Lukey Kid

I was seriously right in the middle of doing the bass intro to “Time” when Brendan’s cell phone obnoxiously went off. It wasn’t like it seeped into the final track or anything, but it sure took me off guard and snapped my concentration. And since his ringtone was “Sussudio” by Phil Collins (he chose it exclusively because it was annoying), you can bet all of your money that it grabbed everybody in the studio’s attention.

I raised my eyebrows at him.

Soria glared.

Ren tilted his head.

Joey growled.

Rai sighed.

But Brendan ignored us and answered the call anyway, saying, “Hello?” into the receiver.

A few seconds passed. His face twisted up into an expression of confusion.

“Who is this?” he said.

His eyebrows were like fuzzy worms knitting across his forehead.

“I don’t wanna guess, I just wanna know who this is. D’you dial a wrong number or something?”

Suddenly the confusion melted away from his face and he brightened up, his mouth dropping to the floor. His eyes darted open.

“Are you kidding me?! Already?! It worked?” he gasped. “Hold on. Lemme put this on speaker so they can hear.”

He fiddled with his phone for a moment and laid it down on the coffee table in the middle of the room. I stopped strumming my bass and instead focused on the apparently breaking news that nonchalantly caught the attention of everybody in the room.

“Hey guys!” a girl’s voice gushed through the loud speaker phone. Her speech was a little slurred and she couldn’t quite pronounce the S sound. “Guess who?”

Joey looked at Brendan with a look of, “Oh my Jesus, are you kidding me?”

Ren and I said simultaneously, “Who’s there?”

“C’mon, guess!” they insisted after pausing.

“Lady Gaga,” Soria joked.

The girl laughed, a cute giggle that sounded oddly familiar in a way. “No, it’s Lindsay!”

“Whaaat?” Joey yelled, doubling over in his seat with his eyes wide open.

I just sat there with my arms limp, completely dumbfounded over the news. Lindsay was David’s girlfriend who helped organize a fundraiser last year to give a hand to emotionally struggling people in Claymore. It was my favorite gig that we’d ever done as a band. It certainly raised a lot of money for that foundation she was starting, the Speak Up! idea she discussed with Brendan’s family about.

She was deaf, too. I figured that out a few minutes after meeting her and how Brendan had to tell me, but she was pretty good at communicating since she could read our lips and write fast. So it didn’t matter to us, really. Still, it was one heck of a shock to hear her speaking to us when just a few months ago she couldn’t!

“Lindsay Strickland?!” I said in disbelief.

Rai didn’t look swayed. In fact, he looked kind of lost.

“In the flesh, holla! Or, in the phone,” she chuckled again. “Guess what?”

Joey threw his arms up. “Um, gee, I don’t know, you got that surgery?”

“Well, yeah, but that’s not what I’m calling about!” she added. By that point, everybody’s eyes were fixated on the phone on the coffee table as if it was her in person. “I finally was able to rent out that building in Orange Park since I just turned eighteen. And I keep getting donations and volunteers for it all and it’s just totally taking off! And Brendan, Joey, your mom wanted me to tell you that Steak got really fat, ha. Nobody’s able to walk her.” She took in a deep breath. “…Oh my God, I have so much I wanna tell you that can’t make it into one phone call!”

The way she spoke seemed off. Not every word was pronounced clearly and the way she said the hard T-sound was odd, to say the least. And the more she went on, the more noticeable her lisp became. It was understandable, though, and I didn’t point it out.

“Lindsay, that’s awesome,” Brendan grinned. The kid was beaming his heart out right then. “Even the Steak thing.”

“Yeah, but it’s all thanks to you guys for the most part. You and the other bands that were playing in Jacksonville a few months back,” she explained. “Oh my God! And speaking of that, I’m still recovering and stuff and getting used to everything, since I just had the surgery in May, but I can finally hear your music and it’s awesome!”

“Aww, shucks. You’re making us blush,” Soria fawned, teasing.

Lindsay had a smile in her voice. “It’s so weird to me still, and I don’t think that’s gonna go away, but I haven’t heard music since I was four and everything sounds amazing. I’m totally gushing to you guys about it and I’m sorry if I’m being annoying about it, but still! It feels so new. I’m a senior right now and things are so awesomely different.”

Brendan was still smiling and looking dazed, gazing into the distance at nothing. “Has the Speak Up! thing in the building officially started up yet?”

