I love funerals the best. Open-casket funerals with lots of tears and lots of food. I love funerals with macaroni and cheese and anchovies. My name is Quinelle Featherbean. If you think I am racist, you can kick me. I don’t care what people think. But I am a fly on the ceiling, observing everything, and I love funerals.

The last funeral I attended was for Rachelle Werns. Poor Rachelle was five years old; had a brain tumor. Her fourteen-year-old sister threw potato salad, and the family had to drag her out back home because she wouldn’t behave herself. The ten-year-old brother Noah stood stock-still and scowling in his little old man’s suit. The mother had dark balloons under her eyes which were properly covered with concealer. That mother was a micromanager. What could’ve gone wrong? Her babies had had every advantage—prenatal water therapy, expensive vitamins, not allowed to play with the children of smokers, slept on all organic sheets, ate pureed carrots grown in the local community, and they never touched a candy bar. This mother campaigned against sex ed in schools and boycotted Walmart and bought only organic toilet paper and flossed every day and wrote to her congressman and delivered her dog’s puppies and ran the women’s church retreat and wouldn’t let her children know that rock and roll existed. She said that rock and roll was when rocks rolled down a mountainside. She campaigned door to door for disease research, diseases with names she couldn’t pronounce. She memorized the ingredients on her body wash. She put up flypaper and used mosquito nets so that her kids wouldn’t get malaria. She took in foreign exchange students and sent homemade quilts to Bulgaria and wouldn’t let her children have light sabers or celebrate Halloween. They were not allowed to play with the children of Arminians.

She had done everything perfectly and never showed emotion and looked like a lady in a dish soap commercial. And here was Rachelle, dead.

She plastered on a smile and went to the church kitchen to wash the dishes and quoted Romans 8:28 to everyone who gazed at her like a dying cat and said, “Oh, you poor thing! You must be so sad! How can we help?”

“We don’t need any help!” said Mrs. Werns smartly. Just then her six-year-old began howling and throwing flowers everywhere. “Shape up!” she scolded him.

Those precious pictures of Rachelle she had organized without a tear. Even her first-smile pictures, her first steps, her first haircut—all those pictures. Her first temper-tantrum pictures she would never look at. She stashed away Rachelle’s stuffed bunny with toothmarks into a burn pile. “It is unsanitary,” she said, thinking of how she’d given it to her daughter in the hospital during chemo and the child threw up on it. Indeed, all those dolls and puzzles and gift-baskets which had gone with her into the hospital must be burned. Not because they were germy. Because Mrs. Werns couldn’t bear to remember those weeks when she couldn’t help her little girl.

Rachelle had been bald for her last month in nursery school, so all the nursery school kids’ parents made them shave their heads to donate money for her treatments. Mrs. Werns had collected soda bottles door to door to campaign for the poor sick child. Now she clawed her bare, bald head furiously. What did it mean? Why, God, why? Where did I go wrong? I was supposed to be perfect!

Even her mailman and her orthodontist complimented her for being Super-mom, but Mrs. Werns seethed and foamed and boiled inside. She had a wild notion to load all of Rachelle’s pictures into a backpack, leave home, and start off walking. She would find a different husband, different kids, a different house, a different life. She considered it. Seriously. Long and seriously.

One day…

Mrs. Werns left her family a note saying, I have gone to South Africa to start an orphanage. Do not cry for me. Mrs. Werns lied. She didn’t get anywhere close to the Atlantic Ocean. She made it to California after many years and ended up in the same mental institution as my mother—I found that out from my mother’s long-lost letters. They were even roommates. Isn’t that a queer coincidence?

My entire life is a series of queer coincidences.

I stayed with the Werns family until I was eleven.

It must have been God who got that letter to me from my long-lost Granddaddy Featherbean in Minneapolis. Granddaddy was ninety-seven years old and wanted me to live with him and be his little girl. Mr. Werns said I could leave home. I was so excited that I hopped and shrieked!

My head was full of dreams like fireflies. I had a Granddaddy! He loved me and wanted me to be his little girl! Would he have a bedroom with pink wallpaper and a window-seat? Would he have a huge backyard with a swingset?

I clutched my backpack fiercely on the train-ride to Minneapolis. When I got off the Amtrack, Granddaddy’s maid, Alicia, took me home. Granddaddy lived in a tumbleweed of a house. There were wilted ivy plants and stuffed geese. Granddaddy was so old that he slumped in a wheelchair all day, working jigsaw puzzles. He was so arthritic with his knobby, swollen knuckles that he could only work preschooler jigsaw puzzles. He had sagging, yellow skin and breathing tubes; he was like a floppy old rag doll, the hair coming out his nose like leaky stuffing.

“I…shore am obliged to have my little grand-girl come live with me,” he muttered, and then fell asleep over his creamed tuna. A piece of dried-up drool hung on his chin, and he drooled with each raspy snore. Yuck.

“Your Granddaddy’s lonesome. He wants you to read the encyclopedia,” said Alicia.

“That’s fine,” I said.

“We’re working through the As, on aerodynamics. Good luck.”

She swept out of the room with her feather-duster, and I sat alone with Granddaddy. I could practically hear his creamed tuna digesting in his withered old stomach. I could feel the house sighing.

Welcome home.

When I wasn’t attending school, in all my spare time, I read him the encyclopedia. I needed to know my family history! Just think, Granddaddy Featherbean was the only link I had with Daddy. He had raised my Daddy—why couldn’t he tell me family stories? Gosh, I needed them!

One day, I couldn’t stop myself. “Granddaddy Featherbean, did you ever hear what happened to my mother and father after they left me?”

He shook himself awake and mumbled, “Well…I reckon they did send me some letters…”

“Granddaddy, please tell me right now.” I clasped my hands as though praying.

“Your mother’s written me letters all her life. Dear old Alice Fetibull! Pretty young gal she was. Married too young to my no-good bum of a son. Last letter came a year ago. Then there was a letter from the hospital, a telephone call, police at my door asking questions, and no more letters. Lordy, there was no more letters.”

“Where did Mother’s letters come from?”

“Place called Lemon County Psychiatric Rehabilitation Hospital, down in Californy.”

 “Let me read the letters, Granddaddy.” I wanted everything that my mother had ever touched. Even the torn envelopes she’d licked would be welcome.

Poring over my mother’s letters to Granddaddy, I lost myself all day and night. Then I got to the bottom of the stack, a letter written on cheap yellow paper like an electric bill. An impersonally written, boxy typewriter-printed letter. The paper froze to my fist.

Lemon County Psychiatric Rehabilitation Hospital. Lemonville, California. Head Secretary, Margaret Barns: We regret to inform you…

NO.

