The contest was held at the Rhythm Chalice, which was a bar on the West side of town. High school students weren't normally allowed in at all, particularly not on a Friday night, but this Friday was special.
LolRock breezed past security. Greta mumbled that they were a band and needed to go to the green room. Jolene and Genevieve blew kisses at security and giggled and blew gum bubbles. Security let them right in.
Jasper and company had a touch more trouble than that.
"I am in a band!"
"I'm sorry, kid, we can't let you in. You're banned from life after last year's... incident."
"That wasn't my fault! She started it! She planted dynamite on me! It was her! Her! Her!!!"
"Was it her, Eric?" Felix muttered under his breath.
"You shut up!! It was Jolene! She planted dynamite on me!"
"Wait, you didn't have your own dynamite?" Jasper asked. "You lost me. What?"
Eric growled. "She knew I wouldn't bring dynamite to the competition, so she put some of her own in my bag! And then she put a timer and a remote detonator in my bag, and she had it blow up during the after party! Everyone thought I was a sore loser, but it wasn't my dynamite!!"
"Wait..." Jasper said. "If you didn't know it was there until she blew it up... How do you know what she did and that it was planted at all?"
"Because I know how her evil mind works!"
The security man rolled his eyes. "Look, Jolene's hot and all. But I don't really think she's plotting to blow stuff up, if you know what I mean. And you're still banned from the club."
"Come on, be reasonable," Cal said. "We signed up for this weeks ago. Come on..."
"No way," the guard said, shaking his head.
"But you have to let us," Jasper argued. "We're in the contest, right? So not letting us in is violating our civil rights! This contest is open to everyone, even maniacs with dynamite like Eric! We're gonna protest this to the ACLU, and Amnesty International, and the United Nations! You can't keep us out! We'll sing We Shall Overcome and Not Gonna Play Sun City and You Gotta Fight For Your Right To Party! All the classic protest songs!"
"And We Will Rock You!" Felix chimed in.
"Yeah! And Queen. Don't get me started with Queen!" Jasper yelled. "'Cause I know all the words to Bohemian Rhapsody and Killer Queen and I'm not afraid to use them!! We'll unionize! We'll socialize! We'll reject capitalism! We'll—"
Lisa, who had been standing behind them, rolled her eyes and walked up to the front where the guard was. "Hey," she said, batting her eyes a little. "You're cute."
The guard frowned. "I am not. And don't think you can try your feminine wiles on me either, missy."
"Aww..." Lisa pouted. "They won't work? Not even a little bit?" She sighed cutely. "Darn it! Well, there's no point in my even being here tonight I guess, if you're not interested in talking. I only come to these shows to flirt with the cute security guards. They're so... powerful and handsome."
"You are setting women's liberation back sixty years!" Jasper yelled. Felix clapped a hand over Jasper's mouth.
"Please?" Lisa pleaded cutely. "Please?"
The guard wavered. "You really are... This really is degrading to women..." he said hesitatingly.
"No, I'm in charge of my own sexuality," Lisa argued. "If Madonna is a feminist, so am I."
His eyes lit up. "Are you going to sing Like a Virgin and roll around in a wedding dress?"
"Well, you'll never know unless you let these guys play, will you?" Lisa replied in a husky voice.
The guard was drooling. Eric looked sick. Jasper was going to explode. Felix and Cal were trying not to laugh. "You can.... You guys can go in. Go ahead." He moved from in front of the door and let them through.
Lisa led them inside. Jasper was spluttering. "But.... But you... That was wrong!!"
"We're inside," Cal said reasonably.
"The ends justify the means? I can't believe I'm friends with you, you, you... Machiavellian Troglodyte!!"
There was a pause.
"Was that an insult?" Cal asked hesitantly. "I'm just asking for some clarification."
"He said you're a mean unevolved.... sea creature?" Felix hazarded.
"Oh. Okay then."
The club was empty and vaguely cavelike. It was dark, walls painted black. They walked through the small entrance hall in to the big empty room where bouncers and security were beginning to set up the stage.
Jolene was lounging on the stage beside Greta and Genevieve. Jolene was casually blowing bubbles with her gum, poking them and then pulling long strings of gum out of her mouth, wrapping them around her finger and sucking them back off. It was grossing Greta out, clearly, but she was doing a decent job of ignoring Jolene, sitting on an amp and tuning her guitar. Genevieve was wearing... not much, and what she had on was hot pink and silver and sparkly. Her shirt didn't have a back and her shorts were hot pants. It was the electric pink go go boots that really made the outfit, however. She was chatting on her cell phone.
