Lemonade Mouth

by Mark Peter Hughes

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I’ve talked to her. She may be a little different, but she seems all right to me.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  By now he’s been working on my neck so long that I worry he might leave a hickey. I wiggle away. “So anyway, have you heard who’s in this band?”

  “Not really,” he says. “I only know about Stella and that loser Charlie Hirsh. Oh, and Olivia Whitehead. Now there’s a real whack job.”

  I ignore that. “Nobody else?”

  “Why do you care?” He slowly runs his finger down the back of my blouse, sending a wave of electricity through me. “Those kids are nothing. The guys and I are going to blow those freaks away. Come on, let’s not talk about this anymore. We’re wasting time.” I feel his hand try to reach under my shirt again.

  “Well,” I say, twisting away, “I was waiting to surprise you with this but, the thing is . . .” He follows me across the sand and puts his face directly in front of mine, his smile betraying only a hint of impatience. “. . . I’m one of those freaks.”

  Even in the darkness I can see his eyebrows draw together. He stares at me for a second and then pulls back.

  “We haven’t agreed on a name yet or anything—but we’re not bad, actually. You should hear us.”

  He keeps staring. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “It’ll be fun. We get to share the same stage on the same night. Isn’t that great?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he says. “That’s just . . . wonderful.”

  “But I thought you’d be happy.”

  He shakes his head like he can’t believe what he’s hearing. “Look, Mo, it isn’t that I care about you being in a band. It’s just that I’m pissed off that this band is taking half our night from us.”

  I try to give him a playful smile. “So it’s your night, is it?”

  “Yes. Well, it was supposed to be anyway, until Brenigan carved it up. We had big plans for this year’s Bash. I think you should tell Stella and the others to back off.”

  “I don’t understand. Why should this be a problem?”

  He shrugs. “I guess I’m just a competitive guy.”

  For a long, quiet moment I watch his silhouette watch me. This reaction is surprising. In fact, he seems so ruffled about the Halloween dance that I decide not to mention about the Holiday Talent Show. Let him warm up to the idea first. I move closer and snuggle next to him. “Did you ever consider that maybe I’m competitive too?”

  “Okay, but Olivia Whitehead? Charlie Hirsh? Come on, Mo, you guys are way out of your league.”

  “What!” That’s when, laughing, I pop him one on the shoulder. “Scott Pickett, don’t be such an arrogant jerk!”

  “Not you. I don’t mean that.” He laughs, but only a little. “It’s just that I honestly have no idea what you’re doing with those losers. Take my advice and tell them you’re not interested.” Then he comes in even closer. “Look, you’re a special person, Mo. I really like you. A lot. You should know that.”

  I don’t answer right away. How can I? He takes my hand and a supernova of excitement renders me temporarily incapable of rational thought. Eventually I manage, “I really like you too.” I lean in and we kiss again.

  A part of me realizes even now that he really is being a jerk about the band, but I decide that deep down he knows it and is going to feel bad about it later. Anyway, I don’t want to argue. After another long kiss we sit quietly and stare up at the stars. Eventually, he stands and helps me to my feet so we can head back to the campfire.

  “So?” he whispers as we round the dune. “What did you decide about the Bash?”

  “Decide?” I give him my best mischievous smile. “Well, after considerable thought I decided not to dump you for what you said.”

  “What I said? About your friends?”

  “About my band mates.” I grin and take his hand again, leaning my head against his shoulder the whole way back to the fire.

  OLIVIA:

  Bikini-Clad Policemen on Old-fashioned Bicycles

  Dear Ted,

  I’ve been sitting here in the backyard for almost an hour gazing into the woods, listening to the crickets and thinking. I get some of my clearest thoughts down here in the grass. And today I have a lot to mull over. I spent most of the afternoon at Wen’s house. Remember that talent show I wrote you about? Well, I decided to give it a shot after all. I figure it’s time for drastic measures unless I want to stay friendless for the next four years. When the time comes to go onstage, I guess I’ll just have to do whatever I can to stifle the panic. (She thinks, “Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts . . .”) Very un-Virgo of me, I know. Impressed? un-Virgo of me, I know. Impressed?

