The Pros of Cons

by Alison Cherry

  “Actually, wow,” she went on, “this explains a lot. You abandon your novels because you get bored with them, right? You get bored because you never know what the plot is. And you never know what the plot is because original fiction is all about writing what you know, and you don’t know anything about anything. You haven’t lived, unless you count being online all the time. You’re so freaking sheltered that you think a little internet flirting means we’re actual girlfriends.”

  “At least I don’t just change the names of my fanfic characters and try to pass it off as original.”

  “Get out,” she said. “My real friends will be here soon, and we need the rehearsal space.”

  That was when I remembered something.

  “Actually,” I said, “remember how I was the one who registered for the Creativity Corner? Under my name?”

  She rolled her eyes. “So change the registration to my name, duh.”

  I smiled at her. “Well. No.”

  “What are you talking about, Nessie? It’s not like you’re gonna do something without me.”

  “Who knows?” I said. “Maybe I will.”

  And I left.

  As soon as the door clicked shut behind me, it took everything I had not to collapse onto the floor and start sobbing. But if I did that, odds were good that Soleil would come out and find me, or that Danielle would find me when she and her posse came over, or something even worse, and, just, no. I had to get away.

  I definitely didn’t want to call my parents about this, so that wasn’t an option. Maybe I could find Merry and see if they were up for hearing about my drama; I could picture their face already, going all soft and sympathetic when I told them what had happened. But I had no idea where their room was. Actually, I had no idea where anyone’s room was.

  Except … no, that wasn’t true. That girl from the taxidermy thing. Callie Buchannan. When we’d met and swapped badges yesterday, she’d told me where she was staying, in case I wanted my badge back at the last minute.

  A few minutes later, I was knocking on the door of room 1535. And a few seconds after that, Callie was opening it.

  “Vanessa, hey!” Her eyes took in the empty hallway, then fell on my suitcase. “Uh, what’s going on?”

  A lump rose in my throat because, oh god, so many things were going on. “I, um. Um.” Why, why, why couldn’t I get words out? Had I used up all my sentence-forming abilities on Soleil? “I just need, uh …”

  Callie’s eyes widened. “Here, come on in. Let me get you some water, okay?”

  I dragged my suitcase inside, and Callie fetched me a cup from the bathroom. I drank the whole thing; she refilled it and handed it to me again.

  “Chair,” she said, pointing to an armchair identical to the one in my—in Soleil’s room. “Sit. Talk.”

  Ugh, no. I’d already done enough talking to fill a lifetime. But I couldn’t exactly come into an almost-stranger’s hotel room and expect her to let me stay without actually telling her anything, right? So I told her the most basic version possible:

  “I had a fight with my roommate.”

  Callie perched on the edge of the nearest bed. “Your roommate as in your girlfriend? Cirque du Soleil?”

  Something loosened in my chest, and I actually found myself kind of smiling. “That’s the one. She’s not … we’re not actually … See, she kicked me out. You were the only person—I mean, I knew your room number. I’m not asking if I can stay here. I just … can I leave my stuff here while I figure out what I’m gonna do?”

  “No way,” she said.

  “Oh.” I started to stand up again. “No problem. I’ll just—”

  “No, no. I mean, you should obviously stay here.”

  “Wait. Really?”

  She spread her arms wide, gesturing at the room. Two huge beds, plenty of space. “I’ve got this whole place to myself, and … honestly, I could use the company right now. So yes, really.”

  I wasn’t going to cry, I wasn’t going to cry just because a girl I barely knew was being nice to me, I wasn’t.

  “Do you want to tell me what happened?” she said. “You don’t have to if you don’t feel like it.”

  “I really, really don’t feel like it.” I looked down—and caught sight of something. Something completely awful.

  Shooting up out of my seat, I wriggled out of the shirt I was wearing and threw it across the room.

  “Uh …”

  And, yeah, now Callie was staring at me. Well, obviously she was, because I was standing there in jeans and my bra, like a total weirdo.

