Pay the Piper (3 page)

As she watched him, Callie felt something like an ache under her breastbone. She'd never felt like that before.
Is it love,
she wondered? Then shook her head. Her parents would never allow it.

“Aren't they brill!” Nick cried, meaning
brilliant,
the latest word in elementary school. It meant “great,” “super,” “the best.” He tugged at Callie's sleeve.

She looked down at him and suddenly thought,
I'm standing with my little brother at a rock concert!
Her face flooded with embarrassed heat. Moving away quickly, she said, “Get lost, Peabrain. My friends are watching.”

Then turning, she saw Alison and Josee and waved at them as the band segued into the next song, “Nobody Here But…”

Josee came over breathlessly, twining a black curl around one finger. Alison was right behind. “Whadda you think?” she began. “That Peter, that Gringras, the piper, he's … he's…”

Callie had never heard Josee stutter before. Usually she had a word or three for everything. But now she sounded dazed, almost as if she'd been hit over the head.

“Brill!” Callie said, before she remembered that was an elementary school word, and the heat flooded back into her face. “I mean, they're awesome.”

“And your parents actually let you…” Alison began, reaching out to finger Callie's press pass.

Josee found her tongue again. “Yeah—your parents got the key and unlocked the door to your cage, let you loose. Fly little bird, fly, Callifrage. Great going! But wasn't that the pea-brained little brother, Mr. Tittletattle Tagalong?”

About to answer back, Callie suddenly heard the music again, and found she couldn't keep still any longer. She started to dance circles around Alison and Josee, as if binding them to her. “Tell you
all
. Later,” she said. Then off she went, skipping and hopping around the hall, her friends tagging after her, all three of them singing along with the music.

When the band broke into “Ratter, ratter, mad as a hatter…” they started to do the Ratter, a dance they'd learned from MTV. But it had been covered by the Blank Joves, and Callie was surprised to learn “Ratter” was a Brass Rat song. It hadn't been on any of the CDs her parents owned.

Scott led it off with a long descending riff on his guitar.

“SCOTT!” a number of the girls screamed out, and Callie whispered his name. As she did so, she felt a delicious shiver travel down her spine.
So this,
she thought,
is a major crush
. She'd never had one before. Then she surrendered to the feeling, throwing herself into the dance.

The dance went like this: One person was the Ratter and went sniffing around the other kids—the Rats—who danced hands down, then hands up, as if trying to get away.

“Hands down, or I'll swallow you whole,

Hands up, do as you're told.…”

When the band hit the line, “Give me money or I'll take your soul,” the Ratter had to chose one of the dancers. Then the two proceeded to spin about together till the Ratter went down on to the floor. The Rat became the Ratter and it began all over again. If two Ratters met on the dance floor, though, they had to go Nose-to-Tail four times around, then spin off after other Rats.

Callie called out, “I'm Ratter!” the moment the guitar was over, which left Alison and Josee to join other Rats nearby.

*   *   *

AFTER RATTER, CALLIE AND ALISON
and Josee just shuffled and shagged and jived through the next eight songs. They sweated up a storm but refused to stop, not even to get a drink of water.

Once Callie caught her dad's eye, and he winked at her. Another time she saw Nick who—with a bunch of his weenie friends—was dancing, too. If you could call what they did dancing.
Throwing themselves about was more like it,
Callie thought.

Then she saw her mother, right out there on the floor, where anyone could see her, doing a strange combination of bootie dancing and the Ratter, which was
so
embarrassing, Callie felt sick. She looked at the floor and thrust her hands down angrily, hoping that the floor could, as the lyrics said, swallow her whole.

Suddenly Gringras announced to the mike, “We're taking a short break. Don't go anywhere, you rats!” and the hall broke into a waterfall of applause.

Callie checked out her mother. She was nowhere in sight. Callie's knotted stomach seemed to ease.

“Want a soda, Callie?” Josee asked, her black curls now sorry-looking tangles. “They're selling all kinds of stuff out front, bottles, cans, plastic and paper cups. Drill them, fill them up.”

