Beat the Band (32 page)

“Jesus,” I say, feeling this rage rise up inside. At Prudence. At her friends. And at myself for being sucked into it all.

“For the longest time I tried to figure out what I could have done differently. I kept questioning everything. Was it my fault? Did I lead him on? It got to a point where I almost felt like I deserved it or something. It’s totally warped.”

“And she’s still pissed about it, two years later?”

Helen laughs. “You obviously don’t know girls very well. We’re like elephants. We have long memories. Even if those memories aren’t true. Besides, it was right around then that she became so popular. I think it gave her this weird sense of power. Like she could crush anyone she wanted. I don’t know. I stopped trying to figure it out.”

“Did you ever think about trying to get revenge?”

“No. Not really. I guess I was hoping it would blow over eventually and I’d get my old life back. Pretty pathetic, huh?”

“We should do something. For payback. What do you say?”

Helen looks at me with her gorgeous hazel eyes. She smiles. Then leans over and kisses me.

Deeply.

Intensely.

Until I think I might lose my mind.

We part and I swallow hard. “Is that a yes?”

Helen laughs. “No. I just thought it was sweet of you. I couldn’t help myself.”

Sweet of me? Oh, God, if she only knew . . .

I can’t believe what a supreme mess I’ve made of everything. All I can do now is pray that she never finds out the truth.

“WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?”
Dad says the second I walk through the door. He’s vibrating with excited energy, his fingers wiggling, like he’s been standing there waiting all day.

I drop my backpack on the floor of the vestibule. “I had to stay after school with Helen to do our Health presentation for Mrs. Turris.”

“Oh.” He looks a little embarrassed. “Well. How did that go?”

“Fine,” I say. “She gave us an A.” I don’t mention the fact that it was probably because she felt sorry for us. But I’ll take it anyway I can get it.

“An A? Wow. That’s great.” He claps his hands and rubs them together. “So. You ready for a surprise?”

“Sure.”

He grins and waggles his eyebrows. “Okay, then. Follow me.”

I trail Dad to the basement door. He covers my eyes with his hand and carefully leads me down the stairway.

“What’s going on?” I ask. “Why all the secrecy?”

“Just shut your pie hole and wait.”

For the last week he’s only come up from the basement for meals and to shower. We’ve heard a lot of hammering, sawing, carpet tearing, and drilling down here, but nobody’s been allowed to see what he’s been up to.

“We’re almost there.” Dad’s got a hold of my right arm as I feel for the next step with my outstretched foot.

Finally we reach the bottom of the stairs, and Dad guides me across the basement floor. The air smells of sawdust and lacquer and fresh paint.

“Okay. Are you all set?” he asks, his calloused palm a scratchy blindfold on my face.

“Yup.”

He repositions me and then pulls his hand away from my eyes in a ta-da gesture.

Holy crap. For a second I feel like we’ve entered someone else’s house. The basement has been completely renovated. Hardwood floors, a brand-new bar, beautiful carpet laid out across half the space, and a fresh coat of buttercream paint on the walls. It looks like it belongs in a magazine.

“Wow,” I say. “It’s amazing, Dad.”

“It’s almost all recycled stuff I got from the junkyard.” He smiles proudly, standing up tall. “You think your Mom’ll like it?”

“Uh,
yeah
. Maybe too much. She’ll probably make you get to work on the rest of the house now.”

Dad laughs. “Good point. Maybe we don’t show it to her until I’m back at work full-time. Which shouldn’t be too long hopefully, since I started sending out resumes again.” He grabs my shoulders. “Okay. You ready to see the best part?”

He spins me around, and what I see makes my mouth fall open in shock. In the far corner of the basement is an entire band setup.

A really bizarre looking setup. But a full one, nonetheless.

There’s a Pearl drum kit with orange flames painted on the shells and a demon airbrushed on the bass head, stacks of beat-up Marshall amps covered in old bumper stickers, four dented microphones in listing mic stands, a neon-green electric guitar with a spread-eagle naked woman painted on it, and two gigantic keyboards with chipped, yellowing keys.

I look at him, confused. “Where’d you get all this stuff?”

“Made a few calls.” He’s acting all caszh but I can tell he’s pretty pleased with himself. “Got in touch with my old band members. When I told them our situation, they offered to loan us their instruments for the performance.”

I walk over to the gear, take a seat behind the drums, grab the drumsticks, and twirl one around my fingers. “I already told Mr. Grossman we weren’t going to be able to play.”

“Well, tell him you can now.”

I give the floor tom a little tap. The head is loose and muddy sounding.

I think about what this means. That I’ll now have to perform in front of the entire school with Helen. That my chances of tagging all the bases —
any
of the bases — will be officially shot. But the thought of being up onstage with Helen no longer fills me with dread. Not after everything we’ve been through, and everything I’ve learned about Prudence.

I look at my dad, who’s still struggling not to bust into a huge grin. He did all this for me. For us.

“Dad?” I say. “You think we have a shot? You know. To win?”

He smiles. Considering the question. I expect to hear the “as long as you’re in it, you’ve got a shot to win it,” speech, even though I wouldn’t quite believe him.

