Breakout (7 page)

“What?” I say. “You said five things. That’s five things.”

“ ‘Every weapon needs a master’?”

“That’s what the Lamborghini website says! Look it up!”

“This is really all you wish for?”

I want to tell her,
Obviously not, read number four! I have
giant wishes but they’re not going to happen! And I thought about doing it like that but you didn’t give me time.…

But what’s the point? So I just say, “Yep.”

It comes out pretty obnoxious. I know it does. But I feel like, whatever.

Keenan is two tables over and he hears me and it makes him laugh. And that makes a laugh bubble up in me. As it’s happening I know what it’s going to lead to but I can’t help it. Suddenly I’m laughing and everything feels hilarious, or pointless, or maybe those are the same right now but I can’t stop the urge.

“Okay, Anthony, that’s enough,” says Ms. Rosaz. “Now you’re distracting others. You’re getting a zero for class participation today. Please leave the room and finish your work in the library or you’ll get a zero for the assignment too.”

“Why do I need to leave?” I ask, but I can’t help cracking up a little more. And this makes Keenan laugh even harder, and then I’m going off more too and I swear I don’t know why that happens sometimes, it just does! And I know I should stop but it also feels like a huge relief, like it’s the only way to cope with this dumb situation, even though I know how mad it’s making Ms. Rosaz.

Clara is leaning back and pulling her notebook closer to her, like she’s terrified that my bad-student disease might spread to her.

Ms. Rosaz raises her voice. “Because you’re not doing your work and you’re being a disruption to the class—”

I cut her off, though, because now everyone in class is
watching and who even cares? I have no ground left to defend, so why not just say what’s really on my mind? “If you had just left me alone it would be fine!” I say, but I am also grabbing all my stuff and heading for the door because honestly the library sounds way better than being here.

I hear Ms. Rosaz sigh, another person exhausted by Anthony. “It’s the end of the week and neither of us wants me to send an email home about this. This assignment is being graded, so I still need you to get it done,” she says to my back as I walk out, as if I didn’t hear her the first
hundred
times she mentioned it, like I’m deaf or something.

Under my breath, I mutter what I really think of this assignment.

Meron and Katie are the only ones close enough to hear what I actually say, and it makes them sit up, and Meron says, “Ooh!”

“Anthony, please tell me I didn’t just hear what I think I heard,” barks Ms. Rosaz from across the room.

I spin around. “What?” I say, playing innocent.

“That is not School-Appropriate Language,” she says.

But I have had
enough
of everything and so I say right back, “Who cares about ‘School Appropriate’?” I make air quotes around the words. “You guys treat us like we’re in kindergarten!”

I can tell that I have Ms. Rosaz really fired up because her eyes kind of bug out and actually my heart is racing now too but it’s too late because we are in it.

“It is school policy,” she says, trying to keep her cool, but I can tell she wants to just let loose and scream at me, “not because you are kindergartners but because that kind of language can be hurtful.”

“I didn’t say anything!” I reply. I should stop there … “But if I did,” I keep going, “so what? I heard that scientists found out that swearing is good for you because it helps you feel better faster.” This makes Katie and Meron and Keenan and a couple of other kids totally crack up even more, but it’s actually true! I overheard my dad telling my mom about the article and I looked it up. “It was in
Scientific American
,” I say, “and last time I checked,
Scientific American
was way more official than the Catharine Daly Student Conduct Code.”

“Okay, Anthony!” Ms. Rosaz yells, so furious that her voice cracks. “Library.” She shoos me away with this look on her face like, why did she ever get into teaching in the first place?

“Fine.”

I go to the library and Ms. Daniels points me to a table. At first I just sit there and steam because Ms. Rosaz sucks! Why couldn’t she just give me a chance? And then she totally dismissed my point about swears!

These teachers are all the same. I think the
real
reason
they
don’t let us swear is because they’re scared of us kids being able to fully express ourselves, and they don’t want us to have all the tools at our disposal because then maybe we’d be able to fight back and make our points. Maybe then we’d be too strong for them. We’d overwhelm the prison guards and take over.

