Someone out There Loves You

As fun as smacking Madison was, I spent the rest of the day extremely anxious. See, the whole situation would’ve been easier if Madison was your chick flick catty-but-stupid cheerleader. But as it was, she was the president of Barrington High’s esteemed drama club. Honestly she was a shit actress and seemed to always snag the leads in the musicals despite her ear bleeding voice. But I guess you can get just about anything when Daddy’s in charge of the biggest hospital in Chicago.
Considering Madison’s flair for the dramatic, I spent a lot of time that day looking over my shoulder. My gut instinct was that she would send Darren. But she was fucking Madison. And with her, “scary bitch” is an understatement. Maybe she was in the mood to pulverize me herself.
But by some miracle I made it home in one piece (minus the morning beating battle scars.) Like any normal teenager, I walked through the door, threw my bag and jacket on the couch, and went straight to the kitchen to devour the first thing I saw.
And lucky for me, that was Goldfish and Dr. Pepper.
Who says there isn’t a God?
I popped the tab and raided the cabinets for any kind of pain killer when from behind me I heard, “I swear, if you keep that up, I’m putting you on a vegetable diet.”
“Hi Mom my day was fine I did nothing in school how was your day?”
“Har har,” she said, and kissed my forehead.
Meet my mom, Claire. Leading real estate agent in Chicago and the surrounding area. She worked mostly in the city and different suburbia clusters. Odd thing is we look nothing alike; Mom has long blond hair, green eyes, a slim figure, and spent her teenage years between modeling and Bohemia. I have black hair, brown eyes, an awkwardly proportioned figure, and would become a model the day it snowed in Nigeria.
“You’re home early,” I said to Mom.
“Yeah,” she shrugged. “But this yuppie couple I worked with this morning pissed me off so much that I faked sick and came home. The wife was a bitch but she clearly wore the pants in the marriage. Her hubby was the biggest pansy-ass I’ve seen since Chuckie on Rugrats, although Chuckie was far cooler than that sweater-vested loser.”
I busted out laughing, forcing a little Dr. Pepper up my nose. One of the best things about my parents? More than half the time you can totally tell that, deep down, they never really grew out of adolescence.
“So hey, you working tonight?” Mom asked.
I nodded. “Six to nine. TGIF.”
“Gig?”
I rolled my eyes. “The unfun kind during dinner hour.” Mom crumpled her mouth to the side and nodded in understanding.
“But,” I said, “We get to have fun at nine thirty. I’ll probably be home late, but before midnight curfew.”
She smiled in approval. “Well, do you want a ride in? I’m meeting some old friends for some Starbuck’s at six thirty, so it’s perfect. I can pick you up too. Figured it’d be better than cab fare.”
“A ride there would be great. But Mark’s already planning on giving me a ride home tonight, so you don’t have to wait around.”
“Awesome,” Mom smiled.
As we both dove for the Goldfish (I was amused by Mom’s hypocrisy), I asked, “What old friends?”
“Hmm?”
“You said you were meeting some old friends for coffee. Who?”
Mom’s face took a stiff expression that I’d never seen her wear before. And considering she was my mom, I knew all of her facial expressions, so it was kind of weird to see this one.
“Just some friends in the city for a visit,” she said, her voice hard. “People I haven’t seen in a while.”
I nodded. Mom and I were normally honest with each other, But when she was vague, you didn’t ask questions.
But still, it bugged me. I knew all my parents friends! Or so I had thought up ‘till that conversation.
So why so secret?

