Chelsea

As I hurtled toward New York City on a Greyhound bus, I’d
imagined my destination would be a gleaming ultrachic high-rise
or a brownstone full of cousins, aunts, and uncles who would
gather me into their arms, thrilled to discover the long-lost
relative they never knew they had. So the reality was a shock: a
hulking windowless concrete block on the corner of Houston and
Bowery, painted a forbidding black. There wasn’t so  much as a
doorbell beside the locked front door. Big jagged silver letters
spelled out the underground. Whatever it was—a restaurant?
a comedy club? a warehouse?—it looked about as welcoming as a
maximum-security prison.
I froze on the front stoop, unsure of what to do next. Had
my mother really grown up here? Two doors down a woman
with fluorescent-yellow hair and a zebra-striped minidress was
arranging thigh-high boots in a boutique window, and a mural of
a fire-snorting dragon on the side of the building vibrated with
color. Though cars blasted past me down the wide street, the side-
walks were surprisingly empty, except for a guy in a long black
apron smoking against a wall and a couple of skaters propelling
their boards in my direction.
Could I have gotten the address wrong? I dug in the front
pocket of my backpack for the letter I’d found last Tuesday, the
letter that had changed everything—my past, my present, my
future. The return address, in my mother’s loopy handwriting,
assured me I was in the right place. I pulled it out and unfolded it,
hoping for some clue I’d managed to miss.

Sweet Chelsea Bell,

By the time you get this letter, I hope you’re old enough to under-
stand and forgive me for leaving. As I write, you’re probably
sleeping in your bed, what’s left of your favorite blue blankie
clutched to your face, and it hurts to think that the next time I
see you you’ll be older, bigger. Maybe you’ll barely remember me.
Maybe your dad is reading this letter to you, or maybe
you’re old enough to read it on your own. Or maybe—if I’m
really lucky—we’ll be together soon and you’ll never need to read
this at all. Still, I’m writing it just in case.
You’re the best daughter I could imagine, better than I
deserve. And your dad’s a good, kind, responsible man. I need
you to know I’m not running away from him. I’m running
toward something. Does that make sense?
I can’t explain exactly why I went away, but here’s the main
thing: I’ve been given a chance to undo the biggest mistake of my
life. That’s why I’ve come back to New York City, to the home I
grew up in. I don’t know yet how long it will take. There are
some people I need to talk to in person. One of them is Jackie,
my best friend from high school. I hope you’ll meet her someday,
because I know she would love you, and I bet you’d feel the same
way about her.
Though I’m far away, everything I see makes me think of
you. Like today, out on the street, I saw a woman in a pink suit
being pulled along the sidewalk by a pack of five identical white
poodles. I know you would have laughed at the sight of her flying
along, her fussy little pink high heels barely touching the ground
as the dogs raced her down the street. You have the greatest
laugh, like lots of bells ringing all at once. At night, when I’m
trying to fall asleep, I close my eyes and I can see your face and
hear that laugh.
Remember me always,

