Lemonade Mouth (6 page)

Dear Naomi,

Let me start off by saying that I don’t believe in accidents. I’d hate to think that whatever happens is simply the inadvertent outcome of a series of random events with no preordained purpose.

Anyway, there’s too much evidence against it. I’m not saying that the future is already decided, only that each decision we make, however small, helps clear the path toward events that inevitably follow. For example, if I hadn’t skipped American Lit, I wouldn’t have had to show up to detention that afternoon. And if I hadn’t gone to detention, everything would have been different.

But the fact was, Mr. Carr assigned
The Great Gatsby,
a sad, beautiful story I’d already read at my old school. Plus, he liked to quiz us after each chapter and there’s no better way than that to strip away all the fun of a good book. Which was why I chose to skip third period and spend the time curled up on a bench behind the janitor’s equipment room finishing it for the third time. Which in turn was why, when the principal, Mrs. Ledlow, happened to make a rare visit to that corridor, she found me there. And
that
was why, at 2:05 that afternoon, I had to show up to the basement for ninth-grade incarceration. Where Lemonade Mouth was born.

How could all that have been dumb luck?

I like to think that whatever happens was always meant to happen, like an unstoppable train that departed long ago and forever rolls toward an inevitable destination. Life seems so much more romantic that way, don’t you think? Still, you asked me to tell my story so I guess I need to begin it somewhere. That afternoon in detention is as good a place as any.

It started like this:

Detention that day was downstairs with Mrs. Reznik, the music teacher. When I walked into the music room, a cluttered, windowless basement space near the A.V. closet and the school’s boiler room, the little radio on Mrs. Reznik’s desk was playing a commercial with a catchy jingle, that “Smile, Smile, Smile” one about teeth. It kind of stuck in my mind. That’s not unusual for me. There’s always some tune or other drifting around in my head.

Anyway, just as the bell rang I took a seat near the back. I was trying to concentrate on my breathing. I sometimes get panic attacks in stressful situations and right then I needed to keep calm. Nobody spoke. Mrs. Reznik sat at her desk, coughing and scowling as she leafed through a giant pile of paperwork. A tiny, narrow-faced lady with a body shaped like a piccolo, skin like worn shoe leather, and a startlingly large nest of lustrous brown hair, she was a sight to behold. I’d seen her reduce kids to tears with one look. There were rumors that the school administration had been trying to force her into retirement, but they couldn’t get rid of her. I could understand why. The woman scared the pee out of me.

I studied the blackboard where she’d set down the law in sharp, spidery chalk letters.

Detention Rules:

1. No gum chewing, food or drink in the classroom.

2. You will remain seated.

3. You will not talk.

4. The first time you break a rule, your name will go on the board. The second time, you will receive another detention.

At my old school, St. Michael’s in Pawtucket, they didn’t even
have
detention. St. Michael’s is an alternative school, a place where they send kids who don’t fit in somewhere else so they can get an education “without walls.” But Brenda, my grandmother, told me back in July that we couldn’t afford the tuition anymore so now I found myself back among the walls.

My chair squeaked and I almost jumped. Mrs. Reznik looked up. “Name please?”

The other detainees, two boys and two girls, turned to look. I tried to smile. I may have been an introverted Virgo of the worst kind, but at least I was working on it.

“Olivia,” I reminded her. “Olivia Whitehead.”

Mrs. Reznik frowned and scribbled something on a piece of paper. “You can all read the rules. I suggest you use this hour to work on something productive.” Some pop song came on—Desirée Crane or Hot Flash Smash, somebody like that. Still, it was the “Smile, Smile, Smile” commercial that looped through my mind.

