Rock 'n' Roll Rebel (11 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

T
hat Friday night, Tig stayed over at Kyra's. With what Tig had endured at school since Haley's outing her as “the bully,” the idea of an evening with Aunt Laurie felt like a cakewalk.

Another reason Tig couldn't refuse the sleepover invitation? Kyra had promised to share a secret. A secret so big, she promised, it would change Tig's destiny. Right about now a change of destiny sounded pretty good to Tig.

Kyra had been reserved and fearful the rest of Monday after Haley'd read her essay, and she was even more skittish on Tuesday. But by Wednesday, Kyra had been practically giddy. “There's nothing to worry about!” she'd told Tig and the other girls. “I've got this one all figured out!” Whenever Tig tried to get anything out of her, Kyra would promise that the big secret, which she would reveal only when the moment was right, would change everything. Given Kyra's recent history with inviting Haley to sing in the band, Tig was more than a little anxiety-ridden.

Kyra had made Tig wait through supper, with no hint of the plan or whatever it was she'd come up with to fix Tig's problems.

It wasn't until they went to change into their pajamas for the night that Kyra was ready to talk. “Who has the best cousin ever?” she asked as she pulled her bra through the arm of her sweatshirt and tossed it onto the bed. It was a cup size too large. Kyra had bought it that way on purpose. Her plan was to grow bigger boobs based on the power of positive thinking. So far, it hadn't worked, but Kyra hadn't given up yet.

“I don't know,” Tig replied. “I'm going to need more information before I answer that question.”

Kyra threw Tig a pair of sweatpants from her dresser drawer. “Then information you shall have.” She took her laptop off the desk and sat on the beanbag chair, leaving room for Tig to join her. She typed in a Web address and said, “Take a look at this!”

It was an Evite.

To Kyra's birthday party in two weeks.

And the big headline said,
Featuring, Live in Concert, Pandora's Box.

Tig's stomach dropped. “What have you done?!”

“Are you surprised? I sent it out to everyone when you got here. I made sure not to send it to you, of course, because I wanted to see the look on your face.”

Tig asked again, “What have you done?!”

“What do you mean what have I done? I've saved your reputation! Haley's been telling everyone you're a loser. So all we have to do to thwart her is show everyone you're not a loser! You're cool, and you're in an awesome rock band!”

“But, Kyra . . . I'm not in an awesome rock band!
I'm in a beginner band, and we stink!”

“No, we don't! We were great at your aunt Kate's party!”

Tig stood up. She was about to lose it. “Kyra! Are you out of your mind? That was
one
song! That does not a concert make!”

“Well, we almost know ‘Plush,' and we know Claire sings that great.”

“Wow, two whole songs! And that's assuming we get ‘Plush' fine-tuned in two weeks. And, as I recall, you were pretty lost on the intro to that song.”

“I'll have it by the party.”

“Just for the sake of argument, let's say you do. Then guess what? We will have two songs! Whoopee! Kyra, two songs is not a set list! We will be laughed off the stage!”

“The problem with you is, you don't believe in positive thinking.”

“The problem with you is, you don't believe in . . . reality!”

“Can't you just
try
to have a positive outlook?”

“Sure. Two weeks from now we're going to be rock goddesses.” Tig picked up Kyra's bra off the bed and threw it at her. “And you'll have giant boobs.” Tig started digging around in her bag. “Where is my phone? I've got to call Robbie.”

“Robbie this, Robbie that,” Kyra whined. “I bet you wish Robbie was your cousin instead of me.”

“Oh, don't try to change the subject. I'm calling Robbie and, meanwhile, you're going to take down the Evite . . . or cancel it . . . or . . . How many people did you invite, anyway?”

“I don't know . . . only, like, fifty or so people.”

“Fifty people?!”

“My mom's letting me have my party at that gorgeous new pavilion on the river.”

“Of course she is.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

It meant that Kyra's mom was spending a fortune to throw an ostentatious party, but Tig knew better than to veer into family insults. “It means cancel the band! Take it down!” As Tig ranted, her phone rang.

“It's Robbie.”

“Naturally.”

Tig rolled her eyes and answered the phone. “Hey.”

“Have you seen this Evite?” Robbie was uncharacteristically shrill.

“Yes, I have. You don't have to say anything. She's taking it down right now.”

“No, I'm not!” Kyra said.

“Yes, you are!”

“Well, I hope she is,” Robbie said. “We're barely solid on one song!”

“Tell me about it. Kyra says she'll learn ‘Plush' by then.”

