by K. L. Denman
Before I can make it to them, Charo calls, “Zack. Over here.”
I hate that her yelling has drawn attention to me. But if I try to ignore her, she’ll probably yell louder. So I make my way toward her.
“Hey, Charo,” I mutter.
“Hey, yourself.” She frowns and asks, “Are you okay?”
Before I can answer, the girls in her group giggle and I tense up. Charo notices and says, “You need to relax. Let’s sit down.” She turns to her friends and tells them she’ll catch up with them later.
When we’re seated, she sighs. “I’ve heard enough about that Idol thing. I don’t know how they can still be chirping about it.”
“Idol thing?” I ask.
“Come on,” she says. “That’s all everyone’s talked about all morning. You must have heard people laughing?”
I shrug.
She squints at me like she’s checking to see if I’m serious. I must pass her test because she says, “It’s this girl who used to go to school here. She dropped out last year, so you wouldn’t know her. She was on American Idol last night, doing an audition.”
Chapter Fourteen
A girl from Penticton doing an audition in the States. I stare at Charo and ask, “How did she do?”
Charo rolls her eyes. “Terrible. She was wearing a black leather microskirt and a bra top. Like that would impress them. When she sang, it wasn’t that bad. I mean, she did okay. Even the judges said so. But when they told her she needs to work on her voice, wow. She went off! They had to beep out almost everything she said. She didn’t stop swearing until they called security.”
“Huh.”
Charo shakes her head. “In a way, it’s sad. I was friends with her until last year. Then she got, I don’t know, twisted or something. All she cared about was being famous.”
“That’s too bad,” I say. “But it sounds like she did it to herself.”
Charo nods. “I guess. But I don’t get it. Why would someone do that?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. We’re quiet for a minute. I watch Charo chew her lip, trying to figure it out. Then I realize when she’s not chewing on her lip, it’s quivering. “Hey,” I say.“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Sorry. I was just thinking about how she must feel right now. I heard she left town in case this happened. I guess they tape auditions, and you don’t know if they’ll show yours until it’s on tv. She must have been hoping they wouldn’t show her.”
“I’ll bet,” I mutter.
She sighs. “By now she knows everyone saw it. Or if they didn’t catch it on tv, they’ll be watching it online.” I cover up my guilt. I definitely plan to check out Jolene’s performance. “I’ll bet she feels pretty bad,” I say. “Unless…”
“Unless what?” Charo asks.
“What if she likes it? Doesn’t this make her famous?”
Charo’s mouth forms a small circle. “I never thought of it that way. I mean, this is more what you’d call being infamous. But with her, you never know.”
We talk more, and it dawns on me that Charo isn’t the average lemming I assumed she was. She’s interesting. It turns out she used to play keyboards in a girl garage band with Jolene.
Huh.
I tell her, “I play around with a guitar sometimes.”
“Really?” she grins. “We should get together sometime and jam. Just for fun.”
I don’t make any promises, but when I head home later I think, maybe. I also think about how people have forgotten my stupid drama. Was it eclipsed by Jolene? Maybe fame is nothing more than talk. When we flock around the latest thing, do we create the fame—then take it away when we move on?
I don’t know. But I do know I have to watch the video of Jolene. I didn’t like it when everyone ogled my picture, but I’m not so above it. I have a cruel wish to see Jolene make a fool of herself.
The video clip is everything Charo described. It’s not pretty. The colors I get with her song are bad. I see beige with a few dull streaks of pink as she wobbles through a pop tune. And Jolene’s reaction to the judges is crazy.
But if fame is all Jolene wanted, she got it. The video has recorded thousands of hits. There are lots of comments too, most of them nasty. I’m about to close the site when a name catches my eye. Frank. He wrote, I tried to tell you the same thing. I bet that means he too tried to tell her that she wasn’t ready.
Watching Jolene fail doesn’t make me feel any better. If anything, I feel sorry for her. She’s one seriously screwed-up girl.
And I was one screwed-up guy. Jolene played me for a fool, but I set myself up for it. Why? Was it being bored and lonely? The music?
