Five Things Our Band Needs (to win Rock Scene 2013):
1. A name
2. A drummer
3. A singer
4. A signature song
5. A collective embolism
“Okay, awesome,” Chaos says. “Totally cool. Extremely excellent. There’s just one thing.”
“There’s always just one thing,” I say.
“If I’m going to be the third leg of this obviously musically transcendent kick-ass tripod, of this totally rocking-ass chart-crushing grindcore juggernaut, we have to make a smallish adjustment.”
“Which is?”
Chaos gestures with the pipe. “My friends, we must come up with a better handle. With all due respect, Sin Sistermouth is very possibly the worst band name in the long and storied history of genuinely terrible band names.”
I wait for him to laugh.
He does not laugh.
There is complete silence.
Even the birds and insects seem stoned.
“Fuck that,” I finally say.
“Totally fuck that,” Elliot says, rubbing his bald dome.
Chaos nods sagely. “It’s been real, gentlemen.” He quickly loads his stuff into the Beemer, backing up with a chirp. “But in that case I guess you dudes are just gonna have to find yourselves another drummer.”
We’re standing out at the basketball courts. Some other people are standing near me. I guess that comprises “we’re.” There’s no actual basketball. A few weeks ago some twitch tossed it over the fence and that was that. Budget cuts or whatever. Maybe just spite. But no new ball. So people stand in groups. There’s an old weight bench and some mismatched dumbbells. When no one’s using them, I put in time with the iron. I can actually feel a little bit of chest developing beneath my shirt. Of course, when anyone else comes up and says, “I’m using this,” I go stand by the three-point line like that’s what I planned to do all along.
Which is where I am when Peanut comes up behind me. He’s wearing a blue watch cap just like Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, except his voice is all syrupy Southern drawl.
“You down with Undercard, Sudden?”
“No.”
It’s the lamest possible response, but my mind has pretty much seized.
“That mean you holding bones?”
His breath is terrible. Like raw meat. Rumor is he’s in for offing someone. Plenty of guys claim to be killers, but he’s the only one I half believe. Especially since they say he strangled the dude with a shoelace.
It’s too stupid to make up.
“I’m not holding shit.”
“Didn’t think so.”
A car circles the perimeter of the fence, then speeds away. We both imagine ourselves in the backseat.
“Why you gunning for me so hard?”
“I was gunning for you, you’d surely know it.”
“Then why do I always get picked to fight?”
“I like the way you fight.”
“You mean the way I lose?”
He grins, shaking cornrow tails off the back of his neck. “People love to bet that great white hope. Hundred years since Jack Johnson and they still haven’t figured out it’s a great white hopeless. Also, I hear you talking with the lady.”
For a second I think he means Looper.
“Who?”
“The doctor. Benway.”
“Yeah, so?”
He says nothing.
“But I don’t have a choice. I mean, doesn’t everyone talk to her?”
“No.”
“Don’t you keep a journal?”
He looks at me like I’m a bug.
“No.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh. You special, Sudden. Know what I’m sayin’?”
“I’m not special.”
“You on the marquee for day after tomorrow. Name up in lights.”
I try to think of a response. Refusal? Acceptance? A one-liner? I end up choosing tremblingly sincere. Or it chooses me.
“Do I have to?”
“Yessir,” he says. “Got a premiere bout here; I can tell.”
I can see kids watching us, counselors watching us, no one moving, no one doing shit.
“Oh, yeah,” Peanut says, snapping his fingers by his calf. “Gonna be you and B’los. Bowing up and flat going at it.”
“Fine,” I say in the library, with a big upside-down art book I picked for cover, leaning back in my chair. Within seconds, Earl Paste, vice principal and dead ringer for a walking meatloaf, pushes my chair forward.
“No leaning back, Sudden.”
“Yessir.”
He adjusts his bulk.
“What’re you reading there?”
I spin the book the right way and we both see it’s a compendium of German graphic art innovations of the 1920s.
