I’d never be able to get rid of Sydney. Ever.
Without thinking, I reached for the door handle. The next thing I knew I was standing in the rain.
“What are you doing, Wen?”
“Going for a walk.” I slammed the door, then turned and started in the opposite direction. Cold rain dripped from my hair. My brain felt numb. I wasn’t sure where I was headed, only that I had to get away.
From behind I heard my dad’s door open. “Hey, don’t do this—”
I spun back around.
“I’m not getting back in!” I roared. A fat raindrop hit my forehead and started trickling toward my ear. “I said I’m going for a walk! And don’t even think about following me!”
My dad had one leg out of the truck, but I guess he saw on my face that I was serious because he stopped. I glared at him. After a moment, I spun away again, dug my hands deep in my jacket pockets, and kept walking.
CHARLIE:
A Wrecking Ball to the Stomach
Thursday afternoon after our final rehearsal before the show everyone went straight home. Practice had been a disaster. On top of barely getting through our newest songs and our panic about the Bash everybody was worried about Mo and where she was and why hadn’t she at least called? I phoned her house a couple of times but got no answer I tried Naomi but then I remembered that Mo had told me she was interviewing some local Folk Musician at Bruno’s that afternoon. Before Stella left to go home she wondered aloud if Mo was backing out but I was pretty sure that wasn’t it. Mo wouldn’t do that to us. Especially not with the Bash only a day away. Still, this was way weird for her.
After everyone left, my mom decided the 2 of us should go out for Chinese. My dad would be home late from work as usual and she didn’t want to cook. But I could barely sit still at the Restaurant and I ended up rushing us through the meal.
It was raining when we drove back. The minute we got home I ran to check the messages. The light was on. I pressed the button.
“Hi Charlie it’s me.” Mo. She was almost whispering. There were a few seconds of sharp breathing. “I hope you get this tonight. Call me I need to talk.”
Something had happened.
“Hello?” Mo had picked up on the 2nd ring. Her voice sounded normal enough at 1st but when she realized it was me she started crying. “I hate him! He’s an absolute bastard!”
“Who?” I asked, really really worried now.
“Scott!”
That’s when Aaron whispered So tell me something we didn’t already know. It’s also when Mo started bawling.
“It’s OK it’s OK” I said trying to sound calm. “Tell me what happened.”
It took a little more coaxing but eventually I got the story: Immediately after school she’d headed to Scott’s locker to say hi. When she got there she found him with Lynn Westerberg, his old Girlfriend. Scott and Lynn were facing each other too busy making out to notice anybody else. Mo said she’d stood frozen, unable at 1st to believe what she was seeing. But then Lynn finally saw her. Her eyes went wide and she whispered in Scott’s ear and unfortunately Mo was close enough to hear.
“Oh God Scotty it’s her.”
There was a long pause where Scott stood perfectly still. Eventually he turned around. “Hi Mo” he said with that stupid half grin he always has, his voice calm. “You remember Lynn. Right?”
“You should of seen his expression” Mo sobbed over the phone. “He thought it was funny! The bastard!”
I sighed. No doubt about that.
Still in shock Mo staggered a couple of steps backward and then spun around and ran away she said she was so hurt that she was having a hard time breathing but even then she half-hoped Scott would follow her. And maybe try to explain himself. Maybe it had all been a misunderstanding.
But of course he didn’t.
“Now I know why he wasn’t talking with me like he used to” she said still sobbing. “I was just a novelty to him something new to try. I wouldn’t mind so much but why did the truth have to come out like this? If he didn’t want to go out with me anymore then why couldn’t he at least have the courtesy to break up with me?”
I didn’t have an answer.
“But that’s it we’re over! Done! I hate him!”
I’m not proud to admit that a selfish part of me did somersaults at the news. In my mind Aaron almost shrieked with happiness. That’s it, bro! You’re in! But after a brief moment of mental high fives with my long-dead brother I felt like an ass. All this time I’d been imagining Aaron as the coarser, more self-centered twin and me as more evolved. Yet here I was sinking to his level. Mo was in pain after all and I really did care about her. Right now I needed to help her through this.