Mom

No matter how many times I read the letter, her words still
sent a jolt through me—an electric current of love, sadness, and
even guilt, because my memories of her had worn away, vanishing
like that tattered blue blanket. All I could summon was warmth,
the tickle of her hair on my face, and the scent of her perfume—
cut grass and little white flowers.
My discovery of the letter had been completely random. I’d
had the day off from slinging crullers at Mr. Donut, but it was the
worst kind of day off, with nothing to do and nobody to do it with.
I finished the last of the mystery novels stacked beside my bed,
and the thought of walking to the library to get more in the
ninety-five-degree heat gave me a headache. My best (and only)
friend, Larissa, was stranded on a family vacation in a part of Cape
Cod so remote it didn’t even have cell-phone service. She’d be gone
for two whole weeks, and though it was pathetic that I had only
one real friend, that’s what moving every couple of years will do to
a person. By the time Dad and I arrived in Marblehead, I’d grown
so tired of starting over that I couldn’t make myself try very hard
to fit in. Luckily, Larissa transferred from private school in the
middle of freshman year, and she was in as dire need of a friend as
I was. But with her out of town, I might as well be a complete
pariah.
I could have used a ride to the beach, but of course my dad was
at his office, teaching. He never used to teach in the summer;
when I was little, he’d take me to the beach or the movies, or even
to his office, where I would spin around in his chair, make long
paper-clip chains, and draw with fluorescent highlighters. But at
some point I got too old to hang around with my dad, and he
started shipping me off to summer camp to be a counselor in
training. This summer I flat out refused to be sent away—I wasn’t
one of those hard-core camp types who lived to make lanyards and
fight color wars. I applied for the job at Mr. Donut so I’d have a
reason to stay home all summer for once.
So I’d gotten my wish, and there I was, hitting refresh at the
Nico Rathburn fansite every fifteen seconds, waiting for someone
else to make a post. When nobody did, forcing me to face the fact
that everyone in the world but me had a life, I decided to look
around in Dad’s closet in search of our old family photos, some-
thing I do every now and then so I won’t forget my mother’s face.
She died when I was three, or so my father had always told me. Of
a brief illness, he would say, to anyone who asked. His face would
go all pale and solemn, and you could tell whoever asked was sorry
they’d brought it up.
I riffled all the way through our box of family photos, and
somehow it still wasn’t enough. Dad’s closet was packed with car-
tons and shoeboxes; there had to be something else interesting in
one of them, but most of what I found was unbelievably pointless.
A stack of old bank statements. A yellowing manuscript from a
textbook Dad had helped edit. Manila envelopes full of tax docu-
ments. I’m not sure why I didn’t give up. I must have been really
bored.
But then I hit the—pun intended—mother lode: a shoebox at
the back of the highest shelf, where I’d never have stumbled on it
by sheer accident. There wasn’t much stuff inside, but all of it was
new to me. My birth certificate. My parents’ marriage license.
Mom’s old passport, stamped in Italy, France, Greece, the Neth-
erlands, and other places too blurry to make out. The next thing I
found set my heart racing: a snapshot of my radiant, glossy-haired
mom in a beret and a man’s flannel shirt. The picture was cut
crookedly in half. She’d been standing beside someone—an old
boyfriend, probably. Part of a hand was still holding hers.
I dug a little deeper and found a few more cut-in-half portraits
of Mom. She looked a lot younger—maybe my age. She was
dressed a lot younger, too; I saw none of the pastel shirts and denim
skirts she’d worn in my baby pictures. Even in a black Pretenders
T-shirt and torn jeans she looked regal and confident in a way that
had unfortunately passed me by, no matter how alike my dad
always said we looked. In another photo she wore a short skirt,
motorcycle boots, and a leather bomber jacket, the missing some-
body’s tan, slender but muscular arm draped across her shoulders.
In that one, she was glancing to the side, toward the person who’d
been chopped out of the picture, her blue eyes laughing.
But the next thing I found blew me away: an envelope
addressed to me, Chelsea Rose Price, care of my dad, Max Price.
Something about the handwriting on the envelope made my heart
beat faster. The blood whooshed in my ears as I read it and the
truth became clear. There hadn’t been a “brief illness.” And Dad
hadn’t sprinkled my mother’s ashes off the coast of Falmouth, the
way he’d said he had.
She hadn’t died at all. She’d run away from us, and he’d been
lying to my face about it for years.
Of all the lies a father could possibly tell his only daughter,
this seemed an especially cruel one—letting me believe my mom
was dead when she wasn’t. But why hadn’t she come home to us,
the way she’d wanted to? Had she changed her mind? Or had Dad
not let her? What else had he been hiding from me?
When I could trust my shaking legs, I ran for my laptop and
typed my mother’s name into Google. I found a Catherine Ever-
sole Price in Des Moines, Iowa. A florist posed beside a prize-
winning arrangement of tropical flowers, she looked nothing like
my mom. One Cathy Eversole turned out to be a fifty-something
real-estate agent in Bakersfield, California, and another was a
fluffy blond newscaster in Indianapolis. On the next page of hits,
I found what I was looking for—a four-year-old story in the North
Shore Ledger.

Woman’s Disappearance Still Unsolved

Ten years since a Danvers wife and mother went miss-
ing, police are no closer to solving the mystery of her
disappearance. On an ordinary weekday, Catherine
Eversole Price vanished from her suburban home with-
out a trace. A wife and mother of a three-year-old
daughter left a brief note saying she had business to
attend to in New York City and would return shortly.
Her husband, Max Price, declined to be interviewed
for this story, but police records show he assumed his
wife had taken a spontaneous trip to her hometown
to visit old acquaintances. Price, at the time a visiting
professor of economics at Harvard, said he thought
his wife would call him from New York and return
home within a day or two.
Letters sent from lower Manhattan reassured
Mr. Price that his wife was safe, and he resolved to wait
patiently for her return. “Cathy always seemed reliable
and sensible. I’m sure Max had no reason to think any-
thing was wrong,” a former neighbor of the couple told
the Ledger. But Price grew alarmed when days passed
without a word, and he went to the police.
An exhaustive search uncovered few leads, and
Price criticized investigators for what he perceived as a
slow and ineffective response to his wife’s disappear-
ance. Now an associate professor of economics at
Salem State College, he resides with his daughter in
Marblehead. A former Danvers neighbor still recalls
seeing Mrs. Price wheel her young daughter’s stroller
through town to the local playground. “Cathy was so
devoted to that little girl of hers. I can’t believe she
went away of her own free will. I’m afraid she must
have met with some kind of foul play.”
A yearlong investigation yielded no leads. “We’ve
done everything in our power to locate Catherine
Price,” County Sheriff Dan Stevenson told the Ledger.
“If a person wants to go missing, New York City is the
perfect place to hide.” He declined to answer questions
about why Mrs. Price might have chosen to run away.
“That’s a private matter,” he told the Ledger.

