Lemonade Mouth Puckers Up (13 page)

The day Lemonade Mouth was on
American Pop Sensation
was also supposed to be a big deal day for me and my buddies, but for reasons that had nothing to do with Lemonade Mouth. That’s because we were auditioning too.

We’re called CJ and the Belmar Boyz—same now as it was back then—and we’re all about the harmonies. There are four of us, with CJ and me being the leaders. Back then we’d performed a few times at our high school and at small, local places around Belmar and West Belmar where we grew up in New Jersey. We were always a big hit at nursing homes.
But now, at last, after a long day of waiting, we were about to get our big chance to show the world we were somebodies.

So yeah, we had big dreams that day.

As always,
American Pop Sensation
had five acts auditioning in each round, and everything was streamed onto the Internet. But we’d lucked out, because we got picked to be in one of the four evening rounds that got shown live on prime-time TV. My guess is the show chose us because we were joking around when the camera guy talked to us in line. Some people say that wasn’t it, that it was really just because they liked our Jersey accents. What do I look like, a mind reader? Anyways, it turned out we were in the same round as Lemonade Mouth. I’d never heard of them before then. In fact, I hardly even noticed when they walked into the Judgment Room with only seconds to go until the round started. I just remember a line of geeky-looking kids shuffling into the last seats at the other end of the front row.

Man, was I on edge. Me and my buds were going on third, right after a couple of burly, short-haired chicks who looked like twins, and then a blond guy with bowling pins gripped in his hands. Third was good. It meant not having the pressure of first but still getting it over with.

The three judges—Celeste, Davey Dave and Franco—were offstage somewhere. I hadn’t seen them yet. But I’d been watching the vid screens all day, so I knew they were in an ornery mood. Especially that big guy, Franco. He can be funny, sure, but if he don’t like you he’s not exactly known for being Mr. Tactful. Mostly, though, I was worried about CJ. He was next to me all bug-eyed and sweaty like he was on the verge of a freak-out. Not a good sign. See, I always sing the harmonies with Wayne and Paulie, but CJ takes the
melody, and I know from experience that when he gets too nervous it can make his voice shake.

“Relax, man,” I whispered, trying to sound confident. “We worked hard for this. They’re totally gonna give us a golden ticket. Believe it. We’re heading to Vegas, baby!”

CJ nodded, but his knee was popping up and down like a piston.

Some lady with a clipboard came out and shouted for everybody to shut up. There was a commercial right then, but it was almost over. The judges were about to take their seats, she told us, and we were going live in ten seconds.

While my son, Charlie, and his Lemonade Mouth friends were practically being shoved into their seats in the front of the studio, the rest of us from our group were being herded into the last remaining chairs in the back row by a scowling stagehand with a bad haircut. Within seconds a lady with headphones and a wad of chewing gum stood up at the front and told everyone to shut our mouths—she actually said that—adding, “and if anyone makes a peep you’ll be kicked out on your butts so fast you won’t know what happened.” Pleasant. The whole experience was like that, to tell you the truth. I used to make my living driving an eighteen-wheeler with a company of cantankerous truckers, so a certain amount of gruffness usually slides right off me, but this was ridiculous.

Whatever happened to courtesy?

From the seat on my left, Lila Penn elbowed me. An
applause sign lit up just as the three famous judges stepped into view. I admit that I was gaping as much as anybody. I’d seen them countless times on TV but now there they were, just fifty feet away. Celeste looked oddly retro with her bouffant red hairdo and a fake pelican around her shoulders—only a former supermodel like her would even attempt such a weird look. Davey Dave seemed shorter and paler in real life than he did on TV, and he looked bored as he took his seat.

But the biggest celebrity, the
real
star of the show, was Franco.

Lean and muscled, with his goatee and ever-present black beret, Franco sauntered to the judges’ table looking as grumpy as ever. Of the three, he was always the judge to watch, the one whose wisecracks and blunt opinions regularly sparked controversy in schoolyards and offices everywhere. Personally, I’d always thought he was kind of a jerk. A few minutes earlier Norm Gifford and I had caught a brief glimpse of him as he’d flown past us in the hallway. He seemed to have been in a heated argument with a tired-looking woman who somebody told us was the show’s director. Actually, it was just Franco who appeared to be having the argument, jabbing his finger in the air and doing all the talking. From what I saw, he didn’t let the poor woman get a word in.

