Gone Bad

by Lesley Choyce

  I tucked my sticks in my armpits and sat back. I listened.

  It was tight but bland. I tried to focus on the words. Stupid stuff. Who cares if you don’t fit in?

  “Way too mechanical,” I said when they were finished. I was staring at Alex and his drum machine.

  “‘Controlled’ is the word,” Alex tried to correct me. “We had control of the song. That’s what you need in a tune if you want to make it commercial. It wasn’t just noise.”

  Yeah right, Alex. The guy was such an idiot. I picked up my sticks and hammered the floor tom just to drown him out.

  When I finished, Alex turned to Kelsey. “I can’t play with somebody this uncivilized.”

  I smashed one of my sticks down on the snare and let it go flying into the air. “You don’t know anything about music,” I told him.

  Alex was putting his guitar down. “This is absurd.”

  Kelsey was angry at both of us now. “Would you two stop acting like babies? What’s wrong with you?”

  “I can’t get into this,” Alex said. “We need a drummer, yeah. But not a Neanderthal.”

  That was it. I was out from behind my drums and ready to jam my other drumstick down Alex’s throat and use it to tear out his windpipe. Who did he think he was?

  Suddenly Kelsey was right in front of me. That cold, steely blue look in her eyes made me stop in my tracks. She walked me back to my seat and picked up the missing drumstick. Then she went over to Alex. He was packing up his guitar. She picked it up and put it back in his hands.

  “We’re going to try this again. I want you both to bend a little. Compromise.”

  The word wasn’t in my vocabulary.

  “It’s pointless,” Alex said. But he was already hitting the first chord.

  Kelsey was staring past me. What else could I do? I gave her a beat. I found a pace that fit to what Alex was playing. A little too slow, maybe. A little too controlled. It made me feel like I was playing underwater. But I played. Amazingly, we stayed together through the whole thing.

  “Not bad,” Kelsey said afterwards.

  “I didn’t know a guy like that could actually play real music,” Alex said.

  “A guy like what?” Kelsey snapped back.

  Alex went mute.

  “I like the words a lot,” I said. I hadn’t been listening to them, but I knew Kelsey would like to hear me say it.

  “Thank you. Let’s try it again.”

  We did it again and again until it was, well . . . tight. Musical. Together. I tried a couple of little fancy things and they worked. It suddenly felt good to be playing real music with real musicians again.

  Kelsey was like a drill sergeant. After we played just the one song over and over, we jammed for a bit. Alex tried to impress me with some hot licks. I wouldn’t admit it but he was pretty good. I tried to give him the beat to something much heavier, the sort of dark hardcore stuff that I liked. He gave his axe a little overdrive. It was weak by my standards but it was a start.

  “I don’t care what kind of music we play,” Kelsey said, “as long as the song has real content . . . not just empty words.”

  Content? Who cares? Nobody listens to lyrics. Everyone knows that. But I wasn’t stupid enough to say that out loud to Kelsey. I think all six of my brain cells were functioning just then.

  By the time Alex’s mom came back with the Audi, he and I had come to a kind of mutual standoff. We had learned to put up with each other for two hours.

  “I think I can talk Alex into you joining us,” Kelsey said to me after he was gone.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re desperate for a drummer and he knows it. I think you might work out.”

  Now I felt like I had been manipulated. “What was this? An audition?”

  “No. Remember, you invited yourself here.”

  “Yeah, I guess I did. So now you want me to play this civilized stuff with you two?” I was already shaking my head.

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh.” Oh boy, was she ever persuasive. “But it’s not like what I’m used to. Too tame.”

  “I’ll write some new tunes. I’ll let you have some input.”

  “So sometimes I’ll be able to bash . . . the way I want to?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Cool.”

  Chapter 4

  I guess I didn’t quite take the hint that it was time to leave. I was in no hurry to get anywhere. I had no car (no driver’s licence, for that matter) to haul away my drums. I had no real interest in going home. So I was just there, you know. And there was a good place to be because Kelsey was seeming more friendly. I guess she was beginning to appreciate my finer qualities. It would have been great to have a little something to drink or a bit of weed but I knew that wasn’t going to happen around there.

  Her mother stuck her head out the back door. “Kelsey, dinnertime. Your father doesn’t look like he’s going to show up. Let’s eat.”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  There was a second or two of awkward silence. The thought of food was like a light bulb inside my brain. “What’s for dinner?” I asked.

  “You wanna stay?”

  It was a half-hearted invite but that was good enough for me. I nodded. We went in the house where I got a pretty icy welcome from Kelsey’s mom.

  “This is Cody,” Kelsey said against some pretty stiff competition from the TV. It was like a soap opera wasteland in there. Food was steaming up on the table but Mom’s eyes were glued to the pregnant woman who was crying on the tube. Mrs. Dubinski didn’t even look up to acknowledge my presence.

  Kelsey grabbed an extra plate and put it on the table.

  “Food looks good,” I announced, trying to turn on the charm and sweeten her mom up a bit.

  “Cody doesn’t speak in complete sentences, Mom,” Kelsey said. I think she was trying to be funny. I laughed at the joke. I’ve got this really well-practised kind of laugh where I snort in the back of my throat. Eric calls it a killer laugh. Kelsey’s mom just looked at me like I was mental.

