they’re a cartoon parody of the original, and wraps the whole thing up in bass that feels like electric shocks to my hips.
I’m still playing with levels when the chorus kicks in—so I feel, rather than see, the crowd respond. Suddenly there’s a surge in the air, an energy that rises like heat into the DJ booth. More than half the audience is tuned to green now, all dancing like tiny hurricanes. The tent’s filling quickly, the line at the headphone station snaking out the door, and as people make their way to the dance floor I watch them switch from green to blue and then back to green. A few tracks later, three-quarters of the dance floor are stuck on green. I’m determined to keep them there.
My fingers feel like tiny electric transmitters as I select my next track. It’s another high-energy blaster with a sense of humor, full of musical jokes and sound effects like creaking bedsprings and cowbell. As I ratchet up the volume I feel my smile spread from my face to my hands, from my hands to the CDJs to the audience’s ears. And then, like magic, I see the same smile break out on faces around the tent.
As the crowd pounds the dance floor I feel like I’m full of helium, like all I’d have to do is jump and I’d be airborne, floating above the silent disco tent and the festival and the whole state of Pennsylvania, a human hot-air balloon. This is better than the quiet, expectant faces and polite applause I would have gotten at Visitors’ Weekend. Here the audience is visceral and immediate, responding to every note like I’m Fred Astaire and they’re Ginger Rogers. This isn’t a one-way transmission like a jazz concert; this is a dance between me and the crowd, a constant feedback loop.
The crowd stays with me through the next track, and the next. The tent is full, the bodies below me a blur of colored hair and smiles and sweat illuminated in green.
Sometimes one of the faces swims into focus: Yelena with her eyes closed and a blissful smile stretching her face. Britt looking like she just scored the winning goal for the state championship–clinching game. A stranger gazing up at me like I’m the first person to ever bring music to his world. Shay, her lips set into a thin, hard line, her eyes firmly on her rig. Derek with an all-access lanyard around his neck, standing off to the side with the headphones half on his head, approval sparkling in his eyes.
The helium inside me warms, expands. I’m too in-control to be nervous, too tuned in to the crowd to second-guess how I’m doing. Even Derek’s perfect face and older-guy cool can’t throw me off right now, not when the music is so good and the dance floor is so clearly mine. Our eyes meet, and he gives me the kind of smile that can melt icebergs. I smile back.
My next track is for him and him alone. It’s my heartbeat when I’m around him and my breath when he touches me: fast and fluttery, shallow and staccato. It’s the agonizing buildup before he kisses me, my breath and the bass and the world a swirl of anticipation and whispers and longing. The crowd stops dancing and suspends in time, swaying like saplings in a barely there breeze. They turn their faces up to me, waiting. Their stillness expands until it fills the tent, until it fills us all like a collective breath just waiting to be released.
And then the beat drops.
The beat drops, and the bass envelops us in a tidal wave.
The beat drops, and the crowd explodes.
The beat drops, and Derek pushes his way to the center of the dance floor.
The beat drops and the Silent Disco is the only place at the festival, the only place in the world. And I’m the one who made it that way.
For a few moments I lose myself in the music. I let my hips move and my eyes close, and when I feel a tap on my
shoulder I know it’s the next DJ ready to go on and I tell him he can mix in right away because I know there’s no track I own right now that could ever possibly top this.
I unplug my headphones and the sudden silence is like dumping a bucket of ice water over my head. In the heat of the music I’d forgotten we were in a Silent Disco; the music was so real and so close, it seemed impossible that only the people with headphones could hear. The mass of moving bodies, so graceful when there was music blasting in my ears, looks clumsy and comical dancing to nothing but the far-off thump of bass and the whirring of ceiling fans.
I sneak a glance at Shay. She’s also handing off to the next DJ, her back an angry ripple as she shoves headphones into her bag. A worm of guilt slithers through my joy. She said earlier that it was just friendly competition, nothing to get bent out of shape about. But I know how seriously Shay takes DJing. I saw how many people were dancing to my channel, and I know that means they weren’t listening to hers.
