Gone Bad

by Lesley Choyce

  “Giles, it was a mistake,” Alex said. “Nothing more.”

  “Well, I can’t afford those kind of mistakes. You know, I’m really disappointed you guys didn’t consult with me first on this one. There I was up in T.O. making the pitch for Scream Static to open for a couple of big acts. I played those new tracks you did. You guys started out rough but were moving in the right direction. But now this.”

  Giles held his sunglasses in his hand and looked out the driveway. There were some kids cruising by on skateboards — little punk kids like I used to beat on. When they saw us set up in the garage, one kid in a loud yellow shirt yelled out, “‘Back Off, Bashers!’ — good tune. Way to go, dudes.” His buddies howled in a kind of hound-dog sound that meant they liked the song as well.

  I smiled, but Giles didn’t see the point. He picked up a rock and chucked it in their direction. It skidded down the driveway and caught the wheels of one of the skateboards, then bounced into the side of his own car parked at the curb. I nearly broke out laughing.

  Giles tried to get control of himself. He rubbed his forehead and said, “I’m thinking of cutting my losses and running.”

  “You can’t do that,” said Alex. “We made one little mistake.”

  “One big mistake,” Giles corrected. “I don’t want this kind of badass publicity. Especially not from a green band — one that doesn’t even have a contract.”

  Screw the contract, I was ready to say. I didn’t know if I could put up with any more of this creep’s lecture. Fame, fortune, and wrecking hotel rooms suddenly seemed like a fading dream.

  “But I’ve already invested a lot of time in you guys. You know what my time is worth on an hourly basis?”

  No one ventured at a figure. My guess was that his time was worth squat, but he obviously thought he was one hot music promoter.

  “Maybe we can do damage control again,” he continued, pacing about the garage. “I can donate some money to that campus radio station and request they pull the tune. If we can nip this thing right here in Halifax, it won’t go any further. No more airplay and maybe we can calm down the morality people. And I know you already put some of this stuff on the Internet, so you’re gonna have to get it off there as well.”

  “So it’s back to censorship,” Kelsey said, her arms crossed in front of her.

  Giles pointed a finger at her now. “Look, do you want to throw it all away? You want to stay a garage band forever? How much money are you making now? How many gigs have you lined up? You think Barry is going to do you guys any good?” Giles was all revved up now. “Barry doesn’t know anything about the music business. I do. I know how things work. I know two things: I know what it takes to make it in this business and I know you guys have what it takes. But I’m going to need you to commit yourself to my game plan, go along with my decisions.”

  He put his shades back on. That was good because it looked as if his eyeballs were about to pop out of his skull like a cartoon character’s.

  “Giles is right,” Alex said. “Look, he’s giving us another shot. Let’s take it.”

  “Censorship and all?” Kelsey asked Alex, but she was staring at Giles.

  “It’s compromise, that’s all,” Alex said. “It’s business.”

  I was thinking, Oh no. Here we go again. Democracy in action. Man, my head was messed up. I was still thinking about the poor guy who got beat up. I was thinking about me getting involved. I had already taken a stand for something. What, I don’t know. But now there was this other stuff. If I said the wrong thing here, I was maybe going to lose the music, lose another band and my only shot at making it big.

  Kelsey was looking at me and she looked uncertain, worried. “I don’t know if I can do it,” she said.

  What did she want out of me? Why was she looking at me? “Sure,” I said, trying to reassure her. “You can do it. We all can.”

  That was the way it was. She wanted me to say it was okay to go along with Giles. I mean, the guy was really putting the screws to us. If he walked now, then, like he said, it would be a big waste. No more chance at the big time.

  “I’ve gotta have an answer. I’ve gotta hear it from all of you. I need a hundred percent or I’m out of here. No more games.”

  Games. The word stuck in my head. That’s what my life had been up to now. Games. Always games. Bullying people, beating up on them. Hanging out with Jordan and the boys. Was it time to get serious? Time to grow up? Or was it one more stupid game?

