Californium (14 page)

“You're getting embarrassed,” Edie says.

“I didn't write any love songs. These are punk.”

Treat gives me a nod and my face cools off.

Edie takes a bite of her apple. “What about you, Treat? What songs do you have?”

“Why?” he says.

“So Cherise and I can give you some feedback.”

Treat looks at Cherise and you can tell she's thinking,
I never said that. I wouldn't make you do anything.
He rubs his hand around the Mohawk without touching it. “I don't have my stuff with me.”

“Well”—Edie turns to me—“I guess we're stuck with your love songs.”

“They're not love songs.”

Treat pulls a sandwich from his bag. “Let's see one, Reece.”

I flip open my folder and pull out the most anti-love song I've got. Treat snatches the paper and looks down. He's perfectly still for a few seconds except for his eyes scanning up and down; then his lips move a little but no sound comes out. The four of us stare at him like something's about to happen, and something does. Treat starts humming and he's getting the tune right. His voice rises, fast and loud, like he's angry, and he punks-up the lyrics, “I'll be what I am-uh / a soli-tary man-uh.”

He repeats the last line, like, three times, louder and faster
each time. Then, he grips the paper tight and looks up at us. Edie and Cherise clap. He looks at me. “This is boss, Reece. What's it called?”

“‘Solitary Man,'” says my mouth;
by Neil Diamond,
says my head.

“Bitchin'. It's totally punk rock.”

Keith nods. Serious. “That really is good, Reece.”

Edie looks at me kind of surprised, not happy surprised or mad surprised, just surprised. “Keith's is good too,” she says, “right, Cherise?”

Cherise nods and wipes nothing from her lips. “Yeah. You guys are gonna be good.”

Treat looks over everything in my folder, bouncing his head and moving his lips. He hops up on the planter and punks-up every song, tromping over shrubs and staring straight down at the pages. “Walk like a man-uh / talk like a man-uh / fuck this and fuck that-uh / fuck it all the fuck out of the fucking brat-uh.” He isn't singing so much as talking out the lyrics. Everyone's watching, so everyone sees Vice Principal Marshall rush past us and step right up into the planter. He grabs Treat by the back of the jacket. “Let's go, Dumovitch. My office.”

Treat turns his head to see who it is, grins, and yells, “I am not resisting arrest! I am not resisting arrest!”

Mr. Marshall pushes Treat a little to hop down and start walking to the office. He grabs the papers in Treat's hand but Treat won't let go. It's not like Treat's trying anything; Mr. Marshall hasn't exactly asked for the pages, but suddenly the whole quad is going “Oooooh.” Mr. Marshall gets so mad he lets go, holds open his hand to show Treat, and says, “Hand 'em over.”

Treat holds the pages up, then lets them slip out of his hand and float down, back and forth like a pendulum, until they scratch to a stop on the pavement. Mr. Marshall scrapes them up. “Bad move, Dumovitch.” He points to his office door with the pages. “Get moving.”

T
reat's suspended two days for vandalizing the planters and swearing. Mr. and Mrs. D aren't mad about the swearing, though they still called Mr. Marshall and said Treat would be happy to spend his Saturday weeding all the planters on campus, which Mr. Marshall thought was a great idea.

After school Tuesday, Treat's got the Two-Car Studio open when me and Keith get there. He must've spent half the day putting together all the stuff Keith's dad bought us. Keith's guitar is on the left with its amp and a new distortion pedal. Treat's uncle's bass and a new amp are on the right. And there's a little Roland drum machine on its shiny new box in the middle. Treat said you can't always make a drummer do what you want, so the drum machine is fine for now. The three folding chairs are in a half circle next to the instruments, the bullhorn on the middle chair, and the car cover is pulled tight over the wall of boxes behind, a three-foot-tall
>I<
centered over the foot-tall
DikNixon.

Treat leads us in and the Mohawk mixes with the logo and the instruments and it all looks so real. It's like how Mr. Krueger says sometimes things work out even when the original plan blows up in your face. “A happy accident,” though Mr. Krueger says there are no accidents, just incidents.

“Does Mr. Marshall really have a Hot Wheels track in his office for whipping people?” Keith says. Treat tells him no, no track, no stick, no paddle. Not even a ruler. “Then what'd he do to you?”

“Nothing.”

Keith drops his backpack next to a chair. “Come on, nothing?”

“He actually said he was sorry he had to suspend me.” Treat steps around Keith and flips on the bass amp. “He filled out some paperwork, told me to have Lyle call with any questions, then made me sit in the office and do my homework until school let out.”

“That's it?” Keith says. “That's like going to the doctor's office.”

Treat picks up the bass and hands it to Keith. “Yeah, I got bent over.”

We laugh as Treat hits the button to close the garage door.

“I'm bass?” Keith says.

“Don't worry,” Treat says. “Sid Vicious played bass.”

I pick up the guitar and flip on the amp.

Treat starts humming the tune for “Solitary Man,” and as me and Keith start figuring out how to make the guitars sound something like that, Treat gets the drums going.