Alicia and I cleaned the attic the summer I turned twelve. That’s where I found jazz records and dusty old pamphlets advertising a band called Appendectomy and the Midnight Pink.

Yes, Appendectomy and the Midnight Pink! Granddaddy had helped organize that band and put out records for them, many, many years ago. The lead singer was named Mr. Willis, whose son Sebastian still kept up a traveling jazz show.

I read the pamphlets until I memorized them, and I listened to the records until they broke. At night, I’d dream of running away to join Appendectomy and the Midnight Pink. To ride around the country in a bus, making music from California to Alaska—that was Heaven!

If California was in Heaven, then my mother was in Heaven, and I’d reach California and bring Mother home to me.

Tonight and tonight only, at Wrigley Stadium, Chicago, Appendectomy and the Midnight Pink! Five-dollar admission at the gate, children under seven free. Hear Sebastian Willis, only twenty-three years old, King of Vocals, unleash his greatest hits— “Purple Tears,” and “Contender.” Hear backup singers, Jeanette and Pippa Green, with their diamonds of voices. Also featuring Xyra “Amazing Grace” Mains, the Gifted Queen of Gospel. Hear her sing to the stars. Tonight and tonight only!

I smuggled the records and pamphlets into my backpack and waited to run away. On my last day of seventh grade, I fled with my pajamas stuffed into the backpack and a faded teddy-bear hanging out the seams.

“Bye, bye, old house,” I said, sorrowfully. My heart was hammering hard, and tears started in my eyes as I thought, I may never see my Granddaddy Featherbean again. I am a bad girl.

My seventh-grade English teacher, Caisy Cashe had just given me a notebook. The notebook’s cover read THREE RULES OF LIFE: NEVER JUDGE A MAN, NEVER JUDGE A WOMAN, AND NEVER JUDGE A CHILD. “I want you to spend your summer filling up this notebook with stories from your heart,” said Miss Cashe.

“Sure, I will,” I’d said. The notebook was crammed into the backpack; I’d used Page One to write a note for Granddaddy. Please do not search for me. I love you very much. Yours truly, Quinelle.

Sebastian Willis was touring in Detroit, Michigan, and I would join his show! Thumbing rides, I watched the traffic blur past on the highways, freeways, and interstates. Other kids might’ve been scared, but not me. Day after day I traveled. When the drivers asked where I was going, I said I was going to visit Aunt Ginny in Detroit.

“Why are you visiting Aunt Ginny?” they asked.

“Aunt Ginny has smallpox,” I’d say. Or “Aunt Ginny has diphtheria,” or “Aunt Ginny has anthrax,” or “Aunt Ginny got bit by rattlesnakes.”

“Poor Aunt Ginny,” they said.

Sebastian Willis, adventure, music, and the United States, here I come!

When the last driver dropped me off at McMillan Stadium in Detroit, I no longer felt like a fearless runaway. I was a lost little orphan in a huge anthill world. These screaming men, women, and children could easily trample me like a Coke can.

What will I do now what will I do now what will I do now what will I do now?

The fences had closed, and I had no money for tickets. So I leaped upon the fence and sprang with all my might. After I landed on the dirt, I stared in utter bewilderment. I’d kicked over a trash can, scattering popcorn and beer cans and old cotton candy. This attracted the attention of a police officer stationed to look for fence-hoppers. Terrified, I darted behind the ticket-booth and hid until he was gone.

Timid as a baby pigeon, I waited.

Spotlights swooped like seagulls on the stage, and while the sky was filling up with darkness, the drunks were filling up with beer, and the houses of Detroit filled up with lights, the folding chairs filled up with fans. Somebody said “Twenty minutes until opening!” I knew that I had better move.

When nobody was looking, I darted for the sign marked BACKSTAGE. The two burly guys who lugged sound equipment didn’t notice me. Huddled in the darkness backstage, the Great Forbidden Backstage, I was stunned when I ran into a young man.

Great googly moogly, he was the Great Sebastian Willis! He wasn’t like the pamphlet showed. Looked like a tired leftover hippie. Stringy-haired and skinny, he wore a baggy Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts, and the ugliest beads I’ve ever seen.

“I was just looking for the restroom,” Sebastian stammered. He was as shocked to see me as I was to see him. “Pray tell, who are you, kid? Didn’t you read the sign?”

            I looked down at myself and saw that I was a bum. I had McDonalds wrappers clinging to my scabby knees. I hadn’t bathed in four days. Why can’t I die right here? Granddaddy Featherbean, forgive me!

            Sebastian’s picture had shown him beneath a sign that said NO CAMERAS PERMITTED BACKSTAGE. He had such a smirk that you knew he really wanted the picture taken. The pictures showed him in a blaze of spotlight with a thrilled expression.

He glared at me. “You know, kid, that you are breaking the law. We have less than twenty minutes left before we go onstage. I ask you kindly to leave right this minute.”

            TRANSLATION: When an adult says he warns you kindly, run for your life. He probably wants to kill you. It’s like when your dentist says that you will feel pressure and you know it’s gonna be pain. When adults talk like this, run for your backside.

Ten befuddled seconds passed. Another person approached me, the tallest African-American woman I have ever seen, six foot three in high heels. She wore a towering bun, emeralds, an elaborate sash, and sequined dress. Her face was like Mount Rushmore, and her voice was sparkly-sweet.

“Dear heart, dear honey girl, what in the world you looking for? You lost? Never fear, Miss Xyra is here to help you.”

Xyra Mains, the one who sang ‘Amazing Grace?’ The Gifted Queen of Gospel? I read all about you…

She laid a ringed hand on my shoulder. “Never fear, child, never fear. You’re tremblin’ like a leaf. What a God-awful time you must’ve had. Sit on this here folding chair and tell Miss Xyra all about it.”

My heart exploded like a lumpy little water balloon. “I ran away and I haven’t no home and I’m a stupid orphan and that’s the truth, so help me God, so help me God, so help me God!”

“There, there, child, stop that sobbin’. We ain’t calling no police on a poor lost child. You got lost and lonesome and needed a friend, that’s all.”

I sniffed loudly into the Kleenex she handed me. “What will I do now?”

Sebastian said, “Of all the luck! We have slept for five days on the cold ground, traveling from Portland, Oregon to Detroit. We got trapped in the rain and thunderstorms. We’re always darting from one end of the country to another, and I feel like a God-forsaken vagabond. The hotels are all filled and we’re nearly broke and we’re starved and the audience is waiting. Now this blankety-blank kid shows up, and says we have to adopt her? I should think not!”

