Girl vs. Boy Band (12 page)

“Wow,” said Max, chuckling. “You're a tough one to impress. Remind me not to ask you what you think of our first single when it comes out.”

As Lark had predicted, having sand between his toes was going a long way toward making Max feel better.

They spread a blanket close to the water and feasted on the lunch Mrs. Fitzpatrick had packed at Lark's request.

“Seriously, though,” said Max, biting into a roast beef sandwich. “The palm trees, the sunshine, the sound of the surf. Tell the truth . . . some part of you must really love it here on the West Coast.”

“You'd think that, wouldn't you?” said Lark with a sigh. “But most of the time, I'm as homesick as you are.”

Max reached into the cooler and offered her a pickle, which she took and bit into with a loud crunch. “It's not really about the scenery. Malibu is stunning. Beverly Hills is gorgeous. The weather is perfect. What I miss most about Nashville has nothing to do with any of that. What I miss most is my dad.”

“Yeah,” said Max. “I've been wondering about what happened between your mum and dad. Donna mentioned she was divorced when we met her in London, but she never elaborated.”

“My dad's a session musician, so he travels a lot. And Mom wanted more in the way of a career than she had back in Nashville. Things got tense, and they both became so frustrated that they started arguing about everything from my education to what brand of barbecue sauce to buy. So here we are,” she finished sadly. “I suppose I sound like a spoiled brat, whining about living in a huge dang house in one of the most exciting cities in the world.”

Max smiled. “A huge ‘dang' house, huh?”

“Sorry. My accent gets stronger when I think about home.”

“Tell me about your dad, then.”

“Right.” Lark closed her eyes, picturing him. “Well, he looks like me, I guess. If you can picture me with a couple days' worth of stubble on my chin.”

“Nope,” said Max. “I can't.”

Lark giggled. “He taught me everything I know about music, most of all how to love it. We started writin' songs when I was—”

“Lemme guess . . .” Max said. “Knee-high to a grasshopper?”

“Please!” Lark gave him a pretend haughty look. “I'm a Nashville girl, Max, not some backwater hillbilly. But yes, when I was very small. Dad and I would sit out back and he'd show me how to play chords. I think our first collaboration was a love song to my favorite teddy bear. Do you know how hard it is to find a word to rhyme with ‘snuggly'?”

Max laughed. “Um . . . ugly?”

“On weekends Mom would come along and we'd go hiking in the Smoky Mountains. I'd always get tired halfway down, so he'd carry me home on his shoulders.”

“He sounds like a perfect dad.”

Lark laughed. “Well, he's mostly perfect. Except for when he leaves his stinky hiking boots lying all over the floor, or borrows my guitar pick and forgets to put it back, or when he eats the last piece of fried chicken that I was saving for a midnight treat.” But Lark even missed her dad's flaws these days, and would happily put up with his smelly boots.

“Ah.”

Lark helped herself to some potato chips, which she washed down with a sip of root beer. Aside from Mimi, she hadn't really talked to anyone about her parents' divorce. It felt good to talk about her dad. Her mom never wanted to talk about the past. She was totally focused on the future. Maybe it was just too painful, Lark suddenly realized.

“Okay, enough about li'l ol' me,” she said, turning her accent up to full throttle and batting her eyelashes in an exaggerated Southern Belle gesture. This had Max laughing, which of course was the desired effect. “Let's talk about
you
. How did you, Aidan, and Ollie come to be in a band together? I know you said you met at school, but from the looks of things, y'all can barely stand to be in the same room together, let alone on the same stage.”

“We were all at the same school in London,” he explained. “I'm a year younger, but Ollie and Aidan had been best friends for most of their childhood. They went to the same private primary school. Me, I'm not from money. But I worked hard and got a scholarship to their private secondary school.”

“Good for you,” Lark murmured.

