Spells Like Teen Spirit Read online

  “You can shove that stuff to one side,” Janis said as I was trying, and failing, to do just that. “It’ll be out of here in a minute anyway. I just need to swing by the post office and ship all those boxes.”

  “Janis, you’re kidding, right?” I asked as I buckled my seat belt.

  “Why would I kid about the post office?” she asked, pulling away from the curb.

  “Because it’s after seven,” I said, “and the post office closes at five.”

  “You’re kidding me,” she huffed. “Is that right?” she asked Cassandra.

  “As if I have ever mailed anything,” Cassandra answered.

  “I swear it’s right,” I said, and Janis gave a long, lingering sigh.

  “Why can’t they just have regular hours?” she said.

  “I’m pretty sure closing at five is regular hours,” I pointed out.

  “The yogurt place doesn’t close until ten,” Cassandra said, as if that were relevant.

  “See?” Janis said. “That makes sense. I needed to get these out today!”

  “Why didn’t you just go earlier?” I asked. “Like, after school?”

  “Because I needed to get ready!” she said, the word “obviously” unspoken, yet still obvious, at the end. Pulling against my seat belt, I leaned forward so that I could get a good look at what Janis and Cassandra had decided to wear for a night out.

  In the passenger seat, the person who had told me to dress “slutty” was wearing the exact same thing she’d been wearing the day before when we’d seen her at the Perk: a long-sleeved green T-shirt under a gray hoodie, and a pair of dirty, baggy jeans. “You sleep in those clothes last night?” I asked her.

  “Yeah,” she answered. “Why?”

  I ignored that question and turned my attention to Janis, who had changed out of Olive Garden into something that—I had to give her credit—was spectacular. She too was wearing platforms, but they were thigh-high black suede boots, with black fishnets under a Romy and Michele–esque metallic-blue minidress, topped with a black velvet bolero that had long, tendril-like feathers tipping the edges of the sleeves. Honestly, only Janis could combine that many textures and not come out looking like a carpet catalog. Her braids were done up in several little Björk spiral buns, and she had on icy sky-blue lipstick, and silver highlights on her cheekbones, and I was 100 percent certain that she looked way too good for where we were going, which was a strip-mall bar sandwiched between a Jacuzzi store and a pet shop that sold tarantulas.

  “You look good,” I said.

  “Thanks,” she said. “So do you.”

  “So why do we have to be there so early?” I asked, thinking about my curfew and settling back into the seat.

  “They go on at eight,” Janis said, turning the corner.

  “Isn’t that early?” I asked, which was just a guess since I had never actually been to a show before.

  “Yeah,” Cassandra answered. “So, eight p.m. show on a Monday night. How good could they be?”

  “Judging the band by their flyer,” I said, “not good at all.”

  * * *

  —

  The strip-mall venue in question was close, and when Janis pulled in, the parking lot was pretty empty, yet she still parked about as far away from the bar as she could, a rhino-sized pile of gray, old snow in between her car and the building. “I hope no one steals my packages,” she said as we got out and she locked the doors.

  “Maybe they’ll drop them off at the post office for you,” I said. “Why’d you park so far away?”

  “Because if they ask for ID, we can say we forgot them,” she explained. “And they won’t know we drove here.”

  “I didn’t forget my ID,” Cassandra said. “I have it right here.”

  “Is it fake?” Janis asked.

  “No,” Cassandra said, pulling it out of her pocket and giving it a flick. “See? It very materially exists.”

  Janis reached over and grabbed it from her, then sighed as she handed it back. “That’s your student ID,” Janis said. “That says you’re in high school.”

  “Hey,” Cassandra said defensively, “I asked Brian to help us out, and he literally shut the door in our faces. So this is all I’ve got.”

  “I have my learner’s permit in here somewhere,” I said, opening my purse, which, contrary to what Dad had said, was actually more the size of a croissant sandwich than a strawberry.

