The Hop (8 page)

TAYLOR HEARD RAIN running in the downspout outside her bedroom windows as she packed. Her wish for rain had come true, but it wouldn't last forever. And she wouldn't get to march with the protesters. When she got home, the pond would probably be gone.

How would she be able to look at the space where everything had once been?

Her mother stepped in and dropped some clean laundry on her bed. “Did I see your bike outside in the drive?” she asked.

“Sorry.” Taylor rain downstairs and out the back door, through the open garage.

The wet concrete felt cool beneath her bare feet. She hoped she didn't step on any night crawlers. She righted her bike and rolled it into the garage, and then she went back out. Taylor liked standing in the rain. It was salamander weather.

A van with
Ryan and the Rompers
painted on the side stopped in front, reversed, and backed into their drive.

“Hi,” a man said, getting out of the van and smiling at her. Raindrops blossomed on the bill of his baseball cap. “You the lead singer?”

What was he talking about?

Her dad came out the back door carrying parts of his drum set. “Hey, Ron. You know Peggy Sue?”

“Don't believe so,” the man said, sticking out his hand. “Ron Waters. Guitar.”

Taylor wondered if she should tell him her name wasn't Peggy Sue, but she didn't want to embarrass her dad. “Hello,” she said, shaking the man's hand.

The men opened the van and Taylor saw sound equipment, boxes, tripods, and all kinds of musical stuff. Her dad wrapped his drum set in blankets and wedged it into place.

“See you in Reno,” he said, sliding the door shut and clapping Ron on the back.

As the van pulled away, her dad's cell phone chimed, and to Taylor's surprise he didn't answer or even look to see who was calling. He just pushed a button and it went quiet. She'd
never
seen him do that.

“You ready to rock and roll?” he asked Taylor.

She stared at him. He looked different. Fluffier. His face wasn't scrunched up.

And he was gazing at her as if he were counting the petals on a flower. “So how come you've never come with us before?” he asked.

Didn't he know the first thing about her?

“I like to stay here.”

He nodded. “Right.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “But here will still be here when we get back.”

Not all of it. That's what was so terrible.

Maybe it was just the misty clouds making the light weird, but Taylor felt something scary brush her heart.

She'd begged to stay home. Just this year, she'd promised her parents. She'd go next year and every year for the rest of her life if she could just stay home this year. But her grandmother was in the hospital for a few days. “To get built back up a little,” she'd told Taylor. Nothing to worry about. And Kia was at camp. So there was nobody for Taylor to stay with.

She followed 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.

“There,” 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.

“What are you up to?” Taylor's mother asked.

Taylor wished her mom wouldn't sneak up on her.

“Oh, 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.

“Come 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.

“This 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.'”

“Who said
lollipop
?” Taylor's dad demanded from the doorway.

“I was just showing Taylor the place where we met. I didn't know Eve had kept all this old stuff. Remember the first time we danced?”

Her dad started to hum and sort of rock around. Her mom got off the bed and they touched fingertips, their arms bent, smiling at each other, and then her mother sang some silly words.

Taylor put her pillow over her face. She couldn't stand it. Had her parents been taken over by alien beings? How would she ever survive a whole week in Reno with them?

FROM A DEEP SHADOW inside the stinky thing's turtle shell, Tad watched humans tromp back and forth carrying things that smelled like home. The fragrance of carrots, potatoes, thyme, and damp earth made him so homesick he shriveled up to almost nothing. As the humans went in and out of the giant turtle shell, they made noises to each other. Their noise wasn't as pretty as birdsong, but better than squirrel jabber or dog talk.

Before long, the turtle shell went dark—so dark he could not see his own hands. Then something rumbled beneath his belly. The stinky thing was waking up and starting to move. Tad crouched, still as stone.

Where was the roaring stinky thing going?

After a while, Tad crept over the trembling bottom. Through a crack in the shell, he saw great snakes of light, the white snakes chasing him, the red snakes racing away from him. Shapes flashed by in the rain. Everything was covered.

He was getting farther and farther from the reno shape, where he had seen the queen. And he was getting deeper into the covering.

He thought about leaping out of the giant shell. The crack was big enough. But he was very high up, plus he would leap into the snakes of fast light.

Tad backed away from the crack.

It was so cold that his warts hurt and his rear diggers started to go numb. He hopped around, trying to keep warm.

The song from his dreams, the one that had made Buuurk roll in the peas laughing so long ago, popped into his head. He swayed back and forth on his diggers, belting out a few words. But without Buuurk, it wasn't fun. Tad just felt even sadder than before. His voice trailed off until it was a whisper, and he stood silently, shivering.

Behind a box, he found a sluggish grasshopper and a cold fly. He stared out the crack again, feeling the chill of the air.

He had to find a place to burrow before he froze to death.

The stinky thing jolted, flinging Tad into the air. When he landed, he was among carrots, their tops tickling his back. And the carrots were buried in something like dirt. It didn't smell exactly like dirt, but his diggers could make a little tunnel that he could back into.

He stayed among the carrots, half frozen, for what seemed like forever. Sometimes, to prove to himself that he could still move, he left his burrow to peer out of the crack in the turtle shell. When it was light, he saw a wide golden body of water sparkling in the sun. He watched as the stinky thing followed along its edge for a very long time. Finally, heavy with cold and loneliness, Tad went back to his burrow and slept again.

The next time he awoke, he wondered where Buuurk was. And then he remembered. Trembling, he crossed the turtle-shell bottom to peer through the crack again. To his amazement, he saw mulch piles so tall they reached into the clouds, and big animals with horns eating grass.