The other kids went back to staring into space. I only recognized two of them. Wendel Gifford, a kid who always seemed to dress in crisp, preppy clothes, was in my Social Studies class. We’d never actually spoken, but he’d embarrassed himself during a presentation that morning and I felt sorry for him. The Amazon girl with the leather skirt, savagely ripped tights, and short spiky hair was Stella Penn. After she’d pulled that crazy stunt at an assembly earlier that week, everybody knew who she was. The other two I didn’t know. Tapping nervously on his desk at the far end of the front row sat a sullen, thick-necked boy with an overgrown mop of frizz. To my left fidgeted a skinny Indian-looking girl with long dark hair, big brown eyes and, at her feet, a huge, gray double bass case. She was biting her nails like a stress-fiend.

After a while, Mrs. Reznik went into a coughing fit. They were dark, rumbly coughs that seemed to come from deep in her chest. Everybody looked up. After a moment she stood and stepped toward the door. “I’ll be back in one minute,” she said, still coughing, and then left the room. When she came back she seemed better. In her hand was a green and yellow paper cup that said Mel’s Organic Frozen Lemonade. It must have come from the machine I’d noticed at the top of the stairs. She set it on her desk and sat down.

I guessed the no-drinks rule didn’t apply to Mrs. Reznik. Not that I was going to say anything.

Wen and Stella stared vacantly at the wall, the frizzy-haired boy tapped on his desk and the skinny girl absently fingered a pile of rubber bands. In a poster hanging near my chair, four old guys in short pants and feathered hats were playing accordions and tubas under this huge willow tree in the middle of what looked like some quaint, pastoral German village. I gazed at it and imagined myself into the picture. I’m pretty good at that, imagining myself somewhere I’m not. I find I can visit the nicest places that way. In my mind I was relaxing on the ground in front of the four guys, listening to their music and feeling the grass between my toes and a gentle breeze in my hair. Soon, the music transformed into the tooth song and I realized the commercial had come back on Mrs. Reznik’s radio again.

Smile, smile, smile!
Would you like the perfect smile?
Don’t you want your first impression
to be great?

I looked up. Every head in the room was nodding with each oomp-oomp-oomp of the tuba.

Bernbaum Associates, Bernbaum Associates,
Bernbaum Associates
Can fix your smile—
Don’t Wait!

Soon after that, Mrs. Reznik’s cell phone rang. She put it to her ear and a second later she stepped out of the room again to take it, only this time she switched off the radio before she left. It took me a minute or so to adjust to the silence. My eyes drifted back to the rules again, and I found myself pondering Mrs. Reznik’s skinny
D
’s and the steep slope of the tops of her
T
’s when I suddenly noticed that something felt wrong. I looked around.

Everybody in the room was looking at me.

That’s when I realized I’d been singing the smile song. My face went warm. After a moment, Stella laughed. Wen shrugged kindly and turned back around, and then everybody else did too. I wanted to die.

There are different opinions about what happened next.

Mo, who of course I now know was the skinny girl, says it was Charlie, who at that time I only knew as the frizzy-haired boy, tapping on his desk that started it. Charlie says it was Mo. She picked out a rubber band, stretched it between her thumbs and flicked it with her fingers. By changing the length she altered the pitch, making the same bouncing notes as the tuba in the commercial. I don’t remember who was first, but it doesn’t actually matter because before long they were doing it together. And it sounded good.

Boom tappa boom tappa boom.

Oomp-oomp-oomp.

Stella and Wen looked up. The next thing I knew, Stella shot out of her seat. She hopped over a row of desks to where Charlie sat.

“What are you
doing
?” he whispered, shrinking back from her. I wondered if he thought she was going to hit him. Big as he was, Stella looked like she could take him.

“Don’t stop tapping!”

On the wall over his head hung a beaten-up ukulele. She reached across, grabbed it off the hanger and took it back to her seat. After adjusting the tuning pegs, Stella started strumming the chords of the jingle along with Mo and Charlie. The ukulele sounded tinny and crazy. But in a good way.

By that time I guess Wen wanted to get into the act. He went to the storage closet and rummaged around. Eventually, with a big silly grin, he held up a kazoo.