“Anyway, Aidan was what you might call a piano prodigy and Ollie can play anything with strings. The music teacher knew I played the drums, so he introduced me to Ollie and we started meeting up after school to practice together. We began writing our own songs and got it in our heads to form a band, so Ollie asked Aidan to join us. We started playing at school assemblies and open mikes all around London, which was how your mum's colleague discovered us. Ollie's dad paid for us to record a demo and we made that silly little video . . . and now here I am, on the beach in Malibu.” He polished off his sandwich with a shrug.

So that's what Ollie meant when he said Aidan wouldn't be in the band if it weren't for him. And Aidan repays him by slugging him in the eye! Didn't he know the meaning of the term “loyalty”? Not to mention “friendship”!

Max grinned. “I know what you're thinking. If Ollie and Aidan were so close, then why are they at each other's throats now? Well, there was this girl . . .”

Lark sighed. How many stories about rock bands breaking up began with that exact phrase?

“So Ollie had a girlfriend,” Lark ventured, “and Aidan stole her away?”

“Nope. Other way around.”

“What?! No!” While Lark could easily imagine Aidan, with his self-important attitude, betraying a friend over a girl, she refused to believe the same of funny, charming Ollie.

“Her name was—is—Jade,” Max went on. “Long black hair, hazel eyes, and well fit.” He glanced at Lark. “Sorry.”

“It's okay. I get it. She's pretty. Keep going.”

“She's smart, too. When Aidan met Jade, he was totally into her. Thing was, Jade didn't have the same feelings for Aidan. She went out with him a few times, had a few snogs—”

“Snogs?”

“You know, kisses,” Max explained. “But for Jade it was just a casual thing. Nothing more.”

“So where does Ollie come in?”

“Not long after we made our video, Jade and her friends came to see us play at a battle of the bands competition in Brighton. Ollie was singing lead vocals, as usual. We were trying out a new song he'd written, a love song. When Jade heard Ollie singin' that love song, she was a goner. Fell for him head over heels.”

“Oooh,” said Lark. “That's not good.”

“She dumped Aidan straightaway, wouldn't take his calls or even acknowledge him at school. I'm not Aidan Harrington's biggest fan, but even I felt bad for the guy. He was crushed.”

“And Ollie started going out with Jade.”

Max shook his head. “No. I think he fancied her, but he kept his distance. For Aidan's sake.”

“He's a good friend.”

“Aidan didn't see it that way. Things between Ollie and Aidan haven't been the same since. The band would have probably split up, but when Donna offered us a deal, we decided to stick together.”

“That's terrible.”

They were quiet for a moment, enjoying the sound of the crashing surf and the squeals of swooping seagulls. Lark snuck a glance at Max and saw that he was still thinking about his friends. Clearly, being caught in the middle was making him miserable. She decided to change the subject.

“Did you always want to be a rock star, Max?”

“Sure. But to be honest, I would have rather waited a bit. You know, finish school, be a kid for a while.”

Lark gave him a confused look. “So why did you agree to sign with my mom's label and come to LA?”

“Because,” said Max, squirming uneasily. “My family could really use the money. Dad and Mum work real hard, but they're always behind with bills. If I can make it in the music world, I'll be able to help them out.”

Lark nodded, understanding perfectly. For Max, just like for Donna and Lark, there was a lot riding on the success of Abbey Road.

“How about a swim?” Max suggested.

Lark didn't have to be asked twice. She was on her feet and dashing toward the surf even before Max had put down his bottle of root beer. It never occurred to her to feel self-conscious about being in a bathing suit, either. Max was starting to feel like the big brother she'd never had.

As Lark and Max dove into the crystal-clear ocean, they sang the Beatles' “Here Comes the Sun” at the top of their lungs. It almost seemed as if the classic song had been written for this very moment, as the warm ocean water and California sunshine helped dissolve the sadness in their hearts.

