Have Mercy (Have a Life #1) (2 page)

Here’s the thing I need to tell The Griffin: When I turn sixteen in January I am going to drop out of school and move to Houston where there is a terrific music scene.  Everything is on the internet so please tell me what I’m doing riding in a yellow bus like a prisoner going to highway cleanup or en route to pluck chickens with illegals at the Turbo Chicken Processing Plant behind South Mountain?   Riding a school bus is just demeaning.  And it’s not as if I have actually learned anything in school in the last year.  The teachers spend three quarters of class time trying to keep the
Gitanos Reyes
from killing the
Nuestros Barrios
or the other way around and the rest of the time stressing out about the PSAA tests, which, if a significant number of students don’t pass, the teachers will lose their pathetic jobs.  I think, but don’t know for a fact, that teachers get demerits every time they send a kid to the principal’s office because once a kid goes to the principal’s office a lawyer gets involved in making sure the kid doesn’t get his right to an education—a right he clearly doesn’t want to exercise which is the funny part—trampled on.  That’s probably why Jane doesn’t even pretend to care about her students’ moral compass, which Principal Thwaite is always harping on.  The first day of school and every Monday in assembly she lectured us on how finding her moral compass saved her and if anybody knew what she was talking about you couldn’t tell because half of us were sleeping and the other half were texting “wtf is thwaite talking about?”

              Anyway, everything of value that you learn in school is on the internet: TED lectures, the Khan Academy, whose tutorials saved my ass more than once in trig class when I fell asleep during Miss Horvath’s endless talk on how her surveyor husband uses trig for scoping out building lots for new McDonalds or whatever.  Everything is on the net and you don’t have to pity the teachers for their pathetic lives and unbelievably sad fashion choices—like Miss Horvath who is, Jane says, an old hippie who had too many abortions and couldn’t have kids when she finally wanted them and wears this thing over her shoulders that’s supposed to be a poncho, but it looks, I swear to god, like a table cloth with a hole for her head cut in the middle of it. I mean, what’s that supposed to be?  I want to cry every time I look at her—because, unlike her, the TED people are smart and well dressed and don’t have to teach gang members for a living.  Maybe that’s the difference. 

              So everything I could possibly want to know is on websites and files and easily accessible anytime I need to learn something.  Google “How to Write a Song” and a zillion entries come up.  I must have looked at half of them.  So, considering that I am not stupid, it amazes me that my lyrics suck and I always feel like I’ve heard them before.  Maybe it’s because I was raised around music, riding inside Jane who rode the band bus and sang to me through the umbilical cord or something until I was born.  Maybe I’m a plagiarist and don’t even know it.  If I unconsciously steal someone’s song, does that make me a plagiarist or am I just tripping on the zeitgeist?  That’s the one thing The Griffin gets on me for, not being original.  Jane, too, now that I think about it, is always harping about being original.  They both think you’re nothing if you’re not original.  And my lyric box is empty.

              Tim, on the other hand, starts humming when I play a new tune and all of a sudden words shoot out of his mouth that are not only seriously moving but they are original, by which I mean they are not trite or full of emotions that he read about somewhere but you can tell that all this stuff is happening inside him or happened to someone else somewhere but he is so empathetic that the vibes find their way into his lyric box.  That’s where I need to get. 

              Writing songs is the only thing I can actually see myself doing for the rest of my life, so, if I can’t learn how to write lyrics in school, I don’t see the point.  I’m dropping out if I can get The Griffin to sign my release and give me a little cash to get me started in Houston.  Jane says if The Griffin will sign she will, too.  She doesn’t want to hold the bag for my potentially disastrous decision or my tantrums if I don’t get my way.  “There’s more to an education than just facts,” she says.  “You have to learn how to get along with the human race and how are you going to find out how to do that looking at a screen?” but I seriously think she’s wrong.  She went to college after she had me and look at her: teaching juvenile delinquents she clearly does not give a shit about.  And look at The Griffin.  He dropped out at sixteen and is the leader of a successful rock band that works all the time. 

              It’s a simple choice made simpler by the fact that The Griffin is coming through Milltown on his way from Toronto to Houston where he will open his first solo tour in ten years.  At which time I will get him to sign me up for real life.

              “I can always get a GED if I turn out to be a total loser and need to become a teacher,” I tell Jane, who pretends not to hear me when I cut her like Lady Gaga cuts Madonna. “I mean, sixteen is not the end of the world,” which is an even meaner thing to say because sixteen is exactly when Jane’s world ended.

