The Prom Goer's Interstellar Excursion

by Chris McCoy

  But I saw all these things from a distance, because I was backstage, trying to help get the band ready for their performance. Driver was caking makeup on himself and Cad to cover the bruises, cuts, and signs of exhaustion they had accumulated over the previous couple of days—but no amount of makeup was going to bring back Skark’s voice.

  Skark was sitting in front of the vanity mirror, wheezing through his throat hole, willing his voice to come back. He was still going through the motions of getting ready, putting makeup on over his eyes while the rest of us stood around, unsure what we should be doing in the meantime. The Perfectly Reasonable had made it to the festival, but they weren’t going to be able to play.

  A stage manager poked her head into the dressing room. She looked like a tote bag turned upside down—canvaslike skin propped on top of a pair of spindly legs, eyes in the middle of her body like two buttons.

  “Fifteen minutes, guys,” she said. “You know, I don’t normally interrupt bands as they’re getting ready, but I’d just like to say I’m a longtime fan and I can’t wait to see Skark in person. I hadn’t heard anything about you guys in years—to be honest, I thought you were dead—and then I saw you on the bill. I figured it was a mistake, but the promoters said no, they’re really playing. I couldn’t believe it. Where have you been?”

  Skark made a hacking sound: “Ghack.” Bits of phlegm escaped from his mouth, landing on the stage manager’s headphones.

  “Guess that’s why you’re never supposed to meet your heroes,” said the stage manager. “Fourteen minutes until showtime.” She hustled away.

  Skark silently finished painting his customary stripe over his eyes. His jumpsuit was streaked in grime. I watched him open his mouth, wheeze, shake his head, and run his hands through his hair. I’d never seen him look so desperate.

  “What are we going to do?” said Cad. “Push him out onstage and have him hack into a microphone? Who’s going to sing?”

  Skark leaned back in his chair, looking at the ceiling, gathering his thoughts. He pointed at me.

  “Bennett doesn’t know our songs,” said Driver.

  Skark grabbed a tube of lipstick and wrote on the vanity mirror:

  DO YOU HAVE A BETTER IDEA?

  “I’ve never sung in public before,” I said.

  Skark wrote again:

  FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING

  “Not to be a stickler for rules,” said Driver. “But contractually I don’t think we can trot out a new lead singer when they’re expecting you, our famous front man.”

  Skark thought about this, then leaned forward and wrote on the sliver of mirror that was still clear:

  DRESS HIM UP LIKE ME

  HE’S ALREADY TALL AND WEIRD-LOOKING

  “I can’t sing like Skark…,” I said.

  “If we say that you’re slightly under the weather, I’m sure nobody will begrudge you a few high notes,” said Driver.

  “I really don’t think—”

  Sophie grabbed my face and squeezed.

  “The faster you get out there and do this, the faster we get to prom,” she said. “Now be a man—or actually, be whatever the hell Skark is—and get out there and sing.”

  Message received, but there was still something I wanted to mention to Sophie before I did this.

  “I don’t have a tux,” I said.

  “What?”

  “For prom. I don’t have a tux. It’s been weighing on my mind.”

  “We can worry about that later,” said Sophie. “Priorities, please.”

  “Fine, I’ll do it,” I said. Skark got up from his makeup chair and offered it to me. I sat down, and he began drawing a stripe across my eyes.

  “This is such a bad idea,” I said.

  Over the next ten minutes, Driver used foundation to make my skin the same pale hue as Skark’s, while Skark completed the fetching metallic yellow stripe across my eyes. Sophie used a chemical solution from an on-site first-aid kit to dye my hair orange, then spiked it with some of Driver’s spit, which had the stickiness and consistency of Elmer’s glue and smelled a bit like sausage.

  Skark removed his sweat-stained jumpsuit and filthy tiled jacket, stripping himself naked except for a Dondoozle Festival program he was holding over his nether regions. He offered the clothes to me in an unappealing wad, and I put them on. I gave him my scrubs; the pants ended halfway up his calves, like a pair of out-of-style capris.

  We shoved pages of the festival program into his size-20 shoes to help them fit me more snugly, but the extra stuffing was little help. I have no idea how women walk in high heels—I felt like I might tip over in any direction at any time, and I had no idea where to put my weight.

  Sophie and the band looked me over.

  “It’s actually not a bad style,” said Sophie. “If you’d done this in high school, you definitely would have gotten more attention.”

  “Think it’s enough for him to pass as Skark?” said Cad.

  “If nobody comes to see us, it doesn’t matter what he looks like,” said Driver.

  Skark hacked a few times and shrugged. Apparently he thought the resemblance was good enough.

  “Ladies and gentlemen…welcome to the Dondoozle Festival. And there is nobody we’d rather have starting us off than our next band, making their comeback. Please put your hands together for Dondoozle veterans and current one billion fiftieth greatest band in the universe…”

  “When did we drop to one billion fifty?” said Cad.

  “Universal Beat released new rankings last night,” said Driver. “I found out about it when we landed, but I didn’t want to say anything.”

  “…the Perfectly Reasonable!”

