had come after us.”
Mrs. Brown and Mr. Pritchard laugh together at this. I realize they’ve been laughing the whole time we’ve been here, that telling this story together has made them happy, even though the work they did was dangerous and hard.
I look at Sarah and Emma, and I know that’s what they want someday, to have an amazing story like this to tell, one where they faced obstacles but were brave, one where they made a difference in people’s lives.
And that’s when I feel the big feeling again—the one I felt the first time I picked up Monster’s bass—that strange sense that I’m becoming larger. Just by sitting here listening. Just by understanding how large a person’s life can be.
Chapter Seventeen
The Girl with the Lizard Tattoo
I have never been anywhere with Emma Lyman where she didn’t spend most of the time reading or else staring moodily into space. Minivan rides to theme parks and history museums, shopping trips to Creekside Mall, and two frozen hours at the Ice Capades every year since Sarah and I were seven, you could always count on Emma’s reading and staring. But so far today, I’ve visited the home of a civil rights hero with Emma and eaten pizza with Emma, and now I’m sitting at Sid’s about to hear an old-time fiddle and retro jazz band with Emma, and not once has she pulled out a copy of Trout Fishing in America or searched the ceiling for something more interesting than the current company she’s with.
We’re sitting next to each other in a booth close to the stage waiting for the waitress to bring us some coffee, which Emma seems to consume by the gallon. Across the table, Sarah is writing like a madwoman in her little notebook, holding up a “wait just a sec’” finger to anyone who tries to talk to her. “I’ve got to copy over my notes from this afternoon,” she explains when I ask her what she’s doing. “This is amazing stuff, just amazing. Imagine it! Our soccer field was sacred ground, and we had no idea. There ought to be a memorial plaque up or a statue or something.”
Then a feral look enters her eyes, and there can be no doubt that Sarah is going to be standing in front of the town council at its next meeting, demanding that a statue of Septima Brown and Hazel Pritchard be erected in the middle of the Mason Farm Road soccer fields pronto. As in now.
“So you and Monster,” Emma says when Sarah returns to her feverish scribbling. “You’re a thing?”
I look over at her, surprised at the sheer, well, high schooliness of this question. We spent two hours this afternoon with a woman who not only was on a first-name basis with Martin Luther King Jr., but actually chastised him for not putting more women in leadership positions. We have been riding around in a VW Bug with a man who got members of the Klan locked up behind bars at a time when hardly anyone was convicted of crimes against blacks.
All afternoon we’d listened to stories of people walking three miles at night to get to the school, eighty-year-old men writing their names for the first time in their lives, and people getting shot at but still coming just so they could have the right to vote.
And now Emma wants to discuss my love life?
Emma shrugs, as if she’s read my thoughts. “Maybe it’s trivial, but I just happen to think you and Monster make an interesting pair. I mean, you’re basically young and unformed, and yet you have the good sense to hang out with Monster Monroe. I never would have predicted it, to be honest.”
I frown, feeling slightly offended. “You don’t think I’m good enough for Monster?”
“I’m not sure you’re cool enough for Monster,” Emma says matter-of-factly, taking the cup of coffee our waitress holds out to her. “Though after today, I’m reconsidering that opinion. I mean, those boots seriously rock. You always did have good clothes, though. Very original.”
I stick a purple-cowboy-booted foot into the aisle for all to admire. “I bought these on Zappos.com,” I tell her. “And Monster and I are just friends.”
“You’re an idiot then,” Emma says, pouring cream into her coffee. I wait for further commentary, but she appears to have lost interest in me.
I’m saved having to contemplate my idiocy in solitude by the entrance of Todd the Biker, who slides into the booth next to Sarah.
“Hey, little sister,”