Rock 'n' Roll Rebel (14 page)

Chapter Thirty-Three

T
ig refused to get out of bed on Saturday.

She'd gone straight to her room when she'd gotten home from Kyra's party. She'd turned her phone on silent, and although she could hear the frequent
Errrrr
of a text or call coming in, she refused to even look at the screen to see who it was.

Sleep had eluded her. It was as though she had forgotten how. Ever since the party, she'd felt her heart racing. She'd tried taking deep breaths but couldn't seem to get enough oxygen. She desperately wished for sleep as a way of escaping herself and the miserable situation, at least for a while.

Uncle Nick had called Tig's mom and told her everything, but Tig had refused her parents' many offers of counsel, responding with a pointed “I don't want to talk about it.” That evening, though, Tig heard a gentle shave-and-a-haircut knock at her door. She sat up in bed. “Come in, BD.” Her mom had called in the big guns.

“How's my sweetie?” BD said, sitting down next to her on the bed.

“I don't want to talk about it.”

“Is it a boy? You tell BD. I'll whoop him.” Tig was sure BD already knew what had happened, but he wanted her to tell him.

Tig settled into her grandfather's arms. He had a way of making her feel safe, and before she knew it, she was spilling her guts about her humiliation, and sobbing into the sleeve of BD's soft flannel shirt.

“Oh, is that all?” he asked.

“Is that all?” Tig asked incredulously. “Isn't that enough?”

“Shoot. Reminds me of the time I tried to sing lead for the Orbits.”

Tig looked confused. “I thought you always said you couldn't sing lead,” she said.

“I can't,” he replied. “But how do you think I found that out? Trial and error. And, boy, was it an error!

“I guess it was about 1963. The Orbits got a gig at a dive called the Jungle Club down around Five Points—where that drugstore is now. I decided I wanted to sing ‘Party Doll.' Jerry and the rest of the guys said that was fine. We rehearsed it, and the night of the gig, I started singing. It didn't go well.”

“Did people boo you and tell you your band stunk?”

“No, it was worse than that. At least that would have been over quickly. No, they just started getting up, one by one, and leaving. At first I thought maybe a couple of people were just going to the bathroom. So I kept on singing. By the time I was done, not a living soul was in that club anymore!

“So I said to Jerry, ‘What happened?' and he said, ‘You can't sing lead.' So I said, ‘Well, why didn't you tell me that before I made a fool of myself?' And Jerry said, ‘Because we were afraid you'd get mad and quit the band, and you're the only one with a van big enough to fit our equipment into'!” BD laughed.

“No way!” Tig said. “What did you do?”

“I'll tell you what I didn't do. I didn't sing ‘Party Doll' . . . or lead on anything else . . . ever again!”

Tig smiled. She appreciated that BD sort of understood. But this was different. “At least you humiliated yourself in 1963 to a roomful of people. This is the Internet age, BD. My shame is worldwide, on the Web, forever.”

“You're right,” BD said. “It is different. I know it's a lot harder growing up now than it was when I was a boy. I wish I knew how to break the Internet for you.”

Tig laughed. BD couldn't even figure out how to transfer his contacts to a new phone. But she knew that if he could, he really would break the Internet, just for her.

Tig thought of how much everyone loved BD. If he could make a fool of himself with his band and laugh about it years later, well, maybe she could too. Even if it was on the Internet. After all, there were worse things on the Web than one crummy band performance. There was so much new material every day that probably in a few weeks the video of her humiliation would be hiding in plain sight—still there, but abandoned and forgotten old news. One day maybe Tig would laugh about it like BD laughed about his “Party Doll” story. One day. But not yet.

After BD left, Tig wasn't quite through wallowing in her misery, so she stayed in her room for the remainder of the night.

The next day, Tig was allowed to skip Sunday lunch at her grandparents' house. The official reason was to continue to work on her science project, but the underlying one was that Tig still needed some time to collect herself.

With her parents and her younger sibs out of the house, Tig soaked in the absolute quiet. Here, walls surrounded her, protecting her from the looks, taunts, and snickers she would face at school on Monday. She was tempted to look at her phone or social media to know for certain what people were saying about her and the band, but she couldn't face it. It might be worse than she imagined. Maybe they hadn't sounded as bad as it seemed. Tig wished she could believe that, but she knew better.

On her bedside table lay one of her pairs of drumsticks.

She looked at them, then pressed them into her hands, running her fingers along their smooth surfaces. Part of her wanted to break them over her knee and throw them in the garbage. The drums had been the cause of all her misery at school. She thought back to how she'd wanted people to pay attention to her, to think she was special in some way . . . to think she was cool. She had hated being invisible. Now she wished she could return to invisibility.

She took the sticks and threw them against the wall. The pronounced bang and the clanging of wood against wood as they fell together to the floor startled her even though she'd expected the loud noise. She stared at the sticks as they rolled, one off the rug and under her bed and the other next to her backpack.
I'll leave them there and never pick them up again,
she told herself
. I'm through with the drums.

But only a few moments passed before Tig was reaching under her bed, patting her hand on the rug and around various shoes, in search of the missing stick. When she had both of them in her grasp again, she studied them for damage.