My heart sped up as my eyes traveled down the screen. So
the county sheriff thought my mom was still alive somewhere in
New York! It seemed at least as likely as any other possibility.
What if all these years she’d been hoping I would figure out the
truth and come find her? Then again, why hadn’t she simply come
to me? If she’d really been alive all this time, and hiding out some-
where, why not call and tell me she was okay?
But maybe she had tried to get in touch. Dad’s job-hopping
and our moving around from one town to the next would have
made it hard for her to track us down. And our phone number
was unlisted (“So students won’t call and wheedle me to change
their grades,” Dad had said). Of course Mom could have found
Dad’s work number online. But what if she hadn’t wanted to talk
to him? What if she knew he was trying to keep me away from
her? He’d kept that letter from me. Plus, the article said my
mother had sent “letters,” which meant there must have been
others.
Unable to sit still a second longer, I paced the house on shaky
legs, every familiar piece of furniture suddenly strange, as though
I’d woken up in somebody else’s life. On the living room book-
shelf, the framed photo of Dad and me goofing around at Wing-
aersheek Beach might as well have been a photo of two strangers.
Who was that man—his blond hair dripping with salt water, his
eyes the same clear green as the ocean sparkling behind us? Some
guy who had been lying to me for fourteen years straight.
At first I rehearsed the speech I was going to give when he got
home, muttering the words as I paced. I would expose him for the
liar he was. How can you live with yourself? Don’t you think it’s time
you told me the truth?
But as soon as I’d figured out exactly what I would say, I real-
ized it was no good. I knew he’d say he’d only been trying to pro-
tect me, and I wasn’t in the mood for his excuses. No: What I
wanted was to get away from him. I wanted to find out the truth
for myself. And more than anything, I wanted my mother.
Dad stayed at his office even later than usual, so I had a long
time to piece together a plan. The first step was obvious: I had to
get to New York City. I would start with the letter’s return
address, knock on the door, and figure out where to go from there.
Luckily, my seventeenth birthday was just a few days away. I knew
Dad would give me a check, the way he’d done since I turned
twelve and stopped wanting Barbie and her Dream House; I guess
after that, he couldn’t figure out what to get me anymore. That
was around the time I quit doing the things he wanted me to—
swim team, piano lessons, and getting straight As—and we
stopped having much of anything to say to each other, to the point
where all he ever wanted to talk about was why I hadn’t made a
list of colleges to apply to and why I didn’t already know what I
wanted to major in. How many times had I heard about my moth-
er’s great sense of purpose and direction, how she’d always known
she wanted to be a writer and go to Harvard, and, sure enough,
she’d applied herself and gotten in? How many times had I asked
myself why I couldn’t be more like my perfect mother?
Well, the joke was on Dad. I was about to become a whole lot
more like my mom. Now I had a purpose—finding her—and a
direction—as far away from him as I could get.

