Battle of the Bands

by Eric Smith

  Why not, honestly.

  Her mom is humming “Killer Queen” when Cecilia finally comes downstairs. The smell of pancakes for dinner suffocates the air. Not just any kind of pancakes, though, but her mom’s specialty: chocolate murder pancakes. Grandpa taught the recipe to her, and his father before that, going far back into the Devine family line until . . . well, the invention of pancake mix, probably.

  She turns to Cecilia and asks, “You’re wearing that to the Battle of the Bands?”

  Cecilia looks down at her wardrobe. “Sasuke gives me strength.”

  “Then let my chocolate murder give you energy,” her mom adds and sets a plate on the counter. Cecilia takes one of the smaller brown chocolate pancakes, slides up to the counter, and nibbles on it. The bar stools have the perfect line of sight out the front dining room windows to the driveway. Cecilia waits anxiously for Roxy’s motorbike to pull up. Usually she can hear it before she sees it, but Mom isn’t a very good singer and she isn’t quitting “Killer Queen” anytime soon.

  In fact, Dad decides to sing right along with her.

  “Oh, Roman! You’re so off-key.” Mom laughs.

  “Only to be in tune with you, junebug,” he replies.

  Ugh, disgusting.

  Cecilia is saved from her parents’ blissfully happy marriage by the roar of Roxy’s beat-up motorbike as it pulls into the driveway. Thank God. She grabs her tiny backpack — full of fandom pins and sparkly key chains — and heads for the front door.

  “Make good choices!” her mother calls after her.

  “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” her father adds.

  Which doesn’t really rule out a whole hell of a lot, but it’s the thought that counts, Cecilia supposes, as she slips out the front door and down the front walk to the driveway, where Roxy is waiting with a helmet. She’s in her concert best, as always — a glittery rose-pink skirt with bike shorts underneath and a crop top under her riding leathers. Cecilia mounts herself onto the back of the bike.

  “You going to hold on this time, Ceci?” Roxy teases.

  Cecilia hesitates.

  “You’ll feel safer.”

  Of course she would. That’s obvious. But as she wraps her arms around Roxy’s middle — her fingers brushing against the warm skin of Roxy’s stomach exposed by her crop top, her heart jumping into her throat — she wonders if this might be more dangerous after all.

  The line wraps around the outside of Raritan River High School. Cecilia wrings her hands, glancing up at the ticket booth, wondering what’s taking them so long to let people inside. It’s sweltering in the afternoon sun. She can feel herself sweating through her Sasuke T-shirt. She tries to remember if she put deodorant on, but she’s been such a ball of nerves today that she’s thankful to remember her own name right now.

  “Calm your tits, it’s not like we won’t get in together,” Roxy says to alleviate her anxiety. She rocks back and forth on her platform Doc Martens, so instead of just being slightly taller than Cecilia, she’s astronomically taller.

  We look like a joke together, Cecilia thinks. Maybe she shouldn’t have worn her Naruto T-shirt. Maybe she should’ve combed her hair, or put on that green top, or maybe —

  “My tits are calm, but can’t the guy go any faster?” Cecilia complains, to stop all of the anxious thoughts racing in her head. She glances toward the parking lot, where a group of kids look like they’re about to get into some trouble. Cecilia doesn’t want to be a part of any of that. Thankfully, the line moves and they squeeze into the auditorium’s lobby, where it’s at least a little cooler, inching closer to the ticket booth. Cecilia looks past the line to the booth. “Yeah, the guy is definitely asleep. Or half dead. Maybe both?”

  Roxy laughs. “What’s the hurry? Do you have somewhere else to be?”

  “N-no! Of course not.”

  She’s afraid that someone else might tap Roxy on the shoulder and let her in on the joke — that they look like the strangest duo. Like a nonfiction book shelved in the fantasy section, Cecilia just doesn’t fit where Roxy exists so perfectly.

  “I just . . . I want us to get a good spot! Maybe you can see Theo early,” she adds, because Theo is the reason they’re there, after all. They’ve never talked about it, but she sees the way Roxy always looks at him in trigonometry. It’s like she can’t take her eyes off of him.

  Roxy’s eyebrows jump up. “Theo? I mean, sure, I guess . . . Oh, hey, we’re up next.” She nods her head toward the ticket booth and begins to reach for her wallet when Cecilia takes out two tickets from her purse and presents them to the guy.

