Daily Journal
4 a.m. Woke up to another bad dream. It was still dark out and Bandit looked at me from the floor, sleepy eyed, wondering why I was awake so early.
The bad dream was different than the ones I used to have, the ones about Dad and what happened to him. These new nightmares have been about that day they found Mr. Friedman in his office at school.
Maybe Mom was right. Maybe I am just a kid and I shouldn’t be at murder scene.
But the thing is I wasn’t scared, not in the way Mom thought I was. When I saw the body, all these ideas started occurring to me, like the fact that Mr. Friedman must have known his killer. It was obvious to me.
No, what made me upset, what makes me upset still is seeing Xander Herrera’s face, the moment I accused him on the murder in front of every body. It’s at that moment he turns into the Incredible Hulk and I fall through the fall through the floor into infinity. Then I wake up.
1:10 p.m. The day got better. In Math 3 Mrs. Cordasco asked me to answer a question on the board, and afterward she not only complimented my solution but also my sweater. In Technical Drawing I finally managed to make some headway in my orthographic drawing, so now my rectangles don’t look quite so much like metal Twinkies. Oh, and in English, Mr. Baci showed an almost religious fervor about what he called “the sanctity of the serial comma.” Call me a convert!
6 p.m. Dinner was lasagna. Delish! Alas, Mom not home to eat again. She has been working longer and longer hours at the precinct to solve Mr. Friedman’s murder. I feel I have the solution nearby but I just can’t grasp it. Maybe I will look through my crime notes after I go over my class notes.
Oh, I forgot! Right after school (3:35 p.m.) I had an adventure. Victor, my driver (and, let’s face it, bodyguard) knows I’ve been looking to update my record collection. This summer Marcelo made fun of me for not have any up-to-date LPs, and recently I realized this murder case has something to do with that disco dance contest of 1978. So I’ve been curious, and once I get curious about something I want to know everything about it.
I found a Grace Jones LP last week—it and she are super-cool. But today Victor surprised me with a drive into the City. I haven’t been to Manhattan in the longest time. Mom has just been too busy.
We dropped into at least half a dozen record stores. We went to Sounds on St. Marks Place, Venus Records on West 8th Street, where we had to ring the bell to go upstairs, and then Discophile nearby. But I found exactly what I was looking for at Vinylmania on Carmine Street. They had a treasure trove of disco, Don Downing, Three Degrees, Carol Douglas, the Hues Corporation. I wanted to buy it all. But I exercised economic restraint and picked up one Gloria Gaynor LP and three 45s, including MFSB’s “TSOP (The Sound Of Philadelphia),” which I’m going to play right now!
Holly Hernandez and the Death of Disco is a young adult mystery novel, released May 31, 2020.
Holly Hernandez, voted “Miss Bright of ’79” and valedictorian at her previous school, is excited to start fresh at Flatbush Technical High School, one of the most competitive public schools in New York City. She’ll be one of thousands; anonymous. But her dreams of a normal school life disappear when her mother, a homicide detective, has to investigate the murder of Mr. Friedman, the social studies teacher.
One of her classmates, Xander Herrera, quickly becomes the primary suspect. The tall, awkward boy is socially inept, but Holly doesn’t think he’s a murderer. She is intent on exonerating him but he wants nothing to do with her. To Xander, Holly is the overly enthusiastic student who always sits in the front row and answers all the teachers’ questions correctly. He hates perky people!
Eventually cleared of the crime, Xander is determined to find the killer before Holly. As they race to solve the case, their separate investigations lead to a slew of suspects, including another teacher seen arguing with Friedman and a mysterious person named Steve who met with him several times before his death. Could it have been a disgruntled student? Ultimately, a trophy for a disco-dancing contest leads the intrepid young detectives to the Mission Venus nightclub and a murderer intent on killing again!
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About the author
Brooklyn-born and -raised, Richie Narvaez is the award-winning author of the anthology Roachkiller and Other Stories and the gentrification thriller Hipster Death Rattle. His newest book, the YA historical mystery Holly Hernandez and the Death of Disco, is out this year. Visit his website at richienarvaez.com.
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