  I couldn’t tell you what we ate. Something with rice, I think. I hate rice paddy chow — but I tried to put on a good face.

  “Good grub,” I said, but Mom was about to burst into tears just as some greaseball guy on TV came in through the door where the pregnant woman was looking at her stomach. A real groaner. The commercials came on and Mom took a bite. I like commercials. They are the only things really worth watching on TV.

  “That’s my favourite,” I said to Kelsey, pointing to the screen where they were advertising some new movie where this robot was shooting up people with a machine gun, chopping them right in half.

  “Significant content,” was all Kelsey had to say. Man, conversation was tough around this place.

  “Your father couldn’t afford the time to eat with his family,” Mrs. Dubinski announced. You could tell there were really bad vibes towards Kelsey’s old man.

  “He’s probably pretty busy,” Kelsey said.

  “Not likely,” her Mom shot back.

  Time for me to stay out of the conversation. I shovelled rice paddy chow and tried to pretend it was good. The soaps were over and so were the commercials. Nothing on but news. Mom tried to turn it off but Kelsey caught her hand. “Leave it. I’d like to watch.”

  My plate was empty and I was looking around for whatever, hoping maybe for dessert or something with a little grease in it, when I see this reporter on TV. She’s standing in front of the steps of the library right by the statue that we spit at all the time. There was garbage all over the place and it clicked: that was the junk I dumped out of the can so I could bang my sticks. I started to say something so Kelsey would make the connection, but she put her hand over my mouth.

  “This was the scene late last night where a young man was beaten and kicked by a group of t
eens. It’s just one of a number of recent assaults that have taken place in downtown Halifax.”

  The camera jumped to a shot of a guy in a hospital bed. He had a couple bruises and cuts on his face. I recognized him — he was the one we thrashed last night. I was thinking, Whoa, this is cool. We made the news.

  “Why do you think you were targeted for this attack?” the reporter asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t do anything to deserve this.”

  I was thinking, Stupid jerk. We picked on you because you are a public annoyance and deserved to get straightened out a bit. What’s there to figure?

  “I know him,” Kelsey was saying, staring intently at the guy on the screen.

  “What?” Mrs. Dubinski asked with a mouthful of food. She hadn’t been paying attention.

  “I know him. It’s Jeffrey. He was a friend of mine when I was on the street.”

  “Kelsey, I don’t want you talking about that in front of your friend.”

  The interview was ending. Jeffrey was describing how we tried to teach him a lesson. Only he didn’t put it that way. Then he held up his wrist. It too was all bruised. The hand had been scraped up pretty bad. “Some guy did that to steal my watch. He yanked it right off my wrist.”

  I was looking at the screen and gave a thumbs-up in the air. This felt like a big moment for me. Nothing I’d ever taken part in had made it on the news before.

  Mrs. Dubinski wasn’t watching me. “That’s disgusting,” she said to the TV. “What’s this city coming to?”

  But Kelsey was looking at me now. She looked shocked that I was smiling. I guess I should have explained to her that the guy had it coming. How was I to know she and this guy had chummed around? Then she was staring at my wrist. I was wearing the watch.

  “I don’t believe this,” Kelsey said, shaking her head over her plate.

  “And this is an artist’s rendition of what one of the attackers looked like,” the reporter said. “If you know his whereabouts, you should inform Halifax City Police.”

  It was a pretty bad sketch that made me look a little too fat and a little too old. Nobody would recognize me from that. I was safe. What was everybody getting so upset about, anyway? Couldn’t they see we were just doing a public service?

  Kelsey was freaking now but she couldn’t quite bring herself to say anything with her mom in the room.

  “If they find the guy, they should just cut him up into little pieces and flush him down the toilet,” Mrs. Dubinski said.

  “I think I’ll be going now,” I announced. “Thanks for the chow.”

  I was up and moving out of there. Kelsey’s mom was still rattling on about what the world was coming to and who should get what kind of cutting up. Kelsey followed me out the door and closed it behind her. Suddenly she was like a volcano.

  “Get out of here, Cody!”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Just get out!”

  Now I was mad. Here she invited me in for dinner like we were pretty tight and now suddenly she was screaming at me in her front yard. “What did I do wrong? I didn’t do anything to you.”

  “Man, you are really dumb. You just don’t get it, do you?”

  “That guy deserved what he got,” I suddenly snapped. I didn’t like anyone trying to lecture me. “If you knew him you must have known he was a parasite.”

  “So you beat on him just because you didn’t like him?”

  “Look, you know that whole white rap thing is so fake and so lame. Sometimes you have to let those guys know what the bottom line is.”

  “I don’t believe you. Tell me, just what is the bottom line?”

  I mean she was pushing me, pushing me too hard. I didn’t need a lecture from some girl. Who was she to tell me my way of thinking was wrong? She’d never understand. Man, I felt so pissed off that I wanted to bust somebody right then and there. I took off out of there before I went out of control.

