Breakout (13 page)

The bell rings. Finally.

“Oh,” says Skye. She rummages in her bag, and out come two new buttons. These are two inches across, and it’s just one big picture of Winky’s head, but then with a mustache drawn above his beak and a red velvet smoking jacket pasted below his neck. There’s a quote bubble beside his head that says, “Well, hello.”

“Would you guys mind wearing these?” Skye asks, and she hands one to Meron to hand to Keenan, and before we can answer she leans in and starts pinning the other to my sweatshirt. She is close as she does this, her leg touching mine for a second, her elbows against my chest as she puts the pin in. And I can smell that same coconut conditioner she still uses in her hair, and it’s weird because I feel like I am back at Magnuson Park, two places at once, and the feeling is sort of slippery like I might time-travel or something.

She presses the pin through and then pats the button. “Perfect.” She looks up at me and because I am now an infinite time traveler, I am suddenly forgetting the current reality and just thinking that she is very cute, and kind of right in front of me, and does she want to see the bombing of Dresden
by airship? I could take her hand and we could run out the back door to where my TARDIS is parked.

“Come on.” Katie pulls on Skye’s shoulder.

“See you later,” Skye says.

“Yeah,” I reply, surprised it doesn’t come out in a British accent, and all of that is totally insane because I think the Doctor is corny anyway and how can all these thoughts be caused by a random hair-product smell?

I shake my head and turn to Keenan. He’s standing there, eyes on the floor, looking sort of spaced out or sad or something.

“Sorry,” I say weakly, “I didn’t know what to say. That wasn’t cool.”

I figure that we are about to head into bad territory because his two-day ex-girlfriend who is my previous ex-girlfriend was maybe (definitely) just hitting on me and for a second I was kind of (definitely) into it and even though girl drama makes us even
more
like a real band, this is also exactly the kind of thing that usually kills bands.

Keenan finally looks up. “I think Meron likes me.” He looks shell-shocked but also happy. “She said the song was cool.” He checks his new hair again. “I always kinda thought she was hot.”

“Oh, yeah, she was totally into you,” I say, and leave it at that. We head to science, where Mr. Scher spends the whole class droning on about how the slow and boring plates of the Earth move in slow and boring ways except for when something cool like an earthquake or a tsunami happens.

But I’m not listening. My thoughts are spinning. I’m glad that Keenan doesn’t seem mad at me, but Skye acting like she’s into me again … And how much have I tried all fall not to think about how much I liked her? And then there’s Valerie, who I’d been thinking about possibly girlfriend-wise up until a minute ago. But is she ever thinking about me?

Skye is.

Still, even though Keenan played it cool, he’d freak if I got back with her, wouldn’t he? And would I even want that?

Then I remind myself that I should be thinking about the song! Not all this business. The song that I never even meant to show anyone, that is now changing everything.

I’ve been looking for Valerie in the halls all morning, but I haven’t run into her. We don’t sit near each other in any classes, so I haven’t had a chance to ask about her weekend and also see what she thought of our song. I figure she’s heard it, since it seems like basically everyone has. Like near the end of social studies, when my table-mate Mica, who is one of the weirder kids in our class, leans over to me. He is superskinny and wears bright purple jeans and usually just T-shirts even when it’s freezing. He looks like an anime artist drew him. Most of his hair is dyed midnight blue and it hangs down over the whole left side of his face and then he has a big line of
white in it. He wears tons of those bracelets that are just black and made of rubber.

“Anthony,” he says to me, and even though he said my name, it still takes me a second to realize he’s talking to me. We only really speak when Ms. Connell makes us read sections of our textbook to one another so she doesn’t have to do anything. “A friend of mine in PDX sent me a link to this song by the Rusty Soles. That’s your band, isn’t it?”

“Yeah?” I say, and it comes out like a question because I’m trying to catch up with what he’s talking about and then I remember that PDX is the airport code for Portland, Oregon. For some reason, people sometimes call the actual city that, the same way they call Seattle “Seatown.”