As it turned out, I was right about getting a check for my birthday.
Dad handed me the envelope and stood in the kitchen doorway
waiting for me to rip it open. He was on his way to his office, of
course. He fidgeted in his checked shirt and dorky tie as I read my
card and examined its contents. Five hundred dollars. More than
I’d expected. I should have been glad—after all, I needed the
money—but I couldn’t help feeling let down that it wasn’t some-
thing more personal or fun—an iPhone, maybe, or a boxed DVD
set of The X-Files, something that showed he had thought even the
tiniest bit about what I wanted and who I was.
Even so, as I thanked him and let him kiss me on the cheek, I
felt a twinge of sadness. I knew he would worry about me when
I was gone; he always worried. As I inhaled the familiar scent of
his aftershave, I was seriously tempted to blurt out how I’d found
the letter and give him a chance to explain himself. I opened
my mouth to speak.
But Dad stepped back, took a look at his watch, mumbled
something about being late for work, and bolted. It was my birth-
day, and even so he couldn’t wait to get away from me. I looked
down at the check in my hand and felt the anger flood in again.
Thanks, Dad, I thought. I’ll use this money to buy myself something
you could never give me: a new life not based on lies.
The very next day I slipped out of my house before dawn. That’s
how I came to be stranded in front of 247 Bowery, without a clue
what to do next. Would The Underground eventually open its
doors? And what on earth would I do with myself in the meantime?
I looked around, taking inventory. Across Bowery, well-lit and
glowing like The Underground’s polar opposite, stood a health-
food café. I crossed the street and ducked through the door.
Behind the counter a youngish woman with crayon-red hair and
hennaed hands was manning the juice machine.
I waited my turn, ordered a banana-coconut smoothie, and
asked, “So, that place across the street? Is that some kind of
restaurant?”
She gave me a look as if to say Well, duh. “That’s The Under-
ground. THE Underground.”
“Oh. Right.” Apparently I was supposed to have heard of this
place because, after all, New York is the center of the universe,
and THE Underground is the center of New York. “When does it
open?”
She shrugged. “Different times. Six, maybe. Or seven thirty.”
Great. It was only noon. The guy in line behind me was
breathing down my neck, and I could tell the girl wanted me to
move along, but I had about a thousand questions. “Do you know
who owns it? And how long it’s been there? Like if it’s been there
about fourteen years or more?”
“Of course. It’s been open since the seventies.” She sighed and
turned away from me, firing up the blender and drowning out any
further conversation.
So much for that strategy. If I wanted to learn more about The
Underground, I was going to have to find it out on my own. I took
my smoothie and set up shop at a table in the corner. Luckily, the
place had free WiFi. I googled The Underground and clicked on
the first hit. Punk rock started blaring out of my speakers, drown-
ing out the café’s wind chime-and-synthesizer mood music. One
table over, a lady with floaty gray hair and pink overalls shot me a
dirty look. The website’s jagged silver lettering—just like the let-
tering across the street—told me I’d found the right place.
I plugged in my earbuds and clicked to enter, and a collage
bloomed in front of me—picture upon picture, all of punk rock-
ers. I’d never seen so much leather, so many tattoos and body
piercings and Mohawks in one place. Had my mother grown up in
a punk nightclub? This didn’t mesh with what little I knew about
her—mostly the things my dad had told me. She’d had a 4.0 aver-
age at Harvard before she’d left school to have me. She baked
sourdough bread and made birthday cupcakes from scratch. Most
of all, she’d married my dad, who listened to Bach and Brahms
and whose idea of a wild night was having a glass of red wine
before he dozed off in front of Law & Order reruns.
I examined the evidence in front of me—a sea of unfamiliar
faces sprinkled here and there with one or two I recognized:
Blondie, The Ramones, Green Day. A link took me to The Under-
ground’s history, a formidable block of text in red letters on a
black background. The Underground has outlived its competition—
even the famous CBGB—and remains THE place to catch cutting-
edge underground music. . . .
This was all very interesting, but I was scouting for informa-
tion I could actually use. I found it in the second paragraph.
Visionary founder Jim Eversole . . . Could that be an uncle of mine? I
did the math quickly and realized he was about the right age to
have been my grandfather. After Jim’s untimely death, the torch was
passed briefly to his son, Quentin, who remade the site into an upscale
steak house. But The Underground’s original vision was revived by its
current owner, Hence, former frontman for Riptide. . . .
What kind of name was Hence? Was he a relative of mine,
too? I scanned the screen for my mother’s name but didn’t see it.
No matter. I had a strong feeling I was on the right track. I couldn’t
waste the rest of the afternoon waiting around for The Under-
ground to open. After all, how much time did I have before my
father guessed where I’d run off to and came looking for me? I’d
been careful not to leave any clues. Still, I could imagine Dad
getting home from work, finding me gone, and going on a
frenzied search. How long would it be before he thought to look
for the letter, found it missing, and guessed where I’d gone?
Back at The Underground, I tried pounding on the front door
until my hands ached. Nothing. I walked around to the rear of the
building, stepping over fast-food wrappers and broken beer bot-
tles. I found another door with an actual doorbell beside it. I
pressed it and heard a buzzer ring inside the club. No answer.
I rang again.
Just as I was about to give up, the door opened and I came
face-to-face with a guy exactly my height and slender, with brown
bangs that fell in his eyes and splotches of pink on his cheeks.
We stood for a moment, staring at each other. This couldn’t be
the  club’s owner; he was too young—around my age, or a little
older. He wore paint-stained cargo shorts and a faded purple
T-shirt with black letters that read punk’s not dead. Head
cocked questioningly, he looked at me, not saying anything.
He was probably just an employee, but my hopeful side won-
dered if he could be related to me—maybe a long-lost cousin?
“Hello. I’m Chelsea Price.” Would my name mean anything
to him?
It didn’t seem to; his head remained cocked. “We’re not
open yet.”