“No way,” Robbie said. “Those chromatic riffs in the intro are too hard for a beginner bass player. I was probably overly optimistic to even suggest that song for us at this point.”

“Positive thinking abounds all around me,” Tig said.

“There's no way we can play her party.”

“I know. It would be an absolute disaster,” agreed Tig.

“Maybe for you,” Robbie said. “I won't even be in town that weekend. It's my great-grandma's eightieth birthday. In Florida.”

Tig relayed the info to Kyra and then said, “Imagine how those two songs will sound without a guitar player.”

“We could get someone else to fill in,” Kyra said.

“No,” Tig said, covering the phone with her other hand. “Absolutely not. First of all, we're not doing this, and second of all, Robbie is part of Pandora's Box, and we don't play without her.” She spoke into the phone again. “Don't worry about a thing. We'll handle it.”

When Tig was off the phone, she took the laptop from Kyra. “How many people have responded?”

“Twenty-six at my last count,” Kyra said.

Tig scanned the list. “You invited Edgy Abz?” Tig asked. “Why would you invite her?”

“Who's that?”

“The redheaded rapper. From the audition?”

“I didn't invite her,” Kyra said. “What are you talking about?”

Tig looked at the names of all the people who'd said they were attending. She didn't recognize more than six or seven people from their school. “Who are these people?”

“I don't know,” Kyra said. “I didn't invite them.”

“Oh no. Kyra, somebody hacked into the invitation and sent the Evite out to strangers. What admin password did you use?”

“‘Kyra,'” she said.

“Wow, who could crack that code?” Tig said. “Passwords are supposed to be secure, Kyra!”

“It's just an Evite!” Kyra said. “I didn't think it was a government secret!”

Tig began looking up the names of the attendees on Facebook. One, two, three . . . eight . . . twelve . . . “They all go to County.”

County Middle School was Lakeview Heights's football rival. There was intense scorn on both sides.

“Who would invite County people?” Kyra said.

“Did you invite Haley?” Tig responded.

“Well, yeah,” Kyra said. “And Regan and Sofia, too. I thought, you know, it might be a nice peace gesture.
Plus, Mom told me to.”

“Kyra, don't you get it? Regan must know somebody at County who she sent the info to and then she told them to spread it around. That's how Edgy Abz saw it. Don't you remember what she said at the audition? She said she'd be there when we gigged so she could burn us to the ground.”

“Oh, I'd forgotten about that.”

“We'd be walking into an ambush. Edgy Abz will get all her friends from County to come and heckle us. Cancel it,” Tig said. “Now.”

“I can't cancel the party!”

“Then cancel the part about the band.”

“Okay, okay,” Kyra said. She edited the invitation. “Are you happy now?”

“I'm deliriously overjoyed.”

But even with the change made, Tig couldn't sleep that night. What could Kyra possibly have been thinking?

Regan was behind the leak to County; Tig knew it. She also had to have been behind the essay. Haley was too dense to come up with plans on her own.

The question was, exactly what did Regan hope to accomplish by inviting County kids to the party? How could she have known about Edgy Abz's beef with Pandora's Box? But with social media, everyone knew everything. Especially since people like Edgy Abz were likely to keep their profiles public and post everything that made them mad. Tig couldn't resist. She looked up Edgy Abz's profile on her phone. It was wide open, no privacy settings. And there it was. The post.

It's goin' down at this party. Lakeview girls who dissed my rhymes about to get schooled. You gotta be there to see it. #revenge #lightthefuse #pumped.

Then she linked to the Evite.

Tig's stomach tied itself in a knot. What a trap they would've walked into! Thank goodness, she'd gotten Kyra to cancel the performance.

But now that the plan for County kids to heckle them at Kyra's party had been ruined, what would the Bots come up with for plan B?

Chapter Twenty-Six

O
n the upside, people at school started talking to Tig again.

On the downside, all they wanted to talk about was the band. How long had they had a band? What kind of music did they play? Who was in it? And, of course, why had they canceled on Kyra's party?

Tig realized that the idea of having a band was a lot easier than the reality. It seemed that everyone at school looked at her differently . . . sort of with admiration and interest.

But despite the temptation to exaggerate (how she wanted to say something like,
Yeah, we've only got about twenty-nine songs on the set list so far
or
I'm working on some original music so we can lock up a recording contract
), Tig downplayed the whole thing. Of course, she didn't feel the need to overshare either. When asked why the gig had been canceled, she simply replied, “Our guitarist is going to be out of town.” Which, of course, was true. She just omitted
And we know only one song, and sometimes Kyra and I even flub that one.

