Rock Star Read online

  Rock Star

  Rock Star

  Adrian

  Chamberlain

  orca soundings

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Copyright © 2010 Adrian Chamberlain

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Chamberlain, Adrian, 1958-

  Rock star / Adrian Chamberlain.

  (Orca soundings)

  ISBN 978-1-55469-236-1 (bound).--ISBN 978-1-55469-235-4 (pbk.)

  I. Title. II. Series: Orca soundings

  PS8605.H33R62 2010 jC813’.6 C2009-906848-6

  First published in the United States, 2010

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2009940839

  Summary: When Duncan joins a rock band, he must decide if he is willing to live the life and lose his friends, or make some tough decisions.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover design by Teresa Bubela

  Cover photography by iStockphoto

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 5626, STN. B

  VICTORIA, BC Canada

  V8R 6S4

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 468

  CUSTER, WA USA

  98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  Printed on 100% PCW recycled paper.

  13 12 11 10 • 4 3 2 1

  For Penny and Katie

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter One

  After school I walk up the front steps of our house and head straight for the kitchen. I’m starving. There’s a peanut butter jar on the counter. But sure enough, someone’s used it all up. Empty. That puts me in a bad mood.

  There’s almost nothing in the fridge. Some stuff that looks like dog food in a Tupperware container. Milk. Old celery. I grab the celery and take a bite. Ugh. All wilty and squishy. So I bend over and gob it into the garbage bin. This is disgusting and weirdly satisfying at the same time.

  I’m still bent over the garbage when Dad calls me into the living room.

  “Duncan!” he yells. “Duncan!”

  You’d think I was twelve or something, not fifteen. I’m in grade ten.

  School’s not my favorite thing, to tell you the truth. Mostly it’s boring. Some days I even hate it.

  But one thing I do like is the school band. I play bass guitar. Sure, the songs are pretty lame. What do you expect from a big orchestra, with clarinets and French horns and all that stuff? But playing bass guitar is pretty cool.

  It’s just me and Dad now. I don’t have brothers and sisters or anything. Mom died two years ago. She had cancer. It was quick. One day she sat down with me to tell me. She’d been sick for a while, and the doctors thought it was something else at first. I forget what. But then they figured out it was cancer. Six weeks later, she was dead.

  “Duncan McCann! Can you come in here for a second?”

  I stop gagging and stand there, motionless, like a video on pause. I thought the house was empty. Something in Dad’s voice sounds different. I remain still. I’ve got a pretty good imagination. If I pretend something, I can even forget what I was doing before. Five seconds go by. Then I walk into the living room. There’s this blond lady sitting on the couch with Dad. Weird. Unbelievable. And Dad looks kind of nervous or something. Even though he’s smiling.

  “Duncan, I’d like to introduce you to Terry. She’s a friend of mine,” says Dad.

  “Hey, Duncan,” the lady says. She’s smiling. She’s taller than Mom was. And sort of all-right-looking for an older lady. Dad’s fifty. And Terry’s probably forty or something. She’s wearing a leather jacket. Mom would never have worn a leather jacket. Not in a million years.

  “Hi,” I say. I’m still holding my backpack. I drop it on the wood floor. It weighs a ton and makes a loud noise, like a kick drum.

  “Yes. So anyway, Duncan. You’ll be seeing a bit of Terry around the house. I mean, we’re…well, seeing each other. She and I.”

  I was getting it now. Dad has a girlfriend. This lady. She smiles and holds out her hand.

  “Okay,” I say, shaking her hand. Then I pick up my pack and run upstairs to my room. I slam the door. I fall on my bed, face into my pillow, which sort of smells like corn chips. I’m not crying. I mean, I’m fifteen years old now. I’m not crying, but I feel like it.

