Read the book: «Another Little Piece Of My Heart»
What if your devastating breakup became this summer’s hit single? In this rock-and-roll retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, music can either bring you together or tear you apart.
At her dying mother’s request, Claire dumps Jared, the only boy she’s ever loved. Left with a broken family and a broken heart, Claire is furious when she discovers that her biggest regret became Jared’s big break. While Jared is catapulted into rock-star status, another piece of Claire’s heart crumbles every time his song plays on the radio.
The summer after her senior year, it’s been months since the big breakup, and Claire is just trying to keep her head down and make it through a tense trip to the beach with her family. But when Jared shows up, and old feelings reignite, can Claire and Jared let go of the past? Or will they be stuck singing the same old refrain?
Another Little
Piece of My Heart
Tracey Martin
About the Author
Tracey Martin lives in New Hampshire with her husband. Though always a voracious reader, it wasn’t until studying psychology in graduate school that she realized imaginary people were way more fun than real ones. She’s been writing stories ever since. Her first novel for adults, Wicked Misery, was published by Samhain in 2013. Another Little Piece of My Heart is her YA debut. You can visit her online at www.tracey-martin.com or follow her on Twitter: @TA_Martin.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Claire’s Summer Survival Playlist
Chapter One
Some people are like a venereal disease. Not that I know what one is like firsthand, thanks, but I did have to sit through health class. My point is, these people are the product of a moment of fun in your past, a wild and crazy passion that you look back on with longing and regret. And just when you think they’re gone for good, they return to irritate the hell out of you.
Jared Steele is one of those people.
Down the hallway, someone turns on the radio, and Jared’s soulful voice drifts through my bedroom doorway:
Daddy’s girl, was that red Miata the price of your heart?
You know you can’t—
“Off! Turn it off!” I put my hands over my ears as Kristen runs over and slams my bedroom door shut.
Slumping against my bed, I glimpse the key to my red Miata, which is currently parked in the garage. My nails dig into my palms as I wait for the surge of rage to pass.
It’s not as though Jared’s ever said “Daddy’s Girl”—or any of the other anti-love songs on his hugely successful album—is about me. At least not publicly. I know this because although I try to avoid the hundreds of interviews he’s given, somehow I manage to read them all. But among those of us Jared left behind in southern Connecticut, the truth is a much-whispered but never-confirmed rumor. I’m Jared’s “Daddy’s Girl,” and he got the ultimate revenge, with whipped cream, sprinkles and several Grammy nominations on top.
Asshat.
For good measure, Kristen yells at my sister and her friends to keep it down. As for me, I take a deep breath and pick up my guitar. I need to clear my head or distract myself. Both if I can manage it.
“So, Claire.” Kristen coughs in an exaggerated fashion, trying to pretend the last thirty seconds didn’t happen. “About this new song of yours.”
This is why she’s awesome and my best friend.
Unfortunately, I am not so awesome. After a few minutes of plucking away at an alleged melody, I let out a small scream and bang my head against the footboard. “It’s not coming together. I suck.”
Kristen hits me with one of my slippers. “How long have you been working on it—two days? Give it time. This is about your mom. You can’t just pluck a tune out of thin air.”
“Some people can.” Some people. Meaning Jared. I have memories of sitting on the floor of his bedroom while he provided soundtracks to our conversations. Even his random nonsense could be amazing.
Groaning, I set the guitar down and throw myself on my bed in despair.
Kristen points a finger at me in an aha kind of way. “You and your mother were a case study in the tangled knots of love and power struggles. Maybe you can’t write a song about being twisted up in your emotions because you’re still too twisted up in your emotions to write clearly?”
I hug my down comforter. “First of all, ‘a tangled knot of love and power struggles’? That doesn’t even make sense. Second of all, twisted is the point. That should help the song be honest or something.”
Kristen goes back to uploading the video she took of my band, Stabbing Shakespeare, to our website. “Honesty is good, but maybe the song’s too heavy. Why not stick to the I-hate-Jared tunes? You honestly kick ass at those.”
