Breakout (16 page)

And I hear some kids say, “No way,” and feel like a hundred pairs of eyes are looking at me and I have no idea what to do so I go into blank Jake Diamond face, except I can feel that, completely unlike Jake, my face is burning red and my jaw is pulsing like there’s a creature trying to bust out and make me grin.

Don’t do it, don’t do it … but then I do.

We are rock stars. This place cannot contain us.

Except once again my nerves spike because here come the f-bombs and I can’t help looking around the room for any teachers. That’s when I see Mr. Travis peering in the direction of Skye’s table like he’s trying to figure out what’s going on, and now he’s leaving his spot where he usually just leans against the wall reading some random grown-up novel like he’s trying to set a good example for us, and he’s making his way slowly toward Skye’s table.

But it’s too late.

Here it comes.…

Skye cranks up the volume even more and then
bam!
there’s me shout-singing the end and it’s like an earthquake upends the room and there are laughs and gasps and a new round of shushing.

And then it’s over. Skye unplugs the speaker and it and her phone are out of sight when Mr. Travis arrives beside her table.

“What was that?” he asks, and everyone busts out laughing like crazy. Mr. Travis makes that face like he’s a little queasy—it’s the one the younger teachers make when they are on the outside of a joke and you can tell especially with Mr. Travis that he is worried that it has something to do with him. “Hey, folks,” he says, trying to sound like
Your Pal
, “whatever that music was, I’m pretty sure it was not something that was appropriate to play in school, right?”

“Rusty Soles!” Natty yells from the table behind them.

“Woo!” A bunch of people cheer and of course they do it extra loud because Mr. Travis is right there. Everyone at Skye’s table is still cracking up. Mr. Travis looks around like he so desperately wants to know what’s going on, and then he follows the path of everyone’s eyes … right to me and Keenan.

Only he spies us right when Keenan is being an
idiot
and standing up and fixing his new hair again and taking a bow. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,” he says, even though Mr. Travis is looking right at us. There’s more applause and laughter from all around us, but I grab his arm and try to drag him down because now Mr. Travis is putting the clues together
and what he says is “All right, boys, that’s enough. No more music.”

“It wasn’t even us!” I say, trying to cover. And besides, it wasn’t our fault Skye played it.

“Either way,” says Mr. Travis. He turns away, eager not to get into an argument with us eighth graders. But before he leaves, his gaze lingers on me and Keenan like he
knows
.

Keenan looks down at me pulling on his arm and says, “What? Stand up,” and he tugs on my arm but I yank it away.

“No!” I hiss, and then, “Rock stars act like they’re used to it,” but what I am thinking is
Come on, Keenan!
This is a dangerous mission with
no
margin for error. We can’t get the teachers even more against us than they already are or we’ll have no chance at this afternoon’s meeting!

Keenan does sit down, but he’s mad. “Why are you such a downer?” he asks.

“I’m not,” I say, but then I don’t have anything to add to that. Maybe he’s right and I should be enjoying myself more. But even though the lunchroom is still buzzing and everyone is looking at us like we are superstars, I can feel the teachers’ eyes on us for the rest of the day, like we have a bull’s-eye painted on us.

By the time we get to our lockers at the end of the day, I feel like I’m going to explode. My stomach feels weird and I’ve had to go to the bathroom between every period.

“Ready?” Keenan says. He’s lost his smile too and looks pale.

“Yeah,” I say, feeling like no, definitely I am not feeling ready.

“Good luck, rock stars,” says Skye from nearby.

“Okay,” I say. Skye opens her mouth to say more but then Valerie appears beside us.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hi,” I say back. “How’s it going?” And the first thing I notice is the blank, nervous look on her face like with her mouth kinda small and how she’s not really looking right at me. Then I notice her awesome Fractured Senses T-shirt with a cracked-apart eyeball on it, and so I say, “Cool shirt.”

“Oh, thanks,” she says, and nope, she doesn’t smile. She’s probably nervous about the meeting too, but also, it’s pretty obvious now that things have changed since she heard the song. Did she not like it? Why wouldn’t she? It seems like everybody else in school does. In the world, even. Ooh, maybe she’s annoyed that I used a drum machine on the track? Drummers get offended real easy by that kind of thing.

