Dissonance - Chapter 22

Tuesday I actually saw Coach Bryant, but thankfully I managed to get back around the corner before he saw me. It meant I had to go the long way around to get to class and I only just made it before the tardy bell, but that was preferable to dealing with him. At least Harry gave me a wide berth in conditioning, suggesting my new tactic was working. I knew David had been right and eventually he’d feel compelled to do something to save face, but for now at least, he was keeping his distance.

Since practice with Chef was back to the schedule it was on last year, I’d promised Kat I’d go to her swim practices every day, at least until baseball season started and I had my own practices. It was a little rushed, but without Hanna to hang out with, I wanted to be around to support Kat as much as possible. She was doing a lot better, but this was the first school year she’d have to face with just the two of us while and I didn’t want her to have any problems that might slow down her treatment.

I was all set to leave just as her swim practice ended when Chef texted me, canceling practice. Kat had an appointment with Dr. Rothstein right after swimming practice, so my day went from being busy to completely open. Since it was only the second day of school, I didn’t have any homework to do.

Normally, that would be a good thing, but with Kat busy, no practice, Mrs. Phillips working, and Hanna off at college, it didn’t give me a lot of options short of going home, which I very much didn’t want to do. I was just going over any other possible options when a voice broke my concentration.

“You’re looking intense,” Sarah said.

I must have been there for a while thinking, because she’d had time to go to the locker room and change clothes before coming back out. I’d noticed her during the practice, and she was better than she’d let on in our previous conversation. She wasn’t at Kat’s level, but she was still very fast and looked to be in the top third of the girls on the swim team.

“Hey,” I said, startled.

“Is everything okay?” She asked, sitting down next to me on the bleachers.

“Yeah, just trying to figure out what to do for the rest of the day. Kat’s got a thing and what I had planned got canceled, so now I’m kind of at loose ends.”

“That sounds like a good thing, doesn’t it? I’d love a free day. Why not go home and watch TV or something while you’ve got the chance and just, zone out?”

“My Dad’s at home and we don’t really get along. Most days I try to stay gone till basically bedtime, and more or less just sleep there.”

“Sorry,” she said, looking slightly embarrassed.

“It’s okay, you had no way of knowing. And it’s not all bad. We just don’t get along and it’s easier to avoid the confrontation.”

“I get it.”

“What are you doing today?” I asked.

“Me? Nothing really. I was just going to go home and read.”

“How about we hang out? That is, if you want to.”

“Yeah,” she said, brightening visibly.

“Kat’s always starving after swim practice, want to get something to eat?”

“God yes. I don’t have a car, though.”

“I can drive. Did you need to call whoever was going to give you a ride home?”

“My dad picks me up when he gets off work, but that isn’t for another hour, or sometimes longer. usually I either sit out here and do homework or go back and sit by the front office. If you don’t mind giving me a ride home, I’ll text him and let him know he doesn’t need to pick me up.”

“Sure,” I said, picking up both our backpacks. “Let’s go.”

She seemed a little surprised I grabbed her bag too, but then gave a small smile as she fell in behind me.

“One of the places at Weaver Square good for you?” I asked, referring to the small complex of fast food places at the interstate exit.

Our small strip of restaurants and a gas station was the only reason most people who didn’t live here stopped at Wellsville and was a good source of revenue for the town not reliant on the factory or farms. The square also held the bowling alley that was Rhoda and my first date.

“Your pick,” I said as we pulled into the parking lot.

“Taco Corner?” She said questioningly.

“Works for me,” I said, pulling into the spot.

I’d only eaten at the burger place once and had never been to Taco Corner. At first, it was because mom and I didn’t have the money to eat out and even after I started making money, I was giving most of it to Mom so she’d eventually be able to quit one of her jobs. She did make me keep a little of it to spend on myself, but I’d also gotten so busy that I didn’t have time to go out and eat.

After ordering a taco and quesadilla combo I turned to Sarah and asked, “What do you want?”

“You don’t have to do that. I can get my own food.”

“I invited you. Invitor pays.”

“Ohh … uhh … the taco meal, please,” she said, surprised.

This wasn’t a date, so it made sense she didn’t expect me to buy her food or anything. I’m not sure why I did it. Even with my record contract, I wasn’t exactly wealthy and I couldn’t really go throwing money around to impress a girl, even the small amount of money it took to buy some tacos, but it felt like the right thing to do.

We got our food and found a table off to one side.

“Are you sure that’s enough food? Kat really puts it away after practice. I bet she eats twice what I do.”

