Rules to Rock By (21 page)

Twenty-four hours before the battle.

I decided not to go home after school. I talked to Crackers and Jonny and convinced them we needed to rehearse. Jonny offered his place, and that would definitely beat going home. Home meant Benny and Joon rehearsing for the big show and my dad going on and on about how he was finally going to meet the great PJ Harvey.

I met Crackers in front of her math class and we walked together to meet Jonny down the hall. But we couldn’t find him. Instead, Bumblebee Shoes was there, sitting in front of Jonny’s locker, his hair mussed yet again, his T-shirt ripped at the collar. He wasn’t crying this time. I guess he was beyond that. He stared straight ahead across the hall and wiped a slow trickle of blood from his nose.

“Angelo, what happened?” I asked.

“Take a wild guess.”

“Not again! I’m gonna kill him. Where is he?”

“Who, your friend?” he said bitterly. He wouldn’t even look up. “He just went around the corner to chase down a couple other kids.”

I turned to Christine. “Darren.”

“There’s no way he’d go back on his word,” Crackers said. “Plus, he’s got a broken elbow!”

“Right. Maybe it’s Jackson, then. I don’t know. Let’s just go.”

“What? Are you nuts? Don’t do this, Annabelle. You’ll regret it.”

We didn’t have to look far. As soon as we started jogging to where Angelo had pointed, we saw a big hulk of a boy who had hold of two kids in Angelo’s weight class. He held them by their shirt collars about two inches off the ground while they rifled through their pockets for any loose change they had. I didn’t waste any time.

“Hey you, let those guys go. Right! Now!” I yelled from the end of the hall.

He did, and the kids stood frozen on the spot. But even before this big punk turned around, I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. I saw his profile, and he didn’t have Jackson’s scraggly goatee
or
Darren’s curly hair. What he did have was a very familiar mop of messy hair and a big black puffy jacket.

Jonny turned around with a look of pure sorrow on his face.

“Jonny, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” I blurted out.

“You’re … with Raising Cain again? You’re, like, in the Federal Hill mafia?” Crackers said.

As soon as they saw Jonny was distracted, the two kids ran off.

“It’s not what it looks like, okay?” Jonny said.

“What, these shrimps owe you for Girl Scout cookies? You’re a jerk!” I said.

“Shut up, Annabelle! You don’t know anything about me!” His voice was a throaty rasp. “You don’t know anything at all.”

Jonny sprinted away, dropping his backpack and a bunch of cash and change as he went. Christine and I ran after him. He kicked open the doors that led to the playground, then beelined it toward the gate that led to the street outside. I couldn’t keep up with him, but I saw him head toward the swing set. Jonny tried to jump one of the swings, but he got tangled up in the chain and hit the ground with a thud. He clutched his left shin, rocking back and forth, and I could hear him huffing and puffing from halfway across the yard. I slowed down as I got closer to him, afraid he might erupt again. But he just lay there, nursing his wound and rocking himself on the black rubber jigsaw mat under the swings.

He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “I never wanted to hurt those kids,” he said. “They used to be my friends.”

“Why’d you do it, then?”

“You see this?” he said, pointing to the scar on his lip. “Jackson said he’d give me another one to match it.”

“Yeah? I thought you were going to ‘talk to him.’ You said you’d figure it out.”

“I did. I tried. I really thought I’d be able to talk to him about all this. I mean, he and I were best friends for four years. But he wouldn’t budge. He said that if Darren quit getting the money, I’d have to do it in his place—or else. And I’m not like Darren. I’m not tough enough to laugh off a smashed hand or a broken cheekbone.”

“So it was either shake down those kids or he’d beat the hell out of you?”

“Yep. He also said if I kept playing with The Bungles, he’d personally make sure I’d never be able to pick up a guitar again.”

“Well, that sucks. But it doesn’t make it okay,” I said.

“You could have told a teacher,” said Crackers.

“Yeah, right,” Jonny said. “You know what Jackson would have done to me if I had gotten him busted? I’d be talking to you from a hospital bed right now.”

“You could have told
us
,” I said.

He couldn’t come up with an answer to that one.

“Just how long has this been going on?” said Crackers.

Again, Jonny said nothing. He just looked down at the ground.

“It’s been him all year,” I said, finally realizing it. “He’s been bullying these kids for their money, just like the rest of Raising Cain.”

We walked away.

“Guys, come on. Wait up,” he said. But we kept walking, and we didn’t talk until we were out the door.

“What do we do now?” Crackers said.

“We figure out how we’re going to compete in the battle with half a drummer. And without a guitar player at all.”

NO SLO-MO

Two hours before the battle.