Xyra’s eyebrows drew together sternly. “Now, you just leave this poor thing up to me. I’ll care for her.”

“My eye! What is she, a stage decoration? A galley slave? What is her name, anyhow?”

“Quinelle Roberta Featherbean,” I said.

Sebastian scratched the back of his neck. It was full of flea bites from camping on the ground. “Our drummer passed out from drinking Coke with ammonia. Now what’ll we do, cancel the show? Jeanette and Pippa are still doing their makeup. I’m fixing to cancel this idiot show. I’d like too—”

“Now, Sebastian boy, I’ll teach this to child to bang a drum, and the show will be fine.”

“My eye!” he repeated. Sebastian’s eyes, so handsome on the pamphlet, looked swollen and bloodshot.

I raised my pathetic, tear-stained face. “I get to bang a drum? But I have no idea how. That is so kind.”

As the August night flattened Detroit, I was initiated into Sebastian’s band.

Sebastian’s personality changed the minute he stepped behind a microphone. “People of Detroit, I would just love to thank you for coming out tonight. You people make the show happen. I can’t tell you how good it is to see your faces after these long days of camping. People, you’ve got the power tonight. I encourage you to stand to your feet and sing along and be unashamed, like I am. Now we open the show with a tribute to my wonderful roadies, ‘Running the Stoplight.’”

Nervously, I struck the drum while blood rushed from my head. Those people in the audience all stared at me!

A skinny kid struck the keyboard, the saxophone-player tooted the intro theme, and the vocalist sisters Jeanette and Pippa struck up their bells of voices. They made pleasant-sounding monosyllables for seven minutes, while the instruments tooted and laughed and sang and called. The music felt like a sunny day, like a romp on the playground. Sebastian belted out the lyrics.

“I’m breakin’ all the traffic rules,

Forgot the Pledge of Allegiance and the Golden Rule.

Ants are in my hair, I’m dashin’ here and there,

Like a fool.

Running the stoplight,

Drivin’ blind,

Sand’s in my eyes, and smoke makes them water,

So why look at me like I am scum?

Baby, sweet baby, pull me through.

Hold my hand and stare at me, your eyes so clear-sky blue.

Baby, sweet baby, pull me through…”

Drunk with music, I forgot that I was Quinelle Featherbean, the girl whose daddy went to jail and whose mother abandoned her. Music swirled around me and I forgot everything else.

MUSIC! MUSSSICCC! Ilovemusic, Ilovemusiccc! I am homesick and carsick and lovesick for music!

The audience roared and whistled and called, “Encore! Encore!” Then Xyra Mains glided onto stage with a pearly-toothed smile and curtsied. “I had planned to sing ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,’ but I changed my mind. We’re gonna hear good old ‘Amazing Grace,’ in honor of my new friend. She is an orphan who will stay with us for a while.”

Those words made me want to float to the ceiling! So did Xyra’s heavenly voice, crooning:

“When we’ve been there

Ten thousand years

Brightshining as the sun,

We’ve no less days

To sing God’s praise

Than when we’d first begun.”

My first week with Sebastian’s band was pure consolation. Xyra asked no more questions—she just adopted me. I was like a nestling under the wing of a great brown bird.

Have you ever wondered what bands do when they’re not performing? Have you ever wondered what cross-country touring is like? Have you ever wondered what happens backstage? I found out all that and more.

            Here’s a list of the main members of Appendectomy and the Midnight Pink:

            SEBASTIAN WILLIS. He wanted to be a brain surgeon, but flunked out of medical school. He wanted to name his band Sebastian Willis and His Spleen Surgery, but Appendectomy and the Midnight Pink was a compromise. His two closest girlfriends from elementary school in Chicago, Jeanette and Pippa Green, made it the Midnight Pink.

            Jeanette told me proudly, “His daddy was a jazz musician in Great Depression Chicago. Sebastian’s traveled every inch of the United States. He has even been to Disco Demolition Night.”

            JEANETTE GREEN. Green-eyed, she had a slow smile and only nine fingers. Jeanette boasted, “I had twenty-four boyfriends!” She lost that finger proposing to Sebastian Willis. Sebastian and Jeanette fought for years, and he just happened to be chopping vegetables with a butcher knife. Slam! The knife slipped and cut off Jeanette’s finger.

            “I still want to marry him,” Jeanette told me. “A finger isn’t that important. And I always have my methods—I always get what I want. Sebastian is wrapped around me.”

            Jeanette wrote Sebastian’s best-selling songs, “Star Boogie,” “Toothpaste Blues,” “Got a Feeling Like Hot Bile,” “I’m Not your Lunatic,” and “You’re Still My Baby, Fingers or Not.”

            PIPPA GREEN. She had a haggard and tired-looking face, but when she sang, “Drop Me Like a Rock,” her voice was cool and warm and sad and beautiful. She had black hair piled in a pompadour.

            She stayed up nights, wandering the cheap hotel rooms we stayed in, picking up the water, the lamp, and the Gideon Bible—just picking things up and putting them down in the wrong places. Pippa suffered migraine headaches and nervous attacks. I watched her pale, troubled face as she pulled her sock off and on, off and on. Hotel rooms never seemed right when Pippa was sleeping there.

            STEVIE-O. He was the drummer who drank Coke with ammonia. I still have a scar where he punched me. Stevie-O had severe anger issues, which he took out on the drums. He threw musical instruments off the stage, just for fun.

            XYRA MAINS. She was seventy-six years old and tough as an old tractor. Born and raised in Mississippi, she was the first woman in her county to become a pastor. During the Civil Rights Movement. When people wouldn’t listen to her talk, she took to singing in the streets for protest. She said, “They told me I had no license to protest, but ain’t nobody said I needed a license to sing.” She often reminded us, “You call me the Reverend Xyra Mains!”

            JERRY “GREASE-PAN” WILLIS. He was Sebastian’s cousin with mental issues. He was the sax player, and often emptied his spit-valve in the middle of performances.

            TAWNEY JACOBS. He was only fourteen, two years older than me, black, with creamy white teeth and dimples like dents in a vat of chocolate. He was the skinny kid I saw playing the keyboards on my first night. Tawney had extensively long arms that reached from the highest squeaky notes to the deepest notes imaginable.

“What are you doing with Sebastian Willis?” I asked Tawney.

“What’s it matter to you, Quinny?”

“My name isn’t Quinny. It’s Quinelle Roberta Featherbean.”

Tawney grinned, white teeth, dimples. “Quinny-Bert the Featherbrain.”

“Scrawny Tawney,” I taunted.