  I couldn’t believe I let a girl make me feel so mad. I had to do something, right? Then I saw this car parked behind the store; it was all silver, a nice set of wheels, a BMW yet. So I made my statement. I picked up a good jagged rock and walked back up the alley. Then I scraped the rock across the hood, leaving a long scar in the paint. For good luck, I took it and pounded once, hard on the metal until it made a little crater and the car alarm went off.

  The back door of a store opened and the guy saw me. He started yelling in some foreign language. I thought maybe he’d come after me. That would have been sweet. But he didn’t. He went back in to call the cops, I guess, and I just walked away as cool as could be.

  After the news, I felt like I should return to the scene of the crime, as they say, and see if anyone would recognize me from the artist’s sketch the cops did. Fat chance of that, really, so I was hoping to maybe just relive a few of those fond memories of last night.

  Eric was there hassling a couple of winos. I watched him from a distance before I went over to see what was up. When I saw he was joking around with the winos like they were all old friends, I didn’t like it. After all, winos were just low-life scum. Better they should all be out of the way somewhere so we didn’t have to look at them. I told Eric so.

  “Relax, Cody,” he said.

  But I wasn’t relaxed. Ever since Kelsey told me off, I felt like crud. Jordan and Logan showed up just about then.

  “We were on the news, dudes,” Logan announced.

  “I was on the news,” I corrected him. “It was a drawing of me they showed.”

  “We were all in on it,” Jordan told me. “Don’t try to hog the glory, Cody.”

  When you feel the way I was feeling then — pissed off, confused, angry — you’re gonna lose your cool on someone. I guess Jordan just happened to be the one in the way. “Jordan, you’re a complete and total idiot.”

  The two winos were looking at me now out of their bleary-eyed haze. Eric and Logan were intent on watching how Jordan was going to take it. Big, snarly Jordan was always too gross and too ugly for his own good.

  “Screw you,” Jordan said.

  “It’s just like you to try and take the credit when I’m the one who gets involved in the serious action.”

  “What do you want? You want this?” Jordan showed me his fist. I stared at the bony white knuckles, at the scars and the three shiny rings.

  I didn’t know what I wanted. I hated the way I felt just then. I had a flash of that guy in the hospital bed. I saw Kelsey’s face swim up into my head. They had made me feel this way. It wasn’t fair.

  Jordan was breathing hard, like a fat slobbering pig. For that alone, I wanted to bust him. It would have felt good.

  “I take it back,” I said, not meaning a word of it. “I don’t know what got into me.” That part was true.

  Jordan was still huffing as I walked away. “Apologize!” he demanded.

  “Sorry,” I said cynically, still not turning back to look at them. I threw my hands in the air. I didn’t care if I ever saw those bastards again.

  Chapter 5

  That next day at school, I felt like Jordan and Logan were watching every move I made, everywhere I went. They had their eyes on me when Alex approached me in the cafeteria. He had on a My Chemical Romance t-shirt.

  “I’ve decided I want you in the band,” he said. It came as a real shock. “I think you add an interesting touch. I was watching some videos last night and I get it now. It looks good to have a drummer who plays it like a heavy, some guy who looks like an animal. It’s an interesting image. But it will only work if you adjust to what Kelsey and I are doing.”

  “How do I have to adjust?”

  “We’ve got a goal here, you know. We want to make it. We want to produce something that is commercially viable.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Not bullshit. We can do it. Kelsey
is a dynamite songwriter. She can do anything. All three of us can create the right chemistry.”

  “Have you talked to her about me? Are you sure she wants me in the band?”

  “She said so yesterday. She was trying to convince me to accept you.”

  “Ask her today.”

  “Well, I did,” Alex admitted. “I don’t know. She was just kind of moody. Maybe it’s her old man or something. Don’t take it personally.”

  “How come you’re on my side?”

  “I like you, man,” Alex said. The words were less than sincere.

  “Bullshit number two.”

  “I’m serious. We’re different but that’s what’ll make us unique. It’s the chemistry. That’s what will make us good.”

  “You’re desperate for a drummer,” I translated. “And you know I’m good.”

  “Okay. Have it your way. We’re desperate for a drummer and it’s our time to move. We’ve been treading water for too long, Kelsey and I.”

  “What about the good part.”

  “Okay. You’re good, Cody. Whaddaya say?”

  I could tell Alex would be a really good salesman some day. Or maybe something worse — a lawyer or a politician. Mostly I wanted to get something going with Kelsey. I wanted her to understand me. And I wanted to play music again. Even if it wasn’t totally hardcore. Maybe I’d be able to shift some of their emo tunes in the right direction. So why not?

  “I’m in,” I said.

  “I’ll see what I can do to put Kelsey in a better mood.”

  Jordan and Logan couldn’t understand why I was talking with Alex. Who could figure it? As I walked past them I thought I’d give them something to chew on. “He just wanted to consult me on a worry he had over school spirit. I told him we could boost morale if they served beer instead of milk.”

  Nobody laughed. Jordan eyed me with suspicion. Logan cracked that evil crooked smile — his trademark. I had them confused and that felt good. I also knew I had stepped one foot over the line just by talking to Alex. I was in no man’s land and wondered if I could ever go back.