Puckers Up

by Mark Peter Hughes

  But they don’t get a chance.

  Just as my father opens his mouth, just as Mrs. Penn starts to raise an angry finger toward Mr. Decker, Stella holds up her hand to both of them as if to say, I got this.

  For a heartbeat the whole world is frozen in place.

  My dad and Mrs. Penn hesitate. Stella glares at Mr. Decker, who’s surveying this whole scene from across the table. Something about Stella’s manner must be impressive to my dad and Mrs. Penn, though, or maybe it’s just that she startled them, but whatever it is, they both back down, sinking once again into their seats. Everyone’s focused on Stella now. Her jaw is set. There’s a steely look in her eyes and it’s fixed like a death ray on Mr. Decker.

  I hold my breath. I have no idea what’s about to happen.

  Like a statesman, Stella rises from her chair. “Let me make this clear, Earl. Let me outline it so there can be no misunderstanding.” She leans across the table, her palms pressed to the oak. “Nobody owns Lemonade Mouth.”

  “I beg to differ, Stella. A contract is a contract. Unless you guys are okay with fading back into insignificance and obscurity with no hope that anyone else will ever pick you up in the future, your course is already set.”

  Stella looks around at us. It’s then that I have this sudden sick feeling because I realize what’s about to happen, but there’s no other choice. It’s what we must do.

  Stella is the first of us to turn our backs to him. She doesn’t shout or pound the table or anything, she just calmly picks up her empty cup and starts for the door. The rest of us do the same.

  “Uh … where are you guys going?” Mr. Decker sounds different now. Not quite as sure.

  We stop and turn back toward him. “Didn’t somebody once tell us we’re the pilots of our own destiny?” Charlie says. “We’re charting a different course now.”

  I nod. “We’re out of here.”

  “Oh, I get it,” he says, his lips going pale. “So it’s back to changing the world again? ‘Don’t Stop the Revolution’ and all that crap? Well, before you saunter out that door, children, think carefully about what you’re doing. The days when bands could thumb their noses at the system and ignore business realities are long over. Once you leave this office there’s no coming back. You’ll be scratched from the Too Shy to Cry tour. Your new recordings will never see the light of day. You’ll disappear from the magazines, vanish from the spotlight, and no other promoter or record company will touch you. If you walk out on me, then by the end of the summer Lemonade Mouth will already be a fading memory.”

  Stella’s voice is steady, but I think I hear a hint of sadness. “I used to admire you, Earl,” she says. “You’re fired. Goodbye.”

  From their expressions I think even my dad and Mrs. Penn are taken by surprise. We’re not done yet, though—not quite. Before we walk out the door all five of us glance at each other, and then we raise our Mel’s cups, almost as if we planned it. It’s a last revolutionary salute, our one final act of defiance toward the great Earl Decker.

  It doesn’t change anything, but it feels good.

  We hold them high. We raise them up.

  Now, I need to say this: It isn’t like we’re natural-born rebels. We’re not. We haven’t been looking for trouble. Until moments ago we were hoping things could still work out with Decker and Smythe. Now each of us knows all too well that by walking out we’re closing the door not only on Earl Decker, but on our own dreams. It’s not a good feeling, but we can’t change what we believe in and we won’t pretend to. Not for anything.

  I’m sure Mr. Decker is gaping at our backs as we walk through his door and out of his office.

  STELLA

  Gloom Sets In

  Friends and coconspirators, it would be difficult to convey the full depth of disappointment that soon enveloped the hearts of your pink-haired protagonist and her beleaguered band of rock-and-roll outcasts. It wasn’t merely the loss of their once-idolized promoter. One theory holds that people who choose to perform on a stage are really just looking for a way to be loved, and maybe that was a little bit true for Lemonade Mouth. Maybe acceptance was part of what they were looking for. So can you imagine, then, the despair it brought them to hear from one of their former rock-and-roll heroes, a respected music insider, that he would do everything in his power to make sure nobody in the industry would ever want anything to do with them?