“I’m looking for the guy who owns this club. Is he here?” When
he didn’t answer, I tried again. “Hence. That’s his name, right?”
“He’ll be in later tonight,” he said, reaching for the door. “I’m
not sure when.” And he started to close the door on me.
“Wait! Please . . .” I could hear my voice getting higher, the way
it does when I get upset. “I took a bus all the way from Massachusetts
to see him. I’ve been dragging this backpack around since five
this morning. . . .”
He hesitated. “I don’t think Hence would like me to let you in.”
But something about his hesitation gave me hope. I leaned
forward a little, so that to close the door he’d have to slam it in my
face. “My pack is heavy,” I said. “And it’s so hot out.”
The guy sighed, but he didn’t shut the door on me. “You want
to fill out an application? I’ll give it to him when he gets in. . . .”
“No! I’m not here for a job. I’m looking for my mother, Cath-
erine Eversole.”
The expression on his face changed.
“You’ve heard of her?”
His response was tight-lipped. “I know the name.”
“You do?” I asked. “Is she related to the guy who founded the
club? She’s his daughter, isn’t she?” I was pretty pleased with
myself for having figured this out, but he didn’t answer. Still, he
swung the door open and let me in.
I followed him down a long hallway that reeked of fresh paint.
We passed a door that led into an industrial-looking kitchen and
another that opened into a room stacked high with mixers and
musical equipment, its walls smeared with graffiti. So this was
what a nightclub looked like.
“This way.” He opened another door and flipped on a light
switch, illuminating a steep staircase to the basement. I followed
him down the creaky steps. At the bottom he clicked on a bare
lightbulb dangling by its wire from the ceiling.
The basement’s floor and walls were stark cement, adorned
only by a poster of some band I’d never heard of called Black
Watch—three bare-chested guys in eyeliner and tartan plaid
pants. A metal cot was covered with a few scratchy-looking blan-
kets and a lumpy pillow. Against the foot of the bed leaned a bat-
tered electric guitar. “You can stay here until Hence gets in.” He
turned to leave.
“Is this where you sleep?” I asked his retreating back, not
wanting to be left alone for God knows how long. “Wait!”
He paused. Before he could disappear again, I asked, “What’s
your name, anyway?”
“Cooper,” he said. “Coop.”
“Are you Hence’s son?”
He laughed, as though I’d said something funny. “No. I work
here. And I need to get some painting done. I’ll let you know when
Hence gets home.” He took the stairs away from me two at a time.
When he was out of earshot, I allowed myself a heavy sigh. I
perched on the cot’s crinkly mattress, with nothing to do but wait.
The small, ancient TV in the corner got about four stations, all of
them too staticky to watch. I thought of the phone in my pocket,
but I couldn’t exactly call anyone. Larissa was still on the Cape,
and even if she hadn’t been, I couldn’t trust her not to crack under
my father’s interrogation.
After at least an hour had passed and I was about to die of bore-
dom, I started poking around Cooper’s stuff. Not that there was
much of it—a heavy English lit textbook under his cot, and a bat-
tered trunk plastered with stickers and stuffed with a tangle of jeans
and T-shirts with names of bands I’d never heard of. I fought the
urge to fold his clothes for him—that would have just been weird.
Instead, I picked up his electric guitar, slung the strap over my
shoulder, and stood in rock-star stance, giving it a strum. Not that
I knew how to play. Those piano lessons Dad had forced me to
take revealed I wasn’t the prodigy he’d hoped for, and in a few
months he’d gotten tired of nagging me to practice. Now, wonder-
ing if my mother had been musical, I ruffled my hair and drew my
lip back in a sneer, trying to look like the pictures on The Under-
ground’s website. I gave one last muffled, tuneless strum. Accord-
ing to my watch, it was five thirty. What if Cooper forgot his
promise to come and get me? Would I have to stay trapped in this
basement all night?
And then I started worrying about Hence. Cooper had seemed
nervous about my being here, like his boss would bite his head off
for letting me in. Why else would he be hiding me in the basement?
But if I really was the granddaughter of the guy who founded The
Underground, didn’t that make me something like rock-and-roll
royalty? Why wouldn’t the current owner be happy to meet me?
Suddenly tired, I thought about lying down on the cot, maybe
crawling under the blankets, but they smelled like boy and proba-
bly hadn’t been washed in months. Instead, I dug into my back-
pack, zipped on a hoodie for warmth, and put a T-shirt between
my head and the grungy-looking pillow. Earbuds in, I hit play on
my iPod and shut my eyes.
When I opened them again, groggy and disoriented, someone
was standing over me, watching me sleep. I bolted upright, strug-
gling to recall where I was. The someone was a guy, familiar and
strange at the same time, looking down at me with a wry little
smile, like I was a puzzle he was working out how to solve. I yelped,
scrambling to my feet, and our heads collided.
“Ouch!” The pain jolted me back to the present, and I remem-
bered where I was and how I’d gotten there. “Geez! What were
you looking at?” It didn’t seem fair, watching a person like that
while she slept.
“I came to get you.” The flush on his cheeks deepened. “I was
trying to decide whether I should wake you up.”
“You scared the crap out of me.” I didn’t mean to be rude, but
I’d always been cursed with a tendency to blurt out the first thing
that pops into my head. It was something I’d been meaning to
work on.
“Sorry.” The flush on his cheeks deepened.
I felt bad for snapping at him, so I changed the subject. “Any-
way, is Hence here?”
Cooper nodded. “He’s not in the best mood.”
I shook the hair out of my eyes and slipped my hand into my
hoodie pocket to make sure the letter was still safely there. “That’s
okay. Neither am I.”
“No, seriously. He can be prickly. It’s easy to get on his bad
side.” He paused to look me squarely in the face with eyes that
were midway between blue and green. “And I’m guessing you can
be prickly yourself.”
True as that was, I didn’t much like hearing it from a complete
stranger. “I’m not prickly.” I drew myself up to my full height.
“And I’m not afraid of your boss.” Because, really, how bad could
this Hence character be?
“Hokay.” Cooper’s mouth twitched, like he was holding back a
grin. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” And with that he led me up the
creaking staircase, into the heart of The Underground.