Over and over, he dozed among the carrots and returned to peek at creation. In places, Mother Earth's body was full of painful-looking cracks. In other places, she was all sand piles. Once, far off, Tad saw giant twisted rocks, like fantastical beasts, rising into the sky. He saw strange squirrel-like animals popping in and out of holes in the ground.

He had no idea Mother Earth was so big and had such amazing animals wandering over her. If Buuurk were here beside him, they could marvel at these strange things together. If Buuurk were here beside him, Tad would feel brave.

“SAY HELLO TO RENO!” her dad said as their car passed under the sign that arched over the street.

“Hello, Reno!” her mother sang.

“Hello, Reno,” Taylor mumbled, feeling a little weird talking to a town.

“Such a friendly sign,” her dad sad. “Friendly town too.”

“Look, Taylor. There's our hotel.” Her mother pointed ahead where two tall towers and a connecting crosswalk made a giant white H against the blue sky.

“It's so big.” She thought of things that began with H. Horoscope. Hiccup. Hack. Hop. Homesick.

As she followed her parents into the vast glass-and-marble lobby, she looked up at the colorful silk banners that moved like clouds on a breezy day.

“Over here,” her dad said, herding Taylor and her mother toward a large sign that said
WELCOME 30TH ANNUAL ROCK AND ROLL EXTRAVAGANZA
.

Her mother saw somebody she knew, and picked up the pace, waving.

“Wally,” her dad called, pumping a man's hand and slapping him on the back.

And before Taylor knew it, they were in a crowd of people. As the grown-ups jabbered, Taylor looked at the posters of bands. They were mainly older people wearing clothes from a long time ago. One guy had on tight jeans and a black leather jacket with the collar turned up. He was playing drums just like her dad's.

Taylor blinked. It
was
her dad.

And was the woman with the microphone to her mouth…the woman wearing a red-and-white polka-dot skirt belted in really tight at the waist…
her mother
?

Taylor practically pressed her nose to the glass. It
was
her mother.

“And this must be your daughter,” a woman was saying, handing Taylor's mother some papers to sign.

Taylor's mom nodded.

The woman grappled a purple hoop big enough for a dog to jump through out of a stack of other hoops and handed it to Taylor.

“Watch this!” said a girl a few feet away. She hung her red hoop around her waist and begin to gyrate like crazy. Taylor could see her moving her lips as she counted. Seventeen, so far.

“You do it too!” she commanded Taylor, not losing count.

Taylor tried, but on the fifth spin, the hoop wobbled down her legs and bounced on the floor.

The girl let hers fall, hooked it with her foot, and flipped it into her hand.

“You're really good,” Taylor said. The girl was wearing a crown. A very sparkly diamond crown—though the diamonds probably weren't real. “Are you like the queen of hula hooping or something?”

“Nope.” The girl smiled, showing dimples. “I'm the Queen of the Hop.”

What
was that?

“Come on, Diana,” a man called. “We need to get unpacked and settled in.”

“See you,” the girl called over her shoulder as her family headed across the lobby to the elevators.

The woman behind the registration desk was still handing out folders and plastic bags full of stuff. “You'll need your name tag too,” she told Taylor. “It'll get you into all the events. And I see you're one of our rock-and-roll babies!” She handed Taylor a big glitter pink star with Peggy Sue
written in gold. “We have two Dianas, a Donna, and a Susie coming this year.”

Taylor looked at her dad. He winked.

Surely he knew her real name, didn't he? But she didn't want to make a fuss, so she put on the gaudy name tag.

On the way up in the elevator, Taylor watched as downtown Reno and then the desert and mountains fell away below her, until her stomach nearly came out her mouth. She turned around, pretending to read the bulletin board. Right in front of her face was the schedule of youth events. At four o'clock, there would be a hula hoop contest.

Her mother put her hand on Taylor's shoulder. “I don't like these elevators either,” she said.

They got off on the thirty-eighth floor. Taylor's head felt tight, like it might pop. Isn't that what happened to balloons when they drifted up too high? They popped?

Her mother put the key card in the door. When it opened, Taylor saw a big room with a couch and chairs, and even a table for eating. There was a tiny kitchen. They were so high up, she thought she might be able to see home from the floor-to-ceiling windows.

“Look, Taylor,” her mother said, leading the way. “You've got your own bedroom and closet and bathroom and everything.”

Her bedroom had floor-to-ceiling windows too, and mirrors on the opposite wall that reflected nothing but the cloudless sky. It was like floating in space.

Taylor flopped onto her bed, burying her face in the pillows.

“You okay?” her mom asked.

Taylor nodded.

“Alrighty then. I'm going to change my shirt and get back down to rehearsal. You'll probably want to eat before your dad and I are back.”

She gave Taylor a quick lesson in ordering room service. “We'll be in the Painted Desert Room, and I'll have my cell phone on.” She got it out of her purse and turned it on. Taylor noticed she didn't check voice mail—just slid the phone in her jeans pocket.

“Is yours on?”

Taylor took it out of her backpack and looked. It felt weird to have her own phone. She didn't even know her phone number.

“So we're connected at all times,” her mother said.

She went into her bedroom and shortly came out wearing a different shirt and a fresh coat of lipstick. “See you in a couple of hours. Call me if you get scared or worried. Watch a movie. When your dad and I get back we'll make microwave popcorn, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Make sure the door is double locked after I leave.” She showed Taylor how to do that. “Don't let anybody in except room service. And look through the peephole first.”

Taylor listened to her mother's footsteps fade into silence. As she turned to look out across the desert, she felt the tower sway. Suddenly she longed for the feel of grass beneath her feet, and earth that seemed to give a little when you curled your toes against it.