Born to Rock

  I couldn’t connect the titles with the vocals, or even tell where one track stopped and the next began. Okay, I wasn’t exactly a fan, but should it be so hard to understand what you’re listening to?

  I tried. Honestly I did. I set aside all my opinions about punk and approached it as an intellectual exercise. Nothing. No melody. No rhythm. I might just as well have headed to the nearest airport and listened to them revving up jet engines.

  I stuck Sewer-ride so far in the back of my sock drawer that it was practically not in the room. Nothing was different. Finding out was just a hiccup; Project X was still on. Now that I knew I was harboring a McMurphy far worse than my wildest nightmares, it was more vital than ever to keep the guy under control.

  I woke up at three o’clock in the morning. The CD was trying to interface with my McMurphy DNA. I could feel it out there, like a fax signal waiting for another fax to make a connection.

  Tomorrow, I resolved, I would bury it in the backyard. If that didn’t do the trick, I was prepared to carry it to Mordor and hurl it into the fires of Mount Doom.

  The next day at lunch, I admitted something to Melinda that ordinarily I wouldn’t have confessed under torture.

  “I was listening to Sewer-cide last night—”

  “Don’t patronize me, Leo,” she interrupted with a snort.

  “Hey,” I defended myself, “I listen to music.”

  “Oh, yeah. Kenny Chesney and Zamfir, master of the pan flute.”

  I bristled. “You’re the one who’s always calling me a musical Philistine. Forgive me for taking the initiative and trying something new.”

  Owen was humming tunelessly and drumming on the cafeteria table with a plastic fork. I was so amazed to find that I recognized the un-melody that I actually sang a few words along with him: “Bomb Mars, now; nuke Mars now…”

  Melinda was round-eyed. “I can’t believe you got turned on to Purge! So? How much did you love it?”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t shave my head, if that’s what you mean.”

  “No, seriously. It’s the greatest punk album of all time. Lacks some of the oomph of Apocalypse Yesterfunk, but more sophisticated musically.”

  “Well—” I probed further, “what do they mean by bomb Mars? Even if we could get bombs to Mars, what would be the point? There’s nobody there.”

  “Don’t you get it? We’re always bombing somebody. Why not Mars? Nobody makes a statement like King!”

  Being one of those statements, I couldn’t really argue with her. But the songs still made no sense to me.

  “What about ‘Number Two’? What’s the message there?”

  “That’s my favorite,” Owen enthused. “We spend twelve years in school, but to the system, we’re nothing but a bunch of test scores—Number Two pencil marks for computers to read.” That made sense for a guy who’d spent most of his life trying to outrun his own IQ test.

  Melinda nodded. “Things like that get King nuts.”

  “Seems to me just about everything gets King nuts,” I observed sourly.

  “That’s why Purge is so great,” she explained. “We think it and feel it, and there’s King screaming it over a hundred thousand watts of raw power. It’s like your words are pouring out of his mouth, and his rage is your rage. It blows your mind!”

  Look, it was still just noise, and I couldn’t make out a note of it. But the mere fact of knowing it was about something—anything—gave me some small comfort. It made King Maggot a little less of a wild beast.

  McMurphy, that poltergeist in my veins, was a real person. In all the years that I’d been sharing a body with the guy, that thought had never once crossed my mind.

  [7]

  MAY. THE HOMESTRETCH. HIGH SCHOOL, for all intents and purposes, was over. The big exams had all been taken. Grades—at least the ones that would be reported to colleges and universities—were already set. Class attendance was sparse, and even the teachers didn’t seem to mind.

  The buzz was about next year—who would be going where. Melinda had final acceptance from U. Conn., and four schools were actually competing for Owen. Despite average SATs and lukewarm grades, Connecticut’s diamond in the rough would be cruising to a full ride somewhere. At least it meant Borman wouldn’t get his way.

  Gates was (where else?) Stanford-bound, and Fleming and Shelby both got the nod from Yale. Somebody had to be the sickening lovebirds of the incoming freshman class, I guess. I was just happy they’d be sickening somebody else for a change.

