Chapter 11
Principal Wroth’s tip turned out to be the only money we made that day, but the five dollar bill she’d given us was more beautiful than any money I’d seen in my life. Charlie and Joey wanted to spend it on some sodas, but I begged them to let me have it. I didn’t say what it was for—I wasn’t sure whether I should be ashamed that I wanted to frame it or not. The first five dollars ever made by Auburn. It had a poetic feel to it.
I had a hard time finding a real frame, so I just taped the bill onto a lightly decorated piece of cardboard and hung it over my bed. When I had a bad day at school or someone said something really mean on the Loser McGee page, I liked to look at it. If my life felt like a dark tunnel sometimes, that makeshift trophy was the light at the end.
Jessica started posting on Loser McGee again once we were back in school. As much as I tried to tell myself that I shouldn’t check it, I usually ended up caving. It wasn’t all bad, though. I started using it as a sort of demented source of inspiration; when I wanted to write a sad song, it helped me get into the right frame of mind.
True to her word, Principal Wroth worked us into the beginning-of-the-year pep assembly. Auburn was slotted to play right after the cheerleaders performed, and before the student council president welcomed everyone to a new year. We didn’t get paid, but it was still a nice form of validation. Less than a year before, we’d had to sneak in during lunch in order to play for the school. This time, the principal herself was asking us to perform.
The three of us were waiting in a white hallway; stark white walls, fluorescent lights overhead, flecked white tiles underneath our feet. It would have been disconcerting, except for the fact that the hallway was only about thirty feet long. Two doors behind me led into the gymnasium, packed with every student at school who wasn’t ditching or helping with some aspect of the assembly.
On the opposite wall, Joey couldn’t stop grinning. “What’s up?” Charlie finally asked, cocking his head slightly.
“Oh, nothing,” Joey replied. “I was just thinking about how funny it would be to use this opportunity to tell Jessica to shut the fuck up in front of the entire school.”
Was it just me, or was his sense of humor improving? I laughed, at any rate. “Yeah, good idea. We could use it to publicly humiliate everyone we don’t like. But I guess we should be the better people…” I faked a sigh.
“Yes, we should be the better people,” Charlie agreed. “I’m nervous enough anyway, without you two planning ways to screw this up.” His tone sounded more hostile than joking, but I knew it wasn’t directed at us; my own fear was making my heart pound like a marathon runner’s.
A pumping pop tune started. That was probably the cheerleaders. As far as I knew, pop songs were the only kind they listened to. I’d never seen a single cheer squad dance to a Queen Anne’s Subtle Overdose song. That would be a performance to remember.
Joey leaned to the left, looking through the open doorway between Charlie and me. I followed his eyes, inwardly groaning when I realized what he was looking at. The cheerleaders were facing the other way, bouncing around in usual fashion.
Charlie looked through the door too, but when our eyes met he grinned and rolled his eyes. “Enjoying the view, Joey?” he joked.
“Maybe. I was just looking at… Their technique.” I was sure Joey was going along with the joke, but he held a straight face. “I think you could be a cheerleader, Ash. You know, if it wasn’t for the nose.”
That stung a little, but I decided to play it off. “Yeah, or my complete lack of athletic ability. If I tried to be a cheerleader, I’d probably break my spleen.” I looked back through the door just in time to see the cheerleaders fall into cutesy poses at the end of the song.
We were up. The cheerleaders filtered out into a different hallway, and after a few seconds an older boy walked out into the middle of the floor. “And now, we have a band from our very own Pyramid-Sienna High School! Ladies and gentlemen, Auburn!”
I inhaled sharply and turned toward the door. We weren’t the kind of happy band that would skip into the gymnasium; I led the way with a brisk walk and the slightest hint of a smile. In the middle of the gym floor, someone had done me the favor of setting up one of the school’s microphones, a black one with red electrical tape near the base. I just hoped it wasn’t the one that had ruined the play last year by going dead right when it was most needed.
“Ahem.” I stopped in front of the stand, glancing around as Joey and Charlie set up their guitars. It only took a few seconds, but I didn’t want to start without them. We’d been set up to face half of the bleachers, but that left our backs to the other half of the student population. If we didn’t start soon, I knew the idea of being surrounded would affect my nerves.
“Like he said, we’re Auburn. And this is Starstruck Lullaby.” Per Principal Wroth’s request, we’d written the song to be school-appropriate. No suicidal references, no violence. It was stripped down, but I kind of liked the departure from our usual sound. “I stayed awake last night, counting stars to the flicker in your eyes,” I sang into the mic, trying to strike a pensive tone.
There wasn’t much bass in the beginning—heck, the main guitar didn’t cut in until halfway through the first verse. At the beginning, it was just me singing into the microphone. “Living dreams in my own head, fantasies better left unsaid. They say the future’s full of snow, and lord knows I’ve felt the bitter cold.”
The speakers finally seemed to come to life as Charlie started playing. I swallowed back my nervousness, focusing on the nodding heads. Maybe some of the students recognized us from last year, maybe they liked the lyrics, or maybe they were just being nice. But they were nodding along… To me.
