Puckers Up

by Mark Peter Hughes

  ALSO BY MARK PETER HUGHES

  I Am the Wallpaper

  Lemonade Mouth

  A Crack in the Sky

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2012 by Mark Peter Hughes

  Jacket art copyright © 2012 by Ericka O’Rourke

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

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  eISBN: 978-0-307-97439-6

  Random House Children’s Books

  supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  For my sisters, Carolyn and Jennifer, with love

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Most Esteemed Pursuers of the Great and Wondrous, You hold in your eager hands the second volume in the bewildering history of the late great Lemonade Mouth.

  As anyone not living under a rock can attest, much has been said and written about the fab five and their extraordinary rise from high school nothingness. But so much mystery surrounds the band that a lot of what has been reported as fact is actually based on mere rumor and guesswork. Let me tell you, it doesn’t even brush the surface of the truth. What really took place was even more astonishing than the rumors.

  I should know. I was there.

  I witnessed a lot of this stuff firsthand.

  Due in part to my role as senior music editor for our school newspaper, the Barking Clam, but mostly because of my close friendship with the band, I remain the only reporter with exclusive permission to tell the whole sordid tale—sour notes and all. As in the previous go-round, getting the full details of this next part of the story from each of the band members was no walk in the park. I’m still bleary-eyed from working through the stack of photocopied letters Olivia gave me, squinting at her faint handwriting to try to decipher what she said. Wen, on the other hand, agreed to be interviewed, but despite what everyone thinks, he can be as chatty as a brick wall sometimes, especially when he’s hungry. I had to keep feeding him brownies to get him to open up. Charlie was perhaps the most frustrating of all. After making me wait ages for him to complete his English Comp paper so I could include it in the previous volume, this time he got the idea of continuing his own written account. It seems he took out a library book on screenwriting and it inspired him “to get creative with the written form.” When he told me this, I knew it would mean only one thing: more grammar errors.

  Sigh.

  But take heart, Dear Reader, because the result was worth all the trouble. Let me set the stage for where this second act of our story picks up:

  With their freshman year at Opequonsett High School behind them, our five misunderstood revolutionaries—Wen, Olivia, Charlie, Stella and Mo—were starting out their summer vacation still reeling from all the local media attention they’d received after their appearance at the Catch A RI-Zing Star competition and the return of the Mel’s Organic Frozen Lemonade machine to their school. A short video clip from the event became an online sensation, and for a week or two afterward they started to receive messages from all over the country in support of their crusade for the unheard.

  As each of them settled into their summer activities, none had any idea that their strange rocket ride into history was just beginning.

  Naomi Fishmeier

  Scene Queen & Official Biographer of Lemonade Mouth

  *A brief note about Charlie’s contributions: In the interest of authenticity I previously let Charlie’s many punctuation and grammatical mistakes slide (the boy is about as careful a grammarian as a sea slug) but, Dear Reader, I confess I could stand it no longer. This time around I have liberally applied my editor’s correcting pen to help the boy along. You’re welcome.

  When opportunity knocks, grab it by the shirt, pull it the heck into the house, and offer it something to eat.

  Come on, guys! This ain’t brain surgery!

  —Sista Slash

  OLIVIA

  A Pebble Tossed into Still Water

  Dear Naomi,

  Looking back, I can honestly say that I felt the trouble coming before it even arrived. As you know, I sometimes get feelings about these things, and I guess a part of me realized that summer vacation was starting off too well.

  Things were far too good to stay that way.

  I’d just finished my chaotic freshman year at Opequonsett High School and was looking forward to two quiet, predictable months of reading in my backyard, gathering shells on the beach and relaxing with my grandmother and our thirteen cats. My only real responsibility was to help out with my grandmother’s mail-order printing and graphics business, which she runs from our house, but I knew that would actually be kind of fun.

  Most of all, I was looking forward to hanging out with my Lemonade Mouth friends.

  For a couple of weeks the five of us had been meeting in Lyle Dwarkin’s garage, trying to record some new songs Wen and I had written. Lyle is so good with that techie stuff, and his mother makes amazing orange meringue tarts. But you remember all this as well as I do, Naomi, because you were there too, hanging out with us and helping Lyle arrange the microphones and all the other gear. Remember how long it took to set up Wen’s trumpet mike that first session? How Lyle kept switching the angle and trying out different effects on his laptop until it sounded just right? Stella didn’t say a word, but it was obvious she was about to burst with impatience, because as she gripped the neck of her new ukulele, her jaw was clenched and her face was turning red. Mo and Charlie nearly fell over themselves trying not to laugh.

  But Lyle is a perfectionist. That’s part of the reason why those recordings turned out the way they did. Even Stella finally admits it now.

