Lukey Kid

Recording was a lot different here than it was back in Claymore, those few days when we hung out in Ren’s dad’s recording room. I mean, the bare bones were the same, the skeleton being that we’d experiment with different patterns or beats to find something that suited the song we were working on best. Also, we’d goof off. Kind of a lot. Sometimes Brendan and Ren would get into arguments over whether or not Elvis was still alive, and from time to time Olli would pop in to help us out and even give us suggestions and synth riffs to toy around with while he was off recording his own album. Once, Soria brought in a fake sword and all heck broke loose.

But most of the words we ended up exchanging in the recording place were just simple, “Does this work?” or, “That doesn’t work so well.”

The producer of our “debut album” turned out to be Rai himself. Raimundo Asbury, the man who ran the record company and had roadie’d with a million bands back in the day before dropping them all and becoming the man most synonymous with the term “Southeast punk.” The thing was that he hardly ever really showed up in the studio with us, which was odd to me. I thought producers were supposed to be working it all with you. He said he’d have all of the mixing taken care of with other people who we never met before in our entire lives, too. And we left it at that; we let sleeping dogs lie.

And besides, recording was pretty fun. It got kind of ridiculous after having to repeat the same verse ten times in a row just to find the exact tempo it should be played at, but it was all worth it in the end after hearing the end products. Plus, whenever we were in doubt and Rai wasn’t there, we’d just consult Olli, since that kid was the producer of two of his first three EPs, and they sounded pretty alright to me.

I’m serious. Olli struck me as kind of a…a…less-than-intelligent person at first, but despite his overly peppy attitude, he knew what the heck he was doing when it came to music. He was honest with us with many of the quirks we’d built into our songs already, suggesting new twists that could possibly add more interest. It was like this was something he was born to do and he could’ve just made his living being a producer rather than going to college to be…well, a producer, as he told us later.

We wimped out on the synthesizers he urged and went with a little more of just a straight-up rock style, though. But he still had ideas to help us with that route, and a lot of them we actually fit into the songs and they ended up better than we expected.

I walked into the recording room with my bass guitar in my hand, only having my sights set on doing exactly what we did in Ren’s dad’s house – having everything be dead quiet as I played notes directly into the computer.

It was actually nothing like that. First of all, the only one of us who had to record in a quiet room was Brendan. The rest of us only had to hook up our guitars into some big mixing-board thing and play. We could talk to each other while we recorded and the only sound that would be picked up would be the sound coming from the guitars, which was cool since we could get feedback immediately.

Oh, yeah. And Ren was stuck in a little booth to record the vocals. Luckily, he didn’t have to stay in there nearly as long as Soria and I were stuck blistering our fingers on guitar strings. Backup vocals were a pain to record, though. Not just because out of me, Soria, and Brendan, none of us could sing, but because none of us really wanted to sing. So that made things difficult.

All in all, it was fun as heck. Especially with Joey there a lot of the times to lighten the mood, which a year ago I wouldn’t have expected him to be willing to do. He’d sit on the couch in the main mixing room with his laptop, scrolling through our FlySpace and taking care of money and time. (He sent the money to our parents, of course.)

One day, we were slowly making it through “Skylight.” I was done recording the bass parts and Brendan and I were just lying on the couch behind the mixing board, bored out of our brains since we didn’t have anything to do. Raimundo was seated in front of us, hunched over the controls as Ren sang the lyrics flawlessly into the secluded microphone we could still hear in the other room.

In my lonely mind, one simple question flicked through. When Ren was done with that verse, I held up a hand hesitantly and asked Rai, “Um, Rai?”

He turned around. His sharp nose, thin lips and pointy chin contrasted with the soft and completely not-mean look on his face. “Hm?”

“Well, I’m done with laying down the bass track, and I was wondering…”

“Oh! Yeah, sure, you can go back to your hotel. Sorry for keeping you here. Just make sure you’re ready for ‘Hey Stranger’ tomorrow; that one’s gonna be tough,” he blurted out.

I stared blankly at him. He didn’t answer the question I was gonna ask… “Actually, I was wondering if you’d mind if I, uh…could I pick up Aaron and hang with him for the rest of today? I mean, if it’s alright with you…” I’m not really sure why I was nervous about asking him such a question. Surely he had to know why I was asking him.

