The Prom Goer's Interstellar Excursion (21 page)

Everybody from the bus seemed to be gliding in the same general direction, covered in their own coats of goop, with the exception being a lump I assumed was Walter the ram, who was spinning a different way entirely. I watched him become smaller and smaller until he was just a splotch far behind the empty husk of the Interstellar Libertine, indistinguishable from any small piece of detritus.

Goodbye, Walter.

I had no sense of how long it took for the comet to finally come and scoop us up. Ten minutes? An hour? It sailed toward us to begin its collection process. I couldn't imagine what Sophie was thinking—just when she thought she had been saved, she had to deal with
this.

The comet positioned itself over Cad, opened a portal in the bottom, and—
shloop
—sucked him inside. The comet repeated the process with Sophie next—
shloop
—and I felt a wave of relief wash over me to know that she was okay.

Driver was sucked up next—
shloop
—and then it was my turn.

The comet came to a stop above me, opened its portal, and—as if invisible hands were cradling my body—I felt myself being gently pulled toward it. I didn't know if it was chemicals in the goo or steady vibrations coming from the ship itself, but I suddenly felt like everything in my life was going to be totally fine.

Then I realized, nope. Not fine at all.

While the sensation of being coaxed into the floating rock
was pleasant, the
angle
at which I was being brought up was askew. Instead of being sucked into the
middle
of the portal, I was positioned way over to the
side
of the hole.

“Mmff,”
I said, or rather attempted to say—no sound in space—trying to signal to
somebody
on the comet to readjust my trajectory, but I couldn't move my arms to gesture for them to stop. I also couldn't shut my goop-covered eye, which meant I had no choice but to watch the rocky edge of the portal get steadily closer and closer and…

CLUNK

I hit my head on the ship, and for the second time in less than a week, everything went black. If I ever got home, I was going to start wearing a helmet.

The basement room where I woke up was clearly some sort of recording studio, given the amount of hi-fi equipment around, though to my blurry eyes it more closely resembled a sloppily constructed madhouse. Ripped foam padding covered the walls, there were deep cracks in the temporary-looking floor, and harsh fluorescent light shined down from naked bulbs hanging from the ceiling.

Promotional photographs and posters of younger incarnations of the Perfectly Reasonable were haphazardly tacked up everywhere. In each picture, the faces of the band members were scribbled out or graffitied or had nails driven through them. We were clearly in the hive of an individual
obsessed
with the group.

The band's instruments were lying in a pile on the floor. The comet-ship had saved them from space as well, though I had been blacked out when this salvage mission happened. All of the band's other possessions seemed to be gone, lost to the void.

Driver, Cad, and—to my overwhelming relief—Sophie were all there, while in a corner of the room there was a glass vocal booth in which Skark was sitting in a straitjacket, looking like he'd been zapped with electric currents. I later found out this had actually been the case—when he refused to enter the studio, he was zapped by our captor, and when he refused to sit down, he was zapped again, and then he was zapped a few more times so he wouldn't be such a pain in the ass going forward.

A heap of stained rags was piled against the wall, next to a can of solution that smelled like turpentine. It appeared that this combination was what Sophie and the band had used to wipe the goo off their skin, though nobody had done a particularly thorough job, and purple specks dotted everybody's face and clothing. I figured that Sophie had been the one who had de-gunked me while I was unconscious, given that she left behind her gooey
SG
initials on my arm.

“Thank God you're up…,” said Sophie. “I can't listen to any more of Cad and Driver's asinine conversations.”

“What were they talking about?” I said groggily.

“They were playing I Spy with My Little Eye,” said Sophie. “And Cad kept spying
me.
”

“Cad…,” I said.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean to be sketchy. It was just boredom.”

Skark was sitting in his booth, ogling us in catatonic shock. His mouth was moving, but we couldn't hear him because of the egg-crate insulation in the tiny vocal booth. A music stand with lyric sheets was positioned in front of him, and a microphone was pointed at his mouth.

On the other side of the room, behind a sheet of protective glass, hunched at a mixing console covered in knobs and switches, was a man with curly red hair. He was wearing a torn Perfectly Reasonable T-shirt, and each time he turned his head, I could see the heavy curve of his scoliosis-gnarled backbone.

There wasn't a doubt in my mind. This was Ferguson, the triangle player exiled from the band nine years before.

Ferguson pressed a button on the mixing console, and his voice rang out through an intercom.

“Finally
finally
,” he said. “Looks like we're all up and alert now. You know, when you guys kicked me out of the group, you told me I'd never be in the same room with you again…and yet, here we are. Back together, happily. The music press is going to flip out.”

“The band was
already
together, Ferguson,” said Driver. “You're not a
part
of the band anymore.”

“Since you fired me, you've been a glorified cover band,” said Ferguson. “You have no idea how disappointed I've been, watching what you've become. One billion sixteenth in the universe. Disgusting. When I was in the band, we were
twelfth.
Now let me think for a second. What is the missing link here?”

“It has nothing to do with you no longer being in the group,” said Cad.

“
The time line says otherwise,” said Ferguson. “You might as well be busking in some red-light district for Spine Wine and loose change.”

“You think that someone playing a stupid
triangle
has an impact on a band's popularity?” said Cad. “That's how far gone your spongy little brain is. Anybody can play the triangle. I could train an
ape
to play the triangle.”

“
I was the most talented triangle player this universe has ever seen.
And you dropped me without consideration of the
work
I had put into my craft, into this
group.
And now—here we are again, all together, and the triangle solo will be part of the Perfectly Reasonable once more.”

