Boy Shopping

by Nia Stephens

  “Talked to Mark—” Sasha began before Mr. Hooper shushed them. Kiki shook her head and started riffling through her bag for a pen. Passing notes with Sasha was her daily activity during morning announcements. But after the first bell, they didn’t hear Dr. Eckhart say, “Good morning, Lions. This is Monday, October 12th, and these are your morning announcements” as they all expected. Instead, a very familiar drum solo tore out of the PA system at high volume, followed by Franklin’s voice howling, “Monday morning’s for the weak/Bankers, teachers, other freaks/I’m gonna sleep until Friday/ When the bad kids come out to play.”

  Kiki froze in shock as every face in the room turned to her. “Friday Night Special” was followed by screams from a crowd. That didn’t surprise Kiki—they had just debuted “Friday Night Special” at the Exit/In that Saturday. When the recorded cheers died down, “Mr. Sprinkles” blared, then clips of “Glit-terbug,” “Sky High,” and Temporary Insanity’s version of the jazz standard “How High the Moon.” Kiki sang Ella Fitzgerald’s part on that one, with Franklin doing a very odd interpretation of Charlie Parker.

  She expected “Demonique” to come up next—it came after “Sky High” on their newest set list—but instead there was silence. Before Sasha had time to ask Kiki what they were doing on the announcements, Dr. Eckhart was on the PA.

  “Franklin Pierce, Mark Slaughter, and Katrina Kelvin, please come to the office immediately. Everyone else, please proceed to first period. Homeroom is dismissed.”

  “I suppose you have some sort of explanation,” Dr. Eckhart said once Temporary Insanity had gathered in her office, lined up in three hard-backed, wooden chairs. Dr. Eckhart was one of the first women to graduate from Wentworth, and Kiki sometimes wondered if the woman’s blood had turned Wentworth blue. She was a little too obsessed with school traditions and order and whether there were bumper stickers on the lockers, and her punishments were sometimes frighteningly creative. For her third dress code violation, Kiki had had to wear the Wentworth uniform from 1952 for a month—and Wentworth was not coed in 1952.

  But Dr. Eckhart was also fair. She always gave you a chance to defend yourself before deciding on your punishment. Unfortunately, Kiki had no idea who had hijacked the PA system, and no idea how they had done it. And she was pretty sure that Mark and Franklin couldn’t explain it either.

  “You three are very quiet,” Dr. Eckhart observed. “Usually I can’t persuade you to close your mouths.”

  “Dr. Eckhart, it’s not our fault,” Mark blurted. “We had nothing to do with it.” His knuckles had gone white, gripping the chair. Kiki wasn’t surprised. He worked hard to keep his scholarship, and if he got kicked out during the fall of his junior year, especially over something as stupid as this prank, Kiki was afraid he might kill himself.

  “I confess that I can’t think of any reason why you might choose such a dubious method of self-promotion.”

  “Um, right,” Franklin said, glancing at Kiki to make sure he had understood Dr. Eckhart. “I mean, we’ve got promoters and stuff. And everyone here has already heard us play.”

  Dr. Eckhart stared at each of them silently for almost a minute. Kiki wondered if she and the boys would be Dr. Eckhart’s slaves before school every morning for the next month, or something even worse. Finally, the principal spoke.

  “You’re quite correct, Franklin. So what do you imagine was the offender’s motivation?”

  “What?”

  Mark rolled his eyes, forcing Kiki to stifle a laugh. She was a little giddy with relief. “She wants to know who did it, Franklin.”

  “Oh! Just a groupie,” Franklin said, tossing back his hair and sliding lower in his chair. “I’ve got to get those girls in line.”

  Dr. Eckhart raised a pair of brows so white they were almost invisible. “For every female student I’ve fined for Temporary Insanity bumper stickers, I have fined three of their male classmates. Kiki, do you have any idea which of your fans might have tampered with my public address system?”

  “Not really.” Kiki shrugged and tried to look unconcerned, but her mind was racing, trying to decide which of her fans might be responsible. She thought Dr. Eckhart was probably right: this didn’t seem like fangirl behavior. Girls tried to get Franklin’s attention by giving him kudos on MySpace and dancing next to the stage at shows. Kiki couldn’t imagine one of them deciding to impress Franklin by hacking the PA system. She also had a hard time believing that any of them were smart enough to pull it off.