“Mind if I ask why?” he asked me, a look of concern sweeping over his bony features.

Talk about awkward. “He’s my brother and everything, so…?”

He cocked his head like I was babbling psycho nonsense to him. “Wait…what?”

“I’m his brother and we got separated by that fire, and you adopted him, and -”

“You’re fucking telling me that you’re Aaron’s biological brother? Are you kidding me?” he continued, a big grin growing upon his lips.

“Well, our last names are Ragan, we look alike, and he recognized me when we came over to your house on that first night,” I laughed nervously, shrugging to try and lighten the mood.

“No shit.” Rai leaned back in the swivel chair he was sitting in, crossing his arms. Then he reached out and punched my shoulder. “That’s the most insane thing I’ve ever heard.”

I looked over at Brendan and he looked like he wanted to burst out laughing. I raised my eyebrows at him in a “Yeah, I don’t know” sort of way.

“I feel like my life’s being written by some shitty high school kid with nothing better to do with their time than write bad stories with stupid coincidences,” Rai went on, fiddling with the mixing board as Ren kept on singing.

“Ohhh, Asbury, we all feel like that at some point in our lives,” Brendan chuckled quietly.

Our producer turned around and went back to mixing stuff, ignoring my question yet again.

“Um, sir…?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I -”

“Oh, shit. Yeah, that’s right. You can chill with Aaron. I trust you. You seem pretty smart,” he babbled, facing me again. He pulled a phone out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Call Olli. He’s babysitting Aaron right now and can pick you up and you guys can do something together.”

I fumbled with Rai’s phone, feeling the familiar sensation of joy bounding through my fingers. “Thanks.”

“Hey, no problem, kid.”

- - -

I didn’t know my way around Miami at all. I knew how to get around my town back in New Jersey, and I knew Claymore pretty well, but being cooped up in a recording studio for most of my time didn’t really allow me to get to know the area. So when Olli brought Aaron to the studio and we went out walking around randomly, I let Aaron lead the way since he’d lived here for a while.

It was around three in the afternoon and the sun could’ve fried eggs on the pavement. Nearly everybody was flocking to the beaches since it was one heck of a hot weekend, but of course, while the rest of my band was cooped up indoors, I was spending my time with my long-lost brother. I didn’t even give a poo if it was considered lame. I wanted to make it last the longest I could before we had to pack our bags and go back to Claymore.

He ended up making Olli drop us off downtown where there were a ton of shops and local hangouts. I’d have gotten lost if it wasn’t for Aaron; even though Olli drove off without us and left us alone, the kid seemed like he had a GPS system built into his head. It was amazing. I kept an eye on him the whole time and stayed close, though, since not only did I not want to lose him in traffic, but I’d wander off and die or something if I let him go.

This place was beautiful, too. It was so much sunnier than the dreary Claymore I grew used to. Even though it was a lot hotter, however, it still beat looking up at the sky and wanting to cry every time the sun got blocked out by the overcast weather. Already Miami was starting to grow on me.

Colorful stores and roadside stands danced past my vision as we walked along the sidewalks. There were a ton of ice cream shops and a million souvenir stands. Right before we left, Rai gave Aaron twenty bucks and said we could get something to eat or anything like that, and just then I was starting to feel my stomach rumble – I had a bowl of cereal for lunch at the studio. Back in Claymore I’d have to mooch off of Brendan’s lunch tray in school in order to get full, which didn’t always end so well, but hey. I was a growing boy.

In the midst of my daydream brought on by the slight culture shock, Aaron turned back to me, smiled, and said, “Do you like it here?”

“It’s actually really nice,” I told him. “It’s a lot sunnier than where I come from.”

“It’s awesome in the summer. ‘Cause all the girls come out, and they’re all super pretty,” he grinned cheekily.

I tilted my head in his direction. “Aren’t you a little young for that?”

“Maybe, I don’t know,” he laughed. “It’s a free country.”