It takes forever, a lot of things sounding okay on their own and then just awful when they mix together. I've heard “Solitary Man” a million times when my mom cleans house with the stereo on. The guitar doesn't sound anywhere near right. But with Treat
getting all the lyrics punked-up, when we turn on the distortion pedals and play faster it sounds pretty decent with everything whirring and echoing. The song doesn't sound the same twice in a row, but Treat says that's okay. “Punk isn't formulaic like corporate rock. It's got synergy.”

We do a version of “I Am, I Said,” and Treat's yelling at the top of his lungs, “No one heard at all / not even the chair!” He kicks over some chairs and Mr. D comes out, eyes bugging, until Treat says, “It's okay, Lyle, just part of the song.”

“All right.” He looks around at the chairs, sideways and flipped over, me and Keith smiling real polite. “Just remember what we do with real anger.”

Treat throws his arms out and looks around the studio at the chairs and the amps, then holds up the crumpled lyrics. “Use it creatively.”

Mr. D holds his hands up and folds his fingers together like he's praying. “Good. And be careful around the computers.”

We work on a few more songs until Treat opens the garage door for some air. The sky's bled way past orange and purple and settled into black.

“We better get going,” I say.

Treat walks us out onto the driveway. He pulls a couple patches out of his back pocket. “Here, Reece. You're DikNixon's official songwriter now.”

One patch has
TSOL
and the Statue of Liberty's head on it
.

“Sew it on your jacket,” Treat says.

“Are these guys on
The Nixon Tapes
?”

“Yeah. They do ‘World War III.'”

Keith takes the patch in his hand. “T-S-O-L. Tell Satan, Ouch Lady?”

Treat shakes his head. “True Sounds of Liberty.”

The other patch is simple, just GBH on it, and Treat waits while Keith strokes his chin. “Guitar, Bass, and Harmony?”

Treat laughs. “Grievous Bodily Harm. They're on
The Nixon Tapes
too.”

“Nice,” Keith says. “So when are we going to play a show?”

“Gig,” Treat says.

“Fine. When are we going to play a gig? Because everyone says we're coming and if we're going to get invited to Ted Three—”

“Ted Three?” Treat says. His lips pucker up for a second and he says, “Why not Woodstock Two?”

Keith glances at me and you can tell he's thinking about the bird who hangs out with Snoopy, so I start giggling.

Treat pushes my shoulder back. “You going to make a hippie joke?”

“About Woodstock?”

“Fuck you, Reece. Your parents were probably
for
the war.”

Keith says, “World War Three?”

Treat folds his arms and leans against the Bug. “Your dad's an engineer, right, Keith? He probably wishes Vietnam was still going on so he could make more missiles and shit.”

“What are you talking about?” I say.

“The military-industrial complex, Reece. The balance of terror. Mutually assured destruction. The end of the world.” He looks over at Keith. “Your dad doesn't share those tasty treats around the dinner table, does he?”

Keith shakes his head.

“I thought we were talking about Ted Three,” I say.

“I have no idea what we're talking about,” Keith says. “Military-commercial complex? Woodstock? I thought Woodstock was a bird.”

Treat holds his face tight for a second longer, then bursts out laughing. He steps over and slaps Keith on the back. “A bird. That's so bitchin'.” He tells Keith what Woodstock really was, about the peace and love, and about the people running around naked and how it went on for days.

“What's that got to do with Ted Three?” Keith says.

“Do you know when Ted Three is?” Treat says. “Or where it'll be?”

Keith shakes his head.

“Exactly,” Treat says. “It may never happen.”

“But people want to see us. Maybe we can play a party or set up—”

“We will,” Treat stops him. “This is happening.”

“We really need to get going,” I say. Treat says
fine,
he'll clean everything up, he always cleans everything up. So, of course, we say we can help and he says he's kidding, that he doesn't have school tomorrow like we do.

.

We can see the glow of the park as we're walking up the hill out of Treat's neighborhood. These nights are the best, people practicing on the soccer fields while we sneak our way from the shadow of a tree to the shadow of the bathrooms, trying to time
it so the East German soldiers on the parade grounds don't see us on our secret mission.

When we get to the first shadow in the park, behind a light post, I say, “Have you got your cyanide tablet?”

“No,” Keith says.

“No?” I say and point at the soccer players. “What about the mission?”

Keith shakes his head and walks right out into the light. “Edie thinks we should play soon. In front of real people.”

“Edie? When did you talk to Edie?”

“We've got a band,” Keith says. “We should play a show.”

We're alongside one of the fields now, the soccer players steaming in the cold air. “We will,” I say. “Two weeks ago we had nothing. Now we've got a name people know, instruments, some songs. It's happening.”

Keith stops, grins at me, then takes off running. He slides through the wet grass, stopping perfectly behind a light post, and whisper-yells, “Take cover.”

I drop and crawl over to Keith faster than my little sister can run.

“Here,” he says and forces something into my hand. “I stole this from their headquarters, but I'm a dead man.
You
must deliver it to Agent Okuda.”