  The band waited for applause to welcome them to the stage, but none came.

  “The announcer and us are the only ones who know we’re making our comeback,” said Cad.

  Driver looked at me.

  “Time for you to be a star,” he said.

  —

  Driver walked out onto the stage, followed by Cad, but when it was time for me to make my entrance, I couldn’t move—my stomach was knotted and I could feel sweat cutting streaks through my makeup. I had never been onstage before.

  On the back of my leg I felt a supportive hoof that nearly sent me toppling from my platform boots to the ground.

  “You can do this,” said Walter.

  From behind his drum kit, Driver was imploring me with his sticks to come on. I took a few steps…and then fell over into the base of the public-address system mounted at the front of the stage.

  “Fantastic,” I heard Cad say.

  I stumbled again as I tried to get up, nearly knocking over the drums this time, then tripped a third time, whereupon I decided to cut my losses and crawl across the stage to the microphone. I grabbed the stand, pulled myself to my feet, and straightened my guitar.

  The positive thing about my botched entrance was that nobody was there to see it except Sophie, who had no choice but to watch us play and had—intimidatingly—positioned herself in the open field directly in front of the stage. The only festival-goers looking in our direction were a few by the food carts in the distance, killing time as they covered their hot dogs with ketchup or mustard or Minotaur blood or whatever it was that aliens used for condiments.

  “Hello, Dondoozle,” I said into the microphone, my voice echoing over the empty lot in front of us. “I am Benn—I’m Skark Zelirium.”

  I glanced over at Cad and saw him giving me a hurry it up gesture.

  “All right. Okay. I’m doing it. It’s great to be here. One, two, three, four,” I said, because that’s what confident rock stars did. Driver and Cad began playing behind me, shooting vibrations up my back…

  …and I froze.

  I couldn’t remember a note of a Perfectly Reasonable song. I mean, I’d only heard the songs once or twice, and I had just the vaguest idea of the lyrics.

  Cad stepped away from his microphone and walked over to me, plucking his bass.

&n
bsp; “What the hell is going on?” he hissed.

  I stared at him.

  “Play,” he said. “Sing something. We’ll play over you—nobody will be able to tell the difference. What’s wrong with you?”

  I looked down at my guitar, then up at the vacant field in front of me. Sophie was still the only one there, imploring me to get it together.

  “Come on!” she yelled.

  The stage manager motioned me on from the side of the stage, waving her tote-bag tendrils around to show her concern.

  I looked at Sophie. I was malfunctioning. She was standing in the middle of the dusty field, hair sticking out in all directions, arms blotchy with bruises and lined with scratches, shielding her eyes from a strange sun, having been through hell. She was here because of me. I didn’t want to fail in front of her.

  “Pretend like you’re in your bedroom!” she yelled over the drums. “You can do this!”

  And with that…a strange feeling came over my fingers, which started to move like they were doing what they wanted without my conscious control. They knew just where to go, which I guess made sense, since I was playing one of my own songs. I leaned into the microphone.

  “I’m going to call a little bit of an audible for our first number,” I said into the mike. “This song is called ‘Sophie and Me Under the Waterfall.’ ”

  Sophie’s mouth dropped. I turned to Cad and Driver, who were equally shocked.

  “What the hell is ‘Sophie and Me Under the Waterfall’?” said Cad.

  “Just follow my lead,” I said.

  Having spent hundreds of afternoons alone in my bedroom with my guitar, I had mentally collected the fragments of a million songs I didn’t have any idea how to finish, which until now I’d always thought was a flaw in my character. Every time, I would hit that point where I got discouraged, and give up.

  But with Sophie standing in front of me, I wasn’t going to give up this time. I started to sing.

  Love is gonna run, but I’m gonna chase

  Sophie’s gonna win, but I’m gonna place

  As I began, it felt like I wasn’t Bennett anymore—I was just another note hovering above the stage, channeling ideas. From my perch, I watched a crowd start to come, approaching with the sandwiches and drinks that a few minutes before had been a more enticing option than watching the first show of the festival.

  I tried not to look at Sophie—I knew she was shocked, which was understandable, considering that every song I was playing was clearly about her, and I was using her real name in all of them. Less than a week ago, when I had spotted her through the telescope and we had started this journey, I had assured her that I wasn’t a stalker. These songs really weren’t going to help my cause.

  The fifth song in the set was the long-in-development “Sophie and Me Up in Those Trees,” about us living together in the Amazon jungle. Halfway through, I realized the stage manager had turned on the video screens on either the side of the stage. For the first time in my life, I caught a glimpse of myself fifty feet tall and singing:

  You’re swinging up there and I’m looking up at you

  Can’t wait to come home to a tree house made for two….

  Oh!

  It was the first time I’d ever shouted oh! I could see why singers did it all the time. It was satisfying.

  The video screens, the growing crowd, and the songs attracted bigger crowds, and by the seventh number—“The Time Sophie and I Got Locked in a Target”—we weren’t getting only snack-gobbling curiosity seekers, we were getting fans who were showing up already dancing, pushing their way to the front for a better view.

