Battle of the Bands

by Eric Smith

  Roxy is just the kind of story Cecilia wants to get lost in. She wants to burrow into her pages because that is the only place where she has ever felt understood and okay. No, better than okay. When she’s with Roxy, she feels like she is home.

  Because the truth is —

  The silly, horrible, wonderful truth is —

  “Roxy,” she says, her mouth dry, “I like —”

  “YOU!” Theo and his loud band shout from the stage. The lights flare. Theo does a somewhat wanting guitar squeal, and this close to the stage, it sounds even worse.

  Roxy’s eyebrows furrow. She shakes her head. “I can’t hear you!” she shouts over the drums.

  So Cecilia shouts louder, “I do, too! I was never looking at Theo! I like —”

  “YOU!” Theo howls again. Honest to fucking God, are there any other lyrics to this song? He puts his mouth on the microphone and screams into it with the rage of a thousand scrawny demons, “YOU! YOU! YOU ARE HELL! I CAN’T STAND YOU. OUR TONGUES DANCE BUT OUR HATRED IS ETERNAL —!”

  Ah, there they are.

  “I LIKE YOU, TOO!” she screams, but it doesn’t matter how loud she is, she isn’t loud enough.

  If words can’t carry across the distance of a few inches, then she’ll carry herself instead. And so there in the front row of Raritan River High School’s too-crowded auditorium she takes Roxy’s face in her hands and presses their lips together. Roxy tastes like cherry cola and cheap cowboy-boot bourbon, soft and sharp, a myriad of opposites that make up Roxy Williams.

  Rock Your Mouth is screaming about tongues dancing, but they have missed the mark entirely. It’s not rage and hate and poison. It’s soft and sweet and true.

  The world feels like it has stopped. Gone silent. As if it’s holding its breath as two best friends come up for air, and Roxy breathes against her mouth, “Me too.”

  Me too.

  Cecilia doesn’t realize she needed to hear those words until that moment. “How long?”

  “Years,” her best friend replies, pushing Cecilia’s not-quite-red, not-quite-brown hair out of her face. They are so close to each other, the rest of the world looks like a kaleidoscope of colors and music, jumping and raving to a song neither of them has any interest in. “I gave you so many signs. You’ve just been too hardheaded to see them.”

  She . . . has? Though now that Cecilia thinks about it — the gentle touches on her arm; the glances at her from across the room; the way they wake up on weekend mornings, tangled in each other and the bedsheets, always circling each other like two satellites in orbit, drawing closer and closer. Even earlier tonight, that secret tucked into the side of Roxy’s smile as she said, “You’d be surprised what you don’t know about people,” their fingers folded together.

  Oh.

  In the breath between one kiss and the next, she can hear a love song — not of the Rock Your Mouth variety, but one made of her heart beating so fast, drumming against her rib cage, so happy and full it wants to burst. A love song to the tempo of Roxy’s laughter, as tempting as the grin she feels curling across her mouth as she kisses her again.

  Cecilia Montgomery hates love songs.

  But I love the sound of us, she thinks, and kisses Roxy again.

  I stood outside the back door of Parker’s garage, ear pressed to the paint-slick wood, and listened to the muffled sound of something miraculous.

  Music. Our music. The very same songs we’d written together inside that room. Except now they were no longer ragged or empty, off tempo, beat thin. For the first time since Colin, our drummer, left for college in Oregon, the Greatest Place sounded extraordinary.

  The only thing missing was me.

  Heart beating staccato, I threw open the door, a wild grin blossoming on my face. Over the past few months, we’d been auditioning drummers — which was quickly followed by rejecting drummers, and then arguing about where else we could possibly look for one, having seemingly exhausted all possibilities within the greater New Brunswick area. But here was someone new. As good as Colin, or even better. I felt buoyant with anticipation. All the nerves in my body began to hum.

  And then I saw him, and every part of me deflated.

