Chapter 15
The next week was hectic, moving all too quickly as we rushed to finish a CD to—hopefully—sell at Cat’s Cradle when we played. The old man gave us a tiny bit of shelf space, enough for twelve copies at once. He promised to restock the shelf if they all sold, but we all knew that wasn’t about to happen.
A stack of one-hundred printable discs cost us thirty bucks, and cases set us back another twenty. After experimenting with a few different ways to record our audio, we finally resorted to holding my microphone up to the speakers for an instrumental, and adding my vocals after.
If I was being honest, the songs were nowhere near professional quality. They sounded like someone’s cell-phone recording of a live performance, which wasn’t too far off from what they were. But the CD’s had our band name on them, and a logo we’d thrown together on the computer. Seeing that was pretty cool.
We tried to pretend that Wednesday was just a normal day; we went to school, pretended to pay attention in class, endured some taunting from Jessica while we waited for the bus, and then headed over to Charlie’s house.
But instead of practicing, we just stood around talking. After a few minutes of doing nothing, I walked over to the concrete wall and leaned against it. “Did you guys see who’s going to be at the signing?” I asked.
Joey looked up from tuning his guitar. “No, I couldn’t find it anywhere online. Who is it?”
“Queen Anne’s Subtle Overdose.” I waited a moment for that to sink in. Even though they weren’t Joey or Charlie’s favorite band, both of them had some of Queen Anne’s songs on their phones. My feelings about the band weren’t exactly a secret; I’d even confessed to Charlie that I had a bit of a crush on Aras Palmer, their frontman. “Do you think we’ll get to meet them?”
Charlie shrugged. He wasn’t tuning his guitar like Joey, but he seemed to be finding flecks on its purple face to pick at. “I dunno. Maybe if we buy one of their CDs and stand in line to get it signed. Or maybe we could ask the store owner to arrange a meeting.”
“Yeah, maybe.” It wasn’t much use speculating, but at least it gave us something to do. The familiar pressure that I’d come to recognize as pre-performance jitters was setting in early, and as much as I wanted to meet Queen Anne’s Subtle Overdose, I also wanted to finish the night as quickly as possible. The feeling was strange; if I could have controlled time in the world, I still don’t know if I would have sped it up or slowed it down.
“We could head there early if you want,” Charlie suggested. “Just hang out in the car until it’s time to perform. Maybe check out the set-up and get warmed up.”
It sounded like a good idea. I pulled my phone out of a front pocket of my jeans and checked the time: 3:07 pm. There were still four hours to go. “I don’t know if we should leave so early. We’d probably get ridiculously bored, waiting in the car for so long.”
Joey nodded his agreement. “Plus, it would look like we were total losers.”
“Yeah, and that.” I wanted to do something, but I didn’t know what. We couldn’t practice—or at least, we hadn’t been successful after half an hour. “Guys…”
Charlie looked up from his guitar, a small smile coming to his face. “Yeah?”
I shrugged, not sure what I wanted to say.
“You seem nervous, Ash,” Charlie said. “I think we’re all a little nervous. But let’s take a moment to remember… A little over a year ago, no one wanted to even let us in the door. Now we have two performances under our belt, and we’re getting ready to play a third.” He held up a hand to stop the protest forming on my lips. “I know, they didn’t exactly go well. But this one will. And once it does, we’ll have our first real performance. From there, the sky’s the limit.”
For a moment, I wondered whether I was hearing from Charlie-my-boyfriend or Charlie-my-bandmate. I shook my head, deciding it didn’t really matter. “Yeah, you’re right. I promise, I won’t screw this up.”
“Don’t.” Charlie took a step forward, reaching under his guitar strap with his right hand. “Don’t put more pressure on yourself. The great thing about this is that we’ll have more than one song. So if you happen to make a mistake, there will be time and chances for redemption.” He took another step forward, and another, so that we were only a few feet apart.
What is he doing? I thought. It seemed as if Charlie wasn’t even sure himself; he had one hand on his guitar strap, another hanging awkwardly at his side, and a slightly confused expression on his face. “Thanks,” I said after a few seconds, “That makes me feel a little better.”
