Five Flavors of Dumb

by Antony John

  I looked at the three bandmates again, thought back to the scene outside the principal’s office and the crowd of groupies fawning over them like their existence on earth somehow mattered. Sure, I knew I’d never orbit the same social sphere as Josh, Will, and Tash, but knowing they’d begin to acknowledge me around school was another appealing perk. I didn’t even pause to consider what that said about me; I simply took Josh’s hand and shook it like I was trying to rip his arm off.

  Tash immediately turned and sloped away, kicking the ground wildly. And even though I got the feeling Josh’s plan had received one dissenting vote, I didn’t really care.

  Finally, Will looked up for the first time. I’d almost forgotten he was there too. Winding curtains of hair behind each ear, he raised his tired-looking eyes, like he’d just figured out that if I was going to be his manager, he probably ought to be able to recognize me. After much consideration, he offered his hand in painful slow motion, presumably for us to shake on our new agreement. His palm felt cold and clammy.

  “Um . . . we’re Dumb,” he said.

  I shook his hand and nodded again and again and again.

  Never a truer word had been spoken.

  CHAPTER 5

  I figured I could do worse than ask Dad for advice. For years he’d compensated for his hideously boring job by immersing himself in rock music. Not that he played it for me anymore, of course—his vinyl LPs were collector’s items, and he probably assumed it would be a waste of time for someone in my “condition” anyway—but he owed me after yesterday’s remarks, and I was ready to proffer an olive branch.

  He was standing before the stove, stirring a large pot of unidentifiable meat. Whatever the animal had once been, parts of it were now spattered across his starched chinos and polo shirt, and I couldn’t help wondering when he was finally going to trade them in for sweatpants and T-shirt. I mean, it wasn’t like he was fooling anyone—everyone knew his brokerage firm had filed for bankruptcy, offering not a penny in severance pay to its long-suffering employees. Unfortunately, his business experience hadn’t exactly prepared him for his new role as Mr. Mom either.

  I tried to get a better look at the contents of the pot, then thought better of it. I’d say it smelled like crap, but that particular odor was emanating from Grace, who lolled around in her bouncy chair by the kitchen table.

  I tapped Dad on the shoulder. Grace pooped, I signed, gripping my right thumb with my left hand and then pulling it out—one of my favorite descriptive signs.

  Signing was a bad way to start our conversation, as Dad predictably shrugged and looked confused.

  “Grace has a poopy diaper,” I repeated, this time out loud so he’d understand.

  He still looked puzzled. “How do you know?”

  “It’s my hearing that’s impaired, not my sense of smell.”

  I meant it to come out funny, but Dad must have thought I was being snarky. He sighed dramatically and hustled Grace out of the buckles. A moment later he stuck a finger under her onesie and grimaced.

  “Damn. I just changed it.”

  “Do you want me to do it?”

  “No, Piper,” he snapped. “I’m perfectly capable of changing a diaper, thank you very much.”

  I shrunk back as he held her at arm’s length and dumped her onto the changing table in the hallway. “I was just offering. That’s all,” I said quietly.

  Dad didn’t reply, just huffed and puffed his way through the diaper change like it was a full-contact sport. He didn’t even notice Grace kicking her feet into the remnants of her poopy diaper, and when he tried to corral her feet she used her lightning-fast ninja reflexes to smear poop across his shirt, then belly-laughed at his outraged response. It was such an infectious, uninhibited laugh that I almost busted out chuckling too. But then I caught sight of Dad’s face. In the end I just watched from the doorway, knowing how much he needed my help, but also how much he needed me not to help. Life in the business world must have seemed so much saner.

  Finally he closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths, Grace’s smelly feet clamped in his hands. “I’m sorry, Piper. I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just . . . I didn’t expect to be in this situation. And I guess I’m really too old to be doing this, you know?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Raising a child. Being there for her twenty-four/seven, that sort of thing.”

