Apart from the TOTAL TRAGEDY of my chances with J.G. vanishing down the plughole, one other question kept nagging at me like Grandma Dotty on a clean-up splurge: what was everyone going to say at school when they found out The People weren’t even playing at the KRMY Best Band Competition let alone in with a chance of winning?
Would we still be cool?
“HEY, KHATCHADORIAN!”
I turned and a wadded ball of soaking-wet toilet paper hit me—whomp!—smack in the face. I’d gotten the answer to my question loud and clear. The news about our KRMY disaster was definitely, absolutely, totally out. The only question was, how bad was it? I knew I’d blown it with Jeanne, but I still figured there was a slight chance I had some cool left in the Khatchadorian tank, or was I right back to being Chief Dork at HVMS?
Across the schoolyard, Che Guzman and Elliot Peagood were laughing their rear ends off and wadding up a second paper ball in the drinking fountain. Peagood was flexing his throwing arm like he was at a baseball try-out. This dude really wanted to make his point.
“You suck, Khatchadorian!” Guzman shouted. “Loser!”
Kasey yelled something back at Guzman that I can’t repeat here (Australians know a super-impressive amount of curse words …), but I pulled her away as paper ball number two zipped past.
“Forget it,” she said as we huddled in the relative safety of the lockers. “Not everyone’s like them.”
I stared at my locker, where someone had spray-painted “LOOSER!”. Even the fact that the vandal couldn’t spell didn’t make me feel any better.
It was true. Not everyone at Hills Village Middle School was like Guzman and Peagood—only about ninety-nine percent of them.
BY RECESS IT was crystal clear: my time as someone in the same zip code as cool was toast. The People were a complete joke and practically every breathing human I met in the first two hours at school made a point of telling me exactly that. Only Jeanne Galletta and a couple of other kids kept quiet. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t like Jeanne and the others gave me a big hug or nothing. It was more that they didn’t actually let me know how deeply uncool I’d suddenly become. It was something, I guess.
Toward the end of recess, I was heading back to class—math, yippee!—when Miller indicated he’d like a quiet word.
“Why is everyone on our case, Khatchadorian?” he hissed, his face about an inch away from mine.
“Urgle burgle, shmurgle burble,” I said, and pointed at my throat. Being lifted into midair by your throat tends to cut off the air supply. If Miller wanted an explanation, he was going to have to rethink his tactics. He couldn’t strangle me and have me talk. One or the other, dude, make your mind up.
Miller put me down. “What gives?” he said, and poked a finger the size of a dachshund into my chest.
Huh? Hadn’t he been right there when Niki told us Sid had stiffed us on the KRMY deal? “Weren’t you right there when Niki told us Sid had stiffed us on the KRMY deal?” I asked.
Uh-oh. Wrong question. Miller looked like his head was about to explode. It’s true he looked like that most of the time, but this was a totally different level of head explosion. A dangerous level. “Of course I was there!” he yelled. “You think I’m dumb or something, KhatchaDORKian?”
I’d have gone for both options, but I figured this would be a real good time to keep my trap firmly shut. It was the right move because, as it turned out, he really didn’t want an answer.
“I figured you were gonna sort everything out,” he said. “Isn’t that what you do? Figure things out, smart guy?”
I don’t know exactly where he’d got this weird idea that figuring things out was something I did—or that I was smart—but I wasn’t going to argue.
“I, uh, guess so?”
“Yeah, you guess right. So, go figure it out,” Miller hissed. “This thing is all your fault, anyway.”
Whoa! Hold on just a minute! The walls began closing in. The red mist was coming down. It was my turn to get angry. Miller had really crossed the line, pinning this thing on me. He was the one who’d ordered me to join the band and fix us up to enter the KRMY Best Band Competition! Now here he was blaming me because Sid had done the dirty and messed up his plan? I was furious. I was fuming.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I squeaked.
Miller grunted and stomped away. “By tomorrow, Khatchadorian,” he yelled over his shoulder. “Or else!”
