Rocking Out!

by AJ Stern

  MY ROCK STAR RIDER

  by Mrs. Frankly B. Miller

  Hello there. This is my rider. A rider is a list of all the things I want in my green room.

  1.A very professional-looking desk

  2.An assistant

  3.A copy machine

  4.White, long envelopes and stamps

  5.A fax machine

  6.A scanner

  7.A three-hole punch

  8.Lined writing paper

  9.A postal scale

  10.Filing cabinets

  11.Legal pads

  I read the list over to myself to see if anything was missing. There were some officey things missing, but I thought eleven was a very good amount of things to ask for. If I asked for any more, I would feel like I was being too asky.

  I brought my rider downstairs to my parents. They read it and laughed and said, “Frannie, you are too much.”

  I knew they didn’t mean that they wished there was less of me. They meant that they think I’m funny. Apparently and nevertheless, not all kids want to have an office and get a job. I brought my rock star rider back to my bedroom office and slipped it into a manila envelope. Before I sealed it, I put my résumé and a business card inside. Then I sealed it. On the front I wrote MRS. FRANKLY B. MILLER’S ROCK STAR RIDER.

  I was not exactly sure what I was going to do with it, but I knew I might need it, so I kept it on my desk just in case. Then my parents decided it was time for bed.

  The next morning was a Saturday, and the Demirs were having a very big house sale. That meant they were selling everything inside their house, not their actual house. Elliott and I offered to sell lemonade so that people could have refreshments. We made a very large pitcher of half lemonade and half iced tea. My dad helped us set up our stand, which was a card table with a tablecloth on top and two stools side by side. I made a sign that read: STOP BY THE LEMONADE STAND OFFICE!

  Winston Churchill was getting in the way a little bit, so we made him our Lemonade Office dog. All he had to do was keep us company. That was a really helpful thing for us to do, apparently and nevertheless. Mrs. Demir told us.

  The Demirs had a lot of stuff. They had stuff outside of the house on blankets, on their lawn, and on tables. Plus, they had all the stuff inside the house that they were selling, too. Mrs. Demir was very worried about getting everything sold in time for their move. She didn’t know how she was going to do it all. And Winston Churchill—she didn’t know what to do about Winston Churchill!

  “What do you mean?” I finally asked her when she said it again to my mom.

  “I just don’t know if we can take the dog. It’s too much. I mean, maybe we could send for him later, but I’m not sure that would be much easier.”

  “So what are you going to do?” I was very concerned for Winston Churchill.

  “I just don’t know. I simply don’t know,” Mrs. Demir said, squeezing all the worry out of her hands.

  “Maybe we can take him!” I offered.

  “Frannie,” my dad said in his stern voice.

  “What?” I asked, acting as though I did not remember one single word he has ever said to me about getting a pet, which, by the way, is No way, José.

  “We’ve had this discussion ten thousand times,” he said.

  I looked at him with my “what discussion?” look.

  “About responsibility,” he said, reading my mind.

  “I have a real job now!” I told him. “I’m the most responsible kid in the entire world of earth!”

  My dad thought for a minute. “The job’s not over yet. Let’s see how you fare. Then maybe we’ll discuss it.”

  Mrs. Demir was looking back and forth between me and my dad, watching us like she was watching a tennis game. Then she saw someone pick up a quilt and she rushed over, talk-shouting, “Oh no! That’s an accident! That’s not for sale!”

  I went back to my Lemonade Office and sat with Elliott and Winston Churchill. I patted Winston Churchill on the head and told him not to worry. If the Demirs couldn’t take him, we’d find a nice home for him. Elliott had made an entire dollar while I was gone. That was very impresstifying. My dad bought an old movie projector that had a film in it already and a suit that belonged to Mr. Demir, and my mom got a lot of dishware and some mother-of-tortoiseshell hair combs. They didn’t have any kid stuff, so Elliott and I just sold our lemonade and kept the dog out of trouble.

  When the sun started to set, we packed up and went back to our house. My dad set up the movie projector and wanted to see what movie was wound around it. He pressed play and the movie was My Fair Lady! That’s when my eyeballs almost popped out of my head with excitification. That is one of my favorite movies in the history of ever! My mom made popcorn and we sat in the living room and watched the movie.

  “This is so perfect,” my mom said, leaning back in her chair and taking a handful of popcorn.

  “Completely perfect,” my dad said.

  “If only we had a dog,” I added. “Named Winston Churchill.”

  Then my dad, Elliott, and my mom all leaned forward in their seats to look at me, and we burst out laughing.

  On Monday during gym, while I was waiting my turn to climb the rope ladder, a bad day worry dropped on my skin. What if we never heard back from Aimee Chapman? Or what if she said no?! And then, what if the battle of the bands got sick and couldn’t do it, either? Then what? And that is when I knew exactly what! We could start our own band and be rock stars!

  I wondered how hard it actually was to play an instrument. Maybe it was really easy, and I could learn how to play the guitar like Aimee Chapman. I ran over to Elliott, Millicent, and Elizabeth, who were all digging through the athletic bag looking for a ball.

