Lemonade Mouth Puckers Up (14 page)

“We’re gonna get creamed. If they didn’t like that amazing little girl, they’ll hate us too.”

Olivia was taking deep gulps of air. The others appeared just as panicked. A short distance away, a team of network stagehands was leaping onto the audition platform to move Lemonade Mouth’s instruments into position.

“Guys, keep it together,” Wen whispered. “We can do this.”

Stella was sitting slumped in her chair, her arms crossed and her jaw tight. “Keep it together? Wen, didn’t you hear how they trashed everybody? Doesn’t it bother you? None of those acts deserved what they just got. They’re people with feelings, but the judges treated them like
jokes
.”

“It’s what they do, Stella,” Mo said. “It’s part of the show.”

I leaned a tad closer, straining to hear their voices—especially Mo, who was sitting farthest away from me. I had to be careful, though. I didn’t want to think about what might happen if the curtains moved and somebody noticed. Or worse. What if I were to accidentally lose my balance and fall headfirst in front of the stage?

All five of them turned their heads subtly toward Ruby, who was sitting ashen-faced with her eyes on her knees. Her mother’s arm was around her shoulder as she whispered into Ruby’s ear, but the girl wasn’t answering. She didn’t seem to hear her.

Stella shook her head. “Doesn’t mean it’s right.”

Something in Stella’s voice must have caught Wen’s attention, because after a pause he said, “Stella, please don’t get any wild ideas. Not now. This isn’t a high school and those
APS
judges aren’t a soda company. This is too big for us. We can’t change it.”

Stella’s hardened expression remained the same. “Maybe not,” she said, “but we don’t have to agree to be willing
participants
in this massacre. How about if we stay in our seats? What if we refuse to go on?”

She looked around hopefully at the others but they only stared back at her. Mo’s forehead wrinkled. “Um, Stella, you can’t be serious. We can’t do that. We made a commitment to Mr. Decker. He pulled a lot of strings to set this up for us and we can’t let him down.”

Wen nodded. “Besides, if refusing to play is supposed to be our way of making a statement, it wouldn’t be a very clear one. People would think we only pulled out because we’re scared.”

“They’d be right,” Charlie said without a hint of comedy. “I
am
scared. I’m petrified.”

Stella’s face was reddening. She still looked livid, but she couldn’t disagree with Wen and Mo. They were in a bind.

“Okay, so what are we saying?” Mo said, her voice even more urgent as she glanced toward the platform. The stagehands were almost finished setting up the last of Charlie’s congas. “Are we backing out or are we doing this?”

Stella narrowed her eyes at the judges. “I say we take a stand. We should refuse to go on.”

After the briefest hesitation, Charlie nodded. “And I say Mo’s right. We made a commitment, so we can’t back out.”

Wen took a deep breath. “I agree with Stella. That’s two votes that we go through with the audition, two that we don’t.”

“Where’s Mr. Decker when we need him? If he were here we could talk with him about this.”

“But he’s not here, Mo,” Stella said, still eyeing the judges’ table. At that moment the three of them were quietly chuckling over something, a shared joke, perhaps, and looking generally pleased with themselves. “This isn’t up to Mr. Decker. This is
our
decision.”

Wen turned to his left. “You’re the last vote, Olivia. It’s all up to you. What do you say?”

Olivia looked ready to curl into a ball. She was practically shaking. But there was no time for any more discussion, because one of the stagehands, a freckled boy who looked young enough to still be in high school himself, appeared in front of them. A tag on his shirt said his name was Cliff. “You guys are up and your instruments are all set,” he said, scratching the peach fuzz on his chin. “You’re on in thirty seconds. Follow me.”

It was a moment that felt heavy with fate. Even from behind the curtain Lyle and I could both sense it. I was
watching Olivia, who glanced nervously around at her friends and then back at Cliff. Then she stood up.

“We’re ready,” she said, her voice barely loud enough to hear.

The others followed her lead and rose to their feet—even Stella and Wen, although they didn’t look happy about it. None of them did. But it was clear they all understood what had just happened. Olivia had cast her vote.

Lemonade Mouth’s destiny was now set in stone.

I watched them follow Cliff toward their instruments. One of the clipboard people shouted that everyone had to be silent again. The show was going back on the air in ten seconds. Lyle’s arm brushed against mine. Even as I felt the new warm glow between us, my eyes were locked on Lemonade Mouth. This was it, the big moment. Oblivion or Glory.

Don’t screw this up …
, I silently called to them in my thoughts.
Please, please, don’t blow this.…

But of course I could never have guessed what was about to happen.

Nobody could.

I gripped the arms of my chair as I watched them take their places on the little stage. So far, every act in this round had been gleefully and, in my opinion,
unfairly
ripped to shreds by the judges, those three pompous, self-important promoters of homogenized mediocrity. Excuse my frank language.

What did those three bozos know, anyway?

By then I was secretly fuming at Mr. Decker. He should
have considered that something like this could happen. If he really cared about Lemonade Mouth, why would he set them up to risk a public shaming? It made no sense. It’s no secret that over the past year I’d grown especially fond of these students—these five young
musicians
. They deserved better than this.

The commercial ended and the applause light came on again, and suddenly Mohini, Charlie, Olivia, Stella and Wen were squinting into the spotlight. In their new black outfits they looked oddly out of place.

“Our next audition,” Celeste announced with a sweep of her hand, “is a high-school band called … uh … Lemonade Mouth.” She paused to look more closely at the index card she was reading from. Almost under her breath she asked, “Is that right? Lemonade Mouth? Now,
that’s
a weird name.…” Beside her, Franco and Davey Dave nodded glumly, as if the band had already offended their refined sensibilities.

