MARCH 1987, Aberdeen WA
TWO WEEKS AFTER Trae's partially unsuccessful band tryout, Lindy had still not stopped thinking about Kurt Cobain and his piercing blue eyes. She didn't think about him in the way that she had watched lovesick teenage girls fawn over high school boys — it was more subdued than that, less obvious than the sighs of longing those girls had exhaled with their eyes glazed over in class. Most of the time, she managed to shove the picture of Kurt that she kept in her head far back into her thoughts.
Sure, Kurt had stared at her as if she had sprouted up from the ground like a rogue plant, but Lindy was used to peoples' stares. Everyone was always observing her, and not in an admirable way. Her physical differences had always set her apart from the crowd, right down to the flush of her naturally bronzed skin and dark eyes. Those stares had always bothered her because they had been calculating, obviously trying to decipher why a specimen like Lindy Clayton even existed in the Pacific Northwest. But Kurt had not stared at her with indifference, but with interest. Great interest, in fact . . . all consuming interest.
In reality, Lindy had had plenty of distractions to keep her from thinking about the boy who had enraptured her with his gaze. Julianna Smith had been up her ass (in Lindy's own words) about their Hamlet project, predictably dumping the workload on Lindy's shoulders while sweetly asserting that she only did so because 'Lindy knew the most about the play.'
"Bullshit," Lindy muttered under her breath, recalling the last two weeks of hell in which she had nearly gotten herself into trouble for taking scissors to Julianna's teased blonde hair. She played her role properly, though. Pissing them off wouldn't have led her to anything besides trouble. And it was only Hamlet, after all. She had dealt with worse.
Lindy's spring break was commencing the next day, and despite the fact that it meant no school for a whole week, she was well aware that she'd be spending it fiddling on her guitar and finishing up the project on her own. Ever since the encounter with Kurt, she had been playing more, trying her best to learn more of the songs she had once seen Trae master artfully. Kurt had made her feel so assured of her knowledge in music that she simply could not resist playing that beaten-up acoustic well into each late night.
"Big brother," Lindy sang as she pushed open the glass-front door to Spin City, where Trae was working a mid-shift. Her ears were penetrated with the sound of a screeching guitar riff, a song by Black Flag. She grinned to herself, knowing that her brother was definitely working alone. Only he could get away with blaring music the music that loudly.
"Hey there kiddo," Trae greeted, at his place behind the counter stuffing vinyls into 'used' record sleeves. He waved his sister forward as Lindy approached, slinging her bag on the counter and leaning in on her elbows.
"Name the song," he shouted, the music still raging overhead.
"Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie, Black Flag," Lindy shouted back. Trae shook his head in disbelief, smirking although he remained ever-impressed by his sister's library-like knowledge of the punk scene despite being the biggest nerd he knew.
He turned down the stereo dial and set aside the record in his hands. "Okay, what about the year in which this particular track was released?"
Lindy rolled her eyes. "I'm not a machine," she said defensively, though she was secretly disheartened to not know the answer. She usually could accurately respond to every music related question that Trae threw at her.
"1981," Trae smiled. "A fond year of mine."
"Yeah, I'm sure being fourteen was just great for you," Lindy said sarcastically. Trae flipped her off with a single wave of the finger, but she continued to smile, unfazed by his special form of brotherly love.
