The Summer of Kicks Page 6

‘Nice effort, Reece,’ I say. I don’t mention my logo attempts. I don’t want to swoop in and steal his thunder. ‘You should consider switching out to art next year.’

  ‘It’s only a rough,’ he says, ‘but yeah. Maybe.’ He takes the thing back and looks it over again, still proud of it. Good God.

  At the end of the breezeway, the library is to the right, labs to the left. There’s a pile of bags nesting under the noticeboard, and Bailey – and it’s always going to be Bailey – trips on a stray handle that’s somehow become looped around his foot. Ambushed by a pile of school bags.

  ‘Hey, check this out,’ says Reece.

  As Bailey de-tangles himself from the snakepit of backpacks, I look at the noticeboard. It’s jammed with school-related stuff – a reminder to bring money for the sausage sizzle fundraiser this Friday; some cartoonist running a workshop for the year eights next month; a clipping from the Gazette about the boys’ under fifteen’s basketball who defeated last year’s premiers and have made it to state. But that’s not what’s taking my interest.

  ‘Grease?’ says Bailey, dusting himself off. ‘What about it?’

  ‘Have a close look, Bailey,’ I say. ‘See who’s down for the role of Sandy?’

  ‘Woah, we are so going to that,’ Reece says. ‘Man, Candace McAllister being the Grease chick, doing that scene where she finally stops being a lame-ass loser and puts on the slutty-bad-girl tights and the low-cut top? Totally worth the price of admission.’

  ‘Imagine being the dude who gets to play the guy,’ Reece says to me. ‘What’s the name of the guy in Grease?’

  ‘Danny Zuko,’ I say. I should have paused first. Or just said ‘Danny’ without the ‘Zuko’. Now it looks like all I do is watch Grease on repeat. I can’t have lived this long in a house where the oestrogen quantities outnumber testosterone three to one without being exposed to Grease hundreds of times. It’s Mum and Rue’s go-to movie. Their Friday-nights-and-chocolate movie.

  ‘Yeah, that guy,’ says Reece. ‘It’s not my thing, but it would be pretty cool to be that guy, you know, doing the whole thing with Candace McAllister.’

  ‘It’s not like they full-on make out, Polar Fleece,’ says Hemmo, joining us. ‘It’s just a bunch of crappy songs and prancing about like a tosser in front of the whole school. Who’d sign up for that?’

  ‘It’s Candace McAllister,’ confirms Reece. ‘I’m just sayin’.’

  The end-of-year musical at our school is known as the Twelve Days of Christmas Mini-Musical. Year eleven drama does it every year. The challenge is that no one’s told which musical they’ll be performing until the first of December. From there, they have twelve days to put the whole thing together, everything from casting to set construction to the twelve hours of rehearsals, right down to the one and only performance, held on the last night of school, twelfth of December.

  Last year they did a twelve-minute production of The Sound of Music. It’s usually pretty funny. Before they’d even attempted to solve a problem like Maria, they were ripping up curtains, and hanging with goat herds. The twelve-minute super-compacted version of Grease should be something to behold.

  There’s a piece of string dangling to the side of the sign-up sheet that I assume once had a pen attached to it. Beneath the list of willing female participants, written in a fat red marker, is BOYS!! We need T-Birds – Hurry, hurry, hurry! and under that We still need a Danny!! Don’t be shy. Sign up Now! Rehearsals start Friday, lunchtime in the hall. See Miss Kellaway.

  ‘You should do it,’ says Bailey. ‘Candace McAllister? I’d kind of like to do it, but I’m pretty sure Mum wouldn’t let me. There’s a lot of stuff in Grease she says is inappropriate for impressionable adolescents. And besides, I can’t sing.’

  ‘Think about it, Starrphyre, it’s freakin’ Candace McAllister,’ says Reece, nudging me with a spiky elbow.

  He’s right. This could be my chance. It’s the perfect opportunity – but instantly nerves and doubt find a way into my headspace and all I can think about is stuffing the whole thing up for Candace. Suddenly my ‘Candace at any cost’ plan doesn’t seem like such a good idea up close. ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I don’t think I’m really into it. You’re up there in front of a bunch of teachers and grannies and parents and little kids and pretty much everyone from school – that’s a lot of people to make a tool of yourself in front of.’

