Time Out Chapter 6

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2000



It was a bright sunny day as Jon pulled his parent’s 1996 Geo metro into the school parking lot. The time was 7:30. He had plenty of time to get to his locker, up the stairs, buy a Cherry Coke out of the vending machine and make it to his first class. He had not turned on SportsTime this morning, but he had a certain rhythm already. He was feeling great! Relatively speaking, of course. His arms felt like giant logs jutting out from his shoulders, his legs felt like they were just one big bruise, and he could barely yawn without his chest feeling like it might implode.
As he slightly limped up to the school entrance by the cafeteria, Stan and Greg burst through the doors and pulled him between two relocateable classrooms where they could have a little privacy.
“Hey! Be careful! What the hell?” Jon asked as he felt his arms sending off sharp twinges of pain.
“We should ask you the same thing, Jon!” Stan whispered harshly. “Where the hell did you go yesterday? What happened to you?”
“You look like shit,” Greg interjected.
“You disappeared from school, almost like you were arrested, and then you show up today looking like the poster child for police brutality! What happened?”
“As I was leaving the classroom yesterday, two guys grabbed me. They threw me into their unmarked car, and took me to a place-“ Jon stopped. He couldn’t tell them. They were his best friends, and he couldn’t tell them. He thought up a lie, and he thought it up quick. “-that we call a police station and questioned me for a bit. Had to do with a rash of embezzlement from school drama clubs in the area. They wanted to know if I had seen or heard anything, being part of the drama club and all.”
Jon looked at his friends and could tell that wasn’t going to tide them over. “While I was there, they found the person who was doing it. He was actually a dry cleaning guy who had taken care of the cleaning of the costumes after a play.” Still no look of belief in their faces. “And, as I walked by him, he got away from the cops he was with and started beating me up. He, uh, thought that I had turned him in or something. He got to me pretty good before the cops could pull him off.”
Stan looked at Greg and Greg looked at Stan. They each arched their eyebrows and tilted their heads slightly. “Why didn’t you call us?” Stan asked.
Jon had thought he was off the hook, so he hadn’t even thought of extending the story any further. “Well, when I got home, I was just so freaked out and traumatized, I guess I just went to sleep. Didn’t even think about it, to be honest.” That was the first truthful thing Jon had told them yet.
“It’s cool,” Stan told him. “but, we were just worried about you. “
“Thanks, but everything is fine.” Jon lied. “I am hurt. I look and feel like shit, but, all told, I guess I’m okay. It was a hell of a day yesterday, though. That is for sure!” Jon separated each of the words in the last sentence.
“So,” Greg changed the subject cheerily, “you all ready for the talent show tryout?”
Jon looked at Greg. “Please tell me that isn’t today.”
Greg started laughing. “You forgot? You’ve been practicing Flight of the Bumblebee since last year’s talent show to win this thing for your senior year and you forgot?”
Jon took a deep breath. “Perfect. Just perfect”
“You feel up to it?” Stan asked.
“Not especially, but, I have to try, right?”
“Try?” Greg asked, still giggling. “If you forgot about it, you probably don’t even have the sheet music, do you?”
Jon looked at Stan. “He’s right. No music.” He was tapped on the shoulder. “Oh, hell.” Jon turned. It was Aleisha.
She was beaming at Jon with a special twinkle in her eye. Her hair had been put into a ponytail with a dark blue bow that matched her sweater. Underneath, she was wearing a white shirt with lace around the edges. A dark blue skirt that went just below her knees almost finished her outfit, had it not been for the black backpack that was bulging with all of her books in it.
Jon grinned like an idiot, fear about the talent contest replaced by a whole new kind of fear. “Oh, hell, hell, hello!” he greeted her.
“Am I interrupting something?” she inquired.
Jon pointed at his friends behind him. “Them? “ He twisted up his face in a silly grimace. “No! They were just leaving.” Jon grabbed Greg’s sleeve and pulled him from out behind him. Greg was now almost in hysterics as he tried to hold in his laughter. Jon turned Greg around, raised Greg’s chin with his fingers and stared into his eyes. “They were just leaving!” Stan walked out from behind Jon and dragged Greg away.
“So, are you okay?” Aleisha asked.
“I’m fine!” Jon replied too fast. “Why?”
“You don’t look too good.”
“I don’t?”
“No. You look a little, um, bruised.”
“Oh, that?” Jon blew out some air from between his closed lips and made a small sputtering sound. “A little bit of problems at a police station.”
“Police station?”
“Yea, An embezzlement thing. Got taken to a police station. Jumped by the robber. All very boring. Anyway-“
“Embezzlement? Jumped by a robber? Are you okay?” She reached up to touch his forehead.
Jon jumped back as if she were carrying a red-hot poker in her hand. “Fine! Like I said, I’m fine. I just don’t want to talk about it right now.” Aleisha pulled back from him, seemingly hurt. “No! I mean, I don’t want to talk about that! Not to you!” Aleisha gave him a quizzical look. “I mean-not about that to you. Or to anybody. At all. The police station.” Jon was trying to explain too fast, so he took a huge deep cleansing breath and started over, as if talking to a child. “I want to talk to you. Just not about the police station incident because I’m tired of talking about it. I don’t mind telling you at some point in the future, just not now. Did that make sense?”
A smile came back to Aleisha’s face. “Perfect sense.”
Jon took another deep breath and smiled himself. “Good. So, what did you come here to ask?”
“How did you know I was going to ask anything?”
“You never got to finish your question yesterday in Mrs. Katsilas’s class.”
“I just wanted to know if you had something to do for the talent show today. As much as I have liked your monologues in the past, I was hoping you’d do something else this year. You’re awfully good on the piano.”
Jon felt his ears start to burn. “How did you-?”
