They were all dressed almost exactly the same as the first time we’d seen them at the bar, but this was the first time I was seeing them all together this close up. They all looked kind of the same, and now I couldn’t tell the difference between the one that Dion and I had followed through the grocery store, and the one I’d talked to on the front porch. Maybe I could just say his name, and see which one of them would stand up, but then I worried that might out me as not knowing the names of the members of my favorite band, so…
“Look what I brought!” Janis said from behind me, and instantly all four members of Jump the Shark were up and off the couch. I turned to see Janis brandishing the can opener like it was the keys to a Lamborghini.
The four of them responded like it was keys to a Lamborghini, and one of them snatched it out of her hand almost immediately. Kendra and Karen were shooting her death daggers too, since she had effectively stolen their thunder and the band was now totally focused on the soup pyramid in front of them. I took this as my cue, and stepped over to Karen.
“I think you guys should get out of here,” I said. “No offense, but they don’t like to have a lot of hangers-on around, you know, hangin’ on.” The look on Karen’s face was priceless. “They need to be able to concentrate before their set. We don’t want to harsh their mojo.” I had no idea what I was talking about, but no matter how much Karen might have hated me in that moment, she still loved Jump the Shark and didn’t want to do anything that would prevent them from having the best show ever.
She nodded. “I’ll get everyone out of here.” She started to turn away, then turned back to me and lowered her voice. “Do you think they like the banner?” She gestured at the green glitter one, and now that I was looking at it closely, I could see that it said “I love you—Karen” in the corner of the K.
“I’m sure they love it,” I said, and then motioned for her to leave. The rest of the dance committee grumbled about leaving, but they followed Karen out, and soon, Janis and I were alone in the green room with Tom, Todd, Brad, and Chad. I made eye contact with Janis. “Which one’s the one you talked to?” she whispered. I grimaced and shrugged. She pointed to a filing cabinet, and I looked over to see that she was pointing at a Sharpie and a stack of “Hello, my name is…” stickers.
“Great idea!” I mouthed back. I grabbed one, wrote down “Esther,” and stuck it onto the front of my dress. I wrote “Janet” on another one and stuck it onto Janis. She narrowed her eyes at me—she’s a little sensitive about the whole Janis/Janet Jackson thing—but I think she got that it just seemed better if Jump the Shark didn’t know our real names.
“So,” I said loudly, turning back to the band. “I’m Esther and this is Janet, and we got these name tags so that you wouldn’t have to remember our names, because I am sure that you guys meet people all the time, and I thought it would be great if everyone wore one.” I held the name tags and the marker out toward them. “You know, for solidarity.” Finally one of them took them from me and wrote “Todd” in big block letters, and stuck the sticker to the front of his T-shirt. The others followed suit, and I was once again thankful for Janis’s genius, because the one I had been betting on to be Tom was actually Brad.
I wondered what kind of vibes Janis was picking up from them, because my Sitter sense was firing away. The back of my neck felt like it was crawling with ants, and the overall drippy, gross feeling that surrounded their house surrounded the band as well. The air was dense, and I was starting to feel slightly nauseous.
I was going to do my best to hide it, though. I turned to the one who actually was Tom, and smiled. “It’s so good to see you again!” I said, making my voice sound extra perky. “So, we are here for you! Please let me and Janis—I mean, Janet—know if you need anything.”
“Yeah, there’s one thing you should know,” he said, his face and voice very serious. “We’re not Jump the Shark anymore. We’re Superfood.”
“Like, blueberries?” I asked. Surely he had to be joking, but he just nodded.
“With an umlaut over the U,” he added.
“So, Süperfood?” Janis said, drawing out the “oo” sound in “super.”
“No,” Tom said, shaking his head. “Over the U in ‘food.’ ‘Superfüd.’ ”
“There is no U in—” Janis started, but I kicked her ankle and she stopped.
“Great name,” I said. “I love it.” He looked at me like he was waiting for me to say more. “It rocks,” I added.