She and I ended up talking for about an hour and a half. Even as I tried to comfort her Aaron made me feel bad about it. This is good, buddy. VERY good. Play the sensitive friend while she’s vulnerable and in no time she’ll be putty in your hands.
Aaron could be quite a bastard himself.
Even after all that time talking on the phone I don’t think the breakup had completely settled in Mo’s mind. One minute she’d say “Oh I was so stupid! Naomi warned me this would happen!” or “I can’t believe I actually lied to my parents for that jerk!” But a moment later she’d go the other way. “Tell me the truth Charlie do you think there’s any chance that someday he’ll realize what he did and we’ll get back together?” How was I supposed to answer that? I only came up with variations on “I don’t know but anybody who would treat you this way doesn’t deserve you.”
By the end she seemed to feel a little better. “I’m so sorry I didn’t show up at practice tonight” she said finally a little calmer. “I just couldn’t.”
“Don’t worry about it. No big deal. Everybody will understand.”
There was a long silence. Then she said “I’m so glad we’re friends Charlie. I really needed you tonight and you were there for me. Thanks.”
“No problem.” I couldn’t stop that selfish part of me from doing one more cartwheel.
There was another pause. Finally she said “Want to hear something funny? Naomi actually told me she thought you and I liked each other. I mean in a romantic way.”
I could hardly believe my ears. Here you go stud! This is your moment! Tell her you DO like her! But I guess my brain was still absorbing this amazing statement and my mouth was stuck closed. OK sure at the back of my mind it’d occurred to me that with Scott out of the picture it wouldn’t be long before I could make my move. But I didn’t think she would be the one to do it instead of me! Or so soon!
Come on! shouted Aaron. What are you waiting for?
But I was too slow. And that’s when she dropped the bomb that ruined everything.
“I love Naomi but sometimes she just doesn’t get it” she said. “It’s obvious that you and I are too different to ever be more than just friends. But it’s our differences that make us such good friends, don’t you think? For me it’s just wonderful to have a guy friend I can talk to. With no strings attached.”
I felt like a Wrecking Ball had just hit me in the gut. Even Aaron was speechless.
But she kept going. “I’m telling you right now Charlie that in the future if I ever feel like I’m falling for somebody else I’ve learned my lesson. I’m going to RUN in the opposite direction. My parents are right—I shouldn’t be dating. I’m never going to sneak around or lie to them for some guy ever again you don’t know how much I hated myself for letting them down because of Scott. What was I thinking?” She laughed but it wasn’t a real laugh it was more like she was putting herself down. “I’m so glad Naomi was wrong about you and me. The idea of us together . . . I just don’t see it fitting into the grand plan. I mean for either of us. Could you just imagine how weird that would be? The 2 of us? A couple?”
Even though my heart was in my throat I forced a chuckle. “Right” I said. “That would be weird.”
That night I lay curled up in bed trying to bl
ock Aaron’s moaning. He sounded like an injured buffalo. Oh man Charlie I can’t believe you why didn’t you listen to me? Why didn’t you tell her when you had the chance? You’re useless you know that? I can’t believe this crap just my luck I’m the one that dies and gets stuck living through a bonehead who just sits there like a jackass when the girl of his dreams says she only ever wants to be just friends. Good work! You’re pitiful, bro. Pitiful.
Which is why on Friday I showed up for the Halloween Bash exhausted. Instead of sleeping that Thursday evening I spent the whole night wide awake trying to stop myself from banging my head against the wall.
CHAPTER 5
Sorrowful and great is the artist’s destiny.
