Ace's Basement (6 page)

I finish painting and tell Chuck I have to go do some homework. I go upstairs and lie on my bed. I stare at the ceiling. Then I get up and really do some homework. Don't ask me why. To keep from thinking about other stuff, I guess.

When I get to school the next morning, it's more of the same. I'm at my locker when someone yells, “Ace! Catch!” and what looks like a cutlet comes flying at me.

In homeroom, someone says “Doom Master” in this deep voice and then rips a big belch. In first period, biology class, the teacher says something about a Heimlich maneuver and digestion, and the whole class breaks up. Except for me.

By period two, I'm feeling totally alone. Denny is off being Denny somewhere. After last night, I'm not even going to look for Lisa. I'm walking to class when I feel my phone vibrate. It's a message from Lisa:
mus rm@ lunch k?

My insides do a nosedive. If you thought I was feeling bad before, try me now. I feel as if I'm about to do a faceplant from fifty stories. This is it. I know it. This is when she's going to tell me officially what I already know. Two is over. I've totally blown it. Oh man, why did I go and see her last night? Why did I have to make it worse? Why did I ever listen to Denny?

I drag myself through period two, and then I make myself walk to the music room. I don't think I've ever walked to the music room slowly before. The longer I take, the longer Lisa and I are still playing music together.

I hear voices before I even get to the door. One of them is Lisa's. “It'll be so great,” she is saying, “…perfect timing…change everything!” She sounds
happy
it's over
.
Oh, no.

“Excellent,” says another voice. “That'll be so cool.” It's a guy's voice.

“So tell everybody, okay?”

“Hey, for sure.” I know this voice. It's a grade-eleven guy who's a good bass player. I look in. Sure enough, he's there, along with another guy who plays drums. It's worse than I thought. Lisa has already started her next band. I'm backing away as she turns around. “Ace! Anyway, later,” she says to the guys.

Yeah
, I think,
you can talk more
about your new band after I'm gone
. I start backing out again.

Lisa runs over. “Where are you going? You just got here. Listen, I have to tell you something.” Now she's all serious and intense.

“Sure.” My knees have turned to mashed potatoes. This must be a world record. I'm being dumped by a girl without ever having had her for my girlfriend.

She flips her hair back the way she does and bites her lip. Then she says quickly, “Listen, um, sorry about last night. I just lost it, you know? With everything?” Her face is pink.

“That's okay.” I'm thinking,
Let's get
to the “you're history” part.
That way I'll have time to eat lunch, throw it all up, get teased some more and still be in time to get beaten up in gym. Now that it's happening to me, I don't see why face-to-face is supposed to be so great for getting dumped. A quick text would make it easier for me to crawl away and die.

But Lisa isn't ready yet. She says, “Anyway, this morning I felt so rotten that I was going to ditch again, but then I got this message—”

“And Rob your boyfriend said he was sorry,” I blurt, sounding sarcastic.
And you promised him you wouldn't do
music with me anymore.
At least I stop myself from saying that part.

“What?” She tucks in her chin and gives me a look. “He's never said he's sorry in his life. Anyway, he doesn't have anything to do with this.” She waves her hand. Her words are spilling on the floor, she's talking so fast now.

“So, like I said, I got this message. It was a forward from Denny, and it was from this woman who's a producer for
Garden Avenue Kids
.”

“Huh?”

“You know, the TV show.”

“Oh, yeah.” I do know. It's a pretty good show, for one that doesn't have galactic death rays. It's about some kids at a school like ours.

Lisa is racing on, her voice getting higher. “And she saw the video and found out how to contact Denny in his channel details and asked him to send us a message that
she liked the song!
And she wants to pay us to use it on one
of the episodes because it sounds like
something two of the characters might
record!
Isn't that fantastic? We
did
it!” Lisa grabs my arms and shakes me. “We did it, we did it!” She is jumping up and down. I think I am too. First, though, I have to ask.

“Are you sure it's for real? This
is
from Denny, right?”

“It is, it is! There was an email address in the message, and I emailed her right away and she got back to me. It's the real thing. We've got to text the whole world,” Lisa says, “and then we've got to celebrate. What should we do?”

There are lots of answers for that, but for once I know the best one. “Let's play some music.”

Chapter Fourteen

I can hardly wait. We meet at the liquor store after school. I open Chuck's guitar case and prop up our cardboard sign that reads
Broken String Fund.
We sling on our guitars, I pull my harp rack on, and we tune up.

“Ready?”

“Ready.”

We're barely done the first song when someone tosses money in the case and says, “Are you the ones on YouTube?”

“Yup,” I say.

“Will you do that song?”

“Sure.” Lisa smiles. We play “Coming Apart at the Dreams” the best we ever have. I even get the harmonica part just right. By the end, there's a small crowd. They clap.

Then someone says to Lisa, “How come you didn't, you know, pop your…” Someone else calls to me, “Hey, aren't you gonna fall into the guitar case and do the eyes?”

Lisa turns away as if she doesn't hear. I say, “Can't today. Doctor's orders. It's an insurance thing.” I don't know what I'm talking about, but it seems to work. “Listen for our song on
Garden Avenue
Kids,
” I call, and I start to strum.

Lisa picks up on it. “Here's a Neil Young song.”

Lisa sings it great, but people drift away. Stuff like that happens twice more in the next half hour. I know that's how busking works, but still. Are the dumb bits all anybody wants from us? Lisa doesn't look any happier.

