Breakout (6 page)

Until my phone buzzes me back awake. Keenan. Probably pulling an insomniac
LF
session like he does—

Except his text says:
Did you hear about Sadie?

I reply:
Hear what?

But I feel like I already know before Keenan texts back:

Skye says she got suspended. Two weeks
.

He texts again, but he doesn’t need to. I’m thinking the same thing:

We’re screwed for the show
.

I wake up late, which makes my dad late and we’re both silent in the car. I eat a banana and a cereal bar and he drives too fast, and then I rush to class. I trudge through the morning and don’t have a chance to talk to Keenan until we’re back at our lockers before lunch.

He just looks at me. “Suspended.”

I feel the energy drain out of me again. “Do we know what for?” Even just speaking feels like the biggest effort ever.

Skye shows up and throws herself into a slouch against the lockers. “I got the dirt,” she says breathlessly. “Sadie and Parker were in Ms. Rosaz’s room for free period because they got caught cheating on the vocab test. And when the bell rang she left to make copies, but she’d confiscated Blake’s phone earlier in the day and it was still on her desk. Parker knew his password, since they just broke up, so she grabbed it and they sent these nasty texts to a bunch of his contacts. But
they sent one to his cousin by mistake, who told Blake’s mom, and she called Rosaz.”

“No way!” says Keenan, and he sounds kind of impressed because really that is some kind of combination of craziness and bravery even for Sadie.

“But how’d they get caught?” I ask.

Skye rolls her eyes and smacks down on her gum. “Because Mr. Scher saw them running out of the room, and they were laughing and stuff, and so he got suspicious.”

“Of course,” I groan. “It’s like Scher’s dream come true.”

“And then Ms. Rosaz got the call,” Skye says, “and she and Scher put two and two together and then tracked down Parker at the end of school and she confessed to Tiernan during interrogation.”

“That’s so stupid!” I shout, and I kick my locker shut in frustration.

“Anthony …,” says a serious voice, and I turn around and can’t believe that
again
someone is walking right by at the worst time. At least this time it’s Mr. Travis. He’s new this year and apparently just got his teaching degree in Hawaii. He wears sandals even when it’s raining and freezing and is always trying to have this mellow, cool vibe. He has a picture up in his classroom of him surfing. I think he means it to say, like,
Check it out, I’m a real person too!
but it is so not cool to have to see your teacher in a bathing suit. “Settle down, please,” he says.

I resist the urge to point out that I don’t
want
to settle
down, that Sadie’s suspension is a perfect reason for me to have some nonsettled emotions.

Instead, I turn to Keenan. “We have to find Mr. Darren.”

We eat lunch barely speaking, and then I spend free period on the office couch again, and then during passing time before language arts we run for the student lounge. Inside, we find Mr. Darren kneeling in front of a Fender Twin amp. It’s turned around backward and he’s replacing the tubes and has one of the short glass cylinders in his hand.

He sees us and says, “Hey, Mr. Armstrong, Mr. Jones, how can I help you?”

“Did you hear that Sadie got suspended?” Keenan asks.

Mr. Darren sighs. “I did.”

“Can she do the show?” I ask, even though I know it’s useless.

“I’m afraid not,” says Mr. Darren. “This is considered a school activity, and with her suspension she’ll miss our last two practices, so … There you go.”

I can feel myself starting to shake with frustration. “So, what are we going to do?”

Mr. Darren kind of shrugs. “Well, I’m not sure. Sadie’s the singer for the Random Sample too.” He’s talking about the
seventh grade band. “I was thinking maybe both bands could learn cover songs and Eric from the Bespin Mining Guild could sing”—that’s the sixth grade band—“but I think that might be too much to put on his plate.”

He smiles sadly at us. “We may just need to plan ahead for the spring show. I mean, we have a good start on the tune. And more time is never a bad thing.”

“This sucks!” mutters Keenan. He’s staring at the ground with his hands shoved in his pockets like he does when he’s mad.

“Why did Sadie have to be such an idiot?” I add.

“Well, I’m sure she didn’t mean to sabotage the band,” says Mr. Darren. “But in rock and roll, it’s all about timing, and there is this weird correlation between big shows and the craziest things happening.” Mr. Darren laughs a little when he says this, but it’s weary, like he’s been through it.

The afternoon bell sounds and Mr. Darren writes us a pass to LA. Keenan and I are silent as we walk there. There’s no use saying anything. It feels like when you’re standing near a mine blast in
LF
and for a few seconds you stagger and the sound gets distant and everything is hidden by clouds of smoke. And then you look down and see that half your leg is gone, and the screen goes red. Game over.

When we walk into LA, Ms. Rosaz has already started the lesson. I throw my junk on my table and drop into my chair. I know it’s a distraction but right now I don’t even care.

“Anthony and Keenan, you should have your books and writer’s notebooks out on your desks,” says Ms. Rosaz, annoyed by our disruption but of course not bothering to ask what we might be upset about. “The rest of the class has already started.”

I huff and dig into my bag for the paperback book and drop it on my desk, then slap open my binder and pull out my writer’s notebook. Every movement I make is loud and Ms. Rosaz is probably going to snap any second. Whatever.

There’s no way I can focus right now. I can’t believe we’re not going to get to play Arts Night! And April is forever from now. Everything we’ve been dreaming of for the entire fall just got snatched away from us.

I stare out the window thinking about this, thinking about what’s
not
going to happen: being onstage with our amps and our guitars and rocking the new tune with my new part and feeling that feeling of playing for everyone again. It was so awesome last year.

