Authors: Kevin Emerson
Ladies and gentlemen
, the stadium announcer booms,
the Rusty Soles!!!
The crowd roars.
“Here comes Anthony’s part!” Mr. Darren calls over the sound, and he nods and Valerie does a cool fill down the toms and
bam!
we change to the new part like doing a backflip into a pool. It takes Sadie a second to find some notes but she has good instincts and she goes up to a higher register than she was in for the first part, and so it’s even bigger and we are totally going to nail this show, nail it nail it nail it—
But then the lounge door bursts open again, slicing my happy thoughts in half like strafing machine-gun fire. We grind to a halt in that car-crash way that happens when you stop playing abruptly.
It’s Ms. Tiernan, and … uh-oh. I’ve never quite seen this look before. She’s pissed. Like, for real. And looking right at:
Sadie.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Darren,” says Ms. Tiernan. “I’m afraid I’m going to need Sadie to come with me.”
Sadie’s face has fallen and gotten red in a very un-Sadie-like way. Usually, she’d be freaking out and protesting about getting in trouble, but this time she doesn’t even hesitate, just grabs her bag and follows Ms. Tiernan out. As she leaves she
even mumbles “Bye,” another thing Sadie would normally never do.
Uh-oh. I look at Keenan, and we know: whatever Sadie did, she’s in real trouble, and that means so is the show.
Sadie doesn’t come back to practice. Another bad sign. We spend the rest of the time running the riff and the new part. By the end it’s sounding really tight, but we are all quiet, worried about what’s happened to Sadie, and to our band.
The school is empty when we’re done at five. Valerie gets picked up by her older sister and Keenan and I walk home. It is misting out, and the kind of raw cold that for some reason feels colder than real cold. Keenan is wearing his black raincoat and I am freezing in my charcoal hoodie and thinking back to this morning when Mom was like, “Take your coat,” and I was like, “I don’t need it,” and now I’m annoyed that she was right.
Keenan and I are silent as we leave school grounds, lugging our guitars. Some of my thoughts have gone back to the fight earlier today, and the others are on Sadie, and it all adds up to a mood even darker than these rain clouds.
“What do you think was up with Sadie?” Keenan finally asks.
“I don’t know, but you know it’s bad.”
“Yeah.”
We get to the intersection where our paths split and Keenan says, “Oh crap, you’ve got the whole thing with the call home.”
“Ugh.” With everything else, I’d completely forgotten about that. “Yeah,” I mutter.
“Good luck,” says Keenan.
I walk another two blocks home. Our house is like the others on the street and in most of Seattle—a little craftsman. The only thing that makes it stand out is that it’s this puke-yellow color that was supposed to be sunflower but came out too dark. My parents want to get it redone but they can’t afford it right now and so we all kind of hate it together.
Also last year Mom and Dad had the whole front yard covered in gravel because if you water the grass these days you’re personally responsible for killing the Earth. I remember eating lunch on that grass, and lying out there drawing. Now it’s all shrubs and a little spiral stone path and a bench that nobody ever sits on. The backyard is a little better but it’s mostly deck. That’s how everything kind of goes in our house. Organized, structured, neat, except my room and I never hear the end of it about that.
Mom’s car is in the driveway. She’s been home a lot lately
because after she worked my whole life at Microsoft, something to do with organizing people, they let her go. It was so cool when she worked there because she had the inside track on the best new games and stuff. I don’t know what this Christmas will be like without that. Now she’s got this idea to try to start some kind of environmentally friendly dry-cleaning business but it’s expensive and these days nobody bothers to dry-clean things much and so that idea is kind of on hold and she is “regrouping.”
And that means she’s home. A lot. So those hours before six, when I used to get home and grab some Doritos and Coke and play video games and then crank Merle up to floor-vibrating volume and let it out? Gone. The guitar playing has to be at a
Reasonable Volume
. The games have to be homework. And the Doritos and Coke are long gone too.
And that also means there will be no delaying any fallout from a phone call home.
