PorchesterPublishing

São Paulo, October 1994. Two years after impeaching a president, Brazil buried Senna, won the World Cup, and changed its currency. Prices stopped going up, for now.

Odete is seventeen, has a black trench coat, and is scared she’ll fail the harsh entrance exam for her chosen university. She’s lived with her grandmother since her parents moved to a gated community outside the city without her. In the afternoons she minds her uncle’s rubber-stamp shop in a building officially called the Grand Galleria and known to everyone as the Rock Galleria, where São Paulo’s underground scene buys records, kills time, and turns every rumor into a conspiracy theory. Customers hardly ever show up, so she has time for what she does best: sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong and tracking every story to its source.

When the leader of a hardcore band shows up complaining that his demo tape has been tampered with, Odete decides to investigate. As the case gets hairier, she recruits a handful of people from the scene to chase it down: friends with more free time than qualifications, and a girl who complicates everything.

As the story gets out, the press blames the devil, extraterrestrials, a real-estate scam, or mass hysteria. A pastor goes on TV to call the building the maternity ward of the Apocalypse, and anyone who listens to metal, punk, or goth rock becomes a suspect.

With exams coming up and her family telling her to drop everything, Odete has to choose between the future expected of her and a mystery that was never any of her business.