But what he says to me is, “Who knows?” He shrugs. “But, really, who cares? At the end of the day, it matters shit one what anyone else thinks about you. Just have a good time. That’s what rock and roll is all about anyway.”

“NO FREAKIN’ WAY,”
Matt says, staring at the sprawling-naked-woman guitar.

Tomorrow night’s the Battle of the Bands, and I’ve called an emergency rehearsal so that we can shake off the rust and get used to our new instruments. Of course, we can’t get started until I convince Matt to play the pornographic six-string.

“Oh, my God,” Helen squeals. “It’s obscene.”

Valerie laughs. “Well, at least they’ll have something else to focus on besides your music.”

“Jesus.” Sean shields his eyes like the image is blinding him. “You can practically see her pancreas.”

“It’s not so bad.” I tilt my head to get a different perspective. “It’s like . . . a work of art.”

“They should hang it in a museum, then.” Matt crosses his arms. “Because I’m not playing that thing.”

“You
have
to,” I say. “It’s the only guitar we have. People will love it. It’s rock and roll.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Matt huffs. “You have a demon on your drums.”

“Yeah, but he’s also naked.”

Matt glares at me. “He’s
red
. And he’s got no . . . bits. So it doesn’t really count, does it?”

“All right, just a minute.” Valerie looks around the basement. “What if we cover her up with something?” She marches over to Dad’s toolbox and grabs a roll of duct tape. “With this. We can fashion a little tape bikini.
Problème résolu.
”

“That’s genius,” I say, taking the duct tape from Val.

Ten minutes later, I’ve cut out a tiny silver bathing suit and magically we’ve gone from an X-rated guitar to one you could safely play in front of a group of kindergartners.

“Better?” I hand the instrument off to Matt.

“Much,” he says, lifting the strap over his head.

Sean plunks away at his ancient synthesizers. “Hey. Some of these keys are dead, you know?”

“How many?” I ask.

Sean counts them out. “Six that I’ve found so far.”

“Can you work around them?”

He shrugs. “I’ll guess we’ll find out.”

I move behind my drums and grab my sticks. “Okay, then. Let’s run the set.”

I count us in, and we proceed to trip and stumble through our eight songs.

Then we trip and stumble through them again. And again. And again. Helen sounds absolutely stagg, it’s just us “musicians” who are having all the difficulty.

Matt looks pale. “Are we sure we want to go through with this?”

“I don’t know,” I say, feeling like an empty wind sock. “We sound pretty sloppy.”

Sean plunks at one of the yellowed keys. “Maybe we should re-quit.”

“No,” Valerie protests. “Don’t say that. You can’t give up. You’re just getting used to the new instruments. That’s all.”

“Val’s right.” Helen puts her mic back into the stand. “We need to do this.” She fixes us with her gaze. “You guys have put too much work into this band to give up now. We all have.” Helen takes a deep breath. “Look. You think I’m not terrified? Getting up in front of the entire school when I know what they all think of me? But here’s the thing. Every time the fear starts to set in, I tell myself, ‘Helen, you’re not in this alone. Your friends are behind you. And you
love
singing. Don’t let that get stolen from you.’”

Her words nearly knock me off my stool. I’ve been so focused on myself — on how embarrassing it would be for
me
to be seen with
her
— that I never actually thought about how incredibly ballsy it is for Helen to be doing this in the first place.

She grabs the mic from the stand and unfurls the cable. “We’ve been given a second shot here. Let’s take advantage of it and prove to everyone we have no fear.”

Matt straightens up, smooths his hand down the lapel of his lab coat. “You’re right. We’re in this thing together. It’s way less terrifying than when you’re on your own.”

“Yeah,” Sean says, adjusting his sombrero. “They can take our manager. They can burn our instruments. But they can
not
take our friendship.
Vamanos mis amigos!
”

Everyone looks at me, waiting for my verdict. This means way more to Helen than I realized. I can’t bail on her now. Not after all the crappy things I’ve already done to her.

“Okay.” I nod, feeling slightly queasy. “Let’s do this thing!”

A collective cheer goes up as I count us in once again and we tear into our first song.

THE BIG NIGHT HAS FINALLY ARRIVED
, and I have to say, I’m feeling pretty chill. It took a while yesterday, but by the time our rehearsal was over, we were sounding almost half-decent. Helen was right. Once we shook off the jitters, we were able to make the songs come alive. I know Dad doesn’t think we have much of a chance of winning, but with Helen’s killer voice, and the added adrenaline rush we should get from playing live, I think we might just surprise everyone tonight.

“Come on, hurry it up,” Dad calls out as we bring all the equipment up from the basement. He looks up at the cold gray sky. “We want to get on the road before Frosty starts dumping on us.”

Matt, Sean, Val, and Helen have all come by to help get ready. We pack three cars — our station wagon, Matt’s mom’s Buick, and Sean’s parents’ Volvo — with the drums, amps, guitars, keyboards, stands, microphones, cables, and PA system. And even though Dad tries to hurry us along, by the time everything’s loaded, the flurries are coming down with a vengeance.