  After a while, I turn over. My face is still hot, but I feel better. I look around and—this may sound dumb—but I pretend I’m all alone on a desert island. Like I’m washed up on the beach, waking up with the tropical sun beating on my back. Then I look up. The walls of my room are mostly covered with posters of bands. I’m crazy about music. There’s one of Death Cab for Cutie. An old Beastie Boys poster.

  There’s also a painting on the wall that my mom made. It’s of a cabin by Shawnigan Lake. We once rented it for two weeks one summer. I was ten. That was my best summer. We swam in the lake almost every day. When I dived down, I could see green shafts of sunlight underwater. After swimming, me and my friend Jason would go to the corner store to buy candy. We walked in the dirt beside the road. Brown powdery dust squished up between my toes. Sounds dumb now, but back then I thought that was the greatest.

  I’ve got Mom’s beat-up old record player on my desk. I’ve got all her records too. She liked the Beatles a lot. I put on her favorite song. It’s called “Here, There and Everywhere.” It’s a sappy ballad, but I like it. I think about Dad and this Terry lady, then about Mom. And then—I’m embarrassed to admit it—I start crying. For real. Blubbering all over the place. What a loser.

  My cell phone buzzes. It’s Jason’s number. I don’t answer. I don’t feel like talking. Instead, I go back to pretending I’m on that desert island. I’m facedown on the bed, pretending my ship has gone down. It’s late morning, and the sun’s killing my back. Pretty soon I’ve gotta get up and build my shelter. Maybe find some food. Like turtle eggs. I read once how some guy on a desert island had to eat turtle eggs. Would that be like chicken eggs? Probably not.

  I roll over, kind of slip-sliding off my bed onto the floor. Then I get my bass guitar out of the closet. Put the record player needle back to the beginning of “Here, There and Everywhere” and start to play along. It sounds all right. I got my bass about a year ago. Actually, Dad bought it for me. But for a long time I didn’t feel like learning to play it. I was pretty depressed. I even had to go to a psychiatrist for a while. Dad was worried about me because I got real sad after Mom died. For a while, I didn’t want to get out of bed. Maybe for, like, two weeks. After that, Dad made me go to that stupid shrink.

  After “Here, There and Everywhere,” I try to play along with some other songs on the Beatles record. But it doesn’t sound as good. Then I hear Dad yelling from downstairs for me to set the table. That’s one of my jobs. Also, I clean one of the bathrooms every weekend, take out the garbage and sometimes help Dad make dinner.

  Terry has gone home, so it’s just me and Dad at dinner.
/>   “Duncan,” he says, dabbing his lips with a napkin. “Did you know Terry is a bank teller?”

  “Nope,” I say.

  “Yes. She’s quite an interesting lady. We were, you know, talking about films. Movies. And her favorites are…let me remember. Oh yes. When Harry Met Sally. And that other one, you know, about that large ship that hits an iceberg.”

  “Titanic,” I say. I cram some peas into my mouth. How can Dad not know that?

  He goes on to tell me that Terry lives in Esquimalt, which is part of Victoria, where we live. I don’t ask Dad one thing about Terry. I’m kind of mad or confused or something, which is actually how I feel a lot of the time. It’s like my emotions boil up and it’s hard to control them. Weird, I know.

  I help do the dishes after supper. Dad talks a lot about some guys at his work, and who said what to who and what so-and-so thought about so-and-so. It sounds mean, but I wish he’d shut up, because it’s incredibly boring. But I don’t want to hurt his feelings, so I just dry the dishes and say nothing.

  I go back up to my room, leaving Dad to watch some dumb TV show. Something about monkeys. Dad is crazy about nature shows. If there’s a monkey or a giraffe or a lion or a koala bear on TV, he has to watch it. I like action movies—like James Bond movies or Collateral—or shows about police detectives trying to solve old murders. Cold cases, they’re called. I like it best when they dig up an old skull or hold up the rusty, crappy old hammer some maniac used to kill some poor guy, or when they look at a bloodstained pillowcase under a microscope. I guess that’s sort of weird. But I make no apologies.