              Jane said, “Maybe you should clean out the Trap if you want The Griffin to jam with you.”

              Two days till The Griffin lands.  I open the garage door to the Trap and start sweeping out the crap that gets in under the door and was in the middle of a sneezing fit—I think I have allergies nobody ever bothered testing me for—when Tim pulls up on his bicycle with his guitar over his shoulder.  He hops off the bike and pulls the guitar out of its case and starts playing.  I put down my broom, pick up the Fender and keep up with him.  After about an hour, we stop, spent, breathing like we just climbed Mt. Everest.

              “I can’t believe The Griffin is actually coming to Milltown,” he said. 

              “He’s coming to see me and Jane.”  I felt it was important to make the distinction.

              “He’s going to be here, though, right?  Right here?”

              Here’s the thing about being the daughter of a famous person.  You’re never quite sure why people like you.  It’s especially problematic when you have a band and your parent is a famous rock star.  Until right now, Tim Coles had never said a word about The Griffin and he had moved here six months ago from Black Eddy and we had been playing together for five of those months.  So I’ve had five months of naïve stupidity where I allowed myself to think that news of my juicy endowment didn’t matter to him.  Look how he fought me on the berets.  If he were trying to kiss up, he would have stuck a beret on his head and asked me if I approved of the angle.

              “Yes, he’s going to be right here,” I said.

              “We got to get a drummer,” he said, excited.  “We’ll sound much better with a drummer.  Do you think Raymond would sit in?”

              Raymond, which everyone pronounced with the accent on the second syllable with no d as if he were French or something—Ray
mon
not
Raaaaay
mond—is The Griffin’s bass man.  He is from Montreal, which doesn’t make him French at all.  I’m not trying to be snotty, it’s just a fact.  But he acts French, that is, he has strong opinions about everything like whether you got fatter since the last time he saw you—“
Cher
Mercy, your
avoirdupois
is looking
trės Americain
.  No more
pommes frites
pour toi
!”—to whether or not the latest song you wrote is worth anything.  Since he is the best musician in The Griffin, actually one of the best bass players in the world, his opinion matters and his cuts always hurt.

              “We can ask him,” I said.  “They just usually crash out when they come here, though.  They crash and get high.  I don’t know if The Griffin’ll want to hear us play.”

              “Of course, he will,” he said, “You’re his daughter, Mercy.”

              It’s a complete waste of time to wonder how things would feel if this or that were different in your life.  Like what would it be like to have a mother who gave me helpful tips on my changing body, like why getting my period made me feel like a griffin myself, ready to pounce at the least offence and why it took my body so damned long to change in the first place.  Or what it would be like to have a father who thought it was worth his time to pay attention to me when I didn’t have a guitar in my hands, although I did notice that every picture of Isak on Facebook featured him playing the guitar, so I’m not the only one
obviously
.  All that neglected spawn stuff is in a box called “yeah, right” which I opened once to sample and almost threw up it tasted so bad. 

              “What should we play?” I asked, humoring Tim.

              “You know that tune you were playing yesterday?  I gave it some words.”

              Which we put to the tune, then the tune changed to fit the words and pretty soon we had a real song on our hands.   It was so depressing that I couldn’t come up with words like Tim could.  There
had
to be a website that addressed my deficiency.  

                Tim put his guitar in its case to get ready to go to his job at the Seven-Eleven.  I picked up the broom to continue the clean-up I’d begun.  He walked his bike up and stared at me.

              “What?”  I asked.  “What’s wrong?”

              To my horror, because I should have seen it coming, he leaned over and kissed me on the lips, which I actually really wanted him to do for a long time, but I hated that he did it now.  I actually liked his hairless chest and his incredible triceps and I liked him, but I wanted him to like me for myself, not because of The Griffin on my coat of arms.

              “Don’t forget to find us a drummer,” he said as he swung a leg over the bike and coasted down the driveway. 

              I waited until he turned around to see if I was watching him to lift my sleeve to wipe my mouth, just to prove how little his kiss meant to me, but later, when I remembered it, I licked my lips.  

It was the end of May and school was almost over.  The seniors, except for the idiots who were slogging through remedial reading and writing, had finished classes and were waiting for graduation and the Prom bacchanalia, meanwhile buzzing the school in their cars because they were like dogs who only knew their way from the kennel to home.  The halls were mostly empty as most of the underclassmen were on educational field trips to the Franklin Museum in Philly or the Met in New York City.  It seemed pointless to put up flyers looking for a drummer at school, but I did anyway.