“Ain’t nobody calls me scrawny and survives. You ever seen me with a punching bag? Huh? I could beat up Michael Jackson. I could beat up the Russians. I could beat up anyone.”

“Well, why are you touring with Sebastian Willis? Don’t you have a family?”

He scrutinized me. “Don’t you have a family?”

“I’m on summer vacation,” I said.

Tawney picked off his Bugs Bunny Band-Aid, revealing a scabby scrape. “Sure, I’m on summer vacation too. More like indentured servitude. My daddy taught me to play keyboards when I was ten months. I got gigs at nightclubs when I was four, and Daddy kept farming me out to concerts, even signing a record label for me.”

A putrid wave of jealously passed over me. Tawney had his daddy, while my daddy was rotting in prison, because he wouldn’t stop stealing garbage cans from Wal-Mart. He didn’t care about his little Quinelle.

I glanced at Tawney and instantly repented. Cute wasn’t quite the word for a boy so wonderful as Tawney—what word described him? Sunshiny and musical and effervescent didn’t cut the mustard. Paired with Grease-Pan’s saxophone on a folding chair backstage, staring at a hummingbird on an oak-tree branch, he looked ready to sprout wings and fly to outer space.

He said, “My record is named, I Can Make a Pizza Disappear in Two Seconds.”

I said, “I’d like to hear it.”

“Naw, it’s a mockery of the Temptations. You know, their hit song ‘I Can’t Get Next to You,’ says ‘I can make a castle from a single grain of sand,’ and ‘I can make a ship sail on dry land.’ Big deal. Who cares about a ship sailing on dry land? Stupid. If you were a god with superpowers, why not devour as many pepperoni pizzas as possible?”

“If I had superpowers, I’d force families to shut up and get along with each other, making parents stay home with their kids all day, not in mental institutions and jails.”

“Superpowers? Huh. I’d rather have a time machine. If I had one free ride in a time machine, I would go up to Mount Olympus, back when the Greek gods used to sip ambrosia. Little you know. I wrote a killer song—it goes like this—

“I wish I could go up Mount Olympus,

I dream about it in bed,

I’d shake hands with the whole gang,

Athena and Hercules and Hermes,

But not Zeus.

Ithinkhe’dthrowathunderboltinstead!

And then I’d be dead!”

“You just made that up, off the top of your head,” I said.

“Yeah? That’s what we jazz musicians specialize in. We hardly compose our music in advance. It’s called improvising.”

Sebastian invented music out of nowhere? The thought shocked me. When I did things off the top of my head, like running away from Granddaddy Featherbean, they never ended well.

Hanging out with Tawney and talking to him was easy. He enjoyed my fits of horse-giggles, when I laughed so long and hard that I was a lunatic like Mother. We would laugh so hard that RC cola spewed from our noses. That boy couldn’t sing, and he couldn’t write songs. Bob Dylan with a lip full of Novocain would’ve sounded more attractive.

Still, he planted an idea in my brain.

What if I wrote a smash hit for Sebastian Willis? What if I made him thousands and thousands of dollars? Then he would love the orphan bum. Surely, he would let me tour with Appendectomy and the Midnight Pink forever and always!

We left Detroit, and we drove and drove and drove. Drove and drove and drove. Sebastian’s truck was called the Pinkie Mobile, and we band members were called Pinkies. We had cassettes out the snout, country music blaring out the windows, freeway after freeway, windmills on the horizon. I passed the hours contacting random truck-drivers on a CB radio.

Sebastian, Jeanette, Pippa, Xyra, Grease-Pan, and Tawney all wanted to throw me out the window. I screamed every time we crossed state lines, every time we passed a landmark…

“BADLANDS! Here we come! Here comes Appendectomy and the Midnight Pink!”

“MOUNT RUSHMORRRE! GLAD TO SEE YOUR OLD FACES!”

“Yellowstone National Park! WHOOP-EEEEEE!”

“GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE, here we COMMME!”

Tires on the Pinkie Mobile were forever flat, and Sebastian spent hours patching them, while we cooked in the August sun. We wandered in hotel rooms and backstage. Xyra tried to teach me vocals one day, and Jeanette shouted, “Who put the cat through the food processer?”

Blissfully, I spent my days in ease and wonder. It was a treat to hear Jeanette and Pippa practicing with their silver voices, or to see Xyra putting on all her rouge, diamonds, and feather boas. We camped near canyons and forests and saw stars that looked close enough to pull from the blackness. Lying between the snores of Pippa and Xyra in a frail plastic tent, I slept with my hands in fists and my eyes cracked open, terrified that Tawney would get mauled by a coyote.

“What are you looking at, Pippa, staring into the darkness?” I asked, sleepily, one night.

“Life…death…I don’t know. Years gone by? Home? What is home? What is the heart?” said Pippa, strangely.

“The heart is a boy without shoes. The heart is a crumpled mass of wrapping paper. The heart is Granddaddy’s armchair. The heart is a Chevy at McDonalds…” I said.

She examined from the corners of her eyes. And then I knew. No matter how pleasant these carefree days seemed, Miss Xyra and Sebastian Willis wouldn’t keep me forever. They watched my face when I wasn’t looking, like I had the Devil’s name written there and they wanted to erase it. What did they say of me when I was alone?

“I have no story to tell!” I squeaked.

“Everybody’s got to have a story, or they have no future, child.”

“I have no parents, never did,” I insisted.

“You will tell us your story when you’re ready. Too bad for me, though. Even if I had the words to speak the thoughts that rose in me, nobody wouldn’t understand them.”

Even Pippa’s sigh was gorgeous, sad and tragic-sounding. It was like wind through the treetops.

We performed at jazz festivals in the Jell-O, yellow sun of California. Men with brass instruments and French accents from Louisiana joined us. We performed “Yellow Balloon Boogie,” and “Jenny’s Blues,” the latter written by Sebastian in Jeanette’s honor. We played long into the night, our voices like timid baby birds, growing ever louder and stronger. The crowd was like toothpaste exploding into the giant sink of night.

After the concerts, we ate cold pizza and Pepsi in the back of the Pinkie Mobile. In the light of mosquito lanterns, I read magazines galore—Good Housekeeping, Popular Mechanics, National Geographic, Prevention, and Reader’s Digest. I wrote poems on the backs of travel itineraries and jazz pamphlets. Most of these poems refused to rhyme, and I crumpled them with a sigh of futility.

“I’ll never be a talent star like you!” I fumed at Tawney.

“Hang in there, sister,” he said.

Stevie-O punched me in the jaw and said, “Pow! In the kisser, pardner!” That was his strange version of a compliment.