"So dude, then I was like, no way, and then Jo goes 'yes way'! Can you believe it?" Genevieve giggled. "I know!"
"What are you doing here?" Eric hissed.
Jolene smiled blankly at him. "What am I doing here? Silly Eric; I'm in a band." She looked slightly condescending. "Too bad you don't understand the concept of a band. You seem to have brought monkeys instead of musicians."
"Hey!" Jasper said.
"Hay is for horses!" Genevieve said, and began giggling. "Silly Jacob."
"My name is Jasper!"
"Suuuuure."
"I swear I'm gonna go get my birth certificate and show it to you," Jasper threatened.
"Ummm... do you mind? I'm on the phone." Genevieve rolled her eyes at him.
"I'm gonna strangle her," Jasper muttered.
"Ok, enough," Felix said. "Ok, everyone, let's go... Cal, are you... Are you all right?"
Cal was staring at Greta, frowning and mouthing something over and over. Felix looked at Jasper, who shrugged.
"Cal?"
"She's the enemy. She's the enemy. She's the enemy." Cal made a mean face. A mean face for Cal, at least. "Ha!" he said. "She has no power over me! She is the enemy! I don't love her. She kicked me in the face!"
"That wasn't you," Jasper sighed. "That was Val Kilmer."
"She has no power over me! She's the enemy! I hate her!" Cal said again.
Greta looked up for the first time from her guitar. "Oh. You guys are here. Hey."
Cal melted and sighed dramatically. He elbowed Jasper in the side. "Did you hear that? She loves me!"
"I can't believe they let you in the club after last year's dynamite fiasco," Jolene said snottily.
"Your fault!!" Eric hollered.
"Prove it," Jolene smirked.
"We're going now!" Felix said quickly. "Right now! We have to go warm up! Come on." He grabbed Eric with one hand and Cal with the other and dragged them both out of the room, in to the back.
"K. Toodles!" Genevieve said, waving absently. "Oh, Lisa?"
"What?" Lisa asked flatly.
"Your outfit...?"
Lisa looked down at her outfit. Jeans and a tight band t-shirt which proclaimed "I heart boys from Canada."
"What about it?"
"Kinda ... slutty, don't you think? If you want to hook up with John, just tell him so!"
Jasper ground his teeth together. "Jasper! Jasper! Jasper!"
"Jasper!!" Felix yelled from the other room. Jasper said "bah!" and stormed out. Lisa followed him, shooting Genevieve a glare of death.
The back room was full of wanna-be bands. Jasper recognized some other kids from school. No one was sitting around like they owned the place except LolRock, however. Cal began tuning his guitar and Felix began tuning his base. Eric began looking around for suspicious items which might be dynamite.
"So, are you nervous?" Lisa asked.
"A little," Jasper confessed. He began singing scales. "Ma mi my mo mu... Ba bi by bo bu..."
"Don't be nervous," Cal scoffed. "It's just a contest. It's just playing onstage. There is absolutely nothing to be nervous about. Nothing at all."
"But—" Jasper protested.
"He's right, J," Felix said. "Being nervous is for wimps."
Jasper lapsed in to sulky silence for a minute, before beginning to sing scales again.
"It's too loud in here!" Cal said. "Darn it. Lisa, can you go see if LolRock is still onstage? I want to practice somewhere with fewer people."
"'K," Lisa shrugged, bopping out of the room. She came back a moment later. "They're gone, and they took their foul stench of stupidity with them."
"Did they take their dynamite with them, that's the question," Eric muttered darkly.
"You want me to go check again, King of Paranoia?" Lisa demanded.
"Yes!"
"Well, too bad." Lisa stuck her tongue out at him and sat down next to Jasper.
"Ok, let's go out there, then," Cal said. "One quick run through the chorus to get us warmed up."
One of the security guards walked in. "They've announced the play order," he said, holding up a piece of paper. "It'll be posted, but here it is. Ahem. The Sugar Squirrels. Eddie and the Pirates. Angelcake. Doormats United. Eric Felix Cal and Jasper. And LolRock, the winners the last three years in a row, are up last."
"Eric, Felix, Cal and Jasper?" Cal muttered.
