Stuff We All Get (6 page)

“How should I know?” she says.

“Would you give him credit for being the composer?” I ask.

“Why should I? If I go out there and bust my butt, why should I worry about him?” Her voice rises shrilly. “He doesn't want to be famous. So I'd cause him a problem if his name got known…” She pauses. “Right?”

I don't know what to say, but it doesn't matter. Jolene keeps talking. “I've got the recording now. It'll be my word against his. Pull over here. This is it.”

I brake, hard, and pull off the road. It's a gravel road in the middle of nowhere. All I can see in the dark is one driveway curving through the trees. I turn and look at her. I take in the sulky set of her mouth. It's not a cute pout, not anymore. The flyaway blond hair? Peroxide. The violet blue eyes? I'm betting contact lenses.

“I shouldn't have burned those cds,” I say.

She clutches the bag, throws open the car door and jumps out. “Why not? I did the singing. The songs are
mine
. Who cares if I don't compose or play?”

I meet her angry stare straight on. “You do play…people.”

She doesn't answer. She hauls her backpack out of the backseat, slams the door and stalks away.

I look at the dashboard. According to the clock, I'm a dead man. I'll never make it home in time. The smell of Jolene's perfume makes me feel sick, so I roll down my window. In the distance, I hear the sound of laughter. Her laughter. And then there's silence.

Lines from Jolene's song—
Frank's
song—play in my head:
You've made
solitude feel eternal / What do I owe you
for giving me that?

It takes a while for me to find my way back through the maze of side roads. My phone starts ringing before I reach the highway. I don't stop to answer it.

The drive home seems to take longer than the drive out. I try not to think. But when I hit Penticton, I wonder if Mom contacted her pals at work to be on the lookout for me. Would she do that? She would.

I don't want to get caught by a cop. I don't want to go home and face Mom. But I'm going to have to do it sooner or later. It's better to get it over with. To avoid getting stopped, I think only about driving perfectly the rest of the way home.

Chapter Thirteen

When I get home, I'm braced for the rant of my life. I'm fully prepared for the possibility that Mom will have me charged with theft. She believes in consequences. Nothing prepares me for what happens when I walk inside.

She takes one look at me and crumples. Every part of her crumples— her eyes, her mouth, her entire body— as she collapses into a chair. She buries her face in her hands and sobs.

I've never seen my mother cry like this. Never. And the way it makes me feel—I've never felt this either. Shocked. Scared. Ashamed. Sick. Sorry.

So sorry. I crouch on the floor in front of her and say it over and over.

Eventually she grabs my face with both hands and says, “Do you know how many kids I've seen broken in car wrecks? Do you?”

I don't. She never talks about that. And she doesn't now. She picks up her phone and goes into the kitchen to make a call so I don't hear what's said.

When she comes back, she's steadier. “Tell me what happened, Zack.”

I tell her everything. When I'm done, she says she needs to think. The next day I get the verdict. I have to enroll in swimming classes and can't stop until I'm a certified lifeguard. I have to complete a course in First Aid. And until the end of the school year, I'll do daily crossing-guard duty at an elementary school.

“Do you understand?” she asks.

The safety theme is obvious. I nod.

All day I resist listening to music. In the evening I start dreading going to school tomorrow. If they're going to mock me again, I do not want to go there.

Frank gets what it's like to be mocked.

Frank. And just like that, it's okay for me to listen to
his
songs again. This time, when I listen, I realize that it was never Jolene's voice I connected with. It was the lyrics and melodies. Her voice was only one small part. To be fair, she's a decent singer. I don't know. I'm no expert.

It's freaky how I'd built her up in my mind to be someone she isn't. I was practically in love with her. I don't get that. Maybe I'm a special sort of stupid.

What about Frank? He doesn't seem stupid. Jolene must have sucked him in too. That thought makes me feel better.

I don't feel much better, but it's enough to get me to school in the morning. I force myself to be totally casual as I walk into homeroom. A titter of laughter bursts from a group at the back, and I keep cool. I don't even look their way.

