Five Flavors of Dumb (16 page)

Oh. My. God.

There wasn’t time to get Dumb together to approve the show, so I wrote Tiffany back immediately and accepted the invitation, omitting to mention that we’d be using the occasion to return to our hard rock roots. I even threw in some extra fictional-but-complimentary phrases about the show (and other artists that had influenced us) to reassure her we were the kind of band she thought she was getting, rather than the kind of band we actually were. Lying smoothly was an art form that required diligence, but I was getting better every day.

Just before dinner that evening, I found Finn playing his new white guitar in the basement, Dad’s enormous old headphones wrapped over his head. I wanted to thank him for working with Tash and Kallie, but he didn’t see me, so I just stood in the corner and watched as he ran his right hand up and down the fretboard. He used to practice like that all the time back in middle school, hunched over, eyebrows knitted in concentration. And whatever the cause of that philosophical difference with his teacher, Finn seemed completely rededicated, like Tash and Kallie had fired his imagination. And even
I
could see how Kallie might have that effect.

I didn’t hear Dad coming down the stairs behind me, so I practically screamed when he placed a hand on my shoulder. Finn leaped up and pulled off the headphones like he’d just been caught watching a porno.

“Well,” said Dad gruffly, “I’ll say again that I’m very disappointed in you for damaging the car. Still, the mechanic managed to find a bumper from scrap that was the right color, so the work was only a hundred and fifty dollars. It’s a lot, but I think we can agree we dodged a bullet here. In the future be more careful, okay?”

I nodded, but it didn’t make sense. I’d seen the mechanic place the order for a new bumper. I looked at Finn, but he immediately turned his attention to his guitar. And he wasn’t alone—Dad seemed transfixed by it, gliding forward like a moth drawn to a flame.

“What’s that?” he asked.

Finn cast his eyes around uneasily. “It’s a, um . . .
blah
Jimi Hendrix
blah blah
,” he mumbled.

“A what?” I asked, slowly and loudly.

Finn glared at me, then finger-spelled
Fender Jimi Hendrix Tribute Stratocaster.

Dad wasn’t paying us any attention at all. He just gazed longingly at the guitar until Finn felt obligated to hand it over.

“Is this the one we bought you?” he asked.

Finn shook his head, kindly omitting to mention that he’d bought the old electric guitar with his own money.

“So whose is this?”

“It, uh . . . belongs to a friend. I’ve got it on extended loan.”

Dad seemed satisfied by that, completely missing the freaked-out expression emblazoned on Finn’s face. “How are you handling the switch from right to left hand?”

“Um, okay. Takes some getting used to, but I want to be able to play both.”

Dad nodded approvingly. “Man, it’s beautiful,” he said, running his fingers over the polished surface. “Wasn’t it a limited release?”

Finn looked up, narrowed his eyes. “Yeah. How do you know that?”

Dad’s head snapped up and the trance was broken. “What? Oh, I must’ve heard it somewhere. I guess. Probably. I mean, I wouldn’t really know, of course.” He shuffled his feet as the silence lingered. “Yeah, well, time for dinner. Nice playing, Finn,” Dad added, even though he hadn’t heard anything. “I’ll see you both upstairs.”

He took the stairs two at a time.

“How did he know this guitar was a limited release?” said Finn, wide-eyed.

I shrugged. “Who knows? But maybe there’s a lot about Dad we don’t know. He can’t always have been as hopelessly uncool as he is now.”

Finn snorted, and I laughed, and a moment later he started to pull the headphones back on.

“Not so fast, Finn. I don’t suppose you know anything about the spare bumper?”

Finn stared at his guitar. “What do you mean?”

“Come on. Don’t lie to me.”

He rolled his eyes and gently laid the guitar beside his chair. Whatever we were about to discuss was clearly going to take a few minutes.

I paid most of the bill myself, then told the mechanic what to say to Dad,
he signed, presumably because he thought it would make me less critical.

I felt my stomach flip. “You did what?”

“What’s the big deal?” he moaned, already done with signing now it was clear the magnanimous gesture hadn’t worked. “The mechanic didn’t care as long as he got all the money.”

