DERRICK SAT IN Principal Rawling’s office. Mr. Rawlings was a short, squat man who wore suspenders that kept his pants over his substantial belly. He plopped into the chair at his desk and read over some papers. Derrick sat across from the desk and sunk into the chair. He knew he was in trouble, the adrenaline having subsided. His hands and knuckles ached and throbbed. Now that he was sitting here in the aftermath of that sudden loss of sense, the weight of what he’d done hit heavy in his chest. He wanted to cry.
Mr. Rawlings pulled his glasses from the crook of his nose and rubbed the knot between his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “I understand you’re new to Mount Vernon this year, Mr. Townsend,” he said. “And I understand that Mr. Anderson was involved in an altercation with your friend before school this morning. However, this school has a strict no violence policy.”
Derrick nodded. “I understand, sir.”
Mr. Rawlings clasped his hands on his desk. “I also know that, according to your teachers and your tennis coach, you’re a good kid and that this is your first offense. So, I am not suspending you. However, you will have detention after school every day this week. And Coach Vargas has been informed that you will not be participating in the tennis tournament this weekend.”
“Yes sir,” Derrick said. “Thank you for not suspending me.”
Mr. Rawlings lifted a piece of paper from his desk and held it out to Derrick. “You will need to have this slip signed by your parents and returned to me tomorrow to start your detention. If you do not return it, you will be sent to in-school suspension.”
“Yes sir.” Derrick took the paper and read it over. It was a notification of detention. He nearly blurted out that his parents were out of town and wouldn’t be back until Wednesday evening at the earliest. However, he kept his mouth shut. He already had a plan for this to stay out of trouble.
“You may return to class,” Mr. Rawlings said dismissively.
Derrick stood from the chair and left the office. A smile crept across his face as he walked the hallways back to class. Despite the throbbing in his hands, he knew that everything was going to be just fine.
♪ ♪ ♪
“You’re going to have to tell mom,” Cassandra said from the couch in the living room. She had plopped down, her math book sprawled open on the coffee table in front of her, a notebook in her lap.
“I know, but I can wait til they come back on Wednesday,” Derrick said as he pulled two bottles of Josta from the fridge. He tossed one to AJ, who leaned against the kitchen counter. Derrick noticed how neither AJ nor his sister looked at each other, both seemingly pretending the other didn’t exist. Derrick, however, decided to keep this observation to himself. “No need to piss her off when she’s five hundred miles away.”
“She’s going to lose it either way.” Cassandra said.
“Well, I’d rather her lose it after the return instead of having to get bitched out twice. Once on the phone and again when they get back.”
Cassandra rolled her eyes and went back to watching TRL.
Derrick knew she was right though. For the first time in almost two months, he and AJ walked home after school, and AJ came over to hang out and play music. He wanted Dustin to come over to make it a real jam session, but their drummer couldn’t make it because he had to work after school. Derrick then reasoned that having a full band practice might bring too much attention to the house, something he didn’t want since they were officially not allowed to have friends over. He and Cassandra had an understanding—as long as they didn’t do anything to get caught, they’d have a friend or two come hang out while their parents were gone.
The two bandmates decided to work out some new songs together, and have them ready for their drummer by the weekend. Sunday was their normal practice day, but on the walk home, AJ had said that he wanted to keep their stuff “fresh.”
Out in the garage, Derrick plugged his guitar into the amplifier and switched it on, a static hum emanating from the speaker. He strummed a few chords on his guitar and messed with the tuners on the headstock of the Telecaster while AJ plucked the strings of his bass. His hands felt tender and his knuckles ached as he played the instrument.
“I still can’t believe you hit Ty like that,” AJ said.
Derrick shrugged. “I just snapped. I’ve had it with him. I’ve been mad at him ever since I met him. And then that stunt he pulled at the pool party at the beginning of the year. Then today, I was mad when I saw your face and what he’d done to you. But then when he started talking trash in the hallway, I lost it. I dealt with that kind of stuff back in Clearwater, and I don’t want to put up with it here.”
“Well, I feel bad now though,” AJ said. “I didn’t want you to get in trouble.”
“It’s not bad. I didn’t get suspended or anything. But, I won’t be able to participate in the tennis tournament this weekend. Which is a good thing. I would rather practice for the talent show.” He stretched his left hand, the one he’d used to punch Ty in the face, and shook it out.
“Are you okay, dude?” AJ asked worriedly.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Derrick said. He went back to playing a riff to a song that they’d written and tried to push the pain in his hand to the back of his mind. “It’s just a little sore.”
“Does it hurt?” AJ stopped playing and watched Derrick.
“No, not really. A little, but it’s okay. Let’s play that new one,” he said.
He ripped into the riff, the guitar blaring through the amp. It sounded okay without the drums, and AJ’s bass helped fill in some of the gaps in the notes. It was also sloppy, his fingers unable to properly fret the notes. Derrick stopped and shook out his hand again.
AJ stopped as well, the blaring instruments dying to a gentle hum again. “You don’t look good, dude. I think your hand is messed up.”
“It’s just bruised,” Derrick said. “It’ll be fine.” He knew he was lying, though. As much as he wanted it to just be bruised, he could tell that something was wrong, that he’d really done some damage to himself in the process of beating up the bully.