I’m not sure why, but for a while it was sort of hard to start a conversation with Aaron. I just felt some sort of weird and awkward distance between us. And the obvious reason would be because I hadn’t seen the kid in seven years, but I think there was another one. Maybe it was that initial shock I was still in over learning how my band’s producer and record label owner had adopted him and didn’t even know I was his brother. I still think he knew. He had to know.

But I didn’t dwell on it. All that mattered to me at that moment was that I was walking with my brother in his home (not hometown, but actual home), and I was finally able to be with him.

I stopped and lightly touched his arm. “Hey, you wanna get some ice cream or something? I’m hungry.”

He said, “Uh,” and fished around in his pocket for the money Rai gave him. Then he took it out, flattened out the wrinkles on his leg, and handed it to me. “Okay, but let me lead. I know an awesome place me and Dad go to all the time.”

Not to mention that it was a little odd to hear him call somebody who he wasn’t biologically related to him “Dad.” But then again, I called Thomas and Sarah “Dad” and “Mom,” right? So I just told myself that it was normal. Completely normal. No matter how far from normal we were as people, what he was saying was totally conventional. My foster parents loved me like real parents. So did his, I guessed.

I made my mind drop the subject and instead I followed him as he led the way to the place he’d recommended.

I mean, I had questions for him, but they weren’t the kind of questions you’d ask your brother a few days after seeing him for the first time after nearly a decade. The kind of stuff I wanted to know was a little personal. I wouldn’t have been bothered if he asked me things – heck, I wanted him to dig deep – but he was nine. I’d never really been around kids that young and I didn’t know how he’d react. The questions would have to wait. Maybe when he was older I’d ask once and for all.

He had a hold of my arm and was dragging me through sidewalks and past beautiful people in summer clothes that looked like they walked right off of TV. I shook my head free of the stress I was putting on myself, and I held his hand.

“Are we there yet?” I asked jokingly.

“It’s on the next block up here,” he smirked.

The place he was talking about that he and Rai went to a lot was a little building that didn’t even look like it was open. It had a faded awning that swooped over the sidewalk in front of it, red and blue but dulled from rain. There wasn’t even a line in front of it. It was just a window in a building with an opening at the bottom for people to reach through and get their cones.

Aaron took off running, yanking me forward with him, and he stopped abruptly in front of the window, shouting, “Andy!” through it. “Get your lazy butt up here!” His head hardly even reached above the counter.

“I’m coming, kid, jeez!” said a voice from inside the shop. A guy with slicked-back hair and small plugs in his earlobes peered at me, pursing his lips in confusion. But then he looked back down at Aaron. “You got company, Aaron?”

He elbowed me in the hip. “Yup! This is my brother Luke.”

The guy looked totally taken aback by that statement, staring at me funny for a few seconds before he finally laughed, “Well, crap. I’ll be danged.”

“Me too,” I chuckled quietly.

“So what’ll it be, kiddo? The usual?” he said to my brother, hands on his hips.

Aaron nodded.

“And you, mysterious long-lost brother who I’ve heard so much about from him,” he turned to me, “what’ll you have?”

“Uh, hm…” I stared at the menu, a little amused by his title for me. “Double scoop mega chocolate blast. Ooh! With sprinkles.”

He smiled genuinely at the two of us. “Comin’ right up.”

When he turned away to fill our orders, I glanced down at Aaron. “How does he know…?”

“He’s a friend of Daddy’s,” he explained casually. “He’s on the label, too. But his band’s name is weird and I can’t pronounce it. They’re about to release an EP but they’re organizing a bunch of stuff down here right now.”

I paused. “Huh.” I don’t know why things seemed to dull down in craziness as time went on. Probably all of the weird junk that I faced already made it all seem dull in comparison.

The guy was back with two ice cream cones in his hairy, calloused hands and handed them to us under the glass. “Here you are, dudes. That’ll be six bucks.”

Aaron slapped the twenty bucks on the counter.

He gave us our change and said to us as we left, “Have an awesome day. Oh, and Luke, dude, you better come down here again sometime.”

I smiled at him over my shoulder. “I will.”

We took our cones and casually strolled along the sidewalks again, gazing at all of the people passing us who didn’t know us and never would. Something about it felt really strange. Like, I don’t know. I still couldn’t get used to the little fact that I was standing next to my brother, in the flesh. No matter how much I’d seen him in the recent times, it was just so…freaky.

