"No More" Played by the Seven Packz of Kingz.
All: Give me a reason
To stay here
Cause I
Don't want
To live in fear
Budd: I can't stop
The rain
But I can stop
The tears
I can fight
The fire
But I can't fight
The fear
All/Budd: No more
I just can't
Live here
All/Budd: No more
I can't take it
Can't take it
All/Budd: No more
What do we
Stand for
When we all
Live in fear?
All:Give me a reason
To believe
Cause you don't
Wanna see me leave
Jon: I can't stop
The rain
But I can stop
The tears
Oh, I can fight
The fire
But I can't fight
The fear
All/Jon: No more
I just can't
Live here
All/Jon: No more
I can't take it
Can't take it
All/Jon: No more
What do we
Stand for
When we all
Live in fear?
Guitar and drum solo.
Budd: No more
I just can't
Live here
Budd/Jon: No more
I can't take it
Can't take it
Budd/Jon: No more
What do we
Stand for
When we all
Live in fear?
Caleb plays us out...
*Band leaves and its just Budd and Lenny*
Lenny: "Well that was much better then last weeks practice."
Budd: "Shouldn't you be at you're practice or something?"
Lenny: "No...todays our off day..."
Budd: "Ha, right...anyway, whats going on my readers! Budd and Lenny back from our little vacation."
Lenny: "More like school work and soccer."
Budd: "So true. Well it's been a while since I wrote a chapter so I think it's time for one."
Lenny: "Wait!"
Budd: "What?"
Lenny: "What about the thing?"
Budd: "Oh right the thing! *cough* I would like to thank FangaWolfLover for the amazing review! It made me write this chapter. And if you want a spot in our booth PM me details! Oh and BTW GO HAWKS!"
Lenny: "The story continues!"
Budd: "Here we go! Chapter Nine! Let's find out what happens next!"
When I woke up the next morning, my mom had already left for work and Budd already left for school. There was a ten dollar bill and a note on the counter: "Sorry, boys-I had to get to work early this morning. Quarterly reviews-Hooray! Also, I have to go right from the office to the restaurant tonight. Mr. Riffen needs me to set up for a party. I won't see you two until late. Here's twenty dollars. Treat yourself to dinner. Be careful and I love you both. Mom."
My jaw clenched and locked. Mr. Riffen was Corey's father. He was the general manager of Santini' s, the restaurant where my mom worked nights and weekends. Mr. Riffen was a hard man to get a bead on. When I was friends with Corey and Laney, I saw him all the time. He was always pretty nice to me, asked me how I was doing in school-all the typical "adult to kid" chitchat. When my mom got a job waitressing at Santini' s, he did an abrupt one-eighty, becoming aloof and standoffish. When I was over at his house, he would mumble a half-hearted greeting, then retreats to his office. I thought I had done something wrong. It took me a while to realize it was Mom he didn't like.
Mr. Riffen seemed to hold a grudge against her, scheduling her for every holiday, calling her in to work on her off days, giving her the most disgusting and time consuming cleaning jobs. My mom never gave him the satisfaction of bring upset. Whenever he'd get on her, she'd just say, "No problem." She would take all the holidays and extra shifts, saying, "Great! We could use the money."
never saw her come home at two in the morning, dog tired, mentally ticking off the hours before she had to get up to go to her office job, knowing that the sleep she would get wouldn't be enough.
I picked up the ten-dollar bill Mom had left and brought it into her room. The ugly, ceramic pineapple where my mom kept the rest of her emergency fund was on top of her dresser. I put the ten back inside, then added ten more from the money that Kon had paid me. It looked like I was taking the case.
I showered, the got dressed, making sure to grab the small bass keychain out of the pocket of the jeans that I wore the day before. Then I grabbed a quick breakfast and headed out to school.
The place was abuzz with a weird energy, almost like the day before vacation...or a Friday. People walked around with dazed expressions, wide and wild grins pasted on their faces. Everyone wanted firsthand accounts. The number of witnesses tripled as stories flew back and forth. Speculation as to who pulled the trigger was rampant. The odds were five to one on the betting boards that Mina would show up to school like nothing had ever happened. Whoever set those odds was a criminal; whoever took those odds was an idiot. Nobody showed up to school the day after they were put in the Outs. Nobody. And nobody would know that better than Mina.
A few people approached me and asked what happened. I put on my best "don't talk to me" face and made my way to my locker. I put the history book that I had neglected the night before on top of the math book that never even made it home. I grabbed my Spanish book and prepared to make myself invisible for class. The less prepared you were, the less it seemed to work.