~

Catherine

My life changed forever on an ordinary Tuesday. I was rushing
home from school so I could get together with Jackie and start on
our homework assignment. The school year had barely begun, and
already I was feeling frazzled and more than a little frustrated—I
wanted to be doing my own writing, not some lame collaborative
book report. It was a hot, sticky afternoon, the kind of late-summer
day that made me want to hang out in a sidewalk café with an iced
tea and a fresh pad of paper, eavesdropping on the conversations
around me and jotting down every crazy idea that popped into my
head. It felt wrong to be wearing an itchy school uniform and lug-
ging a backpack, and even more wrong to have homework.
When I took the corner, I saw him right away: a slender guy
with shaggy black hair camped out on my front stoop next to a
guitar case and a big duffel bag. My first thought was Oh, no, not

another one. One of the most annoying things about living above a
nightclub—and believe me, there are plenty—is the musicians
who are always trying to introduce themselves to my dad, hoping
to convince him to put them on the bill. It’s a waste of time, of
course; Dad books his acts a year in advance, and he knows exactly
who he will and won’t let play in the club. A band not only has to
be great, it has to be on its way up, about to go national. “The
Underground has to stay relevant. We’re more than a place to hear
music. We’re tastemakers”—that’s how he puts it. He’s not exactly
humble when it comes to The Underground, but why should he
be? The place is kind of famous, and Dad’s a legend in the rock-
and-roll world. Or so everybody has told me all my life, to the
point where I get a little tired of hearing about it.
Really, I’d gotten so sick of coming home and finding stray
guitar-god wannabes on the doorstep that I was thinking about
sneaking around to the back door so I wouldn’t have to talk with
this one. He was staring down at his feet—lime-green Chuck
Taylor All Stars—so I could have slipped right around the build-
ing without him so much as noticing me, except he happened to
glance up as I was passing, and the look on his face stopped me.
He was striking, with dark eyes, glossy hair, skin like coffee with
extra cream, and the sharpest cheekbones I’d ever seen, but it was
more than that. He looked hungry. Literally. Like he hadn’t eaten
in days. I had this feeling he needed someone to be kind to him. It
was written all over his face: He was on the verge of losing hope,
and he needed someone to urge him to keep going, to fight for
what he wanted.
It was the strangest thing. It’s not like I’m usually good at reading minds.
If anything, I’m the opposite—dense about what other
people are thinking and feeling. But something flashed between
me and the guy on the stoop—a kind of understanding. So I went
over to him and he scrambled to his feet and dusted his hands off
on his jeans. He held out his hand and I shook it—like we were
executives meeting at a business luncheon. His touch surprised
me; the palm of his hand was dry but hot—almost feverish.
“Do you work here?” His voice sounded hopeful, but right
away his gaze shot back down to his sneakers, as if he didn’t dare
meet my eyes for long.
It was a strange question, considering I was wearing my school
uniform and carrying a knapsack.
“I live here.” I threw my shoulders back and brushed a stray
lock of hair from my eyes.
“You live in The Underground?” Now he was looking at me in
disbelief, as though I’d claimed I lived in the Taj Mahal or Buck-
ingham Palace.
“Not in it. Above it.” I fumbled in my knapsack for my keys.
“My father owns the place.”
“Seriously? You’re Jim Eversole’s daughter?”
I had to hand it to him; he’d done his homework. But the hope
in his voice made my stomach lurch. Like all the others, this one
would turn out to be way more interested in my father than in me.
Why had I thought, even for a moment, that there might be more
to him?
“You want Dad to book you.” It wasn’t a question.
“That’s not why I’m here.” He sounded defensive. “I know I’m
not ready for that yet. For now, I just want a job. Any job. Waiting
tables, maybe.” From closer up, I could see the faint scruff above
his upper lip and along his chin. Despite the heat, he had on a
black denim jacket, and under it his faded blue T-shirt was speck-
led with small holes, one wash away from dissolving into shreds.
“I don’t think my dad needs any more waiters.”
“I’ll wash floors. I’ll even scrub toilets. I just want to get to
know the place from the inside.” He dug his hands into his front
pockets and looked back down at his sneakers, as if he knew
he was asking for a huge favor and didn’t want to pressure me one
way or another.
Maybe he wasn’t like the others who had tried to worm their
way into The Underground. I paused a moment, weighing my
options. When I opened the door, stepped inside, and beckoned
for him to follow, I wondered if I was making a big mistake.