  I put the Beatles record back on and play along to “Here, There and Everywhere” again. Then I get under my covers, not even taking my clothes off. I shut my eyes, sniff my smelly old corn-chip pillow and pretend I’m on that desert island again, thinking about those turtle eggs. They’d be all mushy inside, right? But, hey, you gotta eat to survive.

  After a while my thoughts get all confused. You know how it is just before you fall asleep, and your mind starts to go into free fall, where anything goes? From the desert island I go back to that summer at Shawnigan Lake, swimming in the green water with sunlight shafting into the deeper brown-black water. Some big dark fish are down below— it’s scary for some reason. And then I’m dreaming…dreaming that I’m sinking deeper and deeper, and that I can still see the sunlight. But it’s far, far above. And then I’m asleep.

  Chapter Two

  The next day at school, I plop myself down at my usual lunch table. Fake wood grain, bright orange plastic chairs. I always sit with the same people— guys I’ve known since elementary school. It’s kind of boring in a way. Then again, it’s nice to have somewhere to sit where you belong.

  Our lunchroom is big on cliques. The cool kids always hang out with the cool kids, the smart kids sit with the smart kids, the jocks sit with the other jocks. What’s my table like? Well, I hate to admit it…but we might be a nerd table.

  Most of my friends are into stuff like video games, science fiction books, Star Wars, Star Trek—even the old-school Star Trek shows from the 1960s. Things like that.

  I used to be into all that stuff too. I really liked the old-school Star Trek. I could talk for hours about the Vulcans and Spock and all. My best friend Jason and I have this joke—if you can call it a joke. We’d always point a finger at each other and yell, “Warp drive!” Warp drive means the faster-than-light way the Star Trek spaceship travels through space after nuclear war destroyed planet Earth. I don’t know why we would say something so stupid and uncool to each other. I guess we thought it was funny.

  Jason and I look totally different. I’ve got dark hair, almost black. Jason’s got red hair. He also has tons of freckles and wears gold wire-rimmed glasses. He’s always joking around, and he’s always in a good mood. Not like me. I guess that’s why we’re best friends.

  “Warp drive!” says Jason, pointing his finger at me as I sit down. I just grunt. Jason’s getting every single thing out of his lunch bag and arranging it on the table, like he always does. He’s a precise sort of guy. His mom, who’s really nice, always makes him a good lunch. Sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, apple, granola bar, home-baked cake. The works. I make my own lunch now. Today it’s two Pizza Pops. That’s it. Pretty crappy, but I’m too lazy to make anything good.

  Most of our friends are really into computers. Not just computer games. They actually know tons about computers, like how to fix them and program them and all. Have you ever noticed that these kinds of guys usually dress horribly? They look like their mom dressed them. Which might even be true. Donnie, sitting next to Jason, wears a little striped Charlie Brown T-shirt, like a six-year-old would wear. Steve’s got a short-sleeved sport shirt, buttoned up to his neck.

  They’re all talking loudly about some big stupid computer project they’re working on. Steve’s so excited, a bit of the sandwich he’s eating dribbles down the side of his chin. Leaks right down.

  “Steve, for Christ’s sake!” I say.

  He looks over.

  “What?”

  “Steve. Steve-o. Your chin,” says Jason. He points to his own chin. Steve rubs the sandwich guck off with the back of his hand.

  “Can’t take these guys anywhere,” says Jason.

  I bite into my Pizza Pop. Then something embarrassing happens. Something really terrible. The Pizza Pop explodes, just like in the TV commercial. A bunch of the red stuff inside, like tomato paste, squirts out about three feet onto the floor beside me. A couple of girls at the next table look over and giggle.

  I can feel my face getting red and hot.

  “Hey, Dunc! Like a zit,” says Steve.

  “Yeah. Pop that zit,” Donnie says, laughing like a maniac.

