Beauty and the Bully (16 page)

Syd snorted, then grinned. “You figured that since I totally
blow
you're gonna give me lessons, yeah?” She bounced in place. “Awesome! I totally need it. I suck. If you guys hadn't detected that, I would have lost all respect for . . . uh . . . what's the band's name, anyway?”

“Fat Barbie,” said Stew.

“Awesome,” said Syd. “Cool name. Total rejection of materialism. Nice.”

“Exactly,”
said Duncan. “That's just what we were going for.” He paused. “But, um . . . we've had a slight name modification. ” Stew and Jess glowered. “Very recently.” More glowering. “Like, earlier today.”

“But I was gonna get an overweight Barbie painted on the kick drum,” said Jess. “Dang, Duncan!”

“Well, I'm sorry, it's just tha—”

“Oh, what's the friggin' name now?” asked Stew.

“The Flaming Tarts,” Duncan offered with a hint of guilt.

“What?” asked Stew.

“Like Pop-Tarts?” asked Jess. “Like SweeTarts?”

“More like, um . . . Teens Against Rodent Tes—”

“No
way
!” yelled Stew. “You have
got
to be kidding me?! You are not gonna politicize this band, Duncan! No friggin'
way
!”

“You think naming the band after the little rat/beaver club is going to get you some sweet Carly lovin'?” asked Jess. “Is that what you think?”

Syd's eyes widened.

“Oh, just calm down,” he said. “This doesn't make us political, exactly. We're only peripherally, um . . . less disconnected from the problems facing, um . . .”

“Beavers!”
shouted Stew.

“The Flaming Tarts,” said Syd. “I don't quite get it. Where are the beavers? And how is it political? Are Republicans setting beavers on fire and I've somehow missed this?”

“Well, it's complicated,” said Duncan.

“It's lame,” snapped Stew.
"L-a-m-e.”
He looked toward Jess. “Don't you have to get home? I'm definitely ready to go.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said, glancing at her digital watch. “Whoops. Later, um . . . Tarts. Nice to meet you, Syd!”

She and Stew grabbed their gear and hurried off, leaving Syd and Duncan alone in the garage. Duncan sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

“That could've gone better,” he said.

“Lotta drama in this band,” said Syd. “I think I'm gonna like it.” She picked up her guitar. “So, how 'bout one of those lessons?”

Duncan sighed. “Yup. Sure. Gotta start sometime.” He ripped off a quick sequence of notes.

“Hey, was that ‘Witchcraft'?” she asked. “I love Wolfmother. Totally Sabbath-sounding, but still.”

Point, Syd, thought Duncan. Yeah, this could all work out.

15

Or not. The first guitar lesson with Sydney Wambaugh addressed only the basics, and in a straightforward manner. She and Duncan reviewed guitar tablature, practiced chords, worked on transitions. “G, C, D,” he said patiently. “Don't worry, you'll get it.” She was determined, focused, and not easily frustrated. And she completely sucked.

Syd was miserably slow-fingered. Her hands seemed too tiny to control the guitar. It made wretched, horrible sounds. Duncan would have felt safer if he were giving her Uzi lessons. Outwardly, he tried to be encouraging. Inwardly, he was thinking of analogies to describe the terrible effect that her playing had on his senses: glass down a chalkboard, chewing tinfoil, removing his own fingernails with a grapefruit spoon—that sort of thing. Syd at least
looked
like a proper guitarist, he told himself. That was half the battle. Well, no. It was probably no more than 5 percent of the battle. But it was something. At six thirty, she put her guitar in its case and walked to the Monte Carlo.

“Very cool of you to try to help me, Duncan,” she said. “As a musician, I know I'm not exactly Jimi Hendrix.”

Dude, as a musician you're not exactly Jimmy Fallon, he thought.

“Oh, don't get down on yourself,” he said. “That's the worst thing you can do. Think successful, be successful. That's what my Little League coach always told us.”

“And did that work?”

“Not for baseball, no. Sure didn't. I can't hit speeding balls. It's my astigmatism. But I'm pretty sure the guitar is totally different. ” Syd smiled at that. “It's really just a matter of practicing. Come over on Thursday, same time. We'll try again.” I'd seriously rather eat marbles, he thought. Big ones. But I owe Freddie.

