The Big Rewind Read Online Free Page A

homemade cookie even though you couldn’t stand raisins.
    I took my wine and my date over to where Mac was thumbingthrough KitKat’s DVDs. “I always wondered where she got the name Baldrick from,” he said, holding up Blackadder Goes Forth .
    â€œShe always said that Monty Python got overquoted,” said Natalie, taking a seat on the ottoman and adjusting one of the lion-mane scarves she wore effortlessly draped around her neck. “She said once you heard a douchebag in a fedora recite ‘Dead Parrot’ for the hundredth time, you had to start exploring other areas of British comedy.”
    â€œHe’s just sleeping!” yelled some drunk, fedora-sporting douchebag from the other room.
    Natalie rolled her eyes. “And that one’s with me,” she muttered.
    â€œHere,” Mac said, passing the DVDs to me. “You got the cat, you should get the source of his name too.”
    That was when I teared up. I felt like a thief. Everyone in this room had adored her, and here I was, sharing their same grief. Was I no better than the girl who’d tried to take my seat on the subway? I hadn’t even told anyone but Sid about finding her body.
    â€œWe’ll all miss her,” Mac said, giving me a side-hug. “She was a real bright spot on this block.”
    I let him hug me. It made me feel less like an outsider. I took a deep breath and Natalie squeezed my hand. I took a drink and looked around. It was okay to mourn. It was okay to be sad in this place. No one was taking a survey of who was really her friend and who was a faker. Well, no one except Hillary, but she seemed to like me. And for the first time since I had arrived on Barter Street, I felt like I belonged to the neighborhood.
    â€œOh man, remember that time she and Bronco hosted the Nick Arcade party when his annual Fourth of July Calvinball game got rained out?” Natalie asked.
    â€œI still have the T-shirt where she wrote our high scores on the back!” Mac exclaimed. “I haven’t gotten that far in Golden Axe since, and I have it on my fucking phone.”
    Bronco. All of her other friends were present, but her boyfriend was nowhere to be seen. “Why isn’t Bronco here?” I asked.
    â€œNo one’s heard from him since we all found out,” Natalie said. “I bet he’s pretty beat-up about it.”
    â€œHillary said he was at the funeral,” Mac said. “But he isn’t answering his phone, hasn’t posted to Facebook, nothing.”
    â€œI’m worried about him,” Natalie said. “I’m going to drop by tomorrow and bring my vegan lasagna.”
    Group visits were a huge part of Barter Street life, complete with cookies and semi-ironic casseroles. When I first moved in, I joined a Facebook group dedicated to posting photos of ugly casserole dishes in an ongoing game of who could find the most hideous. I wondered who had gotten KitKat’s yellow and white paisley dish, which had taken prizes for both ugliness outside and delicious chicken-and-bacon goodness inside. Whoever had the pink tag had already laid claim to it.
    Natalie pulled a panda alarm clock out of her bag and checked the time. “Which means I’d better get to the store now if I’m going to get some soy cheese.” She pointed to me, then withdrew her hand. “I was going to ask if you were up for going to Axis for Homework on Saturday, but I guess it doesn’t seem right to go without KitKit.”
    Homework was a weekly dark-eighties dance party that Natalie, KitKat, and I had dropped by occasionally. I thought about the tape still sitting on my dining room table and briefly toyed with the idea of contacting DJ MissTaken and asking her to play it in tribute to KitKat. But I didn’t even know what was on it, and chances were, MissTaken wasn’t lugging a boombox around with her mixing board.
    â€œMaybe we’ll just get coffee,” I said.