Beauty and the Bully (18 page)

Why is that funny? She
might
hit on me, he thought. Someday. It's possible.

Duncan's heart sank. This nugget of information totally blindsided him. Jewel was most definitely
not
on the Duncan Boone approved badass rocker list. She was, in fact, on the my-generation's-Cyndi-Lauper list. That was not a good list. But fine, he thought. I just haven't had a chance to work on her music vocabulary yet.

What a complete load, he thought. Was that maybe a little too thick? Hope she buys it.

Apparently, just thick enough.

Downstairs, the doorbell rang.

“Duncan!” called his mom. “Oh, Duncan, you have a guest.”

“Just a sec!” he yelled dismissively.

He heard footsteps on the stairs, as well as female voices.

This was where he should make some sort of clever segue into a discussion of Carly's post-rally plans, he realized. An ideal opportunity to broach the topic of homecoming.

There was a knock at the door to Duncan's room.

“Duncan!” said his mom. “I said you have a guest.” More knocking. “Can we come in?”

Flustered, he swiveled his head around and tapped a hand on his desk. This is just fate crapping all over me, he thought. A big stinking fate-dooky right on top of ol' Duncan Boone. Yup. Figures.

“Sure, Mom,” he said. "C'mon in.”

His mother opened the door. Syd stood beside her, smiling a wry smile, a guitar case in her hand.

“It's none other than the delightful Sydney Wambaugh, honey,” said his mom. “Freddie's sister.” She stared at her son. “Isn't that something.”

“She's with the band, Mom.”

“Duncan's giving me lessons, Mrs. Boone,” said Syd. “He's been a huge help with my fingering. I'm not really so good.”

“I find this interesting on so many levels,” said Duncan 's mother, still staring at him. “But alas, I've got to go see Kenny.” She hummed “You Needed Me” as she walked away.

Duncan and Syd stared at each other for an awkward moment.

“My mom has atrocious taste in music,” he finally said. “In case you were wondering what your guidance counselor listens to when she's out power-walking. It's Kenny Rogers.” He shivered. “Can you imagine?”

“Dinner music in my house is mostly AC/DC, Deep Purple—that sort of thing,” said Syd. “My dad has a very narrow range of musical interests.”

“Cool.”

Syd peeped behind Duncan and saw the IM window.

“Oh, sorry,” she said. “Don't let me interrupt. Chat away.”

He spun back around and closed his laptop.

“No, no. Just this girl. It's actually the person who Freddie 's helping me . . . um . . . it's complicated. And maybe not all that interesting to you.”

“Was that Carly?” asked Syd. “
The
Carly?”

“Ah,” said Duncan. “I see Jess has gotten to you.”

“She might have mentioned that you had a special lady, yeah.”

“She's not really . . . um . . . never mind.” Duncan lowered his head.

Syd shifted slightly, scanning the walls of Duncan's room. Her eyes landed on a large poster composed of more than one hundred tiny square photographs, each of them a bit grainy, and several depicting something salacious, illegal, or both. Syd placed her guitar on the floor and walked over to the poster, which hung near the foot of Duncan's bed.

“Pretty sweet, eh?” he said. “Nobody fully appreciates it. At least not in my family. That's the original poster that came with the first pressing of—”

“—
A Nod Is As Good As a Wink
by the Faces,” said Syd. “Came out in, like, seventy-one, right? And then they pulled the poster because everyone's parents were outraged. Totally rockin' album. Man, people should give the Faces their due.”

Duncan was mildly stunned. “Well, I give 'em their due,” he managed.

Syd leaned close to the poster, examining a square that featured a shirtless and heavy-lidded Rod Stewart. “Whoa, he was a hottie back in the day, eh?”

“Do you expect me to answer that?” said Duncan. “There's really no right answer for me here.”

“Purely rhetorical,” she said. “What the hell happened to Rod Stewart, anyway?”

“Disco, I think,” said Duncan. “And then more recently, Rachel Hunter.”

“That is so unfair,” she snorted. “He happened to
her
, she did not happen to
him
. That dude started puttin' out crappy songs way before he met Rachel Hunter.”

Duncan grinned. Syd propped a Doc Marten on the frame of his bed and ran her fingers over the edges of the poster.

“What are all these little orange pills?” she asked.

“I'm pretty sure they're vitamins,” said Duncan. “To keep the band healthy despite the rigors of touring.”

“Riiight,”
she said. “Are the Flaming Tarts this kind of band?”

“The kind that tours? No.”

“I mean are we the kind that takes lewd photos of ourselves and our pills?”

“Well, we're evolving,” said Duncan, leaning back. “It's too early to say. If we made a poster today, it'd probably be of me and Stew arguing while Jess tries to impale me with a drumstick. But you don't get posters if you don't get gigs. And the one consistent truth of this band is that we don't get gigs. But again, we're evolving.”

Syd smiled. “Evolving takes time,” she said. “Unless you have superpowered mutants!” She struck an action pose, legs splayed, karate hands extended.

Duncan snickered. “Do your mutant superpowers enable better guitar playing?” he asked.

“Sadly, no. So let's have another lesson.”

17

So Syd had a guitar lesson. On Sunday she had another. And on Monday night, another. If the goal of these lessons had been to produce ultrasonic noises that repelled pests from the neighborhood, they could have been considered an overwhelming success. But that, of course, was not the goal. Syd was not improving. Her attempts at “Louie, Louie” were sounding less like "C Is for Cookie” and more like “Rubber Ducky,” Duncan thought. This did not count as progress. He kept jamming with her because (1) despite sucking she seemed to be having fun, (2) she had impeccable taste and an encyclopedic familiarity with rock history, and (3) Duncan needed her in the band—'cuz of Freddie—and the band needed her to not suck if they were ever going to get a whiff of gig.