  By the eighth song, I figured it was time to try something else, so I eased the band into a song that had no title, which we had worked on together in Ferguson’s basement, words courtesy of Sophie.

  As was the case with everything she did, writing lyrics had seemed to come to Sophie with ease, and throughout that night I had watched Skark repeating her rhymes to himself as they popped out of her head, laboring to commit them to his newly sober working mind.

  These particular lyrics were patently about being trapped with a bunch of people you didn’t want to be stuck with. Because they were fresh in my mind, they rattled off my tongue: “Nowhere to go but out in the snow, nowhere to hide with these guys as my guide.” Propelled by the thump of Driver’s drums, they poured out of me, and I could see Sophie grinning and looking around at the crowd roaring behind her.

  For the ninth song, my brain went back to one of my own compositions, just called “Sophie,” which I knew was uncreative. I couldn’t see where the crowd ended, and they were all moving. Or at least jumping—by now, the crowd was too tightly packed for any individual to be doing a solo dance number.

  That’s something I forgot to mention about the songs—while they started out with me strumming a guitar alone in my bedroom, with Cad’s bass and Driver’s huge backbeat, they had somehow morphed into dance songs. And I liked watching the crowd move out there.

  This was why I needed a band. I had always thought my personal musical style would end up somewhere in the Bob Dylan / Jeff Buckley / Van Morrison song-as-confessional mold—but it turned out that in my heart, in true seventies funk-lord style, all I wanted to do was make the people dance.

  As we began the tenth song—“Sophie at the End of the Telescope,” which was another number that wouldn’t help my I’m not obsessed with you case—I looked at Sophie to see her reaction, but all I got was the back of her head, because she had turned around and was pushing back against the crowd pressing her up against the stage.

  I see you through my glass viewfinder

  Let me be your lovin’ next-door minder

  I reached down from the stage and pulled Sophie up to keep her from being crushed. I didn’t even lose my balance—three songs in, I had become one with my platform shoes, and by this point I thought I might never take them off again.

  She yelled into my ear over the music. “Every song is about me. I think you owe me royalties,” she said, smiling.

  “Sorry about the surprise,” I said.

  “It wasn’t a surprise,” she said. “I’ve been listening to you singing about me for years.”

  Well, that solved that mystery. She had heard me singing about her through my open window. I didn’t have time to feel self-conscious about it. There were a hundred thousand eyes—grouped in twos and threes and fours—staring up at me from the field.

  I turned to make sure Sophie made it safely to the wings of the stage. And there, for the first time since I’d started performing, I noticed Skark.

  He was rubbing his throat and pacing back and forth barefoot, miserable. This was supposed to be his moment, but there I was in his shoes, fronting his band, playing to the entire ticket-holding population of Dondoozle.

  We finished the last song. “Thank you and good night!” I yelled. “The Perfectly Reasonable loves you.”

  I hustled offstage and immediately began taking off my boots as the audience stomped and clapped and screamed for the obligatory encore.

  Skark gave me a gesture of what are you doing?

  “You’re going out there,” I said. “But you can’t do it naked, so you’re going to have to put all of this back on. Fast.”

  I looked at Sophie.

  “A little privacy, please,” I said.

  “Let me point out that I’ve just been watching you jump around in the tightest jumpsuit imaginable,” she said, turning around and covering her eyes. “So there isn’t much mystery between us anymore.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “You’re still totally mysterious to me.”

  I saw Sophie smile. She liked that.

  I took off Skark’s jacket and peeled the jumpsuit from my body while Skark pulled off the scrubs and handed them back. It was a little odd standing face to face with a naked man who had a body kinda similar to my own, like I’d stumbled into an abstract black-and-white photograph from the 1970s, but there was no time to dwe
ll on it.

  “Hackkk,” said Skark, rushing to put the jumpsuit back on. Dressing him up wasn’t going to solve the issue of him not being able to speak.

  There was still one thing we hadn’t tried, maybe because we hadn’t had the right kind of spackle.

  I pulled a sweaty wad of balled-up festival program out of my boot and shoved it into the hole in his throat.

  “Garumpf,” said Skark, shocked.

  “See if that helps,” I said. “I know you’ve got one song in you.”

  Skark rubbed his stuffed voice box and looked at me.

  “A little better…,” he croaked.

  I held the top of the platform boot open, and reluctantly he lifted his callused foot toward me.

  “You know what?” I said. “Your foot is bugging me out, so I’m going to let you put on your shoe yourself.”

  One after the other, he jammed his feet into his boots and laced them himself. He stood, checking his balance, and put out his hands to me.

  I gave him his guitar.

  “Thank you,” he whispered, barely forcing it out. “I’m glad you came on the bus.”

  “Me too,” I said. “Good luck.”

  With that, Skark smiled at me and walked onstage for the encore. The applause was deafening, and I was pleased that it was partly mine.

  —

  If anyone in the audience had questions about why the Skark who walked onstage for the encore was taller, had slightly different colored hair, and carried himself in an alternate manner than the Skark who had walked off the stage two minutes earlier, they forgot them once the real Skark stepped up to the microphone.