I hate when lyrics from previous chapters of my life come true. What aaaaarrre you doin' in my beeeeeeeeed?
October 3rd - part 1
(Sunday)
If he wasn't already so used to it, he'd be annoyed by the wait. But Billy Falduto spends a lot of his life waiting: on his mom late to pick him up from literally everything, on the inside scoop going on around him, on the right time to tell his parents his "passion for fashion" wasn't "just a phase"... So, it's 10:17 AM on a Sunday morning, and he's neither surprised nor bothered to be sitting at the dingy, quaint, little Sunshine Cafe alone.
"More coffee while you wait, Sugar?"
"Thanks, Doris."
"Young man, you have the patience of saint. I don't know how you're still waiting on that frump. For shame."
"Oh, it's no big deal. Plus, we both know he needs this."
Doris laughs throatily and refills the cup. It's only morning, but her red apron already has a coffee mark, likely permanent from many years of staining. She shakes her head slowly. "Ain't that the truth—"
TING-LING!
He comes in like a tornado of a human being, seemingly falling apart but kept together by invisible winds and raw dude energy. An open messenger bag and puffy jacket twist around his body as he swings past chairs and spins around a couple leaving from their table. With surprising speed and grace for his girth, he slides into the chair opposite Billy and cracks a grin upward.
"Hello, Doris, I'll have—"
"—Kid already ordered for ya," she answers, rolling her eyes and walking back to the kitchen counter. "Show up on time already, doof."
"Well!" Dewey Finn says, playfully miming an entire bodily expression of indignation. "I have never been so disrespected in my life. I have half a mind to complain to the manager and bring this whole establishment to justice!"
"Then where would we on Sundays?" Billy asks, ignoring his clowning. "Did you want two eggs, three pancakes, hashbrowns, and a large orange juice? Because I ordered you two eggs, three pancakes, hashbrowns, and a large orange juice."
"Yeah, duh, how else does a busy artist-about-town start his day?"
His crazy grin makes Billy chuckle and shake his head. The portly rocker has a weird charm about him, a devilish intensity mixed with boyish enthusiasm for literally everything that seems to draw in everyone around him. It's how he conned an entire school system into believing he was "Ned Schneebly," an 5th grade substitute teacher to the kids who would one day perform as School of Rock. And it's how he still makes ends meet to this day.
Billy motions an open hand. "So, let's see it."
Dewey fishes out a few papers from his bag and holds them tentatively out before stopping for a few words: "Alright, but see... I'm not really. completely. technically. done... with this yet. And I included this dumb concert theory I've working on about the 'Balance of the Room'... Don't even read that part. In fact, don't read any of it. Never mind, let's forget about this whole thing and wait for the food to get—"
"Oh, for Cher's sake, Dewey, give it!"
Billy snatches the papers, spins them, and starts scanning.
Dewey adds, "As uzh, don't look too close at the spelling, you know? And grammar, obviously. Also, punctuation: I am not good at that. Also—"
"Can you shush? I'm trying to read it!"
"Alright, alright! Ground Control to Fancy Pants, do your worst… just saying, it could be rough…"
It's a song-and-dance they've been doing for a while now: meet up every couple of weeks, always on a Sunday, always at the Sunshine Cafe, as close to 10 AM as Dewey can manage to shower and arrive at, order the same generous breakfast and coffee, and share.
Dewey shares stuff he's been writing. The School of Rock after-school music program is a roaring success; there's enough students to keep both him and his roommate-turned-business-partner Ned busy, and it's an honest-to-God joy to be paid to make kids' eye shine. He loves it. But there's only so many students and lessons you can teach after school lets out, Monday to Thursday, 3pm to 6pm. And it's just barely enough to cover the rent.
Billy chuckles.
Ned nods. "Okay, okay… is that a good chuckle or a bad one?"
Billy looks up incredulously.
"Got it. Zip-ola."
The initial idea had come during a practice a year or so ago. It was in the middle of an epic tirade Dewey unleashed during a practice break the band was taking. It had been a while since Dewey had stepped down from the band, focusing on the budding music program and leaving Zack in charge of its future, but he was still always welcome to observe and coach rehearsals. Dewey's wild rant had veered from Gene Simmons to Justin Bieber and was well on its way into other YouTube singers when Billy Falduto spoke up. 'Why don't you write this stuff down?' he had asked.
"Okay, this is… pretty compelling stuff," Billy says. He's wide-eyed and pleasantly so.
"Are you playing with me?" Dewey squints dramatically. "Billy F. Pants, if you're playing with me right now, I'm going to be majorly pissed."
"I'm dead-serious. I've never even heard of these guys, but I feel like I was there! This is the best thing you've ever written."
"Mmm-yes, I knew it!" Dewey exclaimed, entirely too loudly for the small diner where they were two of only five customers. "I was feeling full Lester Bangs on this one. My fingers were tingling. It was electric!"
That's how he got the idea to start the long, rocky, and unpredictable road to rock journalism. While not being able to write worth a damn.
"But this entire thing is like three long sentences."
He coughs. "Yeah, well, that's where I need some, you know, minor help sprucing it up."
"'Minor?' Dewey, this may as well be written in crayon."