  At our next Young Republicans meeting, good old Flem brought in stacks of newspaper clippings claiming that his Yale had surpassed my Harvard in the college rankings. What was the point in arguing? High school arguments seemed lighter than air, and getting lighter.

  Harvard was stamped all over my incoming mail—dorm assignments, preregistration. Some fraternity even sent out a flyer advertising their first party of the fall. The tuition bill was there too, along with a letter from the McAllister Foundation. They were the sponsors of my scholarship, the only way I was able to pay said tuition bill. So it was fitting that the two should arrive together.

  I tore open the McAllister envelope. The letter was short and to the point:

  Dear Mr. Caraway,

  We are sorry to inform you that we are canceling your scholarship funding due to a recent ethics violation we note in your student record. In addition to academic and extracurricular achievement, the foundation requires the utmost in integrity from our candidates. In this light, we cannot overlook what your school describes as “cheating on an examination.”

  With regret,

  Rosalie McAllister Black

  CHAIRPERSON

  It was like being hit by a train when you didn’t even know you were standing on railroad tracks. Total devastation, but total shock as well. I had checked with Harvard after my meeting with Borman. In a million years it had never occurred to me that the math test thing would cost me my scholarship. If it wasn’t a deal-breaker for Harvard, why should the McAllister people care?

  A feeling of cold panic descended on me as I realized that a no on the scholarship was a no on Harvard, too. Sure, I had college savings, but that would never cover more than a state school. Dad owned a small-town hardware store; Mom picked up a few extra bucks as the dispatcher for substitute teachers in our area. My first year’s tab for tuition and housing was more than forty thousand dollars! For me to come up with that kind of money now would take a much larger ethics violation than the one I’d allegedly committed with Owen Stevenson. I would have to hold up an armored car on its way to Fort Knox!

  I was screwed.

  My parents took it worse than I did.

  “If only we’d known, Leo!” Dad lamented. “We could have found that money somewhere!”

  “Come on, Dad. Forty grand? That was always the deal—no scholarship, no Harvard. That’s why I applied to state schools—in case the McAllister didn’t pan out.”

  “But we told the state schools to forget it!” Mom interjected desperately. “It’s too late for that now!”

  Dad cut right to the heart of the matter. “But how can they accuse you of cheating? Did you cheat?”

  “Of course not!” I exploded. “I was tutoring a guy in algebra, and I said one word to him in the exam. One word! It wasn’t a question or an answer.”

  “But why did you say any word?” my mother persisted.

  “Mr. Borman was gunning for Owen Stevenson,” I explained. “If I’d served the kid up on a silver platter, nothing would have happened to me.”

  “Owen Stevenson?” my mother repeated shrilly. “You can’t stand Owen Stevenson!”

  “Borman’s worse. He was looking for an excuse to kick Owen out of school, and I sure wasn’t going to do his dirty work for him.”

  They supported me. Mom got on the phone to Mr. Borman, and Dad took on the McAllister Foundation. Then they switched. They fought hard for me, their strident, outraged voices ringing through the house.

  In th
e end, it was all settled. The powers that be were going to take away my scholarship, and I was going to let them. There’s no mercy in academia.

  Screwed.

  Thinking back on it, I probably should have gone to the newspapers to expose Borman for the tin-plated dictator that he was. But that wouldn’t have gotten me my scholarship back. Technically, I was in the wrong here. Talking during an exam counts as cheating. It’s like speeding—everybody does it, but if you’re the guy they catch, you’re done.

  Dad was practically suicidal. “This is my fault. If I had stayed on Wall Street that tuition bill would be a drop in the bucket right now.”

  “Erik, that’s crazy talk,” my mother soothed. “Who could blame you after what happened to Dan Rapaport?”

  “There were a lot of other guys on that commuter platform, and none of them quit their jobs. None of them put themselves ahead of their families.”

  “You did that for your family, remember?” she argued. “So you’d always be there for us.”

