A Hard Day’s Fright

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

August 14, 1966

H
ere’s the thing people didn’t get about Lucy Pasternak, I mean people who never met her: Lucy sparkled.

Back when the rest of us Baby Boomers where white bread ordinary, Lucy was one of the beautiful people. Inside and out. She wasn’t afraid to let it show, either. Lucy let her personality shine through, no matter what people said or thought about her. Like that time the kids in her sophomore class were picking on a newcomer simply because she was new, and Lucy stood up for the girl and welcomed her to her lunch table (which, because it was Lucy’s, was
the
 lunch table).

Or the night we went to the Beatles concert at Cleveland Municipal Stadium, and Lucy wore a miniskirt seven inches above her knees. Nobody was doing that then. I mean,
nobody
but the models in the fashion magazines. My mother practically choked when Lucy walked in to pick me up to go the concert. And me? I don’t think the word
dork
had been coined yet, but I didn’t need a word to explain how I felt standing next to tall, reed-thin Lucy in my turquoise and white plaid skirt, my blue blouse, my kneesocks, and the matching cardigan my mother insisted I wear in case it got chilly. Oh yeah, I was a dork, all right, and I could only pray that by the time three years passed and I was seventeen—as old and mature as Lucy—I’d be half as cool.

Yes, we did use the word
cool
.

I remember that distinctly, because I remember the first words Lucy spoke when we all piled onto the train (only, here in Cleveland, we call it the
rapid
) to head home after the concert.

“I am cool! I am brave! I am, my dear friends, groovy, neat, and really something else!”

Lucy flopped into the seat beside me. When most girls were still wearing their hair teased up into a beehive and hair sprayed to within an inch of its life, Lucy’s sweet corn-colored hair was past her shoulders and as straight as she could get it with the help of her mom’s iron and ironing board. She swung her head, and her hair gleamed. She was wearing golden lipstick and her nails glistened with gold polish, too, only Lucy called it “nail lacquer,” the way the English girls we read about in
Seventeen
did.

Like I said, Lucy was cool.

And she was so hyped-up that night, she wasn’t about to let anyone forget how cool.

Just before the train lurched forward, Lucy jumped out of her seat and squealed the news for all the world to hear. “I am the bravest person in the world! The bravest…” She heaved a sigh and touched one finger to her golden lips. “And the luckiest!”

When the old lady sitting across the aisle gave her a dirty look, I signaled Lucy to sit down. “You’re already in enough trouble for getting that F in your summer school poetry class,” I reminded her, sure to keep my voice down. The kids we were with were Lucy’s friends, and all of them were older than me. I didn’t want them to think I was some kind of reject, or worse, a know-it-all. “You’re lucky you got to go to the concert tonight. If your mom finds out you were acting up on the rapid—”

Lucy threw back her head and laughed, completely ignoring my warning.

“I kissed Paul,” she told the woman sitting across from us, and I guess she figured it was all she needed to say, because she laughed again and turned away from the lady so she could tell us what she’d already told us a couple dozen times since we walked out of the concert. Not that I minded or anything. As far as I was concerned, Lucy could go right on telling the story forever. It was that amazing.

“I got out of my seat and ran onto the field and jumped up on stage and…” Her sigh heaved the pink blouse she was wearing with her khaki-colored mini. “I kissed Paul McCartney. Right on the mouth.” Lucy giggled and I did, too. Before that night, there was no way I could ever have imagined anyone getting that close to one of the Beatles, much less my very favorite Beatle, and when the
anyone
in question was the girl who had once been my babysitter and now considered herself my friend…

A shiver of excitement raced up my spine just as Lucy crooned, “Oh yeah, I’m brave, all right. And I’ll never let anything or anyone…” Lucy didn’t look my way when she said this, but she did glance around at the other kids who were with us. She looked at Janice Sherwin and Bobby Gideon, in the seat in front of us, and then to the seat behind ours where Will Margolis and Darren Andrews sat side by side. “I kissed Paul McCartney! I’ll never let anyone else’s lips touch mine again. Ever.”

“Get over yourself!” Bobby turned around and knelt on the seat so he could boff Lucy on the arm. “A couple thousand people stormed the stage at the concert. You weren’t the only one.”

