Number 8 (32 page)

“Nah,” he replied, “I'm too used to it. And anyway, Dad thinks it's a great stage name for a rocker.”

I look over now at Badman. He's been checking his strings for the last half hour. He's standing guarding his own space, snarling if anyone comes near. He's as nervous as a cat, but he'd never admit it. He sees me looking and his frown lifts. I nod at him. I'd be nervous, too, if I were him. There's a lot at stake. His dad is supposed to come tonight. When we went missing, his mother totally freaked. She couldn't
find his father and she spent the dawn hours at the police station. When the police finally tracked down his dad in New Zealand, we were already home. That really shook up Mr. Bradman. That he hadn't even known his son was missing. Badman talked to him on the phone and he thinks his dad must have “woken up to himself.” Anyway, he promised to get back in time for the concert.

I peep around the corner of the curtain and search the audience. There's Mrs. Bradman sitting next to Mr. Norton. He's talking to her, nodding a lot, with a sympathetic expression on his face. He's looking after her. He's all right, Mr. Norton. You know what he said to us when we returned to school? He said he used to play air guitar in his bedroom. He'd pretend he was Elvis Presley and jive around in his
blue, blue, blue suede shoes
… He showed us his whole air guitar routine in the coat room. It was a riot! If you get a chance to do that for real, he told us, you should take it.

“Can you see him?” Badman's looking out over my shoulder at the audience.

“Who, your dad? Not yet. But he'll be here, he promised you.”

“Yeah, but he's never on time. Mom told him he'll be late for his own funeral.
He
said he hopes he's so late he misses it.”

“What, the concert?”

“No, his funeral.”

“Well, he's not the only one who's late. Have you seen Asim, or Jackson? I wish the four of us were here together right now. It's our first concert at high school. There'll never be another like it.”

“Yeah,” says Badman. “Maybe next year I'll be rippin' it up in Auckland!”

“
Hey look, there's Asim's dad. He's slipped in beside Valerie.”

“He looks pretty pleased with himself … Hey, did you see that? Was that a kiss?”

“Well, whatever, I'm just glad he's here. There are Asim and Jackson coming up the side. I was beginning to think we might have to do without a drummer.”

“No way. Rock
is
drums.”

Asim hurtles up the stairs of the stage and comes panting over to us. I give him a hug, seeing as they're more common than colds around here.

“You got your sticks, drummer?” says Badman.

“Yes.” He wrings his hands. “But I don't know about this. We haven't rehearsed much—”

“Only every day and night for three weeks!”

“Yes, but I've never had any proper lessons or…” Suddenly he gives a huge grin. “I've got some news—”

“Oh,
Jackson
, look everyone, how
cute
is that puppy!”

We all look to where Catrina is pointing and see Jackson holding something out in front of him. Kids are crowding around until he's entirely lost in a wriggling mass of arms and legs. I decide just to wait until all the excitement has calmed down. But a deep thump of happiness pounds in my stomach. Now we're all together, just as it should be.

Two weeks ago, when Badman and I decided to do our own song, Valerie said we would need a place to rehearse. She cleared out the garage and put matting down on the floor. She worked for days, with Jackson and me helping after school. Asim's dad repaired the broken windows and tiles on the roof, and checked the electrical wiring. And that's how we became a garage band. Valerie moved in like a one-woman army and took over the musical arrangement.
She convinced Asim to be our drummer, helped us with the lyrics, and brought over a guitarist she knows to go through Badman's solo with him.

Badman loved those jam sessions. He kept falling over himself to be helpful. And he smiled so much I think his jaws must have ached. Funny, every time Asim got low in confidence, Badman was there to back him up. I think it was Badman who actually convinced him to keep going. He kept beaming like a flashlight around the garage saying, “If we can defeat the friggin' Mafia, we can do anything!” He gave Asim such encouraging pats on the back that once he fell clean off his stool.

