Chapter 25
Word got around school that we were playing shows, likely helped by Joey. The way he told it, we were playing in front of crowds that even the most famous pop stars would envy: thousands of screaming fans dying to hear every track, girls who were throwing themselves at him and Charlie. It got so bad that one of Will’s friends even asked me if I was worried about Charlie cheating.
I wasn’t. The next time we played the Underground Club, there were nearly three times as many people in the audience—including Will—but if there was anyone throwing themselves it happened well out of view. Grant was there, right in the front row; I took some time to talk to him before we started, along with anyone who wanted to join in. It was interesting how five minute conversations inevitably turned into CD or shirt purchases.
That show went well, but it wasn’t the highlight of the year. That came when Principal Wroth called me into her office and asked if Auburn would like to open the talent show. With a grin, I asked her how much she was planning to pay.
Well… Fifty dollars was the answer. I hadn’t expected any money—heck, I didn’t even know if the school was paying or if Principal Wroth was dipping into her personal account—but I wasn’t about to turn it down. Fifty dollars for one song was good money.
The talent show was set up as a sort of end-of-year celebration; the faculty charged for admission, and strongly suggested that students go to support their peers. But admission was open to anyone, so we invited the small coterie of fans we’d been cultivating.
Mom and Kent both promised to be there too. It was on a Friday, after school so that parents could go. I knew that Mom usually worked Friday afternoons, but she didn’t think it would be a problem. I didn’t push the issue, since I really wanted her there.
Walking into the auditorium beside Joey and Charlie, I felt like a conquering hero. We weren’t like everyone else; we’d been invited to perform. The chance at redemption for the beginning of the year was a nice little cherry on top.
The auditorium was set up in three sections: seating close to the stage rose just enough for each row to see above the previous one, then there was a main walkway with one end leading outside and the other opening out into the main hall, and above that more seating layered steeply, so that if the auditorium was packed the heads of each audience member would only reach the shins of whoever was sitting behind them. The stage was about four feet above the first row of chairs, and red curtains were drawn to hide the crew setting up.
There were only a couple of people in view: a brunette teacher walking around with a clipboard and a student trailing after her. The show wasn’t set to start for half an hour, so I figured we were probably the first to show up.
Charlie led the way from the walkway up to the stage. “Hey, Mrs. Abrams!” he said, breaking off from us to hug her.
“Nice to see you, Charlie. Are you here to perform? I don’t remember you being on the list.”
“Yeah, we are.” Charlie stepped out of the hug. “Auburn. We’re supposed to open the show.”
She frowned down at her clipboard. “Oh. Right. Do you need anything special? We have speakers set up already, and you shouldn’t need that microphone.” She looked pointedly at the box in my hand.
“Um, I’d really rather use my own. The last time I used a school microphone… Yeah, it didn’t end so well.” I’d learned the power of moving around to help connect with an audience, and I wasn’t about to give that up.
Mrs. Abrams sighed, as if I was a stuck-up starlet making some impossible demand. “Okay, we’ll try to make it work. That plugs into a standard jack, right?”
“I think so.” Honestly, I had no idea. I’d only ever plugged the wireless receiver into the small speaker that came in the package, but I figured I’d find out soon enough. We turned toward the curtains and ducked through them.
One thing was clear the moment we got behind the vale: we were not the first to arrive. A veritable army of students, from small freshman to post-pubescent seniors, were running around, searching for items known only to them. To the far left, a few kids were standing in front of a panel of switches, arguing about something. I decided they had to be the ones running things. At least, the technical side of things.
But what interested me the most was a girl standing off to the side, out of the way of anyone else. Jessica was holding a sheet of paper, singing lyrics I knew by heart. “Where once I… No, no, it’s faster than that. Where once I was a kite…”
Charlie raised an eyebrow at me, a clear warning not to engage her. But I couldn’t help it. I made a beeline for my enemy, the girl who had inspired the very song she was singing… And poorly at that.
She didn’t notice me until I was close. I raised my voice to be sure she’d hear. “Honey, the best band in the world could perform that song, and it would still be a boring song about how no one likes you.” The words were etched into my memory. I couldn’t duplicate the exact tone Jessica had used, but I wished I could.
Jessica’s eyes found me; they were wide, full of emotion that I didn’t much care about. “It’s not that bad. With the right melody and rhythm, it sounds good.” It was a crude quotation, but enough that I understood what she was saying.
“How dare you?” I whispered, glaring at her. “You have no right to sing that song.”
I was about to launch into a full tirade, but I heard Charlie clear his throat behind me. “Maybe she does. Why’d you pick it, Jessica?”
