Brendan Dude

To spare you the sappier-than-a-Canadian-turd story, Joey was our manager again and things went back to normal. Well, not exactly, you know, normal, but the way they were before.

Eighth grade was preparing to screech to a halt, and so the graduation ceremony neared closer. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to high school, but I didn’t think I’d miss eighth grade so much.

Even so, Plaster Caster stuck together by Joey and we continued working hard and getting noticed. Life was good.

The ceremony took up a good forty-five minutes, as the various teachers called up every passing eighth grader at Claymore Middle. (And believe it or not, I actually passed.)

Then, they dragged it out even more by adding crap like Honor Roll, Perfect Attendance, Highest Average, Good Citizenship, you know…useless stuff no one really cares about.
Superlatives were fun, though. Laughs echoed through the crowd since we voted for them, and each one was completely accurate. There were so many to vote for, too, so anybody who was anybody got one. I got “Most Likely to Trip in the Doorway to Claymore High.” I had to say, it was fitting. I tripped in the doorway to Claymore Middle on my first day as a seventh grader, so…

But after the awards and pep talks and goodbyes, things got exciting as the chairs were moved to the walls. This signified the start of the graduation dance, and our cue to move to the stage. As we set up, students were saying goodbye to their friends and teachers, and…basically, moving on.

I felt a little tug on my heart realizing that this would be my last night in Claymore Middle as a student. It most likely happened to everyone, but still, it was kind of sad to see the faces I’d probably never recognize again after a long summer separating the kids from the teenagers.

But the other kids on the stage with me…Ren, Luke, and Soria…well, they’d be with me no matter what.

And they were the only ones I never had to say goodbye to.

The kids broke away from their gloom and doom long enough to applaud. The sadness in me evaporated once I began playing the beat to “Don’t Coast” - our most recent song, updated to perfection in only the past few weeks.

The song was played a little slower, as if to accommodate the occasion. Ren smiled warmly and sang.

“Catastrophic mess
Has got a hold on me.
‘Soon you’ll understand’
He smiled straight at me-” Soria smiled a little -
“And really, I don’t know
Why the earth just spins
When all the time we’ve got
Keeps going, it never ends.”

I twisted the beat a little to add in a mini-solo, and we were in the pre-chorus.

“You get up, you get down
In the words, you’ll drown.
‘Cause in the end you’re all I got
And in the end it’s time to stop.”

For a split second, we stopped playing and a random kid went, “Whoo” in that silence. But we started back up and jumped into the epic chorus.

“Jonah takes it slow!
With his pen, he strikes the page
And you gotta love
How he doesn’t know his age
But the time says ten
So let’s go again
Kid -
You don’t coast.”

Ren dragged out the “-st” in “coast” with a flustered smile, like it was all just an afterthought. He stepped away from the microphone to grab a breath and then uttered the last line of the chorus.

“You speed up, you slow down, down…”

Soria kicked on a pedal on the floor with a free foot and prepared to play the second verse.

“This’ll be the last
Time it’ll happen again.
Gotta watch your step
‘Cause you can trip and slip and fall-”
“’I’m alright to drive!’” Luke shouted hastily.
“- He shouts and bangs his head
What he doesn’t know
Would likely make him dead.”

Luke shook his head in a “That was kind of embarrassing” fashion and out of instinct, I couldn’t hide my grin as we did the pre-chorus.

We powered past the chorus and absolutely pulverized the bridge. Ren improvised, which we look back and laugh at now. When we practiced, he rarely remembered the first line and went…

“Lalalalala!
Lalalalala
Make or break yourself
‘Cause I’m not doing it for you
Satellite’s on high
I hear the sweet sweet sound
The kiss of melody
Now I love…”

Man, he held that note for a long time. I was surprised. For a kid who never speaks, he had some freakin’ pipes. During that note, Soria pulled a solo out of her head and stepped back to me. We banged our heads in unison as the tune synced perfectly to the beat.

The volume went lower as we kicked by the normal chorus for the final time. Then in the middle, Luke jumped a clear three feet in the air and when he landed, the cafetorium exploded with noise.