  ‘Good point,’ Reece says. ‘Chances are you’d suck ass.’

  ‘Thanks a bunch, Polar Fleece.’

  ‘You suck, man, don’t call me that,’ Reece says. He punches me hard in the shoulder, and I make like it doesn’t hurt because that’s what’s required. ‘I’m just saying it’d be good practice for the band, you being our frontman and all.’

  ‘When we’re in a musicals-only cover band, I’ll consider it,’ I say. ‘Hey, I’ll see you at band practice this arvo,’ and it sounds cool when I say it out loud and I’m hoping that some other kids have heard, as Reece and Hemmo head for the stairs to go off to whatever class they have.

  After science I stay back for a couple of minutes to talk to Mr Lenick about our final exam. He explains the whole compound chemical equation thing to me again, one on one, and I leave no more the wiser, but thank him anyway.

  I pick up my bag and, up ahead, Ashleigh Neale and some other girls from my class are standing by the noticeboard, like they’re waiting for me.

  ‘Nice move, Starrphyre,’ Ashleigh says, and the other two girls, Brione and Tiana, start to giggle the way that girls do whenever there’s more than one of them in a clump. Nice move? What does she mean by that? Is my fly undone? Did I step in dog shit?

  ‘What’s that?’ I say.

  Ashleigh’s OK. She’s not one of the bitchy girls. She’s tall and I’ve seen her at the mall a couple of times and she’s stopped to talk to me and she looks good in jeans. I think she might kind of like me, but I don’t really know. How do you ever really know?

  ‘Grease,’ she says with a giggle. ‘Tell me about it, stud,’ and the trio of girls becomes a trio of howling, giggling girl-idiots, gathering up their bags and running off to whatever bus stop or train station will take them away from this place until tomorrow.

  And now I’m facing off against the noticeboard. I don’t really want to look. It’s just me here and before I turn to see what caught Ashleigh’s attention, I’m safe. Safe in the unknowing. But not looking won’t change anything.

  On the girls’ side, the cast list is full of names. The girls are all sorted. And then I scan down, down to the male lead section. There’s nothing but blank lines. Oh, and the name Starrphyre Jones written in thick, indelible ink, right at the top. I know it wasn’t me and I should be freaking out, but instead I’m taking deep breaths. Calming breaths. Candace McAllister has the lead and although I know how completely awesome it would be to spend all that rehearsal time together and play Danny to her Sandy and I know I’d probably do some version of a reasonable job, it’s with Candace, and if I stuff up, I stuff it up for her and that’s probably the real reason I should be freaking out, but already it’s too late, because names on the list are irreversible according to Miss Kellaway. Try-outs are mandatory and it’s no longer just me staring at the noticeboard. It’s the two of us.

  Me and Danny Zuko.

  Chapter 13

  I’m with the band

  The afternoon sun is hot against my neck, but it’s my ear that’s burning. Mikayla’s stop-stalking again, waist-deep in some story about her mum or her aunty and some surgery that they might or might not need. At least I think she’s still on that subject, because I’ve been half responding to a text from Dad. He wants six songs from The Dark Side of the Moon. I can see the album cover in my head, and I quickly text him my reply. Tracks one to six in order, and he shoots me a smiley face. I respond by offering him a choice: the names of two albums by Green Day or twelve by AC/DC. Even before I hit
send I know which one he’ll choose.

  ‘Don’t you think so?’ Mikayla asks, and now comes the part where I have to confess that I’ve been ignoring her too, the way that eleven hundred other kids do every weekday of her life. She looks up to me, waiting for a response.

  ‘I um … I guess so,’ I say. Fake it till you make it.

  ‘Totally, right?’ says Mikayla. ‘We totally think the same, you and me. We’re like two peas. You know … in a pod?’

  I know, but I don’t respond. In Mikayla’s perfect world the moment that it’s declared that the human race has to pair up and pod off, we’ll be standing side by side. Potential pod-buddies for life. But in my world, I’d have to make a choice. Candace to my left. Someone else to my right. Mikayla hopefully somewhere else.