“Because… Look, I think I sort of understand how it feels now. To have people hate you, to feel like you’re just getting torn up inside.” She paused, shook her head. “I wanted to sing it because it captures how I’m feeling. I didn’t know you guys would be here, so...”
“So pick another song. This one’s ours.” There was no way I would let Jessica—hateful, malicious, Loser McGee-creating Jessica—sing my song. I felt like she would ruin the whole thing for me if she even tried.
Charlie gently touched my elbow. “Ash, I think everyone who feels that way has a right to sing our song. It’s actually a huge compliment, if you think about it.”
I didn’t want to be complimented, not by Jessica. “No, I won’t let you do this. Find a new song.” She couldn’t twist my lyrics. She couldn’t pretend that she knew what they meant, what it felt like to want to disappear.
“But I don’t have any other music.” She seemed to find her backbone, returning my glare with the haughty look I’d grown accustomed to. “So shut the fuck up.”
There was no Maya to run for Principal Wroth, and when I looked to Charlie it didn’t seem like he was about to either.
There’s a way to fix this, an evil part of my mind thought. Even if you can’t stop her from singing your song… I turned back to Jessica and smiled sweetly. “Alright, I’ll let you butcher our song if you want.” But not before people heard it sung the right way.
Since we were first to perform, we got priority in terms of setting up. The crew by the switchboard helped us find extension cords and places to plug in for a sound check. I ran through a quick vocal warm-up The one thing I neglected to do was tell either Joey or Charlie which song we were going to sing. I had to wait until we were just about to perform, until it was too late for them to say no.
With a full stage to work with, we decided it would be cooler to start in the middle and work our way out. Joey would go left, Charlie right, and I’d stand in the center until the second verse. We’d all enjoy our share of the spotlight.
The rest of the performers cleared out, off to the sides while the lights went down low. Someone flicked a switch and a mechanical crank threw the curtains back.
It wasn’t a packed house; probably every other seat was occupied. But I’d sung to fewer kids. “We’re Auburn, and this is Jaded!” I shouted into the mic.
There was a brief pause while Charlie looked at me, as if he couldn’t believe what I was doing. Then he seemed to realize that the silence was getting awkward, and started playing.
r /> “Feeling lost, twisted and confused. Abused like a puppet, caught up in a winter tempest.” My eyes found Jessica waiting in the wings. I sang for her, to remind her how she’d made me feel. “I’m feeling like a kite, torn up by the wind. My colors once so bright, now I just can’t stand… Two, three! Do you see, what you’ve done to me? And can you hear, my whining plea? Oh, please just let me be. Let me be.”
Something happened, something terrible. As I sang and remembered the song’s inspiration, I started to feel bad… For Jessica. If she truly felt the same way I had when I wrote Jaded, then I was filling her old shoes, kicking the outcast while she was down. In a way, I couldn’t help seeing my decision to sing the song she’d prepared as similar to when she’d signed me up to play Juliet.
I wished I could take it back, but there wasn’t anything I could do. The song was already halfway through and I couldn’t stop. All I could do was feel bad. It occurred to me that I might mess up, in the hopes that it would make Jessica look good, but I had a career to think about. In the end, I just finished the song.
A smattering of applause followed us off the stage; I made sure to head for the side opposite Jessica, so I wouldn’t have to look at her. But that meant I had to meet Charlie’s eyes, which was almost as hard.
He didn’t have any words for me. He just shook his head and let a disappointed expression say everything.
The talent show itself moved quickly; less than a minute after we left the stage the crew was setting up a black grand piano. It wheeled around pretty well for something so heavy.
We stuck around to watch as an older girl took her place behind it and cranked out a classical piece. It looked and sounded like a demanding song, but… It was classical. The other students behind the curtain looked bored, and I knew that if I peeked out from behind it, half the audience would be too.
My mind kept drifting as the song went on. And on, and on. “Hey,” I whispered to Joey, since Charlie didn’t seem to be in a talking mood, “How long is this supposed to go on for?”
“I have no idea. She’s more boring than a hobo performing slam poetry.” He groaned so loudly that the closest students gave us dirty looks.
“Joey!” I scolded, as if I hadn’t been thinking along the same lines. The only difference was that I knew how rude it was to give voice to my opinion, and I could at least appreciate the difficulty of the song. Even if I disagreed with the genre.
Difficult or not, it was getting repetitive: one, two, three, one, two, three. Thankfully, the notes started coming faster and louder as they built toward a final crescendo. I joined the audience in applause as the girl performed a complicated display of hand acrobatics to hit the right notes.