“Jonah doesn’t know!
He’s gonna fall apart.
Everything he loves
Is coming on his mind
I hear the clock strike ten
Hey! Let’s go back home
Kid, you don’t coast
No, I don’t coast no more.
We crash like waves now.”

The applause began even before we were finished. It sounded even louder than ever, even louder than my beating heart. Sweat dripped off my forehead and onto the drums, but once I got up and got with my best friends, I felt chill.

Hah.

Just like David.

I smiled for the rest of the night.

Reluctantly, I stepped off my throne and we sunk into the crowd as one. Unlike the dancing students, we may have just done a kickass performance. But like them, we were sad to leave middle school and a little scared to move on to high school.

I grabbed a cup of punch and drank it, most of it ending up on my shirt instead of in my mouth. Luke came out of nowhere and grasped me around the shoulder, making me accidentally squirt some out onto the floor, onto a few kids. They looked pissed off at first, but shrugged it off since there was no point in being mad.

The deejay started up the tunes that got the kids moving. Blasting louder than 4th of July fireworks, Rihanna’s voice poured through the speakers and told me to live my life.

“Oh my god, this is my song!” I screamed louder than the music. I started dancing like an idiot ‘cause of the happiness pulsing through my veins.

A little circle spread out around me as kids laughed at my awesome dance moves. When they clapped their hands to the beat, I raised mine up to tell them to do it louder. And when I busted out the Running Man, I couldn’t quit grinning.

It just felt cool to be liked.

I had to wonder if Claymore Middle would remember Plaster Caster. Maybe there’d be a fan club, or a hate club. Whatever would happen, it would be okay ‘cause when I was in the center of the dance floor, people were simply taking notice. It was awesome to just not be a nobody.

To not be…dare I say, anonymous! Pun intended.

Yeah, we weren’t celebrities yet. Not across America, anyways. Not yet.

But with Joey on our side, we might have had a platinum-selling record out in a year. I owed that kid a big hug.

When the song ended, my stomach suddenly turned and I ran out the double doors to barf my brains out. It was a good puke, though. The kind that makes you feel brand new after you get it outta your system.

Luke rushed out, followed by Ren and Soria. “Dude!” he shouted. “You okay?”

“Hell yeah, I’m okay! Can you believe we’re outta junior high?!”

They looked at each other. “No, I can’t,” Soria chuckled.

Luke pulled me up by the shoulder. “C’mon, man, let’s go back in. Kickback’s on.”

Soria pranced first through the door and immediately got to jumping. I could hear why, too - Kickback, this year’s talent show winner, was playing their signature song that had a way of making everybody move.

I leaped and bounded a pathway into the crowd, my brain tumbling inside my skull. I bumped into a few shoulders ‘cause I was a little less than sane, but nobody minded. The music carried all of us into a special place, like we were jumping to push past the roof and climb up to the stars.

“Kickstart, I’m winding up again
Jumpstart, and going back again
Zipping out around the town!
I know, you’ll be here in the end
But I’m not coming back again
So you’ve got a lot to learn!”

The singer - I think his name was Dirk or something - had a smile so wide you could spot it from a mile away. Kickback looked a lot like us when they played; they put passion and rhythm into their song, higher than air and it showed on their little seventh-grader faces. They jumped and bounced all over the stage, as if to copy the crowd that was doing the same.

Maybe they looked up to Plaster Caster - how cool would that be? Maybe they were our little brothers in the Claymore music scene, and maybe if some bizarre twist of events came into their lives, they’d become just like us.

I smiled to the world.

Yeah, we might be famous after all.

And for a split second while I was jumping around in the mess of adolescents, my eye caught sight of something at the double doors to the cafeteria. I swear to God, it could’ve been real if I didn’t know any better. Honestly, I thought I was tripping balls when I saw it.

There stood David, leaning against the cinderblock walls of my junior high and his old one, his arms folded across his chest. His eyelids drooped as always, he had that little smirk on and kind of nodded his head at me. It was sorta like he was saying to me, “Good job, man.”

And then I smiled back, blinked, and he was gone.