“Yeah, it’s fine. She puts it all out every time she swims and she’s in a lot better shape than me, so there’s no doubt she needs more calories than I do. I mean, I’m just doing this for my P.E. credit, since I like swimming a lot more than running laps and playing dodgeball. She’s going to be in the Olympics one day. We’re not even in the same league.”

Kat didn’t really talk about her swimming much. She’d pushed to have her dad keep paying for her swim coaches, maybe because she thought she should or maybe because she was trying to get everything out of him she could. We’d talked about it a few times and I think she didn’t really know what she wanted out of it yet. Part of her thought she really did want to try and make something out of swimming, be it the Olympics or something else, and part of her thought it was something her dad had pushed her into so much that she accepted it as a given. That was part of the problem with her condition. An ongoing decision like that, if someone pushed it on her for years, she couldn’t tell what she wanted from what the other person wanted.

So far she hadn’t given it up because she was afraid if she stopped and realized she really did want to try and compete at a serious level, it would be too late to pick it back up. Trying to get to that level of competition required a serious amount of practice. Even going with us this summer had been a risk and she’d had to still do exercises in the hotel every day to keep from losing anything.

“So you don’t want to do swimming in college?”

“Probably not. I want to be a vet, and I understand it takes a lot of work to get that degree. Not doctor level study, but still a lot. I think I’d rather focus on that than swimming. Don’t get me wrong, I do like it and it’s fun to compete, but I just like other stuff more.”

“So you’re an animal person then?”

“Heck yes. I love animals. When I was little, I would bring animals I found home all the time. It drove my mom crazy. If it was up to her, we’d have one dog and that’s it. Instead we have two dogs, three cats, and a bird she absolutely hates.”

“Wow, that’s a lot of animals.”

“As my mom points out all the time. She makes me take care of them, feeding them, cleaning the bird's cage, and everything, but I don’t mind. I actually love it. People are great, but animals love you with everything they have. It’s great.”

“You’re adorable,” I said, laughing.

“Shut up,” she said, matching my laugh.

“I’m serious. You really do love animals. I think it’s cute. Some people say they like animals, but the way you talk about them, it’s clear you really do. Since we lived on the move my whole life, until last year, we’ve never really had animals, but I think it’s great you’re such an animal person.”

“I guess,” she said, with a shrug, getting suddenly shy.

“Seriously. I think it’s great you want to be a vet and know what you want to do. Gives you a goal to work towards. You should have seen Hanna applying to college. She was just going to get a basic liberal arts degree or something, because she didn’t know what she wanted to do. It was stressful for her mom.”

“But she figured it out?”

“Yeah. She started seeing some of the back-end stuff we were dealing with, working with clubs, the finances of it and everything, and really liked it. She got accepted into UNC’s business school working on a business degree with a focus on talent management.”

“Really? Does she want to work with you specifically?”

“For her degree? No. She knows that a lot can change in four years and she is smart enough to not bank everything on where I might be in my career. If she could work with me, that’d be great, but she’s been talking to some of the people at my label and working as a kind of intern manager for us on our tour, letting her make contacts and get practical experience. That’ll be a leg up when it comes to getting in with one of the agencies or record labels, though.”

“See, you’re talking about us knowing what we want to do when you’re actually doing what you want to do. You’re out there touring and have a record contract and everything. We’re still kids, dreaming of college and you’re actually doing it.”

“I got lucky and I’m a long way from having this be something I can support myself with. I told you my dad had a record contract, and see what happened to him? We were barely living hand to mouth out of an RV until he went away and Mom settled us down here. As careers go, it wasn’t exactly booming.”

“Went away?” She asked.

My circle of friends was pretty small and they knew all about my dad at this point, so I didn’t really think about having to explain to someone that my dad killed someone or was in prison. Had I thought about it, I probably would have kept that to myself for a while longer, since this wasn’t exactly a great topic for a first conversation getting to know someone.

“Uhh, yeah. He went to jail after a bar fight and was set to do a long time, until his case got overturned because of the judge doing something illegal or something.”

“Ohh.”

“Yeah, I know. We don’t exactly get along, especially since he got back.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Why would you. He’s only been back a few weeks and he only sits around the house doing nothing.”

“I guess I mean I didn’t mean to bring up a bad subject.”

“It’s okay. Not everything is great all the time, and pretending the bad stuff doesn’t exist doesn’t make it go away or make me feel any better.”

“That’s a good way to look at it.”

“I mean, it’s that or stays in bed and feel sorry for myself.”

“I know more than a few people who’d do just that, plus crying. being able to put it behind you and get on with your life.”