Pippa and I sat around a record player plugged into the huge extension outlet, listening to her favorite album, The Pretender by Jackson Browne. I liked the idea of being a happy idiot and struggling for the legal tender. Pippa invariably burst into tears during “Sleep’s Dark and Silent Gate,” when Jackson sang:

“Sometimes I lie awake at night and wonder

Where the years have gone.

They have all passed under

Sleep’s dark and silent gate.”

            She told me that sleep’s dark and silent gate was a metaphor for death and loss. “I know about death and loss. Me and Jeanette were foster sisters. Never had a home anywhere in the world.”

            But you have a home now, Pippa. You get to travel with Sebastian Willis!

            “Our mother was a failed actress, took too many pills all her life. I knew the muses had destined me to be an actress, when I played Juliet in our high school’s production of Romeo and Juliet. My favorite part was when Juliet discovered Romeo dead and she killed herself with a sword.”

            Pippa loved the subject of death and talked about it nonstop. In spite of this, I stared at her creamy white face and wished I could dance like Pippa, act like Pippa, sing like Pippa. She was so beautiful and never fumbled.

            “What do you think about death and dying, Quinelle?”

            My face in the Pinkie Mobile mirror had a gaping mouth and beady green eyes. What could I say? What did I know about adult matters? I was only Quinelle, so I fumbled.

I remember the Last Night in California so well.

Our mouths were sore from singing, our throats hoarse from shouting—the instruments all packed away in the Pinkie Mobile, along with amps and microphones and cords. It was long past midnight. We all should’ve been asleep, but we were a bundle of nerves.

Creeping toward the empty stage, I found Sebastian Willis. He sat there alone with his piano. Unsuspected, I watched him. His face wore the saddest expression I had ever seen, and his piano playing brought tears to my eyes. He sang softly.

“Pack it all away, love,

Pack it all away,

And save your love for a stormy day.

Pack up your broken heart,

And throw it over the railroad bridge

When your dreams get too heavy and the road is twisted,

And there’s nothing left to hope for,

When lovesweetlove is gone…”

I had never heard this song before. He had just invented it from his heart when nobody was around.

Then I thought of Pippa’s mournful face, and two puzzle-pieces clicked. Sebastian Willis loved Pippa Green! How stupid I was not to guess the truth. Did she love him back? She had to. Love Sebastian, Pippa! Even if he is a lonesome freak, love him!

Pippa had been acting wrong all day. Kept her hands pressed to her temples, walked around with a washcloth on her forehead, wouldn’t sit down, and wouldn’t speak to any people.

My teeth hurt and my eyes stung. Frightened, I scurried around a patch of wild licorice, and I slammed into Tawney Jacobs behind the stadium bleachers. Why was Tawney here?

“You heard Sebastian’s new song?” he whispered to me.

“Yeah.”

“You’re distracted, Tawney. Are you also writing a love song, Mr. Moony Eyes?” I teased.

“Naw.”

“Because that’s just what I was gonna do—write a love song for Tawney Jacobs and sing it for all the people in America.”

“You’ll get a knuckle burger if you try that. Keep your declarations of undying love to yourself, Quinny-Bert the Featherbrain. The world doesn’t wanna know.”

“What should I do with them?”

“You can kiss me if you want.”

“I love you,” I blubbered, weeping like a two-year-old who just dropped her ice-cream in the sand under the playground slides. So he grabbed me and kissed me, my first kiss, the most wonderful kiss in the whole world. We pried apart from each other just before I passed out from lack of oxygen.

It was the summer when “Arthur’s Theme” was constantly playing on the Pinkie Mobile radio. The lyrics, as familiar as my fingernails, came back to me.

“When you get caught between the moon and New York City, the best thing you can do is fall in love.”

Stars danced before my eyes! I was moon-struck! I could’ve grabbed a brass trumpet and hollered for all the world, I kissed Tawney! I could’ve shouted it from the rooftops. But then I looked closer at Tawney and saw a disgusted look on him, like I’d been sucking chili peppers.

“Look at that moon!” I shrieked.

“Get away from me, Quinny-Bert,” he said, flatly.

“We should run away and get married and have twelve children who play brass trumpets in the California sun.”

“That’s enough. I never should’ve let you…I shouldn’t have let you on. No way on earth will you be my girlfriend. My daddy will kill me.”

I stood stupefied, like I was a rain-drenched torch.

“Goodnight, Quinelle,” he said quietly.

“Goodnight,” I said.

I walked away from the bleachers, across the gravel, toward the Pinkie Mobile. As soon as I saw Miss Xyra, my tears gushed back and poured down my face.

“Honey-child,” said Miss Xyra, “what’s the matter?”

“I’m a stupid fool, a lying donkey.”

“Come to Miss Xyra’s arms. I’ll sing you a lullaby.”

“I want to go home,” I sobbed, and then lost my breath as the thought struck me, Quinelle, you have no home.

Xyra just stared at me, more troubled than I’d ever seen her. I saw it in her eyes—Quinelle, why are you dragging me through all your nameless troubles? Just tell me about them. Spit it out.

“What have you been doing, all alone here?” I said. Just to fill the silence.

She sighed. “Listening to R&B. Channel faded until all I could hear was a report of a man who escaped a mental institution.”

“That reminds me of Mother. My mother ended up in a mental institution many years ago, after she abandoned me at McDonalds, after Daddy went to jail,” I blurted.

Xyra said nothing, but I poured out my story to her—I told her all about Mother and Daddy, about the Werns family, about Granddaddy, and how I escaped to join Sebastian Willis’s band. My words were foolish, utterly foolish, but who cared? This was my Last Night in California.

Who knew? Maybe it was my last night outside of juvenile prison.

The car keys dangled from the ignition. The smelly pine-tree freshener fluttered in a faint breeze. Moonlight lit the mascara on Miss Xyra’s face. The radio blared the report about the insane man. Police headed down Highway 67—citizens advised to stay indoors—further reports upcoming—if seen, call such and such a number.

“Don’t say it, Miss Xyra. Don’t call the police on me.” My teeth clenched and my lips bled. The squeakiness of my voice frightened me. Miss Xyra and Sebastian Willis and Tawney Jacobs were the closest to home I’d ever known.

“Tell me more about this mother of yours,” said Xyra, like she was my shrink.

“I don’t remember Mother as strongly as Daddy. I do remember Mother had wilted ivy plants and cracked coffee mugs and pink fuzzy bunny slippers. Fed me coffee when I was a toddler to make me sleep. Whenever Joni Mitchell sang ‘Both Sides Now’ on the radio, she sank into a kitchen chair and cried. Mother did other funny things, too, like wear stuffy turtleneck sweaters in the hellish heat of summer, sleeping with my teddy-bear, and throwing Chinese noodles at Daddy. She said, ‘Quinelle, one day you and I will run away to the Pacific Islands where no men are allowed. We will feast on coconut milk and honey all our days.’”