  “We need to start a band,” I told them.

  They all looked up, and at the same time they all said, “Okay.”

  “Because what if Aimee Chapman says no? Then what?” I asked.

  “Battle of the bands,” Elliott said.

  “Or maybe just our band because we’ll be so good!” I said.

  “I’ll be in a band,” Millicent said.

  “Me too!” Elliott played the clarinet, so we were already in good shape.

  “I’ll do it, too,” Elizabeth said.

  “Great! I’ll see if Mrs. Glass will let us use her music room during lunch.” Then I ran back to my spot in line for the rope ladder.

  After gym, I got permission from Mrs. Glass and then quickly ran back to my classroom.

  I was so excited about playing an instrument, especially because I didn’t know how to play anything. But I worried that everyone else would want to play the guitar and I’d have to play something else. The tuba was good, but it was too heavy. The piano was good, but it seemed too concentratey for me. Besides, when pianists play, you can really only see the side of them.

  I decided I would just have to run really fast toward the guitar when we got to the music room. I worried all throughout reading class and all throughout math and finally, when it was lunchtime, I ran as fastly as possible to the music room. But the music class hadn’t even finished and I had to wait outside.

  Elliott plays a lot of instruments, so I wasn’t sure which one he’d want to play. But he showed up with his clarinet. Millicent came, then Elizabeth, and I was nearly sweating. Finally, the music class finished, and when the last kid walked out of the room, I ran as fast as possible to the guitar. Mrs. Glass was there and told us to treat everything with care.

  “We will!” I yelled as I reached the guitar. You will not even believe your ears about this: I was the only one who wanted to play the guitar! The others ran to different instruments.

  Elliott put together his clarinet, Millicent went to the piano, and Elizabeth picked up the tambourine. I put the strap around
my neck and then turned to the others.

  “Hey!” I said, realizing something very important. “We need a band name!”

  “Oh, yeah!” everyone chimed in, very excited about this.

  “How about the Elliotts?” Elliott asked.

  “Or the Elizabeths?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Or the Millicents?” Millicent asked.

  “Well, what about me?” I asked. When everyone shrugged, I got it. “I know,” I called. “The ME ME MEs!”

  “Yeah!” Elliott said.

  “That’s a great name,” Elizabeth said.

  “Yeah, because it could be any one of us!” Millicent said.

  “Exactly,” I told them. “Now, what should the ME ME MEs play?” I asked.

  We spent a really long time trying to decide this, and then when we agreed on an Aimee Chapman song, it was official. We all turned to our instruments and Elliott called out, “Ready, set, go!”

  The sound we made was so terrible and so loud that my eardrums almost broke off. Everyone else had their face squinched up like they ate a whole lemon with the peel on. But we kept on playing our instruments, anyway. I guess we should have stopped sooner because a couple seconds into our horrendimous song, Cora (Principal Wilkins’s assistant) and Principal Wilkins himself appeared red-faced and out of breath in the doorway.

  “What is that terrible noise?” Principal Wilkins cried.

  I stopped playing first. Then Millicent and Elizabeth. But Elliott kept playing until he realized no one else was playing anymore. I looked up at Principal Wilkins.

  “We’re the ME ME MEs,” I told him. “We’re a band.”

  “That was a song?” Cora asked in a sweet voice as though she was trying to be very polite.

  “Yes. That was an Aimee Chapman song,” I told her.

  “I didn’t know that you even played the guitar, Frannie,” Principal Wilkins said to me. “Or that you played the tambourine, Elizabeth,” he added. “In fact, the only one I know for certain plays an instrument here is Elliott!”

  “We don’t!” I told him.

  “You don’t?”

  “No! But we have to be a band in case Aimee Chapman says no about playing at Noah’s Ark,” I explained.

  “But if you don’t know how to play instruments, how are you going to play those songs?”

  “That’s the tricky part,” I told him.

  “You can’t just will yourself to play an instrument. You have to learn it first. That takes time,” Principal Wilkins told us.

  “That is true,” Elliott said. “It took me months to learn the clarinet.”

  “We don’t have that much time,” I explained.

  “I think you need a Plan B,” he said.

  “I agree,” Cora chimed in.

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Anything,” Principal Wilkins said. “Anything but playing instruments.”

  They were probably right. We did sound terrible, and we certainly weren’t naturals, which is something that I always liked to be.

  “Good luck,” Principal Wilkins called.

  “Yeah, good luck!” Cora sang, and the two of them turned and walked back down the hall to their office.

  “What should we do?” Elliott asked.

  “We just have to wait,” I said. It’s a scientific fact that that was one of the most grown-up things I’ve ever said.

  No one liked that answer, but we all knew it was true.

  After school, the three of us walked across the street to Noah’s Ark. I ran up to Noah’s office to hear about my next job. He was more nervous than I had ever seen him. The concert was in just five days, and we hadn’t heard from Aimee Chapman.

  “I’ll give it until the end of the day,” he told me. “Then we’ll tell the local bands to get ready.”