"We don't have a band name, ok?" Eric muttered back. "It's not my fault!"
"We should just be called 'The Lads'," Cal said. "That's the name of the story."
Lisa, Jasper, Felix and Eric looked blankly at him. "The name of the story?" Felix echoed. "What does that mean?"
"Oh, so now there's a fourth wall?" Cal said sarcastically. "Whatever."
"Where the heck is LolRock?" Lisa asked, looking around.
Eric glared darkly. "Making fiendish plans of evil!!!"
They all stared at him. "Ooookay," Jasper said.
"Let's go practice, eh?" Cal said, and led them back out to the stage. No one was in the room anymore, except for a couple of security guards sweeping and setting up. Cal stepped up on stage and started playing with his synthesizer, setting his guitar aside. Jasper went and sat at the drumset on stage, and Felix and Eric stepped up, too. Lisa hopped up on stage, ignoring Eric's glare, and went to stand by Jasper.
"Okay, ready?" Felix asked. "J, count us in to the chorus?"
"Sure," Jasper said. "One, two three... does anyone else hear a buzzing noise?"
"It's probably the amp," Eric said. "Or the lighting in here."
Jasper shrugged. "Ok. One, two, three, four... Here's your ticket, pack your bags; time for jumpin' overboard. The transportation is here... Close enough but not too far, maybe you know where you are, fightin' fire with fire!""
They were just all getting in to the song when Jasper stopped drumming abruptly. "Seriously? I hear a weird buzzing noise."
"Jasper!" Eric said.
"Well, I do!"
Lisa rolled her eyes. "You know what would make you feel better, Jasper?" she asked.
"For Eric to not think I'm crazy?" Jasper sulked.
"That's not gonna happen, sweetie. But what if I go find you some coffee?"
Jasper perked up. "That'd be great! Thanks!" Lisa jumped off stage and went searching for coffee.
"Count us back in, J," Cal said.
"Sure! One, two, three, four... Here's your ticket, pack your bags; time for jumpin overboard—"
There was a sudden crashing noise, like the drumset had been dropped twenty feet, and the floor was breaking. Cal, Felix and Eric turned around.
There was a hole in the stage where the drumset and Jasper had been. Felix looked at Eric sternly, who shrugged and shook his head. Cal stepped over to the hole and looked down curiously.
The drumset had landed mostly right side up. Jasper was sort of underneath it, looking dazed, in the basement.
"Uh, J?"
"Muh."
"Jasper?"
"Mmmmeh..."
Cal was worried, mostly because Jasper was neither talking nor bouncing nor asleep. And he was always one of the three.
"Did he die?" Eric asked.
"Don't think so," Cal replied.
"Oh." Eric walked over and looked down the hole. "Jasper, why did you cut a hole around your drumset?"
"I don't think Jasper did this," Cal pointed out.
"Riiight," Eric said sarcastically. "It was one of the Indian henchmen from Help!"
Felix sighed. "Jasper? You're gonna come back up, right?"
Jasper managed to extricate himself from the drumset with a lot of difficulty and looked up. It was way too far to jump. He looked around the basement. There was a big metal door, but it didn't look like it led back upstairs.
"Uh... how?"
"Go find the door?" Felix suggested.
"Is there another drumset?" Eric asked.
Jasper put his hands on his hips. "Another drumset??!! Um, hello! Fell twenty feet to my death here, remember? You're supposed to care!!"
"I do care," Eric said. "I asked Cal if you'd died. He said no." Eric shrugged and walked away.
"Thanks!" Jasper hollered. "I feel the love!"
"J, get back up here. We'll try to find a way to fix the stage, k?" Felix said.
Jasper pouted. "I'm glad I didn't die. If I had a funeral, would you even care?"
"Don't get all Chris Murphy on us," Cal sighed. "We need you to be able to sing."
Felix looked confused. "All what with the who?"
"Uh... nothing." Cal looked guilty. "Nothing. Nothing at all. No breaking of the fourth wall going on. None!! None, I tell you, none!!"
There was silence. From below, Jasper called "Okay... I'm gonna try and find a way back upstairs. I'll see you guys in a bit."
Eric, Cal and Felix looked around. There was a giant round hole in the stage and no drumset. "This," Eric said gleefully, "requires strategy."
Cal and Felix groaned on cue.