  “Sorry, crap, I’m so sorry,” I said, trying to cover myself with my hands. “I’ll … uh … I’m not hitting on you or anything. It’s just—it’s hers. Soleil’s. I’ve been borrowing her clothes.”

  Callie’s face changed completely. “Ohhhh. Okay. Here, let me get you another one.”

  She knelt in front of my suitcase, unzipped it, and rifled through until she found a plain black T-shirt. She tossed it over to me, and I pulled it on. “Thanks,” I said, sinking down into the chair again.

  Callie nodded. “No problem. Make yourself comfortable. Put on some music if you want; my speakers are over there. I actually have to get back to this, um … project.”

  “That’s cool,” I said. “I should do some writing, anyway.”

  I’d said it automatically, partly because Ms. Scherer’s critique had been at the back of my mind all day, but mostly because writing was always my default escape route when things got stressful. But as soon as the words were out, I realized that actually, for once, I kinda didn’t want to write.

  “Hey,” I said, “what kind of project are you working on?”

  Callie’s expression turned shifty. “My dad’s doing his big Mounting a Strutting Turkey demo tomorrow. And I might have a plan to make it go, um, not so smoothly.”

  For some reason, this perked me right up. “This wouldn’t be a vengeancey sort of plan, would it?”

  “Decidedly vengeancey,” she said. “You have no idea how much he deserves it.”

  Just like that, I no longer felt like crying at all. “Can I help?”

  She looked surprised—not that I blamed her. If you told me an hour ago that I’d actually be offering to help with a taxidermy thing, I’d’ve said you were nuts, but now? Well, it wasn’t like my night could get any weirder, right?

  “How are you at mixing stuff with other stuff?” said Callie, grabbing a bottle off the desk. Wait—was that Nair?

  “Depends on the stuff,” I said. “As long as I don’t have to, like, touch anything dead.”

  “Okay. I’m gonna set you up in the bathroom with some hide paste and this”—she wiggled the Nair bottle—“which is not mine, by the way.”

  “Whose is it?” I asked.

  “Phoebe stole it from her roommate.”

  “Ooh, she’s in on the vengeancey plan, too?”

  “Yup,” said Callie. “You just missed her, actually. She should be back any minute—she had to check in with her teacher. Oh, and there’s another thing you can help me with! I need to heat up the skin, and it’d be so much easier with two people.”

  “Wait, skin?”

  Callie nodded. “Turkey skin. You don’t have to touch it. You can be the wielder of the blow-dryer.”

  This was getting really gross, really fast. “But won’t it, like … smell?”

  She rolled her eyes. “No, it’s tanned.”

  I gave her a pointedly blank look.

  “Like a leather jacket. Except made out of a turkey instead of a cow. And not a jacket.” She hesitated. “You don’t actually have to help me if you don’t want. It’s really okay. And didn’t you just say you have to write?”

  I took a deep breath. Yeah, I definitely had writing to do. But on the other hand, Soleil was right: If I really wanted to write original fiction, I had to start living in the real world. Taking risks and having experiences and whatever else people did when they didn’t live on the internet all d
ay.

  I doubted that she’d meant messing around with dead turkeys, but still.

  “No, I want to help. I mean it. Show me what to do.”

  Ten minutes later, as Beyoncé called for her ladies to get in formation, Callie held up a leathery turkey skin and I carefully pointed the hotel blow-dryer wherever she told me. It occurred to me, then, that I’d been wrong before, thinking that my night couldn’t get weirder. It was definitely weirder now.

  And I actually really liked it that way.

  My plan to spend the evening avoiding everyone from Ridgewood by indulging in poultry vandalism with Callie was thwarted by my way-too-savvy band director.

  “IPAC is supposed to be part of your music education,” Mackey said, arms crossed. We were standing outside of the main ballroom in B-wing, where the showcase concert was about to start. “You don’t get a week away from classes just to come here and hang out in your hotel room.”

  “But I—”

  “Phoebe,” he interrupted. “I have a sixth sense for high school drama. You’re obviously having some issues with your friends, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know what those issues are.”