“We’re getting there. I got a ton of guidance counselors from a bunch of schools around here and other kids who want to help, and we’re really making it special. I’m taking speech classes right now and it’s cutting into that time, but they’re all making it even better than I planned and taking over and it’s just so amazing,” she continued, her sentences blurring into one another because of her excitement. “We even got a whole front-page article in the paper – bigger than the one we got with the show you guys did!”

“That’s awesome,” I said for lack of better words.

“I know, right?” she laughed.

All of us were grinning like idiots at the phone call. I guess I wasn’t the only one who took a blow to the imagination with that.

“So, anyways, since I know you guys are recording right now and everything, and I totally didn’t find that out by Facenook stalking, I’m gonna shut up now and let y’all do your stuff,” she went on. “I’m really sorry if I called in the middle of something important.”

“Nah, you didn’t,” I told her. It wasn’t her call that bugged me, but it was more Brendan’s ringtone that irked me.

“Good. Well, I’ll talk to you guys later, then. Bye!” she bid farewell, hanging up.

But before she left, we all synchronized a goodbye in a blur of loudness, hoping it wouldn’t kill her. Then the line clicked silent.

For a while, we just stared at each other in amazement. All of us were quiet, silently shocked by what just happened. It was completely random, completely awesome, and totally rad, but just one-hundred-percent unreal.

“Dude,” Joey killed the silence, “that was insane.”

“Why didn’t she call us earlier if she was able to hear months ago …?” Ren quietly trailed off, his look of disbelief paired with one of puzzlement. Everybody ignored that question.

Brendan leaned back in his seat with his still-present content grin. “I don’t know, but that is fucking awesome. I can’t even believe it, hardly.”

“I totally wasn’t expecting any of that,” Soria laughed airily, shaking her head.

“Me neither,” I agreed.

Another little quiet fell upon our shoulders. It lasted for about ten seconds until Brendan snapped his fingers, shot up from his seat, and exclaimed, “I know what we gotta do! We gotta make a bulletin for her!”

“What do you mean?” Joey asked, sounding uninterested.

“A video bulletin with all of us talking so she knows who the hell we are and who’s talking! And we’ll cram a bunch of music into it – good stuff! And we’ll dedicate it to her and talk about the Speak Up! thing!”

We all kind of looked at each other, not looking real confident about it at first. But then Soria shrugged and nodded.

“Well…where do we start?” Ren spoke up.

“Shit, I don’t know. I guess we’ll figure it out when we just do it once and for all,” Brendan snickered, crossing his arms contently.

And that was that, really. I’m not sure just how he figured that one out, but like a lot of things we did as a band, somebody sparked the idea and we went along with it. We tackled that thing headfirst, going into it full-speed with our heads pounding with ideas after a quick brainstorm.

Rai, sitting there at the mixing board while we shot off in our own little direction, was stuck with a spinning head and thousands of questions. He didn’t talk for a while, though, but when he did, he made sure his voice was heard.

“Guys. Just…what the hell is going on?” he’d said, putting his hands up and raising his eyebrows. “I’m sorry. I just wanna know. You’re pulling all this crap outta nowhere and I’m curious.”

He cut into our impromptu session so bluntly that Brendan decided to throw him a bone and explain all of it. From the beginning – from David and Joey’s spitefulness to the Jacksonville Landing concert. The story laid on so thick with Rai that by the end of it, he looked like he’d been on a rollercoaster and he just wanted to get off.

The room was dead silent after Brendan shut up.

“Jesus Christ. That’s the…second-freakiest thing I’ve ever heard,” he laughed insanely. None of us bothered asking what the first-freakiest thing he’d ever heard was, but I think I sort of knew.

- - -

“Here we have our lovely bassist,” Brendan said.

A camera was jammed into my face right when I was figuring out an acceptable bassline tweak to “Anonymous.”

My best friend, behind the camera he was holding in his hands, added, “Care to let us know your name?”

I smiled – partly for the camera and partly because I knew what he was doing. “Luke Ragan.”

He turned the camera around to face himself. “Well, there you have our bassist. Good ol’ Luke. He’s a chill dude and I think he’s banging my brother.”

“Brendan!” I cut him off. When the camera was pointed at me again, I put on my mean face. “Be quiet. Turn that thing off.”

“Ohhh, look, he’s blushing!”

I almost smacked it out of his hands, but I didn’t want to hurt him or the expensive-looking device. “Let me get back to recording.”

