Signal to Noise (3 page)

“Did I miss something?”

“No,” Sebastian said, snorting.

“I had a close encounter with Frankenstrada,” Meche said. “She thinks I shouldn’t pee.”

“How are you supposed to do that?”

“I don’t know. Carry a bottle around with me and just go in there?”

“She told me I have to cut my hair again this morning or she’ll cut it for me.”

Sebastian had a pseudo-punk aesthetic going and he liked to style his black hair with an obscene amount of hairspray. It was still pretty tame compared to what real, hardcore punks did with their hair, but then again the Queen Victoria didn’t smile too kindly on any of that stuff so you really couldn’t try a mohawk. Plus, punk was a bit lame.

Rich Mexican kids who could visit the USA and England imported this wild aesthetic, but it was all show and no substance. Sure, some good bands had emerged from that primordial ooze, like Atoxxxico and Ritmo Peligroso, but Meche was pretty tired of the studded belts and bracelets, patches, and junk which supposedly went with being punk.

The only reason why Meche could stomach Sebastian was because he was pseudo-punk. He knew, or cared, little about punk music or punk culture in general. But he liked sci-fi and horror movies and had watched
Mad Max
obsessively, to the point of using a couple of old car tires to build himself what he termed a “rubber exo-skeleton” on top of his leather jacket. For him it was the aesthetic thrill of the whole thing.

“You should get a tattoo and really piss her off,” she said.

“Sure. Then I’ll get kicked out by my mom.”

Meche leaned her chin against the back of her hand and looked at Sebastian’s skull with its wide grin.

“Hey, can you come to my place after school? I want to show you something.”

“It’s meatball dinner.”

“So go home later and have the meatballs.”

“They’ll be cold. Plus, my brother will eat them all if I don’t show up.” Sebastian paused. “What’s your grandma making for dinner?”

“I dunno. Green beans with egg.”

“Gross.”

“Come on, what are you going to do all afternoon by yourself? Homework?”

“Read and draw,” he muttered.

“Come on over. Dani’s coming.”

Meche had not even told Daniela she was invited, but she assumed Daniela would tag along. Dani was as different from Sebastian as night was from day, always dressed in pink, her Barbies still lined up on her shelves, an Easy-Bake oven in her room—even though the three of them were fifteen—and a predilection for soap operas. She liked listening to Lucerito, which made Meche want to barf, and thought Luis Miguel was the hottest man in the world, which was a double-barf. As far as Meche was concerned the only way she would listen to Ahora te Puedes Marchar was if someone tied her hands and feet with duct tape, then pushed a rag into her mouth to drown her screams.

But hey, Daniela was a good listener and of the three friends she was the one with the most money, which meant a chance to have free tickets to the movie theatre and loads of pop courtesy of her father, the accountant of a small furniture store.

“Mmm,” said Sebastian. “You’re not going to play
boleros
, are you? That shit’s so
old
.”

Meche punched him on the arm and he turned to stare at her with his usual stiff, offended face.

“You’re talking about Agustin Lara, you idiot. One of the greatest Mexican songwriters of all time.”

“You know, I really do want to have meatballs. Why don’t you come over to my place?”

“My mom doesn’t like me going over to your place.”

Meche’s mom had this over-developed fear of teenage pregnancies, courtesy of too many articles in too many ladies’ magazines. It was a bit hard to get pregnant when Meche had never even been kissed, let alone had a boyfriend, but Meche’s mother considered every boy in a twenty-block radius to be a danger to her daughter. As if anyone would try and date her.

“Fine,” Sebastian said. “I’ll come.”

Meche tried to grab the marker Sebastian was using, but he slapped her hand away and hunched over, busy with his drawing. She sighed, unrolled the headphones and pressed play on the Walkman.

The tape rolled and Black Sabbath sang about children of tomorrow and revolution while she tapped her fingers against the desk, waiting for the bell to ring.

“S
O WHAT YOU’RE
saying essentially is that you’ve gone nuts.”

Sebastian lay on the floor of Meche’s room, drawing in his notebook. He had traded the skulls for stars and was busy creating a night sky.