Faintly, I heard Miss Xyra’s black jazz voice humming:

“Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, sometimes I feel like a motherless chi-ld, oh Lordy, sometimes I feel like a motherless chi-ld in my soul, deep in my soul.”

“Yeah, I do feel like a motherless child.”

“Didn’t you ever see sadness in your mother’s eyes?” she asked.

 “Sadness? My mother? Why is she the sad one—she abandoned me!” The word abandoned slammed me.

“Depressed and suicidal people do things often that they regret later.”

“I will never forgive her, even if God strikes me dead.”

“Quinelle.”

I turned, stiff-mouthed. Miss Xyra held a notepad. She had gone from shrink to detective.

“Tell me the truth. I need all the information I can get. If we contact the police, there’s the chance that we can locate your mother…”

“No.”

“Don’t lie to a reverend, Quinelle.”

“My mother died, Miss Xyra.” There. I finally spilled the truth. It nearly killed me to admit that fact, for I’d been hoping so hard to find Mother in California.

“Oh, Lord.” She looked flabbergasted.

Just at that moment, we heard Jeanette yell. Jeanette’s yell was nothing to laugh about. It freaked us so badly that our hair stood on end.

“Come over here and help! Right now!”

“It’s Miss Pippa,” said Xyra.

We tumbled out of the Pinkie Mobile. We found flashlight-holding people gathered around a huddled form on the cement. Jeanette weeping. Stevie-O and Grease-Pan and Sebastian rushing for the payphone to call the cops. Their voices like urgent crows.

“Pippa,” gasped Jeanette.

Something bad happened to Pippa.

I sank to my knees, the cement freezing cold beneath my dungarees. Pippa, beautiful Pippa in her sequined scarves, sprawled cold and unconscious around a puddle of shattered glass. Shattered wine-glasses. Blood dripped from her sweet upper lip. One hand was clenched into a fist, the other hand open and desperate. Rings gleaming in the moonlight. I studied the hollows of her perfect hands, the tiny veins running up and down her powdered skin.

“Is she…how she…what did she…?” I gasped to Jeanette.

“She’d been depressed on and off all her life, but this summer’s been worse than ever. Her sleepless nights and panic attacks got too heavy. She had nobody to turn to. I was her sister. I had no idea what she was talking about.”

“Was her sister?”

“Stay with her, Quinelle. The ambulance is coming as fast as humanly possible.”

Blackness and tears and pounding feet and ambulance sirens. Nothing was real. Now this night—the Last Night in California. It might’ve been the Last Night Ever, for all I knew. Tawney squeezed my shoulder and said, “Quinelle. Come now. Get into the police car.”

“Police car? Am I getting arrested?”

“Come with us, Quinelle.”

“What’s happening?”

“We’re going to the hospital.”

Hospital. That reminded me of when I had my tonsillectomy and Mother dragged me out into the Chevy, and Rachelle Werns being wheeled down a corridor. Nothing on earth could make me relive those days.

I sat in the room marked EMERGENCY WAITING with the band members around me and random strangers staring at us. Crying infants, hollow-eyed young men, kids with swollen eyes and dangling broken arms. Antiseptic stench filled the air.

A nurse handed me a glass of Welch’s grape juice and a pile of Cheezits. I counted the salt on the Cheezits. How late was it? The white sterile clock read half-past 2 AM.

Beautiful Pippa, sweet diamond Pippa, what are they doing to you? They can’t steal the fire in your eyes. Keep your hand on the microphone, Pippa. Don’t stay on the ground. Your time has come to sing.

Hands on me. Boy hands. Tawney’s hands. My eyes blinked open from sleep, saw yellow, glaring hospital lights.

Panicky, I cried, “Just tell me! Pippa! Is she alive, or is she…?”

“We’re leaving this place. Just you and I. Private business,” said Tawney.

I scrambled off the waiting-room chair. Tawney’s slightest touch sent electric thrills up and down me. He was so beautiful, the sight of him could’ve cured every sick person in this darn hospital. I wanted to kiss and bite his scalp and love him forever. He cared about me—me, a skinny twelve-year-old with mousy red hair and freckles, even though he was a bona-fide jazz star.

“I changed my mind,” said Tawney.

“Changed your mind about what?”

“We’re gonna run away and get married. Take the Pinkie Mobile. Sebastian taught me how to drive that sucker. We can slip away right now.”

At this point, someone should’ve slugged me. Someone should’ve said, You’re insane, Quinelle! Here you are, running away from Granddaddy Featherbean and the law, traveling with a jazz band, sitting a crowded hospital. Pippa is badly hurt or maybe dead. Everything is chaos. Your name is on milk cartons and telephone poles. You’re a teen runaway! You and Tawney cannot elope and get married. There is no way on earth a twelve-year-old girl can marry a fourteen-year-old boy. That’s illegal, immoral, impossible. Stop right now, before you dig yourself into a deeper mess! STOP!

Xyra walked into the waiting room. She said, “Where are you going, Tawney and Quinelle?”

“Going outside, to catch fresh air,” said Tawney.

We got into the Pinkie Mobile, Tawney jammed the keys into the ignition, and the vehicle sputtered to life. All the saxophones and folding chairs and microphones crammed into the trunk clattered furiously. I gripped the seat.

“You’re not sure you can drive the Pinkie Mobile, are you, Scrawny Tawney?”

He cursed. “Don’t you go sassing me, future bride! Course I can drive! Can’t I make a pizza disappear in two seconds?”

Tawney drove the Pinkie Mobile like his ego was the only thing holding the world together. Psychedelic and dreamy lights flashed past. Police cars honked. Tawney roared and rumbled down the highway.

“Slow downnnnn, Tawney! I’m gonna puke!”

“We’ll rule the worrrrld!” Tawney was wide-eyed.

Crash, bang, smash, clatter, clang, SMASH!

Tawney never saw the telephone pole coming. There was a smash, a splintering of wood, a jolt, and then police sirens closing in around us.

Traffic wailed, California people whizzing by on the highway. A policewoman poked her nose into the Pinkie Mobile window.

“Kids!” her shocked gasp echoed in my ears.

“I’m seventeen! I got a license!” said Tawney.

“Crazy kids. A license to do what? Smash into telephone poles and block traffic?”

“He is a short seventeen,” I said, crossing my fingers.

“Whose car is this? Tell the truth.” Her badges glimmered.