“Yes!” Stella whispered.

Still plucking her rubber band, Mo giggled. I kept glancing over my shoulder at the door, expecting Mrs. Reznik back any second. They played through the full song—the verse and even the Bernbaum part. Wen had the melody. It was a joke, but it still worked. The music from their makeshift instruments sounded so unusual, so exciting. My heart pounded. I suddenly didn’t care if Mrs. Reznik showed up.

The next time the verse began, I sang the words.

Smile, smile, smile!
Would you like the perfect smile?
Don’t you want your first impression
to be great?

Hearing myself sing in front of people felt weird. I’d never thought I had a very pretty voice. Instead of a pure, clear sound like the singers in, say, a Disney cartoon, mine is kind of low and scratchy, like a three-pack-a-day smoker. It’s always been that way, even when I was little.

But Stella nodded, Wen winked and everybody was grinning.

Then dial, dial, dial!
Change your life, improve your style!
Call our dental experts ’fore it gets too late!

It felt like one of those perfect moments where everything comes together. But like I said, I don’t believe in accidents. Even if this strange, musical moment, the final result of a long chain of seemingly unlikely events, never came to anything else, it was meant to be.

Something new had been born.

We were just starting over again when Charlie suddenly lost his grin and stopped tapping. I looked behind me.

Mrs. Reznik was standing in the doorway.

In the silence that followed, it was obvious she’d heard us. We waited for her to speak but she only stared, wide-eyed. Something important had just happened. Looking back, I could feel it even then. I think we all could. Only nobody knew what it was.

And none of us could have imagined it would change our lives forever.

CHAPTER 2

Apathy is for butt-wipes.
Get off your comfy sofas and do something!

—Sista Slash

MOHINI:
Baba

Naomi eyes me skeptically. “You’re serious?”

“That’s right,” I say. “I can’t keep lying to my parents like this. I’m losing sleep and I’m starting to hate myself. If being with Scott means I have to make up stories, sneak around and worry all the time about getting caught, then I can’t be his girlfriend anymore. I have to drop him.”

“Holy crap,” she says. “That’s huge.”

It’s Thursday afternoon, less than an hour after detention let out, and Naomi and I are sitting in the storage room at the back of my family’s store. We own the only Indian grocery in the area. We’re surrounded by several large sacks of basmati rice, an unopened case of Nirav Kesar canned mango pulp and a stack of Glucose Biscuits. My father is playing Indian music through the stereo. He’s also burning incense at the front counter, and that along with the combined smell of chili powder, garlic, cilantro and dry curry powder, gives the air the familiar, pungent odor of home. When I’m not helping behind the register or stacking the shelves, my parents like me to study here too. They like to know where I am.

Naomi and I have an American History essay due on Wednesday and neither of us has even started. The topic is
Why Do Revolutions Happen?
But Naomi has mostly been flipping through one of her
Rolling Stone
magazines. We have to keep our voices down. My dad is at the register only a few steps beyond the doorway behind me. I can hear him speaking Hindi with a customer. I didn’t tell him about detention, of course. I had to make up a story. I said I stayed late today because of a project. Another lie.

Naomi peers at me sympathetically over her glasses. I know she always had her doubts about Scott, but from the first day I started going out with him she tried to be supportive—and I love her for that. She also knows about my parents’ no-dating rule. She’s heard the story of my uncle Ramesh and aunt Anita back in Calcutta, who practically disowned my sixteen-year-old cousin, Sashmita, a couple years ago when they found out she went out to a movie with a boy.

She knows me. She knows what a mess I am.

“Plus,” I continue, “I don’t have time for distractions. I’m barely keeping up with my schoolwork. Not only do I have to hand in this essay next week but I also have to read chapters four through six of
The Great Gatsby,
and on Tuesday we have a Trig test, remember? Not to mention Debate and working here at the store. And did I tell you I’m increasing my volunteering at the clinic to twice a week?”