  “Mina, hey,” Diego said, fingers halting the dull metal strings of his bass. He waited, no doubt hoping Parker would jump in. But I could tell by the nervous sway of his body, the crest of sweat beading above his lip, that he’d been assigned the role of news breaker. “You, uh . . . you know Jeremy.”

  Diego motioned toward the sparkly red drum kit in Colin’s old spot by the window. And behind it, sitting smug on his throne, was my ex-boyfriend.

  “Yeah,” I managed, voice catching in my throat. “I think I remember.”

  What else I remembered: the text message he sent me, out of the blue, breaking it off. And the next day, when he was making out with Leslie Mendoza three lockers down from mine. They walked right past me, his hand in her back pocket, his nose nestled in her hair. I cried all through the lunch period.

  I knew Diego and Parker remembered, too.

  “The thing I don’t understand,” I continued, addressing the room but keeping my eyes on Jeremy, hoping my anger burned a hole straight through him, “is what he’s doing here.”

  Parker gave Jeremy an apologetic glance before corralling Diego and me into a corner. “Just hear us out for a second, okay?” he began, voice low. He placed one hand over his guitar strings to control the feedback. “We ran into him last week at Guitar Center, and it came up that we needed a drummer, so we just thought, what the hell, let’s see. If it’s awful, no big deal. But Mina.” He gripped my shoulder, pulling me closer. In his eyes, I caught the sparkle of awe. “He picked up our songs in an hour. All of them.”

  I scoffed. “So what? He’s still an asshole.” I shook off Parker’s hand and plucked my guitar from its case, then strapped its turquoise body across my chest like armor. “He’ll ditch us the second he thinks he’s found something better.”

  Parker crossed his arms. “Look, it sucks that he dumped you sophomore year —”

  “And we absolutely respect your opinion in this process,” Diego interjected, shooting Parker a warning glare, “but he’s the best drummer we’ve seen.”

  “By far,” Parker stressed.

  “And we can’t play in the Battle without a drummer.”

  “We’re playing,” I snapped. “We have to. We need that recording session.”

  Diego nodded, the left side of his mouth rising. “Exactly.”

  I cringed. The trap had been obvious, yet I’d plunged right into it. “There has to be someone else,” I tried.

  “Name one,” challenged Parker.

  My fingers scaled the neck of my guitar as I mentally scrolled through the last few auditions. There was that kid Douglas, a freshman, who’d never actually played with a band before and kept stopping in the middle of songs and then apologizing until it looked like he might cry. Nate from a neighboring high school, whose technique was sloppy and frayed. A girl named Jessica who beat her snare ragged, as though she were picturing her irritating and invasive little brother. She wasn’t so bad, I thought. All we had to do was stay on her good side — and definitely never go in her bedroom without permission.

  “What if we just try it this afternoon,” Diego offered, attempting to bring us all back to common ground. “See how it goes from there.”

  I racked my brain one last time for a way out of this, any other drummer we could possibly use, but I already knew all the decent ones were taken. Even that quiet new girl, Beckett, had been snatched up by several other bands before we could get to her, the rumor of her existence spreading as if she were a shiny, time-keeping unicorn.

  Our options were dwindling. So was our time.

  With a heavy sigh, I gave in. “But if I’m still uncomfortable with this after the show, we look for someone else.”

  “Deal,” they agreed in unison.

  The three of us turned back around to find Jeremy standing in front
of his kit, idly twirling one of his sticks between his knuckles. He flashed that same lazy grin I remembered falling for, and something smoldered in my stomach. That was two years ago, right before he graduated. It felt like a lifetime had passed, and yet somehow, standing across from him, the wound was still oozing.

  “No hard feelings, right?” he said, stretching out his free hand.

  The only hard feeling, I thought, is going to be my fist against your face.

  “Let’s just play,” I said, walking past him.

  As I stepped up to the mic stand, I prayed to the gods of rock and roll (Are you there, Joan? It’s me, Mina) that Jeremy would blow it. That something about me or our history would screw up his beat, set his internal metronome askew. I wanted the satisfaction of affecting him, however slightly.