He glanced over his shoulder at Joey, whose eyes were flicking between us. In that moment, it felt as if we were all a little lost.
Joey shifted from one foot to the other. “Hey, if you guys are gonna start making out, take it outside,” he said.
It was a weak joke, but we all started laughing. Not knee-slapping, red-in-the-face laughter, but laughter nonetheless. “You know what? Why don’t we just watch some TV?” I suggested.
Charlie raised an eyebrow at me. “Um… Yeah, if you want to. I mean, my parents’ll be home around five or so, so they might end up joining us.”
“Okay, cool.” I couldn’t figure out why he was telling me; I was fine with his dad, and his mom too.
We set our equipment aside and filed into his house. The garage led into a short tiled hallway, and once we turned left the family room was right in front of us. It seemed more modern than my home, with walls a bright shade of gray, a simple steel-and-redwood ceiling fan, and a plush blue couch facing the flat screen TV. The couch didn’t look wide enough to fit all of us; there was a brown recliner beside it, but I couldn’t help wondering if a lack of available seating had been the reason behind Charlie’s mention of his parents.
Joey took the recliner, which left Charlie and me on the couch. Charlie found the remote and turned on some lame cartoons, which at least gave us something to focus on other than the impending performance.
I was comfortable on my side of the couch, sitting with my knees pulled high against my chest. But Charlie kept squirming around, as if he couldn’t possibly find the right position. That didn’t make me uncomfortable; what did was the way he kept looking at me and then looking away.
After his third time, I cleared my throat. “Is… Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” The words came a little too quickly to be believable. Charlie sighed. “Okay, I haven’t actually told my mom about… You know, anything about us. I just didn’t know how to bring it up.”
“Oh, okay.” Based on the way he was acting, Charlie expected me to be mad. I didn’t understand it; as far as I was concerned, his parents were his to deal with. I hadn’t told Kent about our relationship either, but I doubted Charlie would be mad about that.
“I just figured I should tell you, in case you wanted to tell her. Or if it might make you act differently, or whatever.”
“Okay. Thanks.” I doubted I would have thought twice about whether he’d told his mom or not if he hadn’t brought it up. But he had. I knew that had to mean he thought it was important, but the real question in my mind was whether he was worried about the way his mom would act around me, or the way I might act around her.
I wasn’t mad; more like confused. The conversation died as we watched the cartoon dish-rag worry about how he’d lost track of his panda bear friend. It was a stupid story, made even worse by the fact that the humor was obviously aimed at teens. What kind of teens would even watch this show? I wondered. Only to realize that, of course, we were watching it.
It was almost humorously bad, but perhaps that was the point. I found myself checking my phone repeatedly, hoping for a text that might distract me from my boredom, but I knew I wouldn’t get one. After all, the only two people who texted me—other than my mom—were in the room with me.
As slow as the time passed, it did eventually pass. The sound of a key jiggling in the front door made me turn, but my view was blocked by a po
rtion of hall that I’d never been down.
“Charlie?” a woman’s voice called. “I’m home! Are you inside? The garage door was cracked open, but I didn’t see anyone…” She stepped into view. “Oh. Hello.”
Charlie’s mom was nearly as tall as his dad. She had a thin frame, mousey brown hair that fell to a uniform length over her shoulders, and the same small nose as him. I didn’t think she looked quite as pretty as my mom, but she was far from homely.
“Hey Mom,” Charlie said, “Ash and Joey are here.” He pointed to us, as if his mom wouldn’t have been able to figure it out otherwise.
“Oh, nice to see you! I have to say, I heard you practicing a few weeks ago, and it sounded really good. Like a real band!” She smiled at me, and I returned the gesture, albeit somewhat awkwardly.
“That’s ‘cause we are a real band, Mom.” Charlie pushed off from the couch. “We were just gonna hang out here before our thing at Cat’s Cradle, if that’s okay.”
