The next day at breakfast, Tanasia and I are the first two there.

“Hi!” I say when she sits down.

“Hi,” she says back with a half smile. “I still can’t believe you’re talking.”

“Me neither. We’ll see if it lasts. While I’m in the habit, though, I just wanted to … Thanks for giving me another chance. I know I’ve had a million already.”

She nods. “You better be worth it.” She smiles.

“I’ll do my best to meet your standards.”

“Please do.”

We smile at each other, and it is crazy to me that this is the same person who was sitting in English with me all year.

“So, what are we going to do about a band name?” I ask.

“Yeah, I have no idea. I guess we’ll figure it out today with Ren.”

“I can’t believe the show is in, like, a week and a half. I could vomit.”

“Nice breakfast chat, Sparrow.”

“Well, you wanted me talking; this is what it’s like.”

We’re laughing when Lara comes and sits down without saying anything. She pokes at her oatmeal.

“What’s wrong?” Tanasia asks. Lara doesn’t answer.

“Lara, I just started speaking; you can’t stop now,” I say, trying to joke her into talking, even though that’s never worked on me.

“I’m just off today,” she says quietly. “It’s, um, my birthday.”

Spike slides in next to her. “Did I just hear you say birthday? HAPPY BIRTHDAY!”

Lara turns so red you can’t see her freckles. She looks down. “Thanks.”

“Why is your birthday a bad thing?” asks Tanasia.

“I don’t know. I’ve just never had a great one. I’m always away at camp for it. It’s never that fun.”

“Well, we could make this one fun.” You can see the wheels turning in Spike’s head as she speaks.

“So, you’ve been to GNRC before?” I ask.

“No, not this camp.”

“Which one?”

“You wouldn’t know it.”

“Why not?” asks Tanasia. “I’ve been to three different camps before this one.”

“I’m pretty sure you haven’t been to fat camp,” says Lara, pushing her oatmeal away. It’s cold now, and a gross film has started to form at the top.

“Your parents send you to fat camp?” asks Spike, stunned.

“No, I’m sorry, not fat camp—True You/New You Camp for Health. Whatever. It’s fat camp. Every year since I was nine.”

“But you’re not even that … ” Tanasia doesn’t know how to finish the sentence.

“Fat. Yes, I am, but I don’t care. They do. Every year they send me and every year I have, like, a piece of celery with a candle in it for my birthday. It’s the worst.”

“Are they like that when you’re home too?” I ask.

“Yeah. They’re on me at every meal. I’ve got a meal plan I have to follow. They go through the trash in my room looking for candy wrappers. Being here is the first time I’ve ever been able to choose my own freaking meals. You might have noticed I have frozen yogurt at, like, every meal. The sweet taste of revenge.”

“They don’t even let you have frozen yogurt?” asks Spike, reeling from the injustice of it all.

“Spike, they don’t let me have cheese.”

“Damn.”

“Wow.”

“Okay,” I say, “so it’s your birthday. You’re not at stupid fat camp, and you’re not at home. You’re not going to have celery. How do you want to celebrate?”

“Yeah,” says Spike. “What do you want to have for your birthday? We’ll get you whatever it is.”

Lara laughs nervously. “I don’t know.”

“Sure you do,” says Spike. “Think of something you could never get at home. What do you want, an ice cream cake?”

Lara is thinking. She squinches up her face for a second, and then it’s like a lightbulb goes off over her head. “I’ve always been really curious about pizza.”

“NO PIZZA? Where do you live, prison?”

“Kinda.”

“You’ve really never had a pizza?” asks Tanasia.

“I’ve had those diet frozen pizzas, but they taste like cardboard, and they don’t look anything like the ones they sell in pizza places. The melting cheese, the pepperoni.” She’s practically drooling.

“We will get you the best pizza in all the land!” says Spike.

During our afternoon session in band practice, Ren seems stressed. “Okay, y’all, it’s time. We’ve waited as long as we can. You need a name. I mean, look, you also need a song, but let’s see if we can’t find a name for ourselves today.”

“Well, I was thinking,” says Spike, “we all love Janelle Monáe, what about the Monáes?”

“We can wear tuxedos!” adds Tanasia. Lara and I nod in agreement.

“I like it,” says Ren, but she sounds doubtful. “The thing is you guys are your own band. You’re not just a copy of an awesome band. You’re your own awesome band.”

“Maybe,” I say, “but awesome bands have songs.”

“We’ll get there,” Ren says. We all stare at each other blankly. “Ideas?” she coaxes. More blank stares. “Okay, team, everyone take a square.” She hands us all pieces of scrap paper. “Each and every one of you is going to write down three names. I don’t care how silly they are, I don’t care if you would never listen to a band with this name. We just need something to get us going. A bad idea can lead to a great one. Write down your favorite word or your favorite sound. Whatever. Just write. Three ideas. Each. Go.”