I went over it a hundred times in my head. I talked it over with Jake at home that afternoon and obsessed about it with Crackers on the phone. But each time I came to the same conclusion: The Bungles would have to withdraw from the battle. Crackers and I were both still too mad at Jonny to play with him anytime soon, but we couldn’t play without him, either. His guitar parts were too important, and there was no way someone else could learn them in time. Jackson had achieved his goal. The Bungles were out of the battle. The Bungles weren’t even a band.

I got to Don Daddio’s at about three thirty. All day I had told myself I wouldn’t go there, but in the end I couldn’t help myself. I was a sucker for punishment. Not only was I going to allow Jackson to break up my band, I was going to watch Raising Cain win it all. Just as I crossed the threshold to the shop, my pocket buzzed. It was a text from Ronaldo.

“With Abuela right now,” it read. “She says to make her proud tonight. Same from me. You are an official MASTER OF THE RULES!!!”

Excellent. I was going to make them so proud! Instead of staying at home like anybody with self-respect would, I was going to watch Raising Cain win. I was going to be a bystander to my own humiliation.

Don had done an impressive job setting up. He had made the small parking lot behind the shop look like a real rock club. It was the last Friday before Thanksgiving, so there was a serious chill in the air, and the sun was already low in the sky. The stage was an intimidating five feet off the ground. Behind it a banner read “Minor Threat Battle of the Bands” in massive letters. There were about a hundred folding chairs in the lot, and a sound guy with a pink and green Mohawk worked buttons and levers behind an enormous soundboard. He flicked a switch and a whole rainbow of spotlights came on, circling in crisscross patterns across the stage.

“You playing tonight, hon?” asked the sound guy.

“Um, no,” I said. “Not tonight.”

“I beg to differ,” said a voice behind me. I turned around to see Don, smiling behind me. “This is Annabelle Cabrera. Her band, The Bungles, will indeed be performing tonight.”

“No, we won’t, Don. I came here to tell you.”

“You come with me, young lady.” He walked a few feet toward the stage and pulled out two of the folding chairs. “We need to have us a little chat.”

As I sat down, I felt my face turning red. I had never seen Don so serious. He was really glaring at me.

“Your nephew was doing Jackson’s dirty work,” I said. “Beating up kids and taking their money for no good reason.”

“I know all about it. I’ve known Jonny since the day he was born. And I certainly know more about this situation than you do.”

“Why are you talking to me like this? I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You’ve turned your back on a friend.”

“But Jonny lied to me. He’s been lying for months.”

“Well, it’s been a complicated situation for him. Jackson has been bullying him for a very, very long time.”

“What difference—”

“Since the second grade, in fact. We’ve tried to get the school involved. Once, even the cops. But Jackson has his hooks in Jonny, somehow. It’s like he’s got a power over the kid.”

“That’s very touching,” I said. Don just ignored me and kept going.

“But don’t confuse them. Not for a second. Jackson is just a bad kid. Jonny, however, is not. He’s scared maybe, and he’s made some bad decisions because of it.”

“So that’s supposed to make it all okay? Jonny’s life’s not a bowl of cherries, so he gets forgiven? For everything?”

“Have you ever been bullied, Belle? Repeatedly, consistently, over several years?”

I didn’t nod. I didn’t shake my head. I just sat there.

“Right. I didn’t think so. Listen, I know your life hasn’t exactly been perfect lately, either, but bullying’s no joke. I think you should cut Jonny some slack.”

“Okay, okay. Jeez.”

Don scratched his head and chuckled under his breath. “Sorry, Belle. I’m coming on a little strong, huh? Listen, I’m not asking you to
forgive
Jonny, at least not right away. I’m just asking you to understand him. And I’m hoping you’ll play tonight. The Bungles are still on the set list. Jonny’s coming, and so’s the rest of your band. I’ve made sure of that. As to whether you perform or not, well, that’ll be your choice, of course. Yours and your bandmates’. Just keep me posted on what you decide.”

“Don, I didn’t even bring Satomi. I don’t even have a bass.”

“Oh, I guess you can’t play, then. Not when there are forty basses ten feet away, any of which you’d be welcome to use tonight. The Beatle bass, for example.”

The Hofner! The man knew me well.

If this had been a movie, Jonny would have entered the store in slo-mo. He and I would have met dead center in the middle of the store and exchanged meaningful looks without speaking a single word. Tears would have sat in our eyelids, waiting to stream down as we hugged and jabbered on about forgiveness and gratitude and life lessons and how much we cared about each other. Cue the cheesy music, the violins.

But of course it didn’t happen that way. Jonny, Crackers, and Darren arrived at Don’s together, which really annoyed me; they had obviously been talking behind my back. And then they walked by me
without even seeing me.
Granted, Don’s was buzzing with people, and I wasn’t exactly keeping a high profile; I had my hood up and was skulking around like a juvenile delinquent.