Her forehead wrinkles. “Don’t get sick, Mo. Everybody knows that people who work at those clinics are always catching something. Those places are swarming with germs.”

I roll my eyes. “The point is, I can’t let myself lose my focus. On top of everything else, Mrs. Reznik wants me ready to play Rabbath’s Ode d’Espagne by the talent show. It’s a killer. I’m already freaking out about it.”

“If it makes you so nervous, why don’t you tell her you’d rather play something easier? Why do this to yourself?” After a pause she says, “Look at your fingers. Are you biting your nails again?”

I curl my hand so she can’t see. “This isn’t middle school anymore, Naomi,” I say, looking back down at my notebook. “When we apply to colleges, our grades and everything we do now, it all
counts.
”

I feel her puzzled eyes on me. She’s heard all about my grand plan, of course. She thinks I’m crazy. “Don’t you think you might be taking things a little too seriously, Mo? You don’t have to be Supergirl.”

I sigh. Naomi means well, but she obviously doesn’t understand. “I’m not Supergirl. Supergirl doesn’t end up with a bunch of losers in detention. Supergirl doesn’t get caught in the bushes in a lip lock with Scott Pickett.”

That’s when I hear a voice from behind me. “Monu, how is your essay going?”

My heart nearly stops. I spin around. My father is standing at the door, a clipboard in his hand, his gaze locked on me. My dad is a big man. He fills the doorway. With his dark, grizzly beard, intense eyes and accent, I can see why my friends used to be scared of him when I was a little girl. I feel my stomach rise into my throat because I’m not sure how long he was standing there.

“Uh . . . ,” I stammer. “Fine, Baba . . .”

When he nods, pleased, I relax. He asks, “Will Naomi be coming home for dinner?”

Fortunately, Naomi is more composed than I am. “No, Mr. Banerjee, but thanks. My mom wants me home early tonight.”

“Too bad,” he says. “Maach Curry tonight. Plus I got a video for afterwards. It’s an Amitabh Bachchan.”

“You’re kidding!
Muqaddar Ka Sikandar?
” she asks, pronouncing the name completely wrong, saying
Muhk-AY-dar Kay Sick-AND-ar
instead of
MOOK-uh-dar Ka SEEK-and-ar.

“No.
Mr. Natwarlal.
We haven’t seen this one.”

I force a smile. Thank God my parents love Naomi and she loves them. She often comes over to our house to watch Bollywood movies with us. She doesn’t always know what’s going on, but she likes all the music and dancing. She can even name a lot of the big stars: Amitabh Bachchan, Shahrukh Khan, Preity Zinta, Isha Sharvani. She knows more about them than I do.

“Well, another time then.” And then to both of us he says, “Keep at the books like your future depends on it. Because it does.”

We nod.

The bell on the door jingles. My dad smiles again and then leaves to greet the new customer. After he’s gone, Naomi and I exchange guilty looks.

A few seconds later she whispers, “So you’re honestly going to do it? Break up with him?”

I nod.

She studies my face. “Really?”

I’m about to nod again, but then my eye catches an ad for zit cream in Naomi’s magazine. The photograph shows a crowd of laughing teenagers chasing each other on a beach in their bathing suits. At the front are a beautiful blond guy and a grinning redhead girl in a pink bikini. They’re running hand in hand and laughing like they just shared the funniest joke ever. Everybody looks so happy, but all I feel is frustration. I can never have a normal relationship—with Scott or anybody else. Unlike a
real
American girl, I’m going to end up in an arranged marriage, so if I find somebody I really care about, I’ll always have to hide it from my parents and eventually I’ll have to break it off.

To be honest, it makes the whole dating idea kind of depressing.