I say, “Remember at lunch today, when you said
we did it
?”

“Sure. Why?”

“Um, maybe it's not
we
. Maybe it's Denny, Nadia and Alison.
We
didn't make us go viral.”

Lisa shakes her head. “No way. They didn't do that
for
us, they did it
to
us. We wrote the song. We win. That's what's important. It serves them right.”

I'm about to say it doesn't feel as if we're winning right now when a guy walks up and says, “Hey, are you the—”

“Yup,” I say.

“Will you do the song?” He holds up a twenty. Maybe Lisa's right after all.

Lisa says, “With all the comedy stuff?”

“Well, yeah.” The guy shrugs as if it's a no-brainer.

Lisa looks at me. I look at her. What now? Twenty bucks is twenty bucks. Is it worth acting dumb for?

Lisa smiles at the guy. “We'll do the song, but we can't do the comedy today. Ace hurt his neck doing the video, and his doctor won't let him. Sorry.”

We start to play. The guy pockets his twenty and tosses in a five instead. “Thanks,” he says halfway through and walks off.

We finish and look at each other again. “Hey,” I say, “a five is still great.”

Lisa nods. “But…” Then she shakes her head and sighs. “I see what you mean.”

I check my tuning while I try to find something to say. “Hey,” I remind us both, “the producer for
Garden Avenue
Kids
doesn't want the comedy. She wants the song.” I check my sixth string. It's flat. “Maybe when people hear it there, they'll pay more attention.”

“Yeah,” Lisa says, “you're right.” I tune up my sixth string, and then she says, “Would you do it again?”

“What? Like, the video?”

“Yeah. But on purpose. Would you act stupid to get attention?”

“Well,” I say, “Denny does it all the time.”

Lisa rolls her eyes. “No, but say it was to get attention for another song?

I guess I mean, was this worth it?” She sighs, and her shoulders slump. “Like, it
did
work out. But think about the last couple of days. Even busking was more fun before everyone wanted us to act silly. If that's what you have to do to get people to listen, it's pretty lame. In fact, it's horrible.” Now Lisa plucks a string and checks her tuner. She looks down, then at me. She's waiting for an answer.

I say, “I don't know. Maybe it would be okay if I thought people were laughing with me, not at me.”

“How would you know for sure?”

That's
a tough question. I shrug.

Lisa says, “I don't know either. Maybe you couldn't know. But what do you think? Would you do it?”

Answers crowd my head. One of them is
Nooooo.
One of them is
For a
million dollars.
The one that comes out is, “Maybe…with you.” The “with you” kind of trails off into a mumble though.

Lisa smiles and does some more tuning. “One more,” she says. “Then I have to go. What should we do?”

“‘I'm A Believer
.
' We haven't done that yet.”

It's an easy one, and people like it because they know it from
Shrek
. Lisa even does the accent the second time through, and I have a harmonica bit. When I open my eyes after my solo, guess who's standing in front of me?

As the song ends, Denny says, “Yo, don't thank me, just throw money my way.” He's looking in the guitar case as he says it.

“How about bricks?” I say.

Denny doesn't get it, as usual. His arms flap around. “I told you it would work! I told you a video would get your song out there! And now a million people know my name and style.”

“And think that Lisa and I are nimrods. You left out that part, Den.”

“C'mon, Ace. You win some, you lose some. Just be glad I check all the comments on my YouTube account. Do you think you could show that producer some of my other stuff?”

Lisa doesn't say anything. She puts her own guitar away. Now she scoops the money from my guitar case and puts it on top of hers. She kneels down to divide it up. I take down our sign and put Chuck's guitar away. I remove the harp rack and tuck my pick in my pocket. “What other stuff?” I finally say to Denny.

“Well, there's the Doom Master footage from your place to work with, but what I'm really thinking is, we all do a follow-up. I've got this great idea. We need to make fake space suits and get helmets. Have you got a song that would go with that?”

“Not yet,” I say. “All the rest of our songs are about zombies, but we'll get right on it.”

“Yessss,” Denny says. “Zombies in space!”

I don't even try to answer. Lisa stands up. “In your dreams, Denny.” She hands me my money. It looks like quite a bit. I stuff it in my pocket to count later.

“I've got to go,” she says to me, “or I won't get to work on time.” To Denny she says, “Thanks for sending the message, Denny. Don't thank your gal pals for us, 'kay? Later.”

Lisa grabs her guitar case and heads off down the street. Denny calls, “Will do, Lee.
Ciao
!” Then he says to me, “Hey, want to see a movie Friday?
Death Watch III
is opening. My dad can drive.”

“Yeah, why n—” I start to say. Then I say, “Wait. Watch my guitar.” All at once, I know I have two questions to ask, and they're not for Denny. One is for when I get home. I have to ask Mom if she is thinking of selling the house. The other I can ask right now. I run down the street. “Lisa! Lee!”

She turns. I catch up to her. We're face-to-face. It's now or never. I pant, “Uh, ah, on, um, Friday, do you, uh, maybe want to do, like, a movie or something?”

Ted Staunton divides his time between writing and a busy schedule as a speaker, workshop leader, storyteller and musical performer for children and adults. When he's not writing or presenting, Ted likes to perform with the Maple Leaf Champions Jug Band. He also enjoys running, reading and listening to music. Ted and his family live in Port Hope, Ontario. For more information, visit
www.tedstauntonbooks.com.