Though maybe I
was
making a scene in class. But it didn’t have to go like that! She could have just left me alone.

After a while I calm down. I think about maybe doing the stupid assignment, but I still don’t feel like it. I end up doodling, drawing
The Rusty Soles
in metallic lettering, but that makes me think about Sadie and Arts Night again and there’s really nothing left to think about with that sucky topic.

I put my head down on the desk and zone out. After a few minutes, my thoughts return to the song. It runs along in my brain, Killer G to Flying Aces. I compare it to some of the bands I like, like the Kneebacks or Green Day II. Then I realize that the song sounds the most like something by SilentNoize. I can kinda hear Jake Diamond in my head and now I start to wonder what kind of melody he would sing over it. I try to imagine him singing, and I start to hear a melody floating over the tune. And more, I hear some words.

I start scribbling them down before I forget.

I work on making the rhythms similar, and the rhyming …

When I look up I find that almost ten minutes have gone by like nothing. I look back at the lyrics:

Whoa
, those are kinda good. And they fit the melody just right. Lyrics to our song. This is pretty cool. When I’ve written lyrics before, they’ve never felt this … complete. Or serious.

Real feeling is what I mean. Honest.

And wait, if I have lyrics, then … could I sing them? I mean, maybe I could. Sing them. If I wrote more. And we need a singer.…

Could that be me?

Then we could still play Arts Night. With me lead-singing. I wouldn’t be replacing Sadie or taking over the band. It could just be this one time.

The thought makes me nervous. Or maybe excited. It’s like both.

The bell sounds. I head out of the library quick. We’re already a few minutes into social studies before I realize that I probably should have gone back to LA after class and showed Ms. Rosaz what I wrote. Except I didn’t actually write anything. And she didn’t even come find me at the end of class so it probably doesn’t matter. It’s Friday afternoon anyway. She
probably didn’t follow up on it because she wants to get to the weekend just as much as me.

One more class and I can get out of here and figure out if these lyrics would really work, and if we have a chance to save Arts Night.

The day ends and Keenan and Skye and I are headed into the center of Ballard when it starts to rain hard. I haven’t told them about the lyrics yet. I’d tell Keenan if it was just the two of us, but when is it ever anymore?

Also, over the past hour, my excitement about the words has been turned down a few notches by doubt. How could I really sing onstage and pull off playing guitar? And how do I know those lyrics are even any good? They might be totally stupid.

Part of me is still a little worried that Ms. Rosaz sent an email home about our fight in class, like she threatened. It would be some kind of stupid luck if the very day that I maybe find a way to save Arts Night, I get in trouble at home and lose the chance to play it in the first place.

The wind kicks up as we walk, and it starts pouring. None of us have umbrellas, because everybody knows you do
not
use an umbrella in Seattle, and Keenan and Skye are huddled under his jacket, which leaves me walking basically alone. The rain feels like strafing fire from the Normandy beachhead
and I need a raincoat like a GI needs a sulfa packet, but of course I’m just in my sweatshirt again and somewhere Rosalie is shaking her head.

Our plan is to get mochas, but we haven’t decided where yet, and now it’s so wet and we are passing the first Starbucks, so I say, “Let’s just go in here.”

But Skye is like, “No. Way. We are not going into the evil corporate beast.”

“It’s pouring!” I say.

“Oh, okay,” Skye snaps, throwing up her arms, “then after this, why don’t we just hop on a plane and go to the developing world and kill some babies? Because that would basically be the same thing.”

See what I mean?
Ninja!

Keenan just laughs, maybe because he knows what she’s saying is crazy. On a different day, I might join him. Instead all I can do is scowl.

“What—it’s true!” Skye snaps at him.

“They also wouldn’t display your Winky donation jar,” Keenan points out.

“Fine!” I say, all extra loud. Ugh! I feel like pointing out that everything we’re wearing and our backpacks and probably the air we’re breathing was all made in a developing country so what’s the point of deciding that of all the criminal corporations, you’re going to boycott Starbucks? Why couldn’t it be somewhere else that’s maybe less convenient to our walk home in this sucky weather?