“How much did you pay?”

Reluctantly, Finn’s right hand formed the signs for
278.

My legs felt unsteady. I was hyperventilating. “Where did you get the money?”

“Shh!” Finn pressed a finger to his lips, stared at the staircase until he was sure no one had heard. “That’s my business.”

I wanted to throttle him. “What about the guitar? You may be able to fool Dad, but I know it’s yours.”

“Yeah, but only someone who actually cared about me would realize that.”

It was a first-rate self-pitying line, and somewhat true. But he was going to have to do much better than that to throw me off the scent. “How much was it?”

“Not much. It was used.”

How much?
I repeated, reverting to sharp signs and a fierce face so I could convey my seriousness without having to scream.

Still Finn hesitated, clearly deciding whether or not to lie.
750.

My mouth hung open in shock. I couldn’t make sense of any of it.
Where are you getting all this money?

It is my business when I have to cover for you after school each day.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath.
Are you selling drugs?

No!
At the mention of drugs, Finn looked like he was about to burst into tears.
It’s from the poker games.

I’d have been less surprised if he’d told me he was growing a bumper crop of marijuana in his bedroom. True, Dad used to play poker with us all the time when we were younger. It was something he could do with me that didn’t involve speaking
or
signing, plus he liked winning. But when I switched to chess he bailed, saying a chess game was too great a time commitment. I’d figured that was the end of the Vaughan family’s poker playing days.

Or not.

Lunchtime,
replied Finn, content to sign as long as it kept his secret under wraps.
And we started playing after school too, because you made me wait while you rehearsed. Except Friday, when you made me go to the rehearsal. In a way, the whole thing is your fault.

I laughed, but inside I was utterly freaked out.
You’ve really won a thousand dollars playing poker?

He clearly misread my surprise as admiration.
Almost. I’m a lot better than everyone else.

I don’t know.
He laughed suddenly.
Probably selling drugs.

I didn’t laugh.
You’ve got to stop. You could get expelled.

“The thought had occurred to me,” he said out loud.

I sighed, “And that doesn’t bother you?”

“Why would it? All the teachers hate me.”

“They wouldn’t if you’d try harder.”

“Yes, they would. Because no matter how hard I try, I’m not you. But we share a last name, so they’re all waiting for me to become class superstar. For as long as I’m there, they’ll compare me to you. And I’ll always fall short.”

“Do you want me to talk to them?”

“God, no! I just want you to admit I don’t fit in.”

“You were fitting in fine during lunch break today.”

Finn looked down, blushed. “What do you mean?”

“You, Kallie, Tash. Quite a cozy threesome.”

“We were just going over some stuff. That’s all.”

I smiled sweetly to irritate him. “But you’re still not really interested in Kallie, right?”

Finn’s shoulders slumped. “For the last time, no. I’m not interested.”

“Isn’t she hot enough for you?”

“I’m not talking about it anymore.”

Finn leaped up and hurried across the basement. But as he ran up the stairs, I caught him smiling too.

Josh was last to arrive for Friday’s after-school rehearsal, sauntering in almost ten minutes late as though prearranged times were optional for Godlike lead singers.

“Glad you decided to join us,” I quipped, not bothering to hide my annoyance.

“I’m sure you are. You missed me, I get it,” he said, the famous Josh smile intact.

I almost rose to the bait, but managed to keep control. “I have news,” I said with forced enthusiasm. “Good news of the paying variety.”

Everyone looked up. Apparently, I had uttered the magic word that got their attention.

“The producer of
Seattle Today
wants us to appear on the show next Tuesday,” I explained. “We play one song, then do a brief interview.”

Will flicked away the curtains of hair obscuring his eyes and leaned forward in his chair. “
Seattle Today
is just a bunch of old women,” he droned, seemingly without engaging his face. “They’ll want something really boring.”

I was taken aback that Will was the one to complain. “Sure, they’d
prefer
a tame song,” I admitted. “And yes, it’s mostly old women. But right now, that’s your main audience.”

“That sucks.”

“Maybe so. But they’re paying . . . three hundred dollars, for one song and an interview.”