Suddenly the show’s theme music was blasting. The camera lights changed from red to green. This was it, I realized. This was live television, and millions of viewers all across America were watching.

The first two auditions went by in a flash—and the judges were not impressed. Davey Dave told the first act—a pair of chunky, banjo-playing identical twins who called themselves Glenda and Glenda—that they had no talent. Then Franco
sent this droopy-eyed teen rapper/juggler named Jeremy back to his seat with “I have to be honest, Jeremy—I was bored. If you were the last juggling rapper in the world I still couldn’t recommend you to entertain at a toddler’s birthday. You’re that dull.” Some people in the audience thought this was hilarious, but I thought it was just plain mean. Neither of those acts was
that
bad. But I suppose meanness was part of the show, in a way. Sort of like when the Romans used to send prisoners into the lions’ den for entertainment. With each new brutal comment they made, the judges seemed to be in better spirits. They were enjoying this. Even as the next act, a group of teens who called themselves CJ and the Belmar Boyz, stepped up to the stage, the three judges were still elbowing each other and snickering at how hilarious they were.

Uh-oh
, I thought.
This doesn’t bode well
.

As just about everybody knows, that audition didn’t exactly go great for us. Before we even got sent up to the stage I could see CJ’s hands shaking. And it wasn’t just him. My palms were a slippery mess and my mouth was so dry I wondered how I was going to sing at all. Finally they called us up and the four of us stood in front of all those lights and cameras. We started off okay. Look back at the online video clip and you’ll see it’s true. It was only after a few seconds that CJ’s voice started to crack. Too bad it was on a high note, so it was totally obvious. I think it kind of killed the last of CJ’s confidence, and after that it kept happening over and
over again. Oh man, it was horrible. When we finished, Celeste held her nose like we’d stunk up the room, and Franco pointed us back to our seats. “Come back when you’ve finished with puberty, CJ,” he said, and then he added, “Better yet, don’t.” A bunch of people were rolling in the aisles at that one, but to us it was like a kick to the stomach. Our hopes had been so high. I honestly thought we were gonna get to go to Vegas, but now I wondered how we could even show our faces again in Belmar. I could see that CJ was taking it even harder than the rest of us, and I felt especially bad for him. Thing is, CJ has an amazing voice. Just because maybe that day wasn’t his best don’t mean he’s not super-talented. Trust me, the kid can belt out a song.

That guy Franco don’t know nothing.

But it turned out we got off easy. The next act was a nervous-looking twelve-year-old from Oswego, a scrawny girl named Ruby. She had bad skin and a rainbow leotard that looked like it came from a secondhand shop. The poor kid didn’t stand a chance. As soon as she stepped onto the stage the judges started rolling their eyes, which got some of the audience laughing too. Okay, so the girl had an acne problem and wasn’t exactly glam, but not everybody has to look like a movie star. Besides, the kid was only twelve! She was staring like a frightened bird up there, but when she sang, she sang her heart out. It wasn’t a silky pop-star voice, the boring kind that usually wins on that show, it was a little more raw and interesting, and I’m telling you, to me it was beautiful. That girl was the best act of the round so far, and I’m including us. But when she was done, those judges just sat there curling their lips while that little big-eyed kid blinked into the lights and waited.

After a long silence, the only thing that pinhead Franco
said to her was “I’m not going to lie, Ruby—you sounded like a buzz saw in need of an oil change. And by the way, haven’t you ever heard of pimple cream? Good heavens, girl. Wash your face.”