It's so strange, if I hadn't spent that incredible night in the cellar with him, I'd think his evil twin had flown away and a good guy has come in his place. But Valerie just shrugs about it. “Everyone wants to belong,” she says. “You kids are like a family now. And besides, as John Lee Hooker says, ‘Let that boy boogie woogie, 'cause it's in him, and it's gotta come out!'” Someone ought to have told old Plato that.

We've all been practically living in that garage. On the same night Valerie brought home the puppy, she brought in the keyboard. She didn't show any of us the puppy at first. She hid it in the laundry. But you could tell she had a secret. She cornered Jackson and told him he was going to play keyboard for the concert. She'd teach him an easy bass part, and that way he could be part of the band.

“It's really only nine notes you've got to learn,” she said.

“Make it an even number and I'll consider it,” he said.

“Oh, stop counting,” she said, “and let yourself go! God knows what I've done to make you so
anal
!”

“I thought musicians had to count to stay in
time
,” he argued.

They fought till we started playing to drown them out. But they just moved off to the garden. Sometimes they can go on for hours. I think Jackson does it just to prove a point. Make himself different from her. He thinks when you battle Valerie you have to use every weapon you've got to resist her. But when she brought the puppy out of the laundry, Jackson melted like ice cream in the sun.

“He's always wanted a pet of his own,” Valerie told me, “but you can't keep an animal in an apartment. You watch, he'll want to build a dog kennel now, just like he built that possum house.”

“Have you given him a name yet?” I ask Jackson as he pushes his way toward us.

“Yeah. Eight.”

“He's got eight names?”

“No, just Eight.”

“So guess what,” Asim tries again. He doesn't wait for anyone to say
what
? “Our visa came through! It was so sudden. It has been extended for another three years, which means we can probably get our permanent residency here in this beloved land.” He puts his hand on his heart and grins like a maniac, but I know he means it.

“That's fantastic!” I give him another hug. Then I turn to Jackson. “Have you told Valerie yet?”

“Yeah.”

Asim is laughing and punching Jackson's shoulder. I've never seen him look so happy. Almost out-of-control happy. He looks, for once, like he doesn't have a care in the world.

“Valerie was mad as hell,” Jackson tells me. “She says funny, isn't it, how there was an election coming up and suddenly all the kids are let out of detention centers, and look, hey presto, a visa is granted. Mehmet had to take her
by the shoulders and tell her all over
again
and then finally it sank in and she cried. When she hugged Asim he couldn't breathe for about two minutes. I counted the seconds.”

More hugs!

“What are you all DOING up here behind the curtain?” Mrs. Reilly stalks up to us like a snapping crocodile. “And what on Earth is that creature doing hiding in your shirt, Jackson Ford? It's made a wet spot right there under your collar!”

“I'm taking him out now, Mrs. Reilly.”

She stalks off to yell at other kids, and Asim and the others make for the stairs at the side of the stage. But Jackson stands still, reaching his hand out to me.

“I just wanted to give you this,” he says. He holds out a little package wrapped in green tissue paper. Inside is a silver necklace, with a heart carved out of a stripy golden wood.

“From the sassafras tree,” blushes Jackson. “I carved it myself. Well, with a bit of help from Mehmet…”

I run my finger over the smooth shiny surface. It feels warm.

“Turn it over,” says Jackson.

On the back there is carefully carved writing: EZ/JF 4 EVER. The infinity sign curls underneath.

I put it around my neck. “It's beautiful.”

“You're beautiful,” he says.

I look at him standing there, a big pleased smile on his face, the puppy poking out of his shirt, his dark eyes shining, his hard brown boy's hands stroking the dog.
He's
the one who's beautiful, inside and out. I take the puppy and put it on the floor. Then I take Jackson's face in my hands and kiss him full on the lips.

I don't feel scared anymore. I don't want to run away. His lips are cool and dry. He tastes of chocolate milk. He puts his arms around me and my heart says
this
is the flavor I choose. I stand there for this moment breathing in his skin and feeling his hug seep into me like sunlight. It's warming all the cold places under my skin.