“If you say so.” AJ shrugged and then turned the volume knob on the bass back up. “Oh, check this out.” He messed with the knobs on his amplifier until it produced a fuzzy, overdriven sound. He played a fast riff and Derrick nodded his head in time.
“What do you think?” AJ asked.
“That sounds amazing,” Derrick said. “When did you come up with that?”
“Yesterday,” AJ said. “I was hanging out with Dustin. He probably wouldn’t want me telling you, but he’s still pretty upset about his girlfriend and Ty. So we just hung out.”
Derrick held his head down. He wished he’d been invited to hang out with them, but he could understand if AJ didn’t want to be around him. “I went to look for you, to apologize,” he said. “But you weren’t home.”
“It’s okay,” AJ said. “I get that you were mad. If it were the other way around—if I had a sister and I caught you making out with her, I’d have been pretty pissed too.”
“Well, I overreacted,” Derrick said. “Now play that again.”
AJ smiled, turned his bass volume up and tore into the riff.
Despite the pain in his hand, Derrick listened as AJ repeated the riff a couple of times and then started noodling around on the guitar, trying to find something that fit the fast and frenzy bass line. He opted to use a run of pinch harmonics to compliment the bass line instead of playing over it.
“Yeah!” AJ yelled. “That sounds awesome!”
Derrick continued playing the notes, pinching the string between his finger and pick as he plucked it to produce a high-pitched squeal from the guitar. Flipping the pickup selector on the Telecaster to the bridge pickup, the notes cut through the fuzz from the bass and he fell into a nice groove. The pain in his hand flared up, but he pushed it aside in his mind. This song, whatever it was that they were creating, was too good to give up.
A pop from his amplifier pulled Derrick out of his concentration and the speaker began making a sound like loud static from a television.
“What was that?” AJ asked, turning his bass down and staring at the amplifier.
“I think I just blew my amp,” Derrick groaned.
“Oh no.” AJ said in the same tone.
Squatting in front of the grey mesh speaker box, Derrick fumbled with the controls on the front of the amplifier, but didn’t get it to do anything other than hum and buzz. He fell down onto the floor in the garage and held his head in his hands.
“Yup,” he said. “It’s blown.”
“What can we do?” AJ asked.
Derrick shrugged. “Does Sherman’s work on amplifiers?”
“I don’t know,” AJ said. “Probably. They work on guitars.”
Inside the house, Derrick went to find the phone. Cassandra was in her room, talking with one of her friends, and she waved him off.
“Cass, please,” he said. “It’ll just take a minute.”
“Ugh,” Cassandra said into the phone. “Let me call you right back. My little brother has to make a call.” She hung up and tossed it at him. “Hurry it up,” she said as he caught the cordless handset.
The phonebook was stuffed in one of the drawers in the kitchen, and after he found it, Derrick looked up the number to the music store while AJ sat at the kitchen counter, chewing on the calluses on his fingertips.
Derrick held the device to his ear as the phone rang.
“Sherman’s,” a voice said on the other end. It was an elderly voice, spoken through vocal cords long ago fried by Pall Malls and booze.
“Hi, I think I blew the speaker in my amp,” Derrick said. “Do you guys work on guitar amplifiers?”
“No we don’t.” The answer was curt.
“Oh. Okay then,” Derrick said. “Do you know anyone in town that does?”
“Eh, there’s a guitar player in town that might do it,” the voice on the phone said.
“Do you have his information?” Derrick asked.
“Yeah, hang on.” The handset on the other end of the line was set down and Derrick could hear a rustling. Then, the voice came back. “Alright, kid. The guy’s name is Ben Barnes. You ready for the number?”
Derrick said yes, and scribbled the digits in the gutter of the open yellow pages. He thanked the man on the phone and hung up.
“This is great,” Derrick said to AJ. “I know this guy.”
From the other end of the house, Cassandra called out, “Are you done yet, fartbreath?”
“Just a minute!” Derrick yelled as he dialed the number he’d gotten from Sherman’s.
The line rang twice before the voice on the other end said, “Hello?”
“Hi, is this Ben?” Derrick asked.
“Depends on who’s asking.”
“My name is Derrick. I think I met you at Sherman’s yesterday.”
“Oh yeah.” Ben’s voice went from aloof to inviting. “What’s going on, man?”
“Hey, I got your number from Sherman’s. I called up there because I blew my guitar amp, and they said you might work on them.”
“Yeah. Tell me what happened,” Ben said.
Derrick explained how the amplifier popped and then made the static noise.
“Yeah, sounds like you damaged the cone,” Ben said. “Do you have a car?”
Derrick told him that no, he didn’t.
“Alright. Give me your address, I’ll come pick it up after my girlfriend gets home from work,” he said.
Derrick told him the address and thanked him and, after they hung up, took the phone back to Cassandra.
AJ looked at the clock and said he had to get home to do his chores before his mom got home.
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” AJ said. “Don’t oversleep again.” He gave Derrick a lopsided grin.
Derrick flipped him off. “My right hand is still good if you want some.”
AJ grabbed his backpack and left. After he did, Derrick went to the refrigerator and put a bag of frozen peas on the knuckles of his left hand. He hoped it was just bruised and nothing more.