Mica looks at me like he’s impressed, though it’s hard to tell for sure because I can only see half his face, and maybe that other eye is glaring or missing or cyborg, but then he says, “I was really surprised.” He starts nodding to himself and he looks away but I hear him whisper-singing, “F*** this place, I gotta break out, f*** this place …,” as Ms. Connell goes on.

I am left wondering if that was really a compliment or actually some kind of sarcasm, but given everything that’s already happened this morning I figure all the evidence seems to point to people meaning what they say and maybe everyone really does like the song and maybe I am actually now some kind of rock star. And for the twentieth time today I am blown away by a feeling that is basically:
whoa!

Then after class, when Keenan and I are walking to math, we see Ms. Rosaz and Mr. Travis standing outside of the
classroom and they both glance at us and there is something about that look that makes me suddenly think that they know too. Could they have heard the song? How would they even know about it? And if they have, what do they think? They’d have to disapprove, wouldn’t they?

But they don’t say anything as we pass by and they just keep talking about their weekend. I hear Mr. Travis desperately trying to woo Rosaz with his stories about studying for the National Boards (it’s totally obvious to all us kids that he’s completely in love with her), and yet I can almost feel their eyes on my back as we continue down the hall.

Finally, I find Valerie outside math class. She has this red sweater on with giant pink snowflakes that are so bright I almost have to squint. It’s cute. Hair in two braids. Also cute. Kind of a big zit issue on her chin that she hasn’t covered up to a professional degree like some of the Pockets would (or Skye today), but who cares?

We arrive at the door at the same time, so Keenan drops back as I say hi.

“Hi,” she replies, but doesn’t really look at me.

I keep walking beside her but it feels weird now, so I ask, “Did you hear the song?”

Valerie looks like she has no idea what I’m talking about. “What?”

“The song,” I say, “online.”

She cocks her head at me. “Whose song?”

“Oh, um …” I try to hide my disappointment: is she really
one of the only kids who didn’t hear it? “Just, I worked on the Killer G tune.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, some new lyrics, and I sang them and then we put it up online and it’s been a big hit. It’s gotten like thousands of plays.”

Valerie nods and says, “Wow, that’s really cool,” but she doesn’t sound like she really thinks it is. “You guys are like a famous band,” she says, and heads across the room toward her seat.

“Well …,” I start, because it’s not
you guys
. She’s part of the band. And why is she acting this way—

But then suddenly
duh
, it hits me. If Keenan never went to Vera on Friday, then Valerie never got the word that I got in trouble. She probably thinks that, at best, we just bailed without bothering to tell her or, worse, that I didn’t want to hang out with her. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that! I just thought it was taken care of, and then the song happened … crap.

I hurry over to her as she’s unpacking her bag and sitting down at her table. “Hey, I got in big trouble on Friday night. I wanted to come to Vera but my parents wouldn’t let me out because of an email home from Rosaz. And I told Keenan to tell you but then he and Skye were breaking up, so he never made it there either.…”

Valerie listens, like she’s wondering whether to believe me. But when she looks up she sorta smiles and I know that
I barely saved the day. “Oh, that sucks. I was looking around for you.”

“Sorry,” I say. “I really wanted to be there. And I didn’t even know you didn’t get the message until yesterday and then I thought about dropping you a line but we’re not friends online anywhere.”

Valerie does a little nod and I realize now that maybe all weekend, when I was thinking about us being in a band in New York together, she was thinking that I had just forgotten about her. Oops.
Idiot!
Well, but anyway things seem to be better now, so I ask her, “How was the show?”

Now Valerie finally smiles for real in that squinty way. “Oh, it was amazing. Lost Puppy was great and everybody loved Fractured Senses but to me the Clones were the best.” She keeps talking and she’s speeding up as she does. “Their stuff was really great and they had an amazing drummer. He had this beat for their last song that was like paradiddles on the toms—oh.” She suddenly stops and glances at me nervously.

“What?”

“Sorry, that’s a geeky drum term. That probably sounded pretty dumb.”

“No, what’s a paradiddle?” I ask, and I do mean it that it’s not dumb because what Valerie doesn’t realize is that a girl using geeky language about anything like video games or skateboarding but especially music is actually the
opposite
of dumb. It’s one thing for a girl to be hot. It’s another thing for her to talk about paradiddles.