  I didn’t know what he expected me to say, but my silence clearly annoyed him. I guess he thought this kind of honesty and openness would be therapeutic, but all I could think was that Grace wasn’t the only child in the house. I was his child too, and I didn’t need him to be there for me 24/7—I’d have settled for just a few minutes of undivided attention now and again. There was a time he used to help me with my math homework, and spent long evenings thrashing Finn and me at poker. When was that? It felt like another lifetime.

  He shook his head as he realized I wouldn’t be bailing him out with some phony line about what a great dad he’d always been.

  “I guess I just haven’t got the energy for this anymore,” he sighed, without a hint of shame or regret.

  I looked at him—the thinning salt-and-pepper hair and the poop-stained polo shirt—and thought to myself, Yeah, but then again, you never did, did you?

  CHAPTER 6

  The website Dumb.com had already been taken. Maybe I should have anticipated this, but since registering a domain name was the only part of the plan that I felt comfortable doing, it was a disappointing start. The registration site tried to help me out by advising that related terms such as idiot, moron, dork, and stupid were still available for purchase if I was interested. But although it was tempting, I figured that Josh’s ego might have a problem with being the headlining act on Stupid.com. Instead I started a MySpace page for the band, which was free and pretty easy.

  I checked out the YouTube video that Josh had mentioned, but the quality was horrendous. The only way I knew for sure that it was Dumb onstage was Tash’s green spikes, which glowed like radioactive waste under the freaky stage lights.

  I spent a couple minutes tweaking the volume control on the computer, but the quality was awful. At its highest setting, it was plain uncomfortable. I closed my eyes and focused all my attention on the static mess, but the sound was completely distorted. A minute later I turned it off. For all I knew, Dumb may have been the best or the worst band in the history of rock music.

  I tried Googling for information about rock bands with three members, but one look at a photo of the Bee Gees assured me this particular line of inquiry wasn’t going to be helpful. I searched under “guitar,” memorizing words like “headstock” and “fretboard” and “pickups.” Then I moved to “singing,” wrestling with the possible meanings of “head voice” and “falsetto.” By the time I’d blown most of an hour it had become abundantly clear to me that (a) just about the only thing the Web didn’t have was a ten-step guide to managing your high school rock band, and (b) the idea of me managing a band was simply . . . well, dumb. Maybe the group knew it too. Maybe this was all a joke—their way of getting back at me for humiliating them—and they were about to have the last laugh.

  I closed my eyes and imagined how different things would have been if Marissa had never left. I still recalled every painful moment of that hot August day when she and her parents climbed into the Penske truck and took off for San Francisco: the way she apologized over and over, like she’d had any say in the decision; how she promised that nothing would change, and she’d fly back during winter break; how we’d ooVoo—a video format tailor-made for sign language—every day. And we did, too, until the camera on her laptop stopped working. Then we switched to IM, but it wasn’t the same. She couldn’t smile on IM, or laugh that ridiculous laugh, or rescue me with a pretend hug before I’d even had a chance to say what was wrong. She felt so much farther away when I couldn’t see her anymore.

  It was too early in the evening to expect her to be around, so I sent Marissa a text
message, asking her to IM as soon as she got in. Then, even though I knew I shouldn’t, I waited around in case she replied quickly. I just needed a sign, something to reassure me that she hadn’t moved on without me, that she still needed me as much as I needed her. After all, she was the only one who really got me, who’d stayed online hour after hour as I complained about Grace’s implant, agreeing heart and soul with every word I wrote. Everyone needs a friend who’ll sympathize no matter what—for me, that was Marissa.

  Ten minutes later, I gave up waiting. Clearly, I’d need to look elsewhere for today’s sympathy quota, although something told me I wasn’t going to find it at home.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Piper’s the new manager of Dumb,” blurted Finn. Apparently the news couldn’t wait until dinner had been served.

  Dad’s eyes narrowed. “What’s dumb?” he asked cautiously, like he was afraid of becoming the butt of a philosophical joke.

  “You know. They won Seattle Teen Battle of the Bands.”

  Mom snorted. “Oh, well then, yeah, of course I know exactly what you’re talking about.”