His mom pursed her lips for a moment. “Of course it’s okay. Your father is working late tonight, so he might not be home in time to see you before you go. We have burgers in the fridge, if that sounds good for dinner.”
She was so different from my mom; if I’d brought unexpected guests, we would have just ordered pizza or picked up some fast food. Although, once I thought about it, maybe that was part of why I didn’t like inviting friends over. “That’s fine,” I said, not wanting to be a burden. “Joey and I can just eat on our way there.”
“Oh no, nonsense.” She shifted the brown leather purse on her shoulder. “Like I said, we have burgers, if that works for everyone. Charlie, you can even grill them if you want.”
Charlie nodded. “That sounds like a good idea. Do you want us to… I don’t know, go downstairs or something?”
“No, you guys stay up here. I’ll find something to do with myself.” She gave Joey and me one last smile and turned for the stairs. They creaked with each step; she didn’t walk up them with a rhythm, like I would have. Just one step after the other, with no discernable pattern.
At least there was one good part about his mom leaving so quickly: I hadn’t had a chance to act any way around her, never mind pretending that we weren’t dating. Not that we acted much like we were dating anyway.
Charlie seemed to realize how strange he looked, standing in the middle of the family room for no discernable reason. He took a couple steps back and fell onto the couch beside me. “That that went well, right?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I said.
Aside from that brief exchange, his mom didn’t see much of us; she came down an hour later to make sure we were able to cook dinner and find buns for our burgers, but she seemed to disappear soon after. It was obvious she was making herself scarce, like Kent when it was just me and him home.
We ended up burning our burgers, so they tasted heavily of charcoal, but by the time we finished eating it was about time to head over to Cat’s Cradle, so I was happy. Joey drove; he’d gotten a little better since the last time I’d been in the car with him, but my heartrate was still pretty elevated for most of the ride.
The parking lot was dark, and about as busy as we should’ve expected. The spaces around Cat’s Cradle were all full, but once we drove around to the front of the mall we found a place to park that wasn’t too far.
Joey pulled into the space and shut off the ignition, and we climbed out. As we got our gear from the trunk and started heading toward the record store, I could practically feel the energy. It started as a buzzing, the conglomeration of a hundred whispers melding into one due to the distance. Then I saw it, a line extending past the glass doors, wending through the middle of the parking lot. A lot of kids our age, some older, and one or two adults.
They weren’t there for us, but we were still going to give them a show. We’d been hired to give them a show. I could hardly believe it, as I led the way past a girl at the very back of the line.
“Ashley?” The low voice was Jessica’s—I would have recognized it anywhere—but I never would have guessed it from her tone. She sounded almost awestruck.
I stopped in my tracks, turning to look at her. The dim lights hid her worse features, making her look like a model or some tormented angel come to torture me. I cleared my throat. “Hey Jessica. What’s up?” Cool as you please; I felt like I had power there, and she didn’t.
“Oh my gosh, are you in Queen Anne’s or something?” Her voice slid upward, almost humorously high.
It took me a moment to realize she was being serious. “Um, no. There aren’t any girls in Queen Anne’s. We’re Auburn. Remember?” We’ve played at school a couple times now, I mentally added. You should know, since you wrote those awful posts about it.
The giddy look on her face disappeared, replaced with an irritated scowl. “Oh, I see. So what are you doing here? Going to force us to listen to more of your bad music?”
“Yeah, well… I guess the owner of this place didn’t think it was so bad. He’s hired us to play some songs for everyone waiting.” If I’d been a little more childish, I might have flipped Jessica off or stuck my tongue out at her. But I was above such things. I could take the moral high ground, since I already had the victory of showing off that our band had been chosen for something. Without another word, I turned back around and kept walking.
The doors in front were obviously locked, but when the owner saw the three of us coming he got up from his chair and walked over. A cheer went up from the people waiting when they saw him walking up, only to end when they realized he wasn’t unlocking the door. Instead, he was doing an intricate set of hand signals, holding a finger of one hand up and circling another finger around it.
