Matt-or-Mike says, “Seriously? Dude, it's totally lame!” Mrs. Baker shoots him a look, but that doesn't stop him. “Well, it is, Mom. It's that whole robotron attitude of education. Confine, confute, conform—I've had totally enough of that scene.”
My dad eyes my mom with a little I-told-you-so grin, then says to Matt and Mike, “So I take it college is out of the question?”
God, what was
with
him? In a flash I was clutching my fork and knife, ready to duke it out for a couple of guys who pinched my cheeks and called me baby brother.
I took a deep breath and tried to relax. Tried to dive down to calmer water. This wasn't my fight.
Besides, Matt and Mike seemed cool with it. “Oh, no,” they said. “College is a total possibility.” “Yeah, we got accepted a couple of places, but we're going to give the music thing a shot first.”
“Oh, the
music
thing,” my father says.
Matt and Mike look at each other, then shrug and get back to eating. But Lynetta glares at him and says, “Your sarcasm is not appreciated, Dad.”
“Lyn, Lyn,” says Matt-or-Mike. “It's cool. Everyone's like that about it. It's a show-me-don't-tell-me thing.”
“That's a great idea,” Lynetta says, jumping out of her seat and dashing down the hall.
Mom freezes, not sure what to do about Lynetta, but then Mrs. Baker says, “Dinner is absolutely delicious, Patsy.”
“Thanks, Trina. It's … it's nice to have all of you over.”
There's about three seconds of quiet and then Lynetta comes in and jabs at the CD player buttons until the drawer slides back in.
“Lyn, no! Not a good idea,” says Matt-or-Mike. “Yeah, Lyn. It's not exactly dinner music.”
“Tough,” says Lynetta, and cranks the volume.
Boom, whack! Boom-boom, whack!
The candles practically shake in their holders; then guitars rip through the air and about blow them out. Matt and Mike look up at the speakers, then grin at each other and call over to my dad, “Surround sound — awesome setup, Mr. Loski!”
All the adults were dying to jump up and turn the thing down, but Lynetta stood guard and just glowered at them. And when the song's over, Lynetta pulls out the CD, punches off the player, and then smiles — actually smiles — at Matt and Mike and says, “That is the raddest song. I want to hear it again and again and again.”
Matt-or-Mike says to my dad, “You probably don't like it, but it's what we do.”
“You boys wrote that song?”
“Uh-huh.”
He motions Lynetta to pass the CD over, saying, “Just the one song?”
Matt-or-Mike laughs and says, “Dude, we've got a thousand songs, but there's only three on the demo.”
Dad holds up the CD. “This is the demo?”
“Yeah.”
He looks at it a minute and says, “So if you're Piss Poor, how do you afford to press CDs?”
“Dad!” Lynetta snaps at him.
“It's okay, Lyn. Just a joke, right, Mr. Loski?”
My dad laughs a little and says, “Right,” but then adds, “Although I am a little curious. This is obviously not a home-done demo, and I happen to know studio time's cost-prohibitive for most bands….”
Matt and Mike interrupt him with a slamming hard high five. And while I'm getting uptight about my dad asking them questions about money, of all things, my mom's fumbling all over herself, trying to sweep away my dad's big pawprints. “When Rick and I met, he was playing in a band….”
Poached salmon was suddenly swimming down the wrong hatch. And while I'm choking, Lynetta's bugging out her raccoon eyes, gasping, “
You?
Played in a
band
? What did you play, clarinet?”
“No, honey,” my mom says, trying to hold it all together. “Your father played guitar.”
“Guitar?”
“Cool!” Matt-or-Mike says. “Rock? Country? Jazz?”
“Country,” my dad says. “Which is nothing to scoff at, boys.”
“Dude! We know. Total respect, man.”
“And when our band looked into getting a demo made, it was astronomically expensive. That was in a big city, where there was a little competition. Getting a demo made around here? I didn't even know there was a facility.”
Matt and Mike are still grinning. “There's not.”
“So where'd you go? And how'd you afford it?” My mother whacks him under the table again, so he says, “I'm just curious, Patsy!”
Matt and Mike lean in. “We did it ourselves.”
