by Anna Hecker
Girls like Shay. Girls like me.
I don’t know why he’s like this. Maybe it really is his mom, or maybe it’s just the way he is, someone who’s so addicted to having money and power and connections that he doesn’t care who he hurts along the way. All I know is that he’s not going to stop. Not unless I find a way to stop him.
I think about the signs outside the festival gates, the security guards who rifled through our instrument cases. Something hard and jagged crystallizes in my chest. I know what I have to do.
“Is everything okay?” Nicky’s hand on my arm makes me jump. I’d almost forgotten he and Crow were here.
“Yeah. I’m done here. Come on.” I spot a security guard leaning against the stage. I start toward him but Derek grabs my wrist, yanking me back.
“Ouch!” I try to pull my hand away, but his grip is hard and cruel.
“Come on,” Nicky says, a warning in his voice. “She told you she’s done.”
“But I’m not done with you,” Derek snarls, his eyes boring into mine.
“Get your hands off of her!” Nicky screams, smacking Derek’s arm.
Derek bats him away like he’s nothing more than a fly. “You’d be nothing without me,” he tells me, his eyes glinting ice. “You were just this little loser until I came along and made you what you are.” His face reddens and his chest puffs up and I’m suddenly aware of the fact that he’s no taller than I am; he’s no longer larger than life. “I eat girls like you for breakfast,” Derek spits as I struggle in his grip. “You think I can’t do better than you? You were just some dumb toy for me to play with until something better came along.”
His words are like a quick smack on the cheek. By the time they stop stinging, the hurt is gone.
“She’s not a loser.” Crow appears on my other side, towering over Derek. “You’re a loser. Who even talks like that?”
Derek stares at us, his chest rising and falling with quick, angry breaths.
“Your friends are freaks,” he says, letting go of my wrist. “And so are you.”
He backs away, bumping into a group of girls taking selfies. As he turns to them with a thousand-watt smile I push my way through the crowd, to the front of the stage.
I find the security guard, say a few words in his ear, and point to Derek.
He picks up his walkie-talkie and begins barking commands just as the band finishes playing and Shay takes the stage.
CHAPTER 48
“That was Derek, wasn’t it?” Nicky asks when I’m done talking to the security guard.
I nod. Shay steps up to the decks, pink and blue lights sweeping across her face. “You won’t be seeing him again,” I tell them.
“What a dick!” Crow gasps. “What were you thinking?”
From the corner of my eye I watch Derek emerge from the crowd. A squad of security guys moves in around him, broad backs in black polo shirts swallowing him whole.
“Hey, I get it.” Nicky gives my shoulder a comforting pat. “He’s a hot dick.”
Shay taps the mic. The crowd strains behind me, waiting for the beat to drop. A security guard slaps a pair of plastic handcuffs on Derek and leads him away.
Shay spreads her arms like a bird about to take flight. Her smile is so huge, so genuine and happy it feels like it could light the dance floor on fire. She has no idea what just happened to Derek, no idea that I’m here, but I know exactly what she’s feeling now. I can sense the nerves beneath her calm, can see her sizing up the crowd as she tries to ride the delicate line between giving them exactly what they want and playing the songs in her heart.
She brings in her first track, soft and low. The beat enters me like water, lifts me over the crowd. It slides from the speakers like liquid silk, wrapping the whole crowd in its web.
Tears gather in my eyes as my hips start to move: tears for the set I’m not playing and the music Shay is, for the future I left behind at Fulton, for Britt back at home trying to put the pieces of her life together, and for Yelena who will never have that chance. I cry for Derek, who will never be the person I fell in love with. And for myself, because I fell in love with a lie.
I feel a hand on my shoulder and look over to see Nicky swaying next to me, Crow dancing with her bass on his other side.
“Hey.” He stands on tiptoes to reach my ear. “This actually isn’t so bad.”
Next to him, Crow nods in agreement.
“Thanks,” I say, smiling through my tears. “I think?”