I let the figure hang in the air, allowed myself to enjoy the stunned silence that signified the band’s complete approval.

Will shook his head. “Not worth it.”

Tash was up in a second. “Speak for yourself. That’s fifty dollars each—sounds like plenty of good reasons to play.”

Kallie raised her hand. “I agree with Tash.”

“Musically, it makes no sense,” moped Will. Then he allowed his curtains of hair to fall back across his face, like a turtle retreating into its shell.

Josh stepped forward, placed an arm on his brother’s shoulder while his eyes remained fixed on Kallie. “Kallie’s right, Will. It’s worth it for an hour.”

Kallie nodded appreciatively, and a moment later Josh’s arm had been transferred to her shoulder instead. She didn’t pull away, but her body tensed, as though his constant physical attention was as welcome as a root canal. Josh noticed it too, and his smile faltered, but he didn’t remove his arm, and the awkwardness of the interaction grew steadily for several seconds.

“We need to practice,” murmured Kallie, her eyes closed.

Josh finally took the cue and withdrew his arm reluctantly. “Yeah, you do.” He ambled to his place at the front of the band. “By the way, Tash, nice costume, but Halloween was yesterday.”

“Go screw yourself, Josh.”

“Natasha, Natasha,” tutted Josh. “Just as rude as ever. After all the time you and Kallie have spent hanging out this week, I figured some of her prim and proper behavior would’ve rubbed off on you.”

“Let it go,” she warned.

“Okay, then,” I interjected, anxious to get things back on track. “The majority opinion seems to be that we’ll accept the gig.” (It didn’t seem prudent to mention that the majority opinion was irrelevant, since I’d already accepted and mailed back the
Seattle Today
contract; I’d even convinced Mom to glance through it first.) “However, Will has a point. We can’t go on selling ourselves as a soft rock band for overprotective parents. It was a means to an end, that’s all, but it’s not who you are, and it’s not who you want to be. I meant what I said last week. You’re hard rock, for real. And you’re going to stay that way from now on.”

Tash shook her head. “They’ll never let us play our real stuff on
Seattle Today
.”

“Not if we tell them ahead of time, no. But it’s a live show, which gives them a choice: Stop the show or let you finish. And from what I’ve read about the host, there’s no way she’ll pull the plug.” Even Tash seemed satisfied with that argument. “And let’s be honest—there’s nothing like live TV to send a message. By the time you’re done, I’m betting our new target audience will have heard you loud and clear.”

I’d never thought of myself as the pep-talk-giving type, although the band seemed to be hanging so intently on my every word that I had to remind them we had gathered for a rehearsal. In particular, Will’s mouth had stretched into the uncharacteristic shape of a smile. He was a boy of few words, but I understood that look just fine.

Without another word, Ed and Finn took over, and Dumb did their finest impersonation of a well-oiled machine. From time to time, I even glanced up from my laptop to watch the Boy Wonders at work, marveling at their confidence, the way they isolated mistakes and corrected them without ever making the perpetrator seem nervous. Even Kallie seemed energized by Finn’s words of advice, laying into her guitar strings with uncharacteristic vigor before remembering that she was the band’s resident wallflower.

By the time Dumb nailed “Look What the Cat Dragged In,” I had downloaded more photos and links to our website, taken the bold step of sending MP3s of Dumb’s performances to local concert venues, and written to Baz to say we’d like to use the studio again on Sunday. I’d even had time to check our MySpace page, which is how I found a new message from ZARKINFIB:
ur a quick study, but don’t forget to enjoy the ride. let hendrix help you at 2010 s jackson

As before, I was shocked to discover the message, but this time it was balanced by irresistible curiosity. I guessed whom “Hendrix” referred to, and with time to kill I opened YouTube and pulled up some footage of him performing.

Jimi Hendrix was younger-looking and hotter than I’d imagined. When the camera showed a close-up of his hands, his fingers looked slender and strong. The way he closed his eyes and swayed his head made me wonder if he was channeling spirits or had indulged in narcotics, but either way, it was difficult to take my eyes off him.