Rules to Rock By (5 page)

“Yeah. Is it that obvious?”

“Providence is a small city, and the music scene’s even smaller. If you weren’t new, we’d already know each other.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

“I used to be in a band.” He strummed a chord.

“And?”

“And … it didn’t really go that well.”

He actually seemed to think I would let it go at that.

“Umm, okay. Keep going …”

“It was with some guys who just turned out to be serious jerks.” He played a power chord and held it. “I’m into playing alone now.”

“What do you mean? Jerks how?”

“I don’t know, just jerks.”

“Okay.” I rubbed my chin. “Well, what if it was with cooler people, wouldn’t you want to be in a band again?”

“Probably not. I don’t know.” He was pretty good at creating an awkward vibe.

“So what’s your name?”

“Jonny.” Another power chord, even louder. “Really, I don’t get why it always has to be about
bands.
Bands are like the big thing now. Everybody all of a sudden has to be in a
band.
But music doesn’t always have to be about rocking out.”

“What do you mean? Of course music is about rocking out!”

“I dunno.”

“Nobody can rock alone, you must know that. Where would Paul McCartney be without John Lennon? Thom Yorke without Jonny Greenwood? Chuck D without Flava Flav?”

That got a laugh, so I decided to keep going.

“You want to be a
solo artist
? You want to be the next Justin Timberlake? Bright Eyes? Miley Cyrus, maybe?”

“Ha, Miley. What’s your name, then, Miss Bandleader?”

“Annabelle Cabrera,” I said, holding my hand out to him.

“Well, Annabelle Cabrera, today has been a weird one.” We shook hands. “First few days of school, and I just kind of wish I was still sitting in my bedroom, playing guitar. You know what I mean?”

I nodded. “My favorite part of the day is spent with my bass and my iPod, learning songs.”

“Exactly. And I’d like to keep it that way.” He got up from his chair. “But there
are
a bunch of musicians in this school.”

“Yeah? I haven’t had much luck.”

“You just need to know where to look. I can help you, if you want.”

“For real?”

“Sure. Meet me here on Monday, same time. I’ll give you a little tour around.”

Yes! A Federal Hill rock ’n’ roll tour guide. I was on my way.

Rock stars hang out with other rock stars.

FRIED CHEESE AND SALAMI

I checked e-mail at home and saw one from Ronaldo. The subject line read “Ronaldo’s Rules to Rock By.” This is what it said:

1.   Find the right bandmates. Form a band with your friends. It’s better to have a pretty good drummer who’s the coolest guy in the world than a great drummer who’s a jerk.

2.   Practice. Every great band practices tons. Whether your music’s crazy-complicated or stupid-simple, you have to rehearse. Radiohead does it. So did The Ramones. And so will you.

3.   Write. I know you keep your notebook. That’s awesome. Keep going with it. Don’t worry about saying anything brilliant or earth-shattering. Write about things that mean something to you, and people will listen.

4.   Record. Recording is really the last step of writing. You have no idea how much you’ll learn about writing songs by recording them. You’ll tear your hair out trying to capture THE perfect version of a song, and you’ll probably rewrite the whole thing three or four times along the way. But you’ll improve as a songwriter, and your band will get better and better, too.

5.   Gig. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing at Madison Square Garden or the pizza place around the corner. Every gig will make you stronger as a band. Especially at the beginning, don’t turn down gigs because they seem uncool. If your history teacher asks you to play for her dad and his checkers partner at the old folks’ home, say yes.

Before I’d even finished reading, Ronaldo popped up on IM.

EggMtnRckr:
so, did U get em?

Bassinyrface:
sure did. thanks.

EggMtnRckr:
and? what did you think?

Bassinyrface:
well, I think I pretty much knew that stuff already. I mean, practice, write, record, gig? Duh.

EggMtnRckr:
Maybe. But you’d be surprised how easy it is to forget the basics sometimes.

Bassinyrface:
Ok. I DO have a question, though … like, you say to form a band with my friends, but I dont really HAVE any friends here, remember?

EggMtnRckr:
Maybe just make sure you pick bandmates that seem like they COULD be your friends.

Bassinyrface:
yeah, that makes sense.

EggMtnRckr:
just dont pick anybody who seems totally evil!

Bassinyrface:
word. So i might have found a guitar player. MIGHT have. plays great but says he wants to stay solo.

EggMtnRckr:
hmm … work on him.

Bassinyrface:
What do you mean? How?

EggMtnRckr:
He’s prolly just shy. Nobody REALLY wants to do this alone. Just get to know him a little, and maybe he’ll change his mind.

Bassinyrface:
how did you find the egg
guys?

EggMtnRckr:
they came to me.

Bassinyrface:
shaddup YOU were the one who came to ME.

EggMtnRckr:
Yeah but U were a special case, Annabelle.
The other guys found me. The most important thing is, you gotta find people you like as people, cuz you’ll be spending a lotta time together. U know?

Bassinyrface:
Are you saying I need to be more likable?

EggMtnRckr:
No I’m saying … be YRSELF.

Bassinyrface:
Meh.

EggMtnRckr:
Hey,
I
like you so at least you’ve got THAT, annabelle.

Bassinyrface:
Ha, thanks, R. U are awesome.