  It was no joy-fest. Let me assure you.

  The drive home after that last meeting with Mr. Decker was a miserable experience. Each of us was still shaken by the immensity of what we’d done. There we’d been, in possession of our very own ticket to fame and glory, and what had we done with it? Tossed it out the window. Now we had no choice but to face the dreary reality that our big chance was behind us and would never, ever return. Is it any wonder that we started to second-guess ourselves?

  What had come over us?

  Had we just made the biggest, dumbest mistake of our lives?

  Had we lost our minds?

  But there was no turning back. Without Decker and Smythe behind the scenes pushing the high-level buttons of the big media outlets, our phones soon stopped ringing and our lives plummeted back to their former ordinariness. Within days we felt like zombies, shuffling through our everyday jobs and obligations. I remember stopping by Mo’s store and discovering her hunched in a chair, dismal and alone, staring at a wall. Olivia all but disappeared from view, retreating into her house like a turtle into its shell. Charlie’s reaction was perhaps the most telling. For two days he wouldn’t talk—I mean at all—and when I asked him why, he reached dejectedly into his pocket and pulled out a preprinted card that explained how Buddhist monks often use silence as a way to center the mind in times of turmoil. I knew Charlie had been on his self-imposed mission to find life’s answers or whatever, but—wow.

  This just seemed too sad for words.

  As for me, my situation was no less depressing. At the height of our Decker excitement I’d cut back my hours at my mother’s lab, but now, with no other commitment stopping me, I had no excuse not to return to the old schedule. So once again, bright and early every morning, I found myself stationed at the Reception Desk of Purgatory. I spent a lot of that time with my cheek planted on the desktop.

  “Cheer up, Stella,” my mother said one morning, setting a cinnamon bun in front of my nose. “Better to be an almost-was than a never-could-have-been. At least you have your health.”

  I swiveled a bleary eye toward her. My health? Seriously?

  Yes, I snarfed down the cinnamon bun (why waste it?), but clearing the fog of my despair was going to require a power beyond that of a mere pastry.

  As if matters needed worsening, the Decker and Smythe situation wasn’t the sole dark cloud hovering in my sky. First, with our Earl connection cut, my free tickets to Sista Slash’s Take Charge Festival were gone. I’d also missed my opportunity to buy tickets, because the entire superhyped festival was sold out. In my frustration I resorted to calling in to WRIZ radio contests when they’d given away pairs of tickets, but I’d found no luck there either—the gods of speed-dialing hadn’t smiled on me.

  After all my efforts, it made me want to scream.

  Second (and this, in all honesty, was the bigger drag on my soul), Rajeev’s six-week stay in Rhode Island was nearing its end. The boy who had dropped from the sky to shake up my world and steal my heart would soon have to fly far away to his family’s new home in Lubbock, Texas. The thing was, Rajeev and I had grown incredibly close during his stay. We’d shared secrets that neither of us had ever shared with anyone else. It hurt to even think of being apart. And I knew he felt the same. We had just a few days left, and then what? Sure, we could call and text and video chat, but it wouldn’t be the same as having him here in person.

  Would he and I ever be together again?

  Would life ever be the same after he was gone?

  My mother must have read my thoughts, because before leaving me to head deeper into the l
ab, she gave my shoulder a sympathetic squeeze and said, “Don’t worry, hon. I’m sure he’ll be here any minute.”

  She was right, of course. Whenever I worked at the lab, Rajeev almost always stopped by to hang out with me. It was the one bright spot that made the job tolerable. But today I knew it would be hard to feel cheerful, even for him. When he arrived at my desk a few minutes later he was holding his hand behind his back. His expression was serious.

  “I brought something for you,” he said.

  “You did?” I tried not to sound quite as downhearted as I felt. “What is it?”

  “A surprise. A high-tech mood booster to make up for all you’ve lost.”

  I looked up. All right, I was intrigued.