  Anyway, Mrs. Reznik is helping us. We decided we’re only going to play our own music because anything else we attempt sounds like crap (our ukulele player’s word, not Mrs. Reznik’s). So this morning in Social Studies Wen mentioned that he and I should maybe try and write some songs together. I guess I misunderstood because when I showed up at his house this afternoon he seemed surprised to see me. But it worked out fine. He introduced me to his father, Norman (Wen’s clone—short, wiry, baseball cap, big smile), his little brother, George (Eddie Munster with freckles) and Norman’s amazing girlfriend, Sydney. Sydney works in a used bookstore in Providence and loves to read so we had a lot to talk about. Plus she’s an artist. Listen to this: she painted a whole case of soda cans, each with its own bikini-clad policeman on an old-fashioned bicycle. So cool.

  Wen knows the words to every Wham Bam Racer song. He sang some of them even though (as he freely admits) he has the worst voice ever, even worse than mine—like a mountain goat in a death throe (his words, not mine)! He made me laugh so hard that for a few minutes I stopped obsessing about Nancy (who’s doing better now). Wen’s even a P. G. Wodehouse fanatic like me, can you believe it? The truth is, I believe I’m starting to have a crush on him. And that’s a problem. After all, I’m sure he doesn’t feel the same way about me. How do I know? Well, for one thing, he’s obviously in lust with Sydney. All afternoon, whenever she was around he practically tripped over himself trying to look in the other direction.

  Poor boy.

  Anyway, the good news is that by the time I left Wen’s house he and I had five new songs. I’d brought my accordion to help us, but we seemed to work best with Wen coming up with most of the music and me writing the lyrics. The songs are just outlines, really, skeletons of words and melody that the others can fill in next time we get together. Still, I think they’re okay.

  Stay tuned.

  Your Biggest Fan,

  Olivia

  P.S.

  I lied when I told you Nancy is doing better. Sorry. I wasn’t going to get into this because I figured there was no point in bringing you bad news, especially when I’m not even sure about it. But I was about to lick the envelope when I had a change of heart. She was originally your cat, after all, so withholding the truth wouldn’t be right. The fact is, she’s still hardly eating. Brenda and I are in a state about it. We’ve been trying everything: hand feeding her warm tuna, even giving her potassium supplements. So far nothing seems to work. The earliest vet appointment we could get was for this Wednesday. We’ve been putting on brave faces for each other, trying to convince ourselves it’s a stomach flu or something, but in my heart of hearts I’m not so sure. Needless to say, I’m losing sleep over it. But of course, whatever Nancy needs we’ll get her. Apart from Brenda and you, my girls are the closest friends I have in the world.

  I hope I’m doing the right thing by telling you.

  I’ll write when I know more.

  STELLA:

  A Puzzling Interruption

  Picture, if you will, your beloved Sista Stella, her short locks now a blaze of glorious green, carrying her ukulele everywhere she went. It wasn’t exactly her ukulele, of course, but Mrs. Reznik said she could use the one from the music room as long as she needed. And Stella wasn’t carrying it around to sh
ow off or anything, it was just that she liked to keep it close. Imagine our musical maverick carefully removing the instrument from its case several times a day just to look at its shiny red finish, its perfect silver frets. Our former directionless loner suddenly felt like she had a purpose, a raison d’être, and she was determined to take good care of the beautiful instrument, to keep it protected, polish it and change the strings often.

  Now picture a bunch of self-important juniors and seniors giving her the evil eye as she walked the hallways. Not that they didn’t stare before, secretly studying her like she were a curious specimen, keeping their distance as if worried she might spontaneously burst into flames. But suddenly now it was even worse.

  How did this baffling new heat from passing glances affect me?

