Rules to Rock By

by Josh Farrar

  Loneliness: “Nowhere Man,” The Beatles

  The Final Battle: “Declare Independence,” Björk

  Closing Credits: “Crimson and Clover,” Joan Jett

  I came to class with my final list—told you I was retro. I had slaved on it for about two hours, going through my iPod over and over in search of the ten songs that express everything that is Annabelle Cabrera. But Mr. V didn’t even want to see it.

  “Okay, students, now for part two,” he said. “I want you to write journal entries.” McNamara groaned super loudly and Mr. V raised an eyebrow in his direction. “This will be a sort of song journal, an explanation of at least one paragraph—that’s three sentences or more, Mr. McNamara—in which you justify your choice of each particular song. Think of it as something you might one day give to your own child as a way of explaining who you were in sixth grade. Unless your soundtrack includes classics like Bon Jovi, these young people of the future will have little idea of the musicians you admired so long ago. So don’t bother explaining the music. Just get to the feelings they evoke. Use the songs to paint a portrait of yourself in these, the ancient days in which you live.”

  I glanced at Crackers’s soundtrack as we filed out of class. She had “A Place in the Sun” for her final battle and “Hey Jude” for her moment of regret. I didn’t recognize any of the other songs. Three of them had Jesus in the title, so they must have been from church.

  Our confusingly nonofficial band had practice at my place on Sunday afternoon.

  “Let’s run through ‘A Place in the Sun,’ ” Jonny said as he plugged in, having no idea that this was Christine’s battle song.

  I didn’t respond. It was annoying that he was so into Christine’s voice. She had a great one, but big deal. One nice voice and three cover songs do not make a band great. We had written only one real song so far, and it barely even had a chorus. What was the point of screwing around recording Crackers when we didn’t even have original material yet?

  “Earth to Annabelle Cabrera. Let’s run through it, okay?” Jonny repeated. Crackers just stood there, playing chords with her headphones on, completely oblivious to the tension in the room.

  “Let’s play ‘Metal Riff’ first. I want to try some new lyrics,” I said.

  “Okay.”

  We played “Metal Riff.” And that’s exactly what it sounded like. A riff. Not a song, just a riff.

  “This sucks,” I said.

  “What? I like it,” said Jonny.

  Crackers didn’t say anything.

  “I need to keep working on the lyrics.”

  “Okay. Whatever. Let’s play the Christine song. I want to try an acoustic guitar part on it.” The Christine song? Ugh. Jonny picked up my dad’s acoustic and tuned it.

  Crackers played the opening chords to “A Place in the Sun,” and Jonny joined in on guitar. I came in on bass, and we sounded good. A little boring, a little old-fashioned, but tight. Crackers started to sing.

  I heard keys in the front door. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my dad enter the apartment and take an immediate right up the loft stairs. But after a few steps, he came back down again. He leaned around my amp and began to spy on our practice. Christine started the second verse. Her eyes closed as she wrapped her booming, velvety voice around the song.

  I admit it. She sounded amazing. My dad came out from behind the amp. Shaky Jake and my mom were at his side. Great. Crackers’s voice was clear as a bell as she reached the climax of the song. She had a way of sliding up into the notes that could make goose bumps appear all over your body. She sang the words like she really meant them. At one point, Jake gave out a hearty “Yeah!” But when the song was over, the room went quiet. I expected cheers, applause … something.

  Nobody said a word. Then, finally, Mom spoke.

  “Honey, you have the most amazing voice!” she said, looking right at Christine. Honey?

  “Nice job, seriously!” said Shaky Jake.

  “I can’t believe a twelve-year-old can sing with that much soul,” added my dad.

  “Actually, I’m eleven,” Christine said.

  “You are?” said Jonny.

  “I skipped a grade.”

  “Well, you’ve got quite a voice on you,” said my dad. “What was your name again?”

  “Crackers ’n’ Cheese,” I said.

  “Christine,” Jonny said, shooting me a look.

  “Well, Christine, you have got something pretty special there,” my dad said. “Jake, maybe she could double your vocals on ‘Trouble in Mind.’ What do you think?”