“Aren’t they getting old?”
“A classic ‘Jared Steele sucks lime-green donkey balls’ tune will never get old. Not with me. And as your manager, you should take my advice. Stabbing Shakespeare is all about the ‘Jared Steele sucks.’”
I slide off the bed and grab my guitar again. “You’re our manager now? I thought you were my therapist.” Actually, Kristen’s father is a psychologist, but she’s been reading his books for years. She claims it’s to help me survive my post-Jared high school life without gratuitous amounts of bloodshed.
“The best managers are probably both.” Kristen presses a couple buttons on my laptop. “Ta-da! Here we are, from last week’s talent show.”
I brace myself as I watch, but Kristen’s right—Stabbing Shakespeare kicks ass, especially on those driving I-hate-Jared songs. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have room to improve.
As she gleefully points out the audience reaction, I concentrate on our performance. The sound is crappy, thanks to Kristen shooting the video on her phone, but even so I can hear how we rushed through the beginning of our first song until our nerves calmed down. So typical.
I turn my attention next to my band members, looking for ways we could improve our visual performance, too. We’re an odd mix. Tiny Alex is lost behind her drums in the auditorium’s poor lighting, but Nate is jumping all over the place, a crazy ball of energy with his bass. Erica, in contrast, serenely strums away, lost in her playing. Every now and then I peek at myself, stuck between Erica and Nate, pretending I have the charisma and stage presence to pull off this act.
I’m pretty sure I don’t. I’m the front person for the band only by default.
Yet despite these flaws, I know we’re good. Really good. Too good to just play at stupid school talent shows or at drunken parties. Good enough that I am determined that one day, one of the songs I write about Jared will get as much play as his songs about me. Only unlike his nasty breakup songs, my songs will be truthful. After all, the truths I have on Jared are so scathing that I don’t need to make up lies about him.
Speaking of which, for the record, I did not dump Jared for a new car. That’s just the most blatant lie on his stupid lying album.
The video ends abruptly and Kristen closes the laptop. “Not bad.”
I bite my lip. Kristen might make an excellent wannabe therapist, but she doesn’t have a trained ear like I do. She didn’t notice how Erica’s high E was slightly flat, or how Alex skipped a beat during the intro, or how I timed my breath badly on the bridge and couldn’t extend the vocals long enough.
She doesn’t want to notice, either. She wants to be our cheerleader, which is yet another reason she rocks and why I need her around. I can be critical enough for both of us. But we will never, ever excel if I’m not. Never, ever be able to compete with Jared.
It’s ridiculous of me to even try. I know. What are the odds of two musicians from the same small town both making it to superstar status? My band will never catch up to him, yet I can’t shake the dream. The sting of his success is all the more painful since it comes at my expense.
But I’ve been over this territory so often that talking about it bores even me, and I soften my thoughts so Kristen doesn’t start on me about the perils of perfectionism. “No, it wasn’t bad, but we can always improve. And I still think we need new, quality material. We’ve been playing mostly the same songs since Erica and I started the band. We’re not going to get better if we don’t stretch ourselves.”
I don’t know when I turned into my piano teacher, but that’s what she always says whenever she challenges me with more difficult pieces. It frustrated me when I was younger, but I get it now.
On that thought, my fingers crawl back to their respective frets, trying to work through this mother-daughter song again.
Kristen chucks the other slipper at me. So much for hiding my thoughts. “Okay, Ms. Morose, let it go. Have you considered that maybe the one-year anniversary of your mother’s death is not the best time to be working on a song about her? That maybe you need a time when you can be more emotionally distant?”
“News flash: there will never be a time when I’m more emotionally distant.” I glance down at my wrist and the diamonds on it sparkle in the late afternoon sunlight.
When she’d decided to go off the chemo, my mom had insisted on giving me and my sister each one of her beloved tennis bracelets. She had two that she used to wear together all the time. Now we wear them all the time.
