by Josh Farrar
I stopped my giggling. “My … what do you mean? My song?”
“I very much enjoyed ‘Where Do I Go (From Here)?’ I think it’s remarkable work and I’d like to read it aloud in today’s class. Do you mind?”
“Umm, I don’t know. I …” The bell rang.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said, and before I could think better of it he was standing in front of the class with my song in his hand.
“Students, I have been trying to make writers of you this year,” he said. “I started with a cheap ploy, really, letting the great Bon Jovi do my work for me. Who wouldn’t have been inspired?” A chuckle from McNamara, that clown in the back row. “Many of you have risen to the task. You have used the songs to delve into memories; you have described events in your life with a keen eye. But few of you have managed to crack the shell of your emotional lives”—at this, I sank in my chair—“to reveal something of yourselves in your work.
“The following song—it also succeeds very much as a freestanding poem—does just that. Please listen.”
Then he recited my song from start to finish. I could feel Crackers’s eyes on me—we had been practicing this one for the last three weeks, so of course she recognized it from the first line. She gave me a quick smile, but I just looked down and squeezed the top of my desk with both hands, praying for him to get to the end without my identity being revealed. I hated hearing my song read aloud. The lyrics sounded terrible without music—so personal and cheesy! So unrock! I felt like he was reading my diary to the entire class, without any loud guitars and drums to bury the lyrics. But the class listened in respectful silence, and I was starting to think I would survive.
Mr. V surveyed the class. “Well, any comments on this work?”
“I thought it was great,” said Christine. “The words are good, and the feelings are real.” Whew. She had obviously figured out from my body language that I wanted to stay anonymous.
“Yeah,” another kid said. “It was cool.”
But then McNamara piped in. “Nice work, Annabelle,” he said sarcastically. “That was totally … moving.” His goon buddies cracked up.
“Mr. McNamara, do you have anything sincere to add to this conversation?” Mr. V said, silencing everyone. “Because if you want, I could read your essay on your grandmother. The one in which you compare her clear blue eyes to a lovely summer sky?” Silence. “Good choice. It needs work.
“Well, I hadn’t intended on revealing the author,” he continued. “But now that you know, I think Ms. Cabrera has done a wonderful job here. The writing is concise and direct. The emotions are tangible and real. My compliments.” He handed the sheet back to me, with a massive A written at the top in blue ink. “Oh, and good luck to you and Christine at the battle of the bands.”
I should have skipped all the way back to my locker, high on my second A in a row, but something bothered me: I didn’t think the song was any good. Even if Mr. V thought it was “emotionally revealing” or whatever, it just felt off to me. And there was no way I could perform it in public if the words didn’t feel right. I’d have to keep working on it.
Darren found me at my locker.
“Yo, Belle,” he said.
“What’s up?” I turned around to find him wearing a sling on his right arm.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. The battle was a week away.
“I wish I was,” he said. “I broke my elbow.”
“What happened?”
“Jackson happened.”
“Jackson broke your elbow?”
“Well, not exactly. But the guy who did it was definitely, um … employed by Jackson.”
“Okay …”
“He introduced himself as Raising Cain’s new drummer. He looked about thirty years old. And he was huge. Two hundred pounds of pure muscle.”
“What’d he do?”
“He sucker-punched me as I was walking home yesterday. Then he pushed me over, and I guess I must have broken my fall with my elbow.”
“Ouch.”
“You’re telling me. It kills.”
“Darren, I’m really sorry.”
“It’s okay. I can still play.”
“Are you crazy? That’s your right hand. You’re a right-handed drummer. There’s no way you can play.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of Def Leppard? That drummer lost, like, three limbs in a drunken car accident, and he can still rock out.”
“I wasn’t aware of that.”
“Seriously, I need to do this. For me. To show Jackson that he and his goons can’t keep me down. He’ll have to break both legs to keep me off that stage.”
“Shh,” I said. I didn’t point out that only three weeks ago he had been one of those goons. “Don’t give him any ideas.”
The day before the battle.
“Belle, sweetheart, I need to talk to you about something,” my mom said as I was making my lunch in the kitchen.
“What?” I looked around. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing, sweetie. Everything’s fine.” She nervously tapped her fingers on the countertop.
“Mom, what’s wrong? Is X okay? Is everything okay?”
“Yes, yes.” She nervously brushed back her hair. “It’s just that … Well, Belle, you know how your dad and I, we need to perform to keep bread on the table …”
“Okay …” As if I hadn’t heard this speech a million times.
“See, Benny and Joon got a great offer to play in Boston, and it’s … Well, it’s tomorrow.”
“The night of the battle? You’re not going to make it to the battle?” I took the knife I was using to spread peanut butter and threw it in the sink. Then I started pacing around the room. I admit that I probably looked fairly crazy at this moment in time. But I was mad.
“Belle, I know. Believe me, I know. But just listen. We’ll be playing at the Somerville Theatre. It’s a pretty big venue. And we’ll open for PJ Harvey. You know how much this means to your dad. She’s one of his favorite—”
I stopped pacing and gave my mom a look that stopped her in her tracks.
