Unfortunately, my confrontation with Will did not faze him at all.
In fact, it only seemed to make him more intrigued than anything else.
For the following few days, at least five times a day, I caught Will looking my way — during classes, lunch break, during homeroom, and regrettably, during chem, where Mr. Stevenson had decided that the best course of action would be to ignore my existence completely; as if pretending I wasn't there at all would mitigate any potential impending explosions of fire in his classroom. Every time Will and I locked eyes, the knot in the pit of my stomach tightened, and I would be reminded, once again, of my insane decision of deciding to take the fall for him in order to keep his mom from moving away. I was always the first to immediately break the eye contact, but I could still feel his eyes on me after I had fixed my gaze on something, anything else.
Will's undue attention toward me had another negative side effect: Ethan.
Walking to English on Thursday, I passed Ethan and his usual group of friends, staring straight ahead, willing them not to bother me. Will was standing off to the right side of the hallway, by the lockers, in the same pose as he had been in when he ambushed me in the hallway before — sneaker up on the wall nonchalantly, hands in jacket pockets, looking right at me. Even as I quickly snapped my gaze to someone else passing me by on my left, I caught a glimpse in the corner of my eye of Ethan turning his head to glance at Will, then at me.
"Bet you had a blast in detention, Violetta." I didn't have to turn around to picture Ethan's smirk as he said the words. I didn't bother to stick around, picking up my pace and turning the corner and out of earshot as snickers of appreciative laughter from Ethan's friends bounce around in my ears, my face burning.
What does Will think he's doing? I thought, fuming. Does not get that he's only going to get me in more trouble the more attention he gives me? Or is that his goal?
I adamantly decided that, if direct confrontation had failed, the thing to do was avoid Will at all costs. I had to give him credit, though — he was relentless.
On Wednesday, he tried to talk to me after history by waiting outside the classroom — history was my last class of the day — but I speed-walked away and disappeared into the crowd before he could catch me.
On Thursday, I spotted him up the hallway waiting at the entrance as students poured out for lunch break, and snuck out the side entrance before he saw me. Thankfully, he didn't try to ambush me after I served my time in jail — sorry, I mean detention — that day.
On Friday, I was beginning to feel more like a spy-in-training than a student, using back stairways and more circular routes to get to my classes. At lunchtime, however, Will seemed to have decided it was time for a more direct approach, and he started walking right to the table I was sitting in the middle of the lunch period, at which point I promptly got up, packed up my lunch, and exited the cafeteria and the main building itself, taking a lap around the school's expansive mile-long track and field, surrounded by the shade of tall oak trees, before heading back inside for my next class.
The only other person I had ever in my life so studiously avoided had been Ethan, especially when we had first broken up and went back to school; but right now, it was Will who was causing me the most trouble.
So when the weekend finally rolled around, I managed to breathe a sigh of relief — a short-lived one, though, since I still had to serve a few hours of detention in the morning, which I spent scribbling down notes and ideas that I brought that same day to band practice. When I was finally released, I rushed outside to the welcoming fresh air and biked to Ryder's place. It was already past noon, and as I put my bike away on the side of the garage, I heard the distinct sounds of a guitar being tuned.
I ducked underneath the garage door, which was only halfway open, letting the sunlight stream inside. I blinked hard to let my eyes adjust, but I knew my way by muscle memory, and I started making my way to the right side of the garage, where most of the instruments were stacked away.
"Violet!" A petite girl with long, light blonde hair standing off to the left, twisting the tuning knobs on a dusty rose-and-white electric guitar, called out to me in greeting.
"Looks like you made it out alive," said a dark-haired figure from behind his drum kit, tapping his finger along the tension rods in each drum, testing their tuning.
When I spotted my bass, a shiny black shape upright in its stand, I grabbed it and swung the strap around my left shoulder as I turned around to face them. Olivia is the one on the electric guitar. She's a year younger than the rest of us and goes to a private school called Newcastle about forty minutes away. None of the pomposity and snobbiness of going to an expensive, top-of-the-line school have rubbed off on her, though. She decided at the age of ten that she'd had enough and started to learn electric guitar instead of the violin as she was expected to at her music lessons at school. The rest is history. I met her through Danny a year and a half ago, when we were scouting for a guitarist, and though at the time the guitar almost looked as big as her, once we saw how she dominated it, we immediately asked her to join.