“Why is it so nuts to believe in magic? My grandmother says there are witches and in the countryside you can see them fly at nights in the shape of balls of fire.”

“Your grandma is a really good cook, but no offence, I wouldn’t take her stories at face value.”

“Why not?” Meche asked, sitting down in front of Sebastian. “You’re the one who told me about spiritism and mediums and shit in the nineteenth century.”

“I believe in ghosts,” ventured Daniela, raising her hand weakly.

“See?” Meche said. “She believes.”

“Okay. So how about we play Teenage Idol. Do I get to become Emanuel tomorrow and sing at a bunch of concerts?” Sebastian asked.

“Why don’t we find out?”

“You’re serious.”

Meche stared at Sebastian. He ripped out the page from his notebook, balled it and threw it in her wastebasket.

“Why shouldn’t music have power? My dad says it’s the most powerful thing in the world. Nietzsche says that without music, life would be a mistake.”

“Don’t quote me Nietzsche. I showed you Nietzsche,” Sebastian said in an offended tone.

“Why can’t music be magic? Aren’t spells just words you repeat? And what are songs? Lyrics that play over and over again. The words are like a formula.”

All around Meche’s room posters of band members and enlarged album covers looked down at them. Freddie Mercury leaned back on stage, Pedro Infante played the guitar. In a corner the Beatles were ready to ride the Yellow Submarine. Stacks of records were piled along Meche’s floor, cassettes poked out from a couple of boxes.

“Okay, how about backmasking?” said Meche. “Doesn’t Aleister Crowley suggest that adepts should listen to records reversed?”

“Yes,” said Sebastian. “But that doesn’t...”

“And all these people flipping out because they think Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven has a Satanic message?”

“So we should play records backwards? Do a Satanic ceremony?”

“Guys, I just want to remind you I have to be home by seven,” Daniela said. “I’m also not allowed to do any Satanic stuff.”

Sebastian and Meche looked at their friend. Daniela blinked and went back to working on the personality test culled from a teen magazine she was completing.

“Not a Satanic ceremony. You’re always talking about this stuff. Crowley? Rasputin had to be killed three times?”

“Because I like to read lots of weird shit. But I don’t want to go around brewing poisons and stuff. People already think I’m odd, I don’t want to give them any extra ammunition,” Sebastian muttered.

Sebastian began drawing on the side of his tennis shoes. More stars in black marker.

Meche wanted to hit them both on the back of the head. They didn’t get it! She expected it from Daniela because Daniela got about 10 percent of what went on in the world, but Sebastian? Sebastian loved this stuff. They had become friends four years before because Meche had been listening to Alan Parsons Project’s
Tales of Mystery and Imagination
and she didn’t get the references. So she decided to ask the only person in her class who might have the answer. At first Sebastian had been offended she didn’t know Edgar Allan Poe, but she had been equally offended he didn’t know Alan Parsons Project because they sang Games People Play from
The Turn of a Friendly Card
which, in her opinion, was a very nice concept album. Not the best, but nice. The best was an easy pick. Most people would probably say the concept album of all time was
The Dark Side Of The Moon
, but Meche preferred The Kinks’
Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)
. Her parents had met thanks to that album.

“Aren’t you curious to see if it works?” Meche asked.

Sebastian capped his marker and stuffed it back in his pocket.

“It’ll never work,” he said with finality. “I have to go. I have a couple of hours bagging groceries tonight. Later.”

Meche scowled as Sebastian stepped out of her room. Great. The big ninny was not going to play ball. Daniela, looking pained, patted Meche on the knee.

“Cheer up. Why don’t we go to my house and bake some cupcakes?”

“The stuff you make in the Easy-Bake oven tastes like ass,” Meche muttered.

M
ECHE COPIED THE
linear equations neatly into her notebook. She was good at math.

Daniela wasn’t. Sebastian sucked even more.

Most students thought math was boring, but math was the foundation for so many things, including music. Music of the stars and all, and hadn’t Kepler...

Meche held her pencil, suspended over the page. She looked at the book again, at the black letters and numbers against the white pages.