CHAPTER

ELEVEN

Lark woke up on Monday morning feeling relaxed and with just the tiniest sunburn across the bridge of her nose. Checking her reflection in the mirror, she smiled. The extra color made her green eyes “pop,” as the beauty magazines would say. She wondered if Teddy Reese would notice when they met after school to rehearse.

She hurried down to the kitchen, where she found her mother in a terrible mood.

“Now what?” asked Lark, not really wanting to know the answer. Today was going to be a great day and she didn't want anything to mess it up. She couldn't wait to get to school. It was the day of the school's International Fair. There were tables set up all around the gym with parents and grandparents offering foods and displaying examples of their cultures of origin. Since most kids in LA thought of the Deep South as practically a foreign country, Lark had considered asking her mom to whip up a batch of homemade biscuits and Southern fried chicken. But Donna hadn't fried anything since they'd arrived in California. Lark suspected this was only partly due to the new image her mother was cultivating; the other reason was that a person probably couldn't even
find
chicken with the skin still on it anywhere within the city limits of Los Angeles . . . let alone a tub of Crisco!

“Some music blogger was at that club where Holly appeared on Saturday night,” Donna reported. “He wrote a great piece about Holly, but he also recognized Aidan from the footage of Holly that Mimi posted online. There's a whole paragraph about a member of a band called Abbey Road acting obnoxious and trying to get into the club.”

Lark stuffed a water bottle into her backpack. “Oh, no.”

“‘Oh, no' is an understatement. The boys are supposed to be behaving themselves. That's the marketing angle I'm aiming for. Wholesome. Clean-cut. I want them to be the sort of boys a mother wouldn't be afraid to let her daughter date.”

“They're normal teenagers, Mom. They have personalities, not PR agendas. Aidan just made a mistake.” She was surprised to hear herself sticking up for Aidan, but Max's story about Jade had caused her to see the group's “bad boy” in a different light. He had feelings, just like anyone else. His broken heart didn't excuse his actions or make him any less of a jerk for sneaking out, but she couldn't help defending him. “Besides, what are the chances anyone's going to read that blog anyway?”

“High, given that it includes a link to Mimi's footage of Holly Rose. I need to do some damage limitation to improve their image. But that'll take time. And I didn't budget for it.”

“Well, how about you dress them in white robes and angel wings and let them hand out signed photos of themselves on the corner of Hollywood and Vine?” She knew her tone was snippy, but what difference did it make? Her mother never listened to her anyway. “Maybe you can send them off to plant trees in the rain forest, or figure out a way for them to single-handedly save the whales?” Lark picked up her backpack and headed for the foyer. “Oh, I've got it!” she called over her shoulder sarcastically. “Since today is my school's International Fair day, you can have them play a free concert to benefit the youth of America.”

“What did you say?” came her mother's voice from the kitchen.

“Nothing, Mom. Nothing at all,” said Lark. Then she headed out the door before Donna could say another word.

At school, Lark saw the opportunity for a little fun from halfway down the hall. Mimi was standing at her open locker, focused on something inside as if she were in a trance. Lark tiptoed until she was mere inches away, then poked her head around Mimi's locker door, and shouted, “Boo!”

Mimi jumped and let out a little yelp, dropping her history textbook and quickly closing her locker door. “Lark! O-M-G! Way to sneak up on a person and give her a heart attack!” But she was smiling. And maybe even blushing.

“Sorry,” said Lark, laughing. “But you were totally zoned out. What are you doing so intently?”

“Um . . . you know . . . just redecorating.”

This was odd. Lark knew that lots of kids bedecked the interior of their lockers with small posters, magazine cut-outs, or bumper stickers. She would bet her boots that Alessandra Drake had a photo of Teddy Reese in hers. And a mirror, of course. Lark herself had an old family photo pinned to the inside of her locker door with a magnet in the shape of a treble clef. But Mimi was a minimalist. She liked to keep her locker neat and streamlined, so as not to clutter her mind and prevent creative thinking.