“Ha, I hope you feel the same when I end up killing him for stepping over the line one too many times,” I said, trying to break the tension.

We actually went on talking way past when Kat finished her therapy session. Now that she wasn’t acting all nervous and weird like she had the other day, I found her to be really easy to talk to. She was smart, funny, self-deprecating, and seemed like a genuinely good person. When I’d hung out with Rhonda, while I’d really liked her, she’d regularly say something that reminded me how self-centered she could be and how she was always looking for an angle. I didn’t get any of that from Sarah.

By the time I dropped her off at her house, which was in one of the nicer neighborhoods in town, I was feeling relaxed. Training and practicing was great, but I think this was something I really needed to cope with the school stuff and dad and everything. Not that I didn’t have that hanging out with Kat, but I felt a responsibility to her that I didn’t have here. It was nice to be able to just disconnect and be a kid again.

***

That weekend was the day the band moved into the house they were renting in Wellsville. Kat and I drove down Asheville early that morning to help them get up one last load of stuff. They’d actually been slowly moving stuff to Wellsville for the last two weeks, filling up Hanna’s mothers' garage, which she was nice enough to volunteer as a storage lot, to keep them from having to rent a truck or something and doing it all at once.

Every time they’d come up for a practice to play our set gig at the Blue Ridge, they’d fill up the van with as much stuff as they could cram into it and drop it off before we started. Friday they’d even started leaving their instruments there instead of bringing them back and forth from Asheville each time, which meant most of the move was us having to drive to and from their house and Hanna’s house, getting stuff moved in.

It wasn’t exactly grueling, but we were all pretty tired when we got the last load out of the van and into their house, so we decided to skip pre-show practice and let everyone get some rest before we had to go on that night.

For basically what the three of them had been paying to live in tiny apartments in Asheville, they were now living in an almost twenty-five hundred square foot three-bedroom house. The landlord even left behind an old washer and drier for them to use, which meant no more laundry mats. Lyla, who’d had two roommates in a two-bedroom house, was particularly stoked, because it meant she didn’t have to work out a schedule for her booty calls. I don’t think the boys realized how much she was going to terrorize them, since she was clearly the wildest of the three, but it would be an interesting experience.

I had just moved the last box of stuff from the van into the garage where we were putting everything until they could sort it out, when my phone rang.

“Hello,” I said, seeing Kent’s name pop up.

“Charlie!” he said with that a little too friendly tone he used. “Good job on that interview. I got a copy of the article and it’s glowing. They loved you down there and the club owner called me to tell me you guys were great. I can bet they’re going to want you to make a stop there on your next tour.”

“Good. Hopefully it’ll help sell some albums.”

“From your lips to god's ear. While I’m glad things went so well, I’m not calling just to shine you one. I’ve got some news.”

“Okay,” I said, trepidatiously.

In my experience, when it was good news someone would just start telling you what was happening. It was only when it was bad news that they’d start off announcing they had news.

“Don’t sound like that, it isn’t bad,” he said, correctly interpreting my tone. “I just got off the phone with Warren Rice, who’s one of our newer talent managers. The band he was managing just got pulled from the label, so he just got freed up.”

“They got pulled from the label?”

“I get the concern, but it wasn’t his fault. They’d been with several managers before and Warren was our last try, hoping some new blood would get them to turn around. Warren may be new with us, but he’s a good guy and he’ll work hard for you guys. He understands your situation and knows about your limitations and thinks he can work around them. Since we had problems though, I didn’t want to just saddle you with him. I was thinking we could fly out there on the eleventh and have a sit-down, just to make sure you two fit.”

“I don’t want to be a big problem, Kent. I appreciate you guys going out of your way to accommodate me, but I wasn’t asking for any special treatment. I really did try and talk to Brent first before pulling anyone else into this and making a big deal of it.”

“I know, which is why I don’t mind taking the effort. Besides, I’m glad you brought Brent’s actions to us. We’re all for having multiple artists under the label come together, keeping performances in-house, as it were, but forcing in an opening band into a tiny venue just to get them ticket sales hurts everyone and is bad for business. You did the right thing telling us what was going on.”

I noticed he didn’t mention Brent trying to break my contract stipulations. Had that been the only thing he’d done, I was fairly certain Kent would have let it slide, since the label would prefer I be out there hustling just as much as Brent did. Just because they’d agreed to our contract requirements didn’t mean they liked them.

“Okay, we’ll be there,” I said.