“I was the only one who made it all the way up on the stage. I was the only one who kissed Paul. And…” Lucy knew a thing or two about pausing for dramatic effect. I’d tried it myself a couple times and always came off looking more like a goofball than dramatic and brooding like Lucy. “I was the only one of all of us who had the nerve to get out of my seat and dodge the cops out on the field.” Lucy gave each of them another appraising glance, and yeah, she looked as superior as she was feeling. But then, she had every right. No way I could hold it against her, especially when she patted my knee to show she understood why I hadn’t joined her when she took off running. Lucy knew my parents would have killed me if they found out I ever did anything that reckless. That—along with the fact that I was a born chicken—meant I’d never have the nerve, and Lucy knew it. But then, compared to Lucy and her friends, I was just a kid. “I didn’t see any of you up there on stage with me and the Beatles,” she told her friends.

“Thanks to you, the concert almost got canceled.” The comment, just a little icy around the edges, came from Janice, and I wasn’t surprised. Truth be told, Janice Sherwin terrified me, but then, Janice pretty much terrified everybody. In her tailored clothes and with her carefully bleached and ratted hair, Janice was a force to be reckoned with and not somebody who would tolerate the kind of chaos we’d all seen break out soon after the Beatles took the stage. The next day’s paper would call it a
riot
, and they were pretty much right. In fact, the concert had been stopped for about half an hour. That is, until some man finally came out on stage and threatened to cancel it altogether if everybody didn’t get back in their seats.

I was fourteen and more than a bit of an idol worshiper. I was convinced that if Lucy hadn’t decided to sit back down, nobody else would have, either.

Silently, I thanked her for coming to her senses and allowing the show to go on so I could hear Paul sing “Yesterday” live and in person.

“If they hadn’t let the Beatles come back on stage, I never would have forgiven you.” This time, there wasn’t just a tinge of ice in Janice’s words, they were positively frozen. She tossed a look over her shoulder at Lucy that was just as cold. And twice as surprising. As the two most popular girls at Shaker Heights High School, Lucy and Janice had always been best friends, even though Lucy was going to be a senior that year, and Janice was a junior. I hadn’t seen them together much over the past few months, but that wasn’t all that unusual. Lucy worked a part-time summer job at the Shaker Heights Country Club, and Janice had spent a good part of June and July traveling in Europe with her parents. It wasn’t my imagination, though—Janice was frosty but Lucy was just as cold right back.

Their icy clash put a chill on what had been, up until that moment, the most exciting night of all our young lives.

“Hey, but the show did go on, right? So everything’s copacetic.” I wasn’t surprised that Will was the one who jumped in to smooth things over. Will was what the other kids called “sensitive.” I was just going into my freshman year at Shaker and I didn’t know much about boys, but I knew I liked the sensitive ones.

When I smiled at him over my shoulder and Will smiled back, I turned around—fast—before everyone on the train could see that my cheeks had turned as red as a fire engine.

“Leave it to Lucy to go where angels fear to tread.” It was safe for me to turn around again, because Darren said that, and I could look his way—and Will’s—without looking too conspicuous. “Lucy is my hero.”

If Darren Andrews had said something like that about me, I would have melted into a puddle of mush; he was that much of a dreamboat. Darren had sandy hair. It was a little long, and he’d have to get it cut before school started again in a few weeks, but for now, Darren’s shaggy hair and his sparkling blue eyes made him look like the star of one of those surfer movies. That night, Darren was dressed just like a surfer, too. He was wearing shorts made out of that bleeding madras fabric that faded and ran a little every time it was washed, and a shirt that was open enough at the neck to reveal the Saint Andrew’s medal that was his prized possession.

Yes, I know, I was only an almost-freshman, and Darren, who was going to be a senior, was way out of my league. But thanks to my friendship with Lucy, I knew things about the older kids, and I knew that Darren and his family liked to flaunt their connections to old Scottish royalty and that Saint Andrew, as the patron saint of Scotland, represented their blue-blooded roots. Who could blame him for showing off?

“You gonna tell your parents what you did tonight?” he asked Lucy.

Her jaw went rigid. But then, Lucy was always up for a challenge. “Maybe I will.”