"Hey hey hey hey… can you help me? The last article, they almost accepted it. You should've been there; the editor specifically said that the voice was 'unique and passionate,' which duh, have you met me? And I could tell they wanted to accept and publish it—in the Sunday edition, dude—but there was some fuddy-duddy nerves about skipping over the regular 'Arts & Entertainment' guy, so it was a no-go. Listen, I could tell they were THIS close to taking my submission. If I send them another one, a really good… C'mon, you got that fancy, official touch."
Billy makes a big show of sighing. "Fiiiiiiiiine, I guess I can try to edit this thing and do you one more tiny favor this one time."
"Yes, I love you, Billy! I do!" Dewey looks at him seriously. "I mean it. I'm not just saying it. You're one cool cat."
Billy smiles to himself again. Somewhere along the years, they became oddly-matched friends. Maybe it was their clashes at the beginning that brought them closer, maybe it was time spent watching the others perform, maybe it was a shared sense of outsider status.
Whatever had birthed the friendship had revealed them to be more similar than either could believe: they were both loud, dramatic, and strongly opinionated about all things artistic. And they both discovered a passion for sharing those opinions through words. Billy had started spending more time in the Journalism class during his middle school years and was now the small-fish-in-a-big-pond at The Talon, official school paper for the Horace Green Hawks. With his own growing talents, Billy had encouraged Dewey to try his own hand at putting his wild rock theories into written word… and here they were.
"Don't get your hopes up too high, Dewey. This stuff is like incredibly competitive. My mom's friend used to work at a big newspaper in Philly and he said it's the worst time for newspapers."
"Yeah yeah yeah, they always say that stuff to upcoming prodigies. But I'm not stressing the small details... I'm gonna get my foot in the door, then I'm gonna get the cred to write my own column, then I'm gonna publish a book of rock theory and be honored as guest lecturer at Berklee AND guest touring guitarist with Radiohead. It's a foolproof scheme!"
"Alright gentlemen, watch yer hands, I'm comin' in hot," Doris interjected, swinging around a platter of steaming breakfast delicacies. She dished out the delicacies adeptly. "Florentine omelette for the young man. (Here's your coffee, Sugar.) And two eggs, three pancakes, hashbrowns, and a large orange juice for the human tornado."
"Thanks, Doris!"
"Yeah… thanks for the compliment, Grandma Sunshine… Geez, what's the old bag got against me?"
"Focus! So you're plan is to spin all of this from an article you wrote—I'm guessing—last night?"
"Billy, oh man, it was such a great concert. We were crammed into this tiny, empty, hole-in-the-wall venue, and it was still SO GOOD. Mark my words, this band, Paint With Matches, they may be nobody now, but they're great and they're going places."
"Glad you had such a good time. Promise I'll check them out online." Billy smiles. "You know, WE had a pretty good time last night, too…"
Dewey cringes. "I know! I'm so sorry I missed Marco & Gordon's Thing. If it had been any other night you know I'd have been there. How was it? Was it great? Of course it was great, what am I saying? How was everybody?"
The corners of Billy's mouth lift in an attempt at a smile. "It was totally fun. A bunch of people from school went, and..." He tries to push forward into a good-natured grin, but the heart just isn't behind it. His breakfast partner notices immediately.
"Hey. What's up, man?"
"I heard Hektor was really happy with the turnout. He might even—"
"C'mon, little dude. Are you kidding me?"
Billy pauses and messes with the collar to his button-up shirt. In spite of himself, he smiles weakly and nods.
And that's what Billy shares. With his mom running around town with appointments to seemingly every beauty salon every day and his dad managing every business affair except the ones at home, Billy finds himself unable to share the constant notes he scribbles about his world with anyone except the pudgy, energetic rocker.
"I don't even know where to start. The high school world of Horace Green Prep is brutal. I thought it was gonna just like middle school, but it's not. It's only October and all my old friends are becoming hot messes. Everybody in the School of Rock is a ticking time bomb of hormones and crazy sauce. And nobody seems to know how to deal with it."
"Okay okay, cool. So, step one. What do I always say is step one?"
"Let it out."
Dewey nods sagely. "That's right, you got get the lead out. Never keep it bottled up cause you'll pop."
"But what about your article?"
"Psshh, we'll get to that later. First, you go through step one. And, I know you're worried about everybody else, but we're gonna start with how you're doing, okay?"
Billy nods with a little self-conscious embarrassment.
"Alright!" Dewey smiles. "Lay on it on me, Papa Smurf."
Billy pulls out a small notebook from his bag, flips a couple pages, and sets it down.
"Okay… but then I have to tell you about the weirdest thing going on with Zach… And, I think, Lawrence is cracking? And, Eleni. Oh boy, we'll have to talk about Summer..."
Dewey grins. "Let's hear it."
Through barely-parted eyelids, Freddy barely spots the peeling flake of paint on the ceiling that looks like the profile of the president that almost went to jail. A moderate headache blurs his vision and keeps him from remembering his name, but the nose and flabby chin look really familiar...
Then he connects the pieces: if he's looking at the President paint chip, then that means he's in the bedroom of the fancy pool house his parents had built last year; and if he has a headache, then he got into the "secret stash" of the pool house, and that means last night…
Freddy jolts his head up without moving the rest of his body, panic filling his eyes.
Gingerly, he lifts his right arm from its warm resting place and pulls down the covers over his chest…
...and reveals the naked back of Eleni Afflerbach, sprawled in his bed.