“This right here? You did this yourselves? That's impossible.” He's looking almost mad about it. “How'd you get the gear?”
My mom kicks him again, but Dad turns on her and says, “Stop it, would you? I'm just curious!”
Matt-or-Mike says, “It's cool, Mrs. Loski.” He smiles at my dad and says, “We kept cruising the Internet and the trades looking for a deal. Everyone's blowing out their old analog gear for digital because that's the move everyone else has made. Digital, if you want to know our opinion, is
weak
. You lose too much of the waveform. There's not enough fat to it, and obviously we like it beefy.”
My granddad puts up a finger and says, “But a CD's digital, so…”
“Exactly, but that is the last and
only
step we'll compromise on. It's just a necessity of being part of the
industry. Everyone wants CDs. But the multitrack and the mixdown to two-track is analog. And we could afford it, Mr. Loski, because we got used gear and we've been saving up our pennies since we were twelve years old.” He grins and says, “You still play? We could, you know, lay down some of your tunes if you want.”
My dad looks down, and for a second I couldn't tell if he was going to get mad or cry. Then he sort of snorts and says, “Thanks, but that's not me anymore.”
Which was probably the only honest thing my dad said all night. After that he was quiet. He'd try to plaster up a smile now and then, but man, underneath it he was broody. And I was feeling kind of bad for him. Was he thinking about the good old days playing in a band? I tried picturing him in cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, with a guitar strapped across his shoulder, playing some old Willie Nelson song.
He was right — it just wasn't him.
But the fact that it ever had been made me feel even more like a stranger in a strange land. Then, when the night was over and the Bakers were piling out the front door, something else strange happened. Juli touched my arm. And for the first time that night she was looking at me. It was
that
look, too, channeled directly and solely at me. She says, “I'm sorry I was so angry when we first came in. Everyone had a good time, and I think your mom's really nice for inviting us.”
Her voice was quiet. Almost a whisper. I just stood there like a moron, staring at her.
“Bryce?” she says, touching my arm again. “Did you hear me? I'm sorry.”
I managed a nod, but my arm was tingling, and my heart was pounding, and I felt myself pulling toward her.
Then she was gone. Out the door and into the night, part of a chorus of happy good-byes. I tried to catch my breath. What
was
that? What was wrong with me?
My mother closed the door and said, “There. Now what did I tell you? That is one delightful family! Those boys are nothing like I expected. Lynetta, why didn't you tell me they were so…so charming!”
“They're drug dealers is what they are.”
Everyone turned to my father and dropped their jaws.
“What?”
my mother said.
“There is no other way those boys could afford to buy recording gear like that.” He glared at Lynetta. “Isn't that so?”
Lynetta's eyes looked like they were going to pop right out of her head.
“Rick, please!” my mother said. “You can't just make accusations like that!”
“It's the only thing that makes sense, Patsy. Believe me, I know how musicians are. There is no other explanation for this.”
Lynetta shouted, “I happen to know for a fact that they don't use
or
deal. Where do you get off saying something like that? You are such a two-faced, condescending, narrow-minded jackass!”
There was a split second of silence, and then he slapped her,
smack,
right across the cheek.
That put my mother in his face like I'd never seen
and sent my sister screaming insults over her shoulder as she ran down to her room.
My heart was pounding. Lynetta was right and I almost,
almost
got in his face, too, and told him so. But then my granddad pulled me aside and we both retreated to our own little corners of the house.
Pacing around my room, I had the urge to go talk to Lynetta. To tell her that she was right, that Dad was way out of line. But I could hear her through the walls, crying and screaming while my mom tried to calm her down. Then she stormed out of the house to who-knows-where, and my mom took up with my dad again.
So I stayed put. And even though the earth quit quaking around eleven o'clock, there were tremors out there. I could feel them.
As I lay in my bed staring out the window at the sky, I thought about how my dad had always looked down on the Bakers. How he'd put down their house and their yard and their cars and what they did for a living. How he'd called them trash and made fun of Mr. Baker's paintings.
And now I was seeing that there was something really cool about that family. All of them. They were just…real.