But now I try to picture myself breaking up with Scott and I can’t help thinking about his olive green sweater, how it smells so good when I rest my head on his shoulder, or the way his soft hand felt in mine that time he walked me almost the whole way home. And I think Naomi can see that this is what’s going through my mind. She doesn’t say a word. She’s known me since kindergarten. She knows I love my parents and I respect the sacrifices they’ve made, moving us here from Calcutta when I was two, getting used to a new language and working hard every day just to give my sister Madhu and me a better life than they had. She knows I want to meet their high expectations and that I hate the idea of disrespecting our family’s traditions.

But she also knows that even though my family is Indian, the fact is I grew up here in America and deep down I want the same things every American girl wants.

Which is why I can tell she doesn’t believe I’ll really drop Scott.

And to be honest I’m not sure I believe it either.

________

It’s first thing Friday morning and Naomi and I are heading to our lockers, which are across the hallway from each other. There’s a note taped to mine. Even before I’m close enough to read it I recognize the handwriting and feel a faint throb in my forehead. I’m not sure why, but somehow I know this isn’t good.

It says:

Meet me in my office right away. We need to talk.

—Mrs. Reznik

“Oh my God,” I say to Naomi, showing her the note. “She’s going to make me drop my independent study. I just know it.”

“What are you talking about?” she says, squinting at the piece of paper. “Will you relax? There’s no way Mrs. Reznik is going to drop you. Why would she do that?”

“First I skip her lesson, then I break her detention rules. You don’t know what she’s like, Naomi. She’s kind of a musical drill sergeant. I always suspected she’d drop me at the first sign of weakness.”

Naomi studies my face, concerned. “I believe you’re losing your grip, Mo. Think about it. Before the school cut the budget, running the student orchestra was probably Mrs. Reznik’s life. Now that it’s gone you’re like the closest thing she’s got. She’ll never drop you. I bet giving you lessons is the part of her day she looks forward to most. You even play her favorite instrument for godsakes.”

It’s true. Mrs. Reznik used to be a bassist with the Newport Philharmonic. She traveled around the world. On her desk are photographs of her standing with famous musicians like James Levine and Placido Domingo. But she stopped touring a few years ago and has led the OHS Orchestra ever since. It’s not surprising she’s furious that the school cut the program. She’s a very serious musician. But
that,
I think, is the real reason she agreed to give me private lessons—she believed I was going to take them as seriously as she did.

At least she did until yesterday. Before I ruined everything.

“Go,” she says, handing me the note back. “She probably has some new sheet music for you or something like that.”

But I’m not so sure. I can feel the panic rising.

CHARLIE:
A Stupendous Challenge
of Celestial Significance

I had no idea why Mrs. Reznik wanted to see me but to be honest when I read the note I was kind of happy. Because I was already late for homeroom and this meant I could get a late pass. I’d already gotten 3 warnings so far this year and Mr. Finnerty said next time he would send a note home. But now I wouldn’t have to see Mr. Finnerty at all. Now instead of having to hurry I could take it easy.

The morning announcements were already droning out of the classroom speakers. The A.V. room was at the bottom of the stairs and when I passed it Lyle Dwarkin was standing on a rickety-looking stepladder stretching for something on a high shelf.

“What are you doing down here it’s homeroom” I said. “Didn’t you hear the bell?”

He craned his freckled head around. “Searching for a laptop projector for Mrs. Abraham.” Of all the extracurricular activities offered at Opequonsett High School the geekiest of all had to be the Audio Visual Club. But not only had Lyle joined, he’d been elected Treasurer. Which meant my buddy was practically High Priest of the Weirdos.

I glanced around. The A.V. room was actually just a glorified closet: a bunch of shelves, a couple of tables, heaps of loose cables and boxes and keyboards and junk everywhere. In the garbage can I noticed a pile of empty Mel’s Organic Frozen Lemonade paper cups. I wondered if any of them were Lyle’s. A lot of the kids from the basement clubs seemed to go for that stuff maybe because it was the only machine nearby. The soda dispensers were at the other end of the building.