“Maybe you’ll get grounded for life.” Since he knew it wasn’t nearly as likely that Lucy’s hip mom and dad would punish her the way I knew my stodgy parents would have done, Bobby laughed. “Maybe we all will if our folks find out what you did and think we ran out on the field, too.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Unlike the easygoing surfers in the movies, Darren had a way of lifting his chin and straightening his shoulders that pretty much said he was better than everybody else. From what I’d heard, it was true, so I didn’t take it personally. “My parents know I’d never do anything like that,” he snapped. “After all, people like us—”

“Don’t mingle with folks from the lower classes.” Bobby said this like it was a joke, but we all knew it was true. Maybe joking about it was what made it possible for Darren and these other kids to remain friends. Shaker was anything but a second-rate community, and none of our families was destitute. In fact, kids we met from other schools always assumed we were rich, just because of where we lived. But in the great scheme of things, none of us was in Darren’s class. The fact that he hung out with us, anyway (or at least that he hung out with Lucy and the others—I was pretty much invisible in Darren’s eyes) said a lot about Darren.

He fingered the gold medal around his neck. “You know I’d never say that about you peasants,” he joked, and everyone laughed.

The train careened around a corner, and we all held on tight. Though it was summer and it stayed light until after nine, it was late and the streetlights were already on. The rapid pulled into its first stop and people shuffled off.

The moment the train started up again, Janice said, “You know it really was dumb of you.” We didn’t need to ask what she was talking about. We all knew the comment was aimed at Lucy’s headlong dash across the baseball field to where the stage had been set up near second base. She turned to give Lucy a probing look. “You could have been hurt. You could have been trampled. None of us would have liked to see something bad happen to you.”

“So kind of you, luv.” Lucy added that last—very British—word and made it sound natural in a way I never could. “But there’s no need to worry about me. I, after all, am the bravest woman in the universe!”

There were groans all around and Will piped up. “Brave, huh? Let’s see how brave you are when you have that meeting with Mr. Wannamaker next week.”

Lucy had a meeting scheduled with the school principal? This was news to me, and from the open-mouthed reactions Will got, I guess it was to everyone else, too. Apparently it was supposed to stay a secret, because Lucy shushed Will with a look.

“You mean I’m the only one who knows!” It’s not like Will was rubbing it in; he was just used to being one of the gang instead of the center of attention.

“Will knows something we don’t know,” Bobby crowed, singsong. “Anybody want to bet that when it comes down to it, Lucy doesn’t have the guts to face Wanny?”

“Nobody talks to Wanny one-on-one and lives to tell about it,” Janice barked, and from what I’d heard about the principal, I knew it was true.

“Even you’re not that brave, Lucy,” Darren said, laying a hand on Lucy’s shoulder. Maybe just being touched by Darren was enough to make any girl shiver, because she shrugged him off.

Darren leaned forward. “You’re not really going to do it, are you? We’ll miss you when you’re gone!”

Lucy knew he wasn’t serious. Me? I wasn’t so sure. From what I’d heard about Wanny, anything was possible. Especially if Lucy wanted to see him to complain about a school policy. When it came to rules and regulations, Wanny was a die-hard. Lucy, of course, was a rebel. Oil and water didn’t mix. I knew it, and I knew Lucy didn’t care. It was the only reason I dared to pipe up. “You could get in trouble, Lucy, and—”

“Not to worry, Little One.” I knew Lucy meant well, but I hated when she called me that in front of her friends. I didn’t mention it. For one thing, there was no use calling any more attention to myself. For another, there was a tight muscle at the base of Lucy’s jaw. I knew better than to push her when her mind was made up. “None of you need to worry,” she added with another glance around at the group. “For I, Lucy Pasternak, am the coolest, the most daring, and the bravest—”

“Here we go again!” Janice moaned.

“No, here we really go!” Bobby jumped out of his seat. While we’d been busy talking, the rapid had arrived at a stop. Bobby, Darren, Will, and Janice lived near each other, and this was where they all got off.

“See you later, alligators,” Bobby said.

Janice walked by without another word.

Will slid past Darren. He gave me a smile before he went to the door, and all I could do was hope he didn’t hold being called
Little One
against me.