I look down at a folded-up note, and there's Edie's name written so big I could have read it without the park lights.

“She's expecting this intelligence at your morning logistics briefing.”

“Algebra?”

Keith smiles and takes off for the wall, catching it with both hands and flinging himself over, disappearing into my backyard. When I get to the top of the wall, Keith's already through the yard and opening the side gate.

I catch up to him on the sidewalk in front of my house, holding up the note. “Why did you give this to me? Just give it to Edie yourself.”

“I don't want to keep it in my room. My mom's a snoop.”

The note feels heavy, maybe two or three pages. “Do you like Edie?”

Keith looks at his house, then back at me. “I don't know. She wrote me a note and told me to write back. Maybe she likes me.”

“Maybe,” I say, even though Edie's way too smart for Keith. It's probably good he's doing this by note, you know, so Edie can be nice about things and it won't ruin everything the way it does when one friend likes the other and it's not mutual and everything gets out of balance and uncomfortable.

“Don't read it, okay?”

“I won't,” I say. “Just don't get weird on me.”

Keith's head snaps to his shoulder a couple times and his eyes round into Ping-Pong balls. “I'm never we-we-weird.” He smiles and salutes me. “And now, for something completely different.” He turns on one heel and goose-steps up the sidewalk toward his house.

Up in my room, I unfold the note slow and careful, making sure to notice how Keith has folded it originally. There's two pages of writing with little drawings in the margins: a little bear, some DikNixon logos, and a square-looking swan with markings around it like it's the blueprint for how to build a swan. It says
Origami 101
on top and I start feeling bad for Keith. He's trying pretty hard and it might be really embarrassing when things don't turn out. And it's not like me and Astrid. Astrid's older and popular and doesn't really know me, so I can't exactly take it personal if she never likes me. But if we were in the same grade and hung out together a lot, and then everybody in the world found out how much I liked her and she rejected me, that'd be the worst. Just thinking about how this could wipe Keith off the face of the earth makes my stomach hurt.

I start folding the note back up without reading anything. A few words stick out the way you see someone you know in a crowd—
do, think,
cute, hot
—and it's hard not to stop and read the whole thing. But I promised, you know, and you've got to be loyal to the people who are closest to you, even if you think what they're doing might not be the best idea. Even if it means you have to sort of help them do the thing you think they shouldn't be doing. That's what friends are supposed to do.

.

On the way to school Wednesday morning, Keith makes sure I've got the note. He helps me safety-pin the TSOL and GBH patches to the shoulders of my Packy jacket.

In Algebra, I plop the note down on top of Edie's book. “That's for you.”

She says, “Thanks,” without looking up from her homework.

“It's not from me,” I say and sit down sideways in front of her.

“I know.” She flashes me a quick smile.

When the bell rings and Mr. Tomita starts in at the board, I hear the note crinkling open. Edie giggles a couple times, quiet
ones that don't make it up to Mr. Tomita; then there's more crinkling, the little quick ones from paper getting folded and smoothed at the creases.

After class, Edie asks me about the new instruments we have, not what they are—she already knows that—but how they sound. “Good,” I say as we get to the stairs. “I mean, we're still trying to get it all together.”

“You'll have it together Friday, when you play on the back of a truck at San Diego State.”

I get it. “How'd you hear about that?” I say.

“My cousin goes to school there. She's going to tell me all about it this weekend.”

“Wait. Do you really have a cousin at San Diego State?”

Edie shakes her head. “No, she goes to UC San Diego, but SDSU is the party school. More believable.” She smiles and hands me a note with Keith's name on it. “Can you deliver this? Cherise has to eat in the cafeteria today.”

“Why?”

Edie sighs. “Will you please just give it to Keith?”

The note is a perfect square and Edie has made a flower out of the
i
in
Keith
. “If you open it,” she says, “I'll know.” She taps the note. “The top of the
i
is on a different fold than the bottom. You'll never be able to line them up.”

The letters are neat and swirly and the folds come together in a diagonal across the front, a tiny white line on the white paper separating the flower from the stem. I can't believe she's spent all this time on a note for Keith.

“I won't read it.”

“Good,” she says, and we stand there for a second longer while the stairs empty out. “Call me if you need help on the homework.”

“You can call me too.”

Edie shakes her head. “No, I can't. You're the boy.”

Her face doesn't crack a smile as she turns and heads up the stairs, and I can't tell if she's razzing me. Would only a boy need help on math homework? Is she not allowed to call boys no matter what it's for? What else is she up to?

The note is thick, at least three pages pressing against my thigh all through English and Spanish. It's killing me not to read it, because no matter how embarrassing whatever it might say is, Keith would trust me with it. I mean, when I told him that sometimes Astrid lies out in her backyard with her bikini straps undone so she doesn't get lines on her back, I didn't deny it when he said, “I bet you pack your mule every time you see that. I would. Guys have to do things like that or we'll die.” And if I ever lose my mind and tell him about everything that happened in Astrid's bathroom, he'll be on my side about it. So maybe that's why I don't read the note, because Keith will tell me if something big is up.