Struts & Frets Page 4

  “Ha-ha,” I said.

  “Swear to God, I think I heard you turn the ignition.”

  “You wanna walk?”

  “I’m just concerned for the health and well-being of our only mode of transport. Maybe you should take it to a shop or something. Have it looked at.”

  “You wanna pay for that?”

  “My money’s all tied up in investments.” That was his usual joke response when people asked him for money. It’s what his dad said when he’d asked why he couldn’t have a car if they were so rich.

  “Anyway,” I said, “I’m sure they’d probably tell me to sell it for scrap or something. It’s only my remarkable Zen powers that keep it moving.”

  “You, Sammy?” said Rick. “You’re the anti-Zen.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Never mind. Let’s go pick up the floozy and then see that sell-out band.”

  When we pulled up to Jen5’s house, she wasn’t waiting out front for us. That was normal, though, because her dad said it was rude if we didn’t come inside and say hello to him. It was kind of like we had to ask his permission to take her out with us.

  We parked the Boat out front, then trooped single file up the narrow, winding walkway through the little rose garden and up to the front door. There was no doorbell because, according to Jen5, the sound of doorbells didn’t agree with her mother’s nerves. Instead they had a big iron knocker that I guess did agree with her nerves. I picked it up and clanked it against the door a few times. We heard shouts from inside that sounded like Jen5 and her father. Her mother was probably still at work. She worked even more than my mom did. But her father, who was some kind of language professor at Ohio State University, was home all the time.

  Rick and I knew better than to just open the door like we did at each other’s houses, so we stood and waited until the shouting match was over. Then we heard several deadbolts unlock and a chain slide, and the big heavy door creaked open.

  On the other side of the door, Jen5’s father glared down at us. He was really good at glaring, probably because he had to do it a lot with his students. And he wasn’t one of those flustered, stuffy, egghead-type professors. He was more like some old English lord, except dressed in preppy clothes that Jen5’s mother had probably picked out. He was tall and really thin, and he had these intense, piercing eyes that didn’t miss a thing.

  “Good evening, Mr. Russell,” said Rick. “We’d like to kidnap your daughter and sell her to the gypsies. We’ll give you twenty percent off the top.”

  Unless it was humor. Mr. Russell never got humor. He continued to glare down at us, but one of his bushy white eyebrows twitched a little.

  “Gentlemen,” he said. “Come in, please.” As we walked dutifully into the foyer, he called up the staircase, “Jennifer, your friends have arrived.”

  “Where are my pants?” she called down from somewhere upstairs.

  “Which pants?” he called back up.

  “The ones you hid from me because you said they looked like they were owned by a bum.”

  “Homeless person,” he corrected her. Then, “I threw the pants away.”

  “Liar,” she yelled down. “You never throw away anything.”

  He paused for a second, his face totally expressionless. Then he said, “You might find them in the attic, then. In your keepsake chest.”

  “In my . . . ,” she began, but her voice trailed away as we heard her stomp up a second flight of stairs.

  Mr. Russell turned back to us, still completely dignified.

  “Jennifer will be down momentarily.”

  We stood there for a little bit, all three of us uncomfortable. But Rick couldn’t take all the seriousness, so he said, “Say, Mr. Russell. Your rose bushes are looking splendid.”

  Mr. Russell glared down at Rick, but Rick held on to his earnest expression of innocence.

  “Thank you, Richard,” said Mr. Russell.

  Then Jen5 came down the steps, skipping half of them on her way.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

  “When will you be home, dear?” asked Mr. Russell.

  “Before Mom is,” said Jen5.

  “Ah,” said Mr. Russell. Then he turned to me. “Samuel, I trust you will have my daughter home at a reasonable hour.”

  “Sure thing, Mr. Russell,” I said. I couldn’t bring myself to make fun of him like Rick did. There was just something kind of sad about him. I imagined him sitting in the big stuffed chair he had in his study, drinking tea or sherry or something, reading depressing poetry for hours and hours while he waited for his family to get home. I don’t know. I just can’t be mean to someone like that.

