Beat the Band (13 page)

“The Beatles.” Matt sighs.

“Oh.” Sean lowers his head. “I knew we should have had someone sing.”

“So, you guys weren’t even playing the same song?” Valerie busts up again. “Now
that’s
funny.”

“Matt,” I growl through clenched teeth. I feel an angry vein pulsing in my temple. “Can you
do
something about her?”

Matt gives Valerie a please-honey look. Not really what I had in mind, but there you go.

Valerie waves her hands in the air. “Sorry, sorry. I’ll be quiet.” She reaches into her purse and pulls out a travel guide to China. Hopefully, she’s planning on
moving
there.

“No, no.” Dad gestures with his finger. “Now that explains a lot. And I’ll tell you what. It shows character. You know how many people would have cut the song off? But you guys acted like
pros
. You played the whole song straight through.”

“
Two
whole songs.” Valerie looks up from her book and laughs, then pretends to zip up her lips and throw away the key. If only it were that easy.

“The bottom line is,” Dad points at us, “you persevered.
That’s
the mark of a true professional. Because if you stop in the middle of a song, it sounds bad.”

“Or,” Matt says, “if you just plain blow, it sounds bad.”

“Okay.” Dad gestures at Matt. “Give me that guitar. I’m gonna show you how it’s done.”

Matt lifts his guitar off and hands it to Dad, who looks at it like the pathetic thing it is. Dad slips the strap over his head, does some fine-tuning of the strings, and cranks up all the dials on Matt’s Rocktron Velocity amplifier.

“You guys just started with something too difficult,” Dad says.

The speaker on Matt’s amp buzzes like it’s filled with wasps. The feedback squeaking and squealing.

“Um.” Matt looks concerned. “Isn’t that going to damage the, uhh . . .”

Dad glances back at Matt’s amp. “Nah. These bastards are built like brick shithouses. You could throw it off the roof and it wouldn’t break.”

Dad strikes a pose and hits a power chord with authority.

Matt’s amplifier makes a loud
POP!,
and smoke starts to billow from the back. He looks over at Valerie, who grimaces.

“Ah, crap,” Dad says. “All right. Don’t worry. I can fix that.” He unplugs Matt’s guitar from the smoking amp and plugs it into the secondary input on Sean’s.

“That’s my Uncle Doug’s amplifier.” Sean gulps. “He said if I break it he’d beat the piss out of me with a tire iron.”

“And well he should,” Dad says. “Because this is a real nice Mesa/Boogie. I don’t even know why the hell he’d loan it to you in the first place.” He dials all the knobs up to ten. Now it’s Sean’s speaker that starts hissing and feeding back. “Okay, we’re going to play one of the easiest rock songs in the world: ‘Paranoid’ by Black Sabbath.”

“Cool,” I say. “We know that song. We’ve done it on Rock Band.”

“Good. Then you know the timing.” Dad grabs the microphone stand and drags it over to Sean. “You’re going to be our lead singer.”

Sean recoils. “What? Me? No!”

“What? You? Yes!” Dad says. “You’ve got the girliest voice. It’s perfect.”

Me, Matt, and Valerie laugh.

“I don’t have a girly voice,” Sean squeaks.

“Did I say girly?” Dad coughs into his hand. “I meant musical. Don’t worry. You’ll be great. Besides, the lead singer’s the front man. He gets the lion’s share of the muttonchops.”

Sean ponders this a moment. Then shrugs. “Fine. I’ll give it a shot. But don’t blame me if I’m not any good.”

“You don’t have to be good,” Dad says. “You just have to be loud. Now, the most important thing to remember is to bring the energy. Rock is all about passion. You want to play straight from your lamb fries.” He sniffs loudly. “Okay. The chords are simple. It’s E minor, D, G, D, E minor. Over and over again. I’ll start us off.”

Dad does a colossally loud pick drag and then rips up the intro.

God
damn
. He sounds really good. Way better than I expected. His guitar riff sends an excited chill skittering up my arms.

I look over at Sean and Matt. They seem impressed, too. Although Sean keeps glancing at his uncle’s amplifier to make sure it isn’t smoking.

Dad looks over at me. Then nods. I dive in with a driving drumbeat. It takes Sean a second to catch up, but he’s with us by the time he starts screaming out the lyrics.

Now, I won’t say that we sound great. Because we don’t. Even though Dad is totally dope on the guitar, Sean has a hard time playing and singing at the same time, and my drumming is anything but stellar.

But I will say that it beats the hell out of our last tune.

And when Dad tears into the guitar solo, his fingers flying up and down the fret board, I feel the tiniest glimmer of hope. Like, maybe, with his help, and if we practice every day, and if all the stars align . . . maybe we won’t get completely laughed off the stage come December.

“YOUR DAD’S A KICK-ASS GUITAR PLAYER,”
Sean says as we trudge up the stairs toward our lockers.

“Yeah,” Matt adds. “I wish
I
could play that well.”

I clap them both on the shoulders. “We’ve just got to give it some time, dawgs. We’ll get there. My dad promised he’d make us better. I mean, we were already sounding halfway decent by the end of our first rehearsal, right?” Halfway decent might be a bit of an exaggeration. On a scale from one to ten I’d give us a one and a half. But it’s definitely better than the negative eighteen we started out with. “Imagine what we’ll sound like after a month of rehearsals.”

“Speaking of rehearsals,” Matt says. “Can we do it after dinner tonight?”

“What? Why?”

“Valerie’s coming over for dinner. She wants to hang out before.”

I glare at him. “That’s so lame, dude.”

“I’m okay to do it tonight,” Sean says.