  I looked at Giles. He was staring at me from behind his hundred-dollar sunglasses. The lyrics to Kelsey’s song went through my head and seeing my image in the mirrors of Giles shades — what I saw at first was me sitting at my drums.

  Then I saw me crouching over the beat-up slob in the cemetery.

  I was supposed to say something now, supposed to say I was in, that I was serious, willing to go along for the ride.

  Instead I said, “I can’t do it, Giles. And neither can Kelsey.”

  Kelsey looked stunned. “What are you doing? You can’t answer for me.”

  “Sorry, babe.”

  But Kelsey didn’t have to say anything more.

  “I don’t freaking believe this!” Giles screamed.

  “Believe it,” I said.

  “Cody, you’re out of your mind!” Alex shouted at me.

  “I’m sorry, Giles. I really am. But I’ve never been very good at going along with the crowd. Besides, I’m too lazy to make a career out of anything. I just like to play drums, man. I didn’t want to get serious. I didn’t know about all this business bullshit.”

  Alex looked like he was having a hard time breathing. I knew what it was all about, but I didn’t have to come out and say it. I knew where Kelsey had been coming from all along. And now I wasn’t about to let her back down. What I was really saying didn’t have to be said.

  “Cody is right,” Kelsey said now, smiling at me — for the first time looking like she really had a thing for me. “I think I’m lazy too. Career sounds too much like work. I think we’ll just keep doing what we’re doing.”

  That was the end for Giles. That was the end for Alex too. With them went our shot at a million dollars and a chance to trash hotel rooms across North America.

  I can’t say I blame Alex. He knew what he wanted and he didn’t give up. Within a week he got together with a couple of older guys from a band called Prime Target that had just broken up. They redid those two commercial tunes Alex and Kelsey had worked on. Giles got interested, trying to pick up some of the time he had “invested” in Scream Static. Maybe Alex would still get what he wanted.

  That left Kelsey and me. Since my little speech, we had become good “friends.” I wanted more than that. She knew it. All she could say was, “Cody, I didn’t think I’d ever hear myself say it, but I respect you now.”

  Respect was not what I was interested in.

  We spent a lot of time together. Still doing music, still practising. In the mind of our faithful local audience, Scream Static still existed. Our songs were still getting airplay on the university stations. And we were getting tons of hits on MySpace. But a band without a guitar is like a horse without legs. Very lame.

  Kelsey and I worked up a tune called “Sell-Out,” about Giles and D and D and how we saw the commercial music industry. Boy, we were good at alienating people. We figured that if we had already cut some ice by being a controversial band then we needed to keep up our image.

  Barry lined up a buddy of his, Warren, to sit in on guitar and work on the tune. I could tell from what I heard, sitting in the bathroom with my drums, that it was pretty weak. The lyrics were good, the song was decent, and Barry thought the tracks were slick. But it was too tame. Without Alex’s wild, wailing guitar leads, we just weren’t a band. Warren was used to playing jazz, not real music, so I didn’t hold it against him.

  The new tune
also snagged some CKDU airplay. Those guys still thought we were hot, even though we weren’t.

  About this time, everything began to fade. People were starting to lose interest in the street violence problem. I think all the hoods in the city were keeping cool for a while with all the legal eyes out to nail them.

  We tried a few guitar players but they weren’t what we needed. Our old rep attracted some guys with no talent and large egos and we always said thanks but no thanks. Despite the fact that our music was still out there, the band had ceased to exist. As our music faded, so did my so-called relationship with Kelsey. I took her out to the movies once but she wouldn’t let me do anything more than put my arm around her.

  “Cody, I still think we’re just too far apart in our thinking.”

  “How can you say that, babe?” I asked her outside the theatre beneath the glow of a solitary street light.

  “Takes a long time to change an attitude.”