When we go up on stage, you can hear a pin drop. This is partly because Mrs. Reilly announces us as if she's introducing the plague. It's also because Badman looks like a zombie from a horror film. Out of the corner of my eye I can see little Robbie Mason inching onto his mother's lap. I don't think Homeland High has ever seen an act like ours. But as soon as Badman starts his first riff, and Asim comes in, right on time, with Jackson's bass rhythm backing the guitar, I forget to look at the audience. I'm listening for Badman's chord change and there it is, perfect, like a question I'm ready to answer. The music flows up through my belly and out into the air, easy as breathing.

I close my eyes and it's like swimming down under a wave. Instead of silence there's only sound, this one conversation we're having here on Earth. I can hear Asim pushing the drums, playing on top of the beat like Valerie showed him, a little faster than the real rhythm. Badman is pulling against him, laying back just a heartbeat, playing with the pulse of the song. It's as if we're all talking, expressing who we are, pulling and pushing the rhythm and making this pattern that I don't ever want to stop.

When I open my eyes I see the pink dresses swishing beside me and they're a surprise, like sudden flowers against our black. I love them! The girls' voices slide into the chorus with mine and we belt it out, smiling like maniacs. We can't
stop smiling. Each of us is a part weaving the pattern, and now I can feel the groove Valerie described—we've clicked into this place where we all belong, where the energy is flowing and we could go on forever, easily, without effort, just like the planets doing their thing, like the cycles of night and day. Asim still looks kind of delirious, almost cross-eyed with delight. I grin back at him. It's as if we're all connected up here inside some divine bubble of happiness, just doing what we were meant to do.

Badman takes off now with his solo. His fingers are working their way up the neck, the high notes spurting light as spray, then crashing like bombs into the dark. Badman's flying way out there, improvising his way into some other galaxy. His notes have flung past the pattern we were making, discovering notes and sequences we'd never heard in our garage band. I realize I'm holding my breath, going where he's going and for a moment I think maybe he'll never come back, but like Led Zeppelin he catches himself and Asim is there to meet him, drumming us back into the main rhythm. We fall into the groove, but it's a new journey, and as the beat takes over I try to make my larynx into drums the way Juanita taught me. We're listening, talking, soaring, and now I see that the front rows of the audience are on their feet, clapping and swaying, and then everyone's up, catching the wave we're on and Badman is taking us higher.

I'll never forget tonight even if I live to be a hundred. Even though Daniel got sick and threw up on Mom's lap and she had to take him home before we finished our number. Even though Eight ran out into the audience and Mr. Phillips nearly stepped on him. And even though Badman's dad arrived late, only after Badman had finished his solo.

“He got here, didn't he?” Badman said. “And all the way from New Zealand!”

Up there on stage, nothing could touch what we had. It was like Valerie's perfect harmony—keeping your own tune while listening to others. Usually that's hard. Takes a lot of concentration. But tonight it was natural, the only way to be.

Jackson says he won't forget tonight either, and if we can do this happy stuff more and stop disabling our immunity systems with anger, maybe we
will
live to be a hundred. When he said “happy stuff' he smiled in a funny way, so I don't know whether he meant the music or the kiss. Maybe it was both.

The last three weeks, there's been more “happy stuff” than I ever thought possible. Which is pretty amazing, since it all came right after the most
un
happy experience in my entire life. But the singing took me away. Practicing every afternoon in that garage—it was like having a bubble of happiness inside. Once you've felt that, Jackson says, no one can ever take it away. It's a part of you.

You know how Frank Sinatra said rock was the end of civilization? Well, I think it's what helps keep everything going. You've gotta hear the music that sets you free. Then you've got the glory inside you. If you didn't have that there'd be no point in getting up in the morning and brushing your teeth. It'd be like being in jail. Or dead.

Maybe I'll write a song about it.

I just have to add something that I haven't told you. It won't take long. But do you know what? When I kissed Esmerelda on the night of the school concert, I forgot to count. No challenges, no numbers. Absolutely nothing happened in my head. For me, that's about as rare as snow in summer. It was the best feeling. When I listen to Ez talk about singing, I think kissing must do the same thing. Hypnotize you.