The Friendship Song

By Nancy Springer

When Harper and her dad move to a new house, a creepy stepmom is the least of her worries

Harper is not too happy to be moving in with her soon-to-be stepmother, Gus. The eccentric woman’s home, which the neighbors call the Spook House, has a yard full of weird metal sculptures. Gus is nothing like Harper’s dad’s other girlfriends, and Harper would take her former trailer home over the Spook House any day.

Luckily, a girl named Rawnie lives right across the street. Harper and Rawnie have lots in common, including the same favorite band: Neon Shadow. When the girls start hearing mysterious rock music coming from Gus’s yard, they get suspicious. Then something terrible happens at a Neon Shadow concert, and Harper and Rawnie have no doubt that there are dark forces at work . . . and that Gus is involved. With their favorite singer in danger, they just might be the only two who can save him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Release date: Dec 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781497688742

Nancy Springer

Nancy Springer is the award-winning author of more than fifty books, including the Enola Holmes and Rowan Hood series and a plethora of novels for all ages, spanning fantasy, mystery, magic realism, and more. She received the James Tiptree, Jr. Award for Larque on the Wing and the Edgar Award for her juvenile mysteries Toughing It and Looking for Jamie Bridger, and she has been nominated for numerous other honors. Springer currently lives in the Florida Panhandle, where she rescues feral cats and enjoys the vibrant wildlife of the wetlands.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

The main thing I remember about the ride into the city is that Neon Shadow came on the radio and I turned the volume up real loud. Dad glanced over at me but didn’t say anything. He knew I was way bad losing-sleep in love with Neon Shadow, and he knew I wasn’t real happy about moving. So he just drove the U-Haul, and I just sat there listening to the hot metal music of the electric guitars and the way Nico’s and Ty’s voices melted together and the words they sang.

What we always been

Is what we’re always gonna be.

When the first two fish

Crawled up out of the sea

And looked at each other

And said, "Yo, brother,"

Hey, doncha know they were you and me.

We’re friends.

Friends. It was a nice thought, but girls like me—built like a moose and bigger than anybody else in sixth grade—girls like me didn’t get a lot of friends. At least I sure never did. Okay, so I had blond hair and blue eyes, which made me a palomino moose, but so what? It took being cute to make a girl popular. There had been a few kids who seemed to like me, but no real close friends. And now I was going to have to start over in a new neighborhood, new school, new everything.

That’s a new release of an old song, Dad said when the song was over.

"I know."

Usually he would have grumped at me, Harper, you don’t have to yell. But this time he just sighed.

I really did know it was an old song. Metal Mag said so. Neon Shadow’s nitro new cover of a rock classic, they called it. The name of the song was just The Friendship Song. I liked it a lot. I mean, any kind of rock music gets me going, it makes me want to stomp my big feet and play air guitar, but this song—it was too good for air guitar, it was special. It really cooked, but it was want-to-cry beautiful at the same time.

I turned the radio down again to keep from annoying Dad too much. We were at the commercial strip right outside the city, where the Wendy’s was, and the Taco Bell, and all the usual places. And then we drove past the Arena. The house, Dad’s sweetie’s house, was supposed to be near the Arena. So we were almost there.

Dad said, Harper, you’ve got to admit a ten-room house is better than a little trailer.

I didn’t say anything, because he was so happy about what was happening, it made me feel bad for not being happy too. I mean, we were always real close, we hardly ever fought. It was just that right now everything was so sudden. Like, one minute he meets this truly strange woman named, of all things, Gus at a stupid art class, and the next minute they’re getting married. So we had to move in with Gus, because her place was bigger than ours. But I liked the trailer. I’d lived there all my life, since the day I was born, practically. It was plenty big enough for just Dad and me.

Try to give it a chance, Harper, Dad said.

Sure.

Gus is really looking forward to having a family.

What the heck was her real name? Gustavia? Augusta? Something gross anyway. And I wasn’t about to be her family. But I didn’t say anything.

The school district is a better one too. They offer Latin, calculus—

"Dad, I know."

That was Dad, always worrying about me, always hoping I’d do better than he had. Which was why he had given me such a bizarre name. His name was Buddy. Buddy Ferree. People with cute names don’t get taken seriously, he’d told me once. I thought he’d done just fine for a person who’d taken care of a baby, me, instead of going to college. He was head of sales at Rugged Pak, a corrugated-box company.