  I now recognize those were special days, a brief period of happy calm like the still surface of a pond just before someone throws a pebble into the water. In a way, it was my own fault that everything changed. Stella and the others had been trying to get me to agree to perform live again, but even though I’d tried to overcome my fears, the idea of singing in front of a crowd of strangers made me so anxious that I often threw up before going onstage.

  If I hadn’t relented, maybe everything would have turned out differently. If I’d said no and Lemonade Mouth hadn’t shown up to perform an hour-long outdoor set at the Seventeenth Annual Rhode Island Chowder Fest in Cranston, my tranquil summer plans might have remained undisturbed.

  But of course, that’s not what happened.

  As everyone knows, it was at the Chowder Fest, immediately after we played our set, that our lives were forever altered.

  It was a beautiful afternoon on a June Sunday. A pretty big crowd showed up to hear us, and I remember my lunch rising at the sight of so many people. But after a discreet visit to the bathroom my stomach calmed a little, and it ended up being an especially fun show. We opened with “Monste
r Maker,” and right away the audience was getting into it, jumping around, dancing and singing along. During the chorus of “Bring It Back!” I was amazed at how many people joined in.

  I want lemonade in my cup!

  Hmmmm, hmmmm

  Hold it high! Raise it up!

  Hmmmm, hmmmm.

  The song had kind of become the unofficial anthem of our lemonade machine rebellion at school that year, and that day I watched as an entire field full of people, most of them total strangers, saluted us by raising lemonade cups, some real and some imaginary, into the air. For our fans this had become the sign of unity and revolution. I couldn’t help feeling a swell of pride. After that I was having such a good time that by our third or fourth song I forgot to be nervous. But I also remember noticing a blond lady in a bright pink business suit near the back of the crowd. She stood out because of her clothing and because she was just standing there, watching us. Every now and then she seemed to scribble something on a pad of paper as if she was taking notes.

  With so much chaos going on around her, it seemed weird.

  When our set ended, the five of us started breaking down our equipment. As I often did, I went over to help Charlie with his drums. He uses so many of them—a giant wall of congas and timbales and cymbals and other percussion instruments I can’t even name—that it always took a while to pack it all up. Anyway, as I was helping him I noticed the pink-suited lady walk up to the edge of the stage.

  “Nice show,” she said to us. “The crowd really liked you.”

  “Thanks,” Mo answered, lowering her double bass into its big gray case. We were trying to move fast since there was another act scheduled to play after us.

  “No, I mean I’m truly impressed,” the woman said. “Your music is wild and different, and it’s not often I see a band inspire this much devotion from its fan base. They know all the words, and they follow your every move. Do you always draw such a big crowd? And do you always get fans who show up in costumes?”

  I looked out at the field again. The place really was packed, and a bunch of people had shown up in funny outfits—zombies, houseplants, cats, toilets and other crazy things. I remember a bunch of burly guys dressed as rubber duckies, and one couple that looked like a cookie and a giant glass of milk.

  Mo shrugged. “Yes, usually,” she said, still struggling with her case. “Our first real performance was at a Halloween dance. After that it sort of became a tradition at our shows. It’s just fun.”

  “It’s impressive,” the woman said again. “The vibe from your audience makes your performance feel like more than just a local show. What I just saw felt bigger—much bigger.” She reached into her blazer and pulled out a business card. “My name is Jennifer Sweet. I work for Earl Decker at the Decker and Smythe talent agency. Mr. Decker is interested in Lemonade Mouth.”

  “Decker and Smythe?” Stella asked. Until then she didn’t seem to be paying much attention to Mo’s conversation, but she now moved nearer and looked over Mo’s shoulder at the card. She stared at it. Wen, Charlie and I stepped closer too. I have to admit, at the time I didn’t understand the significance of what was going on. I’d heard of Decker and Smythe, of course, but I didn’t really know much about it.

  Stella must have noticed my confused expression. “Don’t you get it?” she asked. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Olivia. Decker and Smythe? It’s only one of the most important talent agencies in the history of the music industry. They’ve represented some of the biggest, most successful bands ever. Devon and the Hellraisers? Monica Maybe? The Deadbeat Fingerwaggers? Exhibit A? The Church Ladies? You’ve heard of them, right?”

  I nodded. These were all rock-and-roll giants.

  “Well, there you go. Earl Decker was there when it all began. He’s like … well, he’s a legend.”

  The woman nodded, but her serious expression didn’t change.

  “Mr. Decker saw the video clip of what happened at Catch A RI-Zing Star and he sent me down to check you out in person. You guys are on to something here. If you’re interested in seeing how far you can take this, call the number on that card. We’d like to set up a time to talk.” Before any of us had a chance to respond, Ms. Sweet had already left the edge of the stage and was disappearing through the crowd, hurrying toward the parking lot as if she was late for another appointment.

  The five of us were left standing there staring at the little white card. It was only a piece of paper, and yet, like a pebble tossed into a pond, its effect was about to send ripples across our universe. We didn’t know it yet, but things were not about to go in a direction anybody expected. Certainly not us, and not Decker and Smythe either.

