The Rock Chamber Boys : The Complete Series

by Daisy Allen

  “Dude. I give, I give!!!” he yells and lays his body flat against the ground.

  Bending over, I snatch the homework sheet back with one hand and offer him my other hand, helping to pull him to his feet.

  “Well played, Butter. Talk about an offer I couldn’t refuse.” He flinches as his hand hovers around his groin protectively and shudders as if contemplating what might have happened had he not surrendered. The look on his face is so pitiful I can’t help but give in. My eyes roll up into my head as I hand him the homework sheet.

  “Oh, you hath taken mercy on my poor soul. The universe shall reward you with riches and the never-ending joy of my company.”

  “Yeah, yeah, just hurry up and get it back to me before we have to hand it in,” I beg him as I brush the dirt from my clothes.

  “I am the very picture of speedy plagiarism,” he says with absolute confidence.

  “Mr. Windsor, Miss Butter. Is there some reason why you are late for my class?”

  Our teacher’s voice drifts toward us and we turn to see him striding across the grass, notes in hand, a wholly unimpressed look on his face.

  “Erm,” I start, but not sure how I’m going to finish.

  “Oh, Mr. Harris, don’t be coy now,” Brad pipes up. There’s that cheeky catch in his voice. Oh man, this isn’t going to end well.

  “Whatever could you mean, Mr. Windsor?” Mr. Harris cocks his eyebrow, twenty years of teaching experience telling him to just let the kid talk himself into trouble.

  “Well, weren’t you talking about how it’s better that we not go anywhere on our own on school grounds? That it’s always better if you can have a...what did you call it, ‘pal’? Just for safety’s sake?”

  “Spit it out, Windsor!” The blood starts to build up Mr. Harris’s neck and up to his face.

  “Well, we’re it! We’re your pals! Your very own double escort service, I mean…not that kind... erm, yes. It’s not safe for a handsome man like yourself to be wandering the courtyard on your own. So we were waiting for you as we are your very own bodyguard service to get you to your fifth-period English class, safe and sound. You. Are. Welcome. Come along now… we’re late.” Brad takes a few steps forward and calls out to me, “You take up the back end there, Butter. Can’t have Mr. Harris teach-napped under our watch now, can we?”

  Mr. Harris stares at Brad, mouth agape.

  “Um, after you, Mr. Harris.” I smile sheepishly and try to hold it together just long enough for him to shake his head and follow Brad, now a good fifty feet away.

  “By the way, Mr. Windsor, that better be your own homework you’re holding in your hand there! I expect that handed in as soon as we get to class!” Mr. Harris shouts to my mischievous best friend.

  Unsurprisingly, Brad suddenly takes off and disappears around a corner, leaving me to “pal” my English teacher all on my own.

  ***

  “You are a dead man.” I point and narrow my eyes at Brad as soon as I catch up to him in the courtyard after class. He’d conveniently found an empty seat in the back of the class to avoid my glares and had hightailed it out of there as soon as the bell rang.

  “Oh, whatever do you mean?” He plays innocent and my eyes narrow into such thin slits I can barely see him through them.

  “You left me alone with Old Man Harris and fucked off after your whole pal-pal speech! I had to explain that I don’t think you’re certifiably insane, but we can’t be sure until you get tested next week!”

  He finds this hilarious and laughs as he drops his ratted old excuse for a school bag onto the ground and sits on it. “By the way, thanks for the homework notes. I’ll owe you.”

  “You already owed me.”

  “Oh, so this one’s a freebie?”

  “No. Oh no, Windsor, you will pay. Mark my words, one day, you will pay.” I shake my finger at him, and he pretends to cower.

  “You can have my first born.”

  “If it’s anything like you, no thanks.”

  He starts to say something, then he stops, and a shadow crosses his face. “Incoming.”

  “Hey babe,” a deep voice whispers against my ear, “how’s my girl?”

  My boyfriend’s hand comes up to wrap around the back of my neck and he pulls my head closer for a kiss.

