Lemonade Mouth

by Mark Peter Hughes

  And I have to admit, I miss him.

  “Listen, I have news,” he says, changing the subject. “What would you say if I told you we could play another show?”

  I don’t answer. Surely he isn’t serious.

  “Come on, what would you say?”

  “I’d say you’re nuts. Didn’t we just agree that Mr. Brenigan’s never going back on his decision?”

  We turn the corner and start up the stairs toward the study hall. “I’m not talking about playing here at school. Listen, Lyle told me he talked to Bruno. From the Pizza Planet? Well, Lyle gave him a CD and Bruno liked it. He says he’ll let us play there sometime.”

  I gape at him. Lemonade Mouth at a pizza place? Is this a joke?

  “It’s not so weird. Mudslide Crush played there a few times. It’s not like he’d pay us much, either, or put us on a great night. Lyle says Bruno won’t let us play a Friday or Saturday because we haven’t proven we bring in a big enough crowd. Even Mudslide Crush never played there on a weekend. But something’s better than nothing.”

  I’m having a hard time taking this in. He really is serious. And even though part of me feels excited about this unexpected news, another part of me is worrying about turning the pressure back up in my life. That’s been the silver lining of Lemonade Mouth being over: managing my time has been a little easier.

  “Just think,” he continues, “depending on how it goes, this could even lead to a regular gig.”

  “A regular gig?” I stop walking, suddenly aware of the pressure already growing in my forehead. “I don’t know. Isn’t it enough that we didn’t get suspended already?”

  “Mo, Mr. Brenigan said we couldn’t play at school events, but he can’t tell us not to play anywhere at all.”

  “What does Olivia say? Have you asked her?”

  He looks at his shoes. “She says she doesn’t want to do it,” he admits finally. “I guess singing in public, even just the one time—well, it really was hard for her. So far she’s saying no.” To me, this comes as no surprise. When Mr. Brenigan pulled us from the Talent Show, I think we all suspected that deep down Olivia probably felt a little relieved. “But if everybody else is up for it don’t you think we can convince her to change her mind? Think of it. Bruno’s.”

  I’m prevented from answering because just as I open my mouth to respond, Hilary Levanthal, a freckled, pointy-nosed sophomore who seems determined to cram herself into a miniskirt every day even now that the weather is colder, appears between us. “What? Are you kidding? Lemonade Mouth at Bruno’s? You gotta do it! So many kids would come!”

  My cheeks grow warm. This is a private conversation! How long has she been listening?

  But Hilary’s rudeness doesn’t seem to faze Charlie at all. “Wow, thanks Hilary. That’s really nice to hear.”

  “Well, you guys are the best!” She gives him a wide, toothy smile, and then for an uncomfortable moment the two of them stand there grinning at each other while I seethe. Finally, she puts her hand on his arm. “See you later, Charlie.”

  Then something inside me, something irrational and completely out of my control, makes me spin around and stomp away. I drop my head and keep marching, pushing my way through the crowd.

  “What’s the matter, Mo?” Charlie calls, catching up with me.

  “Nothing.” I keep moving. I don’t look at him.

  As we round the final corner I can almost feel his eyes studying the side of my face. “Really, tell me what’s going on.”

  But I can’t explain, not even to myself. Still, the bell is about to ring and he’s waiting for me to say something.

  “Charlie,” I say, still walking fast and not looking at him, “in case you haven’t noticed, Olivia isn’t the only one feeling stressed around here. It’s everything I can do to keep my grades up in Trigonometry and Latin. And that’s on top of the rest of my classes, bass lessons with Mrs. Reznik, volunteering at the clinic and working at the store. I’m already pushing the limits of what I can take. Sure, I agreed to do the Halloween Bash and even the talent show, two school events, but now you’re talking about an even bigger commitment.” We’re near the door now, so I spin around to face him. “Plus, did you know that after Trig this semester I’m considering filling the space with another elective?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Well I am. Pre-calc.” And then I can’t help adding, “If you and I ever got a chance to talk anymore you’d know that.”