  It tore me up to see him blaming himself for this. I also saw a connection with that day on the railway platform, but my take was different. Ever since then, I’d been unable to say no to Melinda. If I’d had the spleen to tell her to stuff it when she’d asked me to tutor Owen, none of this would be happening right now.

  If only life came with a rewind/erase button.

  “Oh, Leo!” Mom was distraught. “I know defending Owen was the right thing to do. But, oh honey, how could you?”

  It came back to me as clear as Caribbean water—the feeling that had swelled inside me as I’d sat opposite Mr. Borman, stiffening my jaw as well as my resolve. Only this time, McMurphy had a face—ferocious eyes blazing beneath a punk haircut.

  I bit my lip. This was probably not a good time to bring up King Maggot again.

  I moved through the halls of that school like I’d never seen the place before. I could barely walk in a straight line. I wasn’t drunk. It was just that my life had suddenly become entirely devoid of direction. I felt like a guy who had just been released from prison after serving a fifty-year term. This was not my planet.

  The planet may have been different, but the local aliens were still the usual suspects.

  “Leo! Leo!” Melinda came pounding down the hall, her layers of black on black flowing behind her like the cape of the vampire Lestat. “You’re never going to believe this! It’s the greatest thing that ever could have happened!”

  I made a split-second decision then and there: I would tell no one that I wasn’t going to Harvard. I couldn’t face the questions and I couldn’t face the sympathy. People might get suspicious in September when they saw me still working my summer gig at Dad’s hardware store, but they weren’t going to hear the news from me.

  “What’s up?”

  “Guess who’s headlining the Concussed World Tour this summer?”

  “The what?”

  She was disgusted. “Concussed, Leo. They have it every year. It’s a traveling all-day festival of punk, hardcore, ska, and heavy metal. You’re going to die when you hear the news: Purge is getting back together to do the tour—all the original band members!”

  It should have made a big impression on me—the fact that my biological father was about to slither out from whatever rock he’d been hiding under since 1990. I’d never really thought of him as a today person. He was just a guy who, eighteen years ago, made some terrible music and got my mother pregnant. The fact that all his fame was from the ’80s only seemed to reinforce the idea that he existed in the past.

  Now he was going to resurface.

  Before yesterday, that would have been front-page news. But now, with my life in shards around my feet, I had no interest whatsoever in seeing the mysterious King Maggot in action. If Purge had been staging their reunion in our backyard, I wouldn’t have lifted the blind to check it out. Losing Harvard had done that much for me. McMurphy couldn’t hold me for ransom anymore. There was nothing left for me to lose.

  Anyway, your real father wasn’t the one who provided the genetic material. He was the one who was willing to get on the phone and call Rosalie McAllister Black an “unreasonable, heartless old bag.” Dad was a real pit bull; Mom too. And even though it hadn’t changed anything, it was some consolation to have two people so ardently on my side.

  I felt a surge of resentment toward Melinda for interrupting the end of the world to supply me with this useless information. That might have explained why I snapped at her the way I did.

  “What makes you think I care?”

  She looked at me as if I’d slapped her.

  “I’ve got news for you, Melinda. Purge sucks! All punk sucks! It’s stupid, pointless noise!” It was the first time I’d raised my voice since opening the McAllister letter. It felt good to let the anger out, even if it was being directed at the wrong person. “Look at you—you’ve based your whole life on it! What does that say about you?”

  I’d seen her deck goth-hating jocks in a single blow, with the silver studs of her dog-collar bracelet pulled up onto her knuckles. But when she punched me, it was barely a tap on the shoulder with the soft leather part. It hurt far worse than a home run swing, because I knew how much my words must have upset her. She expected to take grief from the usual gang of loudmouths at our school. But not from me.

  On the other hand, if I’d had the guts to offend her a couple of months ago, I might still be going to Harvard.

  So why did I feel even worse than before?

  That Saturday, Owen Stevenson dropped by to see me just before seven A.M. His 180 IQ may have been a thing of the past, but he was still gifted in the field of bothering people.

  I blinked bleary eyes at him, struggling to find focus. “Don’t you sleep?”

