Lemonade Mouth Puckers Up (17 page)

I took a step back. And then another. She was
talking as if I’d already decided what to do. To me it felt like the whole room was rocking. All I wanted was to get out of there. I backed away and ran to my room, slamming the door. That’s where I still am. I’m furious, but I don’t know who to be furious at. Brenda? My mother? You? I don’t know. There are way too many moving parts here. It’s too much to wrap my mind around
.

My entire life is exploding and the only thing I understand is that I don’t understand anything
.

After the
American Pop Sensation
thing, we had a small cult following all over the country. It wasn’t
huge
or anything, but for the first time we had a fan base that went beyond the borders of Rhode Island. And yet, just like after the lemonade machine incident at the end of the recent school year, once again most of the media attention focused on the controversy instead of our music, with headlines like, “The Lemon That Roared” and “Rhode Island Kids Stand Up To ‘Cruel’
APS
Judges.” I kept remembering how Mrs. Reznik was always reminding us that it’s the
music
that matters above all else. True, our performance got rave reviews in a few small music magazines and blogs. A handful of independent college radio stations even started playing our songs. But for the most part, people thought of us as a novelty story for the slower-news summer months.

I have to admit, as exciting as things were getting, that part was kind of a disappointment.

We were all at Bruno’s Pizza Planet one afternoon, for example, listening to Mo read an article from the
Cleveland Chronicle
. It didn’t even say that we were a band. It only referred to us as “five high school students with a penchant for civility.”

“Typical!” Stella said when Mo finished. “What did they think we were doing up there in the first place, loitering? Didn’t they notice our instruments? Didn’t they hear our song? Why didn’t they write
that
?”

When we mentioned this to Mr. Decker he didn’t think it was a big deal. “Don’t worry,” he told us. “Any press is good press.”

I tried to believe it, but it wasn’t easy.

Now, there’s been a lot of heated speculation about this next part, about how and why the events that followed could ever have happened in the first place. The thing to keep in mind is that we were all brand-new at this, and there was a lot of other distracting stuff happening in our lives. Even though my dad was working like a dog, his wiener business was struggling. Turns out my father was great with people, but he might have overestimated their willingness to eat wieners for lunch every day. So now he was asking for a lot more of my help. Mo was doing extra hours at her family’s store, Stella was off in her own little world with Rajeev, and Charlie was on some weird mission he’d devised for himself, spending all his free hours trying things he didn’t normally do, like baking cookies, rollerblading or building gigantic castles out of sand and shells. “There’s something missing, Wen,” he told me as he filmed a video of a cloud drifting across the sky, “something I have to figure
out. How am I going to find what I need if I don’t look for it?”

Typical Charlie. I would have laughed if I didn’t think he was serious.

As for Olivia, I knew something was up with her even though she was still refusing to admit it. I felt this weird distance between us, and it was beginning to bug me. If she was mad at me, why didn’t she just say so and tell my why? Why did she have to keep herself so bottled up? I know it sounds selfish, but I didn’t understand, and I was starting to lose my patience.

So yeah, maybe we should all have seen the trouble coming, but I think we were each a little blinded by other things and ended up getting swept away in the moment. And anyhow, it wasn’t like any of us had a crystal ball.

One day the five of us gathered in Stella’s living room for yet another video link with Mr. Decker. He told us he had some big news. Chet Anders, the television talk-show host, had called him. His show, which aired late at night and was known for its edgy, anything-goes attitude, had been featuring the clip of our appearance on
APS
, playing it over and over again for comic value, and it was getting such a great reception from viewers that Chet had invited us to be guests for an interview on the show.

“And that’s not the only big news,” Mr. Decker told us as the monitor filled with his cigar smoke. “Zephyr Stick, the lip balm company, wants to sponsor you. They like the band’s attitude and the image you can project for them, so they want to feature you in an upcoming ad campaign. I’m telling you, this is big. It’ll go a long way toward solidifying Lemonade Mouth’s national presence. It’ll also set you up for even more sponsorships going forward.”

I glanced around. Everybody looked stunned.

“The best part is that you kids won’t have to do anything for this. The company already saw the band photos we took a few weeks ago, and they’ve picked one they want to use. It’s all upside, guys. A no-brainer.”

Stella’s boot tapped as she brushed back a strand of her pink hair. “Wait, let me get this straight. They want to use us in an ad for
lip balm
? Is that really such a good idea?”