  But when we finally began practicing, I understood. There was no deal, no compromise, no audition. Before I had even set foot in the garage that day, Jeremy was already in.

  A spark of betrayal lit in my chest, but I tramped it to cinders. If we wanted to win, we needed him.

  The Greatest Place had played the Battle of the Bands three times before.

  The first year we were terrible — all power chords and simple beats, lyrics that rhymed too perfectly and were sung with a savage strain. It was punk, but not on purpose, which is undeniably the worst kind. Luckily, though, by sophomore year we’d mellowed out a bit and found Colin. By junior year, we’d finally developed an authentic sound.

  And this year, we were seniors. We were ready, and we were good. But more than that, we were acutely aware of the ways our world was changing. The tight-woven days at Raritan River High School were unraveling too rapidly, the end of the thread drawing near. College acceptances would be coming soon, and though we hardly spoke of it, I felt a shared worry wrap around us. Last year, when Colin moved, it was like an earthquake that shook our core. Since then, so little seemed truly stable.

  So that fall, Diego, Parker, and I had decided to complete our applications together. We applied to all the same schools, or — in the case of Ivy Leagues that only Diego, with his APs and nearly perfect SAT scores, had a shot at — at least the same cities. Splayed on the floor of my bedroom, we’d pored over the catalogs, the options, dreaming up plans for each state.

  “If we go to LA,” I said, “we could totally play at the Troubadour.”

  “And if we move into New York City, we could play the Bowery Ballroom,” Parker said.

  “Terminal Five,” I added.

  “Madison Square Garden.”

  For a moment, we were quiet, all gazing at our respective laptops, minds dewy with possibility. Then we erupted in laughter.

  “And if we end up in Boston . . .” I began, because of course Diego had to apply to Harvard. “What’s in Boston?” I finished.

  Parker tousled Diego’s hair and said, “If our super-genius gets into Harvard, then I guess we’ll find out.”

  At that, Diego sprang on him and I yelped, clambering up onto my bed as they crashed around the carpet, play-fighting. It was in moments like these that I could see how far we’d come together. Those awkward fourteen-year-olds were still in us, still dreaming, still sure of so little except each other. We’d named our band the Greatest Place because that’s what we’d found through our music: somewhere we could be our truest selves. Somewhere we belonged.

  When the wrestling match was over, our laughter exhausted, and our laptops once again perched on our thighs, Diego asked, “But what happens if we all get into different colleges? Just hypothetically, I mean. Like if I get into Harvard, but you get into Hunter, and Mina gets into San Francisco State?”

  A charged silence sat between us, growing tense and tumultuous, like feedback from an amp.

  In the end, no one attempted to answer.

  But if we won, the logic went, it would prove to everyone (ourselves, our parents — even Mr. Grover, my precalculus teacher, who once said I could really make something of myself if I cared as much about school as I did about the silly poems I’d been caught writing) that our passion wasn’t just a passing whim, something to be shed like a reptile’s outgrown skin. If we got the recording time, if we finally made a real EP, our future as a band would stretch open. Not even college could break us apart.

  Jeremy, however, was another obstacle entirely.

  And before you ask: no, this wasn’t about my feelings. I wasn’t still pining, or still scorned, or any of that other crap they feed us on TV. In fact, the truth was far simpler.

  I was jealous of him.

  Jeremy had an obvious, innate talent that I didn’t. His confidence radiated like a furnace while I sat shivering, always worried I’d be branded a fraud. It would have been a lot easier if he sucked. Just a little. Just sometimes. Not the night of the show, of course, but during practice, when he started getting too cocky, I wished he would forget a transition. I wanted to see his arms knot over his sticks. But every day, he only grew more comfortable in that spot by the window, and I hated it. I hated when he started suggesting tweaks to our songs. I hated it even more when those tweaks made them stronger. And most of all, I hated that Parker and Diego grew so obviously enamored of him, like light-starved moths drunk on his glow. Before my eyes, the Greatest Place was transforming into the Jeremy Show, and I felt powerless to pull myself from the fringes.