  Mark interrupted her thoughts by saying, “Franklin’s right. It’s more likely to be a girl. Kiki doesn’t really have her own fans. Our guy fans are fans of the band, not Kiki specifically.”

  “Excuse me?” Kiki said, not sounding half as mad as she felt. Or as hurt. “What would you know about that?”

  “I talked to that PR guy, Mike, about fan demographics,” Mark explained mildly, as if he hadn’t just insulted her. “He says that fans never key in on drummers. The guys who listen to the White Stripes aren’t listening because they like Meg. Think about it—no one’s ever into the drummer.”

  Kiki stared at Mark, too stunned to say a word. That was what he really thought? No wonder he’d never asked her out.

  “Maybe it’s that Katie girl,” Franklin said thoughtfully, working the fingers of his left hand as if he was doing chord progressions. He did that on the rare occasions when he tried to use his brain. “Katie Fulsome. She seems smart.”

  “You only think she’s smart because she wears glasses,” Mark pointed out. He leaned forward in his seat. “I have no idea who it could be,” he told Dr. Eckhart.

  “Then I suppose you should go to class,” Dr. Eckhart said slowly. “However, if you should learn any facts related to this morning’s incident, I would like to hear about it.”

  “Of course!” Kiki promised. Mark nodded and Franklin added, “Sure thing.” Then they left the office as fast as they could without actually running.

  “You don’t think Katie’s smart?” Franklin asked once they were in the hallway outside the office.

  “No!” Kiki and Mark both growled.

  “Her bra size changes at every single show!” Mark said. “What’s your problem?” Franklin demanded.

  “My problem is that one of your stupid fans got us in trouble with Dr. Eckhart. I need her to write recommendations,” Mark said, biting off each of his words.

  “Kiki, are you worried about recommendations too?” Franklin asked in a fake, sugary voice.

  “Nope.” Her father was chief of neurosurgery at Vanderbilt University, which meant she’d have a full ride there if she got in. And her parents’ strict rule that getting more than one B in any six week period would mean having to quit the band, had kept her on the principal’s honor list since freshman year. Getting into college was one thing she didn’t have to worry about—balancing college with touring, however, was a whole other story. “That’s not the problem.”

  “So what’s your damage?” Franklin sneered. “Are you jealous ?”

  “Of your deranged fans?” Kiki retorted. “I don’t think so! But I am amazed that you could be stupid enough to think that one of your little idiots did this!”

  Franklin smirked, and did his patented hair toss again. “When was the last time some guy threw his boxers on stage for you?”

  “Fanboys don’t do that to get attention, dumb-ass! They send CDs to my parents’ house and flowers and cow hearts on Valentine’s Day! Did you hear the sound quality on that recording? That was serious equipment—professional grade. Any of your fans with that kind of money would spend it on hooker clothes, not micro-recorders!”

  “Look who’s talking!” Mark shouted before Franklin could think up an answer. “Maybe if you didn’t dress like that, maybe you wouldn’t have to worry about crazy stalkers!”

  Kiki was so stunned she couldn’t answer. She could barely breathe. Her clothes were definitely sexy, but compared to most girls in the industry, she looked like a nun. Mark’s face was almos
t as red as Kiki’s lipstick, and he was panting as if he had just run a mile, but he kept yelling anyway. “What do you mean, cow hearts on Valentine’s Day? Who’s sending you that crap?”

  “What do you care?” she screamed back. “You think anyone who plays the drums is a loser!”

  “Back into the office, please,” a stern voice behind them ordered. Kiki shut her eyes for a moment. They should definitely have gotten farther away from Dr. Eckhart’s office before they started lobbing insults.

  They followed Dr. Eckhart meekly. Kiki couldn’t stop trembling, even though Dr. Eckhart sat in complete silence for five full minutes, waiting for someone to say something.

  Once again, it was Mark who broke the silence. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “That was my fault.”

  “Indeed? I was sure I heard more than one voice shouting.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” Kiki immediately echoed. And she was. She could not remember the last time she was so sorry.