MILLER’S THREAT REMINDED me of the GREAT IDEA I’d come up with about how The People could improve our chances of winning the KRMY Best Band Competition. Fear has a way of doing that. I had shelved the GREAT IDEA until I could talk to Kasey and, with one thing after another, never got the chance.
Except … my GREAT IDEA did depend on us actually being in the KRMY Best Band Competition. Minor detail. With Sid not having secured us a spot, my GREAT IDEA might turn out to be just an idea. For the millionth time that day, I cursed Sid.
From what people were saying, there had been no sightings of him. It looked like Kasey had been right—the dude was gone, along with all my drawings from Dingbat Wall and my chances with Jeanne.
The bright spot in all this was that I’d gotten more used to being yelled at, laughed at, and generally abused on all sides. I mean, I wouldn’t say I liked it, but I was definitely getting better at shrugging it off. So what if everyone thought I was a total loser? That had pretty much been my role at HVMS until very recently. I could do loser! I could do loser better than anyone!
After school, Kasey and I walked home.
We didn’t say much on the way about what had happened, mostly, I think, because Kasey was kind of disappointed she hadn’t come up with any smart plan about what to do. Even though Miller had pinned that ability on me, it was Kasey who was good at coming up with smart plans to save the day. I could see she was feeling guilty she hadn’t thought of anything.
“Listen,” I said eventually, “I did have one sort of, kind of an idea.”
Kasey raised an eyebrow. “So, are you going to tell me this sort of, kind of an idea?”
“It doesn’t really work now we’re not in the competition,” I said. “It sort of depends on us—”
“Just tell me!” Kasey snapped.
So I told her.
AFTER I’D TOLD Kasey about my GREAT IDEA, she went very quiet. So quiet that I figured she thought I’d lost my mind. Maybe the cat had got her tongue. Have you ever heard that expression? Grandma Dotty says it sometimes when I’m quiet and it always freaks me out. What’s the cat doing with your tongue? Cats have claws and tongues are all soft and putting those two things together makes me feel icky, plus we don’t even have a cat! Anyway, back to the story …
“I knew I shouldn’t have said anything,” I said, sighing. “It’s totally ridic—”
“I like it,” Kasey said.
“There’s no need to be so—wait—you like it?”
Kasey nodded. “Only problem is, it needs us to be on the bill.”
“Exactly,” I said, still reeling at the fact we were in agreement. “And with Sid gone …”
“Let me think,” Kasey said.
We walked home the rest of the way in silence. I could almost hear Kasey’s brain working.
When we got home, Kasey still hadn’t stopped thinking, but I remembered something that cheered me up. It was Leftover Meat Loaf Spaghetti Special night!
Don’t laugh. I know Mom’s Leftover Meat Loaf Spaghetti Special sounds like a contender for The Worst Meal on the Planet, but it’s actually totally yummy. She takes a few slices of five-hundred-year-old meat loaf that you wouldn’t give Junior and, by adding some mysterious ingredients (olive oil, garlic, tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, cheese, and brown sugar … so actually not all that mysterious now I think about it), turns it into something pretty neat.
“It’s Leftover Meat Loaf Spaghetti Special night!” I yelled.
Kasey nodded one of those nods that means “I heard what you said, but it has done nothing to
help the situation, okay, doofus?”
I pushed open the kitchen door and immediately noticed four things:
1. Mom was ripping one of Sid’s yoga festival posters into a zillion pieces.
2. Mom was so angry her face had pretty much turned purple.
3. Junior was quivering under the kitchen table.
4. The chances of us getting Mom’s Leftover Meat Loaf Spaghetti Special tonight were zero.
Mom threw the pieces of the poster onto the kitchen floor and began jumping up and down on them as we entered the room. I was about to say that it looked like her back was feeling better, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t go down well.
“She’s been like this for an hour,” Grandma Dotty said, and took a bite of her biscuit.
“Why?” Kasey asked. “What happened?”
Mom stopped stamping on the pieces of poster and looked up like she’d just noticed us. Then she burst into tears before running straight out of the kitchen. Kasey and I turned to Grandma Dotty.
“It’s that Australian,” she said through a mouthful of crumbs. “He’s stolen a bunch of money.”