  Just then, the phone rang. Noah reached for the phone, but before he picked it up, he changed his mind.

  “You get it,” he told me.

  I smiled and picked up the phone, saying the exact same thing Noah always did.

  “Noah’s Ark, how may I help you?”

  The voice on the other end sounded a little bit familiarish.

  “I’m calling to talk to Noah Zark,” the voice told me.

  “He’s right here. Who may I say is calling, please?” I asked in my most professional voice. I was about to use my English accent, but then I decided against it. It might be weird to change my voice after someone had already heard it a little bit.

  “My name is Aimee Chapman,” the voice said.

  That is when my skin and every inside part of me froze. I had never talked to a famous person before. Especially not an Aimee Chapman–type of famous person.

  “Hello?” the voice asked.

  “Uh—uh—hold on a second, okay? He is right here. Here he is. One second, please. I will give the phone to him now.” I could not stop my mouth’s brain from talking. Noah was looking at me strangely, and I held the phone out to him.

  “Who is it?” he asked, but I could only shake my head no. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. Even my head was filled with moths and butterflies.

  “Hello?” Noah said, then his face turned bright red and he looked at me and smiled. I smiled right back at him.

  “Wow. It’s you. I can’t believe it,” Noah said. Then he waved me out, and I shut the door behind me and stood outside his office while he talked to the most famous person on planet Chester.

  What felt like seventeen whole days passed by, and then suddenly the door swung open and Noah yelled, “She said yes. Aimee Chapman said yes!”

  Then he grabbed my hands, and we started jumping up and down and went roundy-round in a circle like we were a merry-go-round made out of people. It was really fun. I was so, so, so excitified that Aimee Chapman said yes! Then Noah and I ran downstairs to tell the entire world of everyone who was at the Ark at that exact minute the very good news. Then we went right back upstairs because Aimee Chapman’s manager was faxing over her rider.

  Because I was Noah’s assistant, he let me capture the pages as they came out of the fax’s mouth. That part was really fun. I handed him the pages and watched him read. When he was done, he let me look at the rider. It looked very complicated, which made it seem very professional.

  “Her green room is easy, but her stage setup is very complicated,” Noah said, relieviated about the green room, but not about the other thing. But I can tell you for a scientific fact that her green room setup was not easy. It was boring. A for instance of what I mean is that it looked like this:

  2 white towels

  6 large bottles of S. Pellegrino

  A bowl of fresh, cut-up fruit. No kiwi

  Spearmint gum

  She didn’t say anything about the walls or the couch or anything like that. What about decorations? What about pads and pens in case she had any sudden brilliant brain ideas? Maybe she would even want to make a copy of these ideas and use a copy machine! Maybe she didn’t know about how to decorate a room. Maybe she didn’t understand about green rooms and how amazing they were. I knew about green rooms, so I could tell her all about them. Or I could just add some more things to her rider for her. Or I could just decorate the green room the way I knew she would love it. Because I was going to be a rock star, too, I knew exactly what rock stars loved to have in their green rooms.

  Noah made a phone call, and when he hung up, he told me that all the things on Aimee’s rider would be delivered the morning of the show. Then I could set up her green room before she arrived. This gave me a really good idea. Setting up her room would be really fast. I would still have time to decorate it before she came!

  She would be so excited to see how amazingified my imagination was. There would be so many cool things to play with, she’
d nearly forget to give a concert because she would be so distractified by how fun I made her room.

  When I got home, I called Elliott and I told him all about my decorating plan. His mom was a really decoration type of person. She had big plastic boxes in her basement filled with birthday and holiday supplies. I told him to pull some fun things from the boxes.

  In only ten minutes, Elliott called back and said he had the bestest supplies. He wanted to show me, so I asked if he could come for dinner.

  Elliott’s mom, Julie, and her boyfriend, George, dropped him off and we ran up to my room. He unzipped his knapsack and pulled out streamers, a Happy New Year banner, Christmas lights, plastic sparkle glasses, and Hawaiian types of necklaces. I was very impresstified with Elliott’s supplies.

  I found a rolling suitcase in my parents’ closet and wheeled it into my room. Then Elliott watched as I took down all my posters and rolled them up and put rubber bands around them. Then I ripped pictures of other rock stars I liked out of magazines. It was a good idea to hang up pictures of rock stars in a rock star’s green room.

  I had leftover Halloween candy, so I put that in the suitcase, too.

  “What about some stuffed animals?” Elliott wanted to know.

  I smiled my “that is a really good idea, Elliott!” smile because that was a really good idea. I put a hundredy stuffed animals in the suitcase. We zipped it up and rolled it over to the front door so he could take it home.

  We were counting down to the big day, which was exactly one day. The Demirs were leaving two days after the concert, so before going to the Ark to help set up, my parents and I went to see how they were doing. Their house was almost empty. It was the weirdiest feeling to be in their house with no furniture.

  “No one can take Winston Churchill,” Mrs. Demir told us. “Please, I have no one else left to ask,” she explained.