  “Hey Silas.” I lean in and press my lip against his and then squirm, hating the feel of his hot sweaty hand against my neck.

  “Oh, sorry! I forgot, the princess hates her neck touched.” His voice has a mocking tone and I know he’s still pissed from our fight last night.

  He pulls away and I face him, my eyes scanning his features, reading his expression. After a year and a half together, there isn’t much I don’t know about him. I certainly know enough that me hanging up the phone halfway through our argument last night was not going to sit well with him and that the radio silence since then was meant to express his discontent rather than an agreement to disagree.

  But it was a disagreement that was a long time coming.

  He’s made it clear he wants to go to the US to pursue his music, with me in faithful tow, and I want to stay in London and pursue my writing. The years at Guildhall School of Music have been wonderful in stoking my passion for music, but my talent has limits and I know that I’ve reached them. It won’t stop me from being surrounded by music; it would just be in a different capacity. What I do know is that that capacity isn’t as a groupie, which is what I’d be if I let Silas’s dream eclipse my own. He is good. But so am I.

  A clear and logical mind would tell me the right thing to do, but the heart’s never been accused of such practicalities.

  “Hey,” I tug gently on his hand and give him a crooked smile. His frown softens and I know that he’s as frustrated about our impasse as I am. He pulls me in for a hug and I can’t help but lock eyes with Brad over Silas’s shoulder as we embrace. The look on Brad’s face is tense, and I know he can sense that everything’s not all right between Silas and me.

  I roll my eyes to lighten the mood, but he just stares back. Despite being friends since elementary school[JD1], lately they haven’t had more than two words to say to each other, and I’ve managed to keep the two relationships separate. There’s just so much room for gigantic egos at one time.

  “Yo, Bradley!” a voice yells from across the courtyard and I see Jez, Sebastian, and Marius, Brad’s best friends and bandmates making their way toward us. He grins and jumps up, brushing the grass off his ass. “Gotta run! Nice seein’ ya, Silas. I’ll call you tonight, Butter.”

  We barely have time to answer before he grabs his bag and is sprinting away to meet up with his friends. Not for the first time, I wish I could follow him.

  “Babe,” Silas’s voice turns my attention back to him.

  “Hmmm?”

  “I thought we were going out tonight.”

  “We are.” I nod, kissing him gently on the cheek, hoping to break the ice between us.

  “Then why did Brad say he’d call you tonight?”

  “I dunno,” I shrug. “Force of habit I guess. He knows we’ve got plans,” I say in reassurance.

  “Good. As long as he remembers you’re mine and mine alone.” There’s a warning in his voice, and I brush it off as sheer possessiveness. Something that I’ve never really enjoyed but have tolerated in him. I’ve never given him reason to doubt my loyalty, and I wasn’t going to start now.

  Chapter Four

  Brad

  Present Day

  Two hundred eyes turn toward me.

  Pens poised higher and audio recorders stretched just that little bit further in my direction, waiting for an answer. I clear my throat. It echoes in the silent room, dancing back and forth on the waves of tension.

  “I’m sorry, could you repeat the question?” I need the extra moment to compose myself, my thoughts.

  I can just make out her silhouette as she pulls herself up taller and straightens her shoulders. It’s definitely her. I haven’t seen her for eight years, but
I’d recognize her anywhere, from any angle. There’s no lack of confidence in her figure and she doesn’t need to clear her throat. She knows exactly what she wants to say.

  “I said, ‘do you guys ever intend on doing anything but ripping off other musicians’ work?’ I mean, this is your fourth album now, the last one you won you two Grammys for Best New Artist and Best Contemporary Instrumental. But really, when you break it down, aren’t you nothing but a glorified cover band?”

  The two hundred eyes turn back to me again.

  In the corner of my eye I can see the guys trying to fight back grins and guffaws. I’m sure they’ve recognized her by now too and are probably picturing a hundred different times we’ve played out this very same argument. Of course, then it was just us, two stubborn music students trying to one up each other for fun. Now it was in front of every influential music journalist in England. And I wasn’t going to let her win.