“Hey! Zack.” Charo walks toward me. “I missed you.” Here it comes. Some crack about my crack. But she says, “I thought I saw you downtown a few nights ago.”

“Yeah?” I shrug.

“I guess it wasn't you. So how've you been?” she asks.

“Fine.”

“Good. You know, I wanted to call you, but I couldn't find your number listed. I felt bad for you.”

The group at the back laughs again, and Charo looks at them.

One of the girls calls, “Did you watch
American Idol
last night?”

Charo rolls her eyes. “Yeah.” She starts to say something else, but the teacher walks in. She whispers, “Talk to you later, Zack.” And then she takes her seat.

The morning goes like that. I hear people laugh, and I tune them out. Nobody openly mocks me, not once. The only thing related to my incident is a guy in pe who says, “Nice work punching out Perv Pete. He's done the same thing to a couple of girls—posted embarrassing pictures online, right? He had it coming.”

Huh.

There's no lunch league game today, so I go to the cafeteria. I spot Charo across the room with her usual group. I decide to keep my distance. I notice a few guys from the team and head their way.

Before I can make it to them, Charo calls, “Zack. Over here.”

I hate that her yelling has drawn attention to me. But if I try to ignore her, she'll probably yell louder. So I make my way toward her.

“Hey, Charo,” I mutter.

“Hey, yourself.” She frowns and asks, “Are you okay?”

Before I can answer, the girls in her group giggle and I tense up. Charo notices and says, “You need to relax. Let's sit down.” She turns to her friends and tells them she'll catch up with them later.

When we're seated, she sighs. “I've heard enough about that
Idol
thing. I don't know how they can still be chirping about it.”

“
Idol
thing?” I ask.

“Come on,” she says. “That's all everyone's talked about all morning. You must have heard people laughing?”

I shrug.

She squints at me like she's checking to see if I'm serious. I must pass her test because she says, “It's this girl who used to go to school here. She dropped out last year, so you wouldn't know her. She was on
American Idol
last night, doing an audition.”

Chapter Fourteen

A girl from Penticton doing an audition in the States. I stare at Charo and ask, “How did she do?”

Charo rolls her eyes. “Terrible. She was wearing a black leather microskirt and a bra top. Like that would impress them. When she sang, it wasn't
that
bad. I mean, she did okay. Even the judges said so. But when they told her she needs to work on her voice, wow. She went off! They had to beep out almost everything she said. She didn't stop swearing until they called security.”

“Huh.”

Charo shakes her head. “In a way, it's sad. I was friends with her until last year. Then she got, I don't know, twisted or something. All she cared about was being famous.”

“That's too bad,” I say. “But it sounds like she did it to herself.”

Charo nods. “I guess. But I don't get it. Why would someone do that?”

“I don't know.” I shrug. We're quiet for a minute. I watch Charo chew her lip, trying to figure it out. Then I realize when she's not chewing on her lip, it's quivering. “Hey,” I say.“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Sorry. I was just thinking about how she must feel right now. I heard she left town in case this happened. I guess they tape auditions, and you don't know if they'll show yours until it's on tv. She must have been hoping they wouldn't show her.”

“I'll bet,” I mutter.

She sighs. “By now she knows everyone saw it. Or if they didn't catch it on tv, they'll be watching it online.” I cover up my guilt. I definitely plan to check out Jolene's performance. “I'll bet she feels pretty bad,” I say. “Unless…”

“Unless what?” Charo asks.

“What if she likes it? Doesn't this make her famous?”

Charo's mouth forms a small circle. “I never thought of it that way. I mean, this is more what you'd call being
in
famous. But with her, you never know.”

We talk more, and it dawns on me that Charo isn't the average lemming I assumed she was. She's interesting. It turns out she used to play keyboards in a girl garage band with Jolene.

Huh.

I tell her, “I play around with a guitar sometimes.”