TWO HOURS LATER and Mom still hadn’t come down. I’d wanted to go check on her but Grandma Dotty had stopped me. “Let her get it out of her system. She’s more angry about being fooled than anything else,” she’d said. “No one likes losing anything to a crook, but it wasn’t a huge bunch of money. Enough to hurt, but it’s more her pride than anything else.”
Grandma Dotty wasn’t always right about things, but when it came to the big stuff like this, she usually was. Georgia was out at a friend’s house, so at least she didn’t have to see Mom upset. As for me, all I wanted to do was find Sid and push him into a shark-infested pool. (In my mind he was already sitting on the edge of a shark-infested pool when I found him, which, I admit, isn’t very likely, but it helped.)
“So,” I said, sitting down across from Grandma Dotty, “what happened with Sid?” I’d known that Gudonya had been cleaned out, but stealing money? That was a whole other thing.
“He took ticket orders from a bunch of folks in town,” Grandma Dotty said, dipping a cookie into her cup of coffee and taking a bite. She’d actually bitten into a coaster, but she seemed to like it, so I didn’t say anything. “And money from folks all over.”
“Wouldn’t it have been easier to just go through with the yoga festival?” Kasey said.
Grandma Dotty shrugged and put down the coaster. “I guess, but I don’t think Sid was the real deal. If he was a yoga teacher, I’m the Queen of England.” She nodded at Kasey. “It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if he turned out not to be Australian.”
Kasey looked at me. “Told you so.”
I pointed out that no one liked a person that says “I told you so,” but Kasey wasn’t listening. She had a strange expression on her face. (Although it would have been weird if she’d had a strange expression that wasn’t on her face. Like, where else would it be?)
“I need to make a phone call. Right now.” She stood up and left the room at about a zillion miles an hour. I guess sometimes you just really have to make a phone call.
“So,” I said, “what now?”
Grandma Dotty’s hand shot into the air like she’d had a brilliant idea. Maybe she was going to come up with the answer to our problems. Maybe she knew stuff we didn’t. She was old and wise, after all, like an owl, or a wizard, or something. “Macaroni cheese,” she said.
I helped Grandma make macaroni cheese, which, considering it was a microwave packet, meant putting plates out and, uh, that was about it. By the time I’d finished, Kasey was back and grinning. It was kind of scary, tbh.
“What?” I said. “You’ll find out,” Kasey replied. “Mmm, smells good!”
I knew Kasey wasn’t telling the truth about the smell. Grandma Dotty’s macaroni cheese was a long way from Mom’s Leftover Meat Loaf Spaghetti Special and it tasted like cardboard. Cardboard with cheese, but it was still cardboard. I snuck a couple of pieces to Junior and even he wasn’t real enthusiastic. In the words of one of our songs, everything really did suck.
“Come on,” Kasey said. “Cheer up.”
I waggled a fork at her. “If the next thing you say is ‘she’ll be right, mate,’ I swear I’ll put you on a plane tonight.”
“She’ll be right, mate,” Kasey said with a wink. “So what are we going to do? And by ‘we’, I mean you, obviously.”
“Obviously,” I said. “Maybe I could change my name? Go into hiding? Get plastic surgery? Move to Australia? Or I could go into school tomorrow with absolutely no plan and let Miller pound me into sausage meat. It’s not like someone’s going to knock on the door with a brilliant idea to fix everything, is i—”
There was a loud knock on the door.
I looked at Kasey. “Your phone call?”
“My phone call,” she said with a nod.
“Rafe?” a voice yelled from behind the door. “Kasey’s had a brilliant idea to fix everything!”
IT’S EASIER TO show you who was knocking at the door:
“Whoa!” I said, taking a step back. I checked the calendar on the fridge door. Nope, it wasn’t Halloween, but that didn’t stop Grandma Dotty from screaming.
“Pretty awesome, hey?” Niki said, doing a twirl.
Kasey leaned against the doorframe and laughed. “Awesome doesn’t cover it. Nice one, Nik.”
Grandma Dotty had the phone in her hand and was trying to call 911.