“Hey, Ant,” Mom says as I shuffle inside. I tense up. Here we go … but she shortened my name like she used to when I was little. That’s a good sign.
So I reply, “Hey, Rosalie.” This is one of the jokes I would make any other day and so I still make it, calling her by her first name in a tone kind of like we are pals or something.
“Don’t be obnoxious,” she says. “Here.”
I drop my bag and toss my jacket and turn to find Mom holding out a plate of prison food. “What’ll it be today, Mein Herr?” Another of my usual jokes.
“Anthony,” she says, and she sounds edgy, but again, pretty much like any other day. She’s always kind of crabby by the time I get home because she’s been here all day and there’s only so much “regrouping” you can do before everything is grouped and the house is so clean there might as well be velvet ropes and security guards everywhere.
I look over the plate. Let’s see, Stalag VII-A, Allied POW 4356, what’s on today’s menu? We have five whole-wheat and flaxseed crackers, each covered in fat-free cheese spread, and three celery sticks, each with a spit-sized blob of almond butter. When you are prediabetic you have to know about how to eat to have good blood chemistry. The crackers have a lower glycemic index because they have more fiber, so it’s like putting really inefficient fuel in your body that your system has to work harder to use, and that keeps you full longer. White carbs and sugar are like dry kindling, and whole wheat is like burning wet wood. The cheese spread has a lot of protein, and the fats in the almond butter are the good fats, and the celery is celery. I get why it’s all good for me and why I need it. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to throw the plate against the wall and go back to my cell where I am secretly digging my tunnel out of here. Over on the counter is a glass of vegetable juice. Mmm, just like Coke.
But I just say thanks and take the plate and the glass. It
totally sucks to have already lost your Doritos and Coke privileges by age fourteen, but at least my parents and my sister, Erica, are eating this way too. Erica is no beanpole, and Rosalie definitely fills out her clothes. Dad is mostly thin except in spots.
I guess if I’m really honest I get that when it comes to food, we Castillos are in a stalag together, and the Germans are our genes, standing guard with uniforms and guns, while behind them the SS officers are the sinister scientists from the food corporations, cloaked in dark trench coats, planning new devices of blood sugar torture. They’ve already taken three of my grandparents, and an uncle on each side, to the chambers where they apply the triglycerides and the trans fats and the empty carbs until the blood glucose is through the roof and causing the heart attacks and the limb amputations. These stupid crackers and celery sticks are our Resistance, our tunnel out together.
“I’ll be upstairs,” I say, and I am just starting to turn away when I hear the sigh from Mom.
“Principal Tiernan called.”
Crap. Here we go.
I try to head off the attack. “Mom, it was so stupid.…” I can already see that tired look in her eyes, and even though
I know I am going to argue this one out, I still feel bad about doing it. I know I’m one of the things that make her so tired, even though that’s not ever what I’m trying to do.
“It was just me and Keenan doing our thing,” I add, “and Mr. Scher totally butted in and—”
Mom cuts me off. “Anthony, this is the third call home we’ve gotten this year already,” she says. “It doesn’t matter that you and Keenan are friends. You are in school, and there are rules, and you need to follow them and behave appropriately.”
“Yeah, but the rules are for babies!” I say, and my voice rises but I can’t help it because they are! “We were just blowing off steam and if we were in high school it would be no big deal!”
“You might feel that way,” Mom says, “but you are still in eighth grade.” Her voice is starting to rise too, and when she gets frustrated I know she’ll make the leap, where one bad thing is suddenly also related to another bad thing.
“And what about your grades?” she asks.
There! The leap! Just like that!
“Who cares about my stupid grades?” I am shouting now.
“Are we going to see another report card full of Cs?” she says.
“I don’t know! And why do you always have to make it about grades and never care about the things I’m actually good at?”
She looks more angry and more tired all at once. “Anthony, that is not what I’m doing.”
“You didn’t even ask me about band practice today!” I say. “You just went right to the stupid grades!”