He clicked his tongue and recorded himself again. “He’s not denying it. Take a good look, Internet. This is the man – kid – who lights Joey’s fire.”

When I heard the word “Internet,” I almost lost control of my bladder. “Brendan!”

“That’s funny, I could’ve sworn I heard you shouting ‘Joey!’ last night,” he teased, running away before I could wrestle him.

And that was only the start of that epic video bulletin. I was just the first of the victims.

- - -

I stood on the familiar boardwalk I’d walked with Aaron on. The ocean was crashing into the shore below my feet, but that wasn’t the focus of this video. The focus was Brendan, who was standing against the wooden fence, the only things keeping him from falling to his death in the water.

I held the camera in my hands, the electronic feeling small and high-tech in my palm. When I pressed ‘record,’ I signaled for him to start talking.

“I’m Brendan! The super awesome drummer for Plaster Caster. Everybody loves me. We’re recording right now,” he paused, turning around and sweeping his arm across the horizon. I zoomed in to the view, catching sights of the beach. “We’re in Miami at Raimundo Asbury’s personal studio, laying down tracks for our very first album.”

“Tell us about this album, Brendan,” I said jokingly.

“I certainly will, Mr. Camera Man who also happens to be Luke.” He winked. “We’re working our poor asses off for this and really trying to make it a good CD. And it’s gonna be a good CD ‘cause we’re all awesome at what we do.”

“And just what do we do?”

“Well, I’m glad you asked. Because what we do isn’t just limited to music, my good friend. I like to think of us as pioneers…striving for musical salvation in a world filled with lame generic bands that spend more time applying makeup than writing songs. Holding the music industry by the reins and taking life by the horns!” He drew his hands into fists, punching them into the sky. His dark brown eyes had a look of adventure to them. “We’re not stopping with this album. After this, the world…will be ours.”

Off-camera, I shot him a funny look.

He continued. When he talked, he spit little flecks of saliva into the air, moistening the lens. “We will save the brain-dead teenie boppers from their doldrums fueled by useless pop-punk and screamo sh – er, poop, therefore rescuing another generation from the deadly grip of whatever band-of-the-week infests their hideous SkyPods and FlySpaces…”

Now he was just getting weird.

“Enough is enough! I wield these drumsticks in hopes of teaching America’s youth about the goodness of real music!” he pulled out of his butt.

“Brendan. Brendan! You’re rambling,” I whispered harshly.

Staring blankly at me for a moment, he blinked. The dazed look in his eye swept away.

I held out my hand and made a rolling motion, signaling for him to go on.

“Uh…wow. Hm. Yeah, that’s it,” he mumbled, turning red and rubbing his neck. “I’m Brendan. Yeah.”

I held in a laugh until I cut the camera off. Then I snorted real loud, thankful that it wasn’t being recorded. “Dude, what the heck was that? You just went all existential on me.”

“I’m passionate. What can I say?” he grinned crookedly.

- - -

“Here we are, in the studio recording our mega-hit ‘Anonymous,’” Brendan narrated, sitting on the couch in the main room of the studio. He had the camera aimed at Joey, but Rai and I were in the shot too, since I was doing the bassline again (I got a killer idea for it) and he was helping me perfect it.

“Our local mega-hit,” I corrected.

“Yeah. Whatever. Anyways, the kid sitting down with the rat’s nest for hair is Joseph Veins, my idiot brother. Say hi to the Internet, Joey,” Brendan ushered.

Joey held two thumbs up and grinned real big and corny so that everybody could see it. “I’m the most awesomesauce manager ever. Even though half the time I have no clue what I’m doing, I’m still amazing at it.”

“And you’re sleeping with Luke, correct?” Brendan poked.

My heart stopped and I started blushing madly, doing my best to glare at the camera and Brendan behind it. But it just came off as a constipated expression. It didn’t help that Rai was laughing his butt off, too.

“Oh, yeah. Totally. The earth quakes when we do it,” Joey winked, licking his lips. “Our safe word is ‘Kumquat.’ I never use it, though. I like the pain…”

“That’s very interesting, Joseph.” Brendan wanted to laugh to the point of insanity. I got the urge to wipe that grin off of his freckled face.