“Merch, too,” Alison added. She had two bright red spots on her cheeks, as if a child had colored them in with Magic Marker. “Tee shirts and headbands and hats and CDs and…” It was a long speech for her.

“Do they have hats?” Josee interrupted. “With little yellow rats on top? I saw one on someone. I'm dying to get one. And Peter's autograph. From his perfect fingers, down the pen, to me … to me … just for me.” She started sputtering again.

Callie waved her press pass at them. “I'm going backstage for an interview. Hard work—but clearly somebody's got to do it.”

“An interview?” Alison asked, voice squeaking, as if she'd never heard of Callie's plan. “With the
band
?”

Callie shook her head. “No, with the janitor.” She made a face at them. “Of course with the band.”

“And your parents are letting you all alone with those older men?” Josee said, her voice hovering between envy and astonishment. “What were they thinking, Califunny?”

“That I'm working?” Callie said. “Not shirking.” She grinned, not needing to tell Josee how she managed it.
Let them think it was hard to do
.

“Can we come, too?” Josee asked. “Quiet as mice, not rats, and we'll be your backup, or your front down, whichever you want. Carry your pencils and pencil box, ma'am.” Her fingers crawled all over her hair as she spoke.

Alison just looked eager.

“Press pass only covers one,” Callie told them. “If you'd been in journalism class maybe you could have gotten one, too.” Though she knew she was the only Hamp kid who'd wangled the assignment. “Get me a soda, will you?” She fished in her jeans pocket for a dollar. She wanted them to go before they found out she had to take Nick into the interview as the price of coming to the concert. The soda was a distraction, to get them out of the way while she rounded him up. “And don't worry about that interview. I'll give you the whole scoop later.”

Alison looked beaten, her already thin lips thinning down into a line like the dash at the end of one of Emily Dickinson's poems. But Josee threatened another flood of words.

“Friends, my friend, don't…”

Holding out her little fingers, Callie interrupted saying, “Friends do pinkie promises.”

First Alison, then Josee gripped her pinkies with theirs. “Pinkie promise,” they both said, and Josee added, “You'd better, or the gods of journalism will dump their ink all over you, Callie, and it'll make your pumpkin head look like mine, jet-black and oily!”

Callie didn't answer, but spun away from them to find her parents and reclaim her notebook. And, she thought grimly, her pea-brained brother.

6 · Talk Is Cheap

And now,
the piper thought,
the part of this gig I've been dreading the most.

“Gringras!” Tommy shouted to him, already offstage and halfway down the hall. “Time to talk to the kids.” He sounded thrilled by the prospect.

Gringras sighed, a deep theatrical affair. “If we must.”

“We must if we want to get paid,” said Alabas as he ignored the short set of stairs and leaped to the ground. “And we
do
need to get paid.”

Gringras nodded. Talking to the children was better than the alternative. But he wasn't looking forward to it.

“Come,” Alabas said, his voice softening. “We'll talk to them and get paid. Then we'll not have to see them again.”

He almost sounds like the old Alabas there,
Gringras thought.
Like my friend.

Scott was the last down, his broad face lightly coated with sweat.

“What's up?” he asked, before answering himself. “Oh yeah, the school newspapers.”

Gringras motioned the entire band down the hall toward the room where the interview would take place. He said nothing more. He was thinking of all of the children he'd had to talk to over the years. And those he'd had to “see again.” Forever. Like the two princes.

“Thou art here to kill us, I wot,” the older one had said matter-of-factly.

He'd looked so brave and fragile, standing guard over his younger brother, Gringras hadn't had the heart to tell him he was wrong.

7 · Interview

“Why are you guys called Brass Rat?” Nick blurted out when they'd gotten backstage and through a pus-colored door to the so-called “green room,” though it was really painted black. They were there by the simple magic of waving the press pass.

Callie was horrified at Nick's outburst. She'd been trying to remain properly cool, as if she hung out in band rooms every day. The other school reporters from other high schools all laughed and nudged one another. And one guy, dressed in an actual jacket and tie, whispered, “Babysitter!” to the girl next to him.

