Out of Sight

Prologue

The stairs up to the stage suddenly seemed really short.

There were only five steps. I was hoping that climbing them would take more time, give things a chance to happen. I didn’t care what happened as long as it was something, anything. But in almost no time I was on the stage. I walked over to the drums, unsure what to do. The audience was waiting. It suddenly didn’t matter how the door sales had been going. This was going to be the only thing anyone remembered about the night. My career-defining awful performance on an instrument I can’t play.

Chapter 1

The Band

Oh yeah. I should introduce myself. I’m Robert Clarke. I’m 16. I do have a middle name. No, I won’t tell you what it is. I got teased about it in second grade, so now I don’t tell anyone. I’m not so impressed with my parents for setting that up to happen. I mean, really, why give your son a stupid middle name?

Good work, Mom and Dad.

I remember the day my parents told me that we were going to be leaving Seattle. Catching the school bus that day and wondering if they had school buses in New Zealand, I stood at the front beside the teacher that morning and told everyone in my fifth grade class that I was moving to Wellington.

As soon as I said it, Annie Hawke started to cry, which I thought was really weird.

But Rob, she said between gasps, we never got to be friends.

Which was true. We weren’t friends. Girls are strange that way.

I used to Facebook my Seattle friends a lot, telling them about the differences. I started calling the differences ‘Zing’.

Short for New Zealand thing. Also, because I thought writing Zing was funny.

I don’t Facebook my Seattle friends much anymore. Mainly, because I’ve made a bunch of friends in Wellington. You’d hope I’d have made some friends after five years. My best friends are in the band.

David’s the one who can really play an instrument. He can make a guitar sound like a cat purring, and then he can make it sound like the cat’s up and wants to be let out.

He’s not as nerdy as that makes him sound. David can also do cool things with the guitar. He can pretty much play anything.

I once caught him playing some classical music, but he swears I must have been dreaming. It’s all rock, all the way for David. Well – rock and cat noises.

If you let him, Jimmy would do a drum solo that went on all week. He just loves hitting things with sticks. Personally, I don’t see the appeal. Occasionally, we threaten to replace him with a drum machine. You know, says David, one of those things that actually know how to keep a beat.

It can get annoying at practice when you’re halfway through a song and then suddenly Jimmy goes crazy on the drums. Yeah, I guess his solos are good – if you like that type of thing.

Girls really like Jimmy. I’ve been told he’s a looker. Personally, I don’t see it.

Me. I’m the singer. I mean, fair’s fair. The band was my idea. I came up with the name. I couldn’t actually play any instrument. I could play a D chord on the ukulele, and I could play the opening bit of that old 70s song ‘Smoke on the Water’ on one string. Not that playing anything on a ukulele is much use in a rock band.

In our first rehearsal David lent me his spare guitar. I’d heard that a lot of punk bands had started with no one knowing how to play their instruments. But when I tried it, it just sounded horrible.

And when I think about it, learning an instrument is pretty much just learning. I’m not the best at school work. I’m not a dunce or anything, but I just find it hard to have to remember specific things.

So now I just sing. I can generally remember the words to the songs pretty good. Well, most of the time I remember most of the words. The rest of the time I just make up something that fits the music.

Jimmy says I should get a tambourine, but I think he’s joking. Although I did wonder about it as a possibility. It could be our image. A hard rock band, with us all wearing black and looking mean. And the singer screaming out lyrics while hitting a tambourine. That might be cool.

But it’s risky, because it might just look a bit lame. I once saw an old rock video of Led Zeppelin and their singer used a tambourine, but he also wore bell-bottom trousers – and I’m never going to wear bell-bottoms.

So I keep telling Jimmy to shut up about the tambourine, and I don’t let on that I’ve seriously considered using one.

Given that I can’t play an instrument, or remember all the words to songs, you might be wondering why I started a band. Well, I am from Seattle. And all anyone seems to know about Seattle is that Starbucks coffee started there and the grunge rock scene.

Wasn’t Nirvana from Seattle? is something I get a lot.

Of course, more often people here in New Zealand just say:

Seattle? Where’s that? Canada?

No. And I’m sick of saying this, I am not Canadian. I’m American. From the US of A. And proud of it.

What’s with New Zealanders confusing Vancouver with Seattle? They’re completely different cities in different countries.

How hard can it be? Seattle equals coffee and rock. Vancouver equals Canadians.

So I guess I sort of got used to the idea that me being from Seattle meant that I should get involved in a grunge rock band.

Also, of course, I was friends with David. And, like I said, David can do amazing things on a guitar. Amazing non-nerdy things. Although he does sometimes wear glasses to give his eyes a rest from his contacts. And when he’s wearing glasses and making his guitar sound like a cat asking to be let into the house, it’s possible that he does seem a little nerdy.

Sure. OK. You’ve caught me. David’s a nerd. But he’s also cool. You know, that nerd-cool thing that Brit bands do. I thought rather than him just doing tricks on his guitar at home and singing his song about Jennifer (a girl he likes from school), he should be performing in a band so that everyone knows he’s cool.

Chapter 2

The Band Gets a Name

It’s been a year or so since I asked Sarah out and she said no. I didn’t think it was a big deal at the time. I mean, sure, an absolutely amazing-looking girl didn’t want to go to the movies with me. So what? So what if this tall redhead didn’t want to see some awful Jim Carrey movie, or whatever it is that girls see at the movies with boys. So what?