*
Eric's first strategy was to build a new stage and replace the old one with it. The drawback was that he had nothing with which to build this new stage, and also, he didn't know how. And he didn't like building things much. And they only had a few minutes.
"Details," Eric scoffed.
Lisa came back with a cup of coffee in one hand. "Here, Jasper!" she called. "I brought your... coffee..."
"What?" Eric demanded defensively.
"Uh... where's Jasper?"
"Don't be so nosy," Eric snapped.
There was a pause.
"Eric... there's a big hole in the stage," Lisa said.
"No there isn't."
"There isn't?"
"No."
"Oh. Good. I'm glad I was confused. Because I thought for a minute there was a giant hole in the stage!!" She paused to take a giant breath and began screaming. "What did you do with Jasper you psychotic card-carrying member of the 'Too Crazy for Dynamite' club?!?!"
"He fell," Felix said.
"My brother tried to kill him!" Lisa hollered.
"No, he just kind of... fell."
"Well someone cut a hole in the stage! And someone did it right around Jasper! And someone must be trying to kill him! And me! And we all know Eric is crazy!!"
"We don't carry cards," Eric protested, sounding offended. "And it's not the 'Too Crazy for Dynamite' club. It's the 'Dynamite's Too Weak' club. DTWC. Good old DTWC."
"Look, Lisa, Jasper plunging to his death is not our biggest problem," Cal said. "We need to fix the stage and find more drums or we're in big trouble."
"Japser plunging to his death is not your biggest... problem?!"
"I phrased it badly," Cal said quickly. "He's fine. He'll be right up. Help us fix the stage."
"I'll help you kill Eric," Lisa muttered, but agreed to go in search of another drum set.
*
Jasper was not right up. He went out the big metal door and found a long hallway, filled with cobwebs and badly lit. It didn't seem promising. At the end of the hallway was another concrete hallway, with some abandoned lockers and a broken, flickering florescent light throwing sparks. He went to the end of the hall, turned again, went to the end of that hall, turned again, went to the end of that hall and found himself in the room with the smashed drumset.
"How very Spinal Tap of me," Jasper muttered. He heard screaming from upstairs, realized it was Lisa's voice, and decided to ignore it. He went out the door again, determined to turn the other way in one of the endlessly similar hallways and found himself simply lost after two turns.
"Drat!" Jasper said. He wandered aimlessly down one of the halls, listening to the echoing noise his sneakers made in the concrete tunnel. The walls were all gray, and the lights were mostly broken, and it was cold. And lonely.
There were no noises except the high pitched hum of the lights and his sneakers on the floor. Hummmmmm...... thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Hummmmm.... Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Hummmmm.... Did it work? Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Hummmmm.... I didn't see... Thump. Thump. It might have. Thump. Thump. Hummm....
Jasper stopped walking suddenly. There were voices. They were coming from beyond one of the concrete walls but he couldn't tell which wall. The voices sounded... high pitched? Girly? He couldn't tell. He started walking quietly toward them.
"What do you mean, you didn't stay to see?"
"What, and get caught? As! If!"
"Would you two hush? I'm trying to get him on the phone!"
"Shouldn't he be here?"
"He'll be here later."
Jasper turned the corner. There was a room at the end of the hall, with the door slightly open. He walked toward it.
"Why can't you get him on the phone?"
"Concrete. We're underground and surrounded by concrete. My cell doesn't work underground and surrounded by concrete."
"Ohh... Maybe if you had a different, prettier case for it?"
"No. Not even if I had a different, prettier case for it."
"Hurry up! The contest is going to start soon! We're going to be late! I need to crush Eric or I'll be depressed all night."
That... That sounded like Jolene. Jasper frowned. But Jolene didn't sound that angry, or that... coherent.
"You won't be depressed on stage, though, right? 'Cause then we won't be cute!! And we have to be cute, or we won't win. Aren't I cute? I'm so cute!!"
But that was definitely, without a doubt, absolutely Genevieve. Jasper crept closer to the door.
"Yes, you're cute. Now stop bouncing like that. You're going to fall out of your halter top. Did you get him on the phone? I missed watching that little harpie fall to her doom for this! Hurry it up, Greta." "It's ringing, okay? Jeez. Calm down, Jo. We don't even know for sure if she was there. She might have been somewhere else."
"Oh, she was there. I'm sure! Bwahahahahahahhahhahaa!!!"