I hurry down the stairs. I don’t know what I can say to make it better, only that I have to find her and say something. But I’ve barely touched the floor when a hand on my arm stops me, and a girl with a flushed face and violet eyes is gushing about my set, telling me she hasn’t danced like that in ages, and before I know it she’s hugging me and other people are pressing in close, wanting to touch me and talk to me and take selfies with me. They smell like sweat and peppermint gum and feel like they’re standing too close, robbing the tent of air. They were so beautiful from up in the DJ booth, but now I feel like they’re a hungry monster, trying to swallow me whole.
“Thank you,” I say again and again, because I can’t think of anything else to say. “Thank you so much.” I’m shaking hands and accepting hugs, learning names I’ll never remember, thinking this is what it must be like to be famous and I’m not entirely sure I like it, when a familiar pair of arms wraps around me, covered from shoulder to wrist in tattoos.
“That was incredible,” Derek breathes, kissing me on the lips. “You were made for this.”
The crowd falls away and it’s just the two of us, his warm metallic smell and the softness of his breath. I melt into his kiss, letting it take me to places even music can’t. When he pulls away he introduces me to a guy standing next to him with thinning blue-dyed hair and horn-rimmed glasses. From the way Derek says his name, I can tell he thinks this guy is important.
“Jake Melville,” he introduces himself, reaching for my hand. “I loved your set.”
“Jake does booking for Electri-City,” Derek explains, his voice heavy with meaning. “They’re looking for fresh talent.”
My jaw drops. Electri-City is the festival Shay told me about—the one it’s always been her dream to play.
Jake hands me a card. It has his name in white against a black background, and a logo for Freaknic Productions. “Shoot me an email,” he says. “Link, headshot, bio—you know how it goes.”
I nod, too dumbstruck to tell him I actually have no idea how it goes.
“Thanks, man.” Derek intercepts the card. “I’ll take care of the deets. I’m her manager.”
“Right on,” Jake says, patting him on the shoulder. “Hey, I was supposed to be over at the Bass Sector stage twenty minutes ago. Nice meeting you, Mira.”
He pumps my hand again before disappearing into the crowd. I’m left with Derek’s arm around me and my mouth hanging open, still trying to process what I just heard. A booking manager. From Electri-City. One of the biggest festivals in the world.
“Come on,” Derek urges, turning us around. “We have to celebrate!”
It’s then that I see Shay. She’s looking at me with wide, wounded eyes, her mouth hanging open. She must have been standing right behind us the whole time. Without headphones in the quiet of the Silent Disco tent, she would have heard everything.
“Shay …” I say, taking a step toward her. But just as I’m about to touch her sleeve another cluster of well-wishers floods between us, asking if I have mixes up and when I’m playing next, swallowing me in a cloud of praise. Derek answers for me, giving them the URL to my DJ page and saying they can catch me at Electri-City.
By the time I manage to fight my way past them, Shay is gone.
CHAPTER 20
Derek escorts me out of the Silent Disco, his hand on the small of my back. The festival grounds are more crowded now and late afternoon sunlight slants over the hills, bathing the tents and stages and revelers in liquid bronze.
“You killed it in there!” Yelena bursts from the tent behind us, Britt at her side. “My friends loved you. I love you!”
“Thanks.” I give them quick hugs. “Have you seen Shay?”
Britt’s brow furrows. “Not since she got off the decks.”
I frown and pull out my phone. You okay? I text Shay as Derek wraps his arms around my waist from behind.
“Wait’ll you hear Mira’s big news,” he tells Britt and Yelena. “They want her to play Electri-City.”
“Electri-City!?” Yelena squeals. “Oh my god, that is the best festival. It’s freakin’ huge. We have to go,” she says, turning to Britt. “We should start planning our outfits now.”
“When is it, anyway?” I ask.
“Third weekend in August,” Derek and Yelena say at the same time.
“Seriously?” My stomach drops. “That’s right after my audition.”