“Cool,” she said. “I'll be here.” She smiled again. "'Bye.”

“Hey, tell Freddie thanks.”

Syd rolled her eyes, then got in the Monte Carlo and drove off.

Duncan locked up the garage and went inside the house. His mom commented on the fact that, for the second time in the past week, he'd worn an OWLS PHYS. ED. shirt home from school.

“Who does that?” she asked. “Are you trying to be ironic? Because if you are, we can buy you some nice-looking ironic T-shirts, honey. They have funny ones.”

Duncan simply attributed the wearing of gym shirts to a newfound commitment to good health. “Healthy body, healthy mind, Mom. I'm taking control of my life. By God, I'm going to impress the President's Council on Physical Fitness.” Then he grabbed a package of Twinkies and went to his room.

So you won't believe this, Mrs. K. (or maybe you will—hard to get a read on you), but here it is: today was another f*@#!ng awesome day. I really don't like to get all vulgar and explicit like that—it's not my nature. But sometimes a simple “awesome” or “great” or “sweet” just doesn't capture a moment. Such is the case again today. And I'm not just having manic mood swings consistent with general teenagedness. Overreactions, melodrama, blubbery gushing, etc. That's not my deal. I'm not prone to that, Mrs. K. No, I normally just find my level, like water, and I chill. But today with this girl (and I am officially divulging, for the record, that there is a girl at the root of all this emotionally charged good day/bad day jazz) was unreal—and I don't mean that in some smutty way, but in an emotional/intellectual way. (Oh, and she's hot, too. So there is that.) I'm way out of my league with this girl, Mrs. K.—waaaay out. In fact, I'm so far out of my league that I've had to lie to get in. But it's working, and it's hurting no one, so let's not dwell on the fine details of the courtship.

Arguably, the girl and I have a Jay Gatsby/Daisy Buchanan thing going on, but without the tragic closure (let's hope). And we have no past together. And we're not really physically involved. And I'm not rich. But other than that, the comparison is solid. She's even got me thinking the H-word, Mrs. K.

That's right: Homecoming.

I've never been. I don't dance. That's why I play guitar. It's a thing to keep oneself occupied in lieu of dancing. But, well, homecoming is less than three weeks away. And I have a solid connection with this girl. I haven't breathed a word of this to anyone, though. It's for the best; things have a way of collapsing for me.

The band? Well, my progress with the girl has put a predictable strain on the band. There is a well-chronicled inverse relationship between romantic success and rock success. I'm living the classic arc: a world-changing band emerges; its songwriter meets a girl; the band implodes. Except for the world-changing and the implosion, that's another solid comparison right there. I've taken on a guitar protégée, too. A new kid in school, Syd Wambaugh. She is Earth's worst musician. I'll consider her training to be a stunning success if I can just help her to become, like, Earth's
second
worst musician. But that's a long way off.

Duncan put down the journal and ripped open the Twinkies. He reclined at his desk, his feet propped up. He held a Twinkie in his mouth like a cigar. For a moment he felt like a five-star general making tactical battlefield decisions that would affect the lives of countless others. But Duncan had played a lot of Risk as a kid and he knew, quite frankly, that it wasn't nearly so difficult to orchestrate a military campaign as it was to conduct a romantic campaign on multiple fronts. Woo Carly, get bullied, placate Freddie, infiltrate TARTS, teach Syd. Wash, rinse, repeat. The challenge ahead of him was monumental. It required cunning, deceptiveness, and intellect. He sighed, then bit off the end of the Twinkie and fished out some creamy filling with the tip of his tongue.

The sweet indulgence before the conflict, he thought.

In the days that followed, Duncan's various schemes unfolded with surgical precision, and they achieved precisely the desired results. He and Freddie conducted two more staged assaults that week—one of them a de-pantsing at Duncan 's locker (he wore a flattering pair of flannel boxers for the occasion), and the other an elaborate after-school chase that ended with Duncan clinging to the crossbar of a goalpost. He and Freddie did a little bully/victim improv during gym, too. And Carly seemed enchanted by all of it. Freddie was absolutely brilliant, the perfect high school nemesis.

