Lucky Caller

by Emma Mills

  “Hi.” I started riffling through my backpack for my headphones.

  It was quiet, just the click of the mouse as Jamie added songs. “So, uh, did you hear back from Michelle?”

  I had met with the catering manager from Pipers the afternoon before. I was to be hired on a kind of second-string basis for “this stage” of the wedding season—after initial training, I would get called in when one of the normal waitstaff couldn’t make it in or when it was a particularly big wedding (according to the website, the Meridian Room could seat up to three hundred). Then when “rush season” started, I would be included more often if things were going well.

  “Interviewed yesterday.”

  “And?”

  “I’m supposed to train this weekend.”

  “Nice.” His expression was neutral, so I wasn’t sure how to interpret that “nice.” I needed more data to draw a conclusion.

  “I guess we’re gonna be coworkers,” I said.

  “Guess so,” he replied, with a smile that was indeed a little more conclusive—maybe he didn’t hate the idea.

  The others arrived then, and Jamie moved to his usual spot on the loveseat. Joydeep flopped down into his chair and pulled out his headphones.

  “How are we feeling tonight, party people?” he asked, and Sasha gave a smile that looked like it was against her better judgment.

  “Fine. You?”

  “Fired up. Ready to go. Let’s do this.”

  The first link went as follows:

  “This is 98.9 The Jam. My name is Joydeep. You’re listening to Sounds of the Nineties. Thank you for joining us. For Sounds of the Nineties. Tonight we are playing songs from the year 1992. A great year. I wasn’t there, but … I’m sure cool stuff happened. Here is a song, and that song is ‘Rhythm Is a Dancer’ by SNAP!”

  He pointed to me. I switched on the music, and by all rights, the music should have started then. It was usually kept at a low volume in the studio, but we should have been able to hear it.

  Instead: silence.

  I fumbled with the dial, thinking the studio volume might’ve been turned down. I couldn’t remember what was playing—if anything was playing at all—when I first arrived.

  Jamie peered over at me. “What’s going on?”

  I twisted the studio dial up and down again. Nothing. Shifted the slider on the board that controlled the music. Still nothing.

  “Check outside,” I said, and Jamie jumped up and hurried out of the sound booth. Music should have been playing out there as well, in the small hallway leading to the editing bays.

  I thought back to class with Mr. Tucker:

  Something we absolutely do not want is dead air. Dead air is any silence that lasts for more than a few seconds when you’re broadcasting. Got that? We’re talking seconds here. Now I’m not saying you can’t take a pause when you’re having a discussion or making a point on-air. But it’s really important that when you’re speaking or having a conversation during a broadcast, you keep the ball rolling. And it’s even more important that if there’s some kind of technical malfunction, you act quickly, and you get something on as fast as you can.

  Jamie came back in. “There’s nothing.”

  “Are we not broadcasting?” Sasha asked, looking concerned. I wondered if she was recalling Mr. Tucker’s words as well. Say it with me now: No dead air. It’s the cardinal rule of radio. No. Dead. Air.

  “Try another break,” Jamie suggested. “We’ll go out and see if it’s playing.”

  I went to pause the playlist, but Joydeep shook his head.

  “Wait, what am I supposed to say?”

  “I don’t know. Read a PSA or something.”

  “Got it.”

  I switched on his mic as Jamie and Sasha both stepped out.

  “Hey, Joydeep back here. From before. A little … earlier than anticipated. Just wanted to read you a PSA. A very important … notice … that is right here. On my desk. Um.”

  He hadn’t called up a PSA before I cued him, which, as the producer, was my fault. I mimed drinking.

  Joydeep frowned. “Water?”

  Shook my head, mimed more forcefully.

  “Drink. Drinking!”

  I did a steering wheel motion.

  “Driving.”

  I made a slashing motion through the air.

  “Don’t,” Joydeep added.

  Frantically, I pushed my hands together in an all together kind of move. “Don’t drink and drive!” Joydeep burst out, triumphant. I gestured to continue. “It will kill people. Dead. It will make them dead. If you do that. So don’t do it.”