“That’s not the point.” I run my hand through my hair. “She’s trying to sabotage the band. You realize that, don’t you?”

“What?” Matt shakes his head. “No. It’s not like that. It’s just . . . she’s going through a hard time right now. Kelly barely even talks to her anymore. It’s like they were best friends one day, and the next, Kelly’s spending all her time with Prudence.”

“Well, they are in a band together, dawg. They’re probably
rehearsing
.”

“It’s
all
the time. In school and after school. And Val’s really upset about it, okay? Kelly’s one of her best friends. Look, it’s not like I’m canceling practice. I just want to move it.”

Well, that explains why she’s been hanging around us all the time. And clinging to Matt like a koala to a eucalyptus tree. Still, this could become a major ish down the road if I don’t play this right.

“Okay,” I say. “After dinner. But don’t you bail on us.”

“I won’t,” Matt says. “But she might be coming with me again.”

A surge of anger swells inside me. But I force myself to think about how bad it would suck to lose your best bud like that. And suddenly I feel kind of sorry for Val.

I take a breath. Let it out slowly. “Fine. Just . . . ask her to keep her yap shut, okay?”

We reach the second floor and head down the hall. It’s chock with the usual crowd of kids hurrying to get to next period, but there seem to be a few people lingering by our lockers.

Some douche bag approaches me, laughing. “You and Helen make a cute couple, Corn Dog.” He gives a few hip thrusts before taking off.

“Screw off,” I say, flipping him the finger.

We push through the small group of people laughing and pointing until we reach our lockers.

“Hey, it’s the man of the hour,” somebody calls out, causing a ripple of laughter to sweep through the hall.

And that’s when I see the photograph on my locker.

Someone has Photoshopped Helen’s and my ninth grade yearbook headshots onto an eight-by-ten picture of a couple on a beach in bathing suits, holding each other in a loving embrace. It’s pretty crudely done — and made even less effective by the fact that our heads are facing the camera instead of each other — but still, it gets the message across. One that fills my gut with acid.

“Assholes,” Sean says, ripping the picture off and throwing it on the ground.

There’s a disappointed groan, and the onlookers disperse.

“Aw, I think it’s kind of romantic.” I turn around to see Prudence laughing and picking the picture up off the floor. She’s flanked by Kelly on one side and Bronte and Gina on the other. “Personally, I’d recommend a biohazard suit the next time you’re going to hug the unwashed.”

The girls snicker. My ears get hot.

“Hey, Kell,” Matt says.

Kelly smiles, unwrapping a Tootsie Pop. The grape smell of it wafts over to me. She gestures at the photo with her lollipop. “That is just mean.”

“They sure were kind to Helen, though,” Bronte says. “I mean, where’s the cellulite? And the belly rolls?”

“And the herpes sores?” Gina giggles as she films the whole thing with her purple paisley Flip Video camera.

“This is getting really serious, Coop.” Prudence looks at me sympathetically. “We’d better talk.” She lets the picture float to the floor. “Come on. Walk with us.” She turns and starts down the hall, her friends following.

Um . . . okay, I’m confused. Have I read this whole situation completely wrong? Could this Helen mess actually be the thing that gets me up to bat with Prudence?

“What’s that all about?” Sean asks.

“I’m not sure,” I say. “But I’m going to find out. I’ll catch up with you later.”

I take off after the girls and reach them just before they turn the corner.

“It’s starting to reach epidemic proportions, Coop,” Prudence says as I walk in step with her. “Between all of Helen’s gossiping and what everyone’s starting to say about you and her hooking up. I felt bad for you before, but this. It’s the kind of thing that could ruin you for life.”

I glance at the other girls. They nod in agreement.

“I mean, yeah,” Prudence continues, “we haven’t always seen eye-to-eye you and me, but honestly,” she laughs shyly, “I always thought you were kind of cute. I’d hate to see this thing completely destroy you.”

Whoa. Yes. I like how this is going. Nightmare turns to dream-come-true. I feel myself walking a little taller.

“Outside the library,” I say, “you mentioned you had some kind of plan?”

“I do, but we’re going to have to work really fast.” Prudence produces some papers from a notebook and holds them out to me. “We need to fill this out.”

I take the pages and look at them. “What is it?”

“It’s an application form for Our Lady of Mercy,” Bronte says. “I picked it up on my way to school today. If Helen’s going to transfer schools, we have to get the process started for her.”

“We want to make it as painless as possible,” Gina adds, her video camera still going. “
Literally.
If the paperwork is done for her, all she has to do is go.”

Kelly tugs the lollipop from her mouth. “It’ll be good for you both, really. She gets a fresh start. And hopefully all these rumors about you and her fade away.”

“We’re going to have to do some detective work,” Prudence says. “And fast, because the deadline for second semester is November seventh. We filled out what we know already. But you’re going to have to get some of the more confidential information. We figure, since you’re working with her all the time, you’ll be able to find these things out. And then, of course, you’re going to have to get her mother to sign it. Which will be an entirely different kind of challenge.” She smiles. “But we think you’re up to it.”

“I don’t get it.” I flip through the pages. “Why would Helen transfer to another school just because we fill out the forms for her?”

The bell rings and the hall starts to clear. Prudence stops walking and turns to me. Her friends do the same.

“That’s just phase one, Coop,” Prudence says, touching my arm. Sending a shiver all over my body. “Laying the groundwork. But phase two — offering encouragement — is the most important part.”

Bronte steps up close to me. Her breasts brushing my shoulder. Oh, God. “And that’s where we’re
really
going to need your help.”

My jeans start to feel tight. My knees want to buckle. Must stay focused. “What —” My breath hitching in my throat. “What . . . do you need me to do?”