I groaned, rubbing my nose. “Joe, could you not talk about stuff like that? You’re only making us look weird…and my brother’s even starting to ask questions about us, too…”

“Whoa, whoa! Aaron knows about you and Joey?” Rai cut in, making slicing motions with his hands as if to literally cut in between us. “What’re you telling him?!”

I moaned some more and silently grow to resent Joey. He was a sweet kid, honest. But he doesn’t shut up when you ask him to and knows just the right buttons to push…

“I’m not telling him anything. It’s Joey that makes it seem like we’re a thing when we’re not,” I explained, shooting nasty looks over to our manager, who looked like he was on top of the world.

“Oh, don’t deny our love.” He brushed the hair out of his face, revealing his heavily lidded eyes.
Brendan kept on rolling the film. “Ah, a lover’s squabble…”

“I’d kick his ass right now, but when he’s all red like that he looks so cute.” He stuck his tongue out at me as if to say “I win.” “Besides, his denial only turns me on more…”

When did my life become a soap opera? I didn’t know. When did the whole Joey-either-flirting-out-of-amusement-or-for-real issue come about? I had no idea. There were a lot of things that confused me, but that took the cake. The thing was that I didn’t know whether to keep arguing with him about it, fueling the fire, or to just go along with it as a joke, which could have freaked me out or given him the wrong idea.

So I just sat there, writhing in my own misery while Brendan kept filming, Joey continued on about himself, making up things about sexual intercourse between me and him, and Rai just sat back, dumbfounded.

- - -

Poor Soria had the camera stuck in her face this time. She was experimenting with the echo sound effect that came out quite well in the soundproof room, trying to come up with a different sound for the twinkly guitars in “Skylight,” but that was interrupted by Brendan and his stupid camera.

And I know this because he dragged me in there with him just in case she had a temper and wanted to beat him up. He knew I’d be able to calm her down.

“And this lovely lady over here – not that she’s single or anything; she’s actually banging our singer – this is Soria Atkinson,” he’d explained, holding a hand out behind the camera to signal her speech.
She just stared at him with a deadpan look.

He ushered her to talk.

“Hi, I’m Plaster Caster’s guitarist and I was working on a song,” she sneered. “And it was going great, until somebody had to interrupt.”

I grabbed Brendan by his shirt. “Okay, let’s go.”

“No! We’re not done!” he insisted, still grinning like a monkey and rolling film. “Go on, Sor. Tell us about this song.”

I could tell she wanted to let loose every swear she ever learned from her sailor dad, but she bit her tongue. “It’s called ‘Skylight.’ It’s our slowest song on the album.” While she spoke, she strummed aimlessly on her guitar, something she always did when she had a guitar in her arms.

“Ah. Powerful words from a powerful lyricist. And may the Internet know, is Ren as good in bed as he is with a microphone?” Brendan prodded.

“Dude, what’s with the perverted questions?!” I exclaimed, the question pounding through my head at full volume.

But Soria, contrary to my predictions, just wiggled her eyebrows and smiled. “Oh, that’s private.”

Okay. Fine. Completely ignore my totally valid inquiry. It wasn’t like it was weird or anything. (Well, in junior high, Brendan always loved the “That’s what she said” jokes, but he didn’t go around asking about our sexual lives. Not that we actually had any, either.)

“I think you can spill a few things for the Internet. We’re all dying to know,” Brendan urged.

“Dude, we’re doing this video for Lindsay…I don’t think she wants to know how big Ren’s hoo-hoo is,” I reminded them.

A look of revelation swept over my best friend’s face. “Oh. Right. Hm.” He looked at the camera, shut it off, and started recording again. “Now, Soria. Uh…hm…”

A few minutes passed with nothing but Brendan grunting and trying to think.

“Damn it! There’s nothing interesting to say. I don’t want her being bored when she can hear us and see us at the same time. If the only interesting thing I can think of is sex, then so be it!” he ranted, aiming it more toward me.

“Soria, what kind of guitar is that? It’s very nice. How old is it? Boy oh boy, I just have a lot of questions,” I suggested, leaning over and putting a hand on Soria’s shoulder, subtly telling Brendan to shut up about the inappropriate things.

“Thank you, Luke. I do like my guitar.” Soria shot a sassy look at Brendan. “It’s a Gibson Melody Maker I got for my tenth birthday.”

Another silence fell.

“Boooring,” Brendan booed.

“Something tells me that Lindsay would be scarred for life if she heard us discussing sexy things,” Soria said flatly.