So when Ms. Rosaz taps me on the shoulder I can’t even begin to answer her question mainly because I didn’t hear it. “What?” I say, glancing quickly at the board and trying to read the assignment on the projector screen.

I’m not that good at hearing assignments the first time anyway, because I’m usually just thinking about other stuff. There was talk, back in like fourth grade, of putting me on one of those Learning Plans, where the psychologist tests you and you get pulled out to the resource room for whatever torture goes on there, but it never happened. I guess I started doing just well enough to not be considered
that
dumb. And by this point in school, I’ve figured out how to catch up with what’s going on really quick.

“Please, get started,” says Ms. Rosaz.

“I don’t feel like it,” I tell her, partly because it’s the truth, not that she cares what I’m really going through, but also because I don’t know what we’re doing yet.

“Anthony,” she says in
that tone
. “This is something you could do well on. I’d like to see you at least give it a shot.” She pats me on the shoulder and walks away. It usually takes her about five minutes to circle the room, and so by the time she gets back and I tell her that I can’t think of anything, I should probably at least figure out what we’re supposed to be thinking about.

My table-mate is Clara. She’s one of those kids who look like they could get hired tomorrow to run a law firm or brief a crack commando unit on behalf of a top-secret agency. She’s not a cute-bot, more like a success-bot. She has trendy black rectangle glasses with red trim. Her hair is perfectly wound up behind her head. She always wears button-downs and jeans or long skirts and always this black fleece jacket, the
kind that’s ready for a rain shower or a quick infiltration of a mountain hideout. She’s the kind of girl who loves writing and loves having teachers love her and she’s sitting there right now with her pen zipping down the back side of the page she’s already completed of whatever it is we’re supposed to be doing.

“Hey,” I whisper. “What are we doing?”

Clara keeps writing, but with her free hand she flips around her copy of the book we’ve been reading in class called
Feed
by an author named M. T. Anderson who I’ve never heard of.

It’s about these kids with chips in their heads so that all these ads and stuff are being broadcast right into their brains. The kids are annoying. They use all these weird words because it’s supposed to be set in the future. And the narrator is kind of an idiot, which is also annoying. The book is maybe kinda interesting, though, especially when the main girl, Violet, starts to die and the main guy, Titus, gets freaked out. Also, the story is about resisting the Feed, which is kind of like resisting food corporations.

“We’re supposed to write our own definitive list of things we want to do,” Clara says, “based on this chapter.”

I see the page number and open my copy and check it out. It’s a pretty cool part. I haven’t actually read this far yet but I’ve heard the discussions in class. Violet is sick and so she’s lying in the hospital dreaming of what she wishes her life would be like, even though it’s pretty obvious that she’s totally gonna die. The list she makes is kind of ridiculous, but
interesting. Like she wants to fly over a volcano and spit in it, and run away with Titus, but she also wants things like to be seen by her grandchildren while wearing a cardigan sweater, have a dog named Paine, and to move to an East Coast city for a job, and Ms. Rosaz pointed out that the list has this kind of sad tone to it because you know she probably won’t survive to ever do any of the things on it.

“Thanks,” I whisper to Clara.

I open my notebook and write down the title but then just stare at the page. Right away I think about how I could write about the New York dream: how Keenan and I imagine practicing in some crappy warehouse where there’s bands on all sides and it smells like old beer and stale cigarettes and the bathroom stalls have no doors and are always splattered with puke. Or playing all-ages clubs on Tuesday nights and working our way up and then doing really well like Mr. Darren did with Tender. Touring all across the country in a black van with a matching trailer full of gear. Like to the Midwest, riding the interstates from Kansas City to Detroit to St. Louis and then Chicago because that would be a cool tour if you look on a map.…

But what would be the point of writing about that now? We can’t even play the one stupid gig we have! I should just face it: none of those dreams are ever going to happen. It occurs to me that this would make me similar to the character Violet, both dreaming of impossible things. Maybe that was fun for her to write about, but it sounds totally depressing to me.

And then before I can figure out what to do, Ms. Rosaz is already back behind me. “Ooh, Clara, that’s really cool,” she says in that tone that she uses to sound like she’s
just one of the kids
and
so
interested, even though about half the time she actually looks like she’s going to fall asleep on her feet in class. I glance over and see that Clara is basically on her six thousandth page.

Ms. Rosaz looks at my blank page. “Anthony, you need to get some writing done on this assignment.”

I feel like saying,
Duh!
But instead I say, “I was just thinking of what to write,” because it’s true.

“You look like you’re just staring off into space,” she says.

“I was thinking,” I say again, and now I sound annoyed because I am! Would it be so hard for her to notice that I’m having a terrible day, or maybe even to wonder what I might be going through? Of course not. Or at least just take the hint and leave me alone?

“I know you can do this,” she goes on, like I’m a toddler. “Come on, we still have some class time left. Try to get at least five things.”

She leaves and I look at my blank page. Even if I did have anything right now, the last thing I’d want to do is share it with Ms. Rosaz, who wouldn’t really care anyway. But she says I just need to write five things and time is ticking by, so I just write some junk:

Then I go back to staring out the window and thinking about how far away spring is. How I now have to spend five more months of slow eighth grade torture waiting for my next chance to be who I really am.

When Ms. Rosaz returns, she looms over my shoulder and reads my list. I can practically hear her eyes narrowing in frustration. “Anthony,” she says, “this is an unacceptable effort.”