Authors: Nancy Springer

The Friendship Song (13 page)

Gus was out on the porch waiting, and when she saw us waver into sight she got up and walked to meet us. Really, she didn't just walk. She hurried, she almost ran. It was about the fastest I'd ever seen her move except maybe the time she jumped over the U-Haul hood to kiss my dad.

“You coming to prop us up?” Rawnie called. She wasn't a bit scared of Gus anymore.

“Sure, I'll do that.” She put an arm around each of us and steered us down the street. “But what I really want is to tell you what I just heard on the radio.”

Even before she said it we both knew, and we both started jumping like we weren't dead tired after all, and we both screamed, “Nico!”

It was true. Nico Torres was conscious. Out of danger. Off the critical list. Asking for a pencil and a piece of paper so he could write down an idea for a song.

A week passed. It took most of it for Rawnie and me to stop feeling tired.

Gus found the exact right thing to go with her flagpole eagle and license plate and smashed Pepsi can, which was a silver belt buckle shaped like a lonesome cowboy with a guitar on his back. She found it just lying on the ground, out near the red drum riserâI mean, the red Cadillac.

Dad took me shopping for new shoes, and he nailed the old ones up on a big tree in the backyard to start a “shoe tree.” He nailed up his oldest pair too, and a pair of Gus's. From now on all our old shoes would go up there together, because we were a family.

Rawnie didn't tear up her pictures of Ty Shaney, but she did put them all away in the back of her closet.

I didn't have any more trouble in school. Aly Bowman was trying to make some, she went around telling everybody I was an overgrown butch, but who cared? Nobody who mattered listened to Aly. Anyway, I didn't mind anymore that I'm big. If a person is going to try to be a rock guitarist, it's a good idea to be big and tall.

The most important thing that happened was, by the end of the week Nico Torres was moved out of intensive care into a regular hospital room.

Saturday we went to visit him. It was Gus's idea. Rawnie and I would never have tried it ourselves. How could we expect to get in, past all the security and stuff? But Gus told us, “No problem.” And sure enough, when she said her name to the guard at the hospital elevator, the man got on his walkie-talkie and word came back from someplace to let us come on up.

Nico was sitting in bed with a big pillow behind his head when we came into the room. He looked pale. Being so near to him made my heart ache, and I couldn't stop staring at him, but it didn't matter. He wasn't looking at me or Rawnie, just at Gus.

“Uh, Gus McCogg?”

“Yeppers. That's me.”

“Um, jeez, I've got it all wrong. I was expecting a guy. Uhâyou're really him? I mean, uh, her? You're the Gus McCogg who wrote âThe Friendship Song'?”

The answer was yes. I don't remember the words exactly because my mouth had dropped open so far my jaw tripped some sort of circuit breaker in my brain and I wasn't functioning. All I could do was babble. “Ba-ba-bu-butâ”

“You?” Rawnie managed. She looked about as shorted out as I felt.

Gus glanced around at both of us and smiled. “Sure.”

So that was how she could get along without a regular job. And that was why she had a Mellotron and a Dobro and stuff in her junk sheds. And that was how she could get rock concert tickets when they were sold out. Butâ

“But Gus,” I blurted out, “who's your friend?”

She knew exactly what I meant, right away: that the person who wrote “The Friendship Song” should have some sort of special friend for life. Her smile widened and her nose got extra pink. “It was always just sort of a dream before,” she said. “Now it's your father.”

Rawnie's face lit up and she grinned like Miss America. She looked the way I felt. “Radical,” she said.

“All
riiiight
!” I agreed. Then I shut up, because of the look in Nico's eyes. He was trying to smile, but his voice was wistful and faraway when he said to Gus, “That's the way it's been for me. A dream.”

Everybody in the room except him had something she'd always wanted and never gotten, and we all knew it. Gus walked over to his bed and touched his hand. “Don't give up on it,” she said.

“I won't.” Nico gazed up at her. “I did almost blow it, though. After Ty let me down.”

“You were entitled to feel betrayed.”

“I guess. But I was stupid. You know, it wasn't even so much that I really liked him. I just wanted somebody to hang my heart on, and I did it to him.”

“Oh.” Gus nodded at him. “I see. You gotta wait for the right person, kiddo.”

“Yeah, I know. It wasn't even really Ty's fault. He was just being who he really is, and I had these ideas of himâusâand he shot them full of holes.”

“Listen, keep some of those ideas. Keep the faith.”

“I will. I am. I've got my act back together now.”

“Okay.” She blinked and seemed to realize that she barely knew him, so she backed off a little. “I don't mean to tell you what to do. We just came by to see if we could help.”

“I think you already did.” Nico turned his head, looking at Rawnie and me like somebody had just played a joke on him, the good kind, and he hadn't quite figured it out yet, but he knew it meant somebody liked him. There was a smile just starting at the corners of his mouth. “I'm not sure what's going on here, but I know you two. I dreamed about you.”

I guess he could see we weren't surprised, but we didn't say much. He wasn't real strong yet, and we didn't want to wear him out with talking. We just said hi, and we told him our names, and Rawnie said, “I hope it was a good dream.”

“The best. There was the most incredible band, and you were fronting it, and Harper was playing the hottest ax I've ever heard. And you both sang, and every word was for me. You were doing it for me.”

This didn't make much sense, yet it sort of did. I said, “âThe Friendship Song.'”

“Yes. And all through it I felt like I just wanted to die, you know? Because something I believed in was shot down in flames. But then after you were done I finally started to see, I understood. I could still believe. âThe Friendship Song' was still alive. It was just not in me right now. It was in you. In you two.”

I looked at Rawnie and Rawnie looked at me, and I knew that for that moment we were standing right on the center of the circle that was eternity. Right on the hub of yang and yin, with lifetime after lifetime of black and white spinning through us. And then Rawnie opened her mouth and started to sing, and she hip-hopped and started to dance, she just had to, because outside in the street somebody was walking by with a boom box that was playing,

Hey, I remember when

We were desperadoes

You had a guitar on your back

And I had a gun in my hand

And when it came down to the end

You took the bullet they meant for me

And smiled 'cause you could see

I was gonna be okay

Friend
.â¦

About the Author

Nancy Springer has passed the fifty-book milestone with novels for adults, young adults, and children, in genres including mythic fantasy, contemporary fiction, magic realism, horror, and mysteryâalthough she did not realize she wrote mystery until she won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America two years in succession. Born in Montclair, New Jersey, Springer moved with her family to Gettysburg, of Civil War fame, when she was thirteen. She spent the next forty-six years in Pennsylvania, raising two children (Jonathan and Nora), writing, horseback riding, fishing, and bird-watching. In 2007 she surprised her friends and herself by moving with her second husband to an isolated area of the Florida Panhandle where the bird-watching is spectacular, and where, when fishing, she occasionally catches an alligator.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Drew Padrutt

ISBN: 978-1-4976-8874-2

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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New York, NY 10014

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