  Sasha stuck her head back in and gave us a thumbs-up.

  “Here’s another song,” Joydeep said.

  I switched over to the music. Sasha ducked back out.

  “You need to work on your charades skills,” Joydeep said.

  “I got you to say it!”

  Sasha came back in shaking her head, followed by Jamie, looking perplexed.

  “Nothing?”

  “It works when Joydeep’s on, but something’s wrong with the music,” Sasha said. “It’s not broadcasting.”

  “Try one of the PSA tracks or a station ID or something,” Jamie said. There weren’t really commercials on 98.9 The Jam, but there were a ton of prerecorded PSAs for things like cyberbullying and sexting and a whole host of other “teen-targeted” issues. (If you WOULDN’T say it to their FACE, then WHY would you SAY it ONLINE? was a particularly ominous one. “Way too much echo,” Joydeep commented the first time we played it. “Did they record it from inside a toilet?”

  “Why would a toilet make it sound like that?” Sasha had asked, baffled.)

  I clicked on the panel for that particular PSA. Nothing came on.

  “So all we can do is broadcast live?” Joydeep looked panicked. “What are we supposed to do? I can’t talk the whole time!”

  “I don’t know. Just get back on the air for now, and we’ll try to figure it out,” Jamie said.

  Joydeep got back on while we inspected the cables and wires at the back of the board and checked the computer.

  “Should we restart it?” Jamie mouthed to me, and I shrugged. Meanwhile, Joydeep continued:

  “So to expand on the thing I said before, drinking and driving is terrible. If you’re gonna drink, go ahead and do that, but don’t plan to drive afterward, because that is just. Irresponsible. Drink responsibly. Or don’t drink. That is up to you. That’s a life choice. Me? I don’t. Because it would be illegal. And you know me. Joydeep Mitra. A man of the law. And this man of the law … is hopefully going to have a song for you on the air … very soon. A song from the year 1992. Or really, at this point, a song from any era. Just some cool, good music. Coming at you. From our studio. Out … into the environment…”

  He started signaling to me somewhat desperately, a How long do I have to keep this up for? kind of look on his face.

  Sasha noticed and mouthed “WEATHER” to him, holding up her phone.

  “And in the meantime…” Joydeep scrunched up his face. “Wet Thorpe?”

  “Noooooo,” Sasha whispered, waving her arms frantically.

  “In the meantime, enjoy the silence and we’ll be right back.” Joydeep pushed his mic away, and I scrambled for the mic control as he said, “What the fuck is Wet Thorpe?”

  It was definitely broadcast.

  “Oh my god, Joydeep,” Jamie exclaimed as Sasha shouted, “WEATHER!” and then my fingers finally found the button.

  It was not looking good for us.

  13.

  IT WAS NO SHOCK WHEN we were called to stay after class on Friday.

  Mr. Tucker sat on the edge of his desk. A chant of No! Dead! Air! played on a loop in my mind, fueled by anxiety and the sober expression on Mr. Tucker’s face. His voice was measured when he spoke: “So. About your last show…”

  Our solution to the music problem hadn’t been particularly elegant. We were too afraid to turn the system off and then back on ag
ain in case we messed up something even more spectacularly. So basically, we just played through the playlist and did the links like usual, as if the music was actually being broadcast. As if we weren’t violating No Dead Air at all.

  Nobody’s listening anyway, Joydeep had said, and he was right. The counter fluctuated between one and zero most of the night—it topped out at two for a moment there and then dipped back down when whoever it was realized that between Joydeep’s lengthier-than-usual links and PSAs, there was absolutely nothing being broadcast.

  “You actually listen to the shows?” Joydeep asked.

  “Everything’s archived, remember?” Mr. Tucker said gently.

  “Yeah, but that’s like … sixteen hours of radio a week.”

  “Fifteen,” he corrected. “We’ve got the talk show, remember?”

  “How could I forget Cat Chat?” Joydeep said blandly, and I shot him a look.