I usually hate giving tours of the club to my friends. Call me para-
noid, but I get the feeling that where I live is more important
to most people than who I am. But showing this guy around made
me see the place through new eyes. First I took him through the
main room. As we approached the stage, he paused for a long
moment, staring like he could see the ghosts of all the acts who’d
played there. So I waited beside him, recalling some of the bands
I’d seen—The Magnetics, The Faithful, and Hot Jones Sundae
were a few of my recent favorites—and I had the feeling that if I
grabbed his hand and squeezed my eyes shut I could share my
memories so that he’d have them, too.
But I didn’t. What would he have thought if I’d tried it? Most
likely that I was crazy—or hitting on him.
Instead, I cleared my throat and led him onward, into the
mixing room with its tangle of wires and crates. I let him take a
peek at Dad’s office, and at his wall of glossy photographs of
bands who’d come through the club. I saved my favorite spot for
last: the dressing room where so many rockers had graffitied the
walls into a multilayered, psychedelic mess. I pointed out a doodle
drawn by Joey Ramone, and he studied it closely, as though trying
to decipher its secret meaning.
“Thanks,” he said when the tour was over. “For letting me take
up your time. And for giving me a tour.”
I shrugged. “No problem.” There was nothing more to show
him, really, but I wasn’t ready to head upstairs and start dinner
just yet. “I’m Catherine.” And when he didn’t reply, I said, “You
have a name, right?”
“Hence.”
It took me a while to wrap my mind around that one. “Hans?”
His answer came through gritted teeth, like he’d been asked
that question a thousand times. “Hence. Like therefore.”
I wanted to ask him if it was short for anything, and whether
he had a last name, and where he’d come from, but he crossed his
arms over his chest and cast a glance toward the front of the
building. I got the distinct sense he was about to bolt. “You want
to leave a phone number? In case my dad wants to get in touch
with you? If he’s hiring?”
Hence grimaced again. “I don’t have a phone,” he said. “I’m not
really staying anywhere. I’m . . . I’m looking for someplace.” He
swallowed hard and I remembered the impression I’d had earlier,
that he was on the verge of giving up. Had he been sleeping on the
streets? Or in a shelter?
So I did something I probably shouldn’t have. I invited him up
to our apartment, into the kitchen. At my urging he sat down on
one of the stools along the counter, perched uneasily like a stray cat
who wasn’t sure if he was going to be stroked or shooed. I cooked
him one of those make-it-yourself pizzas heaped with everything
I could find in the fridge. He practically swallowed it whole, so I
made him another. Either he wasn’t much of a talker or he was too
busy eating to make chitchat. To fill the silence, I talked about
myself—about how I wished I were musical but couldn’t carry a
tune in a bucket, so I wrote poetry instead, and how most of the
girls at school thought I was weird because I liked vintage clothes
and would rather spend an afternoon reading than shopping. I went
on and on until I noticed I was whining about my relatively nice life
to a guy who probably didn’t even have a roof to sleep under.
The realization brought a blush to my cheeks.
“No,” Hence said, frowning down at his plate. “Keep going.
I’m interested.”
“I’d like to hear about you.” I stole a glance at the kitchen clock.
It was 4:15, and Dad had told me that morning to expect him home
at about five. My father’s pretty cool about most things, but even so
I didn’t want him to come home and find me alone with a boy
whose last name I didn’t even know. Same thing goes for my
brother, Quentin, who was due back from school any minute, and
who could be a bit overprotective and big-brothery sometimes.
“There’s nothing to tell,” Hence said. “I’ve always wanted to
come to New York to see The Underground. I’ve read about the
seventies punk scene, and the place is legendary. . . . But you know
that already.” And he stopped, as though that’s all I could possibly
have needed to know about him.
If I hadn’t been worried about the time, I would have pressed
further. I needed to get him safely outside, but I didn’t want to
let him disappear into the night, not before I at least tried to help
him. I reached out—slowly, so I wouldn’t startle him—and tugged
his jacket sleeve. “I have an idea.”