  At last he set it on the desktop. It was a bobblehead of Elvis. With a gentle flick of Rajeev’s finger the king of rock and roll bounced and nodded at me, a tiny pompadoured stud muffin in a dance frenzy. I looked back at Rajeev. He was waiting for my reaction.

  Despite everything, I smiled.

  What can I say? The boy knew the way to my heart.

  It was Lyle’s idea not to wallow in our misery. “You gotta throw yourselves right back in it,” he urged soon after the Decker debacle. “Let’s finish the old recordings. There isn’t much left, just a few cleanup tracks and maybe some overdubs. But at least it’s something to do instead of sitting around moping.” We agreed, but it was kind of a downer to return to the makeshift studio after working on a big-time project at a real, high-tech operation. Our dreams had been so big, and now we were back to standing around in a sweaty garage?

  It was hard not to feel discouraged.

  But at least there was some good news. Starting the day after our appearance on After Midnight with Chet Anders, our official website (yep, it turned out we had one. Lyle and Naomi had put it up only a day before our careers crashed and burned. How ironic was that?) started receiving appreciative messages from people who’d seen the show.

  Dear Lemonade Mouth,

  As a 45-year-old professor in a lifelong battle with my weight, I want to let you know that I got so emotional during your appearance with Chet that I actually cried. Thank you for making it okay to be me.

  —Marjorie Chi, Mobile, AL

  LEMONADE MOUTH! DUUDES!! A bunch of us from my dorm r making a statue of u guys out of toilet paper rolls & those s2pid magazine ads where everybody looks fake. We’ll send a pic when it’s done! Glad 2 hav somebody on OUR side for a change! U GUYS ROCK!!!!!!

  —Dave McQuilkin, Ida College of Art, Ida, OR

  I read maybe a couple dozen messages like that, most from ordinary people who’d struggled for one reason or another to accept themselves and wanted to let us know they liked our music and appreciated what we’d said. Which was nice to hear.

  If that was the only good thing that came out of what happened, at least it was something we could be proud of.

  The other positive news was that Lyle turned out to be right—going back to our old recordings was a welcome distraction. The Decker incident had left a certain amount of unspoken tension among us, but now that we were back in Lyle’s garage and making our own musical production decisions, we started remembering how we used to feel when we were making music just for ourselves. The garage setting was far more casual than that stuffy studio with Mr. Decker’s stressed-out producer. Here we felt like we were just hanging with friends and having fun, which of course was exactly what we were doing.

  This arrangement was a lot more comfortable. It felt right.

  Maybe it was having Lyle and Naomi helping us again, or maybe it was just where we happened to be emotionally and artistically, I don’t know, but somehow being more relaxed made the whole process not only easier, but faster too. It was as if our version of the music had been bottled up inside us, waiting to get out. Without really thinking about it, we completed all the remaining overdubs from the earlier songs in just two intense afternoon sessions. Then, in a third session, we added two additional new songs—“Ninja Earthquake” and “Bounce in All Directions,” both recorded in single takes, with all of us playing our instruments together, like in a live show.

  For us, those few afternoons in Lyle’s messy garage were like an oasis in the desert. They helped us forget, at least for a while, all the bad stuff that had happened, and they gave us something to look forward to. I think we were all relieved just to be having fun again, and I think that energy came through in the music we made. In my humble opinion, the results were better than any of Decker’s studio recordings.

  The big difference, of course, was that the Decker recordings would have gotten exposure to millions while these tracks, proud as we were of them, had little hope of being heard by anyone beyond a small number of local fans.

  A few days later, I arranged for the five of us to meet at Bruno’s so we could figure things out. You know, the future of the band and how we were going to move forward, stuff like that. I was trying to stay positive. It was clear on everybody’s faces, though, that the flash of joy that had briefly returned to us in Lyle’s garage had been beaten down again as the hopeless reality of our situation set in.

  So much for moving forward.