“Really?” she grins. “We should get together sometime and jam. Just for fun.”

I don't make any promises, but when I head home later I think, maybe. I also think about how people have forgotten my stupid drama. Was it eclipsed by Jolene? Maybe fame is nothing more than talk. When we flock around the latest thing, do
we
create the fame—then take it away when we move on?

I don't know. But I do know I have to watch the video of Jolene. I didn't like it when everyone ogled my picture, but I'm not so above it. I have a cruel wish to see Jolene make a fool of herself.

The video clip is everything Charo described. It's not pretty. The colors I get with her song are bad. I see beige with a few dull streaks of pink as she wobbles through a pop tune. And Jolene's reaction to the judges is crazy.

But if fame is all Jolene wanted, she got it. The video has recorded thousands of hits. There are lots of comments too, most of them nasty. I'm about to close the site when a name catches my eye. Frank. He wrote,
I tried to tell you the
same thing.
I bet that means he too tried to tell her that she wasn't ready.

Watching Jolene fail doesn't make me feel any better. If anything, I feel sorry for her. She's one seriously screwed-up girl.

And I was one screwed-up guy. Jolene played me for a fool, but I set myself up for it. Why? Was it being bored and lonely? The music?

Frank's music.

I have to tell Frank about burning those cds before they burn a hole in my conscience. I call Slick Sal's, and they tell me he doesn't play there anymore. And no, they can't tell me where I can find him.

So now what? I'm not ready for another round of playing detective. I try to pump myself up for the search by remembering I found Jolene without so much as a name. How hard can it be to find Frank?

This time, my motivation isn't quite the same. Lurking outside pubs in the dark, hoping to find an angry guy, doesn't sound like fun. There has to be a better way.

It turns out I don't have to find Frank. A couple of weeks later, he finds me.

Chapter Fifteen

I'm sitting on the hillside at the geocache site, looking at Skaha Lake. I'm hoping to hear a loon again. I've got my guitar and I'm idly plucking strings, watching the pops of color. Suddenly Frank is on the trail, staring at me.

“Uh,” I choke. “It's you.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Did you find her?”

I nod.

He lights a cigarette, then squints at me through the smoke. “And?”

“And nothing. At least, nothing much.”

His smile is fleeting. “I could have told you there wouldn't be much.”

“I know,” I tell him.

His eyebrows go up. “How do you know what I know?”

He doesn't have the same attitude as when I met him. He seems curious. “I know you wrote the songs. And I know why.”

“She told you about that?” He sounds surprised.

“She didn't exactly volunteer the information,” I mutter.

“Interesting.” He takes a drag on his cigarette, then says, “Ever since you asked about her, I've wondered where you heard her. Looks like I guessed right.”

I nod.

He grins. “So you're a geocacher?”

“I tried it.”

“Cool,” Frank says. “And cool for me to know where the cd went. You know how you put stuff into caches and then wonder who has it now?”

“So you put that cd in there, right?” I ask.

He nods.

“Yeah, well, about that.” I take a breath. “I have to tell you…Actually, first, I'd like to know…Why did you leave the cd here?”

Frank shrugs. “I didn't want it anymore. Too many bad memories. But it didn't feel right to toss it. Then I got this idea.”

“What idea?” I ask.

“It was an experiment. It was like caching my feelings about that music. I thought I might get a song out of caching it.”

“I think I get what you're saying. Did it work?” I ask. “Did you get a new song?”

Frank frowns. “Not yet. Inspiration happens in its own time. But I was thinking I should have made that cd a hitchhiker.”

“A hitchhiker?” I ask.

“You can attach an extra logbook to an item, asking that it be carried to another cache. The people who take it along write a note in the log about where they found it. They can also post its new location on the geocache website. Then everyone can track the item's movements. Hitchhiking would've suited that cd.”

I stare at him as I work out what he's implying. Then I laugh. “I get that.”

My smile fades as I remember what I have to tell him. “About that cd. You don't mind if other people hear it?”