Overview: What would have happened if Wen hadn't been so anti-confrontational when Ray was bothering Olivia in the cafeteria that day?
Disclaimer: I do not own Lemonade Mouth, nor do I have any rights to the characters herein.
Note: This will be a multi-chapter story, eventual Wenlivia. Previously posted under my other account, Thayne M.
A/N: I'm not very good about replying to reviews (I don't get online all that much; just a few minutes to update my stories and check my e-mail), but I want you guys to know that I read them all and I appreciate them VERY much.
Reviews are SINCERELY APPRECIATED!
"Ouch!" It was the first thing Wen heard when he walked - head down and steps heavy - into Mrs. Reznik's room at 11:15. He looked up to see Stella licking the back of her hand, where a guitar string had snapped and cut her. Even though it had happened a few times since they all started playing together (she got a little too into her solos), it seemed ominous today. Like the build-up to the inevitable break. He collapsed into the desk between Mo and Charlie and immediately crossed his arms an the surface, resting his chin on them.
This was how his day had been so far: Him trudging from class to class with a hangdog expression, not paying attention to anything or anyone. The most attentive he'd been was during the first ten minutes of Geometry, listening closely to roll call and watching the door. Olivia didn't make an appearance. After that, every last thread of hope he'd been gripping slipped from his grasp and he shut down. He considered calling his dad to sign him out sick for the rest of the day, but he knew that Stella - who'd seen him clearly during passing time - would show up at his house and throttle him if he missed a band meeting. Not that a band meeting was worth much of anything without Olivia around.
"Why are we here, Stella?" He grumbled from his current position.
She cocked an eyebrow at him, "What do you mean? It's a band meeting." She reached over her guitar to a veggie sandwich, taking a big bite and talking around the food, "Weh haff a name now, an' I fink weh haff ouw opening song fow da Hawoween Bash."
"Oh man," Charlie smacked his hands down on his desk, smiling his trademark ear-to-ear smile, "The name, it's perfect. Wen, you should have seen it; it was classic." He proceeded to launch into a story about the previous afternoon, when he and Mo told Stella the exact details of what had happened during lunch. Apparently, Stella reacted about as well as Wen had to the situation and immediately went off in search of the Mudslide Crush frontman. Armed with a can of Mel's, she'd found him sitting on the back bumper of someone's rusty old Jeep, mid-laugh, and without a single word she'd spat a mouthful of the beverage in his face. She'd practically started a riot - her, Mo and Charlie against Ray, Patty and Dean Eagler - by the time Brenigan showed up and demanded to know what the fuss was about. Everyone had been yelling their explanations, but above it all, they' heard Ray say something about "lemonade mouth over here," and thus the brilliant band name was born.
Yeah yeah yeah whatever, was all Wen could think as the drummer finished this story. He hadn't moved from his slumped position over the desk, and when he showed no enthusiasm for the name, all three of his friends fixed him with a prodding stare. He glanced between them and blinked a few times, trying to figure this all out in his head. "What are you guys talking about?" He finally demanded, "A name, a new song? What good are those going to do us now?"
Now it was their turn to blink at him. "What are you talking about?" Stella asked.
This was starting to aggravate him. It was hard enough knowing that Olivia was gone - now they had to talk about it? "Well, we can't really do this if Olivia- -"
"I'm sorry!" A voice practically shouted as the music room door swung open, "I had to stop in and pick up the assignments from my morning classes." Wen couldn't believe his eyes. It was Olivia who came stumbling through the door, juggling her backpack, a few schoolbooks, and a can of lemonade. Olivia. She was here. He felt the same way he had when he was nine and lost control of his bike while riding down Addison Hill; that feeling of certain doom, and then that bolt of adrenaline when he realized he wasn't going to die today after all. Realizing that he got to keep living his life.
The singer seemed to distract everyone from whatever Wen had been about to say, and Mo hopped up to take her books so she could settle into a seat without dropping anything. "I missed you in Bio," she told her with a sigh, "Mr. Nagy made us watch that stupid cartoon-y movie about recessive genes again."
"Sorry," Olivia apologized again, unzipping her backpack and digging in for something, "Gram let me skip this morning so I could finish some lyrics."
"How did you manage that?" Charlie laughed, "My parents would have grounded me for even asking."
She sighed, extracting a binder from the bad and setting it on her desk, along with a package of snack cakes. "I had to promise that I would stop skipping classes to read in the janitor's closet." They all laughed, except for Wen, who was now sitting straight up and staring at the blonde girl. She seemed so perfectly happy and at ease with the group that it was almost as if the day before had never happened, save for the fact that she wouldn't look back at him. In fact, she was doing everything she could to avoid looking at him.
"Did Stella tell you about the band name yet?" Mo asked with a little giggle.
Olivia nodded, smiling, "Yeah, she told me when I was at her house last night; I love it. It suits us." At her house last night? Wen looked around wildly; what was going on? Why was everybody else suddenly in on something and he was the odd man out? Did Olivia still want to be in the band? He had a million questions and no ability to voice any of them. He just sat there, opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish while the rest of them carried on, oblivious to his confusion.
Stella, who'd been working on replacing her snapped chord through all of this, started tuning her guitar and asked, "So do we want to eat first, or go over the new song first? Either way, Mrs. Reznik said she could write us a pass for our next class."
Olivia looked at her cakes, then at her binder before deciding, "Let's do the song first, I guess." Wen noticed the slightest blush rising on her neck, but he couldn't imagine why. Sure, she sometimes got bashful about her lyrics, but ultimately she was always confident in them.