“I think he wants us to go around back,” Charlie whispered in my ear.
“Yeah, either that or he really wants us to do the hokey-pokey,” Joey joked. Since he was the one with our CD’s—packed into a small suitcase that had trouble rolling on the asphalt—we let him move ahead.
There wasn’t really a back to the store—at least, not that I could see—but there was a side door tucked into the corner of the far wall. The empty space on that side was about twenty feet by twenty feet, just large enough for two heavy green dumpsters and four wooden pallets laid down flat.
The pallets looked almost like a makeshift stage. On some level, I knew that was why they were there, but I’d had a mental picture of a real stage for our first paid performance. As it was—a dull gray wall on my right, two green dumpsters on my left, a stained red brick wall in front—the set-up was far from ideal.
Joey stopped at the pallets, frowning at the guitar case in one hand and our CD suitcase in the other. Since my hands were the least burdened, I stepped forward and took the suitcase.
The white side door opened up and the old man stepped out. “You guys are late,” he announced. “You should learn to be on time if you want to be professional performers.”
“Um, sorry.” From what I could tell, we were only a few minutes late from when we’d been told we could set up, and almost fifteen minutes early for when we were supposed to perform.
“It’s alright. Hopefully you’ll only make that mistake once. And even if you get famous, don’t be one of those bands who makes arrangements to arrive at a certain time and then doesn’t show.”
“Okay, we won’t be,” I promised. A terrible thought occurred to me. “Wait, is Queen Anne’s not here yet?”
The old man shook his head. “No, they’re here. Main singer’s a good kid. I was saying in general.” He searched for something on the ground, which turned out to be a rock to keep the door propped open so he could come a little closer to us. “I’m sorry, I put up signs for the line to come around this way so that you’d be looking out at everyone waiting. But no one really followed that.”
I shrugged, not caring much if we were visible or not. Maybe that would help with my nerves. Charlie voiced what I was thinking. “That’s cool. It’ll be kinda like the way we practice.??
?
“No it won’t be,” the old man said, “Because I have a plan to get everybody over here. I’m going to ask Aras if he’d sing a few lines with you.”
To say my jaw dropped would be a cliché, but my jaw did drop. I’d always assumed that responses like that were kind of overwrought and exaggerated, but I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. “Aras as in…?”
The old man laughed. “Yes, Aras Palmer. I’ll leave the option of whether to sing one of your songs or one of his up to him. Here, come on back with me.” He disappeared back into the store.
That out-of-body feeling hadn’t left; my hands were shaking so badly that I had a hard time moving. When I looked at Charlie, he was watching me with wide eyes, as if he knew exactly what this would mean to me.
“Hey Joey, could you go on ahead?” he asked. Joey didn’t have to be told twice; he jogged with his case toward the door, like he was scared it would slam shut if he didn’t get there in time. “Ash, do you think you can sing like this?” Charlie whispered. “I mean, with Aras?”
“I don’t know…” I heard my voice tremble with each word. “It’s cool, but…”
“But a lot of stress too,” Charlie finished for me. “I can only imagine. Okay, here, take my hands.” He set his guitar case down and held out both hands. When I took them, he wiggled my arms back and forth. “You can do this. Just relax. Remember Homecoming?”
I nodded; my arms felt a little numb from how much Charlie was shaking them, and I was worried I might drop the mic if he continued. I pulled them back and waited for Charlie to explain how this was related to Homecoming.
He bit his lip, scrunched up his nose for a second. “That night, I felt like you could do anything. Like we could do anything. We danced like idiots and it didn’t hurt us.”
It hurt me, I thought, thinking about all the comments that had come after. But I held my tongue.
“This is the same thing. We’ll do what we came here for, and it won’t hurt us.” He paused, a slight smile coming to his face, as if he enjoyed his own words. “We’ll get through this together. If you start getting worried, just look at me. Perform for me.”
For the first time, one of his speeches didn’t fix me. It wasn’t that he was saying anything wrong, it just didn’t reach me the same way he’d always been able to in the past. Perhaps it was because of the strong emotions I was feeling. I faked a smile and kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks, Charlie. You always know exactly what to say.”