I closed my locker, turned, and almost ran right into Laney.
"He was a mess last night," she said, as if we were continuing a conversation instead of just starting one.
"Who was?"
She shot me an impatient look. I knew who, and she refused to waste time verbalizing it.
"So? That's not my problem."
Her eyes narrowed into slits. "He's your friend, Lenny."
"No, he was my friend."
She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Can't you just forget all that and help him?"
"Help him do what? Find the kid responsible and rub him out? He's got enough thug buddies to help him do that."
"That's not what he wants..."
"Don't be so naive, Laney. What the hell do you think he wants? To give the kid a stern lecture?"
"Look, all I know is that he's really hurting."
"Well, what do you want from me? Tell him to get a hug from his sister."
As soon as I said it, I was sorry. Laney winced as if stung.
"Nice guy...," She mumbled.
My face flushed. Their sister was a tender subject. If their fathers attitude toward people was puzzling, their sister attitude was neon billboard: she wasn't fond of anybody, and "anybody" including her immediate family.
Before I could start my apology, Carrie walked over and slapped me across the face. The slap looked dramatic, but there wasn't much behind it. "You jerk!" She yelled, then turned and noticed Laney.
"Hi, Laney."
"Hey, Carrie. You cut in line."
"Sorry."
"No problem. I'll get him next time. See you around, Lenny," Laney said and walked away.
"What the hell was that?!" I yelled at Carrie while trying to rub the fingerprints off my face.
"You're working for Kon!?" She yelled back.
I looked down the hallway to see if Laney had heard, but thankfully, she was already out of earshot.
"Not that it's any of your business," I said, "but, yes."
She went to slap me again, but I saw it coming and grabbed her wrist.
"Let me go!" She screamed, making us look like a married couple on a daytime talk show. Kids stopped what they were doing and watched. I heard the deep voice of a teacher coming around the corner. I pulled Carrie close to me. She was clutching a guitar covered notebook. I could smell her soap. It was the same kind that Mina used.
"Pipe down or we're both going to end up in detention."
Mr. Rudolph, an eighth-grade history teacher, turned the corner and walked past us. I pretended that Carrie and I were having a casual conversation.
"So you like guitars, huh?" I asked and willed her to play along. Either she didn't pick up on my cues, or she didn't want to. She just stared at me with a weird mixture of anger and excitement on her face, as if she had never been this close to a boy before and wasn't sure if she liked it. Lucky us Mr. Rudolph must have had something on his mind, because he passed by without giving us a second look. When he was out of sight, I let Carrie go.
"I was going to tell you," I said.
"When?"
"Later today. Give me a break, will ya? I only just got here."
"Its all Kons fault."
"What is? The Mina hit?"
She nodded yes.
"And what, Mina's the innocent lamb? Please. You may want to buy that bull because she's your sister, but don't try selling it to me."
Carrie started to say something, but stopped. Her gaze dropped from my face.
"Look," I said, regaining my composure. "As far as I can tell, Kon didn't have anything to do with it."
"But I hired you first!" There was a little whine to her voice that was starting to get on my nerves.
"Technically, Kon hired me first. Look, I don't want to take money from both of you for the same job, and quite frankly, I think he has more to give."
"I don't care what he has. She's my sister. I want to know who did it."
"You'll know, but for free. Not a bad deal."
"But Kon will know first, and then he'll get to the kid, like he gets to everything else in this school. Like he got to you."
I was sick of being reminded of how I sold out to Kon. I grabbed Carrie and pulled her close.
"Listen, girl! You want the trigger, you work that out with Kon. I'm sure he wouldn't mind sharing a piece of him. Me? I don't care what happens to him. How could I with all you sharks after him? If I had any conscience left, I wouldn't find him at all, because if I think about it too hard, that's the only chance this kid's got!"
I let go of her and backed up a little. She looked at me like she wanted to scratch her initials into my face. Then her anger broke, and her regular, innocent expression came back.
"I'm sorry," she said, "I was up all night with Mina, and I guess I'm a little edgy."
"Yeah, you and me both."
She paused. "I'm not a shark. The only reason I want to know is because Mina is my sister. I don't want to...you know..."
"Put the hit kid in the Outs? He may end up there anyway, no matter what you want or don't want."
Carrie nodded slowly then tried to smile, but her mouth wouldn't let her. She clutched her notebook tighter, as if it gave her comfort.