The chorus was paced a little faster, with Joey entering to round out the sound. “This is a starstruck lullaby. Sing it up to the life that passed me by. Never good and never great, I keep trying anyway. And nights’ll be warmer, faces kinder, in that life we can’t deny. ‘Cause it won’t pass me by. Pass me by, tonight.”
I’d be lying if I said that everyone seemed into it. As my eyes passed over the true blue bleachers in front of us, I saw a few scowls and unmistakable eye rolls. But there was enough of a positive reaction too. Enough smiles, enough lips half-forming the words I sang, to keep me going.
As if energy was flowing through the audience, my muscles started to twitch. I’d never done anything besides sing into a standing mic before, but I pulled the red-taped microphone free and theatrically kicked the stand away.
Too late, I noticed the black wire wrapped around it. It felt like someone had yanked the microphone out of my hand; I twisted to keep my balance and threw out my left hand to catch it, but it tumbled just out of reach.
There were four beats. A four-count rest between my last lyric and the next one. I could practically hear a metronome in my head, ticking them off as I struggled to retrieve the stand. One, everything was falling. Two, I chased after the stand in an awkward crouch-walk. Three, my hand closed around the metal pole.
When it hit four, I wasn’t anywhere close to being able to sing. I paused. Joey stopped playing. Charlie slowed, but none of us quite knew what to do. We’d missed cues in practice before, but in practice we could always play the song over. We couldn’t do that this time.
As if drawn by a magnet, my eyes found Jessica. The smirk on her face nearly defeated me. I could practically see the Loser McGee comments already. But I wasn’t going to give it to them. No, Jessica could not win this round.
I schooled the slight tremble in my lip and slowly righted the stand and microphone. “On three,” I whispered to Charlie and Joey. “One, two, three…”
They were miserably out of sync; Charlie started a few counts before the next lyric, and Joey started all the way back at the chorus. It was a mess, but I forced myself to stand still and finish the song. “Pass me by. Whoa, pass me by. In this starstruck lullaby. Just pass me by, tonight.”
It was far from triumphant. I
didn’t feel like a rock star. I felt like I’d messed up our one chance. All we’d had to do was be as good as I knew we could be, and we hadn’t managed it. “Thanks, everyone,” I said. “We’re Auburn.” Not triumphant, but not defeat, either.
There wasn’t any cheering, no enthusiastic response like I might have been hoping for. As I left the mic where it was and turned toward the doors we’d used to enter, the only sound was the kind of lazy, mandatory applause that met the end of any performance.
I took deep breaths, focusing on the rise and fall of my chest to prevent strong emotions from rising to the surface. Part of me wanted to run back to the middle of the floor and claim that the mistake had been intentional, part of me already wanted to check Loser McGee for a new post, and part of me wanted to curl into a ball the moment I reached the hallway.
It was all white, just like it had been before we left. Only this time, there were at least a dozen other students there, getting ready for the next performance. I heard the footsteps of Charlie and Joey behind me as I stepped into the hall, but instead of stopping to talk to them I hooked a left and didn’t stop walking until we were alone.
“So…” Charlie began as we reached a turn that would lead to the same bathroom he’d found me crying in nearly a year ago. “That wasn’t quite as easy as we’d hoped.”
“No,” I agreed, letting myself slowly fall to the ground. “Sorry guys, that was all my fault.”
“No, not at all.” Charlie looked down at me and, after a moment, slid down as well.
On my other side, Joey had the opposite response. “Yeah, it was all your fault,” he said. He frowned when Charlie gave him a clear You’re not helping look. “What? It’s true, isn’t it? Ash, that was all your fault. But um, it would’ve been cool if it had worked.”
“Thanks,” I whispered. To my right, Charlie’s guitar was sitting nearly on top of my hand. I fiddled with some of the strings.
Perceptive as always, Charlie leaned in and touched his forehead to mine. “Look, this was just practice. I mean, we didn’t even get paid. So maybe they deserved a less-than-flawless performance. And if none of us were going to make mistakes, there’d be no point in practicing, would there?”
He was close, so close that I inhaled the scent of mint Tic Tacs on his breath without trying. “Yeah, you’re right. I guess I was hoping that if I made a mistake, it wouldn’t be in front of—you know, in front of our classmates.”
“You don’t get to choose moments like this, Ash. All you get to choose is what happens after. And right now, what I want to happen is…” Before I could react, he’d closed the distance between us and pressed his lips to mine.
My reaction was visceral; I pushed him away and scrambled to my feet. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to kiss Charlie or not, but I was sure that if I did want to kiss him it wouldn’t be like that. Not in some stupid school hallway after I’d just botched a performance. Not with Joey watching.
“Um…” I mumbled, shaking my head as if that would help me get a clear idea of what I wanted to do. It was strange to think that I’d just had my first kiss, and it hadn’t even been by choice.
Charlie grimaced, scrunching his brow like he was confused by what he’d attempted. “Yeah, I’m sorry. I just thought… I should really go put my guitar away.” He stumbled to his feet and headed off in the opposite direction; his shuffling steps didn’t carry him far, but he turned out of sight as soon as he could.
Behind me, I heard Joey chuckle. “So he’s not gay after all. Good deal, Charlie.”