"Hey, if you guys see that new Syrian kid, you tell him I'm watching him, and he's gonna get deported!"

This came from Derek Bodley as he skulked up the driveway of my house to the garage, where I was practicing with my band, the People Movers. I say skulked because that's the best word for how Bodley moved. He was the kind of kid that always seemed to be trying to sneak up on people, instead of just walking up to them.

He was skinny, with a narrow face and a little bit of wispy hair on his upper lip that he called a mustache. He never looked you directly in the face, that was the oddest thing about him. He was always looking at you sidelong, with his face turned away a little bit. Bodley lived a few blocks away and was fifteen, the same age as we were. He spent most of his time wandering the neighborhood looking for trouble.

As usual, he was wearing his ill-fitting red baseball cap with his favorite political slogan printed on it. For some reason he had a pair of binoculars slung around his scrawny neck.

He stopped just short of the garage entrance, in the shade of a big elm tree growing in my front yard, and squinted at us. Late afternoon summer sunlight threw his shadow across the driveway.

Our singer, Xavier Montgomery Maplethorpe, whom everyone just called X, slouched with one arm draped over his mic stand. His stork-like, six-foot frame was topped by a huge ball of frizzy black hair. He regarded Derek with a cool gaze and a faint smile.

"Hey, man, the election was nine months ago, or didn't you hear? Why you still wearing that cap, fool? Thing's so ugly it's givin' me a migraine."

The rest of us laughed, the rest of us being me, Carlos Villareal on lead guitar, and Kenji Omura on bass. We were currently short a drummer.

We'd grown up together on the same block in Redford, Michigan, near Detroit. All of us went to Redford High School, where we'd be sophomores in the fall. Right now it was still summer, August 1st, and we had almost four glorious weeks of freedom left.

Derek glared at X out of the corner of one eye. "What'd you say?" he asked, in a sullen tone of voice. That was another thing about Bodley: he always sounded sullen, like he'd just been caught doing something wrong.

X leaned into the mic. "I said WHY ARE YOU STILL WEARING THAT DUMB CAP, FOOL?"

The amplifier stack against one wall blasted his voice out at maximum volume. Derek jumped and squawked, then his face went brick red. I laughed.

"You illegal beaner!" he said, pointing at me. "Your sorry butt's gonna get deported right back to Mexico, you'll see." He tapped the binoculars around his neck. "I'm watching. All the time."

I flashed the peace sign at him. "Hasta la vista, amigo!" I said in my best Speedy Gonzalez accent. It was the only Spanish I knew.

An old, blue Chevy pickup pulled up in front of my house, belching oil smoke from its rusty tailpipe. The engine revved and backfired.

"What're you doin' talkin' to them people?" yelled an older version of Derek from the driver's seat: Derek's dad, of course. Vince Bodley worked at the Woodhaven Stamping Plant and was even meaner than his offspring. A cigarette hung from his mouth. "Get in the truck, boy!"

Derek glowered at his dad. "I'm comin', Pop, just hold on, awright?" Then he turned back to us and said with a sneer, "Your band sucks, by the way. You ain't even got a drummer."

The elder Bodley let loose a stream of cursing that practically blistered the finish off my Fender guitar. He finished with, "Get your skinny butt in this truck, now!"

"Jet, you hot mess," said X to Derek. "Oh, by the way, bro, you have any luck stealing those comic books down at the Hobby House? I know you just came from there."

Derek frowned. "How'd you—"

"Never mind, my man. Go on, jet. Your daddy's waitin' on you."

Derek, at a loss for words, got into his dad's truck. They roared off in a cloud of smoke.

I had to admit that Bodley had a point about the drummer thing. Up until two weeks ago, a kid named Bilal Al-said had done skins duty for us, but his dad had moved their family back to Lebanon after the election. Here in southeast Michigan, with its big Arabic population, a lot of people were worried. And Bilal had been a pretty kick-butt drummer, too. Thank you, haters.

"What Syrian kid was he talking about?" I asked.

Kenji answered. "There's a family of refugees, they just moved in over on Hawthorn," he said.