The bracelet works for April because she’s a lot like my mom was. But it doesn’t really work for me. It clashes with my style the way, well, the way I clash with everything and everyone in my family. Be it the vinyl record albums decorating my bedroom walls, the bright purple-and-green polish on my nails or the collection of band T-shirts in my drawers, everything about me screams that I am the un-Winslow child—the bad seed, although no one says that aloud. No, it’s far more proper to just fret about my wasted potential.
But if I take my tennis bracelet off before April takes hers off, it’s like me finally admitting that I really was the worse daughter, a public acknowledgement of the knowing glances exchanged by the rest of my family behind their closed doors.
Of course, if I were half the rebel everyone thinks I am, I’d have tossed the bracelet by now. But I can’t. I won’t. I miss my mom. So it stays on, and five thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds shimmer on a wrist that doesn’t appreciate them.
“I’m sure your mom didn’t expect you to wear that every day for the rest of your life.” Ever astute, Kristen swats my bracelet.
“We don’t know that, and it’s just as likely that she did. I mean, she expected my bed to be made every day so I wouldn’t embarrass her in front of the housekeeper. Reasonable expectations were not my parents’ forte.”
Hence, why my mom also once expected me to dump my boyfriend, and oh-so-rebellious me went ahead and did it. Eventually. Because when your mom has cancer you will do whatever it takes to make her happy, even if you’re the “bad” daughter. You will remember the effort she made to ensure sure you got the cupcakes with the blue sprinkles on your birthday, and how she once spent an entire day with you at the library helping you research that awful term paper you had to do in eighth grade. You’ll think about the gross homemade chicken soup she forced you to eat when you were sick, and how she held your hand when the ER doctor stitched up your busted lip. You will do anything to make that woman’s life easier, even if it means overlooking all the ways she made your life difficult.
And then, if you’re like me, the boyfriend you dumped for your mom’s sake will write a nasty song or two or three about what a bitch you were for doing that, and you’ll realize your mom was right and you made a good decision.
That alone is reason to keep the bracelet on—as a reminder that maybe she knew what she was talking about on occasion and I should have listened to her more often.
“Claire?” Kristen snaps her fingers in my face and I nearly hit the ceiling.
“Did you say something?”
She laughs, but her face is filled with concern. “Are you okay?”
I blink and force a smile. “Yeah, sorry. I spaced out thinking about the song. What did you say?”
“Just that I have to go. The parental units texted.”
I check the clock and realize it’s nearing dinnertime. “Right.”
As I watch Kristen drive off a few minutes later, April appears in the foyer, clearing her throat. Two years younger than me, she’s already my height. Plus, she’s mastered the art of the oh-so-superior expression. As a result, most people assume she’s actually the older one.
She thinks that’s awesome. I think it means she’ll get wrinkles first.
“Yes?” I cross my arms and mimic her look.
April tosses her long hair over her shoulder. “You need to lay off the noise making. Gayle and I are trying to finish our group project upstairs. Can’t you take your guitar to the basement or something while you still can?”
I raise my eyebrows. “What do you mean while I still can?”
“You know, before we move? Dad’s putting the house up for sale?”
I gape at her. “We’re moving?”
She returns my dumbfounded expression with one of her own. “Oh, my God. Did you really just ask that? Maybe if you ever had dinner with us anymore you would have known.” April spins around and stomps out of the foyer, but her voice echoes off the marble floor. “You are so clueless, Claire!”
I yell at her to shut up, but the words are a reflex. I’m frozen, unsure what bothers me more—the idea that we’re moving, or that no one bothered to share this not-so-unimportant piece of information with me at a time when they knew I could hear it. Why now? Is it because of my mom’s death, or something else?
My stomach knots as I pad down the hallway and knock on my dad’s office door. Without waiting for an answer, I push open the heavy, paneled door and step inside.
He’s hanging up the phone as I enter. “Yes? What is it?”
Feeling rude for barging in like this, I dig my toes into the cushy carpet. “April told me you’re selling the house. Is that true?”