  His expression changes. I can’t be sure because the lighting in the hallway isn’t great, but I almost think his face is turning pink.

  Suddenly I feel like a jerk. It isn’t that anything I told him is a lie, it’s just that something inside my chest is pulling at me, like I’m not telling the whole truth—even though I’m not exactly sure myself of what the whole truth is.

  But suddenly it dawns on me.

  All at once I realize that I’m gazing into his eyes like a desperate puppy. And finally it hits me, the awful truth. It practically bowls me over like a hot bucket of obvious. Suddenly I feel like the dumbest girl that ever was.

  I’m crazy about him.

  Why didn’t I see this before?

  And then, still gaping at his face, I make a decision: I have to stay away from Charlie. I’m not going to make the same mistake twice, sneaking around like a thief and lying to my parents like I did with Scott. No way. Not again.

  “Mo,” he says, “maybe you don’t realize how big a deal Lemonade Mouth is to a lot of kids around here. We’re not just a band to them. It’s weird, but somehow they’ve made us . . . I don’t know . . . more. It’s almost like they’ve put us at the center of a movement, you know what I mean?”

  But I’m not capable of speaking at the moment. And as I gaze mush-headed over Charlie’s shoulder, I happen to notice Andrea Beckham rolling around the corner in her wheelchair. Seth Levine is with her, and Jane Seiseki too. In a way, it’s strange that I have the clarity of mind to even notice them, considering what’s going on in my head. But like Richie and Pete, Andrea is another quiet kid who rarely ever smiles and seems to exist in the margins. And yet here she is rushing toward us from the direction of the Speech and Language lab with two of the most popular kids in school. Jane is pushing her fast, with Seth running alongside. All three of them are giggling. They’ve obviously been up to something. But when they notice us, they slow down.

  “Look who it is,” Seth says in a low voice. “Two of the instigators themselves.”

  Andrea gives me a conspiratorial look. “Did you guys hear about the gym?”

  Not sure what to say, I just nod.

  “That wasn’t you three, was it?” asks Charlie.

  They look at each other and laugh. And then Jane whispers, “Nope. But whoever did it, it was a good one, don’t you think?”

  Andrea leans forward and speaks in an even quieter voice. “It’s just terrible what the school is doing to you. You guys deserve to be treated better.” I realize that I’ve never seen her looking so happy. I take in her face, her soft features, her cheekbones that stand out when she smiles. Andrea normally wears her hair so that it covers her features, but now she has it tied back. I realize that she’s beautiful. I’ve never noticed that before.

  Seth glances over his shoulder. “Guys, we can’t stop. We gotta get away from here fast.”

  Even as Jane starts to turn the wheelchair, Andrea is still beaming at us. A moment later Charlie and I watch them vanish down the hallway. Then the bell rings. Now, it isn’t like me to show up late to any class, even if it’s only study hall. But Charlie and I take one look at each other and then we both sprint in the direction Seth, Jane and Andrea just came from. Whatever they’ve been up to, we want to find out.

  The Speech and Language lab isn’t far; it’s just around the corner all on its own in a little dead-end corridor. When we round the bend we both stop, frozen.

  The signs are hung everywhere. Lemon yellow paper arranged in a checkerboard pattern across
all three walls. The effect is impressive, even pretty. Most are the usual messages like JUSTICE FOR LEMONADE MOUTH and MEL’S IS MARVELOUS but I especially notice the ones near the bottom.

  JUST BECAUSE YOU NEVER LOOK AT ME

  DOESN’T MEAN I’M NOT HERE

  Another of Olivia’s lyrics. And I think again of quiet Andrea Beckham, the last person I would have expected to make a big statement about anything. But then I remember with growing pride the word Mr. Brenigan used for us.

  Subversive.

  When Charlie speaks, he doesn’t look at me. “So you really can’t play another show?” But words won’t come. And the truth is, I’m not sure what I want anymore.