I want to ask her but right then I hear this little snapping sound and I glance sideways and see that Skye has just popped a bubble but more important than that she is watching me
talking to Valerie. No, not just watching, scanning every detail of it like there should be some kind of laser light grid shooting from her robot-assassin eye.

Keenan nudges my shoulder. I see him breathing deep. “Time to go.”

“Yeah,” I say. Out of the corner of my eye I see Skye leaving.

Valerie checks her watch. “It’s time.”

So the Rusty Soles walk up the hall and it seems like every kid is looking at us, which is now the usual, and so we are all staring straight ahead like we’re cool and under control. Actually it’s almost getting kind of exhausting all the time having to keep up this show for the public. I feel like I can totally understand why after the third SilentNoize album,
The Tragedy of Coulds
, the band needed some time out of the limelight.

We enter the office and have to weave between lots of little slobbering kids as their parents jostle at the sign-out sheet like hyenas around a fresh kill. I am leading the way, and when I glance over at Ms. Simmons, the secretary, she eyes us like we are POWs on our way to the stalag.

We march down the narrow hall past the office, the copy room, the supply room, and the teacher bathrooms, until we get to Ms. Tiernan’s open door. She’s in there, behind her wide desk. She has a fish tank along one wall and a burgundy Oriental rug on the floor like she’s trying to make her office feel inviting. And it does: just like a lair.

She looks up and gives us the all-business face, no wink,
then looks back to a file on her desk. “And here’s Anthony and the band,” she says. “Come in.”

We shuffle into the room, Keenan kind of bumping into me like we’re chained together. I see that there are seven chairs arranged in a circle that also includes Ms. Tiernan’s desk. Six of the chairs are empty but the seventh is not, and that’s when I understand what is really about to happen.

Level 20 of
Liberation Force
is one of the toughest in the game. It takes place at the end of the Battle of the Bulge, and you are part of the 7th Infantry Division when suddenly German paratroopers start dropping in through a snowstorm and things get crazy. You get swept up in troop movement only to get attacked by a German division near the town of Malmedy, and next thing you know you’re part of a surrender and then it’s too late. Instead of putting you in a boxcar and shipping you off to another stalag that you can escape from like in Level 15, the Germans march you out into a field with about 150 others and start shooting. It was actually one of the biggest soldier massacres of the war. There’s a moment before that, during the battle, where you have a chance to get away from the group, but the point is that you don’t realize that the first few times you play, and so you’re part of the slaughter. Of
course, since it’s a video game you have more lives and so you try again. No big deal.

But when you walk into the principal’s office and see your
mother
sitting in one of the chairs, you can’t press Reset, and you are not going to get another life to try this again. All you can think as you see the look on her face is that you are an idiot. You should have known better. Should have seen the advancing forces, should have known it was hopeless, should have gotten out of there sooner. But now it’s way too late.

“Mom,” I say, but I have nothing to add.

She just looks at me. Well, it’s more like a glare. An exhausted glare.

“Hi, Ms. Castillo,” says Keenan, using his fine-upstanding-friend voice, and that means that now he knows too that there is no escape.

“This is Valerie,” I say, thinking that I should introduce her but also trying to do anything to calm the tension. “She’s our new drummer.”

“Hello,” says Mom. She does smile at Valerie so that’s something.

I sit down beside Mom but then realize I didn’t have to, but it was just habit and getting up and moving now would be awkward so I stay there. Keenan and Valerie sit down too. Ms. Tiernan keeps looking at what’s on her desk. We just sit there.

A minute goes by and then I hear a voice in the hallway. It’s Mr. Scher talking quietly and saying, “… don’t understand what Darren was thinking. Why didn’t he just nix it from the start? This is a waste of time.”

He walks in with Ms. Rosaz and Mr. Travis. They say hi to my mom because they’ve all met her too many times before, and they grab seats. Each of them has brought a pile of papers and starts busily working so that nobody has to make eye contact.

There is a rustle at the door and Mr. Darren hurries in. “Hey, everybody, sorry.”

“Mr. Darren, could you please get the door?” Ms. Tiernan asks. He swings it shut. There are no chairs left and so he comes over and stands behind us as Ms. Tiernan begins.