  “Both of you just keep your mouths shut,” Janis said, stepping over a slush pile studded with Slushee cups, and leading the way. “Let me do the talking.”

  The bar was called Ray’s Pool Bar and Hot Dog Grill, but as we got closer, I could see a sign on the door that said NO HOT DOGS! Good thing they’d cleared that up. Cassandra and I fell back and let Janis go first, as she had insisted. I had no idea what story she had worked up in her head as to why there were three of us here without our IDs, but I think she might have been a little excited to spin it, because she faltered a bit as soon as she stepped inside, since there was no one poised to stop us from waltzing right on in and sitting down wherever we wanted.

  And we had our choice of seats. I had been worried that we would stand out because we were underage and overdressed. I hadn’t thought that we’d stand out because, aside from three guys on the other side of the bar playing pool, we were the only ones in there. Janis picked out a random table in the middle of the space, and we followed her and sat down. We were all quiet, not sure what to do or where to look. Finally Cassandra pushed her chair back and stood up. “I’m starving,” she said. “I’m going to go order a hot dog.”

  “There are no hot dogs,” I hissed, reaching out and grabbing her arm to pull her back down into her chair. “Didn’t you see the sign?”

  “Yes,” she said, shaking my hand off. “That’s how I knew they have hot dogs.”

  “No, the other sign,” I said. “Not the one that says ‘hot dogs’! The one that says ‘no hot dogs’!” My heart was beating fast, and I worried that we were already drawing attention to ourselves.

  Then Janis shushed us. “Look,” she said, tipping her head at the stage.

  Jacking Lanterns was in the house.

  It was the same four guys from the picture on the flyer, wearing the same amount of hair gel, and while they weren’t wearing the same clothes, they might as well have been: ringer tees, ball-chain necklaces, and baggy jeans that were as frayed at the hems as Cassandra’s. They were carrying drums and guitar cases onto the stage, and they all looked very serious. They had the vibe of guys who would watch YouTube videos about how to pick up women. Three of them were wearing bracelets, and two—that I could see—had barbed-wire tattoos.

  A wallet chain wouldn’t have looked out of place on any of them, and I would have taken the whole thing as a joke, except for how serious they seemed. I could see two of them arguing over what appeared to be the set list. There was nothing demonic about them, but as I watched them, the back of my neck started to feel like it was crawling with spiders. Something was off. Way, way off.

  “Excuse me, ladies. I’m going to need to see some ID.” My head swiveled from the band to the bartender, who was standing at our table, looking down on us with a tight smile. I looked from him to Janis. If she wanted us to keep quiet so that she could do the talking, I was more than happy to step aside and let her do just that.

  Cassandra was looking at her too, and both of us were frozen. “Of course,” Janis said, smiling up at the bartender and getting out her purse. She rifled through it, then looked up at him with a big smile. “Ugh, can you believe that I left my driver’s license in my other bag?”

  “I can absolutely believe that,” he said, then turned to me. “And what about you?”

  I swallowed, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth. “Me too,” I said.

  “Your ID is in her other bag
?” he asked with a smile, and all I could do was nod. Now he turned to Cassandra, who just shrugged.

  “I don’t have a driver’s license,” she said.

  The bartender pursed his lips and nodded. “All right, ladies, I’m real sorry, but we’re a twenty-one-and-up establishment, and I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” None of us moved an inch. “Now,” he said.

  “I feel so silly,” Janis said. “It’s crazy that we all three forgot our IDs on the same night, but can’t we just stay for one song? I’ve heard these guys are really good.” At the mention of the band, a weird look came across the bartender’s face.

  “Yeah, Phantom Limp really rocks,” he said.

  “Phantom Limp?” I asked. “I thought they were called Jacking Lanterns?”

  The guy shook his head and looked at me like I’d just tried to order a Big Mac at Taco Bell. “They were Jacking Lanterns last week,” he said. “This week they’re Phantom Limp, and this place is gonna be packed.”

  “They go on in ten minutes,” Cassandra said, a note of challenge in her voice. “And we’re the only ones here.”