“It’s okay, Grandma,” I said. “This is, uh, my music teacher.” I looked at Niki. “Come on in.”
It was easier said than done. For a start, wearing those boots made Niki about ten feet tall. He clomped inside, knocking a coffee cup off the counter with the exhaust pipe from his guitar. (Yep, this guitar shot flames from the end of the neck).
Niki carefully sat down at the kitchen table and we looked at him expectantly.
“So?” I said. “The brilliant idea?”
Niki nodded. “Okay, I got to thinking that KRMY might be interested in The People topping the bill at the competition rather than being in the competition, understand? Playing as the main attraction!”
Was it just me, or had Niki Blister just tipped over into cuckoo land? “Um,” I said, trying to figure out a way of not making him feel like a complete idiot, “if we can’t even get into the competition, why would KRMY let us top the bill?”
Niki clambered to his feet. It was supposed to be a dramatic moment, but he had to get Kasey to give him a hand, which kind of ruined it. Anyway, once he was on his feet, he struck a chord and raised a rock-and-roll hand to the sky (bumping his skull rings against the ceiling and breaking the light fitting).
“You already know what would make KRMY interested in The People topping the bill, don’t you, Rafe?” Niki said. “And it was Kasey’s idea to call me and for me to call KRMY and do a deal for Niki Blister and The People to top the bill!”
I looked at him, stunned, and Kasey laughed.
“That’s right, bandmates,” Niki said. “I’m coming out of retirement!”
THE RIO WAS ROCKING.
The two thousand people packed inside had just watched four of the best bands in the Greater Hills Village area battle it out for the title. In the end, it had gone to The Mighty Phlegm Overlords of Zoon, a folk-metal rap outfit, who just got it over Android Acoustica, a duo dressed in clown outfits (they were actually pretty scary-looking, tbh).
“Let’s hear it for The Mighty Phlegm Overlords of Zoon!” KRMY’s rock DJ, Shaun Baron, yelled.
Backstage, Niki adjusted his wig. “Right, People,” he said. “Let’s kick some rock butt!” He bumped fists with everyone and then got us all into a huddle, which took some doing as we were all wearing MASSIVE platform boots.
On stage to our left, Shaun was giving Niki Blister and The People a big build-up. “Rio rockers! Are you ready to see some real rock-and-roll history?”
The audience went nuts.
“I said, ARE YOU READY,
HILLS VILLAGE?” Shaun screamed.
The audience went double nuts. I’m not even sure that’s a thing, but they went it. I swallowed hard and tried to control the flappy bats in my stomach (butterflies are way too small to describe how nervous I was feeling). This was it.
“For the first time on stage in thirty years, please give it up, Hills Village, for one of rock and roll’s long-lost legends—NIKI BLISTERRRRRR AAAAAAND THE PEOPLE!!!”
“Showtime,” Niki said, smiling under layers of makeup. It was hard to think that only a few weeks ago I’d thought of him as Mr. Mann, our boring substitute music teacher. “Let’s rock!”
THE REALITY OF playing in front of two thousand people hit me like a bucket of cold water as we headed for the stage. All those faces! Who was I kidding trying to get up there and pretend to be in a band? I stopped dead in my tracks, which, given I was wearing platform boots, wasn’t easy.
“Uh-nuh, no way, soldier,” Niki whispered in my ear. “Not on my watch.” He put a firm hand on my back and started pushing me toward the spotlights. “The show must go on, Rafeman. Your fans await.”
“Fans?” I squeaked. “I don’t have any fans.”
“You do now,” Niki said, and shoved me onstage.
I staggered into an amplifier and dislodged my wig, which fell offstage and disappeared down a black hole.
“Keep going!” Niki hissed. “They’ll never notice!”
We came into view and, at the sight of Niki Blister, the crowd erupted. Okay, most of them probably didn’t have a clue who Niki Blister was, or who he had been, but since Niki had made the station an offer to play last week, KRMY had been playing “Kangaroo Krush” nonstop. Plus, even if you’d never heard of Niki or “Kangaroo Krush”, there was no question that up there on the stage at the Rio was a genuine rock star. He looked incredible.
G'day, America Page 9
