Five Flavors of Dumb (15 page)

Ed turned around. “They took indie rock mainstream.”

“Which means?”

“They broke musical boundaries. Their music was only supposed to appeal to a niche audience. They weren’t supposed to make it big. But somehow they ended up speaking for their generation in a way that bigger bands just couldn’t seem to.”

Kallie smiled. “And they had energy. They just . . . rocked.”

I looked at Kurt Cobain’s house, clearer from the park, and gawked at the size of the place. It was a beautiful house, too, with patterns in the red brick and latticed windows looking out over the lake and mountains. It must have been worth millions of dollars. Suddenly I wanted to get away, leave all that wasted wealth and misdirected adoration behind me.

“I’m sorry, but I just don’t get it,” I said. “All these people visit this park just because he lived next door?”

Kallie looked puzzled. “No. They come here because that’s where he killed himself.”

I waited for her to laugh, to cry
gotcha
, but she didn’t. “What?” I mumbled. “How?”

“He shot himself,” she said. “Didn’t you know? He went alone to the greenhouse above the garage and shot himself.”

I felt my breath catch, my eyes drawn back to the house magnetically. It looked the same as before, but somehow different too.

I took in the view again, the mountains fast disappearing, the inky black lake stretching into the distance, rimmed by amber streetlights on the other side. “But it’s so beautiful here,” I said.

Kallie and Ed stood silent, regarding me.

“It’s just . . . how could you see such beauty and not find a reason to keep living?”

Kallie stepped forward and took my hand in hers. “He was depressed. He was addicted to heroin. And I think there comes a time when all the beauty in the world just isn’t enough.”

“But he had so many fans, so much money.”

“It’s not enough,” said Kallie sadly. “I don’t think anyone who’s motivated by fans or money will ever get it.”

“Get what?”

“Music. It’s not about those things. It’s about a feeling. It’s about expressing yourself. It’s about letting go.”

I couldn’t help but stare at Kallie, Dumb’s weakest link—the one who couldn’t play in time or in tune, whose superficiality had left me speechless for years. Did she really believe a word she’d said?

I sat down on one of the benches, stuffed my hands inside the sleeves of my fleece jacket. On the seat, to my left, someone named Tom D. from Minneapolis wanted Kurt to know that he was gone but not forgotten. Dakota and Phil from Sydney, Australia, told Kurt that he’d live forever. Someone had even left three daisies, wilted and withered now, but a touching gesture all the same.

Ed sat down too, but he didn’t speak, just stayed with me as I studied the bench and our breaths condensed in the air. He seemed to know I needed to be quiet, but I was still grateful to feel him there beside me.

In phrases long and short, scrawled and carved, Kurt Cobain’s apostles had composed eulogies to their fallen leader. And however much I wanted to dismiss the words as simple graffiti, I couldn’t ignore the sentiment or the distances covered on the way to this place, the final destination on the Kurt Cobain pilgrimage. I could have been cynical, of course, but that would have been dishonest. Because the painful truth was that each and every person who had sat on that seat before me had experienced music in a purer, more visceral way than I could even begin to imagine. And I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t profoundly jealous of every single one of them.

Everyone stopped talking as soon as I walked into the dining room.

“Where have you been?” demanded Mom.

I hesitated. “Kurt Cobain’s house.”

“Yes, Finn told me that. I mean,
what
were you doing at Kurt Cobain’s house when you should have been here for dinner?”

I was about to mention the e-mail from ZARKINFIB, but I could tell that Mom wouldn’t consider that an acceptable explanation right now. “Kallie said it would be . . . illuminating.”

Mom rolled her eyes. “Oh, great. So air-guitarist Kallie is also an air-head.”

“I never called her an air-guitarist.”

“No, Finn did. The airhead bit I worked out for myself.”

“She’s not an airhead.”

“Oh, right. She just drags you off to the house of a suicidal rock star. Sounds like a shoo-in for Mensa.”