  “Yeah, we’re gonna need this table, actually,” the bartender said, either not hearing Cassandra or choosing to ignore her. “They’ve got a huge fan base. I got this T-shirt on their first tour, and at their last show, someone offered me three hundred bucks for it. I said, ‘No way. I’m going to be buried in it.’ ”

  All three of us looked at his T-shirt, and I saw the confusion flashing across Janis’s face before she nodded and smiled. Unless Phantom Limp had once been known as “Star City Brewing, Colby, Colorado” (which did seem entirely possible), it was definitely not a band T-shirt.

  Janis started to say something, probably more about how we didn’t need to leave, but I tapped her with my foot under the table, and she shut her mouth. “So you’ve been a fan for a long time?” I asked, and he nodded vigorously. “What’s your favorite song?” I asked.

  “All of them,” he said.

  “Same,” I said. “I was really looking forward to hearing them play all of their songs. What’d you think of the last album?”

  “It rocked,” he said. “Hard.”

  “You don’t think it sounded a little overproduced?” I asked.

  “Oh, no way,” he said enthusiastically. “It was totally raw. These guys rock. If they keep going like this, I can see Hoobastank opening for them, and not the other way around.”

  “Do they ever play any covers at their live shows?” I asked.

  “No way,” he said. “All original.”

  “Totally,” I said. Then I stood up, grabbing Janis’s sleeve to pull her to her feet. Cassandra followed. “We’re going to go get her bag with our IDs,” I said to the bartender. “We’ll be right back. Enjoy the show.”

  “Oh, I will,” he said. “These guys rock.”

  As we were walking toward the door, I looked back and saw a member of Phantom Limp approaching the three guys at the pool table, carrying what appeared to be shots. For some reason, it made me shudder. I’d rather drink from a puddle in the parking lot outside than swallow anything that band had touched.

  Outside the bar, it was frigid and silent. Janis was so cold, she broke into a run to get to the car, and we followed her. I managed to call shotgun, and as soon as we were inside, I turned the heat on full blast.

  “What was that all about?” Janis asked. “We were making progress! He would have let us stay. I didn’t even get to use my story. I was going to tell him that my cousin works in A and R and…”

  Cassandra was shaking her head and looking back at the door to the bar. Cassandra was often quiet, but rarely speechless, and I got the distinct vibe that she didn’t know what she wanted to say. “Something is seriously wrong with them,” she said finally.

  I nodded. “There was nobody there, but that bartender wasn’t joking at all. He talked like he really did think this band was the next Led Zeppelin. And he really thought he was wearing their T-shirt.”

  “Yeah, that was really weird,” Janis said. “What was the band he mentioned? Hoobastank? What the heck is a Hoobastank?”

  “I think it’s some sort of cleaning product,” Cassandra said. “Like, something you use when your bong spills.”

  “The band didn’t have a Negative vibe,” I said, “but they weren’t just your run-of-the-mill losers either. My Sitter sense was going off in there like fireworks.”

  “Same,” Cassandra said, tugging at her ear.

  “When that guy was talking about how great they were, it was like he was in a trance. Like he was a robot programmed to say certain things,” Janis said. “ ‘They rock.’ ‘These guys rock.’ He sounded like someone who gets their opinions on music from listening to the radio.” She put the car in drive. “So what do you want to do now?” she said.

  Cassandra’s stomach answered with a growl. “Get pizza and go home,” she said.

  I agreed. I felt like we’d learned enough for one night, but I wasn’t quite ready for pizza. With Janis and Cassandra, pizza had been a fight from day one. Well, at least from the day when Cassandra had ordered pineapple on it and Janis had said, “Oh, you’re a pineapple person.”

  Cassandra had responded by calling Janis an “anti-pineapple activist,” and the whole thing had devolved from there into an argument that had only been settled by me screaming “TASTE IS SUBJECTIVE!” at the top of my lungs and causing the whole restaurant to look at us.

