Frail Days

by Prendergast, Gabrielle;

  When Tamara dives into the last verse, we reach a new plane of musical existence. Everything disappears but us and our instruments. It’s like the walls of the studio fall down and we’re playing for all creation, at the beginning and end of the universe.

  I look up from my drums to see Miles blissing out, his eyes closed, his fingers thrumming the bass strings. Tamara clutches the microphone like she’s hanging on for her life and sings with such emotion that my heart aches. And Jacob—Jacob is staring at Tamara with his mouth hanging open, like a hungry dog. Now that’s interesting. He catches me watching him and looks away quickly. Still, very interesting.

  When the song is finished we’re sweating, red-faced and laughing like maniacs.

  “THAT WAS TOTALLY INSANE!!” Miles yells.

  Even though Tamara is laughing too, she also looks like she wants to cry. Or hug someone. Possibly both. We’re all in a weird post-uber-awesomeness daze.

  I freaking LOVE this band.

  Seven

  “Check. Check.” Miles tunes both guitars while Jacob checks the sound system. Tamara and I tighten all the bolts on my drum kit. I hate wobbly drums, so I like to have everything as tight as possible. I still can’t quite believe Nate organized this for us. A lunchtime gig at his café? It’s too awesome to be real. I’m too nervous to live. I need to do some yoga or something.

  “Check. Test. One two. One two,” Jacob says. He’s one of those audio nuts who claims he can hear a difference between wool and polyester, so his soundchecks can sometimes be a bit tedious. “Check. Test. Chest. I mean, check. Check.”

  A curvy waitress sets Jacob’s milkshake down on a nearby table while Tamara and I shake with laughter. Jacob laughs with us. “It was an honest mistake!” he says.

  Nate comes by with a coffeepot and refills my cup. “Are you guys excited?”

  I try to act cool, which is dumb, because trying to act cool almost always results in looking extremely uncool. Sometimes I think I should stop worrying about cool altogether.

  “It’s a small crowd,” Tamara says, looking around Nate’s workplace. Most of the tables have one or two people. Half of them seem to be working on laptops. The rest are watching us set up with bemused expressions on their faces.

  “All right, I know,” Nate says. “This whole lunchtime-gig idea may need to catch on a bit. You guys are trailblazers. This is totally going to be a thing.”

  Tamara doesn’t look convinced. I’m not convinced either. Even at the table taken up by our four sets of parents, every eye is locked on a cell phone. Except for my mom. She’s reading Slaughterhouse-Five again.

  Just as Jacob finishes the soundcheck, my eyes are drawn to a table by the window. With the bright sunlight streaming in I can’t quite make out who is sitting there but it looks like…

  “Is that Chad Banner?” Jacob says, adjusting Tamara’s microphone stand.

  She glances over casually. “Oh, yeah. I Facebooked him. He was always pretty nice about how the whole Fants thing went down. Wanted to see how I was doing. I guess he’ll find out.”

  I duck down behind my cymbals. Now I feel like we should sound like Paramore meets Green Day or Chad Banner will think I’m a liar. And we don’t sound anything like Paramore meets Green Day. I grip my drumsticks with sweaty palms and take a last look at our set list. We open with some old-time rock ’n’ roll, then bust out an early Police number that Tamara kills. Then a bit of Red Hot Chili Peppers, a Pearl Jam thing we do mostly acoustic, a couple of pretty trashy neopunk covers and, finally, we’re going to finish with Tamara’s song, “The Alien.” It’s a chronological journey through awesome music.

  I hope Chad Banner stays to the end.

  When Tamara steps up to the mic she does that metamorphic thing again. She goes from slightly geeky, frumpily dressed ordinary girl to suave front woman of a wicked-cool band. It’s like magic.

  “Hi, everybody, welcome to the Coffee Pit. I’m Tamara and we are…” Her voice trails off.

  Oh, shoot! We forgot to pick a band name! We were going to do it before we set up. How could I have forgotten that?