“I get it, Mom. It’s back to the way things were.”
“Don’t, Belle—”
“I know how things work in this family. Dad comes first. He always has and he always will.”
Then I marched into the bathroom. Remember, that was the only slammable door in the place.
“Belle, that’s not fair.” Mom followed me. “Come on, open up.”
I vowed to never open up. Not in a million years. Or at least not until I could escape from the house without having to talk to my mom again.
While my temples pounded with rage, I thought again about what Mr. V had said about how craziness is defined as doing the same thing or seeing the same thing again and again and expecting something different to happen. But I think the definition of craziness is living with my mom. I mean, for my whole life she had done the same thing over and over again, which was to side with my dad. On literally everything. And then, starting at the hospital, she seemed to start siding with X and me. She had seen how my dad’s way of doing things wasn’t working, so she was moving away from him and toward us. But how did that explain her ditching me on the most important night of my life for a PJ Harvey opening slot that hadn’t even existed twenty-four hours ago? Who was crazy: my mom, or me?
“Belle,” Mom said, still outside the door. “Please open up, sweetie. Come on.”
“I’m fine, Mom,” I said. “I’m just going to take a shower. I’m not mad anymore.” Ha, what a lie.
I did get in the shower and think things over. Logically, it shouldn’t have been that annoying to me for my mom not to come to the battle. She hadn’t been to the open mic, and that had gone fine. She hadn’t seen me play in Central Park—they’d had a gig in some rock toilet in Philadelphia the same night—and that had been amazing. She hadn’t even come to my fifth-grade graduation—Abuela had. Why should the last three weeks have made a differen
ce? My mom wasn’t going to change. She would always put Benny and Joon ahead of me. She would always put my dad in front of the rest of the family, so it was stupid to expect anything different.
After I dried off, I waited to make sure my mom wasn’t by the door anymore and got dressed as quickly as I could. I walked to the front door and carefully unlatched the lock.
That’s when I felt two quick taps on my shoulder. I turned around and saw X.
“Belle, I—”
“X, I can’t hang out with you right now. I’ve gotta go to school.”
“Belle, I got something for you,” X whispered.
“What?”
“It’s for good luck,” he said. “At the battle.”
He held out a little plastic bag filled with guitar picks, the kind of big, wide picks that I liked.
“You bought me picks?”
“Special picks.”
I opened up the bag and spilled a few out into my hand. On one side, they said “Annabelle Cabrera” in big letters. On the other, they said, “Bass Goddess!”
“X, where’d you get these?” I asked. “How’d you pay for them?”
“Don ordered them for me. He said I can work them off, once my arm gets better.”
I leaned down on one knee and gave X a hug, careful not to mess with his bad arm.
“Thanks, X,” I said, although other than that I was speechless. What can you say when the little brother whose arm you basically broke in two turned around and gave you one hundred customized guitar picks? I gave him a peck on the cheek, then bolted.
Rock stars aren’t half as cool as little brothers.
Twenty-four hours before the battle.
I decided not to go home after school. I talked to Crackers and Jonny and convinced them we needed to rehearse. Jonny offered his place, and that would definitely beat going home. Home meant Benny and Joon rehearsing for the big show and my dad going on and on about how he was finally going to meet the great PJ Harvey.
I met Crackers in front of her math class and we walked together to meet Jonny down the hall. But we couldn’t find him. Instead, Bumblebee Shoes was there, sitting in front of Jonny’s locker, his hair mussed yet again, his T-shirt ripped at the collar. He wasn’t crying this time. I guess he was beyond that. He stared straight ahead across the hall and wiped a slow trickle of blood from his nose.
“Angelo, what happened?” I asked.
“Take a wild guess.”
“Not again! I’m gonna kill him. Where is he?”
“Who, your friend?” he said bitterly. He wouldn’t even look up. “He just went around the corner to chase down a couple other kids.”
I turned to Christine. “Darren.”
“There’s no way he’d go back on his word,” Crackers said. “Plus, he’s got a broken elbow!”
“Right. Maybe it’s Jackson, then. I don’t know. Let’s just go.”
“What? Are you nuts? Don’t do this, Annabelle. You’ll regret it.”
We didn’t have to look far. As soon as we started jogging to where Angelo had pointed, we saw a big hulk of a boy who had hold of two kids in Angelo’s weight class. He held them by their shirt collars about two inches off the ground while they rifled through their pockets for any loose change they had. I didn’t waste any time.
“Hey you, let those guys go. Right! Now!” I yelled from the end of the hall.
He did, and the kids stood frozen on the spot. But even before this big punk turned around, I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. I saw his profile, and he didn’t have Jackson’s scraggly goatee or Darren’s curly hair. What he did have was a very familiar mop of messy hair and a big black puffy jacket.
Jonny turned around with a look of pure sorrow on his face.
“Jonny, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” I blurted out.
“You’re … with Raising Cain again? You’re, like, in the Federal Hill mafia?” Crackers said.
As soon as they saw Jonny was distracted, the two kids ran off.
“It’s not what it looks like, okay?” Jonny said.