“Of course. No need to worry.”
We collected our stuff and brought it inside. It felt a little warmer; before then, I hadn’t even noticed I was cold. Winters in California are usually mild, but the nighttime brought about a noticeable drop in temperature.
Though Cat’s Cradle’s walls were almost all glass, there was a single long room separated from the rest of the store by a red brick wall. When Charlie and I entered hand in hand, we saw that everyone—Joey, the old man, all five members of Queen Anne’s Subtle Overdose—was hanging out in various positions along the long wall. The drummer was closest to us, playing with his sticks. He twirled them around each finger, stopped them, and reversed the motion.
Joey was sitting next to him, hardly further in than we were. He was a step or two ahead, bragging all about how he could have played the drums if he wanted, but decided that bass guitar was cooler (‘and they’re basically the same thing anyway.’). The drummer was so obviously ignoring him that I had to resist the urge to laugh.
The three guitarists were standing around a soda machine, arguing about something. Two of them, who I remembered were brothers, had their long blonde hair pulled back with white bandanas. I smiled at them as we squeezed past, heading toward Aras and the old man.
“Oh, nice. Looks like some young blood,” one of the brothers said, looking from me to Charlie. “Yo, you remember when we were like that? So small we felt like little kids next to everyone else?”
“Maybe you felt like a little kid,” the other brother retorted. “Actually, that would explain a lot. You still act like a fuckin’ five year old.”
“Hey, I’ll take it. Last week, you said I was only four-and-a-half. I’m aging at an alarming rate. Pretty soon I’ll be able to take a shit without needing Mommy to hold my hand.” It seemed like a semi-private conversation—or one that wasn’t meant to include us, at any rate—so I just kept going.
It felt like we’d walked the entire width of the store by the time we reached Aras. His black hair was flat on one side like he’d just woken up, but his beard looked freshly trimmed. Brown eyes that were lined with black in all of their music videos looked kinder in person, and my general impression was that he wasn’t the hottie the media had made him out to be. In a lot of ways, that only made me like him more. He was cute, but looked more approachable in person.
“I dunno, I’d have to hear what it sounds like,” he was saying to the old man. When we walked up, he turned slightly to include us in the conversation. “Hey. What’s up?”
Being acknowledged like that made me want to squeal, one of those typical girlish squeals of delight that I decided I was too mature for. Instead, I just nodded and relied on Charlie to answer.
“Not much, bro.” I could tell that even Charlie was affected by being so close to greatness. Queen Anne’s was exactly where we wanted to be in five years; at least, where I assumed we all wanted to be.
“So I take it you’re the singer?” Aras asked, his eyes moving to me.
“Y-yeah. That’s me,” I stuttered out.
“Okay, cool. Could you sing the part of... What was the song you wanted me to sing?” He glanced at the old man out of the corner of his eye.
“Well, how about you guys choose? Which song were you going to sing first?” the old man asked.
All eyes moved to me. I frowned, trying to think of a good song to pick. I had a weird thought, that it was like Aras was my own personal karaoke machine, and had to shake my head to keep from laughing. “Um…” When it came down to it, I wasn’t sure if any of our songs were good enough to ask him to sing. “Starstruck Lullaby?”
Aras nodded, pinching a bit of his lip. “I like the title. How does it go?”
I refused to let my nerves render me mute, even though they threatened to do exactly that. “I stayed awake last night, counting stars to the flicker in your eyes,” I sang. “Living dreams in my own head, fantasies better left unsaid. They say the future’s full of snow, and l-lord knows I’ve felt the bitter cold.”
“Hmm, interesting. Yeah, I can get behind that.” Aras turned his head to look at the old man. “Do you just want me to sing the first verse? I’m not exactly warmed up, but I’d be fine with a few lines. It might help us sell a few more CDs.”
The old man smiled, an expression that looked like a miniature reflection of how I felt. “That would be perfect, Mr. Palmer. Thank you.”