"Oh yeah?" said X. "You meet them yet?"

"No. But my folks want to have them over for dinner soon, to welcome them to the neighborhood."

"Cool," said X.

"Dudes, we gotta hold drummer tryouts," I said.

"Solid," said X, nodding and making his huge Afro bounce. "Craigslist, baby."

"Hey, X," I said as I packed up my Fender. "How'd you know about the comic books?"

"Oh, that?" X shrugged. "Ain't no thing. His cap had blue paint dust on it. Right now Hobby House is sanding blue paint off their ceiling over the comic book rack. Got water-damaged up there or something. He was standing at the rack and it got all over his hat."

"But how'd you know he was trying to steal something? Maybe he was just looking."

"Then he was looking for a long time, brother. Lot of dust on that hat. Yeah, maybe he was just browsing. But Bodley? Uh-uh, I give you ten to one he was looking to get the five-finger discount."

Kenji shook his head. "X, someday you need to tell me how you do that."

"Like I said, ain't no thing." He grinned at us. "Let's go find us a skins man."

A few days later, we were back in the garage, trying to work our way through a cover of Crosstown Traffic. We didn't sound that good, to be honest, but X killed the vocals. He was a huge Hendrix fan. He even sounded like Hendrix when he sang.

When the last chords faded away, we all just stared at each other. Finally, Kenji spoke up and said what we were all thinking. "We need a drummer. Badly."

We all looked at the drum kit at the back of the garage, an old secondhand Ludwig with beat-up heads and a couple of dented Zildjian cymbals.

"Why'd that cat have to up and move?" said X, referring to our old drummer, Bilal. "That dude could lay down a beat."

We stood around the kit for a few minutes like mourners at a funeral.

"Excuse?" said a voice behind us in a Middle Eastern accent. "Drummer? Yes?"

We turned to see the owner of the voice.

It was a short, brown-skinned kid, smiling and holding a piece of paper. He was at least six inches shorter than me, and I'm not exactly tall. He wore bright orange gym shorts, socks up to his knees, blue Converse All-Stars, and a green Michigan State T-shirt. Best of all, on his head was a beat-up old straw cowboy hat with an American flag bandanna tied around it. It was the craziest outfit I'd ever seen. I liked him right away.

"Hey, dude, what's your name?" I asked.

"Yusuf," the kid said. "I am Yusuf Karout. I saw Craigslist. Drummer?" He held out the paper. X took it.

"It's the ad we posted," he said. He looked at Yusuf and smiled. "I'm X. These two fellas are Carlos and Kenji. You wanna try it out, brother?" He jerked his thumb at the drum kit.

Yusuf nodded rapidly. "Yes, yes, drums!" He mimicked playing with invisible drumsticks.

"All right, hit it, my man," said X.

"Thank you," said Yusuf, and sat down behind the kit. He snagged a pair of sticks from the floor.

Yusuf worked that kit like he was born to do it. We watched in growing amazement as he filled the garage with the most butt-kicking drum solo we'd ever seen outside of a Rush concert. The cowboy hat stayed perched on his head the whole time, too, like it was glued there. By the time Yusuf was done, he was sweating a river.

"I play band in Syria," he said.

"Oh, baby," said X, and laughed. "You owned that kit! You killed it! Syria, you said? Oh, you with that new family over on Hawthorn. Cool, bro."

"Dude, that totally rocked," I added. "Seriously."

Kenji was nodding. He looked at X and me. "I think we've got ourselves a drummer."

Yusuf stood up and shook hands with all of us. He had a strong grip. "Friends, thank you! I am very glad!" Then he checked his watch. "It is almost the praying time. Excuse?"

"Praying time?" said X.

"Yes," said Yusuf, stepping out from behind the kit. "Muslim." He pointed to himself. "Praying time."

X nodded. "Oh, yeah. Solid. Can you come back? We gotta hear more."

"Come back?" said Yusuf. "Yes, yes. We jam?"

"Oh, yeah, man, we jam," I said, clapping Yusuf on the shoulder. "We definitely jam."

Yusuf nodded happily and stepped out of the garage.