"The Flamenco Academy" by Sarah Bird Read Free Book Online

to
pick up the finished work and made a fuss about it, my mother
pouted like a little kid. I didn’t care. I tried to make my
stitches microscopic just to hear someone tell me I was doing a
good job.
    Who knows? Maybe I would have gotten
completely hooked if Didi hadn’t reappeared. But she did. One
morning when I was gathering up the report I’d written for her
about McKinley and the Tariff of 1890 so she wouldn’t flunk
American history and I already had the long denim skirt on over my
jeans, she honked. My mother and I both identified the honk
immediately. We stared at each other as we worked through a long
series of lightning calculations that yielded the same answer: my
mother was not big enough to stop me. I walked through the door and
out to Didi.
    All she said as I jumped in the front seat
was, “Nice skirt.”
    I ripped the denim skirt off and stuffed it
under the front seat.
    “You have that history report?” she asked,
backing out of the driveway.
    I plucked the neatly typed paper out of my
backpack and held it up for her to see. She smiled and nodded, her
eyelids drooping like a cat’s in the sun, then held her fist up. I
tapped it with mine. Didi put the Skank in first, revved the
engine, and we peeled out in a spray of gravel.
    I knew I would pay, but I didn’t care. Didi
was back.

Chapter Seven
    Didi returned with a new mantra that we both
followed: Stay distracted. We never talked about our mothers, about
how things were at home. School became an afterthought. We put most
of our energy into the jobs we both got at Pup y Taco, a take-out
place based on a marketing strategy that reasoned, if you don’t
like Mexican food, there’s always hot dogs. The only other thing we
put any energy into was groupieing. Actually, Didi did the
groupieing. I tagged along for logistical support, taking care of
the details the way I always did.
    I was the one who made sure that the tank of
the Skankmobile was filled so we could get to the airport where
Didi could flirt with the car rental guy enough to weasel the name
of the hotel where R.E.M. or Ever-clear or whoever was in town was
staying. I was the one who installed the extra memory in her
computer so she could run her astrology program and do charts for
whichever band member she was currently obsessed with. Didi was the
one who played the roadies and got the all-access backstage passes.
She was the one cool and sexy enough to get chosen from the pack of
skinny girl groupies. She was the one the stars would point to as
they whispered to a flunky to make sure she—that one there with the
lips, the mouth, the jeans lower than anyone else’s—was at the
party. After.
    I didn’t like thinking about the After part.
The part when the doors closed and Didi was one of the throwaway
girls with the band or a pack of roadies. She called them missions
and that was the part I liked, the part that was like a spy
mission. Scouring the city for glimpses of tour buses, getting
gullible hotel clerks to reveal room numbers, raiding maids’
uniforms from unguarded hampers, swiping tiny bottles of shampoo
and conditioner. The last had nothing to do with getting to the
band; it was just my own little vice. I liked everything up to
meeting the band. The actual band, the stars, held no interest for
me whatsoever. That was when I would leave.
    We established our groupie division of labor
the first time I went with her on a mission. Limp Bizkit was
playing at Tingley Coliseum. Built on the state fairgrounds to host
rodeos, Tingley looked and smelled like a big barn. Didi loved it
since security was impossible there. I followed her through the
chutes usually used to herd livestock into the ring that had been
covered with a fake floor and turned into a mash pit. The roadies
picked her out as soon as she appeared. When the show was over,
they herded her toward the tour bus.
    She turned my way and asked, “You
coming?”
    The prospect utterly panicked me, but I’d
already learned enough