  Lemonade Mouth had just begun a bumpy journey to a place none of us could have predicted.

  STELLA

  The Most Important Phone Call Ever

  My friends, the good news couldn’t have come at a better time for your own Sista Stella. Up until the moment Decker and Smythe dropped out of the sky and into our lives, my summer started off looking drearier and more frustrating by the day.

  There were two major reasons for this.

  First, despite the brief period of commotion and media attention that our recent Catch A RI-Zing Star appearance had brought to my little band of misfits and our lemonade machine cause, very little of that attention had focused on our music. As a musician with lofty aspirations, this was burning me up. Mrs. Reznik, our septuagenarian music teacher and Lemonade Mouth’s spiritual mentor, often said, “The music is everything. It’s what matters above all else.”

  So of course I was frustrated.

  The second reason was this: My summer, young as it was, had recently been hijacked. Against my wishes, my mother had volunteered me to spend my weekday mornings filling in as a receptionist at her biochemical research laboratory. True, I was getting paid, which meant I had a chance of going to the Take Charge Festival in August. Take Charge was a giant daylong concert event in Vermont, with a dozen big-name bands promoting worldwide youth activism. It was organized and headlined by the one and only Sista Slash, my guitar-slinging activist hero, so even though tickets were expensive, I really wanted to go.

  Still, being the receptionist for a small research laboratory had to be the dullest job in the world.

  Picture, if you will, your musical maverick sista, her formerly green cropped hair now an inferno of glorious pink (a fresh color for a fresh summer), sitting at a metal desk surrounded by filing cabinets and cardboard boxes. Imagine your misused heroine parked on a chair from eight to noon, Monday through Friday, in a dark-paneled space where the phone hardly ever rings, with little to do except twiddle her thumbs, surf the Internet and occasionally write her name on an electronic pad when the package delivery guy needed a signature.

  “Oh, don’t exaggerate, Stella,” my clueless mother said at the time, dismissing my complaints with a wave of her hand. “It’s not that bad!”

  But how would she have known?

  As I suffered in bored silence, she and her team of biochemical trailblazers were twenty feet away doing the geeky mad-scientist things they loved most, which at the time meant searching for a way to make cheap, biodegradable plastic from vegetable cells. While my mother and her genius buddies were busy trying to create a planet-saving Frankenstein plant, I was wasting my life away. The one thing I had to look forward to was recording music with my friends. I was forever counting the hours and minutes until the next time Lemonade Mouth got together again.

  As you can imagine, the surprising news that the Decker and Smythe Talent Agency, that music-industry colossus, that promoter of rock-and-roll superstars too numerous to count, wanted to talk with us—well, it came like an unexpected beacon of hope in a dark sea of tedium and despair.

  I remember the next morning, my palms sweating as I gripped the little business card. Out of the five of us, I’d been chosen to make the call. Looking up from the telephone number, I could see Beverly DeVito, one of the lab assistants, on the other side of the
glass window that looked into the main lab. Plump and twentyish with short brown bangs and glasses, she was hunched over a microscope. She must have sensed me watching because she looked up, but my mind was so occupied that it took me a moment to realize she was waving at me through the glass. Finally I waved back, embarrassed that I’d been caught staring. She didn’t make a big deal of it. She just smiled and went right back to her work.

  I liked Beverly. She was all right.

  The thing was, I was in a tizzy. It was 8:45 a.m., too early to contact Decker and Smythe. It was too early for any sane person to have to be up and about, especially since it was supposed to be summer vacation. It weighed on me that this might be the most important phone call I would ever make in my entire life. First impressions mattered. Call too early and Lemonade Mouth might seem overeager. Leave it too late and the agency might get the idea that we weren’t serious about the band’s future.

  Needless to say, I’d been thinking about this all night.

  The best approach, I’d decided, was to wait until later in the morning—ten o’clock or so—and then ask to speak directly to Earl Decker himself. The goal was to project confidence. I’d been imagining the conversation over and over again: Hey, Earl, I would say (I’d agonized about what to call him, but in the end the informal approach seemed best), you guys said you wanted to talk, so let’s talk.

  But first I would force myself to wait.

  To kill time I grabbed the stack of fashion magazines Beverly had left on the coffee table for visitors—as if anybody other than me ever sat in that room long enough to look at them. I flipped through each magazine one at a time, page after page of rail-thin models in tight dresses. They looked starved, every one of them, and it occurred to me that someone ought to make a thick, healthy stew to feed these poor women.

  At last it was 10:02 and I couldn’t stand to wait a moment longer. I dialed the number. In my mind I pictured the office somewhere in a tall building in Boston. In some other reception area—one no doubt grander and more exciting than the one I was in—a phone started to ring.