  “Well, um, I’m sorry, what was your name?” I play dumb, buying time as my mind ticks over, still trying to process that it’s her. Here.

  “Emily,” comes the one-word curt reply.

  “What a lovely name. I once had a best friend called that.”

  “Poor girl,” she fires back.

  Jez, on the far end of the table, chokes on his water and I kinda think he deserves it for enjoying my pain.

  “Yes, well. She was a bit of a hag anyway. Huge Dumbo ears. And um, you know, that awkward, really long second toe. That’s weird.”

  A light smattering of chuckles travels through the crowd. I’m not sure they know what’s going on, but they’re enjoying it anyway.

  “Back to your question—it’s a doozy by the way. I might need a second to ponder it. While I’m doing that, can I ask you a question?”

  She shrugs one shoulder in response.

  “Hmm yes, chatty one, aren’t you, not at all like my old friend, Emily. Couldn’t shut that one up. Anyway, what’s your favorite song, Emily?”

  I can just see her open her mouth, pausing, and then closing again before answering. “I don’t…”

  “Nawww, come on, you’re here, reporting on us. You must be a music journalist of some sort. Are you trying to tell me that you don’t have a favorite song? And I don’t mean the one you think your music snob listeners want to hear is your favorite song. I mean the one that when it comes on the car radio, you turn it up and forget all traffic, red lights, pedestrians, and gets you singing and dancing in the street. The one that makes the whole world make sense for just three minutes and completely turns your day—no matter how shitty it was—around. What song is that?”

  I know what it is, and she knows I know.

  “’Tainted Love.’” She gives it up, reluctantly.

  “By?” I prod her.

  “The original, Soft Cell.”

  “Good choice. Except that…of course, it’s not the original. The Soft Cell version.”

  I can’t see it, but I can picture her, that little furrow of the brow, and how her whole face curls in confusion, not just her forehead. Her lips kinda purse and her eyes dart side to side as her brain churns in her head. It’s adorable.

  “Yeah, would you believe Soft Cell’s version of ‘Tainted Love’ is in fact a cover. A rockin’ singer by the name of Gloria Jones actually released the original in the ‘60s, way before her time of course. It flopped, giving Soft Cell the chance to give it a second life in the ‘80s. So, anyway. In answer to your question…no.

  “No what?” she replies.

  “No, we won’t ever be much more than a glorified cover band. We don’t really have it in us to compose. A few songs here and there, sure. Like the lovely one you’ve heard recently, the new song on our album, the single ‘Cadence’s Song’ by our man Sebastian over there. But we do have it in us to make melodies and harmonies ours. Breathe our version of life into them. And well, isn’t that what music’s all about? And anyway, since your favorite song ever is actually a cover—it doesn’t really sound like such bad company to me.”

  With that, I lean back in my chair and pull the sunglasses back down over my eyes.

  Through the tint of my sunglasses and the shadows in the back of the hall, I can’t make out the expressions on her face. But I don’t need to see them to know. She’s biting her tongue, and her eyes—those brilliant blue eyes—are narrowed to paper-thin slits.

  And it’s killing me not to jump over the table and run to her. Pull her into my arms and shake her, and ask her where the fuck have you been all these years? Why has it taken you this long to find me?

  But I don’t.

  The tension in the air is like a vacuum, sucking the breath and speech from everyone in it. All we can hear is the flashing and recharging of camera bulbs.

  “Well. Um.” There’s a squeal of the microphone as Hailey’s voice cracks over the speakers, breaking the silence. “It looks like we’re out of time now. Thank you, everyone, for coming. Remember, Chords and Chaos is out next week. If anyone didn’t receive a press pack at the beginning, please come see me at the podium now.”

  There’s an immediate din of chair legs scratching on the wooden floor and voices raising into conversation.