“We're an incredible team,” Duncan told him privately. “Like Shaq and Wade. Or Kirk and Spock. Or Bobby and Whitney. Or Harold and Kumar. Or—”

“Shut up, dweeb.”

“Will do.”

Freddie's sister had another lesson. It was both fun and excruciating, which struck Duncan as very odd. He teased Syd for making crazed, primal guitar faces when she played.

“But those are my possessed-by-rock-and-roll faces. All great guitarists make faces. Otherwise you just look like a butcher or fry cook or bartender or something.”

“The faces need to match the sounds, Syd. If you're not making the faces, maybe you could focus on, um . . . playing the right chords.”

“I'd look like a chump.”

“But you'd sound like a guitarist.”

“Hmm. It's quite a choice, really.”

Duncan noted that she looked pretty cool in her backward Minnesota Twins hat and her KISS T-shirt. If nothing else, she brought a cooler aesthetic and a classic rock posture to the Flaming Tarts. (And there really
was
nothing else.) He tried to teach her a fragment of “Louie, Louie.” Syd somehow made it sound like "C Is for Cookie” from
Sesame Street
. Not just
kind of
like "C Is for Cookie,” but
exactly
like it, almost note for note. Except with shrill, teeth-rattling feedback.

“It's really not that hard of a song,” said Duncan, slightly exasperated but mostly amused.

“Yeah, I know,” said Syd. “I've heard that before. It feels hard, though. All the moving my fingers around and everything. I have trouble with that.”

“Should we try to find you a song where your fingers don't have to move?”

“Is there one?” she asked.

“No.” He smiled. “But we could write one. It'd suck, though.”

The time spent with Syd was fun but largely unproductive; the time Duncan spent with Carly, however, was spectacular on all fronts. He found that because most of his conversations with her dealt with things that were wholly contrived—his supposed fear of Freddie's attacks, his conversion to a rodent-saving zealot, his desire to assist with the upcoming TARTS rally—their interactions were unexpectedly effortless for him. He'd even developed a little confidence. Granted, it was con fidence based on totally false pretenses. But hey, it was confidence nonetheless. Suddenly, Duncan could make her laugh. There was no more stammering, convulsing, or brain-farting when they were together. Increasingly, Carly seemed to view him as an interesting and relevant person, not simply as a victim in need of rescue. (Which isn't to say that Duncan was ready to stop playing the victim card.) He wasn't quite
comfortable
around Carly yet, but he knew what to do, when to do it, and how to spin it.

“You know, Duncan,” she said to him over lunch, “I'm really glad I've gotten to know you—”

“Hey, me, too.”

“—because TARTS needed fresh energy. You're so involved, so sincere.”

“Yup,” he said, “that's me. Involved. Sincere.”

“The rally is going to be something truly special. I'm, like, tingly with excitement.”

“Oh, so am I. Tingly.”

“And I'm so stoked that the rally is on the same afternoon as homecoming. How perfect is
that
? It's going to get everybody talking about TARTS, Duncan.”

“Everyone.”

TARTS had begun to take up nearly all of Duncan's discretionary time. He arrived at school early to attend pre-rally briefings in Dr. Wiggins's classroom. He photocopied pro-rodent propaganda. He hung flyers about town, hitting the neighborhood near the college especially hard. He attended after-school meetings of the TARTS public relations subcommittee —and these didn't even involve Carly. Instead Marissa, a high-ranking handmaid, delegated various un-fun responsibilities to people other than herself, then she gossiped. But Duncan went to the meetings nonetheless. Doing so served both the near-term goal of taking Carly to homecoming and the long-term goal of having no fewer than fifteen children with her before he turned thirty. Duncan had burrowed so deeply into TARTS so quickly that he became, in a matter of mere days, an almost indispensable asset.

He also became somewhat distant from Jess and Stew.

“Dude!” called Jess, racing after Duncan down a hallway. “When are we gonna practice again?”

“Who?”

“Your
band,
assmaster! You, me, Stew, Syd . . . you do remember us, right?” She swept in front of him to make eye contact. “Hello? Anyone in there?”