Frank’s music.
I have to tell Frank about burning those cds before they burn a hole in my conscience. I call Slick Sal’s, and they tell me he doesn’t play there anymore. And no, they can’t tell me where I can find him.
So now what? I’m not ready for another round of playing detective. I try to pump myself up for the search by remembering I found Jolene without so much as a name. How hard can it be to find Frank?
This time, my motivation isn’t quite the same. Lurking outside pubs in the dark, hoping to find an angry guy, doesn’t sound like fun. There has to be a better way.
It turns out I don’t have to find Frank. A couple of weeks later, he finds me.
Chapter Fifteen
I’m sitting on the hillside at the geocache site, looking at Skaha Lake. I’m hoping to hear a loon again. I’ve got my guitar and I’m idly plucking strings, watching the pops of color. Suddenly Frank is on the trail, staring at me.
“Uh,” I choke. “It’s you.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Did you find her?”
I nod.
He lights a cigarette, then squints at me through the smoke. “And?”
“And nothing. At least, nothing much.”
His smile is fleeting. “I could have told you there wouldn’t be much.”
“I know,” I tell him.
His eyebrows go up. “How do you know what I know?”
He doesn’t have the same attitude as when I met him. He seems curious. “I know you wrote the songs. And I know why.”
“She told you about that?” He sounds surprised.
“She didn’t exactly volunteer the information,” I mutter.
“Interesting.” He takes a drag on his cigarette, then says, “Ever since you asked about her, I’ve wondered where you heard her. Looks like I guessed right.”
I nod.
He grins. “So you’re a geocacher?”
“I tried it.”
“Cool,” Frank says. “And cool for me to know where the cd went. You know how you put stuff into caches and then wonder who has it now?”
“So you put that cd in there, right?” I ask.
He nods.
“Yeah, well, about that.” I take a breath. “I have to tell you…Actually, first, I’d like to know…Why did you leave the cd here?”
Frank shrugs. “I didn’t want it anymore. Too many bad memories. But it didn’t feel right to toss it. Then I got this idea.”
“What idea?” I ask.
“It was an experiment. It was like caching my feelings about that music. I thought I might get a song out of caching it.”
“I think I get what you’re saying. Did it work?” I ask. “Did you get a new song?”
Frank frowns. “Not yet. Inspiration happens in its own time. But I was thinking I should have made that cd a hitchhiker.”
“A hitchhiker?” I ask.
“You can attach an extra logbook to an item, asking that it be carried to another cache. The people who take it along write a note in the log about where they found it. They can also post its new location on the geocache website. Then everyone can track the item’s movements. Hitchhiking would’ve suited that cd.”
I stare at him as I work out what he’s implying. Then I laugh. “I get that.”
My smile fades as I remember what I have to tell him. “
About that cd. You don’t mind if other people hear it?”
“Isn’t that what music’s for?” he asks.
“But what if Jolene takes credit for it? Wouldn’t you mind that?”
He shakes his head. “Man, I don’t care. She can sing those songs if she wants.”
“But…I gave her the CD. And I made copies for her to send out to radio stations. I don’t think she plans to tell anyone it’s your music.”
Frank goes quiet.
I wait.
Finally he sighs. “Whatever, man. I doubt Jolene will get around to doing that. But if by some miracle she gets to do a pro recording…I’ll worry about it then. The only song I still do is ‘Travel Time.’ She can have the other two.”
“‘Travel Time,’” I echo. “I like that one.”
“Yeah? It’s all right, isn’t it?” Frank gazes down the trail. “Speaking of, I should get going. Nice talking to you, uh…”
“Zack,” I tell him. “Good talking to you too. Maybe I’ll see you around? Out geocaching or something.”
“I’m off and on with the caching,” he says. “I mainly like the symbolism, you know? I like the idea of being able to pinpoint a position. Can’t always do that with a lot of stuff we get.”
I watch him walk away. Then I look at the sky and think about satellites. They’re circling the globe, sending out signals, helping people everywhere find their position. I’ve seen them at night, twinkly points of light that could pass for stars. Only their behavior betrays that they’re not real stars.