In the reflection of the glass partition that separated the control room from the rest of the studio, I could see that there was a contusion above my left eye where my head had smacked into the bottom of the ship. It was a cloudy purple, and speckled with smooth, blood-red bubbles. Every time I moved, I could feel my brain sloshing around inside my head, banging into the interior of my skull.

“Where are we?” I said.

“We're in Ferguson's basement,” said Driver. “You can tell from the lack of style.”

“This studio is about music, not comfort,” said Ferguson.

“I have a question,” said Cad. “How are we supposed to play when you won't even let us
talk
to our singer?”

“I'll let Skark out of his booth when you learn the sheet music in the folders,” said Ferguson. “Until you know the new song I wrote, there won't be any music for him to sing over, so
for now he's staying in his vocal booth. It's a little time-out as punishment for his past deeds, and a moment to reflect on what he's going to say in your press release stating I'm back. When you're done, I'll come in and lay down some triangle.”

“Skark is our guitarist,” said Cad.

“Oh, give me a break,” said Ferguson. “Everybody plays guitar. Have the guy with the welt on his head do it. You probably play guitar, right, new guy?”

“A little,” I said.

“Then learn the song,” said Ferguson. “I'll be back after I take a bath and do a mask. I need to look good for my reemergence onto the universal stage.”

Ferguson got up from his engineering console and left the room.

“What a
dick
,” said Sophie.

“He's always had an inflated sense of his importance to the group,” said Driver.

We looked at the booth. Skark's hair was falling out in handfuls, clustering on his shoulders. He was shaking.

“That is awful to see,” said Driver.

“Can you help him?” said Sophie.

Driver was silent for a moment, examining Skark.

“You might not believe me, but I think what's happening to Skark is actually good,” said Driver.

“Why?” said Cad.

“I think he's
detoxing
,” said Driver.

I had noticed that Cad also wasn't looking so great. He was
grinding his teeth, and his cheeks were sunken and corpselike. Runnels of red capillaries were polluting the whites of his eyes, and he kept pulling at his shirt like he was overheating.

“I'm feeling a little off myself,” said Cad. “And look at you, Driver. You're sweating everywhere. It's disgusting.”

Cad was right. Perspiration was pouring out of Driver's temples, down over his ears, and onto his shoulders, forming sweaty pools in the indents of his collarbones.

“I thought my body was readjusting from floating in space,” said Driver. “But you may be right. Perhaps we're all detoxing, but Skark has it the worst.”

Hands trembling slightly, Driver picked up the paper with Ferguson's song. “Does anybody know how to read sheet music?”

Sophie nodded. “I do.”

“You can read music?” I said.

“I play violin,” she said. “My parents made me learn in middle school.”

“There is
so
much I don't know about you,” I said.

“My family also has a harpsichord in the attic,” she said. “I'm weirdly good with any kind of baroque instrument. Too bad there are none here.”

Cad looked at me.

“She's amazing,” he said.

“I'm aware,” I said.

“Shut up and let's start,” said Sophie. “The sooner we do this, the faster we leave. Give me a B major.”

There was silence in the room.

“What's a B major?” said Cad. “I just play by feel.”

“Okay, this is going to take some finessing,” said Sophie. “Just play something that sounds like this.
Hmmmmmm.
”

Cad plucked a note that sounded like Sophie's humming, and we were off.

Cad, Driver, and I did fifteen run-throughs of Ferguson's terrible “Explosion of the Heart”—Sophie humming the song's notes as we figured them out on our instruments—before Ferguson made his way to the studio wearing a towel and holding a pair of scissors. He made his way to Skark's booth, and with a quick
snap
of metal he cut the straps of his straitjacket.

“There,” said Ferguson. “You once cut me loose, and now I'm returning the favor. I know it must be hard to be a front man when you know you have no control. So, so sad.”

Ferguson gave Skark a shove with his foot. Skark fell from his stool and began crawling across the floor, jumpsuit soaked with perspiration, groaning and stopping every few feet to make sure he didn't throw up. His limbs were spasming because he'd been bound too long, and he was shaking from the Spine Wine withdrawal. Every time he opened his mouth to speak to us, I could hear loose phlegm blocking his throat.
“Gack,”
he said, again and again.

Ferguson stepped into the control room and locked the
door to make sure we couldn't go assault him, watching Skark as he made his way toward the rest of the band.

“That is both a pathetic and a very satisfying sight,” said Ferguson.

We got out of our chairs and lifted Skark to his feet. His legs were flailing, so Driver plunked him down in one of the folding chairs. He raised his head and looked at me, and his voice was a rasp when he spoke.

“How—
cough
—did you get that horrible bump about your eye?” said Skark. “It looks like your brain is trying to escape from your head.”

“Hanging out with you guys, it must know it's being underused,” I said.

Skark smiled and coughed again. “
Gack.
Probably true.”

“How you feeling, Skark?” said Cad.

“Terrible,” he sputtered. “But sober, for the first time in about ten years.”

“This might be the first time the band has been together without
somebody
having some sort of liquor in his system,” said Cad.

Ferguson rapped on the control room glass to get our attention and pressed the intercom button.

“All right, there you go, you guys are reunited with your singer,” said Ferguson. “
Hurrah
, good vibes all around. Let's lay this thing down.”

“I have a question,” said Skark. “Were you the one who blew up the dam inside the Dark Matter Foloptopus?”

Ferguson smiled.

“I thought a good scare might get some of your creative juices going,” he said. “It makes me physically ill seeing what you are now, compared to what we used to be.”

Ferguson opened a cabinet inside the control room and reached inside to remove a triangular case. Reverently, he unclicked the latches and extracted a polished metal triangle and a brightly burnished wand.

“Hello, my treasure,” whispered Ferguson. He kissed the triangle, and I could hear the wet smacking sound through the studio microphone. “Time to make a classic.”