              I printed the flyers on Barbie Girl pink paper and sprinkled glitter on them—girl drummer bait.  Girls, myself included, and even girls who wear only black and even girls who have had abortions, have some chemical that makes it impossible to resist pink sparkly shit.  Pink brings up girlish happy reminders of innocence or something, which is hilarious because no girl I know is either happy or innocent.

              I taped the flyers in all the usual places: the band room, the library, the cafeteria and I had one left so I headed to the gym.  I had no sooner taped a flyer to the girls locker room door when a sturdy junior, Janet Kirby, who had been the captain of the field hockey team since she was a sophomore—Captain Kirby they called her—knocked me off balance when she pushed the door open.

              “Soooooorrrry,” I said, waiting for her to apologize back. 

              “No problem.”

              Captain Kirby looked back at the door to see what was so interesting, read the flyer and pulled it off the door.  “A drummer.  Hey!  Unless…you saw it first.”  She handed the flyer to me with a show of polite sportsmanship.   “You go ahead.” 

              “No, no,” I said.  “I’m already in the band.  It’s my band, I mean.  Do you drum?”

              “I dabble,” she said.

              “We don’t need a dabbler, we need a drummer.”

              “Hehe…hehehe,” she said.  Her voice was really low.  “Sounds like fun.”

              “We need someone who can actually keep a beat.” 

              “I can keep a beat.  What do you think hockey is all about?”

              I had no idea what hockey was all about, but I was hoping that a girl drummer would take Tim’s attention away from me until he decided what it was he liked about me: the real Mercy or Mercy, daughter of The Griffin.  And it didn’t seem likely that Captain Kirby was the girl to do it.  It wasn’t that I was a beauty or something—as I said, average average average—it was just that with a mostly shaved head with bangs in front and a bullish neck Captain Kirby didn’t look like a girl to distract Tim from me.

              “Well, why don’t we find out what drumming and hockey have in common?” I said.  “Here, come to the Trap.”  I wrote the street number down.  “Can you come tonight?”  It would give us two nights to practice before The Griffin showed up.

              “Yeah, I can come tonight.”  She pocketed the address and patted it. 

              Right.  I could see where she probably didn’t need a secretary to keep her social life straight.

              “What kind of music do you like?” I asked.  “Do you like rock?  We’re a rock band.”

              “Doesn’t matter,” Captain Kirby said.  “Whatever.  I like everything.”

              Definitely the wrong answer to give a rocker.  She must have seen my disapproving look.

              “Drummers, you know,” Captain Kirby said, “Can’t be particular.  We’re the dumb blondes—no offence—of a band.  No one wants our opinion or they laugh when we give it.  They just want us to do our job and keep quiet.  So to speak.”  She did a little air drumming, flicking her wrists expertly enough so I was hopeful she could do what she said she could.  At the end of it, she did an impromptu dance and was surprisingly light on her feet considering how big she was. 

              “Have you played with a band before?” I asked.

              “My cousins.” 

              Great.  Everyone plays with their cousins or their brothers.

              “There are some famous professional musicians coming to the Trap the day after tomorrow.  You think you might want to jam?  I mean you still have to audition and everything.”

              “What is this Trap you keep talking about?  I never heard of it.”

              I’m not sure why I thought my Trap was the most famous band practice space in Milltown but clearly news of it hadn’t traveled to the girls’ locker room so how famous could it be?

              “It’s just my garage, actually.”    

              “And who are these famous musicians we’re going to jam with?  I don’t care, mind you,” Captain Kirby said.  “Like I said, it’s all the same to me.  I just do my job and…” She put her thumb and index finger together and dragged them across her lips. 

              “Right.   Well, it’s The Griffin.”  I peered into her eyes, waiting for that glint of recognition.

              “The Grif
fith
?” she asked.

              “It doesn’t matter,” I said.  “Just come tonight and audition.  We’ll see what you can do.”

              She looked down at the flyer.  “Cool flyer.”  She touched some of the glitter and patted her nose.   Even Captain Kirby wasn’t immune to glitter and pink.  “So you’re Mercy?  As in Have Mercy, the name of the band?”

              “Yeah, that’s me.  That’s the band.”

              “Cool.”

              “I’m not saying you’re in or anything, I mean it’s an audition process,” I said.  “And the other band members have to approve.”

              “I totally get it,” she said. 

              “So.  See you later?”

              “See you later.” 

              I twirled around to leave, thinking it was actually pretty great that Captain Kirby had a shaved head so I could mentally measure her for a beret.  It was even greater that she didn’t know who The Griffin was.