  I had a sudden, vivid mental image of Scott pulling the triangle beater out of the back of his jeans and cringed. “You definitely don’t.”

  “Right. So you want to avoid them. I get it. Come with me.”

  He pulled open the door to the ballroom, and I hesitated. “But I was going to …”

  But I was going to go up to this random girl’s room and play with some dead turkeys. Yeah, I couldn’t say that. I squeezed my phone in my hand, wishing I hadn’t left Callie’s room after dropping off the Nair and lotion. But I would’ve been in big trouble if I hadn’t checked in with Mackey after dinner.

  He arched an eyebrow. “Yes?”

  “Nothing.”

  I followed him into the ballroom and said a silent prayer of thanks when he turned and walked along the back wall behind the last row. If I had to suffer through this concert, at least I didn’t have to sit with anyone else from Ridgewood. Then Mackey stopped outside a black door and spoke to a skinny guy wearing a black IPAC T-shirt. The guy opened the door to reveal a staircase, and Mackey gestured for me to follow him.

  “Where’re we going?” I asked.

  “Sound booth.”

  My heart lifted a little. And when I stepped into the booth, all thoughts of dead turkeys strutted right out of my head.

  A glass window took up most of the far wall, providing a view of the ballroom’s stage and most of the audience. The stage was covered in a sampling of pretty much everything you’d find in the exhibit hall: drum sets, marimbas, vibes, timpani, congas, steel drums, and countless other instruments. Below the window was the biggest mixing board I’d ever seen, flanked by two giant Mac monitors. A woman with graying curly hair sat behind the Mac on the right, scrolling down a bunch of audio tracks. She glanced over her shoulder when we entered, then did a double take.

  “Jeff!” she exclaimed, getting to her feet. “How’s it going?”

  “Great, you?” Mackey grinned broadly as he crossed the room and shook her hand.

  “Same old,” the woman said. “So good to see you again! And this is?”

  She glanced over at me, and Mackey waved for me to join them.

  “Phoebe Byrd, one of my students.” He pointed at my hands. “Of scalpel fame. Phoebe, this is Giovanne Clark.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said. “And wait—you really heard about the scalpel thing?”

  Giovanne chuckled. “Are you kidding? Kid plays a xylophone solo with scalpels in front of a few hundred drummers … yeah, people have been talking about it.”

  For a second, I wasn’t sure whether to feel proud or ashamed. But the way Giovanne was grinning at me said proud, so I stood a little straighter and smiled back.

  “Phoebe’s the one I mentioned to you a few months ago,” Mackey told Giovanne. “She helped me out with mixing Ridgewood’s ensemble recording.”

  Giovanne’s eyes lit up. “Aha, so this is the girl with the magic ears?”

  My eyes widened. “What?”

  “Yup, this is her.” Mackey looked amused. “A fact of which she is apparently unaware.”

  “Magic ears?”

  He laughed. “Maybe not magic. But better than average, at least.” Turning back to Giovanne, he added: “I’ll never forget her first day of band camp. Freshman carrying a drum on the field for the first time. Walks right up to the senior saxophone officer and asks him if he’s telling his section to play that sharp on purpose.”

  “They were, though!” I exclaimed as Giovanne cracked up. “Everyone could hear it, but no one was saying it.”

  Mackey shook his head. “That’s the thing, Phoebe. Most kids are so worried about their own performance, they don’t notice how everyone else is playing—especially at first. You’ve always been more aware of ensemble sound. Why else would I ask if you wanted to help with that mix, anyway?”

  I didn’t know what to say. Mackey always let me use the band’s audio equipment to put together my IPAC summaries, and he’d taught me a lot. But I’d never realized he thought I had an actual talent for this stuff.

  “So I was wondering if Phoebe could hang out up here with you during the concert,” Mackey said to Giovanne. “She’s been missing out on participating in the clinics because of her hands, and I’m thinking she could probably learn a thing or two from watching you work.”