  Mr. Tucker didn’t acknowledge it, just continued: “I will admit, I do fast-forward through the music a lot of the time, but I try to listen to at least a couple links for each show, your intros and sign-offs. You know, during my commute, at the gym and stuff, it fills up the time. And I like hearing you guys. Plus I need to be able to give you feedback, right?”

  We all nodded.

  “So about your show last night. It seemed like there were some … technical difficulties?”

  “We’re sorry,” Jamie jumped in. “There was a problem with the music. It was my fault.” It patently wasn’t. “We tried to fix it, but we couldn’t figure it out.”

  “I went ahead and restarted the system this morning, checked the equipment and the software, and everything seemed to be in order, so it seems like something that got resolved by the restart. We’re broadcasting fine now. But if something like this happens again, I want you guys to shoot me an email as soon as you know that something’s not right with the equipment. I know there’s no one on after you guys, so you have the responsibility of closing up shop for the night. And that includes letting me or someone else at the station know if things aren’t running correctly.”

  We all nodded.

  “Definitely,” Jamie said. “We will. We’re sorry.”

  And I thought maybe that would be it, until Mr. Tucker spoke again, a wry expression on his face.

  “And about the language…”

  “It won’t happen again,” Joydeep said quickly. “Scout’s honor.”

  Mr. Tucker nodded and then dismissed us.

  Joydeep let out a breath when we got in the hallway. “Good thing I’m not a Boy Scout.”

  14.

  I FOLLOWED JAMIE WHILE SASHA and Joydeep headed their separate ways. It seemed like we were making a habit of this.

  “I didn’t need you to cover for me.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “You were,” I said as we made our way down the hall. “I was running the board. I should’ve been able to figure it out.”

  “We were all at fault. Or…” Jamie scrunched up his face. “None of us were, actually. It was a freak malfunction. We were just unlucky.”

  Maybe that was true. But either way: First it was the job at Pipers, and now he was taking the blame for this. I didn’t want to owe Jamie anything. It wasn’t specific to him—I didn’t want to owe anyone anything. But something about it being him specifically made it worse.

  “I don’t need anyone … rescuing me, or whatever,” I said after a moment.

  “I know.” He glanced over at me with a hint of a smile. “Believe me, I remember.”

  I was reminded all at once of our childhood game of Kingdom, and there was no way Jamie wasn’t thinking of it too. Kingdom had always had a rescue component, but it was very rarely a rescue of my sisters or me. Instead, we focused our efforts on saving Jamie.

  Kingdom was invented out of boredom, as most childhood games are. It was one of those weird sorts of imaginary games that you get into at nine or ten, when you’re old enough to think up some truly ghoulish things but young enough to still want to play pretend.

  My sisters and I were obsessed with fairy tales at the time, and we wanted to make our own. We decided being princesses or whatever was too played-out, so we took on different roles: Rose was a rogue bounty hunter named Iliana. Sidney, only six at the time, was a troll, because she was obsessed with the trolls in Frozen. I remember her glaring up at us when she declared that she wanted her name to be “Quad.”

  “Why?” Rose looked baffled.

  “Because that’s the name I want!”

  “But—”

  “Quad! Quad! Quad!” she chanted, her little fists beating in time against her thighs.

  We were forced to relent eventually and decided that Quad the Troll had very specific powers—camouflage, communication with animals, and super strength.

  I established an intricate backstory for my character, Aurelie. She worked in a bakery by day, but by night she practiced all manner of magic—predicting futures, making potions, casting spells. I remember tying dental floss around a rock we found outside and holding it over a map that Rose had drawn, shushing the others while I focused my energies. I liked the idea of a seemingly normal person with hidden powers that they only revealed at incredibly crucial moments. I liked, I suppose, the idea of being underestimated and then exceeding people’s expectations.