“Sebastian Willis, with his jazz band Appendectomy and the Midnight Pink, he owns this car…”

Shut up, mouthed Tawney.

The policewoman squinted at me. “You are…oh Lord, you’re the runaway child from Minneapolis! Quinelle Featherbean, isn’t it?”

Don’t even think my name.

A sterner, heavier policeman lumbered up to the Pinkie Mobile, handcuffs clinking. “You kids are gonna spend your night in a safe place,” he said.

Jail was like an extremely creepy campout, a campout with cement and metal benches and locked doors. Tawney and I spent the night begging to get out so we could use the bathroom, but the police wouldn’t budge. My thoughts whirled.

Hello! What exactly are you people gonna do with us? What about Appendectomy and the Midnight Pink? What about Pippa?

Next morning, a shaggy-haired young policeman had mercy upon me. He took me away privately, sat beside me in the police station’s back room, rolled up his sleeves, and rested his elbows on the table. He took a sip from his Dr. Pepper. “Let’s have a little small talk, kid,” he said.

TRASLATION: When adults, especially authority figures, want to have a little small talk or a little chit-chat, and they act all friendly-friendly and casual, watch out. Watch out.

 “Give me the goods,” I said.

He pretended to clean his nails while sizing up his next words.

“Well, Quinelle Featherbean, you’ve been an official Missing Child for some weeks. I can’t believe you made it all the way from Minneapolis to Detroit to California without being caught. And you toured in broad daylight! Didn’t you see your picture on all the milk cartons?”

I had seen my picture on a milk carton the other day, and I was just upset because of my scraggly haircut.

Then a horrible shock gripped me. “Do you know about my grandpa? Is Granddaddy Featherbean still alive?”

“Yes, but the chaos surrounding your escape has driven him near the edge.”

“I’m so sorry, so sorry, so sorry…”

“So you sneaked into the Appendectomy and the Midnight Pink concert in Detroit, and you’ve followed the band across America. Miss Xyra Mains took you in, didn’t she?”

“No, sir.” I crossed my fingers.

 “Our records show that witnesses have spotted you in thirty states. It appears that Miss Xyra sang ‘Amazing Grace,’ for her orphan friend during the Detroit concert. Didn’t she?”

He flipped casually through a stack of papers. My heart gave a dull, slow thump.

“You people will send me to juvie,” I summed up. He looked puzzled. “I mean, I’m going to juvenile prison.”

“So you think so?”

“My mother died in the loony bin. Daddy went to jail because he wouldn’t stop stealing lawn dwarves from Walmart. My grandma is a hog-tied Baptist, and Grandpa Fetibull is a trucker.”

“We were about to discuss your father, Walter Dean Featherbean.”

“Oh!”

Oh, God!

He flipped casually through a stack of papers. “Our records show that, at the time of your escape, your father had inquired of your Granddaddy Featherbean about…adopting you. Taking him to live with you at his truck stop in Woodsville, Indiana. Our records show that he sent out a massive search team for his daughter—dogs and helicopters and warnings on television. He has nearly given you up as dead. ‘If I can just see little Quinelle’s face, then I know I’ll be all right,’ he said.”

I flopped backwards. How stupid had I been? The entire United States had searched for Quinelle Featherbean, and I’d toured with Appendectomy and the Midnight Pink! Amazing! I grabbed for his papers. “Let me see what other dirty secrets you have in those records,” I said.

He snatched the records away. “Under ordinary circumstances, you must face trial for juvenile elopement, and the band members also, who contributed to the delinquency of a minor. But we police officers have discussed the matter, and we’ve decided it would be more efficacious for your precarious situation to live with Walter Dean Featherbean. You’ve been shown great mercy with the law authorities.”

TRANSLATION: I saved your butt, kid. You get to live with your long-lost jailbird daddy instead of rotting in juvie.

It’s true what Daddy said, that you can’t keep a Featherbean in jail. The Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle ran articles about me called, “Girl, 12, Runs Away, Joins Traveling Jazz Band.”

Tawney’s dad filled the entrance of his jail cell. He was built like a lumberjack, with tree etchings on his forehead. He could’ve crumpled me in his fist. Tawney took one look at his dad and got an expression like he’d rather be locked in jail.

“You have shamed the noble name Jacobs, running away in the Pinkie Mobile with this white-trash girl,” declared Mr. Jacobs.

“Gosh-darn it, Dad, don’t lay the blame on me. I’m only human.” He stared at his Calvin Kleins.

“Don’t call me Dad! Look at me, loser. Apologize this instant, or face serious consequences. You’ll thank me later.”

My stomach sank with sympathy for Tawney. I never did think he had many brains. But he was only human, and that father of his…Mr. Jacobs was an ogre. Poor Tawney.

Will I ever see Tawney Jacobs again in my life?

Goodbye. Goodbye. My whole life was a series of goodbyes. Say goodbye to California. Say goodbye to Tawney. Say goodbye to Sebastian Willis, Xyra Mains, Appendectomy and the Midnight Pink.

When the cops took me to Lemon County Hospital, I ran straight to Pippa’s room. Xyra was there, Jeanette was there, Stevie-O and Grease-Pan were there. Sebastian had his arms around Pippa and was stroking her raven-black hair, back and forth, back and forth. The place was full of flowers and cheesy get-well cards. I could hardly look at sweet Pippa without crying. Those white bandages on her wrist. Hollows in her violet eyes. She looked so sad and frail. There were so many questions, but I couldn’t fit them around the golf ball in my throat.

Xyra Mains gestured from Sebastian to Pippa and mouthed the words, He saved her life. Praise the good Lord.

Jeanette’s nine fingers grasped my hand. “You are the sweetest little orphan I ever met. I wish you joy forever.”

I said, “I’m gonna go live with Jailbird Daddy in Woodsville. I’m sorry for putting you people in danger. You could’ve…you could’ve gone to jail on my account. I don’t know how to tell you how sorry I am. I know, nobody’s slaying a fattened calf for Prodigal Quinelle. You should’ve turned me in to the police long ago. Granddaddy Featherbean’s pretty bad off. Daddy searched for me endlessly. I am a helpless, hopeless little fool.”

“Child, we still love you,” said Miss Xyra.

“You gave us a scare,” said Sebastian, concern in his brown eyes.

“Grease-Pan was the most terrified of all,” said Stevie-O.

Grease-Pan just sat there emptying his spit-valve and absent-mindedly strumming a fiddle, like this wasn’t a white-walled hospital room and he was allowed to do whatever he pleased.

“What day is today?” said Jeanette.

“July the twentieth,” said Xyra.