  Tonight Janis had thrown down the gauntlet early and said she would allow pineapple on half the pizza, to which Cassandra had responded, “But what if I want to eat more than half the pizza?”

  “You’re not eating more than half the pizza,” Janis snapped. “You’re not even eating half of it. There are three of us, so the most you get is one-third.”

  “I’m not eating mushrooms,” Cassandra said. “They grow on cow poop.”

  “They do not,” Janis said, though I could tell that she faltered a little bit and this was probably something that she would look up as soon as she was alone. They finally settled on a pizza that was one half mushroom and pepperoni, one half pineapple. Janis would eat the pepperoni and mushroom third, Cassandra would eat the pineapple third, and I would be stuck with a slice of each. I was glad I’d already eaten.

  Cassandra called the pizza in so that we could just pick it up, and as Janis drove, I looked out the window and went over everything in my head. In the brief time I’d been a Sitter, I’d met two people who were heavily involved in Red Magic: Erebus and Wanda. Erebus was a wannabe, and Wanda was in charge, but they were both petty, self-pitying, and power hungry. Two data points was not a lot of data points, but it seemed like that was enough to draw a rough sketch of a Red Magic user. Red Magic appealed to people who thought the world was holding out on them, people who thought they deserved more than what they had earned. I wondered if Phantom Limp fit the bill, and shuddered to think that we’d have to get closer to find out.

  The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like everyone, and anyone, could be a Red Magic user. Who didn’t want something that the world didn’t want to give them? Cassandra certainly did, and I did too. Brian, Dad, Dion, Adrian…everyone I knew. Even Janis—who came from a stable family that had plenty of money—had life stacked against her in more ways than I could count. Maybe, if the circumstances were just right, any of us would be willing to hurt someone else, to bend the rules until they broke, to get what we wanted.

  But if the band had something to do with Red Magic, how? The bartender that we’d talked to had truly believed all the crap he was saying. I had no doubt that magically inspiring that kind of devotion took more than a few bits of public domain Red Magic found on the internet. If they were the ones who had stolen Wanda’s talisman all those years before, certainly she would have found them. I texted Brian.

  U home?
>
  The text had barely been sent when he wrote back.

  School board meeting to discuss athletics funding. Boorring. Wassup?

  I shook my head. Brian really needed to stop spending so much time with teenagers.

  Can you check the Red Magic monitor when you get home? Wondering if anything new shows up tonight.

  Will do.

  At some point, Janis and Cassandra had decided that we would go back to Cassandra’s house, since apparently Janis had had a similar curfew argument with her parents and didn’t want to let them win by getting home early. We pulled into the pizza place parking lot and pooled our money so that Cassandra could go in and pay. She was in and out and back in the backseat in a flash, pizza box balanced on the Depop boxes, slice in hand.

  “Hey!” Janis said. “Driving up here! Hand me a napkin and give me a slice.”

  By the time we arrived at Cassandra’s, we’d crushed the entire pizza. Dion was sitting on the couch, watching TV when we walked in, and he immediately perked up. “You got pizza?” he said, sitting forward on the couch.

  “Sure did,” Cassandra said, opening the box to show him that it now contained nothing but grease stains and that little plastic tripod. “It was delicious.” Dion knew enough of his sister’s ways to not complain too much, and he just sank back onto the couch only slightly more deflated than before.

  “That’s cool,” he said. “I’ll just eat some more peanut butter. Hey, why are you two all dressed up?”

  “We tried to go out,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Cassandra said, tossing the pizza box onto a mountain of recycling. “We tried to go to that show, the one from the flyer.”

  At that, Dion practically jumped up.

  “The one that we found?” he asked, and Cassandra nodded. She went over and removed the flyer from the front of the fridge, where she’d stuck it, still in the same plastic bag.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Dion snapped. The force of his words took me by surprise, and I thought Cassandra was a little shocked too. She’d had him under pretty heavy spells since Halloween, and none of us were used to this kind of confrontation.