  STELLA:

  Lemon Gags

  My friends, it certainly was a turbulent time for our embattled ukulele-toting maverick and her ragtag gang of malcontents. Suddenly they found themselves at the center of controversy, both vilified and idolized, depending on who you asked. So it was no wonder why, as our down-trodden diva trudged home from school one cold afternoon not long after Thanksgiving, her head was weighed down with troubles. She felt herself slipping back into that deep funk she’d fallen into at the beginning of the school year. The Holiday Talent Show had happened only the night before and, depressingly, Mudslide Crush had won. Her own aborted band, formerly the sole happy diversion in her otherwise gloomy new life, would never play another show.

  Worst of all, she was still feeling guilty about Olivia.

  Okay, here’s the thing. Since the Bash I’d felt like a real jackass for pressuring Olivia into going onstage. That night, after Mr. Brenigan shut off the music and everybody else was taking down the equipment, I’d noticed her sitting alone on a stool in the corner, her shoulders hunched and her eyes closed.

  “Are you all right?” I’d asked her.

  “Fine,” Olivia had said after a moment. “I’m . . . just fine.”

  But I could have sworn her whole body had been shaking.

  Now, as I trudged up the front steps to my house, I wondered if I really had gone too far that night. Maybe my mother was right—I was selfish and irresponsible, an immature kid who never considered how my actions might affect anybody else.

  Once inside the house, something felt different than normal. Where was the noise? Usually when I came home in the afternoons the TV would be blaring and the step-monkeys would be up to something chaotic, perhaps sliding down the stairs or pretending to swordfight in the kitchen. It was normally my job to make sure they didn’t maim themselves until my mother came home from the lab. But today the house was strangely calm.

  And then I noticed my mother. She was on the sofa, her jacket on.

  “Hi,” I said, confused. “What are you doing home so early?”

  “I thought we’d go out,” she said, grinning. She explained that Tim and Andy were at a friend’s house and that she’d decided to duck out of the lab early. “We have an hour or so to ourselves before they’re back. It’s time we restarted our tradition. Want to grab a coffee somewhere?”

  For a second or two I didn’t answer. The woman had been MIA for practically the whole three and a half months since we moved, and now all of a sudden she wanted to spend time together? Why should I let her off so easy? Why not let her feel the silence for a while? I almost said no.

  But I didn’t. A part of me still wanted to believe that my mother and I could be friends again. So fifteen minutes later the two of us were seated at a table in Paperback Joe’s, the little bookstore café next to the photo place in the center of town, me with my usual decaf mint mochachino and my mother with a caramel latte. Back in Arizona we used to go out and talk over coffee all the time, just the two of us. But it’d been a while.

  To my shock, my mom asked, “So, how goes the lemonade crusade?”

  This was the first time she had ever brought up the subject—even though I’d been clipping Naomi’s articles about the lemonade controversy and leaving them in obvious places. There were rumors that the town was even thinking about expanding the bottling company deal to the middle school in order to make improvements to the school grounds. But my mother, so self-absorbed lately, had never said a word about it. Not even once.

  “Great,” I lied. I was trying to fight back my growing pessimism, but it was hard. After all, what did hallway signs matter now that the Talent Show was over? “Sarah Beth Adams got into an argument with Mr. Dewonka in class yesterday. A bunch of kids are boycotting the soda machines now, but Mr. Dewonka says the whole thing is ridiculous. He thinks everybody should stop complaining and just be thankful that we have the new scoreboard. He also says that as part of the deal, a small percentage of the money we spend on soda is going to come back to the school to buy new sports equipment. So he says we should all be happy.”

  “This is Mr. Dewonka?” my mother asked. “The history teacher?”

  “Right. Anyway, Sarah Beth, this mousey little girl with a voice like a fairy princess, stood up to him. She told him that since the students were never included in the decision-making process, taking the machine away was kind of like taxation without representation. You should’ve heard her.”

  My mom raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like you’re causing quite a stir in your new school. Be careful, Stella. Don’t get yourself in any more trouble. I’m concerned about you.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.” I felt my resentment thaw a little. I could see that, in her own way, my mother really was trying to make things okay again. “How about you? How are things going with the Frankenstein plants?”