“Wouldn’t have figured you for a Bauhaus fan, Sudden.”
“No, sir, me, neither. But, you know, their first album is pretty good.”
“Excuse me?”
My cell buzzes. It’s Lacy Duplais. I don’t answer.
“Nothing, sir. Just doing my best to expand my inexplicably limited horizons.”
Vice Principal Paste clears his throat. “Who exactly do you think you’re wise-assing here, Sudden?”
“Not you, sir.”
“Never mind him, Mr. Paste,” Elliot says, shooting me daggers.
“I’ll never mind who I want to never mind, Hella.”
“Yessir.”
“And who are you?” he asks Chowus, who is wearing dress pants, wing tips, a sleeveless T-shirt, and a tan safari vest with a million pockets and zippers. In front of him is a volume of Shakespearean sonnets.
“Me? Just transferred. Adam Bahm.”
“At Embalm?”
“Adam Bahm.”
“Atom Bomb?”
Chaos spells it out. “A-d-a-m B-a-h-m.”
“Transferred from where, Bahm?”
“Balltown, sir. Would you like to see my papers?”
Chaos starts to reach in his chest pocket. He’s so convincing even I believe he’s got them folded and waiting, despite the fact that it’s a 98 percent certainty the only thing lurking there is his meerschaum pipe.
“No need, Bahm.”
“Yessir.”
Vice Principal Paste holds up one finger in warning, then touches his nose before waddling away.
My cell buzzes. It’s Lacy Duplais. I don’t answer.
“Bahm?” Elliot says.
Chaos shrugs. “Best I could come up with on the spur. My improv chops are rusty.”
“How did you get in here anyway?”
“The door.”
Elliot rolls his eyes and turns to me. “You’re so asking for it, Sudden. Why give Paste such a hard time?”
“Why not?”
“Will you be cool, please? At least until Rock Scene? After that, you can be all the junior tough-ass you want.”
“Can we get back to the subject at hand?” Chaos says. “The reason you called me? The reason I drove all the way over here?”
“Fine,” I say.
“Fine what?”
“Fine, we are no longer Sin Sistermouth.”
He leans back. “Good. Very good. Once again, you have secured the services of a kick-ass drummer.”
“But now we need a new name.”
“No, we don’t.”
“You got one?”
“I do.”
“So what is it, Chowus?” Elliot asks.
“Close your eyes.”
“C’mon, stop the bullshit.”
“Close your eyes,” he insists. “And really let it sink in.”
My cell buzzes. It’s Lacy Duplais. I don’t answer.
Elliot and I clamp our lids.
Chaos takes a deep breath and says very slowly and very loudly, so pretty much every kid at every table and even Dice, who’s leaning over the counter and flirting with Miss Flan, the librarian, looks up:
/> “Gentlemen, our new name is… Wise Young Fool.”
I’m in Mom’s room, where the full-length mirror is. The audience is screaming.
Wise Young Fool!
I’m wearing just underwear and The Paul.
Wise Young Fool!
I adjust my package, do different stances, different pouty faces, different rock-god poses. I do the Keith Richards slouch, the Billy Zoom grin, the Chuck Berry duckwalk, the My Chemical Romance dickwalk, the Eddie Van finger-slam, the Hendrix teeth-pluck, the Joe Strummer low-slung, the Jimmy Page smack-daze. I raise one lip. I do speed scales. I attitude like Joan Jett’s little brother, Mo Jett. I sling the thing over my shoulder and around my back like Rick Neilsen. I do the finger robot like Yngwie. I gaze at myself like crossroads Robert Johnson about to do a shot of poison whiskey. Then I stop screwing around and just straight-out pentatonic air-wail like my man Joe Walsh.
“Looking good, Ritchie,” my reflection says.
“Thanks, Other Ritchie.”
“You really can play that guitar.”
“You, too, man.”