Realization. My birthday. My thirteenth birthday—I had forgotten all about it. I was grown up now and must put childish ways behind me.

“It’s my birthday,” I said, looking at my sandals.

“I had a feeling today was special,” said Xyra. She drew a piece of junk from her ever-present duffel bag and handed it to me.

I stared at the junk. It was the head of a Navajo Indian woman and it looked like it had cost fifty cents at a yard sale.

 “That is the Virgin Mary herself,” said Xyra, “and it’s been in my family since slavery times. Survived Sherman’s march, floods, fires, hurricanes, to become the most treasure heirloom I had. I always carried it with me as a talisman—you know, as protection. Mary kept the insane escapee from attacking us and saved Pippa’s life and got you out of jail. Now I give it to you, my precious orphan-child. Whenever you look at Mary, remember that she is your mother and you are never alone.”

The woman’s carved face sneered. If Miss Xyra thought this was Jesus’s mother and would take over Mother’s place in my life, she clearly belonged in a loony bin.

“Please take it back—it’s yours,” I said.

Then I looked from the Navajo woman to Miss Xyra and from Miss Xyra to the Navajo woman, and they looked exactly alike. That was a carving model of Miss Xyra’s head! I dropped it and squealed with shock.

“Thank you,” I said, and I cried into Miss Xyra’s neck for ten minutes. We were all very mushy and sentimental, even Stevie-O and Grease-Pan. Sebastian took out his guitar and serenaded us with the Happy Birthday song.

Grasping my suitcase and the Navajo head, I fled Pippa’s hospital room. Immediately, I rammed into a tall man in the hall. You could’ve knocked me over with a turkey feather.

“Excuse me, little girl?”

He looked at me. I studied him. Tall. Chinese-looking. White teeth. Grinning. Familiar.

“Quinelle?” the grin dropped from his face.

For a split second, he could’ve been the angel Gabriel. Then he was Sebastian Willis, all awkward and lonesome and alone. I blinked away my tears and recognized who he was.

He was my Daddy, and I went to him.

Now there’s a whole world of fantasies and illusions and delusions following me around, wherever I go. Just like Miss Xyra’s Navajo head always smiles at me from my nightstand. I can’t help believing in my foolish daydreams.

I’m just like Daddy and Mother.

When Daddy and I got back to Woodsville, we sat in the pea-green loveseats in the living room, popped a bowl of popcorn, and had a nice long talk. It was the freest I’d felt in months.

All that happened a year ago. Now I’m a freshman at Woodsville High School and still daydreaming, still writing poems and songs in my notebook. My philosophy is NEVER JUDGE A MAN, NEVER JUDGE A WOMAN, NEVER JUDGE A CHILD. Never judge anyone. Not Daddy, who stole garbage cans and lawn dwarves. Not Mother, who spent years at the Lemonville mental hospital. Not even myself.

Daddy told me the truth. He told me that Mother stayed in California for years until she remembered, Oh, yeah! I left a little girl at McDonalds. I’d better go search for her. Yep, I’d better go fetch her back! Mother broke out of that place, rented a junk car, and went tearing off across America, looking for me.

Mother crashed at the Woodsville Creek Bridge, by Highway 3. I knew that bridge. It was tree-shaded and lovely and had twisted guard-rails. White crosses crouched in the knee-high Queen Anne’s lace. Everybody called it Death’s Crossing because of all the car-crashes. Mother had been the world’s worst driver—especially when it came to turning corners.

“My mother died at the Woodsville Creek Bridge,” I said, shakily, to Daddy.

“Do you want to go visit the place with me?” said Daddy. He was as grief-stricken and desperate as I was.

“Are you crazy?”

Every time I closed my eyes, I pictured Mother’s car in midair, breaking the heat waves along the Woodsville Creek Bridge. I smelled burnt glass and mental and gas fumes. Waves of terror passed over me.

It could’ve been easily been me or Daddy. God works in mysterious ways.

Mother, forgive me for tearing off to California and leaving everybody to search for me. I’m no better than you are. I forgive you too, for what you did. We were more alike than we wanted to admit.

Writing songs won’t make Sebastian Willis adopt me, but I still kept doing it. Can’t stop. Appendectomy and the Midnight Pink send me postcard after postcard. Sebastian and Pippa are engaged, and I’ve written them a love song in my journal.

I’m so proud of them. Everyone’s got to have some reason to gloat in this world! Everyone deserves a standing ovation sometime!

Yesterday was the poetry slam at Woodsville High School. Everybody there was as crazy as I am! I slammed the town with these two pieces written below. They seemed to make the world all right again.

Meet me in the woods when the daylilies open. Meet me by the sea when the boats turn purple and strain at their ropes. Meet me by the creek when the rains are gone and birdsong is sharper and the confusion has left my mind.

Today we join hands. The blue skies bless us and the world serenades us. Under the dandelion sun, let me marry you. Let the new moons come and go. I will love you when it stings like a mosquito bite. Let me love you like an old book I read over and over. Let me love you when we hide away to face life on our own. Let me love you and run my hands through your hair and study the veins on your hands and your wonderful feet.

 Today we join hands and say amen. Let me love you when forever ain’t love enough. Let me love you tenderly. When the seats are all empty and ocean waves crash over me, you will dig me a sand castle. Always together. Me and you. You and me. I can’t tell if I’m marrying you, or if I’m marrying the grass and sunshine and all this world has to give. I will take it all and hold it.

You and me. Me and you. Always together. Let the curtain fall. Righteousness and angels and stones kiss each other. I love you.

My name is Quinelle Featherbean

and I say if you’re beat down,

if you’re caked in misery and crusted with tears,

if you’re beat down

We people will see the end of this world, and we’ll be

HAPPEEE, HAPPEEE HAPPIE

HAPPIE as a birthday cake or a snowman in a cartoon

And you can jump on the trampoline, do whatever you wanna do. You can sing corny songs and throw shoes and open windows

And parachute and dive and climb and ski and

pet tarantulas

If that’s what you wanna do.

I can imagine this turkey-feather day when the world will end will end will

and people like bank tellers and mean schoolteachers

and giggly toddlers will be singing in the streets

will be dancing in the streets

and hugging the tears away and laughing and dancing in the streets under the stars. Dancing on the Sear’s Tower,

Praising God,

and having a good time praising God.

Throwing cherry rockets and setting bonfires

I can smell the popcorn and caramel apples and s’mores

and hear the singing and nobody will have to worry about FOLLOWING THE RULES!

I have a dream today, a DREAMMMMMMMMMM.

Today I have a dream, and I’m not Martina Luthera King, Jr.

How many pairs of lips does it take a person to say, We will overcome?