  Well, I won’t lie. I found it all pretty freaky. Still, who could blame me, a naïve newcomer at the time, for assuming I was getting these dark stares only because kids thought I was some kind of music dork? According to Wen, though, that wasn’t it at all. He told me it was because somebody had spread the word that I was responsible for cutting the Mudslide Crush show short. Naturally, I was surprised to hear it was that big a deal. Apparently this band had quite a following. Its fans even had a name for themselves: the Mudslide Crushers. Sure, I’d heard some of Mudslide Crush’s music, and it really was a good band in a power-pop kind of way—but who were these people, some sort of suburban cult?

  But I tried to ignore the looks. Just because Mudslide Crush was popular didn’t mean they couldn’t share the stage for one solitary night.

  That Tuesday afternoon my own neophyte band met again for our second practice.

  “I see everybody brought their official underworld membership badges,” Wen said as we were setting up.

  I wasn’t sure at first what he was talking about, but when I looked around I realized. Today, not only did Mrs. Reznik have her usual Mel’s cup from the nearby machine, but each of us, myself included, had brought one too. Before moving to Rhode Island I’d never even heard of Mel’s Organic Frozen Lemonade, but during my visits to the basement in recent days I’d developed a taste for it. The icy cold slush was a welcome change from soda. But in my short time at this school I’d also learned that drinking Mel’s was something people around here usually associated with the oddball kids who hung out in the basement. If somebody was carrying the signature yellow and green paper cup, that usually meant they were in one of the school’s less glamorous organizations.

  Everybody seemed to recognize what Wen meant. Mo laughed. “I guess this means we’re an official basement club now.”

  It suddenly struck me as strange that Mo would want to be down here with us. After all, unlike the rest of us, she had somewhere else to go. But then again, it seemed to me that Mo didn’t really fit in with that crowd of Barbies and Kens I sometimes saw her with. There was something off-kilter about her. For starters, she was a human pressure cooker. You could see in her eyes that the girl was always on the verge of panic. And then there was the bullheaded way she did everything—like insisting on lugging that bass around with her all the time even though it was practically bigger than she was. Being the only Indian kid at school didn’t help either. In any case, here she was—maybe not as obviously out of spec as the rest of us, but out of spec just the same.

  I held up my cup, “We’re subterranean and we’re proud!”

  Everybody grinned. They each grabbed their own cups and held them up, and then we all took a sip together.

  The dark and windowless music room was not a particularly peaceful place to practice, though. Not only was it situated below the new locker rooms which were under construction, but it was also directly adjacent to the bathrooms so the pipes shook, loud as crap, every time somebody flushed—which always seemed to happen two or three times in a row.

  “Down here, everybody’s an underachiever,” Wen quipped after the third or forth time it happened. “Even the toilets.”

  Wen was all right.

  Still, I didn’t care about the noise. To be honest, after everyone dissed my Sista Slash ideas at the last practice, leaving the group with only the one tune, I worried that we wouldn’t be able to get our act together on time. Plus, we still didn’t have a name. The subject had come up a few times already but nobody ever had any good ideas, and anyway, nothing seemed to fit. And this worried me. Mr. Brenigan had been pushing for a name to put on the fliers. The Bash was only in seventeen days.

  But after practice got going, I realized that at least we had a handful of new songs thanks to Wen and Olivia. Who knew they had it in them? Olivia had even brought an ancient-looking accordion, which they hooked up to one of that Lyle kid’s distortion effects. Freaky cool. Out of all the new songs, the one that especially bowled me over was one called “Skinny Nancy,” a spooky tune with mysterious words:

  Eat, Skinny Nancy, eat

  Before your time is done

  You are a fading flower, a setting sun

  Enjoy this moment, my lovely one

  Eat, Skinny Nancy, eat

  That blew me away.

  I asked Olivia what it meant but she wouldn’t say, only that it was personal. I kept pushing but the girl was a hard nut to crack. Finally, Charlie came to her defense:

  “Leave her alone,” he said. “Why should it even matter what she says it means? Can’t everyone interpret the words whatever way makes sense to them?”