“Yeah, so that banner’s gonna have to come down,” he said, pointing at Karen’s love letter.
“Sure,” Janis said, walking over to the banner. We all watched as she pulled it off the wall, wadded it into a ball, and stuffed it into the nearest trash can.
“Cool, cool,” Tom said when she was done. “This is a cool soup pyramid.”
“Thanks, yeah, Janet made it,” I said.
“Cool,” Tom said, and I doubted that he had aced vocab tests in high school, whenever that was.
Behind Tom, the rest of Superfüd were making quick work with the can opener, and each member of the band had opened their own can of soup.
“Do you need a microwave?” Janis asked.
“Nah, we’re cool,” Brad said as he pried open the lid on the can of chili and then dumped the contents into the blender. He hit pulse a few times, then took the lid off and peered into the top. Next to me, Janis made a weird noise, and I could tell she was stifling a gag.
Apparently, what Brad saw wasn’t to his liking, so he put the top back and pulsed the blender a few more times. Then he took the pitcher off the blender base and dumped the now liquified chili into one of the Styrofoam cups that Janis had set out for the drinks. I felt like I was watching a YouTube video where stoners decide to add strawberry jelly to their nachos—because next he took a bottle of ranch dressing, popped the foil seal, and then squeezed a whole bunch onto the chili, and then sat down and began to sip it. It was still cold. I looked away before I threw up in my mouth. Janis started to hum, clearly trying to distract herself from the scene in front of us.
When Chad stepped up to the blender with a can of chicken noodle I had to turn away again. They didn’t rinse the blender out between soups. Fortunately, Tom didn’t seem to be hungry, and just sat at the end of the couch, sipping a glass of grape juice.
Steeling my stomach and mentally telling my gag reflex to take the night off, I went over and sat down on the arm of the couch. “So,” I said, “how long have you guys been playing together?” Tom looked up at me, his teeth already stained purple, and I could see his eyes narrow a little bit. “I mean, I know, of course, because I know everything about you. But I want to hear the Superfüd story from Superfüd themselves.”
I would have bet all my babysitting money that I was the only person to ask Tom about Superfüd in maybe all of history, but he still had the weariness of a musician who’d been doing interviews all day with journalists who clearly hadn’t listened to the album.
“Well,” he started, taking a sip of grape juice and savoring it like it was thirty-year-old Scotch. “Only a couple of years now,” he said.
I tried to keep my face neutral, and just nodded. “You ever take any breaks?” I asked. “I bet it’s tough being in a band, and sometimes you just want to chill out for a while. Like a week, or fifteen years, maybe?”
“No,” he said, looking up at me. Crap. Maybe I was being paranoid, but I thought I could see something in his eyes that hinted at him being onto me.
I changed tactics. “So, tell me about your influences. Who, in your opinion, is really rocking right now?”
This was a question that Tom could answer, and he sat up a little straighter. “Puddle of Mudd, for sure,” he said. “Those guys are super inspirational. They’re from Kansas City, you know, so it’s cool to see another Midwestern band make it big.” I nodded enthusiastically.
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“Mud puddle, yeah, I love them.” I had never heard of this band. “So, you guys used to be a five-piece, right?” Tom nodded and gave a little grunt. I decided to take that as a sign of encouragement and run with it. “What happened to the fifth guy?”
“He died.” His bluntness kind of shocked me, especially since he said this with all the emotion of an exterminator delivering news on the fate of a rat.
“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.”
He just shrugged and sipped his grape juice.
“So,” I said, “what do you do when you’re not playing music? Any hobbies? I’ve got tons of hobbies. Lately I’ve been really into flooring, especially the waterproof kind. Like, tile and linoleum…”
Maybe it was a good thing, but my words had no effect on Tom. “Music only,” he said. He certainly had the mute-rock-star thing down.