“Oh gosh, tell me about it. Joey already practically came out and said me and him were sleeping together,” I groaned, feeling my hand crash into my forehead. “It’s awful.”

She looked up at me, appearing quizzical. “That’s not true?”

I wanted to cry.

“No, it’s not true! Let’s get back to your clip, anyways. I’ve about had enough of talking about him,” I insisted, raising my voice to a higher volume than I was used to.

“This is good. Keep going. I want to hear the angst about your constant inner struggle concerning your attraction for Joey,” Brendan teased. He always knew the right things to say to make me even more disgruntled, just like his brother.

I just glared at him. That time I think I kind of got it right.

- - -

“And last but not least, this is Ren Hawker, our awesome singer who’s skinny as hell and has lungs like a porn star!” Brendan introduced, swinging the camera around to Ren, who was in the vocal booth with headphones around his neck.

Ren popped open the door and said, “Could we do it later? I’m busy.”

“Nonsense! We’re doing this for CoolTube and Lindsay. Now tell us just what you’re up to, O Singer!”

I facepalmed.

We exchanged a look of exhaustion.

“Um, I was in the middle of singing ‘Anonymous,’ which is kind of hard on my voice, and I was doing really great until you interrupted me…” Ren trailed off, passive aggression at its finest. He was good at that. Until, you know, something really bad came along and snapped his cool demeanor.

Brendan flapped his wrist. “Ah, c’mon! Relax. We’re doin’ a video here.”

Ren raised an eyebrow. “The video for Lindsay?”

“Yup.”

“Now?”

“Yeah.”

“In the middle of recording our best song?”

“Yeah!”

Ren sighed, taking his headphones off. “And…you don’t see anything wrong with that?”

He furrowed his eyebrows. “Heck naw!”

I elbowed Brendan. “Dude…there’s always other moments you can harass him.”

“Yeah. Like after hours,” Ren shrugged. He was annoyed, but didn’t show it too much.

Brendan eyed both of us, realizing he was outnumbered. I didn’t see a point to catching the members at their most stressful moments, and Ren was proof of that. Brendan’s plan had come to a snag. And while I did want to do that video bulletin, doing it during recording just wasn’t a great idea.

- - -

We did end up finishing that video. Brendan waited until after we were done for the day to take us out on the town, walking us all around the city (with Olli to guide us, of course) to explore the sights and sounds in video format.

“This is Miami, the furthest thing from a hicktown I’ll ever live!” he’d gushed, narrating the bulletin with passion.

He caught perfect scenes of the beach and the roadside shops. Bikini beauties and buff bods passed by us, looking into the lens like it was some sort of UFO. We carried on as a band, their manager, and the guy who got us discovered. Nothing mattered. And the more we went on, taking in the city’s essence, the more the video became not only a tribute to Lindsay but a treat for us.

We’d never really had the time yet to just sit back and just drink in the atmosphere we sure as heck didn’t get back in Claymore. There was something strangely exhilarating about it. I felt like a star even though we were still in the same state and nobody outside of the southeast knew who we were. Something about the neon lights and sea breeze must’ve altered my state of mind.

Brendan’s narrations blurred through my ears. I wasn’t really listening to them; I was focusing more on the setting and trying to soak it all up, making it all stick to my brain as much as possible. I never wanted it to end. I hardly even wanted to go back to Claymore. I wasn’t homesick like I was for a few days here, checking into the hotel under Olli’s name since we were all minors and couldn’t even live on our own technically. I was still a kid, still impressionable, and still easily shaken. But that night, it didn’t matter – I was still a kid. I could have the time of my life and didn’t have to worry about breaking my hip or having to eat my bran in the morning.

My head was buzzing. I wanted more of Miami, more of the newfound excitement I’d never experienced before with Plaster Caster.

And after all of that, the video turned out great. Even with the botched interviews of all of us. It was funny, and since Olli helped us edit it together with Doors Movie Maker, the funny parts were minced in with the breathtaking scenes of the city. Lindsay would love it. It was perfect. Everybody would love it.

At that point, I didn’t have any doubt in my mind that things would ever stray from perfect. Even when a few things didn’t go as planned, they resolved themselves. Even if Lindsay herself called later and asked if me and Joey were a “thing,” I shook it off and was dead serious and said we weren’t. (She emailed us about the video.)

Things were going well. But as a band, you gotta go through some real crap before you get to the good stuff.