Stella clapped her hands and grabbed her own binder, pulling out some handwritten sheet music, "I was hoping you'd say that; I was up all night after you left. I got a lot of the faster stuff down, but I thought that, instead of acoustic guitar at the beginning, we could just have the keyboard. That way, you wouldn't have to worry about playing and singing at the same time." She was talking a mile a minute as she flipped through her papers, and Wen still had no idea what was going on, other than he was apparently going to be playing something at the beginning of a mysterious new song. "Here you go, Wen," she suddenly smacked a sheet of paper down in front of him, then passed two more to Mo and Charlie. Wen studied his, mentally playing the opening keys in his head as he read them from the sheet. It sounded sad. Please don't be a goodbye song, he mentally begged, Please don't be a goodbye song.
"Hm," Mo hummed thoughtfully as she looked over her own paper, "Okay, let's give it a shot." She stood from her desk and started over to the little practice area Mrs. Reznik had set up for them after their first impromptu performance together. The others followed quickly, but Wen took his time in getting out of his seat and making his way to his keyboard. He was still skeptical about this song and the situation, and nervous over the fact that Olivia still hadn't so much as glanced in his direction, even though she was acting normal toward the others.
"Get the lead out, Wen," Stella snapped her fingers as she hooked in to her amp. He scowled at her, but picked up the pace nonetheless, circling around and planting himself behind the keys. He set the paper on his music stand and studied the keys, trying to memorize them before they started. C-C-E-D-E, he noted, his fingers trailing just above the keys without actually playing them, A-A-C-B-C, F-F-A-A-G-F. Yeah, it still sounded sad.
"I think I've got it," Charlie said a moment later, from behind his drums. He and Mo had been doing the same thing as Wen - hearing the music in their heads before playing it out loud. When Mo nodded to second this statement, Stella looked over her shoulder at Wen. He shot a look at Olivia, but her back - stiff and obviously nervous - stayed to him. He let out an inaudible sigh and started playing.
After a beat, Olivia inhaled and it echoed through her microphone, and then she started singing. It was as pure and beautiful as it had ever been, but there was something different to her voice; something more stripped and exposed. "Tryin' hard to fight these tears," she sang, slow and deep, "I'm crazy worried. Messin' with my head, this fear - I'm so sorry." There it was. To Wen, that was the kiss of death; that really made this her goodbye song. He wanted to give up right then - wanted to stop playing, throw up his hands, and leave - but he couldn't bring himself to cut her off. If this was going to be a goodbye, he was at least going to hear it all the way through.
"Ya know, you gotta get it out; I can take it. That's what bein' friends' about." And finally, she glanced over her shoulder at Wen, her expression unreadable, but there was something comforting there. Something that drove him forward as the song picked up in a sudden, excited beat. "I," she swung around, blonde hair flying across her face, "I wanna cry; I can't deny, tonight I wanna up and hide. And yet inside, it isn't right; I gotta live in my life. I know I, I know I, I know I gotta do it. I know I, I know I, I know I gotta do it."
Wen was so happy that he could have cried; this wasn't a song to say goodbye with. This was a song to get empowered with. This was Olivia's battle cry, and it was amazing. "Gotta turn the world into your dance floor," she sang the chorus with so much gusto that it seemed to make every surface in the room shake. "Determinate, determinate. Push until you can't and then demand more. Determinate, determinate. You and me together, we can make it better; gotta turn the world into your dance floor. Determinate, determinate."
As the keyboardist played along, it hit him that the reason Olivia wouldn't look at him before was because these lyrics seemed to be a direct response to everything he'd said to her the previous day. "Hate to feel this way and waste a day; I gotta get myself onstage. I shouldn't wait or be afraid; the chips will fall where they may." She sang through the pre-chorus and chorus again, getting into it and jumping around, coming up with her own little dance moves before they all ran out of sheet music and stopped playing.
Olivia stilled and was silent for a moment before clearing her throat and turning to face the band, "I'm not sure what to put in the bridge yet, sorry. I'll try to come up with something fun."
"Don't be sorry," Mo laughed, a huge smile on her face, "That was amazing. You wrote all of that in a day?" Olivia nodded and the Indian girl's hands fell from her bass to clap a few times, "Wow."
"Seriously," Charlie agreed, "It gave me chills."
Stella smirked, "Now you see why I said we have our opening number for the Halloween Bash?"
"I think I could fill in the bridge." The sentence came out so loud and sudden that it took Wen a minute to realize that he'd been the one who said it, and another minute to come up with an elaboration. By that time, his bandmates (which, he was happy to find, included Olivia) were all staring at him like he'd lost his mind. "I just mean," he could feel his ears heating up, "I have an idea for something. Maybe we could," he said to Olivia carefully, "Work on it after school?"
It was a little daring, he had to admit. Considering how their Alone Time had gone the day before, he wasn't sure she ever wanted to be alone with him again, but he had to try. He had to have the chance to tell her, in private, what he thought of this new song that spoke volumes about her and, as it turned out, of him as well.
Olivia studied him briefly and then, to his amazement, she smiled and said, "Sure. I have to take a make-up test after school, but I should be done by three-thirty."
"I'll meet you outside," he told her, unable to keep back the beaming smile that snuck across his face. The band talked for a few minutes about the new song before running through it again, then rehearsing a few other songs before Mrs. Reznik came back from her lunch break and told them to start packing it in so they weren't too late for fifth period.