The clapping died down quickly, as everyone came to the sobering realization that the performance wasn’t over. I checked the time on my phone; she’d been playing for over five minutes, and still wasn’t showing signs of stopping.
Now that’s rude, I thought. In my mind, it was just bad form to monopolize a talent show, as if it had been set up for the sole sake of giving her an audience and platform.
Thankfully, she finished after only a few more minutes. A few long, boring minutes. The three of us found a place to sit against a wooden box that I vaguely remembered as a prop for the school play, and we waited out the next few acts.
It was less of a talent show in the end, and more like a Pyramid-Sienna High version of American Idol. Just about everyone who came on tried to sing or play music, with varying degrees of skill. I wasn’t much interested by all of that.
What did interest me was seeing Jessica walk onstage and up to the microphone. They were still using my white mic—I hadn’t been smart enough to take it with me—and I had to sit still while she put her grubby hands all over it.
“Hi, I’m Jessica Smith, and I’m gonna sing Jaded. Ashley already kinda sang it, and I don’t have a whole band but…”
Charlie poked me in the ribs. “Listen up. Remember how you felt back in that bathroom freshman year? That’s how she feels right now.”
“No it isn’t.” But I could see her glance at me before someone clicked a button and a terrible instrumental version of the song started. It wasn’t off our CD, I knew that, but it sounded like it had been recorded using similar equipment.
“Feeling lost, twisted and confused.” Jessica’s voice was weak, trembling as she meandered through the first verse. “Abused like a puppet, caught up in a winter tempest.” She was going slow, already falling a quarter beat behind. “I’m feeling like a kite, torn up by the wind. My colors once so bright, now I just can’t stand. One, two… Wait. Sorry.” She seemed to finally notice how off-tempo she’d gotten, gesturing wildly for someone to pause the music. “Can we just start over? Please?”
It was my worst nightmare, playing out before my enemy’s eyes. I’d be lying if I said part of me wasn’t enjoying the irony. And yet… There was a far larger piece of me that couldn’t help sympathizing. I knew all too well how that felt, the horrible gut-punch feeling of screwing up in front of a sizable audience.
Charlie still had his guitar, as did Joey. Charlie played a note that rang out through the speakers, then nodded at me. “You should go make up for what you did to her.”
I gritted my teeth. If I was going to apologize, I wanted it to be on my own terms, and not because my boyfriend had scolded me like I was a boisterous child. “No, I can’t.” I could feel bad for Jessica, even realize it was mean to make her more nervous than she’d already been. But the one thing I couldn’t bring myself to do was save her.
“If you don’t go out there, I will. And trust me, my singing will be even worse than hers.”
The idea of watching my boyfriend perform with my old enemy helped me make up my mind. I rolled to my feet. “Oh, screw you, Charlie.” There really wasn’t any other choice; I jogged back onto the stage.
There was the tiniest bit of applause from our section that died out as soon as Charlie and Joey started playing in full. Joey, at least, seemed to be on my side; he scowled at Charlie as they both followed me onto the stage. I approached Jessica and gestured for her to hand me the mic.
She eyed me like I was getting ready to put another knife in her back, but slowly reached out and handed it over. “—What you’ve done to me?” I sang, picking up in the middle of the chorus. “And can you hear, my whining plea? Oh, please just let me be. Let me be.” I moved to stand side-by-side with Jessica, singing quietly to help her keep time without overwhelming her voice.
“Feeling hated, rejected and affected. By all of the cold shoulders, by all of your hostile stares.” To my ears, her voice was everywhere in terms of pitch, but she was still much better than before.
“Where once I was a kite, now I can no longer fly. I’m stuck here on the ground, and I just keep falling down.” I gritted my teeth and kept singing; even managed to fake a smile for the audience. Moving into the second chorus, I handed the mic back to Jessica and sang so softly that the only sound it picked up was her voice.
“I want this feeling to end. Please mend my broken colors, and let me sing again. Hear my plea, and let me be. Oh, don’t make me feel lost. And don’t make me feel hated. The sadness will pass, don’t leave me feeling jaded.”
The song was over. I’d aided the girl who had been the reason for so many tears, who’d made my life miserable. In a perfect world, we would have hugged and kissed, and realized how silly all our fighting had been. In a perfect world, I might have forgiven her.
But I didn’t live in a perfect world. I never have. She whispered a quick thank you, but all I could think about was how good it had felt to watch her fail. I’d been the better person, but only at the cost of compromising my true feelings.