I watch Shay choose another track and I ache to be up there with her. I yearn for the feel of knobs and dials under my hands, the tangle of beats in my headphones. Snippets of music flash through my head, layering beneath Shay’s beats: Nicky’s leg jittering a drum-and-bass rhythm. The keytar player and bassist from the last set. The saucy strut of that practice-room trombone. It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing.
Above me Shay glows with stage lights and sweat and something more, something so pure and joyful it turns us all into a sea of stars. Spotlights sweep the crowd. I open my mouth and let my voice fly free, calling her name, raising my hands to the heavens. A spotlight lingers on my face, warming my skin and making spots explode in my eyes.
The beats. The trombone. Yelena’s arms in the air.
The bass.
My trumpet.
The band.
The spotlight.
Shay. Nicky. Crow.
It hits me like a high A-sharp, suddenly and smack-dab in the middle of my head.
I know what that track was missing.
I jump up and down, waving my arms and calling Shay’s name. But everyone’s yelling, everyone is jumping up and down. Of course she doesn’t notice me.
The spotlight is still on me. I just have to catch her eye.
I undo my trumpet case, hands shaking as I snap my instrument together and wave it in the glare. My heart thrums and the spotlight starts to move away, and just as I think I’ve blown it Shay squints and takes a step back. Her eyes land on the glare from my trumpet. The light moves away. And then she sees me.
She does a double take.
And before I can change my mind I’m scrambling over the lip of the stage and Shay is pulling me up, her face opening in a laugh as her arms open wide, circling me in a hug.
“Mira Mira, in the house!” she screams into the mic, diving back behind her rig as I motion for Crow and Nicky to join me.
“What is happening?” Crow demands as I yank at her sleeve, trying to pull her up behind me.
“Get up here.” I’m breathless, my heart pounding as the stage vibrates beneath my feet.
“I don’t think …” Nicky starts to say.
“Just do this.” I cut them off. “I just blew my audition and had my boyfriend arrested. So please, just do this for me.”
They look at each other and shrug, then scramble onto the stage.
“Get your instruments out,” I beg, excitement squeezing my words into gasps.
“You’re acting crazy,” Nicky says, reluctantly opening his case.
“I know!” I reply. But I can’t help it—I can’t stop moving, pressing the valves on my trumpet, hovering over Crow as she pulls her bass between her knees, hopping behind the decks to join Shay.
“What’s happening?” she asks, her eyes cutting from me to Nicky to Crow and her double bass.
“Our track.” I don’t have time to explain. “It was missing something.”
“This?” Shay looks from our instruments to the crowd. A field of curious eyes gazes back, no doubt wondering what a trio of musicians in recital clothes is doing up on stage with the DJ. “Mira, I don’t know….”
I know what she’s thinking: that this is her big break, and I’m probably about to ruin it.
Maybe she’s right. I don’t know anymore. All I know is that this is what I want more than anything else in the world, and we only have one chance to get it right.
“Can you cue it up?” I beg. “If it doesn’t work we’ll l
eave the stage and pretend nothing happened.”
Shay’s tongue pokes out from between her teeth.
“I guess….”
“Great.” I turn to Crow and Nicky before she can change her mind, maneuvering them into place behind the microphones where the keytar player and bassist stood. “You two just follow my lead.”
They both look at me like I’ve grown a second head. Shay cues up the track. I clutch my trumpet. My heart races.
Out beyond the festival the sun has dipped below the horizon, leaving peach-colored streaks in the sky. The crowd is a blanket of blinking lights, faces softened and blurred by darkness. Shay brings our track in, light and easy as summer rain. My heartbeat sprints past it, pounding through my body and into my fingers, making them thrum with music and desire.
The beat builds through four bars, then eight.
At twelve I bring my trumpet to my lips.
Here goes nothing, I think.
I take a breath and blow, my fingers coming down on a low, rich D that vibrates across the dance floor and disappears like a memory on the end-of-summer air.