“What, these shrimps owe you for Girl Scout cookies? You’re a jerk!” I said.
“Shut up, Annabelle! You don’t know anything about me!” His voice was a throaty rasp. “You don’t know anything at all.”
Jonny sprinted away, dropping his backpack and a bunch of cash and change as he went. Christine and I ran after him. He kicked open the doors that led to the playground, then beelined it toward the gate that led to the street outside. I couldn’t keep up with him, but I saw him head toward the swing set. Jonny tried to jump one of the swings, but he got tangled up in the chain and hit the ground with a thud. He clutched his left shin, rocking back and forth, and I could hear him huffing and puffing from halfway across the yard. I slowed down as I got closer to him, afraid he might erupt again. But he just lay there, nursing his wound and rocking himself on the black rubber jigsaw mat under the swings.
He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “I never wanted to hurt those kids,” he said. “They used to be my friends.”
“Why’d you do it, then?”
“You see this?” he said, pointing to the scar on his lip. “Jackson said he’d give me another one to match it.”
“Yeah? I thought you were going to ‘talk to him.’ You said you’d figure it out.”
“I did. I tried. I really thought I’d be able to talk to him about all this. I mean, he and I were best friends for four years. But he wouldn’t budge. He said that if Darren quit getting the money, I’d have to do it in his place—or else. And I’m not like Darren. I’m not tough enough to laugh off a smashed hand or a broken cheekbone.”
“So it was either shake down those kids or he’d beat the hell out of you?”
“Yep. He also said if I kept playing with The Bungles, he’d personally make sure I’d never be able to pick up a guitar again.”
“Well, that sucks. But it doesn’t make it okay,” I said.
“You could have told a teacher,” said Crackers.
“Yeah, right,” Jonny said. “You know what Jackson would have done to me if I had gotten him busted? I’d be talking to you from a hospital bed right now.”
“You could have told us,” I said.
He couldn’t come up with an answer to that one.
“Just how long has this been going on?” said Crackers.
Again, Jonny said nothing. He just looked down at the ground.
“It’s been him all year,” I said, finally realizing it. “He’s been bullying these kids for their money, just like the rest of Raising Cain.”
We walked away.
“Guys, come on. Wait up,” he said. But we kept walking, and we didn’t talk until we were out the door.
“What do we do now?” Crackers said.
“We figure out how we’re going to compete in the battle with half a drummer. And without a guitar player at all.”
NO SLO-MO
Two hours before the battle.
I went over it a hundred times in my head. I talked it over with Jake at home that afternoon and obsessed about it with Crackers on the phone. But each time I came to the same conclusion: The Bungles would have to withdraw from the battle. Crackers and I were both still too mad at Jonny to play with him anytime soon, but we couldn’t play without him, either. His guitar parts were too important, and there was no way someone else could learn them in time. Jackson had achieved his goal. The Bungles were out of the battle. The Bungles weren’t even a band.
I got to Don Daddio’s at about three thirty. All day I had told myself I wouldn’t go there, but in the end I couldn’t help myself. I was a sucker for punishment. Not only was I going to allow Jackson to break up my band, I was going to watch Raising Cain win it all. Just as I crossed the threshold to the shop, my pocket buzzed. It was a text from Ronaldo.
“With Abuela right now,” it read. “She says to make her proud tonight. Same from me. You are an official MASTER OF THE RULES!!!”
Don had done an impressive job setting up. He had made the small parking lot behind the shop look like a real rock club. It was the last Friday before Thanksgiving, so there was a serious chill in the air, and the sun was already low in the sky. The stage was an intimidating five feet off the ground. Behind it a banner read “Minor Threat Battle of the Bands” in massive letters. There were about a hundred folding chairs in the lot, and a sound guy with a pink and green Mohawk worked buttons and levers behind an enormous soundboard. He flicked a switch and a whole rainbow of spotlights came on, circling in crisscross patterns across the stage.
“You playing tonight, hon?” asked the sound guy.
“Um, no,” I said. “Not tonight.”
“I beg to differ,” said a voice behind me. I turned around to see Don, smiling behind me. “This is Annabelle Cabrera. Her band, The Bungles, will indeed be performing tonight.”
“No, we won’t, Don. I came here to tell you.”
“You come with me, young lady.” He walked a few feet toward the stage and pulled out two of the folding chairs. “We need to have us a little chat.”
As I sat down, I felt my face turning red. I had never seen Don so serious. He was really glaring at me.
“Your nephew was doing Jackson’s dirty work,” I said. “Beating up kids and taking their money for no good reason.”
“I know all about it. I’ve known Jonny since the day he was born. And I certainly know more about this situation than you do.”
“Why are you talking to me like this? I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You’ve turned your back on a friend.”
“But Jonny lied to me. He’s been lying for months.”
“Well, it’s been a complicated situation for him. Jackson has been bullying him for a very, very long time.”
“What difference—”
“Since the second grade, in fact. We’ve tried to get the school involved. Once, even the cops. But Jackson has his hooks in Jonny, somehow. It’s like he’s got a power over the kid.”