  Dr. Eckhart tapped her fingertips together lightly. “You know, I’ve said from the beginning that you were too young for the responsibilities a band entails. Your grades haven’t fallen, so I haven’t complained too much, but shouting matches in the middle of first period are difficult to condone.”

  “It’s not really our fault,” Franklin insisted. “It’s all because of the announcement thing.” He shrank a little into the chair, then asked, “Are you going to suspend us?”

  “The zero-tolerance policy on fighting does not apply to verbal violence, so the answer is no. But I may have to speak to your parents tonight. You are far too old for this sort of nonsense.”

  Franklin perked up, but Kiki and Mark slumped in despair. They didn’t have a lot of freedom, and they were both certain that a little more would soon be taken away. Their only hope was that something even worse would happen over the course of the day, distracting Dr. Eckhart before she began her daily round of phone calls.

  “Go to class,” Dr. Eckhart ordered, and they fled.

  “Kiki—” Mark began as soon as they left the office.

  “Don’t talk to me,” she said. She wouldn’t even turn to face him as she fast-walked down the corridor. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Okay,” he said slowly. “But after school—”

  “I’ll get a ride with someone else,” she snapped.

  “Oh. Well—”

  “Leave. Me. Alone.” Each word was punctuated with the sharp click of high heels on tile.

  When lunchtime rolled around, Sasha, Jasmine, and Camille were waiting for Kiki at her locker, concerned expressions on their faces. No one said a word as Kiki spun the combination on her lock.

  “You heard?” Kiki asked, pulling a vintage Pink Floyd lunch box full of leftovers out of her locker.

  “I think everyone heard,” Jasmine said, patting Kiki awkwardly on her shoulder. Jasmine was never as comfortable trying to make someone feel good as she was making people feel bad. “So I guess you’re not going to practice tonight, huh?”

  Kiki didn’t say anything, just felt her cheeks warm. She might not have screamed her last words to Mark, but she hadn’t whispered them either. She had no doubt that the whole school knew about their fight by now.

  “We’re going to get our nails done after school,” Sasha interjected, giving Jasmine a dark look. “Want to come with us?”

  “Nope.” Kiki fanned her fingers for the girls, displaying her super-short nails. They had to be, otherwise she broke them hefting her drum kit in and out of the van. Of course Sasha knew this—she’d only invited Kiki to be kind.

  “I’ll get a ride home with my dad.” Kiki sighed, and Sasha took the hint to change the subject. Sasha told a long story about talking on the phone with her dad on Sunday morning, pretending everything was under control at the house, while scraping vomit off the kitchen floor with a bag of ice tied to her head all after Kiki had gone home. It was a funny story, but Kiki didn’t feel like laughing.

  What was Mark thinking? Did he really think that Kiki dressed like a slut? How could he, when he knew that she had gotten into a fight with the style consultant over her refusal to wear any skirt short enough to flash the audience, any top cut so low that she couldn’t wear a bra, and anything that showed her navel? There was a fine line between sexy and slutty, but Kiki knew which side of the line she was on—didn’t Mark?

  And how did that make any sense, considering his other comment that nobody was interested in drummers? She’d heard drummer jokes since her very first show, usually some variation on, “What do you call someone who wants to hang out with musicians? A groupie? No, a drummer!” Was it that hard to believe that guys liked her, just because she didn’t play an instrument with strings? Did he think that any guy who liked her was a crazy stalker? For the first time since they were five, Kiki had no idea what Mark was thinking.

  Chapter 3

  Boy Shopping

  “You don’t look so good, baby girl,” Kiki’s dad said when he pulled up in front of Wentworth, staring at her over the top of his new black-rimmed bifocals. Kiki thought they made him look like Denzel Washington as Malcom X, which Dr. Kelvin considered one of the nicest compliments he had ever received.

  “Thanks, Dad. How was work?”

  “Fine. What’s up with you? Aren’t you supposed to be going to Franklin’s for practice?”

  “Practice was cancelled.” Of course, she didn’t know if Franklin and Mark felt up to playing music, but she was definitely not in the mood. If they didn’t appreciate her, they could find a drum machine somewhere.

  “Those boys getting on your nerves?”

  Kiki raised an eyebrow. Rumors spread fast at a school as small as Wentworth, but she didn’t think they could reach the neurosurgery department at Vanderbilt in less than a day.