I opened the stage door and was overwhelmed with the action. Which was ironic. Our first set of the night, during the dinner hour (six thirty to seven thirty), was to be completely mellow songs of our choosing. But there was a shouting match going on somewhere.
“We said we were gonna play Good Riddance by Green Day and Emotionless by Good Charlotte.”
“Yeah, we are!”
“Then what’s this about Disenchanted? Our My Chem song was gonna be The Ghost of You!”
“Dude, people want to feel relaxed when eating their dinner, not depressed.”
“Because Disenchanted is so relaxing, Levi.”
“You know, you can just shove it--”
“Whoa there, fellas.” I cut into the argument.
Now, meet the other two members of Rush and Ruin. First, Levi Pettington. Our amazing bassist and a dropout college student. He dropped out a year ago when he was 18, and his folks kicked him out. So he went to live with his best friend--our rhythm guitarist, Blake Austin. But we call him Monster; it’s rare you’ll ever find him without a can of Monster at least nearby. He drinks it before and during every show.
They were a lot alike. They both dropped out of the same college, shared the same birthday, lived together, agreed on just about everything musical. But for two best friends, they could be pretty opposite. Levi was a tactless and not-so-subtle ladies man with the lamest pick up lines in the world (“Hi, the voices in my head told me to come over and talk to you.”) Monster’s the gentlemanly type, but he’s a terrible klutz with women, especially when it comes to pick up lines (“So…you’re a girl, huh?”) Yet somehow, when they played together, it was mindfucking magic.
“What’s the problem here?” I said to them.
Levi pointed at Monster. “He wants to play The Ghost Of You as one of the dinner set songs. And we should play Disenchanted. It’s more mellow and--”
“No it isn’t!” Monster yelled. “Plus, we’d get fired because it says ‘goddamn’ in it--”
“Wow, pussy, how do you play punk music?”
“LEVI PETTINGTON, JUST GO--”
“OKAY.” My shout shut them both up. I felt a little swell of pride in being able to out-yell two guys who were both 5 years older than me.
“Look, we’ll compromise for a My Chem song. Mellow that you can both agree on.”
“Like what?” Monster said.
“Like…” I gave it a moment of thought. “Oh, we’ll play Cancer.”
“We don’t have a piano,” Levi pointed out.
“Mark can pick it out on his guitar.”
Levi and Monster looked at each other. And when they smiled, I gave and exhale of relief that I had stopped the fight.
“Nice one, Clayah.” I turned around and smiled up at Yoda.
The final member of Rush and Ruin is technically not a member. He’s our manager, Pete Bennett. But they day we walked into his office at The Firm Management he wasn’t expecting us. We walked in to find hi tugging at a sticking file cabinet drawer, his sagging-pants’d ass flashing boxers emblazoned with Yoda and a light saber. The best part of it was probably the text on the boxers; “Protect your buttocks, I will.” From that day on, he was just plain Yoda to us.
“Hey, dude, what’s up?”
“Not much.” He handed me a piece of paper. “Set list for dinner hour. Then Joey said you gotta wait for an hour and a half ‘till you’re normal set. The guys and I can whip up another set list in that time. And eat.”
“Raw,” I smiled. “But are we still gonna do the stunt on The Bird And The Worm?”
“For sure,” Yoda said.
The downside to having to play sets at The House of Blues was that we had to play all covers during dinner hour, and at least two or three covers during our late night set. We wished we had more time to play our own stuff, but it was better than having no shows at all.
What the whole band loved to do was stage stunts. We had a huge list and a bunch of props-- but I shall never give away the secrets (Mwahaha).We did some stunts during our own songs, but we did them mostly during covers to make it more fun. Covering songs by artists you love is fun in the garage days, and maybe playing one cover during big shows, but having to play them constantly gets old.
Oh, by the way. Joey is Drew’s uncle. Drew’s entire family is pretty musical, and Joey worked the whole dining aspect of The House of Blues. He let us play sets if we paid him half of what he would normally charged for stage time. Everyone else had a job, but since I’m fourteen it’s harder for me to get a job. So, I bus and wait tables for minimum wage. That covers part, and he pays us to play dinner hour. But in the end that money just goes right back to him…
It’s an odd setup, but it works for us.
A stagehand poked her head through the curtain and looked at me and Yoda.
“Ten minutes,” she snapped, and disappeared.
“Go get your stuff,” Yoda told me. “And look for Mark, he’s missing again.”

With the five of us in our places and Yoda smiling at us offstage, we heard the overhead voice:
“Ladies and gentleman, please welcome one of Chicago’s local bands to play for you as you dine tonight. Introducing, Rush and Ruin!”
The curtain rose, bright colored lights struck, and a small applause came for us. Even though people hardly noticed we were there because they were too absorbed in their own conversation, I still always got a little flutter in my stomach when curtain went up. I had to remind myself that I’d done this a thousand times.
Deep breath…. Swallow…Sing.