Finn looked up suddenly. “Kallie
is
smart, actually. And since you’ve never even been to Kurt Cobain’s house, I don’t see how you can call it a waste of time.”

Silence. Mom was ready to have an argument with me, but Finn’s vehemence surprised all of us. It was like he’d declared war, and she didn’t care enough to continue fighting. Or perhaps it had nothing to do with Kallie or Cobain at all. Maybe she was still pissed at me for last night.

“Look, Piper,” she said tiredly, “I’m all for you indulging this project, but I’m not going to bend on our rules. You get home in time for dinner or you can forget about the band. Understand?”

I nodded, and Finn returned to studying his plate. He wouldn’t meet my eyes until Mom and Dad left the table, and even then I could tell he was still shaken by his outburst.

Do you like Kallie?
I signed, trying to keep my facial expressions as neutral as possible, not wanting him to clam up.

She’s very popular. You know that, right?
I tried, hoping he’d read between the lines and realize she was completely out of his league.

Nothing,
I lied, then thought better of it.
It was just something Tash said to me tonight, that’s all.

Suddenly Finn was blushing, and I knew I wasn’t the only one who’d been lying.

On Saturday morning Dad and I took USS
Immovable
to the shop. He said he’d waited until then so that Finn and I wouldn’t be inconvenienced, but the truth is that he just didn’t want to give us rides to and from school. It would’ve meant sticking Grace in her car seat, which, you know, is thirty seconds of extra work.

Also, by waiting until Saturday he made it possible for me to experience every guilt-filled moment, from the ancient mechanic who shook his head incredulously at what I’d done, to the estimate for the work ($400). When Dad found out that the car wouldn’t be ready until Monday he almost blew a fuse. Seriously, if Finn hadn’t been such a star at the rehearsal the previous afternoon, I might have strangled him when I got home.

 

It took me thirty minutes to walk to Josh and Will’s house on Sunday. Everyone in the band had agreed to an extra rehearsal, even though there wasn’t a recording session. Still, that was before I had my blowup with Tash. Just as I’d worried that Kallie might not show after our run-in a few days ago, I now wasted several minutes biting my fingernails and wondering if Tash had made her final appearance. Only I got the feeling that Dumb had an additional attraction for Tash, and that seeing Will was sufficient compensation for having to hang out with Kallie for an afternoon.

Sure enough, Tash showed up just like usual, unpacking her guitar and tuning it methodically. Then she handed her tuning fork to Kallie. It was a simple gesture—essential, really—but it seemed symbolic: Tash grudgingly acknowledging that Dumb needed its two guitarists to be in harmony. What’s more, they’d both clearly been practicing—with varying degrees of success—so the band was able to polish up “Kiss Me Like You Mean It” and still have time to learn “Look What the Cat Dragged In,” a new number from the Cooke family songbook.

Meanwhile, I sat by the window, engrossed in a biography of Kurt Cobain I’d checked out from the library. It was the story of a life so heartrending that I wanted to hug every member of Dumb just to show I truly cared.

I figured we’d split after the three hours were up, but then a pizza delivery guy arrived and Will said, “Now you all owe me another hour,” and no one disagreed. I couldn’t decide if I was more amazed that Will had had the forethought to order pizza, or that he had expressed an opinion, but either way, it worked. And when the extra hour was up, nobody mentioned it, and Dumb pressed on for an hour after that. Maybe it was because they knew that the next full rehearsal wouldn’t be until Friday, but even so, it felt momentous, like everyone had finally taken responsibility for making this thing work.

For the first time, Dumb’s five flavors were mixing, blending, and forging something altogether greater than the sum of its parts. And I didn’t need perfect hearing to know they realized it too.

 

All of this meant that I was in a pretty good mood on Monday. I even tolerated Dad’s eye rolling and steering wheel slapping on the way to school without uttering a single sarcastic remark. There should be medals for that kind of self-control.