Equations. Letters are not letters in equations. They stand for numbers and if you balance them right, you’ll find the right number. What if it was the same for music? Songs stand for something, don’t they? They have a symbolic value. So if you were to somehow balance them... ugh, she was getting herself all into knots.

She heard the door opening and looked up. Her father shuffled in, taking off his coat and putting it on a peg.

“Hey, Meche,” he said, patting her head as he walked by. “Doing homework?”

“Math,” she said.

“What did you eat today?”

“Grandma made green beans. Should I heat them up?”

“Don’t bother. I’ll have some cookies.”

He sat down, poured himself a glass of milk and opened a box of animal crackers. Meche’s dad and her mom had married young and sometimes he still looked like half a kid himself when he sat hunched over a glass of milk, his shoulder-length hair pulled back.

He was the coolest grownup Meche knew. She wanted to be like him when she grew up.

“Does mom have another late shift at the pharmacy?” her dad asked.

“All week,” Meche said, shrugging.

“I don’t remember her telling me.”

“She did.”

“Your grandmother in bed yet?”

“An hour ago.”

Her dad ate a cracker and lit a cigarette, nodding absentmindedly.

“What did you play today?”

“Oh, let me see,” he said. “Miguel Bosé. A bit of Sabina. A bit of everything.”

Ever since Meche had been born her dad had worked as a DJ. He had originally intended to study veterinary medicine but had never cared for the career, which he had been more or less forced into by his family. He eventually dropped it altogether and went to work at a record store, where he’d met Meche’s mom. The radio station was where he was most comfortable. The microphone was his natural prop. Without it he seemed unreal.

He cut a cracker in half and dipped it in the milk.

“Do you believe in magic?”

“What’s your grandma been telling you?” he asked. “I hope you’re not believing any of her kooky stories about putting saints upside down so you can get a boyfriend.”

“No. I mean like serious magic.”

“Nothing serious about magic. Just superstitions.”

“What about music?”

“What about it?”

“I don’t know,” Meche muttered, looking at her equations.

“Cracker?”

Meche nodded, taking a cracker shaped like a lion.

Her dad closed the box and took the glass to the kitchen, leaving it in the sink. Then he grabbed his jacket.

“I’m going out.”

He didn’t have to say he’d be at the bar. Weekdays it was at the bar. Weekends it was the pool hall. Sometimes, when he stayed out too late, her mom had her go pull him out. Meche felt humiliated when this happened.

Her mother was out late tonight, so maybe Meche wouldn’t have to put on the sweater and head there. It wasn’t far. It was just... annoying.

She wished he’d come home early. Otherwise her parents might fight. Again.

“Be careful,” she said.

“Yup. Finish your homework, alright? Don’t skim on the reading. You can’t read, you can’t do shit. No matter how good you are at adding numbers.”

“I’m going to work with computers, dad,” she reminded him.

She had decided this two years before when her parents finally bought her a Commodore 64. She had learned how to program little games on it and thought she could make a go at it as a real career when she grew up.

“You still need to read.”

“Yes, captain.”

“Arrr. Don’t stay up late.”

Meche raised her hand, saluting her dad. She watched him put on his old leather jacket and step out.

She dropped her hand and chewed on her pencil, starring at the numbers.

I
T WAS A
rainy morning. Meche jumped and tiptoed around puddles to the rhythm of Soda Stereo. She shook her head and snapped her fingers.

A hand grasped her shoulder and she frowned, turning around. Sebastian Soto, lanky and dour, just like every morning of the week, stood with an umbrella under his arm. He was the tallest kid in her class and when he stood like that, grimly looking down at her, Meche had to agree with the kids that teased him: he did resemble Lurch from afar.

“Hey,” he said. “I was thinking about what you said yesterday.”

“And?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we should give it a try.”

“For real? When?”

“How about now?”

“School day.”

“So?”

“Oh my God, you just want to skip the chemistry test.”

“Maybe. But do you really want to go to school?”

“Nope.”

Sebastian rocked back and forth on his shoes, which, against school regulations, he had painted with faint traces of whiteout spelling out THE RAVEN. Meche pulled up her left sock, with the broken elastic.

“Daniela will be pissed if we skip out without inviting her.”