“It’s an acquired taste, but keep working at it and you might be surprised,” Will said, and the class broke up again. He shot a cheeky smile to Mr. Theo, and glanced around the room to bask in the spotlight. That’s when he noticed me. All at once, the grin slipped off his face like it’d been glued on with grease. He cut the bravado act short and slumped into the chair, angling himself away from me while Mr. Theo held up his hands for quiet.
Back in California, there was a guy in my class. Pierce, his name was. He was one of those guys. The ones who swagger instead of walking, and always have a smartass remark stored for ammo, and photosynthesize attention. Pierce was popular. Like, super popular. My crowd didn’t have anything to do with him and his friends. Just in case insufferable smugness was contagious, I guess. Besides, we figured Pierce wasn’t going to achieve much of anything with his life.
Somewhere up there, the Ethereal Being was smirking down at me from the sky with a handful of popcorn, because Will was Pierce. I’d spent all summer with a guy who was sweet, and thoughtful, and … and respectful. Only to find out he was the antithesis in real life. A guy who ignored my texts, and shunned me in front of his friends, and, apparently, had a bit of a superiority complex.
Because the lake wasn’t real life. It had felt like a movie, anyway. Everything was suspiciously perfect. How many times had I thought Will seemed too perfect to exist?
Well, joke was on me, in the end.
He was.
5
A week later, and I was still getting lost more often than the girl in the Labyrinth movie, except I didn’t even have David Bowie in tights as a reward for my efforts. I was on my way to third period—at least, I thought I was on my way, but it might very well turn out I was walking in the exact wrong direction—when I noticed a sign on a bulletin board. BASSIST WANTED.
The words were accompanied by a blurry picture of a bass guitar with a Getty Images watermark printed across the middle, the name Izzy, and a cell number. I forgot all about my class and gave into a thrill of excitement. I usually played guitar, but I had a solid handle on bass. To be quite frank, I’d learn to play the harp if it meant I could get involved in a band again. Riffing with my bedroom wall didn’t really cut it for inspiration, and my parents were as reluctant an audience as you could find.
I texted the number.
I play bass. In the right circumstances. What did you guys have in mind?
“You guys” ended up being a rainbow-haired girl called Izzy, a round-faced guy in a hoodie called Emerson, and a mostly-skinny dude with impeccable biceps named Sayid. When I finally found room 13b (which turned out to be a basement, something I felt Izzy could’ve mentioned in her text to save everyone’s time since I had to follow the distant hum of music to find it), they were already rehearsing a cover song I vaguely recognized. The room looked like it was probably a classroom for music students, with a grand piano in the corner, various instrument cases propped up against the wall, and several amps older than I was. It was too bad my Music Appreciation classes weren’t held in here. I kind of loved it.
They were playing against the far wall. Izzy was on drums, Sayid had the keyboard and clean vocals, and Emerson took lead guitar and the screamed vocals. They could definitely use more bass, but overall they did a solidly decent job at metalcore. I was instantly impressed. This was worth sacrificing my lunch break for after all.
I didn’t have my own bass with me, because I didn’t go to school carrying it every morning in case someone asked me to jump in on their impromptu musical number, but Sayid grabbed one of the school ones for me. It was kind of cheap and out of tune, but I was still able to knock out a few lines.
“Not bad,” Izzy said, twirling a drumstick. “Can you improv?” Without waiting for me to reply, she hopped onto the drums and jumped straight into a beat. I matched her as tightly as I could, making up the tune as I went along and ignoring the closely watching eyes of Emerson and Sayid. Before long, I stopped noticing them anyway. All I knew was the beat, and the bass under my fingers, and the perfect intermingling of the two instruments. It’d only been a couple of months since I’d played with others, but I’d forgotten how awesome it was. Like blending your soul with someone else’s for three and a half minutes. For the first time since I stepped foot in this school, I felt comfortable and calm. I could picture the tension pouring out of my pores like a noxious gas.
Suddenly, Izzy stopped, got up from the drums, and waltzed over. “Can you do Tuesdays and Thursdays after school? That’s when we’ve been catching up so far. Obviously, we’ll have some gigs, too, so that’ll be a Friday or Saturday usually.”
I blinked and put the bass down. “Yeah, sure. I don’t really have any standing commitments, other than babysitting, but I can be flexible with that.”
“Awesome. So, tomorrow? Three-thirty?”
“Wait, I’m in already?” I asked.
Emerson clapped me on the shoulder, and Sayid grinned while unplugging his keyboard. “Dude,” Sayid said, “we weren’t expecting anyone to respond. This kind of music isn’t exactly big in this school, in case you hadn’t noticed. Welcome to Absolution of the Chained. We could’ve been really big, had we all been born in a town with better music taste.”
“Way to make us sound desperate, Sayid.” Izzy scowled. “People like us fine. We just usually have to tone down the screaming when we perform.”
“A.K.A., put a gag on me,” Emerson said. “I only get to have real fun when we’re playing around.”
“You’ve got to know your audience, guys, like I keep telling you,” Sayid said.
The bell rang then. “Yeah, for sure,” I said. “See you tomorrow. Let’s do it.”
They broke out in grins. It was that easy. So that’s how you got through a social situation without repelling everyone within ten feet of you. Speak as little as possible, and fill the silence in with music.
Note to self: carry bass around everywhere and break into impromptu solo whenever anyone tries to force you into conversation.
Foolproof.
As soon as we were dismissed the next day, I headed toward the music room. I got about halfway down the hallway when I ran into Juliette and Niamh. Or maybe they ran into me. Juliette did seem quite enthusiastic when she saw me. That appeared pretty normal for her, though.
“Ollie-oop,” she said, bounding over. If anyone could be called the human personification of Tigger, Juliette was it. Which made me Piglet, I guess. “Want to come hang with me and Lara? We’re gonna grab some fries then hit the mall for a bit.”
As tempting as a night with Lara was … “I can’t, actually. I’ve got band practice right now in the music room.”
“Band?”
“Yeah. It’s called Absolution of the Damned. No, wait … Apocalypse of Chains, I think. Can you have an Apocalypse of Chains? What would that involve, do you think?”
But, weirdly enough, neither of them was keen on philosophizing about various potential forms of the apocalypse. “Oh, do you mean Izzy’s band?” Niamh asked, at the same time Juliette jumped in with, “I didn’t know you played!”