  “Perks of my mom sponsoring the Battle,” Cecilia says by way of explanation.

  “Nice! Thank you.” Roxy grins as the ticket guy tears the tickets in half and gives them the stubs back. They meander through the crowd into the high school auditorium, quiet for a minute, and then Roxy says, twirling a lock of her rose-gold hair, “Thank you for coming with me, by the way, Ceci. I know you hate this kind of thing.”

  Cecilia shrugs. “It might not be that bad.”

  “Yeah, or you might hate it.”

  “Probably,” she agrees, “but at least I’ll get Dad off my back. You know he’s always like, ‘You should carpe way more diem!’” She tries to mock his deep voice, then shrugs. “Now he’ll have to pester me some other way.”

  Roxy looks away. “Ah. So I’m a means of getting your dad off your back.”

  “Well, the company’s not bad, either.”

  Roxy grins and elbows her in the side. “Gee, thanks.”

  Cecilia forces a smile, but what she wants to do is say the company isn’t bad — the company is perfect, and she really couldn’t care less about getting her dad off her back. She’s here for one reason, and one reason only:

  To be a good friend.

  And good friends go to concerts where their friend’s crush is playing, even if the thought of it twists some strange, deep part inside of them, because that’s what friends do.

  When they finally make it into the venue, Cecilia sees enough people from her school that she wants to crawl into the bathroom, lock the door, and not come out for the entirety of the show. The acoustics in this place are going to be terrible — the walls are cement, and the speakers look . . . ancient, to be polite — but at least there isn’t a bar or any nonsense like that. And the curtains almost match the color of the old ones. The drama club had to buy new ones after the old ones caught fire during a particularly rousing production of The Phantom of the Opera.

  Onstage, the manager and some of the stagehands are setting up for the first act already, plugging in the instruments and making sure everything is in place. Cecilia’s familiar with that dance — she’s seen stage managers and stagehands set up and break down her father’s sets for years.

  “The stage manager looks particularly frazzled,” she notes quietly.

  Roxy glances back at her. “You say something?”

  “Nah — where are we going?” she asks as Roxy begins to make her way through the thickening crowd toward a corner of the venue. “Our seats are the other way.”

  “To find a drink,” Roxy replies, gesturing over to a cluster of girls in the front left corner. One of them has overly large cowboy boots on, complemented by a frilly sundress. “I think Aimee snuck in some mini-bottles in her cowboy boots.”

  “Ah, so that explains it. I didn’t think she was the yeehaw type.”

  “You’d be surprised what you don’t know about people.”

  “I think I know most people,” she replies, and Roxy grins as if there is a secret tucked into her mouth. Cecilia’s heart quickens. No, calm down, she tells herself. You’re reading too much into this. It was nothing.

  It is nothing.

  They pass a few merch booths set up on the sides of the auditorium selling T-shirts, and she stops at one manned by a boy with wadded-up tissue in his ears, though the music hasn’t even started yet. Not a great sign.

  Roxy says offhandedly, brow
sing the wares on the table, “You just think the worst of everyone.”

  “And is that such a bad thing?”

  Roxy picks up one of the demos. In addition to loving motorbikes, the smell of an oil change, and bodice-ripping Regency novels, Roxy also loves new music. She and Cecilia’s dad get along so well, Cecilia sometimes thinks that maybe Roxy should’ve been her dad’s daughter instead. The first time Roxy came over to the house, she and Roman bonded over the complete discography of Motion City Soundtrack. Since then, they’ve swapped music recs and mixtapes and burned CDs.

  “Ooh,” Roxy says as she reads the back of the album cover. She points to one of the songs. “‘Written in the Stars,’ such a good title. I hope they play it.”

  “Probably will,” Cecilia replies, and points toward the girl in the cowboy boots with her group of friends. “That’s Aimee, right?”

  Roxy looks to where she points. “That definitely is.” She digs a ten-dollar bill out of her bra and hands it to the merch dealer before she dives off after Aimee and her yeehaw minibar boot collection, leaving Cecilia alone at the edge of the crowd.