  “I just got off the train from New York,” he replied. “Mel and I stayed up all night waiting in line for passes to the Concussed kickoff press conference.”

  “Congratulations,” I mumbled. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard all day. Of course, it’s early yet. Plenty of time for you to say something even dumber.”

  In spite of the fact that I was blocking the doorway, he pushed past me and established himself in a living room chair. “Mel was going to get a ticket for you too, as a surprise. You know—before.”

  “I’m glad she didn’t bother. I wouldn’t be caught dead in that place.”

  Another funny thing about Owen. If you don’t tell him what he expects to hear, he continues as if you hadn’t spoken. “You were really nasty to her. What did she do to deserve that?”

  “For starters, she saddled me with you.” I gave him my most inhospitable glare. “Now, are you here just to bug me, or do you have something to say?”

  “You don’t know how good a friend Mel is to you,” Owen informed me. “When people make fun of you and your Young Republicans, she doesn’t let them get away with it. When people are sick of hearing about your Harvard scholarship, she sticks up for you. When people call you a snob—”

  “What people?” I growled. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

  “It’s lots of people,” he insisted. “And you should hear Mel—‘Leo’s a good guy; I’ve known him my whole life; he’s just a little misguided.’ What do you say to that?”

  “Since when is ‘misguided’ a compliment?”

  “You owe her an apology.”

  Here’s the thing: I’d been mentally formulating an apology to Melinda for the past two days. But I wasn’t going to admit it to Owen.

  I said, “Go home.”

  He stood up. “I told her not to get you a ticket, but she got you one anyway. You’re going to see Purge.”

  “I’ve got better things to do with my time than to waste it on a bunch of middle-aged punks who were nobody in their prime, and are even less now.”

  He faced me with haughty dignity. “Twenty-five million CDs—what do you say to that?”

  “I don’t know,” I told him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

&nbs
p; “Twenty-five million CDs and vinyl records—that’s what those nobodies sold in their prime.”

  “Really?” I stared at him, stunned. A lapsed Einstein, sure. But he had just pointed out something I’d never thought of before.

  Rock stars weren’t just notorious bad boys and gossip column fodder. The music business paid! Twenty-five million CDs—that was a lot of money. And that didn’t even include concerts, T-shirts, posters, and radio and TV royalties!

  Here I was, completely undone by losing a forty-thousand-dollar scholarship, when…

  I had a rich father!

  [8]

  I SAT ON THE PACKED TRAIN, WEDGED in between Melinda and Owen, on my way to the press conference and an uncertain future.

  Good old Melinda had forgiven me readily. God only knew why. Just like I couldn’t stay mad at her, she apparently couldn’t stay mad at me. Maybe it was our shared history, which stretched clear back to toddlerhood. Maybe she wasn’t as punk as she liked everybody to believe. Or maybe she was just so psyched about the prospect of a Purge reunion that everything was sunshine and roses. On her usual online soapbox, KafkaDreams posted this message:

  Nobody bug me today. This is the greatest moment in the history of recorded time! Tell you all about it tomorrow, but right now I’M GOING TO SEE PURGE!!!!

  Her enthusiasm hadn’t dampened on the train. “I can’t believe,” she was raving, “that when we get there, the four guys sitting behind the microphones are going to be Purge. I mean, what do they look like now? Has anybody seen them in all these years? King used to be so sexy!”

  Owen nodded thoughtfully. “But you know who’s smokin’? That guy who calls himself Ylang Ylang—the drummer for the Ball Peens.”

  Melinda shook her head. “The real hottie is Pete Vukovich from the Stem Cells. P.S.—he has the best butt in punk.”

  While they giggled like sixth-graders, I sat there, working up a migraine, scared witless. I felt a lot like those Olympic athletes who train for decades, and then it all comes down to a ten-second race. How was I going to get close enough to King Maggot to give him the letter I’d written, explaining who I was, and how I desperately needed to talk to him? Would he read it? And even if he did, how seriously would he take it? Rock stars collected paternity claims like baseball cards. I could be one of a royal court of thirty Prince Maggots.