  As soon as we were outside and the door was shut behind us, Rick called, “Shotgun!”

  “Chivalry,” said Jen5, “is so dead.”

  Monster Zero was playing at a local venue just off the OSU campus called Saul’s Subs. It was supposed to be a deli, and they did serve sandwiches and stuff, but there was also a bar attached called the Brewery. Since they were technically two places that just happened to share a wall, they could do all-ages shows. That combo made it popular for both high school kids and college kids, so it was usually pretty hopping. In fact, it was probably the best venue in town for local bands. It usually had just the right amount of space.

  But not tonight. I guess the hype from the stupid music magazine had brought in a lot of people who didn’t usually see local bands, so the place was completely mobbed. Rick, Jen5, and I pushed our way through the crowds of sweaty jock and cheerleader types who normally wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like this. I felt like we had been invaded and the place didn’t have its usual cool vibe at all. Instead, it felt weirdly tense, like a school dance, with lots of people sizing each other up.

  “This sucks,” I told Jen5.

  She shrugged. “Price of fame, I guess.”

  “Fame sucks,” I said.

  “You’ll keep saying that right up to the point when you’re discovered by a record label.”

  “Let’s find a place in the back to hang out,” Rick yelled over the noise.

  “We have to find TJ first,” I said. “He’s here by himself.”

  Rick looked around at the mass of shoulder-to-shoulder people. “That won’t be fun,” he said. “Why can’t TJ find us?”

  “Jesus, Rick,” said Jen5. “Come on, let’s at least try to look around a little.”

  We made our way through the crowds, scanning the top for TJ’s mop of brown hair. While we were looking, I spotted Joe and Laurie in a dark corner making out. Rick followed my look.

  “Shit!” he said.

  “Come on, guys,” said Jen5, pushing us on.

  “Did you see that, Fiver?” asked Rick. “Joe’s totally grabbing her tit.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she said. “Keep it moving.”

  We found TJ backed up against a wall looking lost and bewildered. Like he couldn’t even comprehend all the trendy people swarming around him. The look of relief in his eyes when he saw me wave to him made me feel like I’d just thrown him a life preserver. But by the time we worked our way over to him, we didn’t really have any time to talk because Monster Zero was onstage.

  Nobody noticed right away. The band just climbed up there, all casual, like they couldn’t care less that this was the biggest crowd they’d ever played to. It wasn’t until they started tuning up that people noticed and started to get quiet.

  Eric Strom, the lead singer, looked more like a computer geek than a rock star. He had thick, square glasses and short spiky hair, and he always wore thin polyester button-up shirts. He waited until the crowd was looking at him, then he cleared his throat.

  “Wow,” he said into the mic, totally chill. “Listen, I just have one thing to say to you people: Don’t believe everything you read.”

  And then the band blasted into their first song. A wall of noise washed over the crowd, punctuated by Eric’s howling vocals. Somehow, in a split second, he’d transform
ed before our eyes into a punk rock god. This was charisma. This was what I was talking about when people asked me why I wasn’t the lead singer. Because I didn’t have that.

  Eric’s energy, backed by the sheer power of the band, transported me, and suddenly the crowds didn’t matter. Joe and Laurie groping each other didn’t matter. An army of marketing minions and their bullshit magazines didn’t matter. There was just this band doing their thing.

  It’s hard to explain. When I’m playing music, that’s when I feel most alive. I escape from all the crap: no doubts, no worries, no fears. Just me. And when I listen to really good music, especially if it’s live, it’s the same thing. I’m transported and nothing else matters.

  When Monster Zero finished their set, I came back to the real world and looked around. Half the people had left at some point. I hadn’t noticed, and I didn’t really care. Because I knew that Monster Zero was for real. They wouldn’t sell out. They had proved that to me. And I was so relieved. I almost felt like crying. Not cool, I admit. But at the same time, I didn’t want that feeling to ever end.