  “…the band with no name,” Tamara finishes a millisecond later. I’ve got to give it to her. That’s a pretty good save.

  She turns, cool as anything, and winks at me. I count the boys in and we start playing.

  At first no one seems to notice us. But halfway through our second song, a couple of people have turned their chairs and closed their laptops. No one is exactly dancing on the tables, but no one is throwing anything either, so that’s good.

  After our third song, Tamara catches her breath while Miles and Jacob switch to acoustic guitars.

  “How is everybody doing today?” she says. There’s a low mumble in response. “I said, HOW IS EVERYBODY DOING TODAY?!” The crowd, such as it is, comes back with a loud cheer. Why does that work anyway? It’s so dorky. Then Tamara introduces us one by one. Miles and Jacob get a few squeals from some tweeny girls drinking bright pink bubble tea in the corner. When my name comes up, there’s polite applause. A fair bit of it seems to be coming from Nate.

  I try not to grin. Because that would look stupid. And Mom would never let me hear the end of it. Oh well.

  The acoustic number is a big hit. The punk numbers make Chad Banner smile. I can see his big cosmetically enhanced teeth from here. Predictably, Jacob breaks a string on the last punk number, so while he changes it, Tamara talks to the crowd again.

  “Thank you all for coming out and being such a fun crowd. I want to thank the Coffee Pit for having us, and my brother, Nate, for organizing everything. Hi, Nate!”

  He waves from behind the counter. I duck down behind my cymbals again, then try to cover that by pretending to check my bass-drum pedal.

  Is it getting hot in here?

  “For our last number we’re going to do an original tune,” Tamara says. “It’s called ‘The Alien’ and we wrote it together as a band two weeks ago, so it means a lot to us. In other words—BE NICE!” The crowd laughs as Jacob plays the opening chords of the song.

  The song has mellowed since that first time we played it. It’s not quite as wild, and it’s also more polished. But still very, very dark.

  Halfway through the song I notice that Chad Banner is holding up his phone. Videoing us? That’s awesome. I look over and see the tweeny girls doing the same. And so is Nate. And our parents. YouTube is going to be on fire with us tonight.

  When we finish the song, the crowd goes wild. Well, as wild as a crowd of ten office workers, eight parents, three tweeny homeschoolers, three baristas and our town’s biggest dj can go. Which is to say not all that wild. But it’s a nice feeling anyway. You can tell that they liked us.

  As we’re packing up, Chad Banner comes over and gives Tamara a friendly hug.

  “That was great, kid. I mean that. What a cool sound.” I peek over my drum kit, and he catches my eye. “Hey, Stella Wing. You don’t sound anything like Paramore or Green Day. You’re better.”

  He’s teasing me, but I decide to go for it. “Do you think we’ll get into the Parkland Festival?”

  I expect him to encourage me, or use some pointless platitude like “Just do your best” or something, but instead he gets serious.

  “I don’t know. We’ve got a new sponsor this year, and they’re super conservative. Your sound is awesome, but it might be too edgy for the festival. As much as I hate to say it.”

  I guess I’m not very good at hiding my disappointment. “There’re bigger things than the festival though, kid,” Chad says. “There’s definitely a market for your sound. Just not the festival.”

  The boys have joined us, sitting on their amps, their guitar cases tucked between their knees. Like they’re waiting for the Magical Mystery Tour bus to arrive.

  “How old are you guys?” Chad says to them.

  “Fourteen,” the boys say in unison. Honestly, sometimes they’re like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. It’s embarrassing.

  Chad looks thoughtful
. “I see great things in your future,” he says. “All of you. Let me know if you have any other gigs, okay? I’d like to come and check out your progress.”

  Then he leaves us, slipping on his sunglasses as he heads for the door.

  * * *

  Jacob’s dad takes the boys and their gear in his sports car. Tamara and I get a ride with my mom because my dad has a meeting at city hall. The band is going to have a post-gig debriefing and maybe a little jam session before we plot our next move. So we head back to the studio.

  “The show was great, girls,” Mom says as we pull out of the parking lot.