“Oh, well.” Valerie looks around a little self-consciously. “A paradiddle is right-left-right-right, then left-right-left-left.” As she says it she moves two of her books beside each other and then starts drumming with her hands (which are kind of big and look a little dry and don’t have any nail polish). She does sixteenth-note alternating like she describes, starting slow and then getting really fast.

“Nice,” I say, and I picture some drummer dude doing that on his toms at Vera and think it’s cool that Valerie thought that was cool and I wish I’d been there to see that with her. Then I imagine her doing this in the New York club and the soundman is making the lights blink at the same speed and that makes the crowd flicker and seem like a horde of zombies and the scene gets crazy.

“Well, maybe they’ll play around town again,” I say, and what I mean is that maybe we could try to set up another date sometime.

“Sure,” she says, “that would be cool,” and because Valerie isn’t a Pocket she doesn’t make some coy smile or anything, she just kind of nods like she is still thinking it over but I’m pretty sure she means it. “I’ll check out the song during lunch,” she says.

“Cool,” I say, and then add quickly, “there’s a drum track on it but it’s just a stupid programmed loop.”

“It’s not your other drummer?” she says.

“No—no, there’s no …,” I stammer, but then she smiles and I realize she was just messing with me.

“Okay,” says Mr. Travis from the front of the room, “let’s get started.”

“See you later,” I mumble, and then retreat to my table feeling scrambled and definitely not making eye contact with Keenan, who I can feel grinning at me from across the room.

But I’m barely in my seat when I hear Mr. Travis say, “Anthony, Valerie, Keenan …”

We all look up and I get this big earthquake inside like my abdomen has become the Ring of Fire or something (yeah, Mr. Scher, I heard that part of class) and the tectonic plates are sliding around against one another.

I suddenly feel certain Mr. Travis is going to say something about the song. But even if he’s heard it, there’s nothing he can say. School can’t touch what we do on BandSpace. And besides, I don’t need to feel like I’ve done something wrong by writing those lyrics. I haven’t done anything different than any other
real
band or artist out there, and all the plays and comments prove that. Still, my pulse is racing.

“Mr. Darren wants to see you at lunch,” Mr. Travis says, and then turns away and maybe that was totally normal.

I glance over at Keenan and he nods at me with a big grin like he knows what’s up. Wait … has Mr. Darren heard the song? Suddenly I’m nervous in a totally different way.

After math the three of us head across school. On our way, a girl I don’t know who’s maybe in the sixth grade shouts, “Rusty Soles!” and she and her pack of friends all smile and laugh.

One of the others says, “Woo!”

Their eyes stay on us as we pass.

“What was that all about?” asks Valerie.

“The song,” says Keenan. “You’ve gotta hear it.”

“Oh. We’re not in trouble with Mr. Darren, are we?” Valerie sounds nervous.

“No way,” says Keenan, and again he’s talking in his new, slightly louder voice. “I emailed Mr. Darren the song yesterday and told him how we had something for Arts Night.”

“You did?” I try not to sound nervous and I try to stop feeling nervous but I still do. “Well, what did he say?”

Keenan smiles. “He said cool and he’d check it out with us today. Like right now.”

“So you knew this was coming?” I ask him.

“Yep,” he says with a smile.

“Anthony, does it have the lyrics you showed me at Jupiter on Friday?” Valerie asks.

“Yeah,” I say.

“Cool,” says Valerie. “Those were great. I can’t wait to hear it.”

“Thanks,” I say, but I have a hard time smiling with the storm of nervousness inside.

As we step into the lounge I’m practically shaking. The
verdict from Mr. Darren
and
Valerie. Right now. And I realize that all those hours I spent reading comments and watching the play numbers yesterday were fine and all, but this, right here, is the real test. The two people, other than Keenan, who I want to impress the most.

Mr. Darren is sitting on one of the folding chairs with his tablet. “The Rusty Soles,” he says, tapping the screen. “Come on in.”

We gather around him and I see that he has our BandSpace page open.

“Two thousand nine hundred and twenty,” says Keenan proudly, reading the number of plays.