I glanced at the clock. I had a few more minutes before I needed to excuse myself to go spell the school. Not that I was going to tell Tom that, of course. “Here,” I said, standing up, “let me refill your drink.” He passed the cup to me, and I shivered as our fingers touched just slightly. He had all the life and humanity of a dead frog soaked in antifreeze.
“Make it root beer this time,” he said. Across the room, Janis had been making small talk with Brad and Chad, which left Todd sitting by himself reading a comic book. As I walked across the teachers’ lounge to get Tom some root beer, Janis came sidling up to me.
“Ummmm…,” she said, her voice barely a whisper, “so Chad thinks that George W. Bush is the president, and Brad just said that he’s the band’s webmaster, so he’s in charge of their Myspace page.”
I nodded as I poured Tom’s root beer. “They’re definitely frozen in time,” I whispered back. “I couldn’t get anything out of Tom about them taking a break or about him working at the Home Depot. Did you get any insight into the soup?”
“No,” she said, “but we had a long conversation about ranch dressing, and they are very impressed with the blender. When do they go on? I’m running out of aughts references.”
I glanced across the room at the clock on the wall. “Fifteen minutes,” I said under my breath. I turned away from the soup table and surveyed the room. Pig was still in her corner, and instead of settling in and curling up into a ball like she normally did, she was still sitting upright, very still. As I watched, Brad got up and started to walk over to her, but when he was a few feet away, Pig started to growl. In a split second, I was across the room, spilling Tom’s root beer in the process, but putting myself between Pig and Brad.
“She’s, uh, not super friendly,” I said. “Best not to pet her right now.” It felt wrong to slander Pig in such a way, but I didn’t want there to be any dustups before the show.
Brad scowled. “Why is there an unfriendly pit bull in our green room?” he asked. “Seems like a liability. We will sue.”
“I know, I know,” I said, turning him back toward the couch. “It’s the principal’s dog. It’s a long story.” I smiled, though I’m sure it looked like a grimace, but Brad took me at my word, and walked back over and sat down on the couch next to Tom. I walked with him, and handed Tom his root beer. He took a sip of it, and then licked the foam from his lip. All I could think about was how much I hated root beer. It was like the creepy old uncle of soda.
“We want to go scope out the venue,” he said, “and get our merch set up.” Tom stood up and turned to Todd, handing me his half-drunk root beer like I was a waiter. “You have the backpack?” he asked, and Todd nodded. Janis came over to join us, looking relieved at the fact that Superfüd seemed to be leaving.
“They want to check out the venue,” I said to her, and she nodded.
“Cool,” she said. “We can show you the gym, and the stage.”
“You got somebody to help with the equipment?” Brad asked. “It’s out in the car.” Just then, Kendra’s and nipple boy’s heads appeared in the window to the teachers’ lounge, I assumed because they were trying to get a glimpse of the band.
“We do, actually,” Janis said. “And they just arrived.” She opened the door, and they started to scurry away, but Janis called them back. “Superfüd needs help unloading their equipment.”
“Superfüd?” Kendra asked, and I couldn’t help it. My masochistic side came out.
“That’s their name now,” I said sternly, “so don’t call them anything else.”
“Oh c-crap,” nipple boy stammered as he started frantically trying to rub off his tattoo. “Obviously, of course. We can help them unload. It’d be an honor.” Beside him, Kendra was nodding so furiously that I worried her head might detach.
“Their instruments are outside in their van,” Janis said.
“Sports car,” Brad corrected. “Sports car.”
Janis opened her mouth like she was going to say something, but then she closed it again. Fortunately, she didn’t have to say anything else.
“Well, heck, let’s go get it, then!” nipple boy said. “You lead the way.”
Brad, Chad, Kendra, and nipple boy headed toward the parking lot, which left me and Janis standing there with Tom and Todd. I redid Pig’s leash, and again pulled her across the floor to join the others. The fur on her back was in a telltale ridge, and if I hadn’t already known that these guys were trouble, Pig’s reaction alone would have alerted me.
