Rhythm & Clues: A Young Adult Novel (14 page)

When the paper towels came up clean, Gavin sat down and tried to restart the computer. Isla flopped next to him, leaning practically in his lap as she watched. “It should work, right Gavin? Your laptop looks good quality.”

I nibbled on my cheek as I watched him.

His face drained of color and he slammed the screen shut. “It’s dead.”

An anvil tore through my stomach. What would Gavin tell his parents? From the horror on his face, I knew he worried about the same thing.

“The Mermaid Lounge will reimburse you,” Isla said. “This kind of stuff is covered by our insurance.”

The word “insurance” somehow caught Becca’s attention from her post a few feet away. After getting all the details, she bounded off to speak with Harry, Isla’s father who owned the club.

“There goes our debut.” Gavin buried his face in his hands. I couldn’t let his first real shot at independence end because his computer crashed.

Just then, the second band came in, sweaty and excited, with arms raised in celebration.

“I’ll go get the fourth band.” Isla stood. “Star Monkey?” she shouted.

“We can play again!” Zack yelled from the back of the room. Isla ignored him and asked for Star Monkey a second time and the band headed for the stage.

I put my arm in front of her, blocking her path. “We’re going on after them.”

Gavin winced, shaking his head.

“We can do this. I know you have cool arrangements on your computer, but do you think you can play it on a keyboard instead?”

“I didn’t memorize any of sheet music because it would have been pointless with the computer. Plus the found sounds would be impossible to recreate on a keyboard. But…”

I waited, my breath stilling in my lungs.

“I might be able to figure out the notes. I hope I can.”

I put two fingers into my mouth and whistled. Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to me. “Excuse me! Does anyone have a keyboard we can borrow for our set?”

Some guy yelled, “Yeah, right.”

Isla looked at the floor and whispered, “I do. But you can only borrow it on one condition.”

I swallowed hard, waiting for her to demand a date with Gavin.

“I’m playing with you.”

We stood on the side of the stage and waited for Isla while Star Monkey. Wooden carvings of mermaids in various poses lined the walls. A large net filled with fake fish and glittery seaweed stretched across the ceiling from one end of the stage to the other. Lace curtains hung on the sides of the stage, giving the place a shabby chic look.

Isla retrieved her keyboard as well as a guitar from a storage closet.

I backed away from the stage. “No. You’re not doing this.”

“You need me… Moxie,” she said my name through clenched teeth. “This crowd didn’t come for a piano recital. And besides, I learned
Take Me to Church
last year. Dad taught it to me.” She gestured to her dad, who stood at the opposite end of the backstage, looking like a big, burly bouncer. Harry took one glance over at us and dropped his hands. His entire body froze.

“Answer’s still no,” I snarled.

“Look,” Isla said in a rushed whisper. “I’m not doing this for you—I’m doing it for him.” She nodded toward Gavin.

Checkmate. “Fine, but you don’t know the arrangement we created. You’ll have to wing it.”

Isla lifted her guitar. “I’m good at picking up a tune.” She inched toward Gavin. “Think you can lead me?”

“I have no idea.” His jaw clenched.

Star Monkey finished their set to wild cheers. After they exited the stage, Gavin carried the keyboard onto the platform and set it up next to a speaker.

Isla skipped after him. She positioned herself at the mic in front of Gavin. “I’ll be here for backing vocals in case you screw up.”

“Then I won’t screw up.” I fumbled with the mic, trying to lower it to my level. The lights beat down on me, and sweat beaded on my forehead. Usually in school, I avoided the spotlight. Seeing everyone’s gaze landing on me made my pulse amp. Isla walked over with a smug smile, flipped a lever I hadn’t noticed before, and deconstructed the tube so it fit to my height. “Thanks,” I mumbled so low I hoped she couldn’t hear.

I pulled the microphone closer to me. “Uh, we’re Backyard Rebels. Or well, two of us are. The other one’s a leach.”

“Special guest star,” Isla said into her mic.

I shot a glance at Gavin, ready whenever he was.

Confused expressions dotting the crowd’s faces. Becca whistled and cheered on the side. Zack Bellinger pushed his way through to a prime spot in front of Isla in the audience. I was surprised he didn’t grab markers and make a quick love sign to her like groupies do at rock concerts. Harry crossed his arms. He didn’t look happy with his daughter.

Isla waited for Gavin’s cue, pick in her hand, arm poised ready to strike like a tennis player about to serve the ball.

Gavin hesitantly pressed a note. He played another note, one that didn’t correspond with the first. He held his finger on it for too long. In front of me, people turned their attention to their friends, conversations erupting. We were losing them.

Isla strummed a note on the guitar, but it didn’t help. Gavin still didn’t join back in.

He stared at the keyboard as if it were locked in chains. I dropped my hands from the mic and hustled over to him. The crowd threw their hands up in agitation. I guessed “amateur night” usually had a more professional feel when Backyard Rebels wasn’t involved.

“Are you okay?” I asked him, shielding the mic attached to his keyboard with my hand.

His fingers curled over the keys, shaking and wavering. “I’m blanking out on the notes.” He peered out at the restless crowd.

“I can play them.” Isla snuck up behind me.

“No,” I said to Isla, and then I turned to Gavin. “If I sing, can you compose some kind of background music? I’ll wing the lyrics to match your tune.”

He bit his lip but nodded.

I spun around. “Isla, can you follow his lead?”

“Only covers tonight,” she said. But then her eyes followed to Gavin’s hopeful face. “Fine. I’ll try, but this is crazy.”