Here we are. Dad stopped the U-Haul at the curb. I spotted Gus walking toward us from—her house.

Oh, my God, what a freaky house.

Of course I should have guessed. I’d met Gus a couple of times. I knew she wore overalls and a baseball cap backward whenever she wasn’t asleep. But it’s hard to guess some things just from meeting a person. No matter how weird they are, you’re still not going to assume they have a sixteen-foot metal cactus in the front yard. I mean, it was a thing put together out of pipes, and it looked like a cactus to me.

Gus said, Yo, Groover, to me. She called me Groover, who knows why. But she kept on going past me, vaulted over the hood of the U-Haul, and went around to the driver’s side. My dad had his window down, and Gus started kissing him.

Ew, sick. I turned my back on them and got out.

Across the street there was a girl about my age sitting on her front steps watching Gus kiss my dad and everything. Wonderful. Just wonderful.

I meant to go inside the house and look around, but Gus’s whole place was so strange I just stood and stared. All the other houses in the neighborhood were regular row houses close together, but her place stood off by itself with a big yard all around, and every inch of the yard had some kind of bizarre object on it, like a tower of hubcaps, and a claw-footed bathtub painted red and black, and a Statue of Liberty made out of venetian blinds. The house was all funkied up with pillars and steeples and things, and there was strange stuff hanging in the windows.

Just the same I would have gone inside, because I wanted to get dibs on the best bedroom, but it was like something took me by the shoulders and turned me around and shoved me away.

Really. It was just as if the yard or the house or something grew invisible hands and gave me a good push. As if something didn’t like me, which was okay with me because I wasn’t in any mood to like it. But then again, it wasn’t okay. What the hell was going on?

There I was all of a sudden heading across the street when I didn’t mean to. And there was the neighbor girl still sitting on a normal-looking house’s front steps and watching.

Hi, I said to her, like it was my idea to come stumbling into her face.

Oh, hi, she said, pretending she hadn’t seen me before. She wasn’t tiny, but she wasn’t an overgrown geek like me either. She was slim and pretty, with dark hair and huge dark eyes and skin the smooth brown color of caramel, and I could tell right away she wore a bra. I was still hiding everything under a baggy sweatshirt.

We both stared across at Gus’s house. She and my dad had finally got done sucking face and had the back of the U-Haul open.

My name’s Rawnie, the girl said.

I’m Harper.

Huh?

"Harper." I hated my name.

Oh. You’re moving in?

Nah. We just stopped by because it looked like a garage sale. Jeez, what did she think a U-Haul was for?

Okay, dumb question. Is your dad marrying Spook House McCogg?

That was another dumb question. Like, Dad and Gus were just chewing on each other because there wasn’t a McDonald’s burger handy? But I let it go, because something else seemed more important. I said, Spook House?

That’s what we call her around here. Rawnie looked up with eyes that flashed white, then moved over on her steps so there was room for me to sit down. So I sat beside her, and she said real soft, Listen, I don’t mess with her. She’s nice and everything, but there’s something strange about her place.

No duh.

Listen. She spoke in a hurry, with her voice low, like she was telling me something important and dangerous. Her eyes were like woods lakes, brown and deep. She said, There’s lights and voices over there after dark. And nobody goes in there with spray paint or anything, even though they do everywhere else. And there’s this kid, Benjy Jacobs, down the street, he was missing for two days once, and when he finally showed up, he said he was in Spooky McCogg’s backyard the whole time and couldn’t get out.

What do you mean, he couldn’t get out?

He just couldn’t get out! He said it was like there were spirits or something wouldn’t let him get out.

I tried to laugh, but I didn’t really because I was remembering a feeling like two invisible hands on my shoulders shoving me off the sidewalk into the street.

Great, I said.

Harper, Dad called, looking around for me like I was a little kid, like I might get snatched or hit by a car or something. That was the only thing that bothered me about my dad, the way he treated me like a baby sometimes.

Over here, I called.

He saw me and beckoned for me to come help. He and Gus were finally ready to move stuff in. I got up to go, and Rawnie said to me, quick, Hey, you need anything, I’ll be here.

I just looked at her. Maybe she was trying to scare me because I had smart-mouthed at her. I mean, I wasn’t happy about Gus, but I knew my dad wouldn’t marry an ax murderer or anything.

Rawnie looked right back at me. I mean it, she said.

I said, Sure, and went back across the street to carry my boxes into Gus’s house.

Gus went first and beckoned me after her, and