  He laughed. “Any girl who was stuck with my friends in high school, morning, noon, and night, would have stabbed every one of us. Teenaged boys are just stupid. It’s the hormones.”

  “Maybe you can do a study on that, proving that seventeen-year-old boys can’t think at all.”

  “You can’t practice neurosurgery on a subject that doesn’t have a brain. There’s nothing to dissect.”

  She had to laugh at that. “You know, I’ve been thinking about what you said before I went on tour last summer.”

  “That I would cut off Franklin’s hands if he touched you?”

  She snorted at that. “I told you then that that would never happen.”

  “That if I heard you smoked anything I’d lock you in the basement until your eighteenth birthday?”

  “Not that either. You said that you would support me with the music thing as long as I wanted to do it. But if I ever wanted to quit, you’d support me in that, too.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Your mother is the one who can help you get out of the contract.”

  “I know. But you won’t freak out about me letting my label down after they’ve spent a fortune promoting us, throwing away an opportunity that a lot of people would kill to have?” That was what her managers told her every time she complained about anything. And despite the fact that her managers were white, barely thirty, and slightly crazy, both of them reminded her of her father. Part of that was the way they treated her: like their favorite person in the whole world, unless she did something that annoyed them. Then she had to listen to lecture after lecture until they settled down.

  “If you ask me to, I’ll burn your drum kit in the backyard. It would be nice to have you around during the summer.”

  Kiki’s heart fluttered at the thought of her drums on fire, the glittery red paint on the sides bubbling and turning black. No. No matter what happened between her and Mark, she would never give up music.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “No problem.” He grinned, and couldn’t help adding, “The day I complain because you won’t be spending all your time with a couple of boys is the day I need my own brain examined.”

  Once they got home, Kiki’s dad
asked her if she wanted to go out for dinner, since her mother was stuck doing paperwork at the courthouse.

  “I’ve got a lot of homework,” she said, trudging up to her room. It was true—she always had a lot of homework—but she didn’t feel like doing it. Instead she logged into the Internet to check her e-mail. She still talked to lots of people she had toured with over the summer—not all the time, since they all had strange schedules, but she tried to check in at least once a week.

  After laughing at Annette’s description of a terrifying dinner full of mysterious, slimy objects, hosted by her Japanese label’s reps, and Colin’s complaints about adjusting to real life after ten months on the road, Kiki felt a little better. Good enough that when Franklin’s number appeared on her cell phone, she actually answered. He might be calling to apologize—about as likely as him bringing a girl flowers—but anything could happen.

  “Did you forget about practice?” His usual bass rumble had gone high and whiny.

  “Nope. I’m just not coming.”

  “You have to come. We have to arrange the rhythm section for ‘Every Angel,’ and we’ve got to finish ‘Foxfire.’”

  “I don’t have to do anything, Franklin, and I’m not going to until you and Mark say you’re sorry.”

  “Sorry? Sorry for what?”

  “Sorry you’re just that stupid, maybe?”

  “Look, Kiki, just ’cause you’ve got PMS, or haven’t gotten laid in the last year, doesn’t mean—”

  Kiki hung up before she started screaming at him so loud that it might kill her cell phone. Whenever she disagreed with him, no matter how wrong he was, he always said it was PMS, or she wasn’t getting laid. You’d think even Franklin would figure out that no one had PMS for a month straight, but his math skills were even worse than hers. She ignored the call when he instantly rang her back, concentrating instead on the text message she was typing to Sasha, Camille, and Jasmine.

  Thru w. Mark & Frnkln 4ever. What r u up 2?

  Before she could hit “send,” she heard the asthmatic chug of Mark’s Karmann Ghia coming up the hill. She scanned her bedroom for something to throw—her windows had a clear view of the front walk. There were books, but her mother would kill her for throwing anything with words in it. She had a few million pairs of shoes, but if she missed they might get dirty, and she liked her shoes. Then there were instruments: bongo drums, spare snares, cymbals, and hi-hats, and a keyboard she was teaching herself to play. Any one of them would hurt like hell, tumbling down from two stories, but she would never mistreat an instrument like that. She decided to run downstairs and tell her father to say she wasn’t home, but she wasn’t fast enough—she glimpsed Mark passing the big picture window in the living room, and that meant that he saw her.