Red Velvet Crush Read Online Free PDF Page B

not sure what we are celebrating, other than the fact that my dad is working the late shift again and Winston had enough cash to buy a keg.
    Maybe we’re christening the new band. It has been official for a few hours now, and Jay and Ginger and Ty all have been invited,but so has every other person Winston has ever met and a few new ones he found at the liquor store while picking up the beer.
    Last time this happened, we had some dude named Tom living in our house for three weeks. He slept on the couch and cooked excellent scrambled eggs. I taught him how to play “Heart and Soul” on the piano, both parts. He preferred the top half ’cause he didn’t have to set his cigarette down to play it.
    Tonight our living room is full of Winston’s friends. Some of his buddies from the station are here, along with the leftovers from his karate club and most of my high school. Everybody in town knows everybody else, and everyone shows up at the parties. The beer is free, and there isn’t anything else to do.
    I hate parties. I hate having all these people in my house, in my space, looking at my things and making judgments and pretending that they know something about me because they have seen my stuff.
    The boys are always too grabby. The music is always too loud. I usually find myself a spot and stick to it. Watch the craziness from the sidelines and wait to rescue Billie from her latest misadventure.
    I take a seat at our piano, facing down a battalion of beer cups sweating white rings onto the wooden top. It is a battered upright that came our way when my grandmother died and my uncles cleaned out her house so they could sell it, quick.
    I didn’t know my grandmother that well, she wasn’t that close to Dad, but she stored some musty music books in the piano bench that opened up like a shallow coffin.
    It wasn’t exactly in tune when we got it, and the ivory was missing from a couple of the keys, but I could tap out “Heart and Soul” half an hour later. It was a vibratey, slightly cringe-inducing rendition, but somehow my dad hung in there, listening with his head cocked to the side.
    Now the keys are sticky with spilled beer. I trace over them, holding my fingers just above the cracked ivory, remembering my mother’s favorite song.
    She used to open this same piano bench when we visited my grandmother’s house. She’d sift through those same books and wrinkled sheet music until she found the exact right one, the only one that she ever played. Then she would sit up perfectly straight, with posture I never saw her use in real life, and start to play.
    Her hands were beautiful. She had long, thin fingers with nails that were always shaped and polished, no matter how many hours she worked or how many days she disappeared for.
    Billie’s hands could be beautiful, too, if she’d stop bitingher nails to the stubs and tearing at her cuticles with her teeth. They are a ragged mess, with glitter polish and stick-on decals like unicorns and hearts. It is all dime-store stuff, basically anything small enough to steal.
    I have my dad’s hands. Kind of squat and stubby; not feminine at all. I keep my nails short.
    My mom’s rings would glint in the sun as her fingers slid along, swift and true. She played only once or twice a year, maybe, and always just that one song. But she always found the keys without fault, without hesitation. It was magical.
    Billie and I would dance around like ballerinas, jumping and twirling and floating through the air with imaginary fairy wings on our backs, instead of worn Fair Isle sweaters and Winston’s hand-me-down sweatshirts, dust motes from Grandma’s carpet rising into the air to swirl around our arms and our hair while the song filled our heads.
    I can play that song by heart.
    I hear it in my sleep, memorized it the first week we had the piano.
    It is burned into my brain and comes through loud and clear, even now, with the