  ‘So, Starrphyre,’ she says. ‘Are you … um …?’ There’s a long pause. She sounds nervous, but not nervous nervous. More tentative nervous, like she’s about to speak in front of the class and present something she’s rehearsed, but maybe not quite well enough to know if it will hit its target or burst into flames, killing everything in a five-mile radius. ‘So my parents are having this … I don’t know – this thing, and …’

  What’s that? Her parents? Oh crap. She’s going to ask me to something out of school. At her house. Crap, she wants me to be her date. And here it comes: Hi, Mrs Petschler, I’m … Oh, we know who you are, Starrphyre. Our Mikayla’s been telling us about the two of you for such a long time it feels like you’re already part of the family. Holy crap, I need to turn this bus around, fast.

  ‘Hey, we’ve … um … we’ve got a band meeting this arvo. First one. We’re just sorting some stuff out,’ I say. I’m trying to make it sound as boring as possible. ‘Figuring out who’s doing what, our influences, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Starrphyre, it sounds soooo exciting.’ She’s genuinely thrilled.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘To think that today could end up being a majorly significant day in history – the opening chapter of one of the great bands of our time,’ squeals Mikayla, her tone bordering on hysterical. ‘I wouldn’t want to miss that.’

  ‘Ah, ’fraid it’s just the band,’ I say.

  ‘Sucks. Who’s idea was that?’

  ‘The guys. Hemmo. You know. A band thing, I guess.’

  ‘Can’t make an exception for your bestie?’

  ‘Mikayla, I’m not …’ and I want to tell her that I’m not her best friend and that in all honesty I don’t really like her that much because she’s a little bit stalker-creepy and a bit desperate and she obsesses over boy bands and she rarely shuts up, but how do you tell someone who counts you as probably her only friend on the planet that you don’t really want to be her best friend? Is it wrong to just shake her off, just like everybody else has done? I don’t know, so I adjust my sail and set a new course.

  ‘I’m not … sure what the guys would say, so … better if you don’t come. Today, you know … first meeting and everything.’

  Her face falls into sadness and she looks up at me and now I’m just another person who’s excluding her.

  ‘But who knows, right?’ I say. ‘You know, sometime, maybe.’

  She smiles and I can see in her eyes that she’s taken my open-ended brush-off as a promise.

  A promise to cling to.

  I walk in and Hemmo is in his kitchen, ploughing through the first of two triangles of bread stuffed with rounds of processed meat and an unlikely combination of sauces.

  ‘Welcome,’ he says to me around a large mouthful, ‘to my humble abode.’ His arms are outstretched and, in his hoodie, he looks like the crucified skater-Jesus.

  ‘Oh, greetings, Starrphyre,’ says the balding back-end-of-a-forty-something guy with his head in the fridge. It’s not until he exhumes himself from the refrigerator that I can actually confirm his identity.

  ‘Hey, Mr Hemmo,’ I say.

  ‘Starrphyre,’ he says. ‘You know we’re on first name terms in this house. I insist you call me Helmut.’ But I can’t. Not out loud and with a straight face. ‘You know, my wife’s side of the family swears that young Benji’s looks come from them, but I reckon he gets his good looks from me. What do you say, Starrphyre?’ He straps an arm around his son.

  I look at the two of them. His dad’s round belly. The beard. The bald head.

  ‘I don’t know what they’re on about,’ I say. ‘It’s like you guys are twins.’

  Hemmo and his dad share a five-second pretend-punch bonding session, before Mr Hemmerling closes the fridge with his foot and shuffles off to some other part of the house, humming an unrecognisable tune.

  ‘And on that note, we should escape to the dungeon,’ says Hemmo. We walk outside, follow the overgrown concrete pathway to what is essentially a free-standing garage, with a burnt wood sign nailed to the side door that reads Dungeon. Enter at own risk.

  Bailey and Reece are slouching on what looks like an out-for-council-pick-up sofa, with their hands wrapped around Xbox controllers, thumbs clicking wildly in sync with desert-storm-style characters, running and rolling madly through the split-screen dusty terrain of their make-believe world.

  ‘OK, so this is everybody, then,’ Hemmo says. ‘Well, everybody that’s coming today.’

  ‘What about the tough guy from the record store?’ Bailey asks. He glances up briefly, and as payoff for not concentrating, his character instantly takes one in the side of the head.