As it turned out, I had a chance to work on my writing later that very night. I lay on my bed, stomach-down, a couple sheets of paper in front of me and a pen in my hand.

“Write about a time when you were very homesick,” read the assignment.

Ugh. I was homesick right
now
. Did Mr. V make up this homework just for me, or what? Missing my old city was about the last thing in the world I wanted to put into words at that moment, so I tried to think of the assignment as Coming Up with Ideas for Future Songs, not as having anything to do with school.

Rock stars don’t do homework,
I thought.

But they do write songs—or at least they try to.

Everything was better in Brooklyn,
I wrote.

I looked at the sentence, and kind of liked it. Could it be a lyric? Maybe. I decided to just write a bunch of sentences as fast as they came to me.

I miss fried cheese and salami.

I miss soccer games in Red Hook Park.

I miss my abuela.

Everything
had
been better in Brooklyn. For one thing, Abuela, my grandmother on my dad’s side, the Dominican side, had always been around. It was actually Abuela’s apartment that we had lived in right up until the move to Providence. We had never had a place all to ourselves before. My dad had never really left home, except for an apartment in Prospect Heights, where he lasted for about five minutes without Abuela’s home-cooked meals. When my parents got married, my mom had moved in, and then they had me and X.

There was never any guessing whose house it was, though. Abuela was the queen of the castle. That is, if a queen worked really hard all day long in a housecoat and slippers. And if the castle were a dingy three-bedroom apartment in Sunset Park. Even with my mom and dad supposedly in charge of X and me, it was pretty clear who called the shots at Abuela’s house.

Abuela had earned the right to tell us what to do. While my parents raced from gig to gig or slept off a late-night recording session, Abuela was at home doing what needed to be done. She was the one, not my parents, who walked X and me to the bus every morning. She was the one who came to soccer games with tasty treats for all my teammates and slowly, methodically opened our report cards as soon as they arrived in the mail. She would force us to stand right in front of her as she did it, too. When the grades were good, Abuela would go nuts baking cakes or cookies or a pie, feeding us until we were about to explode. When they were not so good, she’d get all serious and say, “I know you do better next time.”

Abuela used to get up every day at sunrise and make
café con leche
for herself with her hair curlers still on. She tore off bits of bread and dunked them in the coffee, always taking a moment to savor the taste. Only once had I actually been awake early enough to see her make breakfast. Usually the smell of hot food was already in the air by the time I even opened my eyes, the pots and pans having long been cleaned and put away.

But one time, when I was about eight, I was sick with a fever. I woke up when it was still dark out, and I was scared. I wandered, sleepy and spaced out, into the kitchen, my blanket trailing behind me. Standing in the kitchen door, I watched Abuela doing her thing. She was making my favorite, fried cheese and salami with a side of
casabe
, a cracker made from yucca. It was 90 percent grease, and it tasted amazing.

Abuela had made this dish at least twice a week for my whole life, but she always took it really seriously, like she was making it for the first time. She was obsessed with getting the fried cheese just right: it had to be golden and crispy on the bottom, and if she didn’t feel it was perfect, she’d throw the whole thing out and start over. She would squint at the pan and lift it from the fire, then have a staring contest with the browned edges of the cheese. That day, it was ready. It was just right. She plated two portions for X and me, not realizing I was standing right behind her. When I coughed into my blanket, she spotted me and jumped back, surprised.

“Oh, baby, you scare me,” she said, pulling out a chair. “Sit down. Eat.”

Now I sat in a huge, humid apartment in a new city, and I hadn’t had cheese and salami for over two months. And what was for dinner tonight in the Cabrera household? Shaky Jake’s chocolate chip pancakes again—I could almost bet on it. X would be on a three-hour sugar high, as usual. While Jake ruled in many ways, he was no Abuela. He couldn’t hold our family together while my parents lived in their fantasy world.

Was I homesick? I felt like I didn’t
have
a home anymore. Home was something we had left in Sunset Park. Now I was living in a recording studio, which is the exact opposite of a home.

I looked at what I had written, pulled out a rhyming dictionary, and started to screw around:

Everything’s better in Brooklyn

Fried salami, goopy cheese

Egg Mountain shows and the East River
breeze

Take me back to Brooklyn, please

Man, I miss my old hometown

Milk shakes at Uncle Louie G’s

What’s for dinner tonight, pizza or
Chinese?

Take me back to Brooklyn, please

What are you going to make of my masterpiece, Mr. V?

“What’s up, Cabrera?” Jonny said on the following Monday. He was waiting for me at the empty classroom at lunchtime, right where he said he’d be.

“Not much, Jonny …” I waited for him to fill in the blank. But he didn’t.

“Just Jonny.”

“Okay, Jonny No Last Name. Jonny Mysterious.”

“Ha, it’s Jonny Mack.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Mack.”

“Likewise.”

We were both brown-bagging it, so we skipped the caff and walked through the halls. I hadn’t been this near him standing upright before, so it was like I was looking at him for the first time. Dyed black hair with bangs long enough to cover a slightly patchy forehead. A small white scar above his lip. Black T-shirt, black jeans, black Chuck high-tops. Next to him, I looked like Little Miss Sunshine. He was way more goth than I remembered, like the doofus big brother to that
David Copperfield
–obsessed pixie I’d seen in Loner Land.