  My mom took a thoughtful sip from her steamy mug. “Not so well, actually,” she said finally. “One of the investors we were counting on is thinking of backing out. If we don’t see real progress soon, I’m worried the whole project might be scrapped.”

  “Scrapped? But . . . how can that be, Mom? You just started.”

  “Well, I knew when I took this position that there were no guarantees.” She shrugged as if she was trying to be philosophical about it, but it was obvious that this was eating her up inside. I felt sorry for her, but at the same time I couldn’t help feeling secretly excited. If the plant thing didn’t work out, would that mean we might move back to Arizona?

  That’s when, out of the blue, my mom came out with an unexpected peace offering. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around for you much since we moved. It can’t be easy for you to start again in a new place, and I know you’ve been mad at me about it. It’s just that right now I feel like I have my big chance to do something really important with my life, to make a real difference. And I feel like I have to give it everything I have for a while.” She watched me from over her cup. “But it won’t last forever. I promise.”

  From across the table, I felt her eyes searching my own until finally I had to look away. “It’s okay,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  The truth was, as hard as it’d been for me, I really did understand how much the monster ferns, or whatever they were, meant to my mother. Ever since I was a little kid, she’d talked about making the world a better place. Imagine finding a way to make plastic that doesn’t hang around as trash in our ecosystems for thousands of years. For a genius biochemical environmentalist like my mom, this project must have felt like the Holy Grail.

  “I’m so glad you understand,” she said with a grateful smile. “Thanks for bearing with me.”

  I took a sip of my coffee. It was delicious and warm. And suddenly, sitting in that shop, I felt a little better. In fact, for one misguided moment I actually believed things with my mother might be back to the way they used to be. We were friends again. We could talk without getting mad at each other—would talk, in fact, whenever we had the chance. I even felt excited that we still had more than half an hour left before we had to head back home. I had so much to say. I wanted to tell her about my new friends and my new school, about the A.V. Club and the Patties and so much else. I wanted to let her know how hard it was to fit in, and how depressed I felt about Lemonade
Mouth ending. For one crazy moment I even decided I would show her the envelope that I still carried in my pocket, maybe ask if she thought there was a chance that the IQ results could be wrong.

  But that was when my mother’s cell rang—and brought me crashing back to reality.

  When the call ended my mother said, “Oh, I’m so sorry, Stella, but that was the lab.” All at once I felt my excitement fizzle away. I knew what was coming. My mom sighed. “I know this is incredibly bad timing . . . but there’s a problem and I absolutely have to go back. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

  A moment later we were back in the car, our coffees abandoned in the shop not even half-finished. “Listen, I’ll drop you off at home so you can meet the boys when they get back,” my mother was saying as she sped out of the parking lot. “Leonard won’t be home until late tonight. I’ll leave you money so you can order a pizza for dinner.”

  But I wasn’t really listening. I felt like a fool.

  As far as I knew, nobody even tried to change Olivia’s mind about playing at Bruno’s. I certainly didn’t. I wasn’t going to pressure her again, and anyway, I was sure she wouldn’t do it. But then one chilly Tuesday morning as I got off the bus at school, I noticed a bunch of kids crowded on the asphalt near the side entrance. At first I wasn’t going to bother finding out what the fuss was about. My breath billowed out in a thick fog, and my fingers were so cold I wondered if they were going to fall off. I wanted to get my freezing butt inside as fast as possible. But then I noticed Wen, Mo and Charlie gathered together at the back of the crowd, so I shoved my hands into my jacket pockets and walked over.

  “What’s up?” I called.

  They didn’t answer, exactly. In fact, nobody in the crowd was saying much, which seemed kind of strange. Wen just nodded toward the wall, which I still couldn’t see because I hadn’t made it around the corner yet. “Check it out,” he said.

  As I walked through the crowd, kids stepped aside. And then I saw what everyone was looking at.

  Drawn in chalk across the brick windowless wall were five gigantic faces. Our faces.