  “You think?” I say. “The crowd was pretty small.”

  In the backseat, Tamara has put her headphones on. She says she does that after performing to unwind a bit. Otherwise she’s prone to “emotional outbursts.” Possibly she means bursting into tears for no apparent reason. That sometimes happens to me.

  “Twenty-five people is not such a small crowd,” Mom says. “When Dad and I were first dating, we went to see this band called Deja Voodoo in this little joint in Richmond. For real, we were the only people there.”

  “God, that must have been awful for the band. How embarrassing.”

  “I don’t know.” Mom gets that nostalgic remembering-the-old-days look on her face. “We had fun. They had fun. We drank some beers together, they played some songs. It was okay.”

  “Why do you think nobody came?”

  Mom pauses, stopping the car while some skateboarders roll across the road. “Deja Voodoo had a weird sound, for their time,” she says. “And I guess in that part of the world people weren’t into their music. But they had lots of fans elsewhere.”

  I think about that for a while. Tamara starts humming and half singing along to the soundtrack from Hairspray in that person-wearing-headphones way that’s so funny. Mom and I smile at each other.

  “Do you think Deja Hoodoo or whatever they were called should have played different music?” I ask Mom.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if they’d played something a bit more mainstream, maybe they would have had more fans, and more people would have been there that night.”

  Mom pulls over in front of Dad’s office. “But that was their sound. It was completely new, what they were doing. They were never huge stars, but they ended up being pretty influential. And they were true to their vision. Don’t you think that’s more important than being super popular?”

  I nudge Tamara, who hasn’t even noticed we’ve stopped. She jumps out of the car and heads around back to the studio, still humming and singing.

  I think I’m starting to figure this out. “So it’s like at school,” I say to Mom. “To be popular and have tons of friends, you have to be kind of bland. But if you’re yourself and a little, you know, edgy, you only have a few friends, but they’re ones who really appreciate you?”

  Mom gets a wet smile on her face and looks like she wants to cry. I can’t think of anything more embarrassing than having to deal with a mom who is crying from pride, so I give her a quick kiss and mumble, “Thanks, Mom” before running away.

  It’s always so weird talking about important stuff with your parents.

  When I get to the studio, Miles and Jacob are having a pretty big argument, for them. I mean, usually they love each other like they’ve been to war together, so this is serious.

  “Because I want this to go somewhere,” Jacob says. “Not everyone is going to medical school, you know.”

  “Just because my parents are doctors doesn’t mean I want to be one,” Miles says. “I’m just saying I don’t want to sell out. We’ve only just started.”

  Tamara is watching quietly from behind my drum set. “What’s going on?” I ask her.

  “Jacob and I were talking about maybe writing some new stuff. Something a bit more poppy sounding. And Miles took offense at that because he’s an artiste.” She rolls her eyes.

  “So you’re saying sell out before we even have any credibility whatsoever?” Miles asks.

  Tamara shrugs.

  “Do you want to change our sound?” I ask her.

  She shrugs again. “Look, I can sing anything. And I’ve been a pop star already, so I know what that’s like. But I want to get into the festival, because I’d like to rub it into Fantalicious’s collective smarmy face.”

  Jacob snorts a laugh, then covers his mouth.

  “I don’t think that’s such great motivation for making musical choices,” I say.

  “Me neither,” Miles says.

  We fall silent. I’m starting to understand why awesome bands like the Beatles and the Police break up over “artistic differences.” I never knew what that meant until this moment. I just wish we could have a few hit songs before it happens to us.

  Eight

  Sometimes I miss the days when I had normal, peaceful waking-up experiences. My mom or dad would come in and rub my back or stroke my hair, and when I rolled over they would say, Time to get up, buttercup, or something like that. They’d make breakfast for me, and it would all be like something out of an old picture book.