And who were we? There was something spinning wickedly out of control inside this house. It was like seeing inside the Bakers' world had opened up windows into our own, and the view was not a pretty one.
Where had all this stuff come from?
And why hadn't I ever seen it before.
By the time I got home, I knew it would be selfish of me to boycott the Loskis' dinner party. My mother had already spent a lot of time humming over pie recipes and going through her closet for “something suitable to wear.” She'd even bought a new shirt for Dad and had scrutinized what the boys intended to wear. Obviously she was looking forward to the dinner— not that I really understood that, but I didn't want to ruin everything by telling her about my newfound hatred of Bryce.
And Dad felt bad enough about David already. The last thing he needed was to hear about crackpot comments made by immature eighth graders.
So that night I went through the motions of baking pies with my mother and convinced myself that I was doing the right thing. One dinner couldn't change anyone's life. I just had to get through it.
Friday at school I avoided the blue-eyed brat the best I could, but that night as I got dressed, I found myself staring at the painting my father had given me and became furious all over again. Bryce had never been a friend to me, ever! He hadn't made a stand for the tree, he'd thrown away my eggs,
and he'd made fun of me at my uncle's expense…. Why was I playing along like we were jolly friends and neighbors?
When my mother called that it was time to go, I went out in the hall with every intention of telling her that I would not, could not go to the Loskis' for dinner, but she looked so lovely and happy that I couldn't. I just couldn't. I took a deep breath, wrapped up a pie, and shuffled across the street behind my brothers and parents.
Chet answered the door. Maybe I should've been mad at him, too, for telling the Loskis about my uncle, but I wasn't. I hadn't asked him not to tell, and he certainly wasn't the one making fun of David.
Mrs. Loski came up behind Chet, whisked us in, and fluttered about. And even though she had quite a bit of makeup on, I was surprised to see the blueness of bags beneath her eyes. Then Mrs. Loski and my mother went off with the pies, my brothers vanished down the hall with Lynetta, and my father followed Chet into the living room.
And wasn't that just dandy? That left me alone in the foyer with Bryce.
He said hi to me and I lost it. I spun on him, snapping, “Don't you speak to me! I overheard you and Garrett in the library, and I don't want to talk to you now or ever!”
I started to walk into the living room, but he stopped me. “Juli! Juli, wait!” he whispered. “I'm not the bad guy here! That was Garrett. That was all Garrett!”
I glared at him. “I know what I heard.”
“No! No you don't! I …I was feeling bad about, you know, the eggs and what I'd said about your yard. I didn't know anything about your uncle or what kind of situation
your family was in, okay? I just wanted to talk to someone about it.”
Our eyes locked for a minute, and for the first time the blueness of his didn't freeze up my brain. “I heard you laugh. He made a joke about me being a retard, and you
laughed
.”
“Juli, you don't understand. I wanted to punch him! Really, I did! But we were in the library….”
“So instead you laughed.”
He shrugged and looked miserable and sheepish. “Yeah.”
I left him. Just walked into the living room and left him. If he was making it up, he was quite an actor. If he was telling the truth, then Chet was right—he was a coward. Either way, I didn't want to be anywhere near him.
I stood beside my father and tried to follow his discussion with Chet about something they'd both read in the paper. My father was saying, “But what he's proposing would require a perpetual-motion machine, so it's not possible.”
Chet replied, “Maybe in the context of what scientists know now, but do you rule it out completely?”
At that moment I was feeling absolutely no scientific curiosity. But in a desperate attempt to block Bryce Loski from my mind, I asked, “What's a perpetual-motion machine?”
My father and Chet glanced at each other, chuckled, then shrugged, giving me the sense that they'd just agreed to let me into a secret club. My father explained, “It's a machine that runs without any external power source.”
“No electricity, no fuel, no water propulsion, nothing.” Chet glanced over my shoulder and asked rather absently, “You think that's a doable thing?”
What had distracted him? Was Bryce still in the foyer? Why didn't he just go away?
I forced myself to focus on the conversation. “Do I think that's a doable thing? Well, I don't really know. All machines use energy, right? Even real efficient ones. And that energy has to come from somewhere….”