“C’mon,” Aaron said, taking me by the hand with his free one, “there’s a dock we can sit at and it’s really nice.”

So I followed him again, lazily licking my ice cream and getting lost in the rush of this more-dead part of Miami. I’d pictured thousands of people crawling the streets. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy being in a quiet yet beautiful part of a pretty well known city, but I expected a little more pizzazz. We crossed a street, took a few steps up wooden stairs, and then I came face-to-face with at least a mile of boardwalk right in front of me.

“I used to ride my bike up and down the boardwalk with Mom,” he said aimlessly, beaming into the distance. “It was awesome.”

He led the way yet again. It was only a few steps until we reached a bench, and then I asked, “Can we sit? My ice cream’s melting…”

“Sure,” he smiled. He plopped down next to me as I sat.

I licked nonchalantly. The cone felt cold in my hands, contrasting with the dry heat that felt unusual to me. It was melting and dripping down my arm; Aaron handed me a napkin wordlessly, looking slightly bored.

“So,” I started. Then I stopped. “…Gosh. I don’t know where to start.”

He grinned at me again. “I know. Remember when I visited you in the hotel? I was kinda barfing words out. Which is bad, I know. But I couldn’t help it. And I’m kind of doing it again and I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” I elbowed him gently. “I wanna talk to you more about stuff but I don’t know really where to begin.”

Aaron stared at the sky in puzzlement. “Ask me…what my favorite band is.”

“Okay. What’s your favorite band?”

“The Jonas Brothers!”

I froze. “Oh…are you kidding…?”

He snorted into a laughing fit. “Sh’yeah, I’m kidding!”

“But seriously, who’s your favorite band?” I inquired.

He thought for a moment. “Um…uh…I like The Max. A lot. They’re really fun to listen to and they’re super fun to be around. But I really really like 311. Dad doesn’t like me listening to them, though ‘cause they do stuff that’s bad, like smoking. And so I just tell him my favorite band is Third Eye Blind if he asks.”

“Really? You like 311? That’s really neat,” I said. “I wouldn’t have expected that from a kid your age.”

“Yup! I just listen to their songs on CoolTube, though.”

“Ah. The Internet – there’s a way into everything on there,” I laughed nervously. Yeah, that was lame, I know. But he couldn’t tell.

Suddenly, he switched the subject and stared up at me with a blank face. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

I nearly choked on my ice cream. “Uh, no…why…?”

“Oh. Well, do you have a boyfriend?”

“No!” I smirked at him, but still looked on in horror. Sometimes he’d say stuff that was just out of the blue. I don’t think kids know what they’re saying half the time.

He snickered back and bit into the shell of his cone. “I watch you guys’ podcasts on Facenook and CoolTube and stuff. Your band. I think Joey has a crush on you.”

You know, that had been said to me so many times that at that point it didn’t make my stomach turn anymore. Most of the time it was Brendan that made fun of me for it. And Joey too, if he was in one of his moods and decided to touch me in my no-no squares. It didn’t bother me anymore. So instead, I just laughed and said, “I think so too.”

“You should be creepy right back to him. Just to be funny. That’d be hilarious,” he suggested, elbowing me knowingly. “Plus if he goes along with it, then you’d know he does have a thing for you.”

“I try not to over-analyze it,” I spoke truthfully. And kind of grudgingly. How did we get to talking about how Joey had a mancrush on me? And why was I discussing it with my nine-year-old little brother? “Anyways…well. Um. Is your ice cream good?”

Muffled by his napkin, he said, “Mmhmm.”

And the way his hair was highlighted by the sun, golden unlike the auburn curls I had, it sort of made him look completely different. Not like the giddy kid I was speaking to about seemingly random things, but a young kid who was shaken by something he didn’t have any control over and was uncomfortable every minute of it. He wasn’t smiling. He was just looking into the ocean and at the sun still blazing high in the sky, just a solemn look spread across his face.

“Hey,” I said to get his attention.

He looked up at me and still looked the same – different. “Yeah?”

“Do you…” I trailed off, finding the words caught in my throat. “Do you…ever think about Mom and Dad?”