“What is with you and other commitments?” Derek kisses my shoulder. “You need to start clearing your schedule. You’re a big-time DJ now.”
“I don’t think I can do it,” I mutter, bitterness rising in my throat. I can’t believe this is happening again. I need to spend the next six weeks laser-focused on my audition, but this seems like too good an opportunity to pass up. Plus, if Pax Summerfest pays a hundred dollars for a DJ set, I bet Electri-City pays even more.
“Hey.” Derek rubs my shoulders. “You can totally do it. You’ll be fine.”
“You can’t not play Electri-City,” Yelena adds. “Nobody in their right mind would turn that down.”
“Even the smallest stage is like five times the size of this,” Derek adds, gesturing to the Silent Disco tent. My eyes follow his hand and I think about the crowd in there, how good it felt to make them dance. How good it would feel to do that again.
“What do you think?” I ask Britt.
“If you can dream it, you can do it,” she says, quoting one of the motivational posters Mom tacked up in The Gym Rat.
“Thanks, Mom,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Can you hold off on emailing Jake?” I ask Derek. “I’m honestly too hungry to even think right now.”
I don’t mention that I’ve been too nervous to eat all day. Now that my set is over, my appetite has come rushing back.
“Sure thing,” Derek says, putting his arm around my waist and kissing my cheek. “Let’s get you some food.”
“Have fun, you two.” Yelena twirls in a circle. “We’re going to dance!”
Britt shoots me a reluctant glance. “I could maybe get food….” she says.
“Come on!” Yelena tugs at her hand. “We already housed those cheeseburgers at the rest stop.”
Britt stands between us, looking torn.
“Just go.” I wave her off. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
Britt looks back at me as Yelena starts skipping off to the main stage.
“Come on,” Derek says, pulling me tighter. “They have these fries here that’ll blow your mind.”
I nod and snuggle into his embrace, but I can’t help checking my phone again as we make our way to the vendors. I still haven’t heard from Shay.
“You okay?” Derek asks.
“Yeah.” I sigh. “I’m just worried about Shay.”
“Her?” His eyes crinkle. “Why?”
“She always wanted to play Electri-City,” I tell him.
“So?”
“I feel bad that I got it instead,” I explain. I watch a giant toadstool on wheels drift by, with bass p
umping from hidden speakers and a cluster of people dressed as gnomes dancing on top. “It’s not even my dream. It’s hers.”
“Hey.” Derek stops in the middle of the path, his eyes slicing into mine. “You can’t let Shay hold you back. You owned it in there, fair and square. That’s why Jake noticed you. You should be fucking pumped right now.”
“I am,” I insist. “But she’s been doing this forever and I just started. I barely know what I’m doing.”
“You clearly know what you’re doing.” He tucks a curl behind my ear and kisses me: gently at first, then less so. I sigh into him as people stream around us, trying to forget about Shay and the hurt in her eyes. I run my hands up his back and into his hair, and after a long time he pulls away.
“We should get going,” he says, breathing hard. “Before I drag you back to my camp and we miss the whole festival.”
I raise an eyebrow. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“You’re bad,” he laughs. “It’s your first festival. You should enjoy it.”
He takes my hand and we find a food vendor selling burgers and Belgian fries in paper cones. Derek nibbles at his as I rip into mine, a trickle of grease and ketchup escaping down my arm. Before I can catch it, he leans over and licks it up.
“Who’s bad now?” I tease.
He winks and pulls me toward the Lip Smacker stage. It’s decorated with dozens of giant lips, made from slick plastic and pink mirrors and LED lights. An enormous, magenta mouth mounted over the DJ booth opens to emit a cloud of colored smoke.
“I have to pop backstage for a sec,” Derek says, dangling his all-access lanyard. “Think you’ll be okay here?”
“I’ll be fine,” I assure him. The DJ is playing a track that sounds like rubber balls bouncing down a highway, and the crowd is going nuts. I’m full of fries, still riding high from my set and Derek’s kisses. “Just promise me you’ll come back.”