  Now it seems like every morning is some new, bizarre world that I have to figure out. If it’s not weird dreams or meowing phones, it’s those mornings where you feel like maybe you’ve been drugged, because you’re so groggy you can barely move. And then there’s waking up with an urgent need to write a song. I mean so urgent that I have to write the lyrics down before I even pee. And I’m busting to pee so bad, I end up taking my notebook into the bathroom with me.

  Once that’s taken care of and four verses of lyrics and a chorus are written down, I pull out my guitar. I don’t play guitar that well—enough to plunk out a few of the easier chords—but I can usually fake a little accompaniment, especially if the key is C. I take my guitar to the breakfast table and am taking bites of toast and figuring out my chords as Dad comes in, wearing his Sunday outfit. That is to say, his pajamas. We’ll be lucky if he’s dressed by four o’clock when my grandparents come over for dinner.

  “That’s sounding good,” Dad says as my song comes together. “What’s it about?”

  “I don’t know. It came to me in a dream.” I look down at my lyrics, analyzing them for the first time. “I think it’s sort of a love song.” Oh my god! Why did I say that? Now Dad’s looking at me with a big, goofy smile on his face. If he says something about his baby girl growing up, I’m literally going to die. I shove toast into my mouth and escape out the back door before that can happen.

  After strapping my guitar into the basket of my bike, I ride around aimlessly for a while, thinking about my song. And I keep thinking of Nate, which is infuriating. Finally, I can’t stand it anymore, apparently, because I turn my bike in the direction of Tamara’s house.

  “Hey, Stell,” Nate says as he opens the door. “Tammy’s not here.”

  I stand there with about a million expletives running through my brain, none of which are helping me think of a way to get out of this with my dignity intact.

  “Do you want to come in?” Nate says. “You look hot. I mean, sweaty, I mean, not in a bad way, just…do you want some juice or something?”

  A few minutes later we’re sitting on the front steps, sipping orange juice. “I just wrote a song. Do you want to hear it?” I ask him, more out of a desperate desire to break the awkward silence than because I actually want to play my song.

  “I’d love to!”

  Oh, Lord. Now I’ve done it. I pull my guitar out of my bike basket and strum the opening chords. But I only manage to sing one verse and half the chorus before my throat starts closing up like I’ve been stung by one of those killer bees.

  “It goes on like that,” I croak. “I haven’t finished the rest of the verses.” Lie. But necessary.

  Nate smiles at me. “You have a pretty voice. It reminds me a little of Angie Hart.”

  “Wow. Thanks. That’s an obscure comparison. But thanks.”

  “Tammy and I went through a Buf
fy the Vampire Slayer thing a few years ago.” He shrugs and taps his forehead. “I have one of those memories that just keeps compiling things, like a giant database. You wouldn’t believe the music trivia I’ve got up here.”

  “That’s awesome. Hey, sometimes they have music-trivia night at the Youth Club. We should totally go next time.”

  What. The. Hell. Did I just ask Tamara’s brother out on a date? No more juice for me.

  Nate grins, two round pink patches growing on his cheeks. “That would be cool. I think we’d crush the competition, don’t you?”

  “Probably.” If I was able to string a sentence together. Which I doubt.

  Nate slurps the last of his juice and looks at a scampering squirrel on the lawn. “So did you come here to see Tammy or…?”

  “Yes!” I yelp way too enthusiastically. “I mean, yes. I wanted to play her my song. Will she be back soon?”

  “I’m not sure. She said she’d be at the church. Something about rehearsal. I have to go to work, but I can drop you there. You can put your bike in the back of the van.”

  Figures. He drives a minivan.

  * * *

  I wait for Nate to drive away before I open the church door. It would be just my luck for Tamara to come out right as he’s leaving and see him. Then there would be all kinds of awkward questions about what I’m doing with her brother that would make me turn five thousand shades of red.

  He does give me a little wave as he drives off though.

  When I push the door open, I’m surprised not to hear the whole choir singing. I can only hear Tamara and an acoustic guitar. And it’s not at all a church song. It’s a schmaltzy old Shania Twain song that Mom used to make fun of. But Tamara’s voice sounds sweet.