“We don’t need the whole band, just you and your mother, since you’re a minor. I want you to be clear, Warren will be managing you. If you want to bring the others, that’s fine, but you’re the one we’re actually contracted with and working with. If they weren’t here, part of Warren’s job would be to find musicians to fill out your gigs.”

“But they’re part of it. Our album has them on the cover and they’ve been part of every performance. They’ll be part of every performance Warren sets up for us too.”

“I know, and I don’t have a problem with you using the same people or even making the a permanent fixture, but we’re treating this just like we do every artist who has a preferred selection of musicians. We aren’t treating you, or your band members, any different than we treat anyone else in this situation. You’re not the first artist we’ve signed who had a band they liked to play with. We make accommodations when we’re paying for a tour to get them housing and the like and we’ll make sure they’re included on Album credits and artwork if you want, but Warren isn’t going to be the band’s manager, he’s yours.”

I hadn’t realized they had other people who had a similar deal with a contract for a single person who played as part of a band, even though the band wasn’t signed. I probably should have. It made sense. There were popular musicians who always had the same people backing them up, none of whose names I actually knew.

Knowing that didn’t make it feel any better, though. I didn’t start making real progress from covers into my own music until Marco and Seth came along. Rowen and Mr. French may have guided me in learning how to write music, but having other people willing to join me on stage and follow my lead had given me the confidence to see myself not as a kid having fun on stage, but an actual musician.

Not that it mattered. I’d already pushed my luck with enough getting rid of Brent, and it wasn’t like I was going to be able to renegotiate my contract before my album even dropped. It also wasn’t going to matter with the guys much. Lyla would probably roll with it, based on how she’d responded the other times it had come up, but Marco was going to flip his shit.

“I understand. I was just thinking things through. Let me know what time we’re meeting and where and I’ll be there.”

“Good. I’ll be in touch,” he said hanging up.

I hung up and went inside, where the three new roommates were looking around the house, talking about where stuff should go and what their plans were.

“I have some news,” I said, choosing a very similar way to start the conversation as Kent had. I could see Marco starting to react so I held up my hand. “It’s not bad necessarily. They’ve found us a new manager and I’m going to be meeting him in about two weeks. Kent had some very good things to say about him and said he wouldn’t pull the same thing Brent did, saddling us with that craptastic opening band.”

“What do you mean you’re meeting with him?” Marco asked, hitting exactly the note I expected.

“I argued with him for a while that we should all be there, but their position hasn’t changed, Marco. I’m really not trying to exclude any of you, and I made that clear to Kent. I also made it clear to him that I expected this new guy to treat us as a collective unit, and I’ll say the same thing to Warren, that’s the new manager, when I see him. I know that’s annoying and it’s not fair to you guys, but they aren’t budging and it’s not like any of us have any sway over the label.”

“I guess,” Marco said.

“Marco, get off his nuts,” Lyla said, sounding actually angry, which was rare for her. “You heard him say he tried to get us included, and you can hear how worried he was when he came in here, because he knew exactly how you were going to react. I swear, you bitch every time you’re reminded Charlie’s the one with the contract here, like you didn’t know that going in. We all agreed to this deal when it happened, and were happy to get an equal cut of what Charlie was paid for his upfront fee and for every tour stop we’ve had. Charlie could have told us to kick rocks, let the label find people to back him up in the studio and on stage, and kept all of the money. And yet, every time it comes up … bitch, bitch, bitch. I’m sick of this shit. I swear to god, next time Charlie’s just giving us an update from the label and you start bitching about being treated like you aren’t on the contract, which you aren’t, I’m going to punch you in the goddamn mouth. You know I’ll do it, too.”

As with the other times, Marco backed down. He didn’t look happy, looking at the ground and very specifically making no eye contact with anyone.

“Marco, I promise I’m going to keep bringing up you’re right to be included in every discussion every time the label does something like this. Maybe, once the record comes out, if it does well enough, we might have enough pull to make them listen to us. I really am trying.”

“We know,” Seth said. “It’s just hard being thought of as an add-on. It’s a reminder that they could replace us at any time, even if the album sells well.”

“Not while I have anything to say about it. They wouldn’t let me put your names on all the songs, but on the ones you contributed, Rowan said he’d make sure you shared the copyright, so that’s something. And I know we don’t have one of yours yet Marco, but we will. I promise. I’m not going to let them screw you guys over.”

Marco didn't buy it, but he backed down again. I hoped that, once we managed to make one of his songs manageable and get it in rotation, he’d back down. Or maybe he wouldn’t until it got on a record, since both Seth and Lyla had one on our first album. For now, I was going to take the coward's way out and let Lyla deal with him.