Jolene’s like a satellite.
And me? I think I’ve pinpointed my position on a few things. I strum my guitar and watch the colors float over the lake. For now, this is exactly where I want to be.
Acknowledgments
My gratitude to authors Shelley Hrdlitschka and Diane Tullson, whose coordinates always read friend and true. Many thanks also to Melanie Jeffs, Orca editor, for her fine attention to the details.
K.L. Denman is the author of numerous popular and award-winning books for youth. Her previous works include Rebel’s Tag, Mirror Image, The Shade and Perfect Revenge in the Orca Currents series, and the Governor General’s Award nominee Me, Myself and Ike. She lives in Powell River, British Columbia.
orca currents
9781554694341 $9.95 pb
9781554698882 $16.95 lib
In most ways, Poe is like the other kids in his school. He thinks about girls and tries to avoid too much contact with teachers. He has a loving father who helps him with his homework. But Poe has a secret, and almost every day some small act threatens to expose him. He doesn’t have a phone number to give to friends. He doesn’t have an address. Poe and his father are living in a tent on city land. When the city clears the land to build housing, Poe worries that they might not be able to find another site near his school. Will Poe have to expose his secret to get help for himself and his father?
orca currents
9781554699032 $9.95 pb
9781554699049 $16.95 lib
At a Battle of the Bands event, Ace and his best friend Denny notice that girls like musicians, no matter how dorky the dudes might be. So they start a band, and Ace discovers that he loves playing music more than anything he’s done in his life. Fueled by Denny’s tweets and a sound guaranteed to make cats barf, the band takes flight until a contest draws them into conflict. Their drummer, Pig, cares more about hygiene than music, and Denny’s drive to impress the girls leads them all astray.
Titles in the Series
orca currents
121 Express
Monique Polak
Bear Market
Michele Martin Bossley
Benched
Cristy Watson
Beyond Repair
Lois Peterson
The Big Dip
Melanie Jackson
Bio-pirate
Michele Martin Bossley
Blob
Frieda Wishinsky
Branded
Eric Walters
Camp Wild
Pam Withers
Chat Room
Kristin Butcher
Cheat
Kristin Butcher
Cracked
Michele Martin Bossley
Crossbow
Dayle Campbell Gaetz
Daredevil Club
Pam Withers
Dog Walker
Karen Spafford-Fitz
Explore
Christy Goerzen
Farmed Out
Christy Goerzen
Fast Slide
Melanie Jackson
Finding Elmo
Monique Polak
Flower Power
Ann Walsh
Fraud Squad
Michele Martin Bossley
Horse Power
Ann Walsh
Hypnotized
Don Trembath
In a Flash
Eric Walters
Junkyard Dog
Monique Polak
Laggan Lard Butts
Eric Walters
Living Rough
Cristy Watson
Manga Touch
Jacqueline Pearce
Marked
Norah McClintock
Mirror Image
K.L. Denman
Nine Doors
Vicki Grant
Perfect Revenge
K.L. Denman
Pigboy
Vicki Grant
Power Chord
Ted Staunton
Queen of the Toilet Bowl
Frieda Wishinsky
Rebel’s Tag
K.L. Denman
Reckless
Lesley Choyce
See No Evil
Diane Young
Sewer Rats
Sigmund Brouwer
The Shade
K.L. Denman
Skate Freak
Lesley Choyce
Slick
Sara Cassidy
The Snowball Effect
Deb Loughead
Special Edward
Eric Walters
Splat!
Eric Walters
Spoiled Rotten
Dayle Campbell Gaetz
Storm Tide
Kari Jones
Struck
Deb Loughead
Stuff We All Get
K.L. Denman
Sudden Impact
Lesley Choyce
Swiped
Michele Martin Bossley
Watch Me
Norah McClintock
Windfall
Sara Cassidy
Wired
Sigmund Brouwer
orca currents
For more information on all the books
in the Orca Currents series, please visit
www.orcabook.com