  ‘Not coming,’ I say. ‘For one, I didn’t tell him about the band meeting, and two, us four probably need to have this first one without him. You know, so that we can get our stories straight.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Reece follows, still staring at his gun-toting computerised buddy. On-screen bullets fly towards him, and Reece ducks and bobs on the couch. ‘We need to be a total band – unified and tight when this dude meets us. We want to totally blow him away.’

  There’s a table with chairs set out towards the back of Hemmo’s dad’s dungeon, right under a set of crossed wooden swords and some kind of medieval shield. We ignore the table. Hemmo walks towards the others, sits in the only other available chair, and I plonk down on an upturned milk crate.

  ‘OK. First band meeting of Empire of Gandalf is officially underway,’ says Reece, setting his controller down on the floor. He looks genuinely excited. I don’t mention the Brittney Pigs name change just yet. A slight crack like that could start internal band dramas right from the get-go, and I can see it. If it’s all too difficult, Hemmo will pull out straightaway, and Bailey will follow him, and we could be said and done before we even begin. Having a guy like Scene in our band – wanting to be in our band – that’s huge. At this point, the sum total of the four of us – me, Reece, Hemmo and Bailey – equals exactly four dorks who can’t play anything, in one dorky Gandalf-themed band. But with Scene, it’ll be different. That version of our band could actually lead to something. Girls. Parties. Social acceptance. Candace McAllister. There’s too much riding on the band making it past this first meeting for me to even think about rocking the boat this early. For now, at least, I can let the crappy band name slide.

  ‘What are you doing with that, Bailey?’ Reece asks. Before a word has been spoken at band meeting number one, Bailey has swivelled away from the Xbox and has his MacBook flipped open on the lamp table with what looks like a microphone hanging out of a USB slot.

  ‘What? Oh, just twiddling about,’ Bailey says. ‘I thought we should record some of our first moments, you know, just in case we get super famous.’ He taps a couple of keys, and adjusts the screen angle. ‘You won’t even know it’s on. Just y’know … do what you’re doing.’

  ‘So …’ Reece looks around the room at us. At his three bandmates. The unlikely trio of non-musicians who will form the bulk of this band. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘Stuffed if I know,’ says Hemmo. ‘Did you guys bring any
instruments?’

  No instruments, but plenty of blank looks.

  ‘OK. Who’s up for a game?’ He picks up Reece’s discarded controller and turns to face the TV.

  ‘Reece,’ I say, immediately aware of the panic in my voice. ‘Show Hemmo your logo.’ It’s a crap logo, but it just might get the wheels turning. Reece reaches for his pocket, and unfolds the paper.

  ‘Nice, Polar Fleece,’ says Hemmo. ‘Did your mummy draw that?’

  ‘Bugger off,’ says Reece, and then he refolds and pockets the offending piece of art.

  ‘The first thing we probably need to do is sort out what we’re playing,’ I say. ‘Bailey, do you still have your church drums at home?’ Bailey nods. ‘And Reecey, you’re good with keyboards?’

  ‘Roger that,’ he says.

  ‘Hemmo? Have you figured out your instrument?’

  ‘Well,’ he begins. ‘It just so happens that I had a crack at this thing right before you dorks got here.’ Hemmo one-handedly struggles to lift an electric bass guitar from behind his chair and hold it out for us. Exhibit A. A battered, tatty specimen that looks uncomfortable in his hands, like he’s just been handed a newborn baby or a live squid.

  ‘Turns out my dumb-ass brother left it behind when he moved to Canberra for uni.’

  ‘Have you had a go?’ Bailey asks.

  ‘Totally,’ says Hemmo. ‘It ripped the crap out of my fingers, though. Check it out.’ His fingers are on display now. They look like a set of completely normal fingers. ‘I don’t know how people play these things. The metal strings are a frickin’ nightmare. I’m thinkin’ of maybe switching out to something else.’

  ‘What about the skin flute, Hemmo?’ says Reece. ‘I hear you can play the crap out of that.’

  Bailey, Reece and I laugh hard.

  ‘Bite me, Polar Fleece,’ says Hemmo. ‘You know what? You can all frickin’ bite me.’ Hemmo turns his back to us, to face the TV once more, and I can feel the already shaky foundations of our band beginning to crumble.