The Friendship Song is a Young Adult novel by Nancy Springer published in 1992.
Harper is not having a good day. Her dad's married a woman named Gus, they're moving in with her, and now she must adjust to a new school and a new mother. There's something strange about Gus and her house, too. The backyard is littered with junk, people have been known to get lost in it, and Harper can hear faint music playing at night. Thankfully, it's not as bad as it seems, as she also meets a new friend, Rawnie. Together with their love of rock band Neon Shadow—and especially lead singers Nico and Ty—the two friends vow to stick together.
One day Harper and Rawnie learn Neon Shadow is coming to town. Despite a fight spurred on by mean people at school, the girls procure tickets to the concert. But when Nico collapses onstage and hovers between life and death, Harper and Rawnie must brave what they find in the backyard afterworld to save him...
This book contains examples of:
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: In the afterworld, Harper realizes that the hot dog vendor probably won't be Aly if she looks at her again, but took the form as something she was familiar with.
- Alpha Bitch: Alabaster. Making it worse is that she's a skinhead.
- Ambiguous Gender: Gus is both herself and Aengus, a male.
- And You Were There: Harper and Rawnie meet people from school in the underworld, or at least it's how it looks to them.
- Broken Pedestal: Ty leaves Nico behind to continue the tour, leaving Harper, Rawnie, and Nico himself devastated and wondering if it was all a lie.
- Convenient Coma: Nico enters one after the concert, and becomes neither alive nor dead.
- Cool Old Lady: Gus won Harper's dad over with her love of rock music and weird art sculptures.
- The Ferryman: In the afterworld, a Charon-like ferryman appears as the school principal, demanding gold or something worth its weight in gold.
- Foreign Queasine: The hot dogs offered in the underworld are worms. This makes Rawnie feel ill as she'd come very close to eating one.
- Gender-Blender Name: Gus' name is male but she's female, though this doesn't exactly apply in the afterlife.
- Hurt/Comfort Fic: Harper and Rawnie are fond of these sorts of scenarios in-universe, with Ty usually saving Nico from some kind of trouble, or both of them dying together but being comforted with their unbreakable friendship.
- Meaningful Name: Harper is named after Orpheus' instrument of choice, a harp.
- The Power of Friendship: The titular song exemplifies this, and Harper and Rawnie believe in it not only for them, but also Nico and Ty. Except Ty doesn't reciprocate.
- Rescued from the Underworld: The main plot of the book involves Harper and Rawnie going to the underworld to rescue their favorite rock singer after he falls into a coma during a concert.
- Really 700 Years Old: Gus is ancient despite looking middle-aged at most.
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Death comes for Nico in the form of a giant winged snake.
- Sadly Mythtaken: Lampshaded, as Aengus admits that he's not the lord of all the dead, just creative people like artists, poets, and musicians. The character in actual mythology is a god of love, youth and poetic inspiration.
- Steven Ulysses Perhero: Gus Mccog is short for Aengus Mac Og, the lord of the dead.
- Threshold Guardians: The boatman and the hot dog vendor guard various stations of the underworld, as do piranha-like goldfish.
- The Underworld: Gus' backyard turns out to be a form of the afterlife, which Harper and Rawnie enter to save Nico.