And in another amazing stroke of bad timing, right then the door opens. Dad’s home early from work. He has that tired look too, his tie loose and his gray suit rumpled from the car ride home. He works at a Chase bank downtown. I think he likes the routine of going to his job every day but I’m not sure how much he likes the job itself. Or maybe the reason he always looks beaten down when he gets home is that he does like his job and coming home to us is a drag, especially when he walks in the door to me and Mom going at it.
Of course he already knows about the phone call, and he probably heard the argument from outside, and so as he walks in he opens fire before his shoulder bag even hits the floor. “You better start caring about your grades,” he says, like he’s talking around a cigar stub, and then he just pulls out a grenade and lays waste to everything. “Or you’re going to have to start missing out on your other activities.”
There it is.
My only other activity is Rock Band.
“I didn’t …,” I start, but I have no intention of finishing that sentence. I just want to make some protest sounds and get out before this goes any further. Actually what I want to do is scream at these adults—my parents, Tiernan, Scher, all of them—wielding their power over me like I don’t even get a say. But I can’t let this get out of hand, not with Rock Band on the line. Twelve days. Just have to make it twelve more days. “Fine,” I mutter, and start upstairs.
“Anthony, are you hearing this?” Mom says.
“Yes! Where do you think I’m going right now? To do my
homework so I can be the valedictorian of your dreams!” I keep walking up the steps, cursing under my breath and adding so they can hear, “So stupid!”
“Anthony!” Dad snaps.
I stop on the stairs and sigh. “What?”
He pauses and takes a deep breath. When he speaks again, he sounds more calm. “How was practice today?” he asks. Dad used to play guitar so I think he likes that I do that too.
“It was fine,” I say, and even though I sound annoyed, I’m glad that he is asking about music. It reminds me that on some level they care.
“Are you guys ready for the show?” Dad asks.
“Getting there.” I don’t mention the stuff with Sadie, but I decide to say something else and for some reason I get a little nervous feeling as I do. “I wrote a new part today,” I say, turning half-around on the stairs, “to the song we’re working on.”
“Really?” Dad’s face changes, like a puppeteer just brought him to life. He showed me his tapes one time, of his college band. He sang some of the songs. They were one of those weird jam bands from back in the nineties, but they were pretty good players. “I bet that was exciting,” he adds.
“Yeah,” I say, and it feels good that he thinks that. For a second I think about apologizing for the phone call home, because you can always tell when the right moment for that kind of thing is, and also I have this tight feeling inside. I don’t want us to be mad at each other. I want them to be proud of me.…
But then I remember that the reason for the call was so dumb. Though maybe it would be good to just say it anyway … except now I am just standing there going back and forth like I always do, the right words never getting out, and then the moment feels like it passed.
“Maybe,” Dad says, and he’s talking carefully, like I’m a dangerous animal and he’s the zookeeper, “you can get some homework done before dinner, and then after that you’ll have time to practice a little for the big show.”
This, I know, is a good time to just say, “Okay.” To not exhaust them any further. To go upstairs and eat my rations and move on. It might be nice, someday, if I could actually make them proud. And Dad’s questions remind me that Arts Night is actually a chance to do that … if Sadie hasn’t ruined it.
I do spend some time on homework, and then we eat dinner, veggie burritos and spinach salad, stalag food that no one seems quite happy about, and then a dessert from the South Beach Diet that is custard and strawberries and a single dark chocolate square.
After dinner, I set up to practice our song. I run a red cord from Merle to a tiny blue Danelectro HoneyTone mini amp. It’s only as big as your hand, so obviously it’s not going to give
you any kind of giant sound that you can feel, but it does make a nice little crunchy rock tone. I plug headphones into the amp, and then finally it’s me and Merle again.
Time becomes the sections of the song. The universe becomes segments of four and eight, looping, repeating, but not just repeating, because each time you go through the part you play it better and hear more nuance and so you go somewhere deeper, and you feel all these new connections between things and feel how they fit.
I play and play, working on Killer G and the new part, which I’ve started calling Flying Aces. And that leads into other song ideas, and the rest of the day falls away, and when I finally look up the whole night has passed, my fingers and arms are sore, and I crash into bed with barely any thought.