  “Absolutely!” Giovanne said. “Pull up a chair, Phoebe.”

  She settled back down in front of the Mac, and I spotted a folding chair leaning against the wall near the door.

  “All right, I’m going to sit with the rest of the group.” Mackey followed me over to the door. “Phoebe, we’re all going to that ice cream place in the hotel lounge after this. If you’d rather head back to your room, that’s fine—but check in with Mrs. Hwang. She’ll be staying behind, too.”

  I nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Anytime. Thanks, Giovanne!” Mackey called before closing the door behind him. I pulled out my phone and sent a quick text to Callie. Sorry, can’t make it. Gotta stay at this concert and check in w/chaperone later. I’ll come watch tomorrow morning. Going ok so far?

  A few seconds later, she replied. No prob. See you tomorrow! I slipped my phone into my pocket and carried my chair over to sit next to Giovanne.

  “All right, Miss Magic Ears,” she said, adjusting a few knobs on the board. “They’ll be starting any minute, so let’s do a quick rundown of the channels.”

  Giovanne launched into an explanation of which instruments were controlled by which of the rows of knobs on the board, and I did my best to memorize each one. That led immediately to a discussion about how to properly mic various percussion instruments, apparently something a lot of sound people kind of failed at.

  “Helps to actually be a percussionist,” Giovanne told me. “Most sound guys only have experience with drum sets. They—ah, here we go!”

  The house lights dimmed, and a few spotlights glowed brighter. The audience cheered and clapped as six performers, all dressed in black, walked out on stage and took their places.

  The next fifteen minutes passed in a flash. Watching Giovanne was incredible—it was like the mixing board was an instrument itself, and she was a master. She kept up a running monologue as she worked, explaining how she listened not just for volume and balance, but tone and overall blend. When the ensemble finished and the crowd applauded, she tapped a few keys on the keyboard and the audio tracks on the screen disappeared, replaced with one new track.

  “Marimba solo’s up next,” she told me. “So all the stuff we’ve been talking about so far, that’s critical listening. But analytical listening is just as important, especially when it comes to crafting an album. Any idea what the difference is?”

  “Um … no.”

  “Critical listening is the technical stuff,” Giovanne said. “Like how you heard that the saxophone
s were sharp, right? But analytical listening is about intent. As the sound engineer, part of your job is knowing what a musician means. What she’s trying to say. Take your xylophone solo in that ‘Big Top’ piece. Tons of people have played that part, but they all say something different with it. What were you saying?”

  I thought back on my performance. “Uh … please let me get through this without cutting off a finger?”

  Giovanne snorted with laughter. “Fair enough. Okay, think about it this way.” She nodded at the glass, and I saw a woman walking out on stage and up to the marimba. “She’s about to play a solo. She isn’t the first person to play these notes and rhythms in this particular combination. But she’s going to own it. Make it her piece. I want you to listen, and tell me what she means.”

  I nodded and wiped my hands on my jeans. Honestly? I had no freaking clue what Giovanne was talking about. Even without scalpels, the only thing I ever thought about when I played that xylophone solo was not missing any notes. But Giovanne was awesome and I desperately wanted to impress her, so I had to give this a shot.

  I focused on the soloist as she raised her mallets over the keys. The applause died out, and she allowed the silence to stretch over several seconds before she began to play.

  The solo started with a rapid but soft ostinato on the high end of the marimba, which quickly crescendoed and led into a chromatic, bluesy run down the keys to the low end. After a dramatic rubato, with tempo abandoned as she pulled and stretched the rhythms like putty, the soloist settled into a minor waltz, her left hand keeping time with a chord progression while her right picked out a melody that was both sweet and haunting.

  She was an amazing performer, and even though I still wasn’t sure how to answer Giovanne’s question, I suddenly understood what she’d been talking about. This soloist wasn’t thinking about getting the right notes. She was saying something. But what?

  Christina would probably know. I pressed my lips together, eyes glued to the soloist but imagining Christina standing there instead. Her solos always had meaning, too. I’d never thought about it before, but they did.