Note by note, I spin a phrase. It catches on the beat, not quite falling into step, and for a long, terrible moment I’m back at the Fulton Jazz Conservatory’s grand hall, blowing that and now this. Over the bell of my trumpet I see people gathering their things to leave.
This can’t be happening. Not again. I’ve already lost everything: my spot in the conservatory, my chance to be a DJ, my boyfriend and Yelena and almost my sister and, if this doesn’t work, probably my friends.
I need this to work.
I pause and close my eyes, filter out the rest of the world until all that’s left is the rhythm and me. Once it’s embedded deep as my own blood I raise my trumpet and belt out the melody again.
This time it sticks. The melody and rhythm fall into a groove and I feel the crowd pause, considering. Giving us a chance.
My eyes find Crow and Nicky and I nod them in. Crow brings her palm down flat on her bass as Nicky’s sax soars over the lip of the stage.
The crowd shifts. People who were starting to walk away drift back again. I can feel the pull of interest from the outskirts, dancers flitting back to our music like moths. They find their footing in the beat; feet start to tap, hips start to sway. Shay adjusts the levels. A smile breaks like sunrise across her face.
I lead us into a chorus, notes falling fat and glistening from my trumpet. They illuminate the dance floor, turning every limb to gold. The crowd swells forward and rises, lifted by the music, transformed.
Sweet, hot jazz pours from our instruments and mixes with the beats booming from the speakers, and I close my eyes but this time I’m not in Harlem and it’s not 1944. I am right here, right now, in this year and this day and this moment. I don’t need to close my eyes anymore because the dancers are right here in front of me, losing their minds and screaming my name and flinging themselves into the air.
The music sounds just like it did in my head. The missing pieces fit together in a combination of jazz and dance music that I realize was always there, just inside of me waiting to bubble to the surface. It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard before—nothing any of the thousands of people out there have ever heard before—but it’s perfect and complete, total and whole and mine.
I look at Crow, red-faced and smiling above the strings. Nicky raises his sax in a salute. I glance at Shay and she flashes me a secret smile and I know this won’t be the last time we make music together, not even close. I can tell this is just the beginning.
I look out at the crowd, a mass of churning limbs and blissed-out faces, then past them to the edges of the festival, the edges of Randall’s Island, the city, the world. My future spreads out before me, full of possibilities. I could live with Crow and Nicky in New York. I could try for NYU or Juilliard, or Berklee in Boston—any number of conservatories that haven’t had their auditions yet.
I could keep DJing. Shay and I could be a duo, tag-teaming our way across the continent. I could keep producing. I could strap on a backpack and travel the world, picking up jobs wherever I land and learning music from every culture, checking out the jazz scene in cities like Paris and New Orleans that Grandpa Lou dreamed of visiting, and hitting up dance music festivals in Croatia and Berlin that he never could have imagined.
All I know is that wherever I go and whatever I do, this is my music now. I’ve found my sound—and the people I want to make it with—and now that I have it I’ll never let it go.
Shay eases the volume up on the track and we segue into our final notes, all of us rising together in a glorious finale that explodes like fireworks over the crowd. I set down my trumpet and raise my arms, soaking up applause. When I walk to the front of the stage the cheer grows to a chant, a sea of thousands calling my name.
I bow my head and the chant swells, rising up over the island and filling the sky, reaching from Bushwick to Harlem to all the places I have yet to go.
I spread my arms, rise to my toes, and leap into the crowd. They catch me, holding me over their heads, and I fly.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing is like DJing: you mostly do it alone in your room, but you need other people to bring it to life.
Thanks first and foremost to my wonderful agent, Eric Smith, for responding to my query in less than ten minutes (on your birthday, no less!), believing with all your heart and soul in this book, and for being a friend and spirit guide in publishing and parenting.
To my wise, insightful, and delightful editor, Becky Herrick: you were always right, even when I didn’t want you to be. I cannot thank you enough for your unflagging passion and thoughtful feedback as an editor and band geek. Thanks also to the rest of the team at Sky Pony Press: Emma Dubin, Kate Gartner, Bethany Bryan, and Joshua Barnaby. You are all magical flying unicorns.