  Jamie joined our game since Gram watched us pretty regularly after school. We gave him little choice in the matter, but Jamie usually went along with whatever we wanted to do anyway. It was no fun having Jamie rescue us, so we decided we would rescue him—the errant prince always getting himself into scrapes with dragons that were after his gold, or sorcerers who gave him poisoned fruit, or witches who put him into trances. We dubbed him Prince Hapless, after one of Rose’s vocabulary words. Hapless meant unlucky.

  Jamie’s portrayal of Prince Hapless was amazing. He seemed every inch the charming, funny, completely brainless prince. The kind who’d accidentally fall in thrall to a witch because he’d stopped to help her fix a wagon wheel or something and didn’t realize he was being hexed.

  Prince Hapless would frequently slip into a coma, or a trance, and sometimes it was a counter-spell that brought him out of it, or the breaking of a cursed relic. Sometimes it was a kiss.

  I was the only one willing to “kiss” Jamie—I would rest my hand over his mouth and peck the back of it, making an overexaggerated smacking sound. His eyes would spring open. For a second, as I hovered there, still close, they would be all I could see.

  I liked that second.

  Maybe it was nostalgia or spending more time with him lately, maybe it was the weirdly potent memory of Jamie wearing one of Papa’s white dress shirts with a scarf for a sash. Whatever the reason, as we walked past the auditorium, then the administrative offices, I couldn’t help but ask: “So … What’s Prince Hapless up to these days?”

  Jamie smiled almost reflexively, but it faded after a moment. “He’s dead,” he said.

  “Dead?” I repeated.

  “Mm. He’s entombed in a majestic field next to this, like, super clear lake. The flowers growing around his grave bloom for just one day every spring, and it’s an official day of mourning for all his people. And then after that, they throw like a really dope music festival there.”

  A pause. “Sorry to hear that. That he died. The music festival sounds cool, though.”

  He grinned.

  “What about, uh…” Jamie’s expression shifted to more of a grimace, some embarrassment tingeing it, like maybe he didn’t want to acknowledge my fake fantasy character name even though I just acknowledged his fake fantasy character name. Or maybe he didn’t remember it. Maybe he had forgotten Aurelie, the baker by day, enchantress by night. “Your person.”

  “Oh, you know. Probably just … baking bread. Hustling people at magic pool. That kind of stuff.”

  “Nice.” It was quiet. Jamie cleared his throat eventually. “So.” He looked around as we reached the end of the hallway, and st
opped at the doors to the parking lot. “Where are you headed?”

  I blinked. “I thought you were headed somewhere.”

  “I was following you.”

  “Oh.”

  “I actually have class back in the gym,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said again.

  He smiled a little, still awkward. “So … I should probably—”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  “See you.”

  “Bye.”

  My class was back in that direction too, but it was too awkward to announce that, to have just said goodbye and then walk together in the same direction.

  So I lingered and looked at the school directory like I hadn’t been wandering the halls of Meridian North for the last three and a half years, like I wasn’t acutely aware of the location of my next class, and I listened to Jamie’s footsteps shuffling away.

  15.

  Conrad: This is 100.2 The Heat. We’re giving away tickets to our Birthday Bash in just about ten minutes here, so stay tuned. We’re going to play one of our favorite games, which is …

  Will: Ancestry Quarrel. [pause] Because Family Feud is, you know, copyrighted or whatever.

  Conrad: Yeah, no, that one doesn’t get better with age. But anyway, we’re going to get a couple people on the line here in a minute, but in the meantime, we’re talking about—what are we talking about?

  Nikki: Do you ever pay even a little bit of attention to what’s going on here?

  Conrad: You know, I have faith that my amazing team will keep me informed.

  Tina: We’re talking about first love.

  Conrad: Oh. Blech.

  Nikki: What? Why?

  Conrad: Why what?

  Nikki: That, like, disgusted sound.

  Conrad: It wasn’t disgusted, it was just—why are we talking about that?

  Nikki: Because of Tina’s news segment earlier! You weren’t even listening!

  Tina: The story of the woman with the locket from her first boyfriend? She saved it all that time? They got together again twenty years later?

  Conrad: I was checking Twitter.

  Nikki: Conrad!