I was burning up inside.

But then Charlie called out the beat. The music began, and within seconds I felt a profound change come over the room.

The song was “Humanator,” one of their newest and among my favorites. It started quietly, with Mo and Charlie setting a soft, staccato rhythm underneath Olivia’s voice, which began as little more than a whisper:

The music quickened and expanded with the addition of Stella’s ukulele and Wen’s trumpet. The judges leaned forward in their chairs, their gloomy expressions fading. I think they were startled by the sheer power of the instruments and by the emotion in Olivia’s unusual, gravelly voice, which seems to astonish everyone the first time they hear her. I swelled with pride. From my seat at the back of the audience I saw people all across the room nodding in time to the driving beat.

It was all going so well. I’d heard them practice this piece a few times and always it left a lump in my throat, but this performance of the song was one of the most moving I’d ever heard. The audience clearly liked them too, and even the judges looked pleasantly surprised.

So perhaps you can imagine my utter shock when, just as Olivia was about to begin the second verse, she looked around at her band mates as if she were trying to make up her mind about something. And then, with a reddening face, she stepped back from the microphone. She simply
stopped singing
.

The others appeared confused but only for a moment. Within a few beats Stella stopped strumming her ukulele, Mo set down her bow and Wen and Charlie stopped playing too.

Oh no
, I thought.
What on earth are they doing?

There was a strange moment then, an odd tension I can hardly describe. All five of them stood still, gazing toward the other contestants in the front row. Those other acts were probably looking back at them just as bewildered as I was, wondering what exactly was going on.

And then it hit me, a sneaking suspicion.

By then I’d known these kids a while, remember. They were practically family to me. Which is why an idea hit me—a crazy inkling. I wasn’t certain, mind you, but it occurred to me that maybe I should have seen this coming.

I held my breath.

Yeah, I was there. I was the stagehand who had to lead that little kid, Ruby, back to her seat after Franco got through chewing her to pieces. The girl was practically in tears.

It’s funny, but whenever I tell people that just before my senior year of high school my TV-executive uncle got me a summer internship working for
American Pop Sensation
, their faces usually light up like it must have been the cushiest job ever. I’m telling you, it wasn’t. Sure, I was lucky to be there, but it was two months of backbreaking labor, long hours and taking abuse from those judges. Those three were a piece of work, let me tell you. You know that whole mean act they did all the time? Well, it wasn’t an act.

Especially for that windbag, Franco.

That afternoon, for example, he and the show’s director—a nice lady named Helena Pang—got into this big thing. I guess Franco wanted a fruit basket for his dressing room but it didn’t arrive, and somehow he figured it was Helena’s fault, so he’d threatened to get her fired.

So now it was Lemonade Mouth’s turn to face the firing squad—and things were getting weird fast.

When these kids first started playing I was surprised. The music wasn’t like anything I’d ever heard before, as if a band of nerdy-looking Martians had just dropped from the sky. And it totally rocked. But then, right in the middle of the song when everyone was really getting into it, they just sort of stopped. It wasn’t a technical glitch or anything, I was pretty certain of that. They’d just ended the song early.

Holy crap! I thought. What the heck was up with them?

“Why did you stop?” Franco asked. “I’m surprised to hear myself say it, but that was actually quite good.”

Celeste and Davey Dave agreed, and the next thing you know, Lemonade Mouth had three thumbs-ups from the judges, which meant that after playing only half a song they already had their golden ticket to be included in the next competition phase in Las Vegas. But something strange was still going on, a weird tension. I didn’t think any of those kids looked happy. They were just standing there looking at the judges. Kind of staring them down, actually.

That’s when it happened.

The singer, the girl with the mousey hair, stepped back toward the microphone. Her face was kind of red, like she was getting emotional for some reason. “No,” she said in this soft, shaky voice, “we’re not interested in competing any more on this show. We’re done.”

I’m telling you, unless you were there in that room you can’t appreciate the full weirdness of that moment. In the whole history of
American Pop Sensation
nobody had ever refused a golden ticket. The audience was supposed to stay silent, but you could hear muffled gasps as people realized that the reason these five had stopped wasn’t because they were nervous—it was because they had something to say. And from their expressions, it wasn’t going to be a love-fest.

I spun my head toward the control booth. If something bad was about to happen—like, maybe if they started swearing or something—Helena could easily have shut down the feed and cut to a commercial using the seven-second delay. But she didn’t. She kept broadcasting, and the reason was obvious: Whatever was about to go down, it was likely to be memorable.

Which meant sky-high ratings.

“Done?” Franco repeated, raising an eyebrow. “Didn’t you come here because you wanted to compete in Las Vegas?” Celeste and Davey Dave looked just as confused.

The singer nodded, but she stepped back from the microphone—I guess she really
was
done. Then the other kids in the band spoke up, starting with that boy who played the trumpet. “We don’t like the way you treated these other kids,” he said pointing to the front row. “The way you laughed at them and the mean things you said.”

The Indian-looking girl with the double bass nodded. “It wasn’t necessary to do that. It was cruel.”

Behind them, that big, frizzy-haired kid with the giant wall of weird drums was gripping his sticks so hard his knuckles were turning white. “It was pointless too,” he added. “Look, we know you’re trying to be entertaining and everything, but that doesn’t make it okay to be just plain nasty.”

On the monitors I saw close-ups of Celeste’s and Davey Dave’s faces. Their jaws dropped. Franco tugged at his beret and squinted his eyes toward the stage. “Oh, so that’s what this is then, eh? Some silly little protest?”