It’s another three blocks of bitter rain before we get to
Jupiter, the indie coffee shop that’s all about how they only buy beans that were grown responsibly in the shade of a rain forest surrounded by toucans and geckos, and no, no fossil fuels are ever used and yes, all the profits go to saving whales. And all that leads to mochas that are kinda silty. Skye says that’s just because they’re more
real
, but that’s the annoying thing about
real
and the reason why
fake
was invented in the first place. There would have been no silt at the evil Starbucks.

But Jupiter does have good baked stuff. And with everything I’m feeling inside, I add a chocolate-chip espresso muffin to my order. It’s not what I should do. It’s giving in to the blood sugar saboteurs. And yes, I know that the biggest danger with junk food is to use it like comfort food to make you feel better, and I
know
, just like the food scientists do, that all the sugar and sodium can trip you out like any other drug and on and on, but I also know that knowing all that is not going to stop me from getting an espresso muffin right now, because it is going to rock and I am just not going to tell my parents.

We sit down on a couch along the wall. Skye joins us a second later, after grabbing the Winky donation jar that Jupiter let her put by the counter. It’s a glass jar taped to a small poster with a photo of Winky on Meron’s finger and a brief explanation of his situation written in bright pink. She pulls a single dollar out, then tips the jar to pour out the coins.

“So,” says Skye as she does this, “what are you guys gonna do now that Sadie’s—”

“Watch out!” I shout, because from my angle I can see—

The mocha sludge lurking on the bottom of the jar, which
pours onto Skye’s hand and down into her lap. It’s not much, like someone dumped their silty leftovers in there, obviously to be a jerk. Dark blotches stain Skye’s jeans. She gazes down at the soaked quarters and pennies in her palm, then glares around the room.

“Hipsters are hypocrites,” she mutters.

Keenan darts up for napkins. “A couple people donated,” he says when he gets back, in classic boyfriend mode.

“I bet if Winky was a panda you’d have like a thousand dollars,” I add, in less helpful ex-boyfriend mode and also maybe because I’m still annoyed at my extra level of wet from walking here.

But then I feel bad because Skye is actually crying as she dabs at her jeans. “You try to make a difference,” she says, “to stand up for someone without a voice, and … somebody does this.”

I almost point out that this someone without a voice is just a sparrow but I know enough to know better. Also, I’m halfway through my muffin and the pure bomb of sugar is smoothing over my thoughts like a knife over frosting.

“So yeah, Mr. Darren says we probably have to wait until the Spring Arts Night,” says Keenan, once Skye seems to have cooled off. “Sadie might be kicked out of Rock Band Club permanently too, which means we’ll need a new singer.” He sounds really disappointed.

And then, maybe it’s just the sugar talking, but I hear myself saying … “Maybe not.” I dig through my backpack and yank out my writer’s notebook. Even as I’m doing this I feel
a wicked sword of nerves stab up from my guts. Am I really going to show them?

“What do you mean?” Keenan asks.

“I, um …” I flip to the lyrics. Yes, I’m gonna do it. “Here, look at this.”

Keenan and Skye study my notebook. “
That’s
what you wrote for the wish list?” says Skye, seeing my lame list from class. She starts to laugh. “No wonder Ms. Rosaz was pissed.”

“Not that part.” I point below. “Here.”

“What’s that?” Keenan asks.

“Is it a poem?” Skye asks.

“No. Lyrics,” I say, feeling a flash of heat and cold sweat at the same time. “Like, for the Killer G song. Maybe.”

“Oh …,” says Keenan. I can’t tell if it’s the good “oh” or the bad one. “Well, how do they go?”

“What do you mean?”

“Ooh, yeah,” says Skye. It’s like the two of them have been going out for so long that they’ve grown a uni-brain. “Sing it for us!”

“No!” I say. “But what do you think of them?”

“I don’t know,” says Keenan. “They could be pretty cool, I guess. Have you tried them out on the tune?”

“No. I just wrote them.” I can’t tell: is Keenan asking because he’d want that or not?

But then he says, “Record them tonight and send me the file. I’ll put bass on it. If it’s cool we could even put it on BandSpace.” He sounds like he means it.