After all, some things were better left unsaid.

That was what Tig thought.

Haley did not, however, share that opinion.

Before the bell rang in math class and the teacher was out policing the halls, Justin Watkins, a second-stringer on the football team, started in on Tig. “Haley tells me your band stinks.”

Tig felt her face go red, but she tried to keep her cool. “Oh, she does, does she?”

“Yeah,” Justin continued. “She said y'all aren't even a real band and that you don't even have a lead singer because she quit.”

“Haley's saying she quit our band?”

“Yeah. Said she quit because the band stinks so bad.”

“So last week the story was that I bullied her out of the band, and this week the story is that she quit. Do you see the inconsistency, Justin?”

Justin looked confused.

Tig continued. “How could I have kicked her out of the band if she quit?”

Logic, however, was lost on Justin and, apparently, the rest of the student body. It was like a bad soap opera where the writers forget the previous week's storylines when they write new scripts. The fickle middle-school public didn't care that Haley's stories contradicted each other; the truth was much less intriguing than the stories the Bots told.

Tig cursed herself for forgetting to pack a drink that day. She had no choice but to get in the lunch line to buy a carton of milk. The Bots were way ahead of her, but upon seeing her, they ditched their spot to join her at the line's end.

“How humiliating about your band,” Regan said.

“There's nothing humiliating about my band,” Tig said. She looked at Haley. “At least not anymore.” There was a twitter of
ooh
s from the audience.

“There must be,” Regan continued, “if you're afraid to play Kyra's party.”

“We're not afraid of anything. Our guitarist is going to be out of town.”

“And I guess there's only one person in town who knows how to play a guitar,” said Regan.

“There's only one guitarist in our band. It's called loyalty.”

“Or an excuse,” Regan replied.

“I wouldn't even think about playing a gig unless every member of the band could make it. It's what real bands do, out of respect for the audience. They come to see Pandora's Box, not mostly Pandora's Box and subs. But you wouldn't know anything about the music business.” Tig was pretty pleased with herself. She actually didn't have the first clue as to whether real bands ever subbed musicians, but she thought throwing around the “music business” stuff made her sound like she knew what she was talking about and might be enough to shut Regan up.

“You are such a loser,” said Regan. “Say whatever you want, but we all know you're just afraid to show everyone you're not really in a
real
band. Everybody knows you're a poser, pretending to be cool when you're not.”

“Yeah, if you were really a good band, you'd play,” said some guy from behind them in line.

“I'd play in a heartbeat if I had a band,” said a random girl in the line. “What's the big deal?”

“Anybody can say they're in a band,” said another guy. “Why doesn't she just prove it?”

There was a lot of muttering. It seemed the whole lunch line had an opinion about Tig and her band. “This is
so
not your business!” Tig said loudly enough for the whole line to hear. But no one stopped muttering. It was like they'd all made up their minds about Tig and Pandora's Box, and there was nothing she could do to change that.

Tig couldn't stand it. “Listen, everybody,” Tig said even more loudly this time. “If I thought for one second I could find a guitarist on such short notice, I'd show you all who's in a ‘real' band!”

“I play a little guitar.”

Tig froze. The voice sounded just like Will's.

She turned around. It was Will.

“You play drums,” Tig said. “Not guitar.”

“I prefer drums,” Will said. “But I dabble with guitar. I mean, I'm not great or anything, but I just heard something about you needing a guitarist. Maybe I could help?”

Tig wanted to die. Where were freak medical anomalies like teenage aneurysms when she needed one? “No offense, Will, but I mean, our guitarist is pretty advanced.”

“See? She's chicken,” said Regan. “What's the matter, Tig? The nerd prince has come to your rescue, so now you have no excuse. Are you going to put up or shut up? Either your ‘band' plays at Kyra's party or you admit you can't really play at all.”

“Oh, wait . . . ,” Will began. “I didn't know what y'all were talking about. I just caught the last part and I thought—” No one was listening.

“She won't do it,” said Haley. “I'm telling you, they stink.”

“Oh, we'll play, all right,” Tig said. “And then we'll just see who stinks.”

“Great,” said Regan. “I know I can't wait.”

“Me neither,” said Tig.

As the Bots paid for their bottled water and salads, Tig's head began to throb. She paid for her milk and sat down next to Olivia at their table.

“What's wrong?” Robbie asked.

“Nothing,” said Tig. “Except that I just made a huge, horrible mistake.”