by Jeff Strand
“Did what?”
“You know what you did. I think there’s still a piece of sinew between my teeth.”
“First of all, sinew comes from tendons or ligaments. You didn’t get hit in the face with any sinew, and if you did, you didn’t get hit with it at a high enough velocity for it to get stuck between your teeth. So your story is falling apart.”
“I’m not good at biology. Also, I had a candy bar later, so it could be nougat. Doesn’t taste like nougat, but what does nougat even taste like?”
I’m infuriated all over again. And I want answers. “Why’d you do it?”
“Because I was startled. Trust me—I didn’t want to get you in trouble. But when something like that happens, I don’t care how dignified you are, you’re going to yelp.”
“I didn’t throw anything at you.”
“Then who did?”
“You did!”
“Doesn’t sound like something I would do.”
“Are you kidding me? Are you really sticking to your ridiculous story even though we’re the only two people in the car?”
“I’m a warrior for the truth,” says Blake.
“Okay, I get what’s happening.” I dig out my cell phone and hand it to him. “I’m not recording this. You can confirm it. You won’t be incriminating yourself, so you can drop the act.”
He hands me my cell phone without looking at it. “There’s no act. You treated me less like a cousin and more like a clown at a dunk tank. I trusted you to make my first day at a new school a comfortable experience, and instead you humiliated me in front of everybody. You know what they call me now? Rat Gut Face. Even Mr. Gy calls me that.”
“Mr. Gy does not call you Rat Gut Face.”
“He thinks it.”
“Nobody calls you that. And if they did, it’s actually kind of a cool nickname, but they don’t, so it doesn’t matter. I don’t know why you’re trying to ruin my life, but I’d appreciate it if you’d stop.”
“You can lie to me, Rod, but you can’t lie to yourself. When you look into the mirror, you’ll know who did it.”
“Yes, I’ll see you standing behind me in the mirror because you’re hogging half of my room!”
“Is that why you attacked me? You’re still upset about your room? I can sleep out in the shed if that’s what you want.”
“We don’t have a shed.”
“Should we build one together? It could be a bonding experience.”
“Look,” I say, “I don’t know what kind of demented game you’re playing, but it needs to stop. I’m on to you, and you won’t get away with this kind of stuff again. I’d advise you to go to school, study hard, keep your head down, and stop trying to ruin my life.”
“Why would I want to ruin your life, Rod?”
“I don’t know.”
“If you don’t know, perhaps it’s because there’s no reason.”
“Maybe you’re a deeply miserable person. Maybe you hate your life in California. Maybe you can’t stand to see me being happy.”
“You’re poor. Your dad left you. Your band hasn’t had any real success. Your friends only use you for your garage. What do have you to be happy about?”
I’ll be honest. If there was a tray of rat innards on the dashboard, I’d fling it at him.
“Being poor has nothing to do with my happiness,” I say. “Some of us don’t need to pay people to cater to our every whim. Don’t talk about my dad. I don’t expect my band to be a superstar success because we’re in high school. And my friends do not use me for my garage.”
“That’s what they want you to think.”
“I don’t even have the best garage.”
“Then why do you practice there?”
“Because my mom usually isn’t home.”
“So they only use you for your mom’s absence.”
“Your mind games aren’t going to work on me. You’ve picked the wrong opponent,” I inform him. “I may seem lovable, but I will destroy you if you don’t back off.”
“Why are you so hostile? I accepted your apology.”
“I mean it, Blake. You think you’re some master manipulator, but you’re wrong. This is over.”
“If I was trying to manipulate you, which I’m not, I’m just getting started.”
“I’ve given you your final warning. Knock it off. We’re done talking.”
“All right,” says Blake. “I think this was a very illuminating conversation.”
“Whatever.”
“I’m looking forward to seeing your band tonight,” he says.
“No, you can’t come.”
“I want to see how the audience responds to the way I revamped your sound.”
“You didn’t revamp anything. All you did was…no, I’m done. I don’t expect to see you anywhere near the Lane tonight. If I find you within a mile of the club, we’re going to have a problem.”
“Is your house within a mile of the club?”
“No.”
“Okay. I’ll stay home then.”
15.
I'm not going to let Cousin Blake ruin my life.
I’m not going to let Cousin Blake ruin my life.
I’m not going to let Cousin Blake ruin my life.
I’m not going to let Cousin Blake ruin my life.
I’m not going to let Cousin Blake ruin my life.
I’m not going to repeat things in my mind over and over and over until I feel like I’m going crazy.
He’s made a terrible mistake. I’m a well-liked guy. Maybe people will take his side at the beginning, but in the long term, Team Blake is going to have exactly one member. (Blake.)
Fanged Grapefruit is setting up at the Lane. Trivia: experts have counted twenty-three different types of stains on the ceiling, only six of which they’ve been able to successfully identify. I feel good about tonight’s show. The headliner is a group from Atlanta called Bathtub Scum, and they’re so popular that I think as many as a dozen people could show up early enough to see our act.
We don’t say much as we set up. Mel and Clarissa both know what happened in biology class, but I guess they don’t want to bring it up in case it messes with my mojo before the show. Everybody in the band is very respectful of one another’s mojo.