I lean closer to the mirror. Condensation fogs part of me out.
“Ritchie?”
“Yeah, Other Ritchie?”
“What do you say we show a little more leg, and then do a rendition of ‘Chin Wag Chat’ at four times its normal speed?”
“I say that’s an excellent idea. Let’s do it.”
I count it off and then zip through the tune, mugging in the mirror, chunking through the heavy mosh part, adding little pull-offs and hammer-ons throughout. When it’s over, I stare at myself for a while, giving sly little grins and pouty groupie faces.
My cell buzzes. It’s Lacy Duplais. I don’t answer.
“Other Ritchie?”
“Yeah, Richster?”
“Tell me the truth. Was that song any good?”
“It ruled, Rich. I wouldn’t lie to you. It kicked some serious ass.”
I smile at myself. A big white porcelain dazzler.
“You’re a good man, Other Ritchie. You’re a real man of the people.”
“You, too. In fact, man, you’re—”
“Who in god’s name are you talking to?” Mom says, standing at the end of the hallway in her waitress uniform, which is covered in so much spilled ranch she looks like she just walked off the set of Saw IX: Tied Up at the Salad Bar. The look of horror on her face is way past the point of explaining.
At least I’ve got my underwear on.
My cell buzzes. It’s Lacy Duplais. I don’t answer.
“Seriously, Ritchie,” she says in her best no foolin’ I’m really worried here voice, “are you high?”
“Just high on life,” I say, holding The Paul artfully in front of my crotch.
“I’m serious.”
“Don’t yuk my yum, Ma.”
“Oh my god, yuk your what?”
“Don’t judge. I’ll never get ahead if I’m constantly lashed to the yoke of your judgment.”
“Oh my god, yoke of my what?”
“I’m sorry I have to explain this, Mother, but in our new instant-gratification Internet world, a young man must have the courage to be peculiar, or he will drown in a vast ocean of pixelated mediocrity.”
While she pauses, trying to digest that particular line of shit, I take the opportunity to blow by, stopping long enough to liberate the moo shu container in her hand, before sliding into my room and locking the door.
Ten minutes later, I realize my cell is in Mom’s room, right where I left it.
Buzzing away.
Dr. Benway hits the buzzer that locks the door, so Meatstick can’t hear.
“So you’re saying this Peanut arranges gladiatorial battles in the cells?”
“In the dayroom.”
She looks skeptical, wearing a cream-colored skirt, white blouse, and red striped blazer. Dressing down so as not to get anyone excited. I don’t blame her, what with all the degenerates in here.
“It can’t possibly be true.”
“But it is.”
“Then we need to do something.”
“No, ‘we’ don’t,” I say. “And if I get questioned about it, I’ll tell them I made the whole thing up.”
“But why?”
“Why do you think?”
She plays with the buckle on her shoe, considering.
“Also, if you show my journal to anyone, I’ll never write anything real in it again.”
“Is that a threat, Mr. Sudden?”
I lean forward. She does a credible job of pretending not to flinch.
“You swore everything between us was confidential. You also told me I have trust issues. Well, here’s your chance to be right both ways.”
Dr. Benway sighs. “I just find it hard to believe, with the counselors on twenty-four-hour watch—”
“What, you think they don’t know? That they don’t dig the action? Shit, some of them probably place bets.”
“Impossible.”
“Listen, you’re just a part-timer. You drive home at night. You don’t see what really goes down in here.”
“That’s true,” she admits.
“And you’re crazy if you think you can just toss this back in the counselors’ faces. Demand they ’fess up and apologize. Best case, you’ll be transferred out before you can buckle your Blahniks. And then where does that leave me?”
Dr. Benway’s eyes flash. For a second she realizes she’s not in a Julia Roberts movie anymore. She’s just a woman with a skirt and a night-school degree locked in a building with hundreds of feral boys and the tyranny of their desires.
“And so you’ll fight with B’los?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow night.”
