Sometime After Midnight - Hardcover

L. Philips went to Ohio University for a degree in music education, decided that job was entirely too noisy, and became a librarian instead. When she’s not working, she enjoys belting out show tunes when she thinks no one is listening and watching the same episodes of Thomas the Tank Engine over and over (or at least that’s what she tells her toddler son). She lives in Ohio and is the author of Perfect Ten.

Chapter One
 
Nate
 
“Nate! Wake up!”
 
As soon as I hear Tonya’s screeching voice, I feel the icy liquid. I look down. While I was daydreaming, the Mr. Freezy I’d been squirting into a cup overflowed, all over my hands and all over the floor. And, regrettably, all over my shoes. Which is a drag, because I love these shoes in particular. They started as just plain white canvas, but I’ve added blue and red circles and stars, and now they’re my Captain America shoes. Steve Rogers himself would have dug ’em.
 
“What’s wrong with you today?” Tonya asks me as I look around wildly for a rag to mop up, all the while try­ing not to move and spread sugary raspberry slush any further.
 
“Tired, I guess,” I mumble. I dare a glance at Vic­tor, my best friend, who flings an already dirty rag at me and desperately tries not to make eye contact. I start cleaning up. “Sorry, Tonya. It won’t happen again.”
 
“Good,” she says, though I sincerely doubt she believes me. I look at her bleached hair, roots dark and thinning, instead of directly at her face. “I’m leaving for a while, if I can trust the two of you not to destroy the place.”
 
“We’ll be fine,” I promise my stepmother, and Victor nods.
 
Tonya turns slowly, inspecting us both with disdain before heading out the Dairy Barn’s back exit, screen door slamming behind her.
 
Victor and I both let out audible breaths.
 
“Dude, you okay?”
 
“Of course. You know how she is. Tomorrow she’ll get pissed that I dropped a peanut or something.”
 
“No, I mean before. You were staring off into space for, like, a good five minutes.”
 
“Judging by the amount of blue raspberry Mr. Freezy on the floor, it couldn’t have been more than two.” I wring out the rag in the sink, blue sludge running thickly down the drain. Victor’s still scrutinizing me. “Really. I’m just tired,” I repeat. “Had a weird dream last night.”
 
“Was it the one about Paul McCartney again? Because, dude, I know he’s an icon, but he’s old.”
 
“No, not Paul McCartney.” I resume mopping up the floor and do my best, but truth be told, there’s no amount of cleaning that could make Tonya’s Dairy Barn sparkle. “It was about Dad, actually.”
 
At that, Victor’s teasing smile vanishes. “The one where you’re him and you . . . jump?”
 
I nod.
 
A car pulls into the drive-thru, and Victor volunteers to take the order, speaking saccharinely into his headset mic. A couple of sundaes later and we’re back to our con­versation.
 
“You haven’t had that one in a while,” Victor says, and because Victor and I have been friends since the day I moved to Los Angeles nine years ago, he would know.
 
“It was the exact same, though. I’m my dad, but I can’t control what he does. He walks out onto the balcony and climbs over the railing and lets go. I wake up when I—when Dad hits the pavement.”
 
Victor grimaces, and I don’t blame him. It’s not exactly a great visual; I can say that from experience. After Dad killed himself, I had the dream several times a night, reliving the steps he must have gone through in his final moments. Over the years, the dream came less and less frequently, until finally it stopped, when I was about thirteen or so. Until now, apparently.
 
I look at Vic. “Do you think it means anything?”
 
Victor considers this, then says, “Nah. I bet you’re just thinking about him a lot. Since you’ll be outta here soon and all.”
 
“From your lips to God’s ears,” I say. Victor also knows that since day one of living here, I’ve wanted to get the hell out. And I don’t mean L.A. Los Angeles is pretty cool in a lot of ways, even if I miss New York sometimes. He means out of Tonya’s house and out from under her thumb and living on my own. I won’t be able to afford college; that’s been off the table for a long time. But as soon as I walk off the high school gymnasium stage with my diploma next spring, I want to walk into my own place. I’ve put aside as much money as I can from the Dairy Barn, which isn’t a lot, but it will cover a deposit. I’ve got the rest of the school year to save more, and by then, I hope, I’ll have plenty of guitar gigs lined up. No more Tonya. No more Dairy Barn.
 
Victor is probably right, so I push the dream out of my mind. I’ve never looked for signs or omens before, and I’m not going to start. Also, at the moment, there are more pressing things, like cleaning off my shoes. I bend down, this time with a clean paper towel, and try to save them.
 
“So about the concert tonight . . .”
 
“Here we go,” I mumble. I don’t want to get my hopes up, because the concert in question—featuring one of my all-time favorite bands, the Jacket Zippers—has been sold out for weeks. Plus it’s in a twenty-one-and-over club. Plus the bouncers at the club actually do, like, bounce people. So that’s three strikes against being able to go. But I really, really, really want to. The Jacket Zippers’ gui­tarist is just sick.
 
“I think I could get us in.”
 
I stand up, Captain America shoes forgotten. “With fake IDs? Yeah, I don’t think so. I mean, the last time you got us fakes, we had Chinese names.”
 
“So?”
 
I gesture to us. I’m a pasty white mix of Irish and German. Victor is 100 percent Italian. If he wasn’t so overweight, he’d be a dead ringer for a young Pacino.
 
Victor waves away my concerns. “We could be adopted. Anyway, we don’t need IDs. Not the way we’re going.”
 
“Through a shady back alley door?”
 
“Precisely, my friend.”
 
My shoulders slump and my hopes right along with them. “Don’t tell me. You once did a favor for a guy who knows a guy whose cousin is one of the Jacket Zippers and he owes you.”
 
Victor stares at me. “How’d you know?”
 
“You are a walking cliché.”
 
“Says you.” Victor eyes my outfit, piece by piece: the Captain America shoes, the cut-off jeans, the red sus­penders, and the purple paisley button-down shirt. I’m not sure which cliché he’s referring to, but it could be any combination of the following: geek, eccentric musician, hipster, and gay. I readily admit that I am those things and very proud of it, thank you, but Victor has a point.
 
“Trust me,” Vic says, a phrase oft repeated and usu­ally followed by a very, very good reason not to trust him. But I really want to see the Jacket Zippers, and a night out with Victor is always guaranteed to be entertaining, whether or not he pulls off his promise. Maybe especially if he doesn’t.
 
“Okay, let’s go,” I say. But I’m not getting my hopes up that I’ll actually get to see the band because . . . well, Victor.
 
“Awesome.” Victor is already texting someone. Per­haps his overprotective mother, perhaps any number of the “connections” he has. Or perhaps he’s just boasting about our evening plans all over social media. Whatever he’s doing on his phone is far more important than working, obviously, because when another car pulls into the drive-thru, he doesn’t acknowledge its pres­ence. Or mine.
 
“Why don’t you play on your phone while I work?”
 
He nods and hops up on the counter, thumbs going like mad, my sarcasm completely undetected. “Thanks, man.”
 
With a sigh, I pull my headset down and plaster a smile on my face so that the customers can hear it in my voice. “Welcome to Dairy Barn!” I am the epitome of job satisfaction. “Would you like to try a cookie dough Icy Typhoon today?”