“So,” she says, looking at us but it feels like mainly me, “Mr. Darren asked that we have this meeting to discuss your upcoming performance at Arts Night. He explained the circumstances of the song and so I asked a few of your teachers to listen as well. I trust everyone has done so?”

Everyone nods slowly like a panel of executioners.

“I spoke with each of your parents,” she says, making eye contact with Keenan, Valerie, and me, “to make them aware of the song and the situation. I also asked Mrs. Castillo to join us today since Anthony, as I understand it, you wrote this song.”

“Yes,” I reply, already feeling defeated.

Ms. Tiernan goes on: “As you all know, I value our Rock Band program, and I love the opportunity it gives some of our young people to express themselves outside the classroom. We’re all very impressed with your songwriting ability, Anthony. And I understand that its content reflects certain current trends in music.” She must mean the language. I hate
how she’s talking about music so clinically.
Content. Trends
. As if I planned it like a math lesson. “Obviously, the end of the song is the reason we’re here. Now, Mr. Darren says that you wanted a chance to make your case.”

Even though I’ve been thinking about this moment, I’m still a little surprised that Ms. Tiernan actually wants to hear what we have to say. Does that mean there’s a chance that she’s going to say yes? I feel my nerves frying at the idea of saying anything to this group. My mind is totally blank. It seems hopeless, standing here in the frozen field, but maybe if I can get the right words out, we can avoid the firing squad. I turn to Mr. Darren and he nods and so I swallow and try to get started.

“Well,” I say, but I can’t figure out how to continue. I can feel my mom’s eyes and everyone else’s on me and the first thing I want to do is point to Keenan and say,
He did it
, because I never would have ended up here if it wasn’t for him posting the song. But that’s stupid. I have to remember that I believe in the song, I didn’t do this as a joke, and I have to think of all the fans online, and what Mr. Darren said, but it’s like I can’t find the right words in my head.

“Anthony,” says Mr. Darren from behind me, “maybe you could explain where the lyrics came from. How they’re not a stunt.”

Okay, yeah, I could talk about that. “They’re not,” I say. “I know everybody’s going to think I wrote the song as some big joke to push buttons, because I know I do that sometimes, but that’s not how this happened. I …” But I stop again. I like what I’m saying, but what’s next?

“Other indie bands have lyrics way worse,” Keenan suddenly says, and I want to kill him because he sounds whiny, and besides,
That’s. Not. Why
. It’s more than that. I have to find a way to say it.

And the clock is ticking. “I just … I wrote the song when I was feeling really pissed off—sorry, angry—and like I was trapped. I keep getting in trouble with everybody and I can’t do anything right and my whole life is like I’m living in a stalag or whatever.”

This makes Mr. Travis kind of chuckle.

“What?” I say immediately because, great, they’re already laughing at me.

“No, nothing,” says Mr. Travis. “I just thought that was an interesting analogy.”

“Oh, okay …,” I say, “but, so yeah, I feel like I could, you know, do things right if I had a chance. But there’s never a chance. And it’s just so frustrating to feel like you’re still being treated like a kid, and like there’s no way out, nothing you can do, and so really I just wrote exactly what was on my mind. I didn’t think about the fact that I was using the f-word, it—it wasn’t about that. I mean …” I think about what Mr. Darren said. “It was just the right word, you know, for the whole feeling.”

Now I see that Ms. Rosaz and Mr. Travis, but not Mr. Scher of course, are looking at me like they are noticing me in some completely different way. It’s not quite like the look they give to Clara or the other star students like Maddie and Emmanuel, but still.

And now everybody seems to be waiting for me to say more, so I try to keep going. “I never even planned to show anyone, but then … everybody really liked it.” I kinda wish I hadn’t said that because it feels like I’m trying to sell it, but I think the point I’m trying to make is what I say next: “I mean, that matters, right? That people really connect with the song? Like, that it’s important to them.”

Nobody says anything for a second.

“Well, yes,” says Ms. Tiernan, “we’ve seen how popular the song is. Anthony, you’ve made some good points. I’d like to thank you for explaining yourself, and I think everyone here understands where you’re coming from. This is a challenging age.”