Five Flavors of Dumb - Antony John [100]
That sound was Kallie?
Beside her, Josh had frozen to the spot, but Kallie wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at Tash, her eyes a blistering command to play, to stop the madness, to make music.
With steely determination, Tash thrashed out the opening riff of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” A moment later, Ed brought down his sticks like crashes of thunder, his face alive with maniacal delight.
It was all I needed. I began moving my right hand up and down with each of his cannon-like drum beats, even furrowed my brow and plucked a few strings deliberately like I knew what the heck I was doing. While Josh was being dragged from the stage, I looked up at the crowd, afforded myself a glimpse of what fame must feel like. But nobody was looking at me. Every eye was glued to Kallie, and it had nothing to do with the body or the face or the hair. It was all about the way she was singing, or shouting, or whatever her mouth was doing while her body contorted as if she were possessed by Kurt Cobain himself. She drove toward the chorus, moaning like she was in the final throes of death, and then suddenly her head was pounding and she was full-on screaming, and if I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn that she was in need of a swift, sharp exorcism.
I glanced back at Ed, tried to stay cool when I saw the look of enchantment on his face. His sticks hammered away at the speed of light, but he smiled straight at me like this was our song—the one with the magical power to turn geeks into rock stars. And as I surveyed the chaos of a thousand thrashing bodies on the dance floor below, I knew that’s exactly what we were.
With a final deep breath I leaped in the air and began throwing my body back and forth, my right hand yanking the strings of my silent guitar like I needed my fingers to bleed. And when I closed my eyes, it wasn’t out of fear. It was because what I was feeling right there on that stage consumed me. I felt every part of that animal music, felt it eat me up and spit me out, and what emerged was a me a thousand times more powerful than Piper Vaughan. I was Piper Vaughan, guitar hero—spiritual descendant of Jimi Hendrix and proponent of pure anarchy.
And I ROCKED.
COOL·NESS [KOOL-NIS] -noun
CATCHING your mom gazing at the crazy crowd like she finally gets it
WATCHING your dad head-banging like he’s Finn’s twin brother
LEARNING that your new friends Tash and Kallie are a thousand times more complicated than you realized, and loving them for it
FEELING every one of your boyfriend’s pounding drumbeats, and thinking it’s the most romantic music ever written
REALIZING you’re completely unique . . . even in a crowd
CHAPTER 54
The roar that greeted us as we gave our instruments a well-earned break at the end of the song was as loud as the music had been. The crowd surged like a tidal wave, bodies crammed together, a single entity amped up on Dumb. And drawing them onward was the awesome magnetism of Kallie Sims, her soft-focus beauty suddenly transformed into something harder-edged, almost fearsome. As she stood at the front of the stage, her jaw set and eyes searing through the crowd, she radiated the otherworldly presence of a sorceress. And I swear that even if I’d never heard of rock music before that moment, I’d still have recognized its immensity.
Dumb had died. Dumb had been born again. Dumb was unstoppable, a force of nature. And the world had just turned on its axis.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw Ed sitting back, relaxed and confident, so in control, he could take my insanity and paranoia and melt them away. He smiled peacefully, lowered his drumsticks, and signed, You rock my