I was wondering the same thing.

“Um, this is only a question,” Charlie asked, looking just as uncertain, “but, like, whenever anyone thinks of Lemonade Mouth, do we really want them associating us with chapped lips?”

Mr. Decker chuckled and took another puff on his cigar. “Guys, guys … you gotta be more forward-thinking than that. This is the music business—the real world. I didn’t make the rules, but we have to play by them if we want to get ahead. A sponsorship means money for building the band’s future. And don’t worry. This ad is going to be young. It’ll be hip. It’ll be fresh.” He leaned back in his chair. “You kids are going to love it. Trust me.”

After the video link ended, the five of us had a long, tense discussion. On the one hand, this was starting to feel suspiciously like compromising on our ideals, and Stella wasn’t the only one who felt uneasy about that.

“We’re a
band
,” Mo mused aloud. “We make music. Shouldn’t
that
be what we’re all about?”

I admit, I might have been the one who pushed hardest for us to go ahead with the deal despite the uncertainty in my gut. “Sure,” I said, “but you heard what Mr. Decker told
us about the industry and our future. What if this is our one and only chance to make it big?” I could see it on everyone’s faces that they were worried about the same thing.

It wasn’t an easy decision. In the end I think the argument that tipped the scales was that this was what Earl Decker advised us to do. This was a guy who knew the music business inside and out and had guided countless other bands to stardom. If we weren’t going to follow the instincts of the legendary Earl Decker, whose instincts were we supposed to follow?

As Olivia likes to say, nothing ever happens without a reason. It’s easy to look back now and second-guess what we did, but believe me, things can be clearer in hindsight than they were at the moment they occurred. Don’t forget that this was a whole new world for us and we were still learning. We were like toddlers playing with a bowl of spaghetti: we didn’t know what we were doing, so in a way, it shouldn’t be surprising that we ended up making a mess of things—a mess that soon landed all over us.

Now and then everybody does things they later regret. We’re only human, so it’s unavoidable that each and every one of us is going to screw up once in a while. Sometimes we’ll recognize our lapses in judgment right away. Sometimes not. Rarely in life, though, do the results of our bad decisions appear before us in the form of a forty-eight-foot-wide full-color image posted against the morning sky for all to see, making the mistake so obvious that it cannot be ignored or denied.

This was one of those rare times.

It was early on a Wednesday morning. My mom called me from the highway, waking me from a much-needed restful sleep. She was driving into Providence to meet a Brown University research student but had suddenly felt an urgent need to grab her cell and shake up my world.

“You’re not going to believe this!” her voice buzzed through the phone. Still mush-headed, I rubbed my bleary eyes and took in the numbers on the clock: 8:53 a.m. I feel there is a sacred rule that people should not be disturbed when trying to sleep in on their day off, but my mother continued, undaunted. “I was taking the ramp onto Route 114 when I looked up, and who do you think was looking back at me?”

I kept silent. I had no idea.

“
You
, Stella! It was you and your friends! The Zephyr Stick ad, it’s already up! It’s giant!”

Two or three full heartbeats passed before the full meaning of this made its way into my sleepy brain.

Moments later, completely awake, I stood in my socks beside my beloved new
SISTA SLASH: FAMINE RELIEF NOW!
poster (from Earl—he also said he’d work with a connection to set us all up with free tickets to Sista’s upcoming Take Charge megaconcert. Life was sweet!) and sent a group message to my friends. Forty minutes after that, we all met in town. I was thrilled to see Rajeev tagging along with Mo. He wanted to see the sign as much as the rest of us did. It was warm that morning, and I noticed everybody was holding a familiar green and yellow Mel’s cup. I wasn’t the only one who’d stopped at Bruno’s to pick up a lemonade.

The billboard stood next to the entrance of the highway on Wampanoag Road, not far from the Bernbaum Associates
Dental building. There the six of us stood speechless, taking in the humongous image. The shot was impressive, to say the least. They’d used one of the photographs from Boston, and it must have been taken toward the end of our photo session, because we were all looking comfortable with the camera as we leaned against a brick wall. Wen had even taken off his black jacket and was holding it over his shoulder like some kind of high-powered supermodel. We weren’t frowning, exactly, but our expressions were intense. Above our heads were giant blue words: