Breakout (9 page)

“Oh, come on,” says Mom. “Ms. Rosaz does not hate you. And how much reason are you giving her to
like
you, Anthony?”

“She didn’t even care that I’d basically just had my year ruined!”

“She has thirty other kids to worry about. And what are you talking about?”

“Sadie got suspended and now we can’t play Arts Night!”

“Well …” This causes a crack in Mom’s anger. “Did you tell any of this to Ms. Rosaz?”

“No,” I say, “but she wouldn’t care anyway!” I hear myself shouting, and I hate this! I feel bad for giving Mom a hard time, for the tired look I can see in her eyes, but what else am I supposed to do? “Whatever, it’s just dumb!” I realize that I should probably stop, that I still need to think about my lyrics, about saving Arts Night, if it’s not already too late, but I can’t. “And besides, the thing we had to do was stupid!”

“Well, it’s too bad you feel that way,” says Mom, “because I let Ms. Rosaz know that you’d be turning that assignment in on Monday and that it would be your best effort. She agreed to give you half credit.”

“Oh,” I snap, “so you guys are all buddies now, like the Axis?”

“The what?” Mom shrugs. “Anthony, you weren’t able to make the right decision in the moment so—”

“Whatever,” I mutter, and start out of the room.

But Mom doesn’t let me go as easy as she did yesterday. “You can get started on it tonight because you won’t be leaving the house.”

I spin around. “What? Come on! I’m grounded?”

“No, you’re getting the work done that you should have done this afternoon. And you are not going to the Vera Project. We can talk later about whether there need to be more consequences for this.”

I glare at her, all the feelings boiling over, like I hate her, like I hate Ms. Rosaz, everyone … but I don’t say anything else. Just storm out. I think about throwing my plate of stalag food across the room. But I don’t do that either. Just pound my feet on each step as I head for my room, and when I get there I slam the door and then I just sit on my bed.

I stare at the wall. I make fists until my nails dig into my palms, and then I release them and make them again. I can’t move, don’t want to move, don’t want to think. And I feel like there is no way out for me, ever. Out of this house, this life.

Nothing ever,
ever
works out.

I hear Dad get home.

I hear
them
talking.

Mom calls up to me for dinner. I don’t go down. I figure she’ll call again, but she doesn’t bother.

A little while later, there’s a knock and Dad opens my door. He’s got a plate of Thai stir-fry with tofu. He hands it to me, and as he’s stepping out he says, “Please just get that work done this evening so we can put this behind us.”

“It’s dumb,” I say, almost wishing I could stop myself, but who even cares?

“Anthony …”

“Fine.”

I eat in silence, all the lights off except for this one desk lamp that’s got a red lightbulb.

I text Keenan and let him know I can’t go to Vera and I tell him to let Valerie know what happened when he sees her. He doesn’t text me back. He’s probably dealing with mad Skye or, knowing him, his battery is dead. Whatever.

I am thinking about opening my window and climbing out, wondering like I have a bunch of times before about how much it would hurt to drop down onto the deck from my window. Probably a lot, but maybe I’d get lucky and just sprain an ankle, and that would be worth it. Or maybe I’d be too heavy and break a board on the deck and that would definitely give me away. Then I am thinking about just storming down the stairs, right past my parents and out to do what I want.

But I don’t do any of those things. I don’t break plates. I don’t run out on my own. Because what would be the point? Anything I do is just going to get me in more trouble and more trapped in this stupid stalag that is my life.

After a while I open the Rock Star app on my phone, the music-recording program that Keenan and I use. I plug in a headphone/​microphone splitter, then my earbuds and a Sure microphone (just an SM57, because Mr. Darren says if you can’t make it sound good on an SM57 it probably doesn’t sound good anyway). I hang the mic by its cord over my desk chair. Then I place the little HoneyTone right beneath it. I set up a preset drum loop in the program that sounds stupid but is just enough like what Valerie is playing on Killer G, and I sit on the floor against my bed and plug in Merle.

I start the beat and then hit Record, playing Killer G to Flying Aces, looping the two parts a couple times. Playing calms me down, pushes away the angry walls, just my fingers and the pick and the strings snapping beneath it—

There’s a knock at the door. Mom’s voice from the other side: “You should be working on your list.”

My only answer is to kick Merle’s case. It slams into the chair. The microphone falls down with a thud. Great. Can’t even play guitar.

I move to my bed and sit there. I lay Merle beside me and pull out my stupid writer’s notebook and look at the list assignment. There is no way I am working on this. They may have me locked up in solitary confinement, but I will not bend to their propaganda.

Beneath it are the lyrics from this afternoon. I think about how they remind me of SilentNoize. I sing them again in my head:

The melody I heard in the library is right back in my head. The words feel like a relief. They feel
true
. I think about today, this sucky night, this stupid week, and then suddenly more words are coming to me and I just grab a pen and go.

The rhythm of the syllables maybe isn’t perfect but who cares. I keep going:

I look up and see that time did that weird thing again where it’s almost a half hour later. I look back at what I have. I like it. I can picture the video: something like a World War II flying part for that second verse, and then like a giant maze with huge animated rats for the third verse, all red-eyed. I could fight them off with a katana sword.

I pick up Merle and strum real quiet in my lap, humming the words over it. They all seem like verses and they all fit what I’m hearing for the Killer G part. So, what’s going to happen in the Flying Aces section? I play those chords and try each of the verses over them but they don’t really fit. That part needs something different.

But my brain is racing along now and I remember how there are those tunes, like by SilentNoize or Arcade Fire, that don’t do the usual song structure where you go back and forth between the verse and chorus. Instead, they just stay on one part for a while, repeating and slowly building each time through, and then finally you switch to the second part for the big ending and you stay there and that’s the song. My dad says U2 did that the best. Maybe that could work for this.

I have to try it out.

Downstairs I hear Dad washing the dishes. Closer, Erica is taking a shower, and Mom could be lurking anywhere out there.

I put down Merle and grab my phone. I take the recording I’d made before Mom stopped me and I start cutting up the guitar track. I take the Killer G section and paste it four times
in a row, then stick the Flying Aces section after that. I set up the drum loop so it doesn’t start until the third time through Killer G. For those first two times, I add only a kick drum that is beating on the quarter notes.

I think of Valerie doing this and how playing live you could time pulsing stage lights with it, and Valerie would totally rock that, but then I remember how I was going to see her at Vera tonight and I feel the angry bullets starting to fly all over again.

I grab my mic from the floor and pull my comforter over my head so that I am a lump in the corner of the bed and then there in the dark red light I hit Record. I let the first section of Killer G go by and then I start to sing my lyrics with the melody I’ve been hearing. Really quiet so the prison guards can’t hear. I sing my three verses over the second and third and fourth sections of Killer G. They whisper out of my mouth, mumbling and cracking, but it doesn’t matter because it’s just a demo and Mr. Darren says that when you’re inspired all you have to do is get the golden nugget of an idea down as complete as you can and don’t worry about the sounds or the perfection because the only thing that matters is getting that pure inspiration before it’s gone.

I rerecord the verses a couple times, until they really sound right. Then I listen back. It’s cool. It builds. The first verse is kind of whimpery but then the second one is stronger, and the song really feels like
life
feels lately, where things are getting more and more intense, and trapping you.

I keep looping it and do more takes. I’m sweating under
the covers, and the more I sing the lyrics, the angrier I’m getting. It is starting to feel like yesterday when we were playing Killer G and the music and everything suddenly felt overwhelming. This song is tapped into that feeling.

The song
is
that feeling.

My brain spirals like there’s a tornado of everything that has been so frustrating and stupid lately. The email. The call home. My parents. Mr. Scher. Sadie. And even Keenan and Skye, not just because of Skye’s opinions but also because it’s like I lost them both when they started dating.

Every part of my life is enemy territory, and it’s like in Level 16 of
LF
when you’re on your own in the woods after you escape from Stalag VII-A, and a pack of German dogs is on your scent and they’ve cornered you in a barn and there is no escape—that’s how it feels all the time to be me and to deal with everything and all I can think

all I can think

all I can barely think is

F*** everything!

is honestly how I really feel, but oh no, you can’t say that. It’s not okay to use
those
words to describe your feelings, the most powerful words, the most accurate. We’re supposed to just be perfect and young and
fine
all the time, with no real problems. But we’re not fine. And when things really suck, keeping it bottled up inside only makes it worse.

It’s like in eighth grade you are too old and too young all at once. And who you feel like you are, and who you’re
expected to be are just completely opposite and wrong and maybe
that
is what this song is about.

I am having that feeling again like yesterday where this angry energy is showing me something, the hidden door, the secret tunnel in the barn’s grain cellar, the way out.…

I start the song over but this time I set the recording to go all the way through to the Flying Aces part to see if I can make it build and I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get there and I am not going to plan it. At least within these little wavy lines of sound I am going to be free to escape and fly above all of the stupid rules and expectations.

I hit Record and start singing from the top, singing it just like I feel it and I don’t care if it sounds dumb or wrong or whatever.

I sing the first three verses, letting it build, getting more intense. My voice is starting to shake but also getting stronger, angrier.

Then the song changes to the Flying Aces part and I just sprint ahead into it and I feel like I am following something or it is pulling me along or I am pushing it or I have no idea how to describe it better than that and I am practically shouting now and the words just happen and I just
go …

The music ends. The program keeps recording, hissing in my ears like I’m drifting somewhere out in empty space.

I feel like I’ve lost track of my body, but then I hear my breathing, fast and raspy. My throat is sore.

And all I can think is
Whoa
.

“Anthony?”

I hear the muffled voice and I throw back my comforter and drop it over my phone and the mic just as my door is opening and I grab my notebook and have it in my lap and there is innocent Anthony, sitting in his bed like a perfect little son making up for the mistakes he made.

Mom peers in. In the low red light, she can’t tell that my face is red and I’m sweating. “Were you shouting something?” she asks.

“Just singing to myself while I was working,” I say, trying
not to sound out of breath or like my heart is pounding like a stampeding bull.