  The first time I’d ever laid eyes on Charlie, all I’d seen was a big slow, disheveled kid with a monotone way of talking and an occasional psycho look in his eyes—a kid at the absolute bottom of the high school food chain. But now I recognized that he was actually a thoughtful, sensitive guy. He seemed to take everything seriously, and I liked that about him. I could understand why he and Olivia might see eye to eye.

  I was also beginning to feel my own unlikely connection to our strange, taciturn singer. That very morning in Biology while everybody was supposed to be silently reading our textbooks, I, uninterested in chloroplasts or ribosomes, had instead been secretly reading an X-Men comic I’d hidden inside the textbook pages. But when I looked up I noticed Olivia on the opposite side of the room staring directly at me. Caught, I’d felt my face heat up. But that’s when Olivia quietly lowered her own textbook just enough to show what was inside. A paperback novel. A moment later, we were both having a difficult time holding back laughter.

  In any case, after that fight during our first practice, I was determined not to let anything else threaten to split my fragile new band apart again.

  “All right,” I said, hoping to end the tension with a smile. “It’s personal. As long as Olivia and Wen keep coming up with songs that good, I guess I don’t have to know what they mean.”

  That’s when somebody pounded hard against the door. It was three loud thumps so sudden and forceful that they made me jump. And immediately afterward I thought I could hear footsteps sprinting away down the hallway.

  “What the heck was that?” Wen looked as startled as I felt.

  By the time we got to the door and peered down the hallway, there was nobody there except a couple kids from the French Club. Just like us, they were checking to see what the commotion had been.

  Charlie scratched his cheek. “That was weird. I wonder what that was all about.”

  Then Olivia said, “Look!” She was pointing up at the ceiling behind us.

  Everyone turned. Hanging from a tile above the entrance way to the loading dock was what looked like one of those baby mobiles, those funny little circular arrangements of colored objects on strings that you hang above a newborn’s crib—except this one was made of five empty Mel’s cups.

  “What is it?”

  I wasn’t sure, but I had a sinking feeling that it wasn’t fan mail. When I looked closely, I noticed that underneath a layer of grime, each cup had a frowning face drawn on it in black marker. One of the faces had rectangular glasses. “I’m . . . pretty sure that’s supposed to be us.”

  �
��Whoa,” Charlie whispered. “Bizarre . . .”

  Everyone crowded closer. At the top of the mobile was a folded piece of paper. I reached up and picked it off the string.

  “Come on, Stella,” said Wen impatiently. “What does it say?”

  As I unfolded it, I felt a wave of dread. I didn’t want any more problems. When I’d started at this school, all I’d wanted was to fit in. But it sure wasn’t easy. I quickly read the note and then showed it to the others.

  “Freaks Back Off the Bash.”

  CHARLIE:

  Stella Shoots Her Mouth Off

  Has music ever transported you to another place? Do you know that feeling when the bad stuff in your day fades and your body can’t help moving to the sound? Do you? Maybe it’s just me. Sometimes when I’m playing my timbales and everything feels just right I can close my eyes and the energy practically lifts me into the air like that Tornado in “The Wizard of Oz” it surrounds me and carries me up and away.

  Anyway at our practices that’s how I felt.

  Mrs. Reznik didn’t say much the first couple of afternoons but after that she wasn’t shy about pointing out our screwups. I caught her tapping her foot in time to the rhythm though so I could tell we were at least OK. Even that strange mobile incident didn’t bother me for long. Because at last the 5 of us were jelling. Musically anyway.

  But soon I couldn’t help recognizing that there was an unexpected downside. It’s kind of funny but the 1 thing I wanted before any of this happened was to get close to Mo. Every day between Metal Shop and Spanish I used to watch her passing me in the hallway and I’d wrack my brain trying to come up with some pathetic excuse to speak with her. Now here we were walking together down the corridor. Like buddies.