When the Beat Drops was fortunate to have a great group of early readers: Tina Wexler, Bernie Barta, Lauren Scobell, Emily Settle, Sunny Lee, Claire Taylor, Shani Petroff, and particularly Danielle Rollins and Leah Konen, whose fingerprints are all over the story in the best possible way.
I’m equally lucky be part of the inimitable Electric Eighteens debut group and the unstoppable #TeamRocks, who help me face the always-questionable decision to become an author with laughter, medicake, and way too many emojis.
I am eternally grateful to Candice Montgomery, Shannon Luders-Manuel, and Nena Boling-Smith, my team of brilliant diversity editors, for adding depth and dimension to this book. Thanks also to Samantha Isom for inspiring Mira’s biracial identity, and for graciously answering my questions about hair.
Hustle is as important in publishing as it is in dance music—and Liane Worthington, Savannah Harrelson, and Crystal Patriarche at BookSparks are the classiest hustlers of all. Thanks for making my little book feel like a big deal.
My parents, Zeke and Linda Hecker, brought me up reading (or at least, raised me in a house without television so I didn’t have much choice). Thanks for your unflagging belief in me as a writer—and thank you, Dad, for your early read and formidable musical knowledge.
This book was inspired in no small part by my vibrant family of DJs, producers, party people, and dance floor freaks. Thanks to the beautiful people of A Cavallo, Alien Underground, The Armory Podcast, Asylum, Bangarang, The Blackbird, The Bunk Police, Camp D, Charlie the Unicorn, Container Camp, DanceSafe, The Danger, De Menthe, Distrikt, Disorient, Empire Breaks, Figment, Freeform, Gemini & Scorpio, The Get Down, Gnome Camp, the Grampagers, Gratitude, Hooping NYC, House of Yes, Icarus, Illeven:Eleven, Kostume Kult, Mobile Mondays!, Mysteryland, New Amsterdam Village, The NYC Bass Collective, NYC Decom, NYC*Ravers, Opulent Temple, The Paper Box, PEX, Playa Del Fuego, Pink Mammoth, Prismatik, Punks Music, Rat Camp, Rubulad, my Secret Santas, The Sexy Tramps, Smoochdome, The Space Cowboys, Sparky’s, SRB Brooklyn, Tasty Noodles, Transformus, Winkel and Balktick, Wonderland, Zone Records, and all the other beat-fiends and burners. Extra shout-outs to Agent 137, DJ Assault,
Aston Harvey, The Beatslappaz, Been Jammin’, Big Daddy, Deekline, DivaDanielle (whose rainbow unicorn vibes may or may not have rubbed off on DJ Shay), DJ Icey, DJ ICON, Douggie Style, Justin Aubuchon, Kellye “Mohawk” Greene, Lady Waks, Lee Mayjahs?, Mafia Kiss, Martin Flex, Martin Hørger, Philip Evans, DJ Shakey, DJ Shooey, DJ $mall ¢hange, The Stanton Warriors, Tanya Everywhere (who still isn’t a DJ), The Teknacolor Ninja, Wally Whatever, Wavewhore, Wylie Stecklow, Zach Moore, DJ Zinc, and everyone else with whom I’ve broken bread in the name of breaking beats.
Finally, thanks for eight years of pure magic to my Vitamin B crew: Tektite, Illexxandra, Anna Morgan, VJ DoctorMojo, Guncle, Sammycakes, and, of course, Tim the Enchanter—my favorite DJ and favorite husband.
And thank you, Jack, for being the sweetest distraction of them all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anna Hecker grew up at the dead end of a dirt road in Vermont. She holds an MFA from The New School and spent a decade writing ad copy and chasing beats before returning to fiction, her first love. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son, and fluffy bundle of glamour, Cat Benatar. Follow her @ HeckerBooks on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.