At lunchtime I met up with Ed for a game of chess. I was finding it hard to concentrate on anything but the band, so I set goals to help me focus: checkmate in twenty moves or under (not too difficult); execute checkmate through a bishop-queen skewer (significantly harder); mustn’t smile—even a small one—when I pulled it off (close to impossible). My assignment worked—for twelve minutes I was focused on nothing but the game, and met every goal except the last one.

Usually Ed was the first to start setting up the pieces again, but for once he just sat back, lost in his thoughts.

“You okay?” I asked.

He nodded. “Just got a lot on my mind.”

“I get that. We’re still two songs shy of a set, and I want to start selling us as an opening act.”

Ed’s eyes grew wide. “Why?”

“Well, how else do you think we’re going to make any money?”

“But ...” He broke eye contact.

“But what?”

Ed leaned back and gripped his hair in his hands. “Do you honestly believe that’s going to happen anytime soon?”

I wasn’t sure I liked where the conversation was going. “It might.”

“But it can take years for a band to develop that kind of a following.”

“We don’t have years.”

“I know, but . . . what about Kallie?”

“What about her? I was wrong. She’s actually really nice.”

“That’s not the point. She’s not ready to play in public. And unless she and Tash plan to meet with Finn
every
lunchtime, I don’t think that’s going to change.”

I wondered if I’d misheard him. “What did you say about Finn?”

“I said Kallie and Tash are meeting with him, to go over the songs.”

“How do you know?”

“Finn told me during morning break. He wanted to check a couple chords out with me.”

I was struggling to come to grips with this revelation. “Where are they?”

“In the practice room.”

I jumped up and began jogging over there, Ed following close behind. I don’t know what I expected to find as I peered through the small window in the practice room door, but the one thing I was certain I wouldn’t see was Tash and Kallie hanging on Finn’s every word.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised: Finn had been playing guitar since he was eight. He’d even taken lessons for five years, until his teacher brought things to an end over a “philosophical difference” that was never fully explained. I think by then Dad had an inkling he’d soon be out of a job, so I can’t exactly say that anyone discouraged Finn from quitting. Except that he never actually quit, of course—he simply changed focus from classical to rock guitar, a shift we interpreted as giving up. And now here he was, a fourteen-year-old leading a guitar master class with two girls on the cusp of eighteen—a freshman boy’s fantasy gone wild.

I got the feeling he knew it too. A month earlier he’d seemed awestruck simply by breathing the same air as Dumb, but now he was correcting Kallie’s mistakes with a reassuring smile. When she struggled with a chord, he gently moved her fingers to the right place, maintaining the contact for so long I wondered why he didn’t just get down on one knee there and then. By contrast, Tash’s mistakes were addressed from a safe distance with no physical contact—probably a wise move for a boy who cracked the scales at an even 110 pounds.

I peered over my shoulder at Ed, who nodded somberly. Whatever his misgivings about Kallie, it was clear he saw the benefits of extra rehearsals with Finn. I wondered if Ed wished he could swap places with him. I hoped not.

The only sign of friction between the girls was when Finn brought things to a close and they both wanted to try out his guitar. At least, that’s how it seemed, and Finn was happy to oblige. It was a relatively new-looking guitar too, not like the battered one he’d bought himself at a garage sale when he was eleven. It also faced the opposite direction from the other guitars, presumably designed for left-handed players. I wasn’t actually sure I’d seen the new guitar before, which got me thinking about where it had come from. He handed it to Tash first, and she ran her fingers lovingly over the white body, gazed at the neck, and pulled a string with a rapturous expression. Then she gave it to Kallie, who was equally inspired by the moment. It was geek love with a twist.

I stifled a laugh and turned to ask Ed what he made of it, but he’d already gone. And while I certainly didn’t expect him to consult with me every time he moved, I realized it was the first time he’d ever taken off without telling me.

With a few minutes of lunch break left, I wandered into the classroom next door and opened up my laptop. Checking e-mail and Dumb’s MySpace page was becoming habitual, an itch that never went away no matter how many times I scratched. And it’s not like anything ever changed significantly either, although . . .