I smiled and spun around to the mic, pulling it close to my lips.

I
stood with the microphone pressed to my lips for a few seconds, contemplating the idea of a witty joke to get the crowd’s attention. But that would have been stalling. So I closed my eyes and the crowd disappeared. Kind of like how I viewed high school.

“
Everything is always black and white
,” I sang the lyrics from my first warehouse meeting with Gavin, my voice starting off low. The words flowed out of my mouth, sculpting the tune out of the background music of gabs and boos and “you sucks” coming out of the crowd.

“
Like a dream sequence I cannot fight
.” Behind me, neither Gavin nor Isla played any notes.

“But it might just be my limited sight.”
I soldiered on, my voice growing louder, building to a crescendo. The audience was quieting down now, but I kept my eyes shut, feeling the rhythm of the crowd through audio rather than visual.

“
Like a decision with no in between
.” Gavin pressed a key on cue, backing my words with a low melodic chain. He stabbed each note as a violinist might pluck out separate strings. None of his notes flowed together. Just as Isla strummed a chord that matched his notes perfectly, his keyboard went silent.

“It multiplies the things I’ve seen.”
I turned to him as I sang, opening up my eyes to meet his. He lifted his chin to me, signaling me onward. I faced the crowd again.

“And shatters the colorful scheme.”
I tapped my foot as Isla plowed on the guitar in wailing chords, matching my every movement.

“And maybe I always knew.”
Gavin joined in, this time delivering notes that matched Isla’s tone in harmony like a chef, desperate to make a gourmet meal out of what little ingredients he had in his kitchen. So haphazard, but it came together to sound decent.

“That in this black and white world, I’m blue.”
I couldn’t hear the crowd anymore, imagining them filing out of the concert hall on tiptoes, not wanting to offend anyone, like people who sneak out of movies. But when I opened my eyes again, everyone was still there, staring up at me. Were we good, or had we dumbfounded them with our complete lack of order?

By the time the chorus finished, we had a pattern going. My voice still rose above Gavin’s tentative piano playing and served as delicate juxtaposition to Isla’s guitar chords. I turned to her during the third line of the next verse and smiled. She could have tricked us, made us look like assholes up here, but she didn’t. And yeah, her motivations didn’t involve me, but I still felt grateful.

We finished our song and waited for a reaction from the crowd. They all looked around, unsure if they should admit they liked it or not.

Finally, I said into the mic, “What? Shocked I don’t need a pole to perform?”

Zack’s laughter carried over the silence. He whistled and hooted. Then Becca joined, whacking her hands on her clipboard high in the air. Next to her, Isla’s dad, kept his arms crossed, his face fierce, though I didn’t know why. As the crowd began to clap and whistle, Mr. Gibson grabbed the clipboard from Becca’s hands, perused it, and then marched over to the stage.

The crowd cheered for an encore, a reaction no other band had received. I turned around to smile at Gavin. He pushed his hair back from his face, his mouth open in surprise at our success.

Isla set her guitar down and fended her dad off by the stairs. Zack rushed to her side, and this time she allowed his help. Isla and her dad argued in whispers, their hands flailing everywhere. Zack nodded along with Isla while Gavin shot me a thumbs up. The stage lights swooped down, casting us in bright spotlights as they probed to the fight going on between Isla and her father.

“Encore! Encore!” The crowd shouted, illuminated cell phones raised in the air.

Isla stalked back onto the stage with a pissed off expression on her face. She pushed in front of me and took control of the mic. “Hey guys! Thanks for the support, but each band only gets one song, so that’s it for us. Also, I need to remind the other bands that only covers are allowed.”

Zack led the crowd in a round of “Boos!”

I couldn’t understand why Harry wouldn’t grant his daughter permission to play a second original song when the crowd clearly begged for one.

On the side of the stage, a group of guys started up the steps carrying guitars and drum sticks. They wavered a moment, wondering what we were still doing onstage. On
their
stage. They eyed Harry who nodded at them. I tried to glare at Harry, but he seemed to be avoiding my gaze.

Gavin folded the keyboard. “They liked it!”

Isla slung the guitar over her back. “Yeah, no shit. My dad thinks everyone
has
to like it because I’m his daughter.”

My stomach sank. That was probably the case.

The next band replaced us on stage. No one came over to congratulate me, of course, but everyone swarmed Isla, Zack leading the charge. She gave him a brief hug, but then turned her back on him to receive accolades from the rest of the crowd.

I stayed on the outskirts of Isla’s fandom for a moment, wanting to thank her for sticking it out. For not sabotaging us when she could have. I hoped maybe, just maybe, I’d impressed her for plowing ahead with the song even after Gavin started to choke. But then I second-guessed myself, wondering what I wanted to gain from a conversation with her. I still didn’t trust her as a friend or forgive her for all the heartache she’d put me through, even if I deserved it. So I left before she could spot me waiting for her. Gavin followed me into the back room.

“I can’t believe it. That was awesome,” he whispered in my ear as we weaved through the packed crowd, searching for a seat.

A guy lounged on two of the three couch seats, Gavin’s laptop and my purse on the last one. Gavin picked them up and offered me the empty seat, but when I saw Isla eyeing us and trying to break away from her admirers, I grabbed the objects from him and pushed him onto the couch.

I stood in front of him, trying to act as a mini-bodyguard, but he placed his hands on my hips and tugged. I was so startled by this total destruction of the translucent barrier we always kept between us, that I fell onto his lap, nearly whacking him in his face with my purse.