  Everyone arrived at Bruno’s looking as enthusiastic as cold, wet blankets. And there seemed to be something uncool brewing between Olivia and Wen. First of all, Olivia showed up almost an hour late. A day earlier we’d texted her about meeting, but none of us had seen her since. Then, when we asked Wen if he knew where she was and where she’d gone (we figured he was the most likely of us to know, right?), he said he had no idea and his face practically morphed into a tomato.

  Perfect, I thought. Relationship troubles. That’s all we needed.

  How many zillions of bands have imploded over the years because of some stupid love spat?

  At last Olivia turned up, and she looked exhausted. She was apologetic but vague about what had happened, saying only that she’d been away, and nobody pushed her to say more because it was obvious she didn’t want to. No surprise there. This was Olivia, after all; mystery seemed to follow the girl around like a shadow. We all knew that if there was something important she wanted to tell us, she’d get to it when she was ready.

  But I could see there was something still going on with Wen. The whole time we were there, he hardly even looked at her.

  CHARLIE

  The Fickle Hand of Fate

  EXTERIOR. ROOF OF CHARLIE’S HOUSE—EARLY MORNING

  Charlie is seated in the lotus position on the near-flat roof of his house. His eyes are closed. Wind ruffles his hair. He holds his hands out with palms upward, ready to receive the elusive wisdom of the Universe.

  CHARLIE (V.O.)

  It was a time of intense spiritual upheaval. It felt like things were coming to an end, and music, which had always been the central calming force in my life, had now become a source of turmoil and sadness. And under it all, that vague imbalance that’d been simmering in me, that feeling that there was something important I was missing and needed to find, wasn’t going away. Which was why I’d been stepping up my search a notch or two. I tried everything I could think of that might help me uncover the answers I was looking for.

  INTERIOR. HINDU TEMPLE—MORNING

  Charlie kneels alongside Mo and her family as a skinny old man in white chants in Sanskrit. A service is under way, and the place is decorated with fruits and flowers. As other worshipers chant responses, Charlie does his best to follow along.

  CHARLIE (V.O.)

  I went with Mo and her family to their temple. It was very cool, with lots of statues and burning incense and altars to different Hindu gods. I didn’t understand most of what was going on, but everybody made me feel welcome. Mo’s dad, especially, seemed happy that I wanted to come. It was an amazing experience but, sad to say, whatever I was searching for, I didn’t find it there.

  Dissolve to …

  INTERIOR. STELLA’S BASEMENT—EVENING

  Charlie is seated in the middle of a crowded sof
a with Stella, Rajeev and Stella’s older sister, Clea. Stella and Rajeev are sharing popcorn, while Clea is painting her nails. They’re all watching television together. There’s thunder and eerie music as the light flickers across their faces. Charlie stares at the screen, a look of terror in his eyes.

  CHARLIE (V.O.)

  Stella tried to help me. She knew I liked watching TV and she said that sometimes when she feels like her life is on shaky ground, it helps her to stay at home and watch vampire movies all day. So that’s what we did. I think I saw more fangs that afternoon than a dentist sees teeth in a whole week. Some of the movies were okay, but I wouldn’t say any of them actually helped me much.

  Dissolve to …

  EXTERIOR. CHARLIE’S FRONT PORCH—AFTERNOON

  Charlie is on his front steps reading an old, ragged book.

  CHARLIE (V.O.)

  Olivia called what I was going through an “existential crisis,” and she loaned me this book called New Perspectives: A History of People and Ideas That Changed the World. She said it might give me new ideas for my search.

  REVERSE ON: A page of the book. Lots of words and a black-and-white image of an olden-days dude with an enormous bushy mustache.

  CHARLIE (V.O.)

  I read about this one philosopher guy in the eighteen hundreds named Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche had this idea that there’s a big difference between how people want the world to work, like being fair and stuff, and how it really works, and he figured that because of this difference, human existence must be meaningless. It was kind of a downer idea. I spent a long time trying to wrap my head around it.

  REVERSE ON: Charlie. He lowers the book from his face, sets it on his lap, and gazes thoughtfully across the street. Little kids are playing with a dog. There’s pop music coming from somewhere in the distance. A car drives past.