Gringras ignored Mr. Tie and spoke directly to Nick in a kind of slow drawl. “Well, actually, there's an interesting and exciting story behind that.” He didn't exactly lean forward from his position on the couch, but he seemed to slouch ever-so-slightly less.
Even up close, he didn't look old,
Callie thought. Unlike her father, who had lines around his eyes whenever he smiled, Gringras had a face that seemed smooth and flawless. And bored.

Maybe he's told this story too many times.
Callie suddenly wondered whether this was how her article could start.
Maybe he's been around so long, nothing surprises him.
She liked that. It was what her journalism teacher called “a hook.” She stood very still and listened carefully.

“It was years ago in an antique shop in Edinburgh,” Gringras said.

“Edinburgh, Scotland?” Nick asked. “We studied that.”

Callie rolled her eyes.
She
was the one supposed to do the interview. But how could she shut Nick up, short of putting a hand over his mouth?

Gringras smiled slowly and dropped into a Scottish brogue. “Aye, bonny Scotland.” As quickly he dropped out, winking at Nick. “A shop near the North Sea. I saw, tucked way back on a high shelf, in the far back room of the shop, a rat as big as a small dog.”

“A real rat?” Nick asked, leaning toward Gringras, leaning—Callie thought—into the story.

“No,” Gringras replied, smiling at him, “it was made entirely of brass.”

Callie suddenly realized that Gringras's actual accent was strange. It could have been from Eastern Europe; it could have been from England. If pressed, she would just have to call it:
foreign.

“Well, I loved that brass rat at first sight. But what use could any sane man have for a big brass rat?” Gringras smiled again but—Callie thought—like a snake, without showing his teeth.

He leaned back against the sofa cushion. “I thought to myself, Gringras, you are not a rich man. But maybe, just maybe—since the silly-looking thing is tucked way back, on a high shelf, in the very back of the shop—then maybe I can make a bargain.”

The school reporters all seemed mesmerized by the story, except for Callie who, pen poised over her notepad, waited for something real to write down.
Get on with it,
she begged him mentally. After all, her parents might want to see her notes. And right now there was nothing to show them.

“The shop owner and I haggled for hours,” Gringras continued. “He claimed I was trying to beggar him and I screamed about shoddy workmanship. When he said I would starve his children if I forced him to go lower, I claimed I would not be able to afford a wife if I paid his asking price.”

Wife?
Callie thought.
I haven't read anywhere about a wife.
Now it was getting interesting. She jotted down
wife
with a question mark after it.

As if reading her thoughts, Gringras shook his head. “Always the price came down, down, down. When it was finally somewhere reasonable, well, I pulled out my wallet and bought myself one large brass rat.”

The kids in the room breathed a long sigh, except for Callie.

I don't get it.
The hand holding her notebook dropped to her side, but not so the other reporters. They were all madly scribbling on their pads. Mr. Tie had filled an entire page.

“I walked out of that store whistling and holding my new brass rat, buffing it with my coat sleeve,” Gringras said, his voice getting lower as he spoke. Not lower, as if whispering, but lower in actual notes. He leaned forward again, too. “But fairly soon I noticed something strange. There seemed to be a large rat following me. And it was
not
made of brass. One very large, lean, and hungry-looking rat stalking me in broad daylight.”

Callie drew in a ragged breath this time. She couldn't help herself.

“Well, this was strange,” Gringras continued, “but it did not worry me overmuch. One rat is just not that frightening. But soon I saw another rat. And then another. And then … well, you see it coming.”

The reporters all nodded, though only Callie really understood what Gringras was doing.

“Soon thousands upon thousands of rats were chasing me through the streets of Edinburgh! I ran and ran with a million rats behind me. And then I understood! They were after my rat. My big, beautiful brass rat. Now, I loved that brass rat! But I loved myself more. So I ran as fast as I could down to the Firth of Forth, which runs into the North Sea. And when I got there I threw that brass rat as far as I could.” His arm made a huge arc as if he were throwing the rat at that very moment. In fact, he'd thrown an empty can that hit its intended target—the wastebasket—with a loud clang.