  “Babe, the record’s already mixed and mastered,” said my mom. “We can’t just go back and add more parts to it.”

  “What did everybody think about the band?” I said. I could feel my face going pink, then red. I had throat-sewn-shut syndrome again and could barely get the words out. “How did the band sound?”

  “Well … you sounded great,” said my mom.

  “Absolutely,” said my dad. “You played wonderfully.”

  “You had a little bit of a Jackson Five thing going on, which, believe me, is a huge compliment,” said Jake.

  That was pretty weak, I thought. Other than Michael, what did the other Jacksons ever do?

  “You mean, we sound like a kid band?” I said.

  “Look, Annabelle, you guys are a band trying to find its own sound, and you sound like a band still trying to find its own sound,” said my dad. “But you’ve got yourself a pretty amazing lead singer here. Congratulations, kiddo, you’ve got an eye for talent.”

  Something snapped inside me. I had to get out of that room immediately. I didn’t exactly throw Satomi to the floor, but I wasn’t being too careful, either, and I dropped her. A sharp squawk of feedback pierced through the amp.

  “Belle, where are you going?” asked Jonny.

  “Shut up, Jonny.”

  I had to get out of there, and I had to edge my way between my dad and Jake to do it. They looked really shocked and embarrassed, which made me even more upset, and as I pushed past Jake, I did something that I would immediately regret, especially because it was the second time I’d done it in ten days. I slapped him on the shoulder. I must have done it pretty hard, because he winced in pain.

  “What did I do?” he moaned, shaking out his arm.

  “Annabelle, come back here and apologize to Jake. Right now,” said my mom.

  This was a moment when an actual room would have been extremely useful, because I really needed a door to slam. Instead, I slammed the bathroom door on my way to my “personal area,” then put my iPod on and crashed on my bed. Crackers was not going to be the star of my group, and I was not going to be just some backup musician in a Stevie Wonder cover band!

  I don’t really know how long Jonny and Crackers stayed, but I eventually fell asleep. When I woke up, the clock read 1:15 a.m. My parents were still up, talking quietly but tensely in the kitchen, and X was snoring away on the other side of the screen. Even in the middle of the night, I couldn’t get any peace or privacy.

  Annabelle’s most important rock rule of all:

  Rock stars always get their own room.

  “Annabelle, wake up, sweetie. Wake up.”

  I was dreaming that I was on an amusement park ride called the Kamikaze. I had gone on it once in New Jersey visiting my uncle, and I had never forgotten it. It’s like a subway car connected to a giant rotating arm. You get crammed in there with about fifteen other people you don’t know, the arm starts to move, and you suddenly realize you’ve made a huge mistake. But there’s no escape. You’re upside down and careening around and around, and two minutes feel like four hours. You’re trapped and you think it’s never going to end. In my dream, my seat belt started to vibrate, and my chair started shaking around, but I think it was just my mom lightly squeezing my shoulder as she tried to get me out of bed.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead,” she said. “You feeling any better?”

  “I’m okay, I guess. What time is it?
”

  “It’s six forty-five. In the morning. You slept over twelve hours.”

  “What happened to Jonny and Christine?”

  “Well, I offered to make them something to eat, but they said they had to get home and left about ten minutes after your … exit. What was that all about, Belle?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, it’s my band. I put it together. And we’re practicing in my house, in front of my parents. She’s not even that great of a singer.” Ha, what a lie.

  “Belle, I thought you played great. You’re a great bassist, and you’re just getting started.”

  See, my mom could be cool sometimes. Once in a while, she actually said the right thing at the right time. But I still wasn’t satisfied.

  “That wasn’t even the kind of song I want to play, though. That’s a gospel song. I want to rock.”

  “Belle, very few musicians actually wind up in the band they thought they wanted to be in. Take Shaky Jake. You know what his favorite band is?”

  That was easy. “ZZ Top.”

  “Exactly. Blues guitar and foot-long beards. What does ZZ Top have in common with Benny and Joon?”

  “Absolutely nothing.”