Audrey, as always, is working the merch table. She smiles as I look over at her. Ha! Try as he might, Blake wasn’t able to get my girlfriend to stop smiling at me!
By eight o’clock, I’m disappointed that there are only seven other people in the club. Bathtub Scum has a reputation for showing up to their gigs an hour late, smelling of gummy worms, so maybe their fans know not to get there too early. Oh well. We’ll rock the house for these seven.
“Thanks for coming out tonight!” I say into the microphone. “Are you ready to rock?”
“Affirmative!” shouts the one guy who’s actually looking at the stage.
“We’re Grapefruit Fangs,” I say. “And this first song is called…”
Grapefruit Fangs? Wait. What?
“I mean Fanged Grapefruit,” I say, even though Grapefruit Fangs is kind of a cool name for a band too. “And this first song is an original called…”
Blake.
No, the first song isn’t called “Blake.” I mean that Blake walks into the Lane.
He’s wearing jeans and a blue T-shirt. To better fit in with the punk rock crowd, he seems to have cut holes in his clothing. Despite this, he couldn’t look more out of place if he were dressed for a rodeo.
He looks at me and gives me a thumbs-up.
I think Blake is counting on me being too professional to scream at him from the stage. And the little creep is right. I’m going to carry on as if he weren’t there.
“This first song is an original called…”
Which song is first? What are our song
s?
There is, of course, a set list taped to the floor next to my feet. “This first song is an original called…”
The one guy who was ready to rock looks like his readiness to rock is fading.
We were supposed to open with “The Night I Drank Way Too Many Blue Raspberry Slushes,” but I don’t think I can handle Blake’s smug look if it goes well. I want to start with a song that he didn’t influence. “Let’s change things up,” I say, turning around to look at Clarissa. “Let’s do ‘That Bandage Won’t Keep Your Legs Attached.’”
“We haven’t practiced that in months.”
“It’ll be okay.” I turn back toward the tiny audience. “This first song is an original called ‘That Bandage Won’t Keep Your Legs Attached.’ One, two, three, go!”
Clarissa launches into the opening drum sequence. Mel joins in with lead guitar. I do my famous screech and then begin to sing.
The guy in the audience bounces around, body slamming invisible people.
Who cares if Blake is here? When I’m onstage, there’s nothing he can do, except cause me to change my set list without informing my fellow band members and fluster me into forgetting the name of the first song. He’s not going to bring me down. This is my world.
We’re on fire tonight. Sure, there’s only one guy bobbing his head to the beat, but his head is bobbing in a big way. By the third verse, I’ve almost forgotten that Blake exists.
The song ends, and the guy up front applauds with great enthusiasm. Blake (that kid I almost forgot about) applauds as well. Though he shouldn’t be here at all, at least he’s considerate enough to stay in the back. Or he’s scared of being injured in the one-man mosh pit. Either way, I’m glad he’s not near the stage.
We go into our second song, which was supposed to be the first song. I don’t care if this song is .009 percent better because of Blake’s input. Tonight is about the music and nothing else.
A tall skinny guy who’s maybe a few years older than me walks into the club. He’s wearing a black Fanged Grapefruit shirt. If this were a cartoon, which it might as well be, my eyes would pop out of their sockets on springs. I’ve never seen anybody in our band’s T-shirt who wasn’t (A) Mel, (B) Clarissa, (C) Audrey, (D) my mom, or (E) me.
It can’t be a coincidence that he’s wearing a Fanged Grapefruit shirt to a Fanged Grapefruit show. He must be a Fanged Grapefruit fan. A fan! An actual fan!
He walks up to the stage and begins to move to the music.
Two more people, a guy and a girl, walk into the Lane. They aren’t wearing our band’s T-shirts, but that’s okay because they hurry up front. For those keeping track, we now have four people enjoying our music enough to move to the rhythm.
By the end of “The Night I Drank Way Too Many Blue Raspberry Slushes,” there are six. One of them is a girl I sort of recognize from school. The rest look like college students.
“Thank you, everybody,” I say as the song ends. “How many of you like chess?”
The crowd gives a huge cheer for the game of chess.
“Well, this song was inspired by that amazing feeling you get when you put your opponent into checkmate. It’s called ‘Checkmate, Checkmate, Checkmate,’ and it goes like this!”
By the time that song is done, the size of our audience has doubled. One guy is wearing a Fanged Grapefruit sticker on his forehead. And I know you won’t believe me, but there’s a woman in the audience in one of our shirts. I knew that someday I’d see two Fanged Grapefruit shirts on two separate audience members at the same show, but I never imagined it would be tonight.
Did I mention that we’re on fire? We’re playing the best we’ve ever have. We’re usually pretty good about covering wrong notes, but tonight there are no wrong notes to cover. More people come into the club with each song. I wonder if some of them happened to be walking by and said, “Wow, that band currently playing in the Lane sounds fantastic! It would be silly to keep walking past the club, which would take me out of earshot of that delightful music. I think I’ll stroll inside and enjoy the rest of their set.”