—Franz Liszt
LYLE DWARKIN:
Scrambling Under the Gaze of
a Sadistic Behemoth
Halloween is a big deal in Opequonsett. On the Friday closest to October 31st, the high school always throws a dance and just about everybody goes. The school sets up a wooden stage at one end of the gym and kids deck the place out with pumpkins, fake cobwebs, spooky lights and stuff like that. Everyone dresses up in funny costumes and gets ready to go wild to live music. The next night there’s a smaller party at the middle school, the one I’d attended the previous two Octobers, but I was much more excited this year. Everybody knew that the Halloween Bash at the high school was the big one. Most of all, this year my buddy Charlie and his band were playing and I got to work the soundboard. I was sure it was going to be a fantastic night.
But it certainly didn’t start off that way.
I arrived early with the rest of the A.V. Club so we could set up the cables and microphones for Lemonade Mouth and figure out the best volume and effects settings. It was a job that should have taken us an hour or so. But by 7:30, only thirty minutes before the party was supposed to begin, Mudslide Crush still hadn’t let us near the stage. Dean and his friends were taking their sweet time setting up, each one of them playing a long solo and spending ages testing each microphone while their sound guy adjusted the levels. And then they’d insisted on running through a bunch of songs—I don’t know, maybe seven or eight of them. They were making us wait on purpose. It was infuriating.
While Dawn Yunker and I sweated it out by the soundboard, Lemonade Mouth, most of it anyway, sat stony-faced on fold up chairs underneath the giant new scoreboard. Wen looked sullen and seemed to have a cold, Charlie had dark circles around his eyes, and Mo, who’d only just arrived, kept biting her nails and wouldn’t even look up at the stage. Stella was quieter than I’d ever seen her, hugging that ukulele to her body almost like she expected somebody to try to smash it. The worst part was that we were still waiting for Olivia to show up. No one had even heard from her since school ended.
“I don’t know what happened,” I heard Wen say. “She told me she was definitely coming.”
“She must be on her way,” whispered Charlie uncertainly. “Maybe she got held up.”
But I didn’t have time to worry about that. When Mudslide Crush finally cleared out, we only had twenty minutes or so to set up. The A.V. Club sprang into action. While Charlie and the others set up their instruments, we worked fast. I grabbed the board as Dawn and the others scrambled onto the platform. We’d learned to be wizards at repairing old cables and microphones with electrical tape, gum and whatever we had lying around. The trickiest part would be miking Charlie’s drums. There were so many of them.
One by one, each musician stood on the platform and rushed through a few notes so I could find the right levels and write them down. Ray Beech didn’t make it any easier. He appeared next to me and hovered close while I scrambled, watching my every move but not saying a word. And let me tell you, when a sadistic behemoth is glaring at you, it’s hard to concentrate. Soon somebody dimmed the lights and the first crowd of costumed kids started wandering in. But I wasn’t done figuring out where to set some of the levels.
In the end I just had to take my best guess.
DAWN YUNKER:
Guys Are Pigs
At 8:15, Olivia still hadn’t arrived. I was fighting the butterflies in my stomach, so to kill time I went back onto the stage and fiddled with the pickup on Mo’s bass. I thought I’d heard it pop a little during the sound check. It wouldn’t hurt to add an extra piece of tape to be sure it held in place. Mo was nowhere in sight. After Scott Pickett came off the stage, she’d bolted from the gym and closed herself inside the Barking Clam office with Naomi. It was no mystery why. By then it was common knowledge what had happened between Mo and Scott. But it was a good thing that she wasn’t around just then to see what I saw: Scott standing in the middle of the gym with Lynn Westerberg hanging all over him.
Guys are pigs.
The place was filling up. While the sound system pumped out music from one of Lyle’s dance mixes, kids in costumes greeted each other with shrieks of laughter. There were some wild outfits this year. I saw the usual witches and ghosts and things like that, but there were also a bunch of funny ones: a tube of toothpaste, two giant purple aliens, a Ping-Pong table. The entire basketball team had dressed themselves like babies in diapers. I planned to change into my costume as soon as I was done with Mo’s bass. I was going to be a toaster.