  Finn muttered something, but I couldn’t catch a word of it as Grace was babbling and Finn’s hands obscured his mouth. Sheesh. It was a round table too, so I could follow conversations and read lips more easily. Dad said it was a “concession” they were happy to make.

  “You’re not serious, are you?” asked Dad.

  “Yeah,” said Finn, not looking up. “They won it this weekend. I’ve heard them too. They’re really good.”

  “No. I mean, about Piper being their manager.”

  “Hello. I’m sitting right here,” I groaned. It happened all the time, Dad talking about me as if I weren’t sitting next to him.

  “Yeah, I’m serious,” said Finn. “She told them . . . well, she said she’s got some ideas about how to market them more effectively.”

  Dad nodded, but his fork hung in midair. “No offense, but shouldn’t the manager of a rock band have perfect hearing?”

  I couldn’t believe Dad said that, and neither could Mom.

  “Piper can do anything she wants to,” snapped Mom, repeating her favorite phrase like a mantra.

  “I know that, honey. Piper is as academically capable as any other child, but this is different.”

  That got me absolutely seething.

  “Well, I think it’s great, Piper,” Mom interjected. “You could do with a non-academic outlet.”

  I felt my jaw slacken. “Let me get this straight. Dad thinks I’m disabled, and you think I’m a geek?”

  They both rushed to defend themselves, so I couldn’t decide whose lips to read. “Stop! One at a time.” I nodded at Dad first.

  “It’s not about being disabled. It’s about knowing your limitations.”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Mom flinch.

  “Gee, thanks, Dad. That’s especially meaningful coming from someone who can’t even change a diaper.”

  “What’s that?” asked Mom, grateful for the change of topic.

  “Dad ended up with Grace’s poop all over his shirt this afternoon.”

  “That’s enough,” he said sternly.

  Mom tried to rein it in, but then she let loose an unsavory snort, which got me laughing. A moment later Grace erupted in chortling too, face aglow as she bounced up and down in her high chair. Suddenly I was laughing even harder, and I would have kept laughing if I hadn’t realized that in the space of a day Grace had gone from profound deafness to hearing probably more than me. I knew I should have been thrilled for her, but instead I was so overwhelmed with jealousy I wanted to scream. I understood that I was being unreasonable, but if I could I’d have ripped her implant off right there and then.

  I looked around the table, wondering how I’d become so frustrated with the rest of my family so quickly. And as I sat there pondering how to escape feeling so wretched, the only thing that offered any relief at all was completely and utterly Dumb.

  CHAPTER 8

  Wednesday lunch was chess club, an opportunity for me to inflict swift and decisive defeats on anyone who dared to take me on. Which is to say, Ed Chen.

  Ed’s strengths did not lie in his chess acumen. In fact, it was entirely unclear to me why he continued to subject himself to successive thrashings, but I was grateful for it. Even though I was captain of the school team—a team in name only; we hadn’t taken on another school in almost a year—I couldn’t get anyone else to play me.

  Ed was white again—like having the first move was any kind of advantage—and he commenced with his standard opening, shuffling a pawn forward two spaces. I sometimes wondered if he kept doing it to lure me into complacency, that one day he’d sense my apathy and unleash his full arsenal of devastating moves, his bishops assaulting my defenseless pawns. But after a year of identical openings, I suspected he wasn’t holding anything back; there simply wasn’t anything there.

  Not that Ed wasn’t talented. He’d been principal percussionist of the Seattle Youth Orchestra since he was thirteen, and seemed destined to follow in his mom’s footsteps by attending one of those prestigious conservatories on the East Coast. He was pretty open about it even, although he never came across as cocky, just confident.

  I countered his pawn shuffle by advancing one of my own pawns, blocking his path. It was a throwaway move, but he responded like I’d exhausted his options. He scratched his head, leaving his thick dark hair standing upright, and scrunched his face until I could barely see his deep brown eyes. Even his cheeks had a cute rosy glow. When he speculatively nudged another pawn forward, the move seemed to cause him such grave discomfort I could barely keep a straight face.