  “Sam,” said Jen5. “It’s time to go home.”

  “Yeah,” I said, and all the fears and doubts that I had escaped came flooding back, making me feel twenty pounds heavier. “I guess you’re right.”

  “That’ll be you someday,” said Jen5.

  “Most of the time I think so,” I said. “But when I see a real band play, as much as I love it, it makes me feel like we’ve still got a long way to go.”

  “You are a real band, Sammy.”

  “We’ve only performed twice, and we didn’t finish our set either time.”

  “Well, okay . . . ,” she said. “It wasn’t your fault some neighbor called the cops on Laurie’s birthday party. You guys weren’t really playing that loud. That neighborhood is just full of old rich snobs who hate teenagers. And getting shut down by the cops is kind of cool, right?”

  “What about the show in Heath?” I asked.

  “Was that the one you did at the Union Hall with a couple of other bands that Joe knew?”

  “Hey,” said Rick, breaking into the conversation. “Are you guys taking about that gig we did where all those rednecks were heckling us?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It didn’t help that Joe decided to do an impromptu version of that old Camper Van Beethoven song.”

  “‘Take the Skinheads Bowling,’ right?” He laughed a little. “That was pretty funny, you have to admit.”

  “Right up until they rushed the stage and nearly beat the shit out of us.”

  “We got away, didn’t we?” asked Rick.

  “The point is, we’ve never had a real gig,” I said. “One that went well.”

  “Just believe in yourself,” said Jen5. “Don’t give up.”

  I smirked at her. “Thanks for the pep talk, Coach.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Fine. You’re going to work at 7-Eleven your whole life. Happy now?”

  hallway at school and stared at a new poster for a long time. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was thinking that the bell had rung and I was going to be late for class. But still I looked at the poster.

  It was glossy black with that messy “thrasher” font that had been designed to appeal to teenagers like me. The poster said:

  I couldn’t stop staring at the poster. It amazed me that the people who came up with this garbage thought they could get to us with this kind of stuff. A Battle of the Bands? How utterly lame. Music wasn’t a competition like football. Not that I expected a poser radio station like KLMN to get that. On the other hand, free studio time to lay down a professional-sounding track . . . that sounded really nice. And how funny would that be to have one of our songs playing on KLMN? And maybe then Mom would lay off about the math and science stuff.

  But who was I kidding? A station like that wouldn’t even like our sound. And anyway, I wasn’t sure we were ready for a big venue like that yet. But I still couldn’t stop staring at the poster.

  “That’s right, Sammy,” said a low, gruff voice behind me.

  Joe.

  “We’re going to enter this poser contest,” he said. “And we’re going to kick all their asses and get a single on that wannabe radio station. And then they will all understand what real hardcore is about.”

  The way he said it was so totally confident. Like there was no other way it could go.

  “Seriously?” I asked. “You want to join a Battle of the Bands?”

  “Why the hell not?” said Joe.

  I looked up at him, into his hard, angry eyes and his perpetual sneer, and it made me feel better. Yeah, I thought. Why not? What did we have to lose? Sometimes it was really good to have Joe on your side.

  “Joseph McConnahay and Samuel Bojar!”

  We both turned and saw Ms. Jansen’s head sticking out of her classroom door. She glared at us from behind her thick octagonal glasses. “Gentlemen, are you waiting for an invitation?”

  “Ah, Ms. Jansen,” said Joe, stretching his arms out wide. “I was just trying to peel young Samuel’s eyeballs off of this Battle of the Bands poster.” He started walking over to her in a casual swagger. “He seems to think that rock and roll is more important than literature. Can you believe it? The next thing you know, he’ll be sacrificing goats to Lord Satan!”

  “That’s not funny, Joseph,” said Ms. Jansen.