He was quiet for a long time, just staring in the distance some more with his ice cream melting, plop plop plop, dripping onto the boardwalk. He didn’t say anything for a while. I regretted asking him that. It was totally random and not in the silly way like his questions were. It just wasn’t something you’d ask a kid nearly half your age.

I opened my mouth to apologize and say he didn’t need to answer it, but before I could, he told me, “Yeah, a lot. Every day.”

Things were silent between us. I nodded at him, silently letting him know that I did too.

“And I think about you every day, too,” he added, our eyes meeting. “More than them.”

Suddenly, I felt like a steaming pile of dog poo. This was my brother. I knew he existed. I knew how to use the Internet, sort of, and I had a phone. All my life, I could’ve tracked him down and found him. I could’ve met him before and caught up with him earlier, and then maybe I wouldn’t have been feeling so bad. But apparently, and this dawned on me then, something kept me from it.
“You’re on my mind a lot, too,” I said. “You and Mom and Dad. All the time.”

He was back to smiling, and he scooted closer to me. Then he looked like himself again. Like a kid should look – not weighed down with the weight of the world on their shoulders, just living normally like everybody should. That brief moment of foreignness disappeared. “I try really hard not to get sad about it ‘cause that’s kind of stupid to me, but sometimes I do.”

“Same here.” I didn’t want to make the weight worse. “When that happens, though, I just listen to music or joke around with my friends. That helps.”

“I jump on my bed and listen to 311. But then my dad yells at me for it and then I get in trouble,” he snorted, laughing. The way the word “dad” rolled off his tongue so effortlessly was admirable to me. Sometimes I still didn’t feel comfortable calling Thomas “Dad” and Sarah “Mom.”

“Ah, that’s life,” I grinned at him, tossing my napkin in the garbage can next to me.

He copied me and sat back down. “It’s cool though. ‘Cause I got a SkyPod last Christmas and I listen to them all the time and he doesn’t even know. I just like their music a lot. And I like Plaster Caster, too. I like your song ‘Skylight’ the best, even though it’s a slow song,” he rambled. “But I like slow songs too and that one is really pretty. I downloaded it on SkyTunes when you put your demo up. And I have a live version that I got off a video on CoolTube. That’s my favorite song right now.”

“Really? You like ‘Skylight’? That’s really weird,” I said, trying not to tease but doing it anyway. “You know, Soria wasn’t the only one who wrote that one. Me and Ren did, too.”

He’d met my bandmates the night we arrived in Miami, so I didn’t hesitate to drop their names. And apparently he remembered them, since his mouth dropped and he went, “That’s so cool. ‘Cause she normally writes all the songs, right? So then you guys worked together. That’s awesome.”

“I know.” Something inside of me was on fire, beaming.

Aaron reached into his pocket and pulled out a little kid’s cell phone, one of those cheap ones that parents give their kids to make them feel cool but are really worthless and only call like two people. He glanced at the clock on it. “Oh, geez, it’s five in the afternoon.”

“We wasted two hours?” I asked in mock disbelief.

“Aw, it wasn’t wasted. I liked it a lot,” he smiled.

I punched his shoulder softly. “Me too. We should do it more while I’m down here. And then you can visit me up in Claymore and I can drag you around town.”

“I’d like that.” He paused, nodding and still grinning at me. “Lemme call Olli. He’ll pick us up. He’ll know where we’re at.”

I kind of shuddered. Olli’s driving skills weren’t exactly top-notch. But it beat walking back to the studio where Ren and Soria were probably still at. (Brendan and Joey were most likely back at our hotel.)

That day was probably the best one I had in Miami. It was one of the weirdest, too, but in a good way. It was just nice, knowing he was there. Not so much that I’d unintentionally blown him off for seven years, knowing he existed, but knowing he was there. Knowing he was thinking some of the same things that I was. I wasn’t all over him getting sad over it, but at least it meant he was human. But he was a kid. Nine years old! I said it before – he shouldn’t have had to get bent out of shape over it all. It’s hard not to, granted. When I was his age, it still hurt like heck.

It was just nice, knowing I wasn’t alone walking in my shoes.