My dad looks up sharply. Then he beckons me toward his desk and reclines in his chair. “This isn’t news at this point. I’ve been working on the arrangements for two weeks now.”
“It’s news to me.” It’s always news to me. I should be used to being the last to know things around here, but really, I’m not sure you actually can get used to that sort of treatment.
“I’m downsizing,” my dad says. “I’m looking at condos.”
I nod dumbly, too stunned for speech. My dad’s voice is mostly devoid of emotion as he tells me his plans. He’s either approaching this as he does everything, like a simple business decision, or he’s trying to hide how much it bothers him. I suspect it’s the second. My dad does not do downsizing any more than my sister does non-designer purses. Although I knew things weren’t good since his company folded recently, it had never occurred to me how bad it could be. Or how much of my dad’s money might be tied up in his company’s investments, from what it sounds like.
Trying not to outwardly freak, I put on my best unconcerned face and regain my wits. “Yeah, sure. We’ll adjust. And since I’m going to college in the fall, you and April will be even less cramped. It’s not like three people need all this space.”
My dad’s mask slips a little. His cheek twitches. “Actually, Claire, sit down. I’ve been putting this conversation off, but we need to talk about college.”
My eyes open wide. On second thought, maybe now is precisely the time to freak.
So I sit, and from the depths of a leather wingback chair, I learn a valuable lesson. I learn there are worse fates than having your ex-boyfriend write a chart-topping song that turns you into the most infamous Miata-driving girl in the country.
For example, your ex-boyfriend could write a chart-topping song about you, and your dad could have invested your college money in a fund that has since run dry.
Did I say worse fates? I meant far, far worse fates.
Minutes pass. The clock on the far wall ticks obnoxiously loudly, and my dad keeps talking, but I don’t hear a word. I feel sick to my stomach, and all I can do is think that I’m living a bad country song. You know, the one about how your mom died, your college fund left you and not even your red Miata can drive you out of utter loserdom. That one.
I have three weeks until graduation and suddenly no longer anything to look forward to.
Chapter Two
Two months after fate vomited all over my plans, my Miata is, in fact, driving me somewhere. We’re going to the beach. If that’s not what normal people do when facing a financial crisis, then this is just further proof that we are not normal. That my dad is bringing his personal secretary along with us is like an insanity bonus track.
Fortunately, my dad is not crazy enough to be renting the beach house himself, given his financial situation. We’re crashing with my aunt and uncle, and my two cousins. It should be...interesting. I don’t know either of my cousins well these days. Hannah is my age, and Lisa is a couple years older. When we were younger and they lived nearby, we used to play together at family gatherings. Then my aunt and uncle moved to Virginia, and that was that. I talk to Hannah online sometimes, but she’s barely a friend no matter what her Facebook status claims. Since I really only use my account to promote the band and talk to other musicians, I know more about strangers than my relatives.
As I pull onto the highway, April sticks her bare feet on the Miata’s dashboard, and I swat at her leg. “Get them off there.”
She lowers her sunglasses my way. “Please, as soon as I get my license, this car becomes ours. Our car. My feet.” She wiggles her pink-painted toes.
“The license plate still has my name on it.”
“That can be changed.” April crosses her arms. “You have to share.”
The emphasis she places on the last word is evidence that she’s still bitter that she’s no longer getting her own car when she turns sixteen. It’s one of the reasons my dad opted not to sell the Miata. He doesn’t want to have to chauffeur April or I anywhere, and heaven forbid his younger daughter should have to take the bus to school. That would be beneath us.
Appearances have always been way too important to my parents, and my dad in particular. He can pretend the house is too big for the three of us, and that he’d only bought the boat to make my mom happy, but getting rid of the Miata or his Mercedes would look too bad. As for me and my lack of college in the fall, my dad likes to wax poetic to his friends about how I’m taking a year off to explore the world, broaden my horizons and deepen my piano studies.
Right.
I grit my teeth. “We’ll share. Until then, feet down. Now. You’re smudging the windshield and blocking my view.”