  “Shut up, you dildos,” I say. “Grow up.”

  I look around, but by now no one at the other tables is looking. It’s always busy in the cafeteria at lunch. Lots of talking, echoing noise. Bright fluorescent lights. I don’t like it here much, if you want to know the truth.

  Jason looks around, then looks at me for a second. Then he says, “Hey, how did you do on McGregor’s test?”

  Mr. McGregor is our social studies teacher. This morning we got our midterm tests back. The test was mostly on Europe, like what are the capitals of Europe and the special features of each city. You know, like how the Eiffel Tower is a special feature of Paris. Also some history stuff.

  Socials used to be one of my best subjects. But this term, I’ve got to admit, I haven’t actually done much work. I barely studied for the test. So, as a result, my test mark is quite lame.

  “D,” I say.

  “What?”

  “D. Well…D plus.”

  “Jesus.” Jason looks at me again. “Jesus, Duncan. That’s pretty bad.”

  “Yeah, I know. I don’t need you to tell me that.”

  “Your dad’s gonna kill you.”

  I hadn’t thought about that. Dad’s going to be mad, that’s for sure. He always puts a lot of stock in school grades. Mom did too. But for some reason, this year I don’t feel like studying so much. I used to be a really good student. Mostly Bs. Sometimes an A, like in band or art.

  Jason doesn’t say anything about his own test mark. I bet you he aced it though. Jason is a very smart guy. He gets mostly As. But he doesn’t brag. He hardly ever talks about how well he does in school. And if you ever need help on a math problem or whatever, he’ll always help you. Jason is a pretty good guy, all right.

  “Hey,” he says, “have you talked to that girl yet?”

  “What girl?” I say. But I know exactly who he’s talking about. Exactly.

  There’s this girl in band that I like. Jennifer. She plays clarinet. She’s pretty, with long brown hair. Everyone likes Jennifer. But she’s not one of those stuck-up good-looking girls. She’s nice. At least, I think she is. I haven’t exactly worked up the courage to talk to her yet. Any conversation we’ve had has been in my imagination. Or, as Dad would say, my overactive
imagination. But I’ve looked at her quite a few times, whenever I get the chance.

  Mostly I just see the back of her head though. That’s because the bass guitar player—that is, me—always gets stuck way at the back of the band, beside the drums. I sit beside the guy who plays the big bass drum. He’s a good guy, but he’s also sort of a dumbass. I guess you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to play the bass drum. And—I hate to say it—he farts all the time. Which is not cool at all in my book.

  “What girl? I’m talking about Jennifer. From band,” says Jason.

  “Nope,” I say, biting into my second Pizza Pop, but carefully this time, just in case. “No talkee. Not so far.”

  “Well, you should.”

  “I know that. Tell me something I don’t know.”

  Jason keeps quiet for a second. I can see he’s working himself up to something. Something different. That’s because I’ve known him since we were in grade two. When he has something important to say, his face goes all blank, then he sort of squints his left eye. It’s a total giveaway.

  “Hey, Dunc. I did something. I did something for you. On your behalf. But don’t get pissed off now,” he says. “Okay?”

  I hesitate for a second, then say, “What?”

  Jason’s quiet. Then he says, “I answered that ad. In the school newspaper. You know the one. That ad.”

  He meant an ad we had noticed in the school paper for a bass player. Jason kept encouraging me to answer it. But I wasn’t so sure. It said Wanted: Bass player for totally kick-ass rock band. No newbies or dweebs need apply.

  Jason says, “I knew you wanted to do it. You know, play in a band and everything. So I emailed the guy. It’s Grant Newson. See over there?” He points a couple of tables away.

  Grant Newson. He’s like Mr. Rock and Roll at our school. He always wears a leather jacket—one that’s all beat-up and rugged-looking. He used to be a total jock, on the basketball team and the football team. But now he just plays guitar and sings in rock bands. The girls are all crazy about him.