  “My humble apologies,” said Joe with a wicked grin. He had told us many times that he had a way with older women, but I could never tell if teachers like Ms. Jansen were really charmed by his little act or if they only tolerated it because, deep down, they were just as scared of him as we were.

  “Just get in here,” was all she said.

  At lunch, I didn’t go to our usual table. Even though Joe sounded completely confident that we would win the Battle of the Bands, I still wasn’t sure about it. So I found a little cubby under a staircase and quietly chewed my sandwich and worried.

  “Hiding?”

  I looked up and saw Jen5 peeking into my cubby.

  “Nah,” I said. “Meditating.”

  “Great,” she said. “Mind if I sit with you?”

  “Well, it’ll delay my quest for enlightenment, but I guess that’s one of the trials I must face if I am to become the next Dalai Lama.”

  “Oh, good,” she said and plunked down next to me. “’Cause I need help with English.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I said.

  “Yeah. Macbeth. Help me.”

  “With what?”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Didn’t you read it?”

  “Of course I did. But they’re always going off on these tangents about gods and stuff. I keep losing track of the story.”

  “Well, you know we were only supposed to read the first act for today, but it’s actually a pretty intense story, so I just did the whole thing,” I said. “I’m kind of amazed that Ms. Jansen was allowed to assign it to us, because it’s crazy violent.”

  “Really?” said Jen5 as she pulled out her salami sandwich. “What did I miss?”

  “Okay, well, Macbeth is this thane, right? This knight-warrior dude. And he’s won all kinds of battles for his king. But then he runs into these creepy witches who can see the future, and they tell him he’ll be king someday. And that totally obsesses him. He wants all that power, right? So he tells his wife about it and she’s like, ‘Let’s not wait around for this to happen. Let’s make it happen. Like, tonight.’ So they kill the king and Macbeth takes over and then he just turns into this total power-hungry psycho. Just goes around killing people, even friends and little kids and stuff.”

  “He kills kids?” she asked, the sandwich halfway to her mouth.

  “Totally. Lots of them. And the witches give him all these weird riddles, like ‘Nobody can kill you except someone who wasn’t born from a woman.’ And he’s like, ‘Awesome. Everybody’s born from a woman, so I’m totally safe.’ But then this dude named Macduff shows up who technically wasn’t born
from a woman. He was ripped out of her womb.”

  “Gross!” said Jen5.

  “Yeah, then Macduff kills Macbeth, chops his head off, and sticks it on the wall of the castle.”

  “And that’s the end of the story?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Wow,” said Jen5. Then she finally took a bite of her salami sandwich. She frowned at it and shoved it back into her bag. “You know, I think I might become a vegetarian.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked. “Feel bad about killing animals, or just want to be trendy?”

  “I’m serious. Some days, meat just seems gross to me. Like I can’t believe we put stuff like that into our bodies. Especially right after hearing you talk about babies being ripped from their mothers’ wombs.”

  I shrugged and took a big bite of my roast beef.

  “I wouldn’t want to be a vegan, though,” she said. “I like cheese too much.”

  “And leather boots,” I said, nudging the cowboy boots she was wearing with her plaid pants—a look that somehow made sense on her. “Vegans don’t wear leather, I think. No animal products of any kind.”

  “Yeah, screw that,” she said.

  We both stared at her boots for a minute. Then she said, “So why are you hiding down here?”

  “I’m not hiding,” I said.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “There’s some Battle of the Bands that KLMN is hosting,” I said, “and Joe wants us to enter.”

  “So?”

  “So, I don’t know if we should do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, I mean, come on. A Battle of the Bands? That’s totally lame.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re just so . . . commercial, you know?”

  “So? Do you get anything if you win?”

  “Free studio time and radio play.”

  “Well, that’s pretty sweet.”

  “Yeah, I know . . .”

  “Listen, you don’t have to sell your soul or anything, right? They aren’t making you change your songs or anything.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “So, you use the system. You make it happen your way.”