Lukey Kid

“You’re off beat.”

“No I’m not.”

“Yeah, you were! See, you were one beat behind. You skipped a measure.”

“No I didn’t!”

Tensions were high in the heat of the recording. Being stuck in a little room with the same kids day after day wasn’t exactly comfortable. We’d already recorded “Anonymous” and “Time,” but at the moment the lyricist herself, Soria, was scrutinizing the drum track for “Be Still,” despite Rai’s insistence that everything was going fine. Even he seemed tired of everything.

“Look, I think I know how my own song goes,” she spat.

“It’s our song!” Brendan objected.

“Um, did you write it? Oh! That’s right! You didn’t!”

Ren hung back, not wanting to take sides. His face was red like he was embarrassed about his girlfriend. Poor kid.

I did the same. Brendan and Soria got in the most arguments lately, the two most outspoken members of Plaster Caster. Joey stepped in.

“Guys, shut up. We need to get this done.”

He was neutral but took a stand to calm them down. It rarely worked, but they got back to what they were doing grudgingly.

Olli walked in the studio with that infamous grin. He walked with a cool swagger around the room, taking notice of the thick air.

“Wow! This party’s dead!”

Ren, next to me, buried his face in his hands and pinched the bridge of his nose with a groan. I can’t say I didn’t feel the same.

“So what do you guys have so far?” Olli asked. Soria leaned back in her chair, folding her arms.

“For ‘Be Still,’ absolute crap,” she spat.

Brendan leapt from his seat with an audible growl, fire in his eyes. “Maybe you should just play the drums!” he yelled, slurring his words - something he always did when he was really ticked off.

Soria also stood up, her seat rocketing backward. “Maybe I should!”

Their crimson faces were centimeters apart. Words weren’t needed to express the loathing, and they didn’t dare use them. Now, I’m not saying a physical fight broke out - Brendan wouldn’t dare hit a girl, I think - but there were definitely thunderclouds that were on the edge of lightening.

He sighed, trying to rid himself of the anger. All that air flushed into her face, and she backed away.
“God! Brush your teeth!”

Brendan lunged like he was going to strike her, but it took me to keep him from actually hitting her. I grabbed him around the waist and pulled him back, and he growled and did everything he could to loosen my grasp – unsuccessfully.

“Dudes, chill! Seriously. Calm down - we’re not gonna get anything done if you can’t cooperate.”

Ren sucked in a breath through his teeth, as if to say, “Oh, man. You do not know what you just did.”

All eyes were on me.

Brendan snickered and made a shooing motion. “Stay outta this. What do you do, hit 3 notes a song? You don’t know nothing.”

Soria shot the same glance at me, but was silent.

To put it lightly, I got pissed off when I heard things like that. Bass playing was a part of my life. When someone dissed it, they dissed me.

But after I came up with a decent comeback, it was too late. The others were lost in the mixing board, trying to edit the drum track.

“I’m going back to the hotel,” I declared.

- - -

Our suite was only half a mile from the studio. For me it wasn’t a huge walk. I felt uneasy walking the streets alone. I wasn’t deep in the city, either - it was a highway with no sidewalks, trees surrounding both sides.

I wondered what was happening when I wasn’t there.

Before we were flown to Miami, we never fought. Even when we recorded the demo, nobody got mad. I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about what could have made us so hostile. And not all of us were getting riled up, either; Ren and I just hung back and stayed out.

I could understand Soria getting mad once a month, duh, but with her and Ren dating, if they hit a really rough patch…it could have meant the end. I had to remember that as we battled each other, we battled puberty, and adolescent anger comes and goes.

Brendan and Joey could break up the band if they tried. They had a way of making people mad, apparently Soria. She liked to voice her opinion. I figured that out in seventh grade whenever she muttered, “idiot” whenever he did something slightly off-key.

There were so many things left unsaid that I needed to know. Did she and Ren fight? He was so shy; he probably let her walk all over him. One of these days, he’d need some amount of bravery to survive. When they met in the beginning of junior high, those kids were tighter than tight, the closest pair of friends I’d ever met. It would hurt both their relationship and friendship if they fought.

I sighed heavily.

The past week was pure studio work – all of those finishing touches I dreaded. It was all about perfection. I’m serious - we were talking about strings on “Common Sense” and a choir on “Skylight,” and Rai was working his fingers to the bone finding violinists and recruiting other bands to lend backing vocals. If a chord was muffled or out of tune, we were urged to repeat the part as many times as we needed.

So naturally, I picked up the habit of yawning a lot.

After a while, my eyes adjusted to the dark. Every so often a car would zoom by and I’d move out of the way and never look back. No streetlights, either. Only the relief of the headlights kept me moving.

Since the lazy day on the boardwalk, I hadn’t met up with Aaron, either. It was like meeting an angel in a dream and then getting woken up by a bucket of cold water. I prayed that someday, I’d get a chance to be a brother again.

Yeah. That’d be cool.

Out of nowhere, I felt the rumble of a vehicle erupt from behind. My bones rattled as too soon, the sea of light trailed on around my silhouette. This car was going too fast.

My eyes grew twice in size.

I froze.

My body took over.

I leapt to the side, rolling down the hill until I was sure I was out of danger’s way. The squeal of brakes pierced the air, making me wince, then the car stopped. After the sound of a door slamming, choruses of “Dude” and “Shit” arose from the silence.

I wasn’t hurt. I was fine. Thank God.

A figure crept down the hill, but I could barely see him in the weak moonlight. He kneeled down, grabbing my shoulder to roll me around while shaking me to make sure I was conscious.

It wasn’t necessary; I was already awake.

But my heart could have burst into pieces when I saw the man’s face.

“Y-you-you’re—YOU’RE--”

He smiled and snorted, pulling off his purple shades.

“Barrett. Aaron Barrett.”