  This became fully apparent two weeks before the competition, when I arrived at practice to find them much the way they’d been that first day: already settled in, jolted through with energy. Except this time, I didn’t recognize the song they were playing. I snuck in the side door, camouflaging myself against the wall of gray egg-carton foam, and stood there until all three of them ended on one practiced, drawn-out note.

  When the sound faded, I launched my voice between them. “Is that a new song or something?” They all startled, as if they’d forgotten why they were gathered in the first place. “It sounded pretty clean.”

  “We’re just jamming,” Jeremy said, punctuating the words with that unconcerned twirl of his drumstick. It reminded me of a magic trick, some sleight of hand. “Waiting for you.”

  I picked up my guitar and turned on my amp, struck a few swift chords. Part of me wanted to jump in, abandon the tension clenching my stomach, and recalibrate our band’s alignment with me back in the center. But I’d never felt comfortable jamming. Even just that word, the lighthearted spontaneity it suggested, filled me with an anxious thrum. I refused to let Jeremy glimpse me at my weakest — flummoxed over key changes, the scales I’d never managed to memorize. So I shrugged the notion aside.

  “Only two weeks left until the show,” I reminded them, voice casual. I stepped up to my mic stand, adjusted the height up, and then down, and then right back to where it had been initially. “Probably shouldn’t be working on anything new right now, anyway, if we want to make sure Jeremy nails our set.”

  It was a futile jab, but I needed to remind him of his place here. I needed him to remember: this was my band first.

  “I think I’ll manage,” Jeremy said, and then began to show off with a quick, intricate fill. I rolled my eyes, unimpressed.

  When practice was over, though, I decided to ask about what I’d heard, because I knew that if I didn’t, I’d worry the thought over in my mind until it was smooth and irrefutable. I waited until a rare moment when Jeremy went to the bathroom, and I had Parker and Diego alone.

  “Have you guys been practicing without me?” I asked.

  “What? No. Jeez. We were just waiting for you,” Parker insisted, parroting what Jeremy said earlier. He looked to Diego for affirmation, and Diego nodded. “What’d you expect us to do? Twiddle our thumbs in silence?”

  There was a laugh behind his question, but something else, too. Something dark, glittering. I only allowed myself to glimpse it for a second.

  That day, I’d arrived exactly on time.

  But if we won, the logic went, shifting and refining, it wouldn’t just mean that the Greatest Plac
e was good enough to make it. It would mean that I was good enough — not an imposter, a failure, unworthy — and that had to bring my best friends back to me.

  So as the days whittled down and the Battle grew near, I made sure we all worked harder, practiced longer. We perfected our set until it felt like a precise science — until I felt certain that not even Safe & Sound stood a chance.

  Then, with one day to go, something strange happened. We got sloppier.

  Parker began picking the wrong notes during his solos. Diego kept forgetting when he was supposed to speed up and when to pause. I grew hyperaware of their mistakes and started making my own, mixing up bridges, overreaching for notes. And after our third time bungling “On the Edge of Something New,” which was arguably our best and, under normal circumstances, most well-executed song, I threw up my arms in frustration.

  “All right, stop, stop.” I waited for the rest of the guys to halt their instruments. “What’s going on today? We’ve played this song perfectly a thousand times, and yet all of a sudden, none of us can manage to get it right. Your lead is all over the place. Your bass line is slow. And you —” I turned to Jeremy, wanting to blame him for something, but his beats were flawless. Mechanical, yes. Unenthusiastic even. But nothing I could confidently criticize. “Just put some effort into it,” I managed.

  “We’re exhausted,” Parker moaned.

  “And hungry,” Jeremy said. “Let’s go get a pizza or something.”

  “Maybe we should call it a night,” Diego offered.

  I crossed my arms. The sharp, metallic scent of our sweat hung heavy in the air, so thick I could taste it. “The show is tomorrow.”