After a few minutes, Ren collects our papers and writes the options on the whiteboard. “Okay,” she says, reading through them, “we’ve got Phalanges, Sinners, Heartbeat, Ampersand, Tuxedo Girls, Hokey-Pokey—you guys are doing great on the words that are fun to say—the Lollygaggers, Eponymous (very clever), Phlebotomy, the SHEnanigans, the Fuddy Duddies and … wait, I can’t read this word.”

“It’s mine,” I say, looking down. “It’s silly.”

Ren rolls her eyes in the kindest possible way. “Come on, now,” she says.

“It says Chachalacas.”

“What’s a Chachalaca?” asks Tanasia.

“It’s a bird. It’s this little bird with a skinny neck and a big body. They’re not found in the U.S. except for southernmost Texas; they’re mostly consumed for food and they reside in Central America and—”

“Wow, you’re like a bird almanac!” says Lara.

There’s an awkward silence where I know I’ve said way too much, revealed myself for the loser I am. I’ve barely been speaking for two days, and I’ve already ruined the whole thing. I’m about ready to curse myself out for ever being stupid enough to open my mouth, when Spike breaks the silence.

“I love it! It’s like Boom Shakalaka! But instead it’s Chachalaca!”

“We could be the Boom Chachalacas,” says Tanasia. Her voice is eager, even enthusiastic. I look up and they’re smiling and writing it on the board.

“I like it too,” says Ren. “It suits you guys. A vote?” Everyone’s hands go into the air before she even gets a chance to ask for all in favor. “It’s unanimous, then—congratulations, Boom Chachalacas. You can start making your band posters this afternoon.”

“I think we should still try to get some tuxedos,” says Tanasia. “I mean, we won’t call ourselves the Monáes, but we can at least pay our respects, right?”

“I think I can get us tuxedos,” says Spike.

“It’s better than dressing up like a chachalaca,” I say quietly. “They’re pretty ugly.”

That night at dinner, we’re all told to sit down and wait. Kendra lets us know that they have something important to discuss with us when we’re seated. I look at my bandmates, confused. “Did we do something wrong?”

“Yeah,” says Lara, “are we in trouble?” Spike shrugs like she doesn’t know but she sends a wink my way when Lara isn’t looking. A minute later, barely hiding the glee in her voice, Spike asks, “What’s that smell?”

“It’s pizza!” cries Tanasia. “Like a lot of pizza!”

Counselors are going from table to table dropping off a box of pizza for each band. When they get to ours, the box is extra large, and when we open it, there’s pepperoni on top that spells out Happy Birthday! We all begin to sing. Ren takes a candle from behind her ear and puts it in the middle of the pizza. Ty lights it, and when the song is over, Lara closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and blows it out. When she opens her eyes again, they’re a little watery. Her smile is so big it looks like it might hurt in the morning. She takes a hot cheesy slice in her hands and happily burns the roof of her mouth a little. “Thank you,” she whispers to Spike between bites.

Lara comes into band practice grinning. “I think I’ve solved our song problem,” she says.

“Here’s hoping,” says Ren. “What do you have?”

“Well, you know how Yoko is on the first floor? I woke up and found this sheet of paper pressed against my window a few days ago. Someone must have dropped it, but it has this awesome poem on it. I thought we could use the lines and start our song that way.”

My stomach drops straight to the bottom of the world.

“Go for it,” Tanasia says.

I look down, like I’m listening oh-so-carefully.

“I’m feeling restless, reckless, like flying up at night and never coming down.”

I tell myself not to look guilty or embarrassed so that no one asks me what’s wrong.

“Sweet. Let’s each start writing from there and see what we come up with. Then we can combine, share, whatever,” Tanasia says.

“Do you all feel like it’s something you can work with?” asks Ren.

“Definitely,” says Spike.

“Let’s do it,” says Tanasia.

I force my head to nod up and down and hope that will be enough for Ren.

“Okay, so what we need to do is ask at lunch for the next few days for the permission of the person who wrote it. We need to give them credit for their work.”

We all start writing. Well, they all start writing. I doodle and try hard to keep my face from showing my feelings. The rest of the morning goes great—everyone writes their ideas on the whiteboard, and we join verses and borrow words from each other. By tomorrow, we’ll have the chorus down and the bridge worked out. It’s kind of easy, working together to get the best song possible, except for the pounding in my chest that will bang and bang against my ribs right through the rest of class and straight through lunch. When we make our announcement asking the mysterious author of this wonderful poem to please come forward, I wish for back when a pack of birds and fifteen minutes of recess would fix everything. It beats right through that, and stomps through the rest of the day until bass class. I pick up the instrument like it’s a life preserver. Because I guess it is.