“You have got to be kidding,” Dad says when I ask him at dinner if he can drive Kylee and me to the gig. The Spotted Cow is bike-riding distance from our house, but I’m not allowed to ride after dark. “You hear them play all the time right here in your own home.”
Hunter isn’t eating with us. He’s off with the band doing a last-minute practice at Timber’s house.
“Kidding?” I ask, trying not to reveal my hidden agenda. “This is different. It’s Hunter’s first gig!”
“All right,” Dad says. “We can give you a ride. Call us when you’re ready for a ride home. Hunter is lucky to have a sister who is so devoted.”
His last words sting.
Hunter is unlucky to have a sister who is a very angry writer.
* * *
What do you wear to a gig? Kylee and I confer via text. We decide we can’t go wrong with jeans, boots, and dark tops with a little sparkly neckline (Kylee) and a plain silver necklace (me). I curl my hair for the occasion. Usually I let it hang straight because I can’t be bothered fussing with it.
My father doesn’t notice, but my mother does.
“You look nice, sweetie,” is all she says. But I know she’s thinking: Is there more to this gig than you’re letting on?
She knows a little bit about Cameron, chiefly because of Hunter’s Cameron-themed insults in the car, but that’s really all. Some of my friends, like Isabelle, tell their moms about every boy they have a crush on. I think Kylee would tell her mom if she did have a crush on anyone, which she doesn’t. Her only crush is the one she has on her knitting needles. But I’m selective about the things I say in person to anyone but Kylee. I’m better at saying things to my notebook.
When Kylee and I arrive at the Spotted Cow, it’s bigger than Dad made it sound. There are a dozen tables and a good-sized performance space with a baby grand piano in it, plus room for amps, drums, and a band. Almost all the tables are full. It takes me a few moments to let my eyes sweep over them in the low light of the café. Cameron isn’t there. Neither are any of the members of Hunter’s band.
Kylee and I order steamers—vanilla for her, raspberry-chocolate-hazelnut for me (I love when a barista lets me mix flavors). Steamers aren’t a coffee drink; they’re just warm milk with Italian soda syrups mixed in—yum. We sit at the only empty table we can find. Unfortunately, it’s right next to the performance space. So much for hoping that Hunter might not even see me there. I don’t want him to know about the review until it’s too late to stop me.
The first band up is called the Electric Orangutans. Their five members are singing a song that sounds like a deafeningly loud chant by medieval monks wearing black jeans and black T-shirts. If it has words, rather than guttural hums, I can’t make out what they are.
I take a sip of my steamer. Kylee produces her knitting from her oversized purse. A thought pops into my overheated brain (it’s too warm in here, as well as too loud): Given that there are no empty tables right now, Cameron—if he comes—may need to sit at ours.
Is it okay if I join you? I imagine him saying or, rather, mouthing, since it’s too loud for any words to be heard.
Or maybe he’d pantomime, pointing to the one empty chair at our small table, and then to himself, with a questioning expression on his face: Do you mind?
Now I almost wish I hadn’t begged Kylee to come.
It would have been almost like a date for Cameron and me.
Except for all the ways it isn’t.
Ten minutes later, the Orangutans are apparently done performing. They’ve started putting their instruments back in the cases and dismantling their drums so that Paradox can set up.
But where is Paradox?
Then I see them, coming in from a door in the back, the stage door, probably.
Cameron is with them. He’s helping Hunter drag in the many components of his drum set: bass drum, snare drum, hi-hat cymbals. I can’t believe someone as wonderful as Cameron is a roadie for someone as awful as Hunter. Maybe he doesn’t think Hunter is as condolence-worthy as he led me to believe.
Kylee keeps on knitting, but her eyes meet mine. I’m definitely glad I made her come with me now. She’s the only reason I can survive being here at all.
It’s blissfully quiet in the Spotted Cow between sets. The barista who made my triple-flavored steamer comes to the mike to make an announcement.
“Thanks for coming out tonight, everyone,” he says, “to support live music. Our musicians aren’t getting paid for their time and talent, so remember to tip generously.”
He points to a large jar on top of the piano, about two feet away from Kylee and me, which has one twenty-dollar bill in it. I’m sure it was put there ahead of time to inspire customers to tip large-denomination bills rather than whatever spare change they find in their pockets.
“And now please join me in welcoming to the stage … Paradox!”
The audience gives a roar of applause. Kylee and I clap, too. I’m opening my Moleskine to a blank page and uncapping my pen when Cameron sits down next to me.
No mouthed request to join us, no humble chair-pointing gesture. He sits down, as if any empty chair is for the taking, including the one that happens to be at our table.
Then he smiles at me, not a huge toothy grin that lights up his face, but a sort of slow half smile, like: We meet again.
I might faint.
I’m still going to take notes on the concert. Maybe Cameron will think it’s cool that I’m willing to sit in public devoting myself to my art. Maybe it will look as if I don’t care what anybody else thinks, just the way he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks—even though I actually do care about what he thinks more than anything else in the world. But it’s hard to anticipate what he’ll think about anything.
As the band plays their first number—and I have to admit it sounds good, with a catchy melody and driving beat—I write down cleverly disparaging turns of phrase I can use in my review:
The real paradox is that anybody would ever voluntarily listen to this music.
If you want a way to kill live music, this is it.
If not dead before, the song was beaten to death by the mishandled drumsticks of incompetent drummer Hunter Granger.
The torn T-shirts, evidently purchased from some rockstar-wannabe website, were designed to give the false impression of having been ripped by adoring fans.
They make the error of confusing loud with good.
The original artists who first recorded these songs should sue.
Another number finishes, to whoops and hollers from the audience. Oh, well. Opinions can differ. That’s why reviews are interesting to read, because not everybody thinks the same way about everything.
David, at the mike, says something, and I hear Cameron’s name. He must have said either that the last song was by Cameron or that the next song would be by Cameron. Do people announce a song before or after it’s played?
I was hardly listening to the song they just played, too busy thinking up witty insults. But it didn’t sound as if it had come pouring out of Cameron’s soul.
It has to be the next song, I decide. Please let it be the next song.
The tempo changes. The song is slower, softer, not music for which you’d need earplugs. I wish I had a copy of the lyrics so I could read along as David and Timber sing, but I can make out at least some of the words.
“I tell myself that I don’t care …
But I do.
I tell myself that it’s just me …
But it’s you.”
I can’t tell if the boy in the song is trying to tell the girl he’s falling in love with her or out of love, only that he’s sad about whatever it is because it doesn’t fit with the person he thinks of himself as being. I wish I could download it on my phone and listen to it ten thousand times.
Maybe the boy in the song is falling in love.
Maybe the girl is me.