  Not that she minds it. She likes being alone. And crowds aren’t that bad — she actually likes submerging herself in a sea of people. She feels anonymous then. Concerts, on the other hand, are different. Cecilia hates them because they’re loud and crowded and smelly, but the main reason she hates them is because —

  “You’re Roman’s daughter, aren’t you?” is how a guy in a band T-shirt and ripped jeans greets her. A guy she definitely doesn’t know. She doesn’t think he even goes to this school.

  This is why she hates concerts. She tries to look invisible, but she’s been on the cover of too many tabloids with her family to ever go anywhere unnoticed.

  “Sorry, you’ve got the wrong person,” she lies, not even looking up from her phone. Go away, she chants. Go away.

  He does the opposite. He doubles down. One of his friends says, “C’mon, man,” but the guy is either high or drunk or he doesn’t care about being rude as fuck. “No, I know I saw you in the audience at the MTV Music Awards last year when your dad got that lifetime achievement award.”

  Cecilia glances around for Roxy, but she has successfully disappeared. She said she was just going to get a drink — but Cecilia didn’t realize that entailed an expedition to the other side of the universe. With a sigh, she finally looks at the stranger and says, “Yeah, you caught me. Roman Montgomery’s my dad.”

  “Oh, fuck yeah! Your parents have a ton of connections. Mateo, let’s give her our demo,” he adds to his friend, who begins to fish something out of his bag. “We can bypass this whole stupid competition. Trust me, we’re better than all these other wannabes.”

  And here we are, Cecilia thinks, the same old song and dance. “I’m sorry, but I don’t —”

  “C’mon, just help a few guys out? You get it,” he adds. “Music’s hard. It’d be bomb if your dad could help.”

  “He doesn’t really do that sort of thing.”

  “Then how about your mom —”

  “Dude, asswipe, she said no,” Roxy cuts in, stepping between Cecilia and the guys. She glowers at them. “So get lost, yeah?”

  They step back, debating whether to pursue their dangerous endeavor, but they decide against it. Roxy is good for that. At first glance, she doesn’t look dangerous — her nails glitter and most of her shirts have patterns of fruits or cute bears screaming, “THE HEAT DEATH OF THE UNIVERSE IS COMING!”— but her glares can cut straight to the bone. Cecilia had been on the receiving end of one of them before.

  She never wants to be again.

  As they meander away, Roxy rolls her eyes and hands Cecilia one of the two Cokes in her hand — Coke that smells strongly of bourbon, so she must’ve tracked Aimee down. Cecilia sips slowly. “I leave you for a few minutes and you find trouble. What am I going to do with you?”

  “Protect me like the damsel in distress I am?”

  “Alas, my lot in life.” Roxy sighs, but she smiles as she says it.

  Cecilia quickly glances away. A blush begins to eat at her cheeks, but at that exact moment, the lights flicker — and then dim. The show is starting.

  Now all she needs to do is survive the music.

  “C’mon,” Roxy says, taking her hand. Roxy’s hand is warm and dry, and a shiver curls down Cecilia’s spine. It must be the bourbon. She can see Roxy smiling in the dim neon lights of the stage. “Let’s get closer!”

  Which means getting the closest possible seat. Which means she’ll be sitting elbow-to-elbow with some stranger, suffocating in auditorium seats that are too small for her gigantic ball of anxiety, and that seems like a terrible idea to Cecilia. Or it would, if Roxy weren’t smiling so wide, and if the neon lights weren’t catching her rose-gold hair in highlights of purple and red, and if Cecilia’s heart weren’t so traitorous.

  But it is, and as Roxy folds their fingers together, and her heart skips like a pebble over a pond, she lets Roxy pull her down the aisle to the first row.

  And she doesn’t mind.

  “I think Theo’s band is on first,” Cecilia says, angling the program toward the neon lights to try to read the print. “I usually hate concerts, but this isn’t too bad so far. I mean, I could do without all of the people, but . . .”

  Roxy laughs. “The music hasn’t even started yet.”

  “Thank God. Since Theo’s first, maybe we can leave after and —”

  “Oh no, you’re with me for the entire ride. Start to finish.”

  Cecilia groans. “Roxy . . .”

  Roxy bumps her hip against Cecilia’s and says softly, only for the two of them, “And I wouldn’t want to be here with anyone else.”