  “I’ve agreed to manage that rock band Dumb,” I said, breaking the silence.

  Oddly, Ed didn’t seem surprised. “What do you think of them?” he asked.

  I wasn’t sure what I thought of them because I couldn’t really hear them, so I just shrugged. “It’s just a joke really, I guess.”

  Ed’s eyes narrowed. “I disagree. I thought their performance on Monday was quite compelling.”

  I was shocked. “You were there?”

  “Sort of. I was watching from the second floor. And for the record,” he said, raising an eyebrow, “I noticed that you and Kallie Sims were the only ones who stayed for the whole performance. Odd behavior for someone who thinks Dumb is a joke.”

  I felt myself blush. Was everyone watching me from behind the safety of a school window?

  I stealthily positioned my knight as decoy, while setting up my queen for a devastating attack. Ed responded defensively, throwing a sacrificial pawn in my way. The game could have been over in just two more moves, but talking to Ed about Dumb was helpful.

  “Would you look at something for me?” I asked.

  “Sure.” He seemed relieved to put the game on hold.

  As we stood up, I noticed he had finally grown taller than me. Not that he’s short—I’m five foot eight—but I’d been taller ever since freshman year. Maybe it’s easier to get your ass whipped in chess when your female opponent is shorter than you.

  Chess club met in the computer room—presumably geeks who play chess are considered less destructive than other student groups—so I led him to one of the computers and searched for Dumb’s YouTube performance. It was no more meaningful for me than it had been the day before, but Ed studied it like it was advanced calculus. When it was over, he nodded several times before turning to face me.

  “Okay, well, the good news is that although all three songs are covers, they’re imaginative covers, like Dumb’s recomposing each song rather than just copying it. That’s important—gives them their own identity, which is necessary if they want to stand out.”

  I had no idea what a cover was, but in the context I got the gist of it. So far so good.

  “Unfortunately, though, they’re very imprecise. They don’t listen to one another, and they clearly don’t practice enough.”

  “Really? Because they told me
they practice every Friday in Josh and Will’s garage.”

  Ed smiled broadly. “Believe me, there’s a big difference between rehearsing and hanging out with each other for a couple hours every Friday evening.”

  We wandered back to the chessboard, my pieces poised to dethrone his king at a moment’s notice. With only two more minutes until the end of lunch, I commenced the endgame.

  “Ed, would you do me a favor?”

  He perked up. “Sure. Anything.”

  “Could you come along on Friday and listen to them? You know, give them some pointers.”

  His eyes shot back down to the chessboard. “I don’t think so, Piper. They’re not really . . . well, I’m not like them.”

  “What are you saying—that you think I’m like them?”

  Ed sighed, passively sending his queen skipping across the board, more fodder for me if I chose to take it. But that seemed unnecessarily cruel. Instead, I moved my rook into position and waited.

  “I think you’ve almost got me here,” I said, wiping my forehead for effect.

  The corners of his mouth twitched with excitement. “I have?”

  “Hmm. . . . Now will you please come on Friday?”

  Ed looked closer at his pieces, trying to see the threat that I saw. He shrugged as he moved his queen all the way back to where it had started the previous move. I sometimes wondered if he thought that the winner was the person whose pieces covered the most real estate.

  “If you win, I’ll come,” he said finally. “But if I win”—he smirked—“then it’s no deal.”

  Five seconds later the bell rang. But not before I’d put him in checkmate.

  CHAPTER 9

  Mom was bouncing Grace on her knee as I entered the living room, and I couldn’t help but smile. It used to be a thing we did together—tag-team Grace teasing, we called it—Mom bouncing Grace, me playing peek-a-boo with her. And I’m sorry if it sounds cheesy, but yeah, I liked it. But this time Mom had turned Grace toward her, talking in the rapid-fire patter of a horse race commentator. Visual stimulation was out. Aural stimulation was the order of the day, and I couldn’t see how I’d fit into that activity at all.