I could handle never seeing her amazing eyelashes again. Or her perfect nose. Or her jawline. Or the way her hair always has a couple of strands out of place, making the rest of her hair seem even more perfectly in shape.

How does she manage to get it that shape? With the hair curled up at the front and long at the back. Such perfect red hair. Other types of red hair are often unattractive, but not Sarah’s hair.

It’s just so… She’s just so… You know what I mean? And I get the impression that it’s without any effort, too. She’s just like that. She’s amazing.

OK. I’ll stop now. David says I go on about Sarah even more than he goes on about Jennifer. Personally, I think that it’s not possible to go on about anyone more than David does about Jennifer, so he can’t be right.

In any case, David hardly talks. So when he starts talking on and on about Jennifer, it’s a bigger deal.

I can stop talking about Sarah any time, whereas David doesn’t seem to ever be able to stop talking about Jennifer. And I’d never say this to David, but Sarah is much prettier and smarter than Jennifer, which makes it even more extraordinary that I don’t talk about her all the time.

I have to tell you just one more thing about Sarah. It’s the way she laughs.

It’s like she really doesn’t want to laugh – but it’s all so funny that she just can’t help herself. And she wishes she could stop laughing but she can’t. It’s got this shape to it, her laugh. It’s really musical. The stifled beginning, and the uproarious middle – and then the apologetic ending.

It is as perfect a laugh as a laugh can be.

It’s amazing how much you can notice about a girl who you happen to catch the bus with every now and again.

In a way, Sarah gave our band its name.

I was walking along Courtenay Place with my iPod on.

Courtenay Place is the street in Wellington with a bunch of cinemas on it, plus a heap of places to eat. So you often bump into people there, and it’s a good place to hang out when you’ve got no plan and spare time. Sort of like going to the mall in the States.

I was listening to this Auckland band called Tono and the Finance Company, a track called ‘Tuesday Night’, and the song had just got to the bit where they sing I think we should go out.

Just then I saw Sarah. She smiled and said, Hi. At least I think she said Hi. I was a bit confused and flustered by seeing Sarah at just that minute. Because… Well… You know… I do think we should go out.

Have you noticed how sometimes the music on your iPod is exactly right for what you’re looking at, and sometimes it’s just wrong? This was one of those really, really, wrong moments.

I pulled my earphones out and said, Hey.

We looked at each other and Sarah smiled again. I realised one of us had to say something.

So, I guess it’s lunchtime, I said.

We’re just off for dessert, she said. It was only then that I noticed that Sarah was with this blonde girl she’s always with.

I could never remember that girl’s name. It was Amy or Emily or Mandy, or something like that.

Oh, I said, wishing that I could come too, then realising that I should say something more. Out of sight.

Maybe it was a weird thing to say, but it made Sarah laugh.

I might not have mentioned it before, but I quite like Sarah’s laugh.

When she stopped laughing, she said, OK then, see you around, I guess. She waved and walked off with her friend, so I walked off too.

Smiling to myself. I made her laugh. If I keep managing to make her laugh, then maybe one day she will go out with me somewhere for dessert or something.

~

David burst my bubble.

Dude, not cool, he said, I’ve told you before, you don’t want to be the funny guy. You want to be the cool guy.

But ‘Out of sight’ was a cool thing to say.

It wasn’t a cool thing to say. It was an American thing to say.

Why do people always think everything I do is because I’m American? We’re not all the same, you know. We’re a quarter billion strongly individual people.

It’s not an American thing to say. It was just me being cool.

David shook his head. If it was so cool, why did she laugh? OK. OK. Maybe he had a point.

Later in the corridor we bumped into Jimmy, off to his Maths class. He raised his eyebrows at us and clicked his fingers in a movement that ended with his finger pointed at me.

I have to admit it was a bit suave. Maybe a bit showy for my taste, but it certainly got all the girls’ attention. Jimmy’s maybe even less likely to talk than David, if that’s possible. I beckoned him over.

Running late, he said without stopping.

No worries, said David.

We’re forming a band, I said.

Interesting, said Jimmy, still not stopping.

Out of sight, I said, seeing if Jimmy would think it was a cool thing to say.

David started to laugh at me, but Jimmy just said, Cool band name as he disappeared off to class.

David and I looked at each other.

Out of Sight, yeah, David said. Yeah, it is.

Let’s face it, Jimmy is pretty much the definition of cool. So if he says something is cool, then it simply is cool.

Chapter 3

Practice Makes Perfect

We’d been playing as a band for a month. Out of Sight was really happening.

To be honest, it was surprising me how well it was going. Jimmy and Dave were turning up for practice after every school day, and they’re not easy people to motivate.

We’d found our niche. Maybe if we started to sound good, we’d start to get popular.

I don’t mean the band would be popular. That’s a given. If the band sounded good, we’d get fans. What I mean is David and I would start to be popular at school.

This wasn’t so much a problem for Jimmy, but Dave and I were sick of being in our own group of two people. We weren’t geeky enough for the geeks, good-looking enough for the popular kids or sporty enough for the… actually we weren’t sporty at all, so I don’t think we can complain