Page 1 of Songs of Summer

Prologue

Maggie May

Maggie May Wheelerhad moved into the house with the big willow tree out back a few months before her tenth birthday. She didn’t want to leave the Main Street apartment over the record shop in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, where she had spent the first decade of her life. She adored living over her parents’ store, loved going down the back stairs with her dad every morning before school to prepare to open. There, Maggie would sit on the stool behind the cash register eating an English muffin with peanut butter dripping from its nooks and crannies. She’d watch as the morning sun caused the words painted on the front window—maggie may records—to dance across the hardwood floor while her dad, Hank Wheeler, got down to business.

Hank would methodically begin each day by opening the boxes from the day before. He liked to check out the new albums in the calm of the morning, contemplating the track list, the cover art, and the liner notes, before gently placing the record on the turntable and dropping the needle to play. The store carried every genre, so it was anyone’s guesswhether Maggie would begin her day to the sound of OutKast singing “Hey Ya!” or Aretha Franklin calling for “Respect.”

“Can I have this dance, Maggie May?” her dad would ask when the rhythm moved him, and the two would spin or twist or twirl until Maggie’s mom came down to scoot her off to school.

Maggie’s mom and dad were older than the other kids’ parents, but it didn’t bother Maggie. She hadn’t even realized it until she was waiting in line at the start of second grade. Jill Rose’s mother studied Jenny Wheeler’s loose gray curls and remarked, “How nice that your grandma brought you on the first day.”

Maggie looked from Jill’s mom, with her miniskirt and shiny black hair, to the moms in front and behind her, and back to her own, and noted, for the first time, the difference in age between them. She asked her mom about it on the way home, and on that night, her parents sat her down and told her that she was adopted.

Soon afterward, Hank and Jenny Wheeler became fixated on the idea that it was unconventional for a child to live above a record store and spend so much time with adults. They became obsessed with giving Maggie a conventional upbringing in a house with neighbors and a backyard. Her parents wanted her to play outdoors with other kids, to spend her free time with the OutKast generation instead of Aretha’s, they’d explained.That, she understood. But even so, Maggie always associated the move with learning she was adopted.

Maggie was devastated by the thought of leaving the apartment over the record store, but not wanting to upset her parents, she didn’t object. For reasons she couldn’t explain,she had been on her best behavior since learning the big news, as if her mom and dad might give her back if she misbehaved. It was an absurd thought. Both Jenny and Henry adored their girl more than anything in the world, and she knew it.

From her bedroom window over the shop, Maggie could see beyond the treetops as far as the train station. She could tell when the 6:07 from Akron came in behind schedule and could count the alarms when the local firehouse had a call. Once, she saw the biggest bully in her class, Kimberly Kahn (nickname—Genghis), drop her ice cream cone on the sidewalk and burst into tears. After that, Maggie never feared Kimberly Kahn again.

None of this would be visible from the three-bedroom Victorian or colonial or ranch with neighbors and a yard that her parents were constantly combing the real estate section of the paper in search of. Nothing felt more boring to Maggie than neighbors and a backyard.

It was nearly a year later that Maggie first climbed the willow tree in the backyard of the prewar Victorian she now reluctantly called home and spotted a neighboring kid that looked to be about her age. With her long ponytail tucked under her Rock and Roll Hall of Fame baseball cap and her overalls’ pockets stuffed with candy, she called out to him.

“Hello down there!”

“Hello up there,” the boy bellowed back, without missing a beat. “Want to see my turtle?”

She stepped onto a lower branch that extended over the back fence into the boy’s yard, then fearlessly slid down it, landing with a thud on the other side. The boy, Jason Miller, looked at her like she was the coolest girl he had ever laid eyeson, even before she unloaded her pockets. Odds were, she was.

“Fun Dip?” she asked, adding “It’s Razz Apple!”

“That’s my favorite flavor!” he gushed.

“Mine too!”

Maggie split the sticks, handing one to Jason, and from that day on, the two were inseparable.

Maggie and Jason waited at the bus stop together, where Maggie had once pummeled Emmett Pitler for hitting Jason with a rock-filled snowball. They waited for each other after school, when Maggie’s mom would shuttle them over to the record store to do their homework and help close: straightening the albums so they wouldn’t warp and making sure that customers didn’t accidentally put back Led Zeppelin under Z or Rod Stewart under R. Maggie’s dad would pay them in 45s and they would spend hours playing Name That Tune with their bounty on rainy weekends. Jason always lost but was just happy to be with Maggie. He was always happiest with Maggie.

Maggie and Jason’s birthdays were two days apart, May third and May fifth, so they made a tradition out of celebrating together on the fourth. They went all out with themes and decorations and music and food, especially the cake. For their tenth, the theme was May the Fourth Be with You (Jason’s brilliant idea); for their eleventh, Battle of the Boy Bands; and for their twelfth,High School Musical. By their thirteenth birthdays, Maggie declared that they were too old for backyard parties. Their parents organized a big family dinner instead. The “big” part referred to Jason’s side of the equation.

Jason Miller was sandwiched between two sisters andlived across the street from a whole other Miller clan, an aunt and uncle, who had five kids. Maggie’s dad would spend hours before their birthday parties pairing each guest to a record that matched their personality. Maggie would meticulously wrap the albums in the glossy gift wrap her mom had designed for the store—bright yellow paper covered in 45s with Maggie May Records printed on their tiny labels. Handing out the personalized party favors was Maggie’s favorite part of her birthday.

On the night of their thirteenth, Maggie and Jason climbed up the willow tree. (They spent so much time there that their dads had built a platform around the trunk for them to hang out on.) Maggie brought out two pens, a notebook, and a Ziploc bag.

“What age do you think is really grown up? Twenty-one?” she asked Jason.

“No way. I have a cousin who’s twenty-one, and he got a marble stuck up his nose on his last birthday.”

Maggie laughed. “What about twenty-five? That seems old.”

“I say thirty. Why do you want to know?”

“OK, thirty it is. Here.”

She handed him a piece of paper, a pen, and an envelope.

Maggie loved games. Jason did not. He rolled his eyes.

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