Ryder is the dark-haired one on the drums and the one who had the garage we used as a practice space. I also met him through Danny, though we had not been recruiting for another bad member at the time. Ryder went to Deschutes High along with Danny, and Danny had first met him in the bathrooms when Ryder accidentally singed his eyebrows trying to light a cigarette. Later that week, Danny got to witness Ryder getting in trouble for trying to bring in a pancake griddle to lunch to cook his own pancakes because "the school lunches were absolutely abysmal." But despite the chaotic energy Ryder emitted, Danny saw how Ryder could hardly sit still in class, always had to have his fingers tapping on something, and decided that he would be perfect for our drummer. He wasn't wrong. Ryder's been playing since he was eleven, and for him, it's always been the perfect way to let out his frenzied spiritedness.
Both Ryder and Olivia are looking at me now expectantly, waiting for a response; an explanation as to why I've been absent from practice for the past week.
"Where's Danny?" I asked.
"Getting another wire for the keyboard," Olivia replied, motioning her head toward the half-open garage door, and just as she did, Danny's broad, tall figure filled the gap between the garage door and floor for a moment as he ducked his head and slipped in.
Danny is 6 foot 2, broad-shouldered, and with long, thick brown hair that curled at the side that was reminiscent of a young Heath Ledger in 10 Things I Hate About You. It was difficult to believe that he was just a teenager, although he was eighteen — one year older than me and Ryder. He stood out in any space he was in, to the point where some of the kids in middle school used to call him 'Cinder Block' — which he didn't take offense to at all; in fact, to the kids' puzzlement; he and I both used the nickname as an inside joke, and it stuck for a while. He's a whizz on the keyboard as well as anything to do with sound engineering, and he held a wire between his fingers, deftly wading through the ocean of mixed-up cords and wires on the floor to find the right one to plug in before standing up to face me.
"Are you going to tell us what happened, Violet?" He asked. His tone is never demanding or insistent, but serious and inquisitive.
I twiddled the tuning knobs on my bass as I began to tune it mindlessly. "My chemistry teacher claims that I purposely set fire to a lab experiment during class."
Ryder whistled. "That's even better than any of the detentions I've gotten," he said, clearly impressed.
"He claims?" Olivia said, shooting Ryder a dirty look. "So what actually happened? Because there's no way you did."
"Well, I know that," I said irritably. "But my chem teacher doesn't. Anyway, it was Ethan."
Ryder made a humph noise ad tapped his drum sticks on his cymbals as if to emphasize his distaste. "Of course. That asshat." This time, Olivia doesn't give another look, instead, she looked indignant.
"But you got in trouble for it instead?"
"Yep, which I'm sure was exactly what he wanted," I said, finishing up my fine-tuning on my bass, which was now thrumming beautifully, the vibrations filling the space. "So now I have detention for the next two weeks. I'll only be able to come on Saturdays." I was well aware that I wasn't telling the whole story, but I didn't see the point of mentioning Will or Jackie to them. Will was someone I had to deal with myself, and my meeting with Jackie was something I had only told Willow about so far. Neither of those circumstances could change the fact that I mostly couldn't make it to practice for the next couple of weeks.
Olivia and Ryder exchanged a knowing glance, and Danny's face grew more serious.
"That poses another problem," Danny broke the silence after a few moments. "I wanted to talk to you about it today while we're all here." He pulled up something on his phone and hands it over for me to see.
I took the phone from him, squinting at the screen in front of me. A colorful, digital banner splashed across the screen:
THIS SPRING AND SUMMER: BERKLEE'S BATTLE OF THE BANDS
I glanced up at Danny in disbelief, my heart beginning to speed. He nodded as if telling me to go on, and I read the rest of the announcement.
The music industry is an ever-changing field, and now more than ever, Berklee College of Music is looking for talented young musicians to accept into their ranks for both undergraduate and graduate music programs. Berklee College of Music is one of the most widely recognized music colleges in the world, and part of its outstanding reputation is due to its star-studded alumni, top-of-the-line instructors, and professionals from the music industry regularly giving talks and engaging with the students on a day-to-day basis.
Berklee College of Music is now announcing a Battle of the Bands contest, inviting all local, unsigned bands within the US to participate in a series of contests that will eventually determine (1) three bands as grand-prize winners and (2) five as runners-up.
The grand-prize winners will all receive full scholarships to Berklee as well as full room and board paid for the entire duration of their degree. This includes any music degree of their choice, as the individual band members may select different degrees.
The runners-up will receive acceptance into Berklee as well as a $1,000 prize for each individual band member in order to help forward them in their musical journey.
Think your band has a chance? Sign up for the contest using the link below, or go to for more information and details on the contest rules. Terms and conditions apply.
When I got to the end of the page, my mouth was completely dry, my heart thudding erratically in my chest, my breathing shallow and strange. I forced myself to speak, but even my voice doesn't sound quite right to me. "Is this legit?"