April groans and lowers her feet. “This sucks. Why New Hampshire? I didn’t even know they had beaches there.”
I turn on the radio because if April is going to complain the whole time, this is going to be an even longer drive than I feared. “Yes, darn Aunt Anita for not growing up somewhere more fashionable, like Martha’s Vineyard.”
“I don’t care where she grew up. I just don’t understand why she has to go to the beach in that state. Why not Florida or the Caribbean?” Her phone sounds with a text, and suddenly I’m being ignored in favor of the friends she’s leaving behind.
That’s fine. I turn the radio tuner, considering whether I should put on some of the music I brought instead, when I land on a classic rock station. Janis Joplin is belting out “Piece of My Heart” in that scratchy but powerful voice of hers, and it’s like an anthem that calls to my blood. The memories this song brings to the surface aren’t ones I want to relive, but I can’t make myself change the station, either.
This was my song. After the first time I heard “Daddy’s Girl,” I blasted Janis from the car’s speakers and just drove and drove and drove because I had to get away from the mess Jared created of my heart. So hearing this song now? It’s so appropriate as I leave behind Connecticut and every place I ever visited with him. For the first time since my dad told me that college had to be deferred, I feel hopeful. Like maybe this summer won’t completely suck.
I crank the volume and press down on the accelerator.
As the music washes over me, I’m fifteen again, at Michelle Rosenberg’s party the September of my sophomore year. Michelle doesn’t go to my school, but some of my friends know her from summer camp. They’re invited and take me along.
It’s my first real party. The music is loud and bad and mostly I wander around Michelle’s house, trying to act like I’m having more fun than I am.
At last I enter a new room that looks just like all the other rooms with its beige walls, muted carpets and overstuffed furniture suffering under the weight of drunk high school students. Except in this particular room a guy sits on one of those overstuffed couches, and the beige fades away until he’s all I see.
His hair hangs almost to his shoulders, the same mousy brown as my own, but his has these golden streaks running through it, like he spent a lot of time in the sun over the summer. There’s something so right about him that my chest feels as though it’s constricting. Then he turns and catches my eye and grins, revealing a perfect dimple on his left cheek.
The burning shocks me. Kristen develops a new crush almost every month, and each one, she swears, is the best guy ever. Not me. I’m not some romantic who believes in love at first sight or anything, but I have to talk to this guy. I have to find out who he is.
My feet move, taking that huge grin of his as an invitation. So even though I’m never so forward, I plop down on the sofa next to him. “I’m Claire.”
“Jared,” he tells me, resting his head against the sofa and looking me up and down. This close, his eyes are an amazing shade of clear blue. He starts to say something else, then a song by this new group, The Frantics, comes on the stereo, a very popular—very annoying—cover of the Beatles’ “She Loves You.”
Jared sighs. “Lennon and McCartney must be rolling over in their graves.”
Whoa. He’s gorgeous, and he knows of the awesomeness that was Lennon and McCartney? I might swoon. “Really? You hate this song, too? I thought I was the only one.” I bounce in my seat a bit. “Though I’m pretty sure Paul McCartney is still alive.”
Jared shakes his head. “After what he did with Wings? He’s dead to me. So are you a Beatles fan? What’s your favorite album?”
We debate the merits of Abbey Road versus the “White Album” versus Revolver. Soon enough I know Jared’s a junior at one of the nearby public schools, and he’s been playing guitar since he was twelve and writes his own songs. I’ve been wanting to teach myself guitar ever since my piano teacher introduced me to sixties rock, and I have to stop myself from drooling.
We discuss our favorite modern bands and movies. Then somehow the conversation changes to things I never talk about with my friends—politics and religion and weirder stuff, like what if all those ancient gods were actually aliens doing experiments on humanity.
Maybe it’s the pot smoke that clings to the air, but it’s the most fun conversation I’ve ever had. Before I know it, the party’s dying, and my friends are ready to leave. Jared and I have talked for three hours.