Her bottom lip settles, determined.
“I think I know a way to deal with tomorrow night.”
“You just gonna snap your fingers and fix everything?”
“Fix? No. But maybe toss in a monkey wrench while I figure out what to do about the rest of it.”
“Without involving me?”
“Without involving you.”
Neither of us says anything for a long time.
“But if I stick my neck out I want one thing in return.”
“It seems worth mentioning at this point that I have zero cash in my commissary.”
She rolls her eyes. “I want you to tell me a story.”
I laugh. “That’s it? I’ll tell you one right now. There once was a man from Rangoon…”
“A real story. Not about your band or school. Not about girls or cars. About your family. Your father, mother, and sister. Don’t skimp on the details. Drop the attitude. Really dig in and make it worth my while. Can you do that?”
I consider for a minute. “I think so.”
“You think so?”
“Yes. I can. But what’s so important about them?”
“Your family?”
“Right.”
“You’re asking me what’s so important about your family?”
“Right.”
She shakes her head. “Well, that’s exactly what we’re going to find out, Ritchie, aren’t we? At least if you tell it the right way.”
The summer before Beth died, Dad Sudden comes home in his brown suit carrying the remnants of a bag lunch. He loosens his tie and turns off the television. His lips are shiny. His forehead is shiny.
“I have a surprise.”
No one cares. My mother does not care.
“We’re going on a trip.”
I’m on the carpet, knocking out chemistry homework. Beth cradles her phone as if she were preparing to nurse it.
“What for?”
“It’s time we acted like a family, that’s what for,” Dad Sudden says. Except it’s not true. We’re going on a trip because Dr. Harvey recommended it. Dr. Harvey sits in a chair while Mom tells him stuff.
“We all know things have been a little rough lately.”
We did all know that. Beth coming home late, gone all weekend, silent and bitchy. Me locking my door, cranking tunes, refusing to answer when Mom knocks before bed, wanting to give me a hug with the arm that’s not carrying a pile of folded laundry.
“So, anyway, I already bought the tickets.”
“Oh, god,” Mom says. “Where?”
“The Bahamas.”
“Are you sure we can afford it?”
Dad Sudden gives me a wink. “We can afford it.”
For some reason I sweat balls going through customs, like they’re gonna find the forged Cézanne or weaponized anthrax I’d forgotten about in the bottom of my bag. But the Bahamian police, in their blue shorts and pith helmets, ignore us, white and pasty and colorfully clothed. They wave us through. I’m annoyed I don’t rate more concern.
Beth and I share a room.
While we’re unpacking, she runs through two quick cigarettes. I test the curtains, flush the toilet. She finds the hotel postcards and sits at the little desk.
“We’ve only been here an hour; what’s there to tell?”
She doesn’t answer. I get up and check the pay-fridge. There’re two Beck’s cans, three bags of cashews, chips, a Toblerone.
“Want a cashew?”
“No.”
Beth writes one long sentence that starts in the middle of the card while slowly turning it, a spiral of words that snakes to the border. It’s clever and stupid at the same time.
“Don’t forget to leave room for the stamp.”
She stares at the card. She has not left room for the stamp.
“Why do you have to be all up in my shit all the time?” she yells, and then storms into the bathroom, slamming the door. Two seconds later she comes back out, grabs a handful of postcards, her pen, the beers, and then slams the door again.
We spend the next day around the pool. Beth and me at one end, near some frat boys in their twenties. She’s flashing all the oiled leg she can muster. I have Tropic of Cancer on my lap, fairly sure I am the only one, maybe in the entire world, who truly understands this book. Mom and Dad Sudden settle near the Jacuzzi, talking with an older couple, a hairy guy all elbows and knees, the woman frail, blue, shivering in the heat.
“We’re gonna end up having dinner with those people.”
Beth holds up Us magazine so it blocks the sun from her eyes. Also my face. “Why do you care?”
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