"I don't want him to go...there. I'll admit that the other day I did...but not now. If someone were to put him there now, I would feel horrible."
"Why?"
"Because I wanted it! I wished for it!"
"So what? Wishes hardly ever come true," I said.
Without any warning, I got really dizzy, as if there was too much happening all at once, but really it's just this one conversation. I leaned against the lockers and winced a little.
"Are you okay, Lenny?" Despite what Carrie was going through, she was still concerned for me. My opinion of her rose a few notches.
"I'm fine. Listen, when you wished for that, you were upset. Your sister was just put in the outs. Give yourself a break."
She nodded as if she agreed with me, but I could tell by her expression that if the kit kid ended up in the Outs, she would always feel a little responsible.
"What we're you two arguing about, right before she got hit?"
"Kon had come up to me at my locker that morning to welcome me to school," Carrie said. "He was different than expected."
"You've never met him before?"
"No. My sister wouldn't let me. If you didn't already know, Mina is a bit of a control freak. When she realized she couldn't stop Kon from talking to me, she exploded."
"You looked like the one doing the exploding."
Her eyes were watchful. "Mina exploded all right, just quietly."
"You stormed off. Why'd you come back?"
"Honestly? To yell at her some more. I don't like people telling me what to do. When I saw her on the ground, at first I..." She paused to get the words right. "I felt guilty, like I had won argument. She got hit because she wasn't a good person. She had no right telling me what to do."
"Harsh."
"I know. I wish I could say I felt something different, but I can't. We can't always help what we feel."
She looked up at me. There was an unexpected spark between us. I started to wonder if Carrie was as innocent as she looked.
"So you weren't hired to distract Mina?" She asked.
"No. I distracted her, but not on purpose."
"I'm sorry...I don't mean to keep bringing It up, it's just...well, I don't know what to think. All sorts of scenarios ran through my mind. I started to think you were in on the hit, and that now you were just stringing me along, ripping me off."
"I'd have slapped me, too."
"Just talking to you now, I know it's not true." She gave me a smile full of sweetness and warmth. "I'm glad it's not true."
There was another spark. I spoke before it ignited something.
"And now you get my services for free."
"I want to pay you."
"You don't have to. It's being taken care of."
"I know, but I want to. Kon takes care of everything in this school. I want to take care of my sister. You can still take his money. I can't pay you much, but I want to pay you something. I want to know that I at least contributed to finding who did this."
"I understand."
"So, how much?"
"Let me find the outlaw first. Then you can pay me according to how hard you think I worked."
Her smile widened. "You're an unusual boy, Lenny." She kissed my cheek-the same one she slapped earlier.
"Uhh...thanks..." I mumbled. All of a sudden, my palms were sweaty and my tongue felt three sizes too big for my mouth. I peeled my gaze away from the floor and forced myself to look at her. She blushed deeper than I had ever seen anyone blush before.
"Carrie." Someone said, interrupting us. The voice belonged to a girl who looked familiar to me, but I couldn't place her. She was a hall monitor; that much was clear from the sash she was wearing. It looked to be the right size, but still didn't seem to fit.
"We have to get to class," this girl said, in a way that made it clear that she didn't approve of the moment Carrie and I just shared.
"Just a sec, Kim," Carrie responded. "I'll see you later, Lenny?"
"Sure."
Carrie smiled, then turned to join her friend called Kim and walked off together.
I could still feel her kiss...and her slap. I wasn't sure which left a deeper impression.
Budd: Wow! I am extremely worn out just by writing that! That might of been my longest chapter...ever!
Lenny: The story is starting to get good! I hope you people are actually reading this! And if your not, that's ok too.
Budd: Why so positive today?
Lenny: Because...if you are from America and have been waiting for Grojband episodes to appear on tv again, like Budd has, there's going to be a long wait...unless you go on the amazing YouTube! If you do a little searching, you will find some new Grojband episodes! But be careful some are in a different language! Find the right channel and you get the English ones! I'm not telling you who! That's your own searching...things.
Budd: I have watched most of the new episodes already!...except for the ones not in English which is like four or five of them. AND WARNING IF YOU WANT TO SAVE THE BEST EPISODE FOR LAST, THEN DO NOT WATCH METROGNOME. Just a fun warning for all my good fans!
*Crickets*
Lenny:*steps on cricket*
Budd: Thanks for chilling with us everybody! Make sure you review and follow!