There was a pause. Jasper was sure he could hear Greta roll her eyes.
"Jo, if the rigged elevator, and the heavy ceiling pipe didn't kill her, what makes you think that either the hole in the floor would come near her, or that it would kill her properly? Besides, I don't like killing. Killing is bad. Killing isn't nice."
Jasper's mouth dropped open.
"We don't want to kill her, Greta! We're just trying to injure her so badly that she can't sing lead in the musical. Besides, even if it doesn't kil— uh, injure her, it should get that rotten little brat of a drummer. I'd like to take a baseball bat and stuff it up his nose! he's so irritating!!"
There was another pause. Jasper fought the urge to go running in to the room and tell Jolene exactly what she could do with her baseball bat.
"It's ringing!!" Pause. "Hello? Yeah, it's us. Hey. We're fine... Yeah, the concert's going to start soon... Yeah, just like we rehearsed... It was really great of you to write a new song for us... Yeah, we'll do it just like you said... Just like last year. Don't worry... No, we shouldn't have any trouble. Don't worry. It'll all go down just like we planned."
Jasper frowned. That was their... choreographer? Someone was writing their songs for them? And telling them how to perform them?
"....No, we're not sure. Yeah, we cut a hole in the stage like you suggested. It definitely worked; we heard a crash. But I don't know if she— ... yeah, I know how important it is that Gen get the lead in the musical. We're working on it. But none of us are any good at sabotage... Well, okay, Jolene is. Jolene is maybe too good at sabotage.... No, the drummer. Jasper. The drummer.... Really? Jolene just wants to hit him with a baseball bat.... But he just transferred here. I don't understand why — Okay, well, if we get an opportunity, I'll tell Jolene to put him on the hitlist, too."
And trying to kill Lisa — and him. Jasper bit his lip. But Jolene couldn't plot to kill anyone. She was dumb and ditzy and .. and... Jolene, and in spite of what Eric claimed, Jolene was just... Jolene.
"I'll squish him like a bug!!" the girl who sounded like Jolene cackled. "And then I'll take that lousy Eric and I'll destroy his every hope and dream and mush them in to paste and then I'll spread that paste on bread and I'll eat the bread and then I'll throw up his hopes and dreams!!!! Bwahahahahah!"
"Um.. ewww."
"I agree," Greta said. "Jo, that's just gross. Anyway... right. Yeah, the contest is about to start. We'll do just what you said. Okay, thanks. Bye."
No, that was definitely Jolene, Greta and Genevieve.
"But I like Johnny. He's got cute hair!"
Jasper hollered "Ja—" and then realized that he was hiding. He bit his lip and flattened himself against the wall, around the corner from the door.
"Did you hear something?" Jolene demanded.
"Was it you, telling me how cute I look?" Genevieve demanded.
"No!"
"Well, why not?" Genevieve pouted. "I'm very delicate! I need lots of rein... Reinforce... I need you to tell me I'm cuuuuute!!"
"You're cute," Greta said patiently. "Now, let's go upstairs before we're missed."
"Yeah! And let's find out how badly injured Lisa and Jasper are! Bwahahahaha!"
"But James has cute hair!"
"Gen, I'm gonna do violent, terrible things to you if you don't stop saying that."
"Oh. Okay."
The door swung open and Jasper heard them coming down the hall toward them. He debated jumping out in front of them and yelling "haHA!! You thought no one knew you were plotting and evil, but I do because I overheard you... From when I fell through the floor when you tried to kill me and Lisa... And I'm all alone down here and no one knows where I am... So just kill me now." No, that seemed like a bad idea.
He waited until they'd walked past and then darted around the corner, following them at what he hoped was a safe difference. Man, was Eric going to be happy to learn that he was right; Jolene was evil! Poor Cal, though, was going to be heartbroken to learn that Greta was evil, too.
Who was telling them to hurt Lisa, though? Well, and Jasper. Jasper had to admit to being relatively concerned about his own well being. Lisa was nice and all, in that "she's a girl" way, but to know someone was actively plotting to drop you through the floor and break the elevator you were in, and drop heavy things on your head... It was like having two Erics around, and one of them being psychotic.
Psychotic-er. Much more psychotic-er.
The girls walked to the stairwell Jasper hadn't been able to find. They went upstairs and he waited to the count of three and then followed them. There was music playing upstairs already.