Do I remember my
reaction
when I heard that? Sure I do! I laughed so hard I nearly fell off my sofa. Come on, it was
funny
! And yeah, that little girl took it hard, but I remember thinking so what? Sometimes the truth hurts, kid, and you can always count on Franco to tell it like it is. That’s why everybody watches the show night after night. It isn’t just to catch the contestants who might eventually win, it’s also because people love to see what kind of losers try out, and to hear the hilarious stuff the judges say about them. It’s not like anybody forces those people to audition. Even when it’s totally obvious that a kid isn’t going to win, that they’re only going to make fools of themselves, they show up anyway, time and time again. Whose fault is that?

If you’d asked me, I would have told you: Any freak who auditioned for the show was begging for whatever insult they got.

Lemonade Mouth was up next, and I could hardly wait.

See, I knew those kids. We went to the same school. I’d lost my band, Mudslide Crush, and even my best friend the previous school year because of them, and yet for some infuriating reason everybody seemed to think those five were like god’s gift to nobodies or something. It burned me up.
All I wanted was for everything to go back to the way it used to be when Mudslide Crush ruled and all was right with the world.

But since that wasn’t going to happen, at least
American Pop Sensation
was about to dish out some justice.

And now, Faithful Readers, it is my privilege to describe what I, your humble reporter, witnessed at that fateful moment. It so happens that during the entire
American Pop Sensation
incident I was surprisingly near to Lemonade Mouth—so near, in fact, that I was able to see and hear things that few others could.

Before I convey what I observed, though, allow me first to back up just a few minutes.

I need to explain where I was and exactly how I got there.

Back when our little Lemonade Mouth entourage was being rushed through the building, my thoughts had been clouded in a fuzzy pink fog of happy emotion. Even apart from the excitement of the auditions, this had already turned out to be a gigantic day for me. For six incredible weeks Lyle and I had been spending most of our time together without openly admitting that we liked each other, and now here we were running hand-in-hand as we dodged through a crowded building to watch our friends appear on one of the biggest TV shows there was. I was practically floating.

But then at last we arrived at the Judgment Room.

Just when a cranky stagehand was about to lead our
group up a set of metal steps to the last available seats, my natural journalistic instincts finally switched back on again. As everyone knows, a good reporter strives to be as close to the action as possible, so it occurred to me right away that the nosebleed section wasn’t going to work. I glanced around. Lyle and I were being led past a wall of green curtains that lined the side of the audience. Scanning along its folds, I spotted a narrow band of darkness where two of the curtains didn’t quite meet. Whatever was behind there, the secret space was only a few steps away and very near the front row, where Lemonade Mouth was about to be seated.

I made a split-second decision.

Squeezing Lyle’s hand, I yanked him along with me, and in all the confusion nobody noticed us ducking behind the curtains.

Dear friends, modesty prevents me from boasting. Suffice it to say that this wasn’t the first time quick thinking and a reporter’s natural intuition had come in handy for me.

Which was why Lyle and I now had a front-row view of music history.

The space turned out to be filled with crates full of wires and unknown equipment. It was cramped and uncomfortable, but the vantage point was unbeatable. If either of us had reached through the narrow slit of the curtain (which of course we didn’t), we could have touched Charlie’s elbow. That’s how close we were. Which was the reason I was able to see so clearly the growing horror on each of Lemonade Mouth’s faces as they watched the judges rip apart each of the first four acts, one by one. It wasn’t simply that the famous threesome didn’t like the performances. Celeste, Davey Dave and Franco gave each of those acts a verbal thrashing, a public and personal humiliation they’d never
forget. Sure, I’d seen them in dangerous moods plenty of times before, but I’m ashamed to say that only now, when I was close enough to see the devastation on the faces of each of the ridiculed contestants, did it finally hit me how unfair and tragic this system could be. Those judges wielded an almost godlike power—the power to grant or deny dreams, sending people with high hopes to the heights of glory or the depths of oblivion depending on the words they chose, which in turn depended only on how they happened to feel at that moment.

And for whatever reason, the gods were showing little mercy that night.

I squeezed Lyle’s arm. Lemonade Mouth was up next, and already I had the sick feeling we were about to watch our favorite band—our
friends
—get destroyed on prime-time television. I wasn’t the only one with that feeling either. The instant the show finished with Ruby from Oswego and cut to a commercial, I heard Charlie whispering under his breath.