“So, there will be drinks, right?” Todd said as we started walking toward the gym.
“Of course,” Janis said. “I mean, not alcoholic, because we’re in a high school. But there’s punch.”
“Cool, cool,” Todd said. “Don’t want people getting thirsty.”
“Yeah, sure,” Janis said, pulling the door open to the gym. “Whatever.”
I had to give it to the Kendras and the Karens of the world, or at least of Spring River High—they really tried. They had given the gym transformation their best, complete with a shiny metallic photo wall that quivered in the breeze of a very deliberately placed fan. There was also a giant pink-and-white balloon arch in the shape of a heart, and a junior DJing from his phone in the corner. He was working hard to crank out some beats to a dance floor that was populated solely by one art teacher and a sophomore who looked to be on some sort of combination of MDMA and taurine.
Various groups had assembled on the sidelines so that they could stare at the other groups assembled on the sidelines. If I was going to do what Brian had said to do, and cast populariskinesis on small groups, then everyone was making it easy for me, as they were already clumped together in little tufts no bigger than eight or nine people. If I worked quickly, I could get everyone done in less than twenty minutes, probably.
“Let’s see this drink table,” Tom said. Janis steered him in that direction, and I followed. Up close, I could see that the punch was a pure Red #40 and had little heart-shaped pieces of pineapple floating in it. The keeper of the punch was none other than Karen herself, who was doling it out one cup at a time.
“One per person,” she said sharply to a girl.
“But he just got two!” the girl said, pointing to a guy who was walking away with a cup in each hand.
“Yeah,” Karen said, “because he got one for his date. You don’t have a date, as evidenced by the fact that you’re here right now, getting your own drink, so one cup for you.”
Ouch, Karen, ouch.
At the punch table, Todd dropped to his knees and started to dig through his backpack, and as he did, a dime and a tube of lip balm rolled out of a hole that he had apparently tried to fix with a piece of duct tape. I picked them up and handed them back to him, and he grunted a thanks. I suddenly understood how someone could drop their body spray, wallet chain, and totally identifying band flyer while they were trying to do something secret.
“Where do I put these?” Todd said, standing up with a s
tack of CDs in his hand. “We’ve got some tees too.” Karen was still under my spell to think that Superfüd was an insanely popular band, but even with that, she wasn’t totally stoked on having them crash her drink table.
“Um, I didn’t really plan space for that,” she said to Todd, who ignored her.
“Here’s our price list,” he said, handing her a piece of cardboard with black Sharpie letters.
Her face looked like he was trying to hand her his old gym socks. “Um, had I known you were going to be selling stuff, I would have made a special sign that went with the color scheme,” she said.
Todd dropped the CDs onto the table, and then started to move cups out of the way to make room for the T-shirts. I bent to get a closer look, and saw that the CD cover had the same band photo as their Myspace page, and that the name “Superfüd” was written on yet another piece of duct tape on each.
“Let me help you with that,” Karen said, the smile on her face stretched as tight as a ponytail holder about to break. I watched her try to aesthetically arrange Superfüd’s ringer tees, which had their new band name made to look like it had been stenciled onto the side of a metal garbage can. I had no idea how they’d gotten the T-shirts made in time, but I couldn’t have designed the band a better logo myself.
“You’re folding them all wrong!” Tom said. At first I thought he was talking to Todd, but then I realized he was talking to Karen. She realized it too.
“Excuse me?” she said. “I spent two summers working at the Gap. I think I know how to fold a T-shirt.”
“One horizontal fold only!” Tom said, taking a shirt to demonstrate. “When you fold it in thirds, you can’t see the logo!”
“Oh, who cares!” Todd interrupted, grabbing the T-shirts from both Tom and Karen and dropping them into a pile on the table. “These are so cool that they’ll sell out no matter how they’re folded.” He looked at me and Janis like he expected us to say something.
Spells Like Teen Spirit Page 24