  Things went a little arctic after that. I walked her home, she pecked me on the cheek with a kiss that said zero, and then I went walking again.

  I felt hurt, what can I say?

  No babe, no band, no boys. I was alone and it felt rotten. I was nobody — an empty, unhappy guy walking around the city at night. I panhandled to get enough to buy a small bottle of vodka and that went down pretty smooth, but all too soon it was gone.

  Jordan, Eric, and Logan were nowhere to be found. I tried the library. I tried the cemetery. I tried some other hangouts. The boys must have been lying low. Maybe I was ready to beg forgiveness and hope they’d ask me back in the family. Maybe I was tired of being off the street and I missed the action. If Jordan wanted to try and smash my face, just let him. It’d been a while but I was ready for a fight. In fact, I think I needed one just to clear my head.

  I sat down and nursed a coffee and a double glazed at Tim Horton’s. A couple of punks recognized me as the drummer from SS and said something about how sick our music sounded.

  I told them to leave me alone or else I’d waste them. And that was the end of that.

  Chapter 16

  I knew that the whole music thing was down the tubes. Scream Static was dead.

  I was back to bashing a snare drum in my bedroom or sitting around with my headphones or just stewing over what might have been. I tried phoning Kelsey plenty of times but she wasn’t there and either her mother wasn’t in the mood to take a message or her father just told me I shouldn’t phone so much because he was waiting for some business calls.

  I felt really out of it at school so I cut a couple of days. The first day I walked around Halifax but the place didn’t feel like home anymore. I had an attitude and I was looking for trouble. When I passed the convenience store owned by the Lebanese family, I thought again about busting in the window or doing something serious. I thought it might cure me, but then I figured, what’s the point? Why waste the energy? I just kept on walking.

  The second day, I just stayed home and holed up in my room, watching music videos on the Internet. I was beginning to wish I’d never joined up with Kelsey and Alex. It was their fault I felt like this. They had let me down. Even Kelsey — the one person in the world I really cared about, the only girl who ever really got through to me.

  Late that afternoon the doorbell rang. My mom was out shopping. I went downstairs figuring that whoever it was, I’d give him a hard time. Paper boy, maybe, or a salesman. I’d make him wish he hadn’t picked my house.

  It was Kelsey.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Wassup?”

  “Thought we should talk.”

  “Right.”

  She shrugged. “Well, it’s more than that. Thought we should go somewhere together.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to show you something.”

  “Like?”

  “Like you have to come with me. You’ll see.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I want you to meet some people.”

  “Like a party?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Exactly what, then?”

  She didn’t answer. So I gave up. We were starting to sound like those contestants on the stupid game shows.

  We walked. She led — I followed — all the way to Argyle Street. We came to a crowd of kids hanging out in front of the drugstore.

  “Guys, this is Cody,” she said introducing me to a pretty low-life looking bunch of kids. I didn’t know their names but I’d seen them around. They lived on and off the street, but mostly on. This was a mixed crowd — every colour, every persuasion. It made me feel kind of itchy to get out of there.

  Then I saw the guy I least wanted to see.

  “I think you know Jeffrey,” Kelsey said.

  “Yo,” I said.

  “How ya doing, Cody?”

  The guy reached out to shake my hand. No way. I pulled my hand back. I grabbed onto my wrist. The damn watch. I was still wearing Jeffrey’s watch. I pulled my sleeve down over it. What was this supposed to be, some kind of guilt trip?

  I felt the walls go up. I didn’t want to deal with these people. What was Kelsey trying to prove? “What are we doing here?” I demanded. “You don’t want to hang out with these losers.”

  The other kids were staring at me now. And I was glaring back at them. Yeah, they knew who I was and who I hung out with. I wasn’t sure, but maybe I’d trashed more than just Jeffrey in the past. I never thought much of the street kids. Jordan and me had our fun jerking them around on occasion.