  “Right. Your dad found Jake in a deadbeat blues bar called Kenny’s Castaways. Jake had never even heard the kind of music we asked him to play. And to this day, I don’t even know if he’s a Benny and Joon fan. But when we met him, we clicked. It was like he was part of the family from the second he stepped through the door.” She paused, grazing her fingers lightly through my hair, tucking it behind my ear. “So, what do you think of Jonny and Christine? They seem so nice. Do you like them?”

  “Yeah. I do.”

  “Then maybe you need to let go a little bit and let your band become the band that represents all three of you guys, instead of just you.”

  “So you think if I form a band that represents all three of us, Dad will start to acknowledge my existence? Or will he just invite Crackers to be the new singer of Benny and Joon?”

  “Annabelle, stop. Your father didn’t mean anything by that. He just gets excited when he spots new talent.”

  “I’m a new talent, and I’m sitting right under his nose.”

  Then, out of nowhere, my mom knelt down on the floor and, leaning against the side of my bed, burst into tears.

  “Mom, what’s wrong?” I said. “What did I say?”

  “You didn’t say anything, Belle.” She wiped the tears away and tried to get it together. “It’s just that I need to ask you something. Something very serious.”

  This is what she and Abuela were talking about on the phone. It had to be.

  “What, Mom?” I asked.

  She cried for a few seconds more, then shook her head to get rid of the tears for good. “Would you rather live here, with your father and me, or would you rather move back to Brooklyn?”

  “And live with Abuela?” I asked. “Where would X go? Would he go with me, or stay with you?”

  “I don’t know, honey. We haven’t thought it through yet. I haven’t even spoken to your dad about any of this. I wanted to talk to you first.”

  “I don’t know, Mom. It’s been really, really hard here. I miss Abuela, and Ronaldo, and actually being in a band instead of banging my head against the wall trying to start a new one.”

  “I know, Belle, I know. I’m sorry we had to take you away from your friends and your music.”

  “And my grandmother.”

  “And your grandmother.”

  “It would be weird to live without you and Dad.”

  She was doing everything she could not to cry. It wasn’t really working.

  “Yes,” she said. “It would be really difficult for us, too. But we want you to be happy.”

  Then she really lost it, burying her head in my pillow and lying down next to me in my bed. I petted her head a little and told her it would be okay, which was totally weird. Shouldn’t she have been the one comforting and petting me?

  I told her I needed to think about it. Move back to Brooklyn? The idea filled me with a joy I hadn’t felt since we’d moved here. But would it be the same to go back? Would Ronaldo even want me in Egg Mountain if it meant kicking out Anthony? Would X come with me? Would I miss my parents? I was too confused to answer any of these questions.

  So instead of doing what I would normally do in this situation—pace around the room like a nut while talking to myself—I decided to try to write out my frustration. I woke up my computer and quickly worked on my Mr. V assignment:

  I chose “Declare Independence,” the Björk song, for my final battle song because when she sings this song, she sounds like she is at war. Maybe not the kind of war where you load up guns, fly flags, and climb mountaintops. But maybe the kind of war where sometimes it feels like everybody is standing between you and your dream, and you have to get a little bit mad in order to become who you want to be.

  All my life people have used annoying words to describe me, like “sassy” or “spunky.” I hate the word “spunky.” It sounds like a word for feeling like you want to throw up. People describe Björk as spunky, too. (Or they just talk about how she wears weird clothes.) Sassy and spunky mean full of energy and attitude. But I don’t really feel like I have attitude. I feel like I will never get what I want in life. I will never be able to lead my own band. I will never be able to do what Ronaldo did, not on my own. I will never be noticed again, by my parents or anyone else. I will be invisible.

  I don’t know what possessed me to write this, especially right after my mom broke down and told me I might be moving back to Brooklyn. It wasn’t a song exactly, this rant about my life. But maybe I’d be able to look at it in a few hours, or a few days, and turn it into a song. Maybe I could turn this upside-down fall into something positive. I had to do something, because the way things were now was making me crazy.