By the time we’re on our last song, there are fifty people in the audience. That wasn’t a typo. Fifty. Five-zero. Ten times five. Half of triple digits. Sure, if Adele walked out onstage and there were only fifty people, she might go ballistic and start firing her staff, but for us, this attendance is astounding. Fifty people! Listening to our music! Voluntarily!
I assume they’re here voluntarily. None of them appear to be in handcuffs.
Not only have we never had a better show, but I’ll go so far as to say that I’ve never had a better half hour. Not during my fifth birthday party when Mom and Dad discovered the invitations had the wrong date so I got to eat all the cake myself. (They didn’t give me permission to do this, but I didn’t get in trouble for it since it was my birthday.) Not when I kicked the winning goal in a soccer game and the rest of the team carried me off the field in victory. (They accidentally dropped me, and I broke a rib, so you’d have to start timing it about twenty-eight minutes before I kicked the goal. But still, there was an excellent half hour in there.) Not when my first girlfriend, Cindy, gave me her grape juice box in third grade. None of those moments compared. This is the best thirty minutes of my life.
We finish our last song. Clarissa, Mel, and I are all drenched in sweat, and I can tell that they’re also ranking this really high on their list of life experiences. What if every show is like this from now on?
“Thanks for being here!” I shout. “We’re Fanged Grapefruit! Do you wanna hear one more?”
The crowd cheers.
The owner of the club points to his watch and shakes his head.
“I’m told that we can’t play one more,” I announce. “But we’re here every Monday! Hope to see you again!”
The crowd cheers some more. I feel like they’d give us a standing ovation if they weren’t already standing. And then they file toward the exit. That’s right. They were here for us!
The lead singer of Bathtub Scum is standing in the corner, looking dismayed. “Where are they going? They’re not leaving, are they? What about us? Doesn’t anybody care about us? Why would they leave?” The other band members quietly console him as the club empties.
“Wow,” says Clarissa.
“Yeah, wow,” says Mel. “That was the best two minutes of my life.”
“It was half an hour,” I say.
“Felt like two minutes.” Mel lets out a whoop. “They loved us! They loved us, right? I wasn’t imagining that?”
“Nope, they loved us. I guess word finally got out.” I can’t stop grinning. I want to turn cartwheels and squeal with glee, but that would be unbecoming for the lead singer of a punk rock band.
The audience clears out of the club pretty quickly. Blake is also gone, which is nice. I don’t want him coming over and spoiling my joyous feeling by doing something reprehensible.
It does seem kind of strange that all those people came into the club and didn’t even stay for the headliner. I wonder what we did differently.
Maybe word got out of my alleged behavior in biology class. Maybe they hoped I’d do the same thing onstage. You’ve gotta see Fanged Grapefruit! The lead singer chucks rat guts at the audience! It’s wicked!
Nah. It seems unlikely that childish behavior in biology class would pack the audience with an older crowd.
Did we get written up on a popular blog?
Did Audrey do some new social media promotion and not tell us?
As we break down the equipment, Clarissa asks, “Does it seem weird to anyone else that we had so many people?”
“A little,” Mel admits.
“What do you think happened? We used the same fliers, right?” Clarissa works at a copy shop, and after we designed the “Fanged Grapefruit Is Performing at the Lane” flier, she printed up five hundred copies without her bo
ss catching her. Each time we put some up, we cross out the old date and write in the new one.
“Yeah, same fliers,” Mel says. “I didn’t do anything different. Did you do anything different, Rod?”
“I didn’t do anything different.”
“Let’s not overanalyze it,” says Clarissa. “We had our best show ever, and we should just enjoy it.”
“I agree,” I say, although I’m suddenly not sure that I agree.
We finish breaking down the equipment and load everything into my car. I keep waiting for Blake to leap out of the shadows like a happiness-draining vampire.
Clarissa, Mel, Audrey, and I spend a couple of minutes talking about how awesome the show went. But my enthusiasm is starting to diminish.
“What’s wrong?” Audrey asks me.
“What if Blake bribed the audience?”
Clarissa frowns. “You think Blake paid fifty people to be there?”
“I don’t think it’s out of the question.”
We’re all silent for a moment.
“Hmm,” says Mel.
“Please don’t say hmm. That sound has been ruined for me,” I explain.
“Do you really think he’d do that?” Clarissa asks. “You guys can’t stand each other, right? Why would he want to bring people to the show?”
“Maybe so that we can bask in the glory, and then he can crush our spirits by revealing that he bribed everyone.”
“He definitely didn’t bribe that first guy,” says Mel. “That dude was totally rocking out.”
“I bet he bribed everybody else though.”
“That would suck,” says Mel.
“I can’t imagine that he would do that,” says Clarissa. “Doesn’t he have anything better to do than go around finding people to pay to attend a punk rock show?”
“No,” I say. “He definitely does not.”
“Maybe he asked them to show up but didn’t actually pay anybody,” Audrey offers.
“We’ve asked people to show up, and they almost never do.”
“You think it’s Blake’s charisma?” asks Mel.
“No!” I say. “Everybody in this car is more charismatic than Blake! We could be hacking up hairballs and have more charisma. I can’t believe you even said that.”