The Suburban Strange Read Online Free Page A

from behind her shoulder and she pushed it back, wondering if it could be as smooth as this cool girl’s.
    “Are you excited about a new school?” Regine asked her.
    “Curious, I guess. I hope it’s better than my last one,” Celia said.
    “It’s all right. Some parts are better than others, but that’s true of any place, isn’t it? Having good friends can make any place bearable. What kinds of things do you like?”
    “I don’t know,” Celia said, wondering how one was supposed to answer such a question.
    “Well, what kind of music do you like?”
    Celia never had considered her musical tastes. “I don’t know . . . I just listen to whatever’s on the radio.”
    Regine scoffed, “That’s not good music. There is so much amazing music that isn’t on the radio. None of my favorite bands get played on the radio.”
    “Then how do you know about them?”
    “My friends told me about them, and gave me things to listen to,” Regine said, and then she smiled conspiratorially. “Like I’m going to do for you.”
    It was a thrilling thing for Celia to hear, not so much because something hidden would be revealed to her, but because Regine had just implied she wanted to be Celia’s friend.
    That day after class Regine had retrieved a compact disc from the glove compartment of her sleek black car to lend to Celia. Celia’s mother pulled up as the transaction was taking place, and when Celia got into the car she asked her who the girl was. “Regine. She’s in my class,” Celia said, unsure what more she could explain to her mother, since Regine still was a mystery to her, too. Celia turned her attention back to the CD and studied the old black-and-white photo of a tornado on the cover. She had no idea what to make of the title— Tinderbox —or the name of the band—Siouxsie and the Banshees. The tornado in the photo was not the theatrical type that carried Dorothy away and only killed witches. It writhed against the sky like a poisonous snake, and the weather-beaten barn in its path would not be going anywhere in pieces larger than splinters. In Celia’s hands the CD seemed like an artifact from a country worlds away from Oz—ominous, yet oddly beautiful. It felt like a piece of Regine, which she had sent home with Celia.
    Celia could remember as if it were yesterday the miraculous afternoon when she had lain on her bed and listened to Tinderbox for the first time. She wished to never forget that feeling. Hearing that music had been like seeing a color she never had seen before, or finding a new room in the house where she had lived for years. Celia hadn’t realized pop music could sound like that: prickly and ominous but passionate and smart at the same time. She pored over the photograph of the band and wound up reproducing the image in her sketchbook while she pondered these severely beautiful people, who wrote songs about the temperature when the most murders are committed and the destruction of Pompeii by volcanic explosion. She listened to Siouxsie’s throaty voice singing about fearing someone but calling his name, and she wondered what that felt like and how someone could find herself in that situation. These songs weren’t something to distract her for three minutes, like the songs on the radio. This album challenged her. It made her think about things she hadn’t considered before. And it was beautiful in ways Celia hadn’t known things could be beautiful.
    It upended her week. Time she would have spent laboring over a page in her sketchbook was spent sprawled across her bed, her ear close to the speakers of her CD player. By the time she returned Tinderbox to Regine the next week, Celia had made a copy for herself and nearly memorized all the songs. Regine was exuberant when she heard Celia’s reaction.
    “I knew you’d like it!” Regine clapped her gloved hands. “There are so many things I want to show you!”
    Regine meant what she said. Each week she lent Celia a new CD and