I sent Hence out, telling him to return around six thirty. Less
than ten minutes later, Quentin burst through the front door
without so much as a hello. A bag of fast food in his arms, he took
the stairs up to his room two at a time and locked the door behind
him. Q had been cranky a lot lately and, judging by the expression
on his face as he blew past me, that night was no exception. Good
thing I’d gotten Hence out in time.
Twenty minutes later Dad turned up, and—surprise, surprise—
he was in a bad mood, too, after a long, frustrating meeting with
his investment broker. He lumbered into the kitchen, kissed
me on the cheek, loosened his tie, and tossed his jacket over a
chair.
“I started a nightclub so I’d never have to deal with money-
grubbers again, and look at me now.” He opened the refrigerator
and stared absently at the shelves as if something delicious would
magically appear in front of him. “Completely at their mercy.”
“I’m making pizza,” I told him. “Pepperoni and mushroom.
Your favorite. I’ll have it ready in ten minutes if you’ll sit down and
get out of my way.”
He grabbed a can of club soda and shut the door. “I don’t
deserve you, Cupcake.” Dad had called me that for as long as I
could remember, and despite being too old for it I didn’t have the
heart to make him stop. Though he was busy almost all the time and
could be a bit distracted, he still had the softest heart imaginable.
While I cut the pizza and shoveled slice after slice onto his
plate, I told him about the nice guy who had come to the club look-
ing for a job as a busboy or janitor because he’d read books about
The Underground and wanted to see it for himself. Of course, Dad
wasn’t a total pushover. He took hiring very seriously, so I made
a  big point of saying how trustworthy Hence seemed, and how
honored he would be to work even the most menial job, to the
point where I was worried I was laying it on too thick, but Dad just
kept nodding, with that faraway look that meant he was either lis-
tening thoughtfully or musing about something else completely.
Luckily, it turned out he was listening, and by the time Hence
knocked on the front door, Dad was completely primed. After
introducing the two of them, I ducked into the hallway and hov-
ered nearby, ready to pretend I was on my way upstairs if Dad
noticed me. All Hence had to do was shake hands and talk music,
and the job of busboy/janitor was his. The other part was trickier.
Hence thanked Dad, then looked so uncomfortable I started to
worry he’d get all the way out the door without mentioning he had
no place to sleep. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore: I stuck my
head into the club and gave him a pointed look.
“There’s one other thing, sir. . . .” he began.
“Sir? I’m not royalty, Hence. Call me Jim, the way everybody
else does.”
“I don’t have any place to sleep, Jim,” Hence blurted out. “Can
you, um, recommend a place nearby—a hostel, maybe, or a board-
ing house?”
Dad did just what I hoped he’d do—he said if Hence was will-
ing to clean out the basement, he could stay here. We’d taken in
stray musicians before, so I had a feeling he’d be cool about it, and
I was right. Before long, Hence, his guitar, and his duffel bag
were in the basement. I would have slipped downstairs to say con-
gratulations and help him shift crates around and set up the metal
folding cot, but as Dad helped me load the dishwasher, he seemed
to be watching me more closely than usual.
“Why are you so interested in this boy, Cathy?” he finally
asked, a bemused smile on his lips. “It’s not like he’s the first ragtag
guitarist to come knocking on our door.”
“He’s so intense. I feel like he wants the job more than any of
the others did.” I paused. “Plus, he desperately needs our help,
don’t you think?”
Dad threw an arm around my shoulders, squeezed, and kissed
the top of my head. “That’s my Cupcake,” he said. “Kind to a fault.”
Satisfied, he let the subject drop, eager to settle into his favorite
armchair with the day’s newspapers and to let me go off and do my
homework.
Another father might have hesitated to let a good-looking
stranger move in under his roof. As I rearranged my backpack,
emptying out the heavy books I wouldn’t need to lug all the way
over to Jackie’s, I thought about how great my dad was—and how
much he trusted me. What intrigued me about Hence wasn’t his
good looks—I’d been burned by one too many gorgeous musi-
cians. It was his intensity—that dark hunger in his eyes—coupled
with that hurt look of his, the way he had of averting his glance as
though he’d been kicked hard by someone he trusted and didn’t
dare let down his guard. I knew he must have stories to tell about
the past he was fleeing and the future he’d planned for himself.
I’ve always liked mysteries, and now one had landed on my door-
step, just begging to be solved.