Danny nodded again. "I called them," he said, taking back his phone and scrolling through a few more things. "And I called Berklee as well. It all checks out. They're holding this battle of the bands. They're looking for local talent to accept into their music programs." He looked up at each of us — Ryder still on his drum kit, Olivia with her guitar now hanging behind her as she leaned against a speaker, me still standing in the middle of the room with my bass tugging heavily at my shoulder.
We were all familiar with Berklee. The truth was, we would all be lying if he said it wasn't our dream school. All that the digital poster had spouted about Berklee being the shit — that wasn't all exaggeration. Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, Ben McKee of Imagine Dragons, John Mayer, and many others all came out of Berklee. We've all spent hours pouring over their music programs, their offers, their scholarships, but at the end of the day, it all added up to one word: impossible. None of us had that kind of money anyplace, especially not to move all the way out to Boston, on the other side of the country. Olivia was perhaps the only person who had a shot at actually being able to afford it, but she had not even begun to consider moving away and being separated from us.
And now, here was a shot. A shot at all of us getting in, no matter how small.
And it made my stomach churn at the thought of it.
"We're doing it, right?" Olivia asked, looking around at all of us. "ECHO has to join."
"Hell yes, we are," Ryder said, and a grin broke out on Olivia's face. Even Danny's lips began to curl up at the ends, and now they're all looking at me.
ECHO is the name of our band, formed a year or so ago from the first letter of all of our nicknames — E for Evanescence, which is a name the same middle school kids who called Danny 'Cinder Block' tried to stick on me (because apparently, wearing band tees, ripped jeans and eyeliner means you must listen to Evanescence); then, of course, C for Cinder Block; H for hotcakes, I'll give you three guesses as to who and why; and O for Olive, a shortening of Olivia, the only normal nickname of the bunch. Together we make ECHO. Ryder was the one who originally came up with that, and I had to admit, it was pretty clever. We had a good name to market ourselves with, but we had not yet performed live. We'd written songs, recorded two, practiced original and cover songs, discussed a couple of ideas for music videos, and done everything else we possibly could as a few teenagers trying to get a band started. But a live performance had never been forthcoming for us.
Of course, this battle of the bands was about to change everything.
My throat tightened as I looked at their faces, all alight with an enthusiasm that only makes my heart beat faster. We all wanted the same thing. But they didn't have the same apprehension that I had; the same feeling that made something in the back of my mind whisper to me: you don't want to disappoint them.
I swallowed hard, pushing the whispering voice aside. "If this is our shot to get into Berklee," I said, "then we've got to do it."
Olivia and Ryder whoop in excitement, high-fiving each other as Danny's small smile grew wider into a full-on grin, a somewhat rare sight for him. "I'm going to put in our application right away," he said, pulling up the link on his phone. "Olivia, you're good at all the organization stuff. Can I give you the task of reading through the terms and conditions of the contest so we know exactly what we're up against?"
"Aye aye, captain," Olivia said with a salute.
I can't help but smile at Danny's delegation of tasks. I might be the originator of the band ECHO itself, and while major band decisions ultimately fell on me, Danny was the glue; always the glue keeping us together.
"Well, what are we waiting for?" Ryder said, tapping his drums impatiently. "If we're doing this contest, we better practice!"
Olivia swung her guitar back around to the front, striking a chord hard, which made the garage door rattle slightly. She grinned. "He's got a point."
Danny put away his phone after he finished submitting ECHO's application to enter Berklee's Battle of the Bands, and then got to work setting up his keyboard. I made the final tunings on my bass, then placed the microphone along with its stand in front of me. We began to play and the relatively quiet and empty garage suddenly burst with music as the low notes of my bass shook the air, Olivia's guitar in accompaniment with me and Ryder's drums rattling the walls. Danny's keyboard notes drifted along and settled in the background, creating the perfect foundation and atmosphere for me to sing along, and so I did, adding my voice as one more layer to the perfect storm happening just behind me.
And although we performed in Ryder's modest two-car garage, the sound so loud I was sure the whole street could hear, it's still not nearly loud enough to drown out the whispering voice that crept back up on me; the voice that reminded me why I felt so hesitant at the contest, why the thought of it made my throat tighten and stomach churn.
Here, in Ryder's garage, with Ryder, Olivia, and Danny, I was safe. But out there, when I pictured faces looking back at me, it was all a daunting, terrifying blur.
And they'll never know the truth.
Because the one thing I'm most terrified of is performing in front of an audience.
that wraps up another chapter! what do you think of violet's reveal at the end?
stay tuned for the next chapter, where will makes a reappearance...:)