  Cecilia’s heart slams against her rib cage, and she quickly looks away. “Obviously, because we’re best friends,” she adds, because there’s not another reason, or if there is, she isn’t sure she’s brave enough to hear it. It’s bad enough that they are here to see Theo Debruin. “Besides —”

  But before she can say anything else, the lights flicker. The crowd erupts into cheers. The auditorium lights dim. The emcee — Mr. Bolivar, the music teacher — walks out with a microphone, the stage lights shining on his bald head. He’s a tall Black man in a polo shirt and khakis, best known for his award-winning music instruction and his terrible dad jokes. “Welcome to the Battle of the Bands! I hope you’re ready to have a rockin’ good time! But before we start . . .”

  “Oh no,” Roxy mutters, “he’s going to tell a joke.”

  “Oh no,” Cecilia groans.

  “What is Beethoven’s favorite fruit?” He waits for a moment, then another, but the auditorium is silent. Roxy shakes her head, muttering under her breath about why she quit band. Mr. Bolivar takes a deep breath before he sings, “BA-NA-NA-NAAAAAA!”

  Cecilia laughs. She can’t help it. The joke is terrible. Roxy elbows her in the side and hisses, “Don’t support his dad jokes!”

  Too late.

  Mr. Bolivar says, “Thank you, thank you. First up is a group who met in Mrs. Sanchez’s seventh grade science class and bonded over frog dissection. Please give a warm welcome to . . . ROCK YOUR MOOOUUUUTH!”

  The lights dim again, and then Rock Your Mouth’s Theo Debruin jogs onstage with his bandmates. He winks at Cecilia and Roxy in the front row.

  Cecilia’s mouth falls open. “Wow, he’s really wearing suspenders and no shirt, isn’t he?” she says, a little concerned at the sight of his nipples. Roxy almost spews her drink everywhere. His acid-blond hair is pushed back, red Fender guitar slung over his shoulder, and he strikes the Captain Morgan pose on one of the ancient speakers (which the stage manager probably doesn’t appreciate) and winks down at the crowd.

  “I think the first row was a massive mistake,” Roxy adds, wiping her mouth. “He’s really committing, isn’t he?”

  “I guess it’s . . . kinda cool?”

  “You think so?”

  In the flaring stage lights, she can b
arely see Roxy’s face. Is she grinning in the way she does when she’s making a joke? No, it doesn’t look like she’s grinning at all. “. . . Don’t you?”

  “Theo?” She sounds incredulous. “He’s a dumbass.”

  Has Cecilia read this wrong? No, it’s not possible.

  “You keep looking at him in trig,” she shouts above the din of the crowd. “You can’t take your eyes off him!”

  “I keep looking at Theo because he keeps looking at you.”

  Oh.

  But why would Roxy care about that? Unless . . .

  Oh — oh!

  And Cecilia never noticed because she kept looking at Roxy.

  Onstage, Theo takes the microphone and screams, “Hellooooo, student body!” And most of the crowd, sitting a little too close to one another and a little shell-shocked by the nipples-out lead singer, cheer in that awkward way you cheer for things you don’t really understand but support anyway. “We’re Rock Your Mouth and we’re happy to be here!”

  Roxy quickly looks away from Cecilia. “I thought you knew?”

  I knew?

  “I mean, how can you not, right?” Roxy goes on, curling her hair around her finger nervously. “Everyone always comments about it. And, like, I know you always correct them and tell them we’re just friends, and I get it.”

  Oh no, Roxy is babbling. She only babbles when she’s flustered, and she’s hardly ever flustered. Cecilia stares at her because her mind has shut down. Cecilia.exe is no longer working. Because she never expected the impossible.

  Because the impossible doesn’t happen to Cecilia Montgomery.

  “Listen,” her best friend goes on, turning back to the stage, “just forget about it, okay? Please, Ceci,” she adds softly, begging.

  And just like that, the moment is passing them by. The moment Cecilia never thought she would have.

  It’s the kind of moment that happens in the blink of an eye, a cloud passing over the sun, shade and then gone, and she doesn’t want the moment gone. Cecilia wants to live in this moment. She wants to scramble the letters in just friends and rearrange them into a new phrase, a new title, a new possibility. They are so different: polar opposites. Cecilia is a forgotten nonfiction novel, and Roxy is a book full of wonder and magic and adventure, and they never should have been shelved together, but . . . but . . .