  I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

  There’s a soft punch on my arm. “Fucking hell, man. You got her,” Sebastian growls gleefully into my ear. I don’t need to look over my shoulder to know he is grinning ear to ear.

  I feel the other guys come up around me. But I can’t help staring out into the crowd. I can’t see her, but I can feel her. What the hell am I doing still sitting here? My inner conscience’s question must’ve rung louder than I thought, because there’s a bang on the table and I look up. Marius is staring at me, his hand wet from slamming his open water bottle down to get my attention.

  “What the fuck are you doing just sitting here, needle-dick? Get the fuck up and go get her!”

  Jez slaps me on the back as his way of agreement and it launches me to my feet.

  “Oh, what the fucking hell.”

  I leap over the table and down off the stage. Darting between the receding crowd, I make my way to the sole figure standing there in the back of the room. Waiting for me. Her features are becoming clearer as I make my way closer.

  Fuck, she looks good. Like time hasn’t bothered her with the pesky business of aging. She’s more beautiful than I even remember. Long chocolate-brown curly locks, her skin like porcelain, framing those blue, blue eyes that tell the world how she’s feeling every minute of every day. I’m kind of annoyed she hasn’t turned into a saggy old cow.

  Just as I almost reach her, she turns away.

  My heart somersaults and lands in my throat and my feet move just that little bit faster, then skid to a stop, but a little too slow, and I bang against her back. She lurches forward and I grasp her shoulder and spin her around.

  “Butter.” I say the name I haven’t let myself conjure for almost a decade.

  She looks up at me at the sound of her nickname, and suddenly, it’s only yesterday. Her mouth opens and I wait for the first words we’ve exchanged alone in over eight years.

  “Fuck you, Brad.”

  Chapter Five

  Emily

  Eight Years Ago

  I can hear the metallic rattle of the beat-up car drive up and the banter going on inside it long before it hits the driveway. There are voices rising higher and higher, their speakers always trying to compete to get a word in. There’s a roar of laughter and I imagine Marius has become the butt of someone’s one-liner, probably Jez. Then it quiets. That’s never a good sign. But it doesn’t last long and soon another roar shatters the car windows and echoes down the empty, silent suburban street and up into the cracked windows of the neighborhood.

  A car door slams and I lean over to peek out the window and see Brad stumble up the driveway.

  He sways a little as he stands in the glow of the motion sensor light, slowly flicking through the three keys on his key ring, as if choosi
ng the right one that opens the front door is a matter of life and death. I see him finally make a decision however, and he rocks back on his heels once, creating momentum to propel his body forward the last few steps up the driveway to his house[JD2] where I’ve been waiting.

  I should’ve known he’d have a drink tonight.

  Weeks away from the end of the school year—well, school life, really—it’s not like he was worrying too much about his future, unlike the rest of us. The boys in the band were just going to keep being the boys in the band. Taking them wherever their charm seemed to carry them. I hadn’t heard a flicker of fear or a peep of insecurity from them about their futures.

  Lucky them.

  The heavy wooden front door slams shut and I can hear him mumble something to himself. Sinking back into the bed, I pull the blanket around me, waiting for him to make his way up the stairs and to his bedroom in the dark. The pillow cradles my head, comfortable, probably because of the hours I’ve spent in it, molding it to my shape. There have been hours spent in this room with Brad listening to music, discovering new bands—old classics and mainstream guilty pleasures.

  I envy him.

  Him and his friends. They always talk about their future as if it is a given. Music. It is to be all about the performance, the creation, the complete immersion of their bodies and souls with music. They won’t have it any other way, won’t even entertain the thought that that is what their lives are not going to be centered around.

  I love music, but I just don’t have the talent. It didn’t take the last four years at a prestigious music school to learn that. I could’ve told you that from the first day.

  So I don’t know how the next five, ten, twenty years of my life are going to go. Hell, after what happened tonight, I don’t even know what tomorrow will hold for me.

  The memory of the night drops the black cloud over my head again, and the tear that’s been lingering at the corner of my eye falls.