Gimme Everything You Got - Iva-Marie Palmer Page 0,92

Tutu and the . . . ,” I yelled over the noise, realizing I’d forgotten the band’s whole name.

“The Pirates?” Joe shook his head. “No, that’s a warm-up act. They’re okay. From Elgin. I guess they’re better than the Watergate Tapes.”

Joe pursed his lips and watched the band play. He looked like he wanted to crack the code of why that band—who looked like they were in high school, too—was onstage and he wasn’t. I put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll get a show here someday.”

He beamed. “I hope you’re right,” he said. The group finished with a clatter of instruments and noise and whoops from the crowd. “I mean, the standards are low. Plus, Ben got dumped so we have a drummer again.”

Then five new guys came out, and the guy at the mic threw a roll of toilet paper at the drummer. “That’s Tutu and we’re the PIRATES! Let’s go, Tutu!”

The band launched into a song that seemed to be called “Debbie Debbie Debbie and her Prison Baby” and was relentlessly upbeat. Joe started pogoing off the balls of his feet with the rest of the audience, and I followed his lead. Everyone more or less danced the same, and it didn’t seem to matter if you knew what you were doing or not.

“Are you having fun?” Joe hollered a few songs later.

“Yeah,” I shouted, and it was true. I tried to remember the last time I’d had fun like this. Maybe when Joe had taken me to Skee-Ball.

The band paused for a second and the bassist switched guitars. “That’s the toilet seat bass I told you about,” Joe said. “They’re gonna play ‘I Wanna Be a Janitor.’”

The singer grabbed a plunger that he waved around as he sang, and the crowd went even wilder. Near me, a girl stepped into a guy’s cupped hands and hurled herself onto the outstretched hands of a dozen or so other audience members, who passed her along to a second group of people, who passed her on to another, until she dismounted right near the stage. I saw Twinkle go up next and make it even farther, landing right next to the singer and yelling the lyrics into the microphone.

As the crowd’s frenzy grew, Joe and I were pressed tighter together. When the band launched into a song with a tempo so fast I couldn’t understand a word the singer said, a tattooed man next to me jumped in the air and the contents of his beer cup went up like they’d been spouted out by a spitting cherub in a fountain. Joe grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the way before the beer could land on me. “That was close,” he said.

“Thanks for saving me,” I said. His fingers were wrapped around my hand and we both looked nervously at our clasped palms before he let go.

The show wrapped as abruptly as it had started—a punk thing, Joe told me—and we spilled out of the club with everyone else.

As we made our way back to the L, Joe told me that Tutu had once opened for the Ramones. “I’ve wanted to see them since then,” he said. “So thanks for coming.”

“Well . . . if we’re doing each other favors,” I began, grinning so Joe wouldn’t think my question was too big a deal, or feel like he had to say yes, “I need a date for my dad’s wedding, and I was thinking, you want to go with me?”

“Really?” Joe said.

I smiled and nodded.

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll even change my T-shirt.”

Twenty-Five

On Sunday, while I tried to write my report on Great Expectations (titled “Great Disappointments”), I kept drifting into thoughts of the night in the city with Joe. It was new territory for me to have daydreams about something that had actually happened and I hadn’t made up.

It wasn’t one of my fantasies or anything like that. I thought about how Joe had said he was going to apply to colleges. That would probably mean no more Saturday practices or concerts if he went far away. It was another entry on the list of reasons not to let things change between us. In movies, there was always some woman waiting for a guy to come back to her, like needing a guy was the basis for her entire character. I never wanted to be that woman.

Knowing that I didn’t like the idea of being left behind—by anyone—going away to college sounded more attractive. On