Before she could fully think about what she was doing and why, Tig found herself in the studio. She sat on her little stool, put her feet on the pedals, and began pounding out rhythms. She played loudly, forcefully. Not a song per se, but different combinations of backbeats. Behind her drums, she could feel herself start to breathe again, like a fish tossed back into its bowl after a few seconds out of water.

Tig realized that no matter the amount of misery the drums might cause her, she couldn't give them up. She wasn't good yet, but she would keep playing. Years from now, when she could barely remember the names Regan or Haley or Sofia, she would still be somewhere sitting behind some drums, a backbeat pounding in her brain and coming out her limbs.

The drums were no longer a means to an end or a silly little project.

They had become part of her.

Chapter Thirty-Four

“W
here have you been?” Kyra demanded when Tig got to school Monday. She was sitting in the gym with Robbie and Olivia. “I had to have Mama call Aunt Julie last night just so I could make sure you were still alive! Do you have any idea how many texts I sent you?”

“Eleven,” Tig said. “I also received six from Olivia, three from Will, and one big
Seriously?
from Robbie.”

“Seemed like a valid question,” Robbie said. “Man, you skip town just once for your great-grandma's party, and the world goes crazy.”

“It is a good question,” Kyra said. “So, seriously?
You storm off the stage like a crazy person and then you drop off the face of the planet. What are we supposed to think?”

“Correction. I did not storm off the stage like a crazy person. I stormed off the stage like a very mentally stable person who realized she'd made a complete fool of herself.”

“Whatever you want to call it, Mama was furious.”

Like I care
, Tig wanted to say. But before she could come up with any response at all, Regan was upon her.

“Good morning, rock 'n' roll princess!” she said. Naturally, Haley and Sofia were on her heels. It was as though they were three parts of one organism.

Tig wanted to say something smart back to Regan, but she didn't. She was humiliated, and her role now was to stand there and take what Regan dished out. She'd earned it.

“Not so mouthy today, are we?” Regan said. “I can't blame you. There's really nothing left for you to say. Wow.
What
a train wreck! You must be so embarrassed. I mean, telling everyone you have a band and then it's all over YouTube that you can't even play one stupid song.”

Okay, so maybe Tig wasn't so great at the whole standing-there-and-taking-it bit.

“If you knew anything about music,” Tig replied, “you would know that ‘Gotcha' isn't a stupid song; it's a difficult song, an advanced song. And that it's hard to play any song when your lead singer gets sick and your usual guitarist is out of town.”

“Excuses, excuses,” Regan said. “I'm just so glad that your big mouth got you into exposing your talentless, pathetic excuse for a band to the whole school.”

“The whole world, really,” Haley added. “My, my, but I do love the Internet!”

“If you love the Internet so much,” Tig said, “then why don't you put up a video of yourself singing? I'd love to read all the comments about your supposed talent.”

“I have too much class to self-promote,” Haley said.

“Trust me, two things you'll never have to worry about having too much of are class and talent,” Tig replied.

“Haley's not putting any videos on YouTube,” Regan said. “Because if she did, people would be talking about her video instead of yours.” Tig was disappointed that Regan could see through her so easily. Regan continued, “And we want to make sure your video gets talked about around here for a very long time.”

“Tig! There you are!” Will made his way to her from across the gym.

“Oh, look, it's your boyfriend the guitarist!” Regan said.

“Will is not my boyfriend,” Tig said.

Olivia shifted her weight onto her opposite hip.

“He's not much of a guitarist either,” said Regan. “We'll just leave you lovebirds alone . . . for now.”

The Bots went to their usual section, and Will sat down next to Tig. “You okay?” he asked. “I've been worried about you.”

“Life couldn't be better,” Tig said. “Haven't you heard? I'm a rock star.”

“You and me both,” Will said. “That was pretty embarrassing.”

“Will, you were so great up there Friday night!” Olivia said.

“No, I wasn't,” Will said. “I shouldn't have said I could play guitar. If Robbie'd been there instead of me, this never would've happened.”

“But I couldn't be there, and you stepped up,” Robbie said. “That means something.”

“She's right,” Olivia said. “You're very sweet.”

The funny thing was, Tig thought so, too. Will was sweet. He'd made a complete fool of himself right along with her, even though he didn't have to, and instead of blaming her for screwing up the song and walking off the stage or even being mad at her for ignoring his texts, here he was, being all nice. She tried to remember what she'd always found so annoying about him, but she couldn't.

“I guess you've seen YouTube?” Robbie asked Tig.

“No,” Tig replied. “I'm making a conscious decision not to look.”

“Good idea,” Robbie said. “It's not pretty.”

“You know what they say about denial,” Tig said.

“It ain't just a river in Egypt,” said Will.

“Exactly. But pretending it didn't happen doesn't solve the problem.”

“You mean of being the laughingstock of the whole school and the rest of the city?” Kyra asked.

“No,” Tig said. “I can deal with that. I mean, don't get me wrong—that part stinks, no question. But I think we have an even bigger problem.”

“What?” asked Kyra.

“Has anybody heard from Claire?”