  Kelsey didn’t answer. Instead, one of her girlfriends did — some girl with heavy black eye makeup and droopy hair. She obviously thought she’d be tough, be cool, by giving me a hard time. “Yeah, Kelsey, why did you bring him down here?”

  The other kids laughed. Man, I hate being laughed at. If these guys weren’t careful, I was going to smash some faces.

  Jeffrey saw me clenching my fists. He knew what I was all about. He’d had the unfortunate luck to catch me at a bad moment before. “It’s okay, Cody,” he said. “You don’t need to be afraid of us.”

  That just about did it. The volcano was ready to cut loose. He was trying to prove he wasn’t afraid of me. I was thinking I’d correct that notion.

  Kelsey was tugging me away, though. “Relax, Cody. I just wanted you to meet some of my friends. I didn’t say they were going to move in with you.”

  When we were away from there, I wanted an explanation. “Why would you want to hang out with a bunch of losers like that? Those people are worthless. They’ve got nothing. They’re worth nothing. They’re not like us.”

  Kelsey stopped dead in her tracks and grabbed onto my arm. “That was your last chance, Cody. I was really hoping you’d changed. Just a little. I thought there was hope. I really wanted to believe you were human underneath all that tough-guy stuff. But I was wrong. You’re still stubborn and pigheaded. Even the music didn’t teach you anything. Goodbye.”

  Maybe I should have just let her walk. It was hard to believe I let her push me that far and not react. Then, as I watched her walk away, I started thinking that she had been the only really good thing in my life. She had led me to something in music that I had never had before. I had this feeling that if she walked, everything walked. For good.

  “Wait.” I ran after her. “What is it you want out of me, anyway?” I pleaded.

  There was a moment of uncomfortable silence while she stared right at me. Then she opened up. I listened while she told me all the things about myself that had been turning over in my brain for the past weeks — ever since the cemetery, ever since the gig, maybe ever since the night we beat up Jeffrey. It was like she could read me — my past, my present, who knows, maybe my future.

  I would have done anything for Kelsey at that moment. And I did. I went back and apologized to all of those kids on Argyle Street. �
�Sorry,” I said to Jeffrey and the others who were still standing there. “Real sorry.” But I didn’t look straight at anyone.

  “Now that you’ve left such a good impression on them, I think we can go,” Kelsey said. “We’ve got another stop.”

  She was holding my hand now and leading me down the block. I turned around to see if the others were watching. They were. They were all just standing there. All except for Jeffrey. He was starting to follow us. The guy didn’t seem to know when to give it up.

  Kelsey led me to a pawnshop called Honest John’s. Inside, the place was crammed with all kinds of music gear. Gretsch and Fender guitars were hanging from the walls. Amps were stacked up on the floor and a couple of dismantled drum sets were scattered around. Behind the glass counter was a bald guy with a hearing aid.

  “John, this is my friend, Cody.”

  John looked up and smiled. “It’s good to see you, Kelsey. How are things at home?”

  “They’ve been worse,” she answered. “What about you? How’s business?”

  “Always the same,” John answered, putting a finger to his ear to adjust the volume on his hearing aid.

  The little bell rang as the door opened again. I turned around to discover Jeffrey had followed us here. I shook my head in disbelief.

  John smiled at Jeffrey. He swept his hand around the roomful of musical chaos. “Look around, kids,” he said. “It’s all for sale. Try out anything that looks interesting.” Then he turned away and fiddled with a pile of cameras on the counter.

  That’s when I began to realize I’d been tricked. Jeffrey had picked up a Fender Stratocaster and plugged it into an amp. He hit a couple of chords, tuned a string, and then cranked up the overdrive on the amp. I walked away towards the back of the store, pretending I wasn’t interested. I didn’t realize anyone into rap could play a musical instrument. Especially not Jeffrey.

  I tried to ignore him. I tried to ignore both of them. But Kelsey had plugged an old Yamaha keyboard into another amp and was hitting some chords.