Breakout by Kevin Emerson Read Free Book Online

I start, but I have no intention of finishing that sentence. I just want to make some protest sounds and get out before this goes any further. Actually what I want to do is scream at these adults—my parents, Tiernan, Scher, all of them—wielding their power over me like I don’t even get a say. But I can’t let this get out of hand, not with Rock Band on the line. Twelve days. Just have to make it twelve more days. “Fine,” I mutter, and start upstairs.
    “Anthony, are you hearing this?” Mom says.
    “Yes! Where do you think I’m going right now? To do myhomework so I can be the valedictorian of your dreams!” I keep walking up the steps, cursing under my breath and adding so they can hear, “So stupid!”
    “Anthony!” Dad snaps.
    I stop on the stairs and sigh. “What?”
    He pauses and takes a deep breath. When he speaks again, he sounds more calm. “How was practice today?” he asks. Dad used to play guitar so I think he likes that I do that too.
    “It was fine,” I say, and even though I sound annoyed, I’m glad that he is asking about music. It reminds me that on some level they care.
    “Are you guys ready for the show?” Dad asks.
    “Getting there.” I don’t mention the stuff with Sadie, but I decide to say something else and for some reason I get a little nervous feeling as I do. “I wrote a new part today,” I say, turning half-around on the stairs, “to the song we’re working on.”
    “Really?” Dad’s face changes, like a puppeteer just brought him to life. He showed me his tapes one time, of his college band. He sang some of the songs. They were one of those weird jam bands from back in the nineties, but they were pretty good players. “I bet that was exciting,” he adds.
    “Yeah,” I say, and it feels good that he thinks that. For a second I think about apologizing for the phone call home, because you can always tell when the right moment for that kind of thing is, and also I have this tight feeling inside. I don’t want us to be mad at each other. I want them to be proud of me.…
    But then I remember that the reason for the call was so dumb. Though maybe it would be good to just say it anyway … except now I am just standing there going back and forth like I always do, the right words never getting out, and then the moment feels like it passed.
    “Maybe,” Dad says, and he’s talking carefully, like I’m a dangerous animal and he’s the zookeeper, “you can get some homework done before dinner, and then after that you’ll have time to practice a little for the big show.”
    This, I know, is a good time to just say, “Okay.” To not exhaust them any further. To go upstairs and eat my rations and move on. It might be nice, someday, if I could actually make them proud. And Dad’s questions remind me that Arts Night is actually a chance to do that … if Sadie hasn’t ruined it.
Relief
    I do spend some time on homework, and then we eat dinner, veggie burritos and spinach salad, stalag food that no one seems quite happy about, and then a dessert from the South Beach Diet that is custard and strawberries and a single dark chocolate square.
    After dinner, I set up to practice our song. I run a red cord from Merle to a tiny blue Danelectro HoneyTone mini amp. It’s only as big as your hand, so obviously it’s not going to giveyou any kind of giant sound that you can feel, but it does make a nice little crunchy rock tone. I plug headphones into the amp, and then finally it’s me and Merle again.
    Time becomes the sections of the song. The universe becomes segments of four and eight, looping, repeating, but not just repeating, because each time you go through the part you play it better and hear more nuance and so you go somewhere deeper, and you feel all these new connections between things and feel how they fit.
    I play and play, working on Killer G and the new part, which I’ve started calling Flying Aces. And that leads into other song ideas, and the rest of