He calls me the next day and we talk for two more, and from that day on, we’re practically conjoined. Jared picks me up after school, which my mom is okay with until she sees his ten-year-old pickup truck with the bumper held on by duct tape. All I can do is hope she never sees his house because then she’ll really flip.
Jared’s bedroom is the size of my bathroom, no exaggeration. It’s cluttered and messy and comfortable in a way my room with its enormous four-poster bed and white lace duvet cover can never be. Posters of his favorite guitarists line the walls: Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and George Harrison, who Jared claims is so underrated. There’s barely enough room for us to sit between the piles of clothes on the floor and the albums and CD cases because Jared’s a freak about needing to own multiple copies of his favorite music. Yet somehow he clears space and teaches me guitar. He’s an awesome teacher, and it doesn’t hurt that when he helps me position my arms and place my fingers on the frets, his touch sends electric shocks singing through me.
“You need to relax your right arm,” Jared’s telling me as we sit in the middle of his room, the October afternoon sunlight pouring in through the window. It illuminates the dust that covers his furniture but also coats the room in a surreal honeyed glow.
Jared takes my upper arm and tries to position it for me. “Don’t tense up your shoulder.”
How am I supposed to not be tense when he’s touching me?
I grumble, trying to do as he says. “It’s awkward and uncomfortable that way.” The fingers on my left hand are screaming in agony from pressing down on the steel strings. I’m never going to get the hang of this.
“That’s because the guitar’s a bit big for you. Here, try this.” He comes around behind me and drapes his arm over mine.
My heart beats so fast I’m afraid I might pass out. Jared’s face is so close. His breath tickles my ear, faintly peanutty because we’ve been working our way through a bag of Peanut M&M’S, but warm and so sweet. My eyes close inadvertently. Just as I’m starting to feel stupid for thinking about his lips instead of my arm position, his grip on my forearm slackens and I feel those lips kiss my ear.
Arm? What arm?
He tucks my hair behind my ear and pulls away. “Claire?”
He sounds adorably nervous about what he did, and I don’t want to know what he wants to tell me. If he’s talking, he’s not kissing me anymore. So I twist around—not easy with the guitar on my lap—and kiss him back before he can say anything else.
And that ended my music lesson for the day.
Still, a month later, I’ve made progress amidst all the kissing, and Jared helps me pick out my first guitar. He takes me one day after school. I’ve been to this shop a few times to buy piano music, but I’ve never ventured into the room that’s wall-to-wall guitars. In spite of my lessons, I feel ridiculously out of place, especially since the clerk has blue hair and more piercings than a pin cushion. She also can’t be that many years out of high school herself, and she’s on a first-name basis with Jared.
While he tells her what we’re looking for, I catch my reflection in a security mirror and wonder what he sees in me. It’s not my looks that bother me, although I have to admit the clerk owns that blue hair in a way I only wish I could. As a result I’m feeling really plain as well as absurdly preppy in my hideous school uniform with its sweater vest and pleated skirt. But what really eats away at my insides is that I feel like such a poser. Part of me wants to run over to the keyboards in the next room and bang out some Beethoven just to prove that I have the tiniest bit of talent.
When Jared adjusts the tuning on one of the guitars then plays one of his own songs, my insecurity reaches new heights. I’m a string ready to snap, tempted to dash out of the store and declare myself a failure before I ever give this playing thing a fair go.
The clerk totally doesn’t help, either.
“Isn’t he amazing?” she says, offering me a guitar to try. “Watch for it. This dude is going to be famous one day. I’m calling it now.”
The guitar she hands me is a better size for me than Jared’s, but it feels awkward and misplaced in my arms anyway. “Yeah, no doubt.”
Jared just laughs and rolls his eyes. “You’re both crazy. Claire’s the talented one. I can barely read music, but you should hear her on the piano.”
“It’s hard to totally suck when you’ve been taking lessons as long as I have,” I say. But Jared’s compliment gives me enough confidence that I play a few chords. I still wish the clerk would go away, though, so I can relax.
The free excerpt has ended.