  Later that night, I pinged R:

  EggMtnRckr: My advice on Crackers … totally forget what your dad thinks. Who cares, you know?

  Bassinyrface: I cant believe i’m hearing this from the guy who basically worships my dad. as a musician, anyway.

  EggMtnRckr: well, that doesnt mean he knows everything.

  Bassinyrface: so youre saying you think I’m a better singer than Crackers?

  EggMtnRckr: Wha?!? How would I know that? I’ve never even heard her.

  Bassinyrface: Grrr.

  EggMtnRckr: Here’s what I’m trying to say … I’ve never heard C sing before, but I’ve heard YOU sing before, and I know YOU are a good singer.

  Bassinyrface: Ok. Thanks.

  EggMtnRckr: First thing is, you should try not to compare yrself to other people all the time. Just worry about getting better at what you do: PLAY BASS, SING, and most importantly WRITE SWEEEET SONGS.

  Bassinyrface: but in Egg Mountain I was a major part of the band. I had, like, followers!

  EggMtnRckr: you liked being the center of attention, huh?

  Bassinyrface: Well, not THE center of attention, but A center of attention. Yeah, why not?!?

  EggMtnRckr: Did you ever think about how I felt when I’d been working on Egg Mountain for over a year, dreaming about it for years before that, and then this upstart girl comes along, sings a song or two, and starts getting HER

  OWN FANS?!?!?

  Bassinyrface: umm, no. I guess I hadn’t.

  EggMtnRckr: Well, at first it was kind of hard, to be honest. But then I realized that having you around only made the band better, so I kinda coached myself into not worrying about it.

  Bassinyrface: That’s totally cool! I had no idea. Thanks, R.

  EggMtnRckr: Rule number six: DONT COMPETE WITH YR OWN BANDMATES!

  Bassinyrface: I know, I know.

  EggMtnRckr: Just joking you, Belle, dont sweat it. Just be glad that not only do you have YOUR awesome talent, you have Crackers too!

  Bassinyrface: Absolutely. Youre right, R. As usual.

  EggMtnRckr: So youre gonna help me out next time I have a b
and crisis of my own, right?

  Bassinyrface: Yes, yes, yes! Absolutely. I swear. Double swear. TRIPLE SWEAR!!!

  I was going to mention the Brooklyn possibility to Ronaldo, but I was too nervous to do it. I mean, what if he loved Anthony’s playing so much that he’d tell me I was out of Egg Mountain, now and forever? I was too freaked out to deal with that, so I tried to act as if the choice of Brooklyn didn’t even exist. I went about my life as if the conversation with my mom hadn’t happened, figuring that soon enough the right decision would come to me.

  My mom asked me to take the bus with X again and drop him off on the way to school. Awesome! X was in the exact opposite mood as me, and obviously clueless about what had gone on between my mom and me the night before. I was feeling quiet and mellow and wanted to take things nice and slow. He, on the other hand, was swinging in the center of the aisle, grabbing the tops of two seats in opposite rows and barely keeping his balance while swinging. If it hadn’t been so irritating, I would have been pretty impressed by his athletic feat. X looked like he was about to begin one of those old-school break-dancing routines that you sometimes see teenage kids do on the subways in New York. I wondered if he was going to start spinning in circles on the floor as a way to earn extra change.

  Then my phone vibrated three times: a message. I looked at the missed call and saw that Abuela had called only thirty seconds before. And when I called back, of course, she didn’t pick up. Stupid cell phone! Was it just me or was the reception in Providence twice as bad as in Brooklyn? Finally, I shrugged and listened to the message.

  “Hello, my Annabella,” she said. “Oh, honey, I’m miss you so much right now and I’m wondering, do you talk to your mommy this morning about anything special? Call me when you feel you want talk, okay, honey?”

  I couldn’t call her back; I didn’t know what to say yet. I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t know what to do. Providence, or Brooklyn? As The Clash once sang, “Should I stay or should I go?”

  Rock stars always know exactly what they want.

  “Guys, I’m sorry I freaked out,” I said to Jonny and Christine in front of Christine’s locker. “I shouldn’t have stormed out like that.”