My bandmates, or former bandmates, or whatever they were, stopped by the counter to strategize. I knelt behind a Marshall stack and listened.

“Just how mad was she the last time you talked to her?” Darren asked Crackers.

“I don’t know if she’s really even mad anymore,” Crackers said. Yes, I was! “She seems more—I don’t know—sad.”

“What do you think’ll make her sadder?” Darren asked. “Realizing that Jonny’s not Mr. Perfect or missing out on this battle, which she’s been working on for over two months?”

“Excuse me, Darren,” Crackers said. “It’s more than just Jonny not being Mr. Perfect. He’s been a total jerk. And you have, too. Do I need to remind you?”
Gooooo
Crackers! I had never seen her get this riled up before.

“Okay, okay,” Jonny said, finally breaking his silence. “Darren and I have both screwed things up pretty badly. He knows it; I know it. But we agreed that, for now at least, we are going to try to patch things up, right?” He looked at Christine, raising his eyebrows. “That we’ve worked too hard to quit now? That we’ll play the battle, and then sort things out afterward?”

“Yeah,” Crackers said grudgingly. “That’s what we said.”

I stepped out from behind the amp.

“Do I get a say in this?” I asked.

“Well, yeah,” Darren said. “Obviously.”

I turned and faced Jonny. “I just want to know,” I said. “Why did you lie to me? Why did you keep screwing with those kids even after you said you were breaking all ties with Jackson?”

“I … I tried,” Jonny said. “But the first time I didn’t bring my weekly totals, he jumped me on Waterman Street, after all. He said he’d
kill
me if I stopped or if I told anybody. He looked crazy—crazier than I’d ever seen him before. So I didn’t know what to do. I just kept doing what I’d been doing all year.”

“But it’s over now?”

“Well, I mean now that Jackson knows that
Don
knows the whole story, I think I’m cool. I think Jackson’s going to back off. At least for a while.”

Darren reached out and put his good hand on Jonny’s shoulder, just for a split second, before pulling it back.

“Will you play with us, Belle?” Darren asked. “I think we owe it to ourselves to play tonight.”

“Darren, you’ve got a broken elbow,” I said. “Can you even play?”

“The guy in Def Leppard has like one limb, and he sounds great,” Jonny said. “I think Darren can manage.”

“Enough about Def Leppard!” I said. “Let’s do it. But once we get off that stage, we’re all going to talk about a way for you two to make it up to those kids.”

“Okay,” Jonny said.

“And it’s got to be something good,” I said. “Not just some lame apology. You’ve got to make it up to them for real.”

“You guys can be their personal slaves for the next three years,” Crackers said.

Jonny chuckled awkwardly.

“No joke,” I said, but I could tell he was taking it very, very seriously.

So that was that. For the day at least, we were still a band. All the bandmates (with the possible exception of Darren) were mad and unbelievably tense, but we were still a band.

At four fifteen, when we got called up for a sound check, we were still communicating in nods and grunts. We climbed the stage by some stairs on the side and started setting up our instruments. The rainbow of lights came on. “Whoa!” said Crackers, and I realized she had never been on a real stage before. As I was fiddling with the house amp—that night everybody was using the same amps and the same drum set—I saw Jackson arrive. He was wearing shades and a knit cap. Either he didn’t want to be seen just yet or he was trying out a completely unsuccessful new look. I don’t think he realized I had spotted him, but he looked as cocky as ever. He approached the Mohawk sound guy and gave him a big cool-dude handshake, like they had known each other for years. Then he whispered something in the guy’s ear.

“Annabelle, you ready?” said Crackers. “We only have five minutes. Let’s try a song.”

“Check, check,” I said into the mic. Crackers did the same. “You ready for us?”

“Um, yeah. Go for it,” said the sound guy, who couldn’t stop smirking for some reason. “Play something.”

Darren did a quick count-off and we started “Is This It,” the Strokes song—we hadn’t had time to decide what our set list was going to be yet, but we could figure that out before the actual performance. Jonny and I still weren’t making eye contact, but there was still a nice bounce to our playing. The Bungles didn’t sound like anybody else, and the fact that we weren’t all best-friend cuddly at the moment didn’t change that. Maybe we’d be like Oasis or the Pixies, I thought, one of those bands where everybody wants to kill each other half the time, but they sound amazing anyway. By the end of “Is This It,” we still weren’t exactly having a love fest onstage. I was angry; maybe
all
of us were a little angry, but the anger was helping us play better, stronger, tighter. As we played the last chord, we didn’t want to let the next band do their sound check. We wanted to keep playing.