I finished with the tape. I hoped Charlie and his friends were as good as Lyle said. Especially since that ass Dean Eagler and his buddies had made such a big fuss, as if Lemonade Mouth was going to ruin the whole evening.
Then a couple seniors dressed as plants called up to me. “What’s the deal with the band? When are they starting?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, trying to sound calmer than I felt. “Soon, I hope.” I couldn’t help glancing toward Charlie, who was talking frantically with Lyle near the soundboard. What would they do if Olivia never showed?
But just as I left the stage, Stella came rushing over to me. “Where did she go?” she said, her face red and frantic.
“Who?”
“Olivia. Wen just said someone told him they’d seen her run through here. Did you notice where she went?”
I shook my head. “No. I didn’t see a thing.”
LESLIE DERN:
I Am Not Going to Throw Up
So I was standing at the sink in the girls’ bathroom with Kate Bates, adding the final touches to our makeup. I’d convinced Kate to come as a French waitress like me even though she complained that the miniskirt made her butt look big. It did, but I didn’t say so.
Just as I was leaning in to darken my eyeliner, the door behind us burst open so loud I jumped, which totally made me smear my eyelid. And then in the mirror I caught a glimpse of that Olivia Whitehead girl rushing toward the first stall. She looked as pale as aspirin and she was holding her hand over her mouth. She was talking to herself too. It wasn’t loud, but Kate and I both agree on what we heard. She repeated it a few times:
“I’m not going to throw up! I’m not going to throw up!”
And she didn’t.
At least not until just before she reached the toilet, anyway. But then, from the sound of it, up came everything she’d eaten all week.
MR. BRENIGAN:
A Terrible Mistake
I wasn’t sure what the problem was. Stella Penn and I had agreed that her band would begin playing at 8:00 on the dot and now it was 8:15 and we were still waiting. I had Dean Eagler and a few other seniors and juniors on my back about getting started with the live music. I told them to relax, that Stella’s band would come out soon. But I kept checking backstage to try to find out what was going wrong. Every time, Stella would assure me that everything was fine and they were almost ready. From the beginning, from that very first afternoon when she’d walked into my office and asked me to allow her band to perform at this year’s Halloween Bash, she’d promised me there wouldn’t be any problems. I’d admired her confidence. She told me in no uncertain terms that after playing at the Bash, she and her band planned to win the Holiday Talent Show. Despite reservations, I’d decided to give
her the go-ahead.
But what a headache it turned out to be.
It’s amazing how a little thing like a high school band can cause an uproar in a town like Opequonsett.
Still, the thing was, and I want this completely understood and in the record: I started off rooting for her. It’s not easy being the new kid in a place like this, and even though Stella had a bumpy start to the year, after our initial talk she had me honestly convinced that she wanted to turn herself around. Anyone could see she was a girl with a great deal of potential. I hoped allowing her this opportunity would give her a constructive place to focus her energy.
But now as I checked my watch again, I began to realize I’d made a terrible mistake.
RAY BEECH:
One Final Tonguer
It was hilarious! Twenty minutes after they were supposed to start, the gym is swarming with people, and the freshman freaks still aren’t ready! So Dean slides back up to Butt Wipe-Brenigan and in his best suck-up voice he reminds him that we’re planning on doing two sets and maybe since everyone is waiting we should just start our first one. A couple of minutes later Butt-Wipe says okay. Yes! So then just as we’re about to get up on stage, I see Mo Banerjee wander in from her hiding place like the Last of the Bummed-Out Princesses. At that exact same moment, Lynn pulls Scott’s face to hers so she can give him one final tonguer before the show. Mo sees the whole thing! Her eyes completely bug out and then I watch her scurry away again, her face in her hands. It was great!
So we start our set, and I can’t hold back a huge grin. We really got those freaks good!
CYNTHIA STENMAN:
Eavesdropping with Marilyn Monroe
I was sitting on the toilet in the girls’ bathroom while Olivia was barfing her guts out in the next stall. So gross! A minute later the main door slammed open again.
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