Aleisha stared straight down as her ponytail flopped into the position her face had just been in. “I’ve listened to you play after school in the music room.” She looked up with her face bright red now. Jon was staring at her dumbfounded, but with a big grin on his face.
“I make sure nobody’s around except for Mr. Wendell.”
She looked into his eyes. “You can hear the piano slightly from the hallway.”
Nothing was said for what seemed like an eternity. They both were staring into the other’s eyes and grinning like dopes. Finally, Jon said, “I do. I mean, I did. I was practicing for the Flight of the Bumblebee, but, because of the incident,” Jon emphasized the last word strongly, “I forgot my music. I’ll just have to sit out this year.”
Aleisha broke eye contact and swung her bag down for her back. She unzipped it and rummaged through the crammed contents for a moment. She emerged with a piece of sheet music. “Here.” She handed it to Jon.
“But, you don’t play.”
“I’m supposed to take it back to the music store for my mom after school today. She already had a copy and forgot.”
Jon looked down and saw the movie poster for The Man From Snowy River looking back at him. Jon liked the film. He really did. He had even purchased the soundtrack and listened to it often. But to play this piece of music in a talent show was like saying Citizen Kane was the best movie of all time. It showed no imagination and no independent thought. Every ten-year-old in the city played that piece of music at every piano recital ever! Jon would never be able to get into the talent show by playing this piece! He was not a prodigy by any means but he had memorized tougher pieces than this. But could he tell that to Aleisha?
He smiled. “Thank you! I guess this will be the piece I play to make it into the actual show tonight! I’ll give it back to you after the tryout.”
“Make you a deal?”
“Anything!”
“How grateful are you for that sheet music?”
“Very grateful for the sheet music.” Jon didn’t feel that that was a lie. He was grateful that she had wanted to help him and that he at least at something to take on stage with him.
“May I ask you to pay a very steep price for it?”
Jon felt the butterflies start in his stomach again. “Sure.”
“After school today, can you take it back to Day Murray on State Street? I don’t really want to.”
The butterflies stopped flying, and, amazingly enough, Jon thought it was a fair trade. “No problem.”
“And will you take me out to a movie sometime this week?”
The butterflies started flying but were squashed flat by the rock that now sat in Jon’s stomach. “I’ll have to check.”
Jon knew the next words coming out of his mouth as he watched Aleisha’s face fall. “Yes, I would love to go see a movie with you this week. I just have to make sure that I’m feeling up to it after what happened to me, and make sure that I have something to wear.”
Aleisha’s face perked up immediately and even laughed at Jon’s feeble joke. “You will? Honestly?”
The butterflies pushed the rock away. “You bet. I’ve been wanting to ask you that same question for a long time, now.”
She beamed again as she turned away. ”Bye, Jon. I’ll be watching you in the audience.”
As she turned and ran toward the doors of the school, Jon’s heart zoomed. “I have a date with Aleisha Madsen!” He pumped his fist in the air and followed Aleisha’s lead through the school doors.
Greg got to Jon first as he entered the doors. “She looked pretty happy! I assume things went well?”
“Amazingly well!” Jon answered. “At least as far as Aleisha was concerned.”
“What does that mean?” Stan asked.
“I got a date!”
“When did pigs start flying?” Greg asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? You don’t know when pigs started flying or you don’t know about your date?” Greg’s mouth and eyes opened wide. “You set a date with Aleisha and you don’t know when?”
“Well, that’s the thing,” Jon explained. “I don’t know when I’m going to feel up to it after the-“ he paused, as had become the custom, “-incident.”
“Dude,” Greg butted in, “it’s Aleisha Madsen! Who cares about the-“ Greg paused an extra long time, mocking Jon, “-incident?”
“Guys, come on! She asked me out!”
“She asked you out?” Stan was even more shocked. “She asked you out and you pushed her off?”
“No! I mean, yes, but no! I wasn’t ready! She kind’ve popped it on me, and I wasn’t ready for it, and so, I said for sure this week, but I don’t know when!”
Greg put his arm around Jon and they started walking to their lockers. “Jon, in a world where the woman makes the first move, you must always be ready,” Greg counseled. “What happens on the date if she wants to kiss you?”
Jon stopped dead in his tracks. “Kiss me? It’s a first date, for Pete’s sake!”
Greg continued. “Jon, old buddy, old pal! We’re not talking about the 1950’s here! It’s the year 1989! Do you know that a girl can be whatever she wants to be? She can do whatever she wants to do?” He got a very serious look on his face. “Jon, when two people love each other very much…”
Jon stepped away from Greg and put his hands up. “That’s it!”
“Maybe not even love each other very much. Maybe just lust after each other very much!”
“Greg! Shhh!” Jon walked over to the wall in the student commons area and rubbed his eyes. “Look, this may be the year 1989, but I’m still a rather old fashioned guy! I’ve had a crush on Aleisha for a very long time.”
“We know,” Stan and Greg said together.
“I’m just going to show up and then I’ll see what happens. I’m not going to plan on kissing her, or anything more than that! I just want to spend an evening together with her alone and see if we can do more than just exchange clumsy hellos.”
Stan and Greg looked at their friend. As Jon looked at them he was hoping they would just drop the conversation.
After a long silence and many pleading looks by Jon, Greg shook his head. “You’re an idiot.” They started walking to their lockers. Jon shook his head and followed.
They crossed E hall and started heading down H hall, where their lockers were. Stan returned to the initial conversation. “So, you said it went well as far as Aleisha was concerned. What else happened?”
“Well, she asked if I was going to play anything in the talent show…”
Stan was impressed by Aleisha’s knowledge. “How did she know you played? I thought we were about the only ones who knew that.”
“She has stood outside of Wendel’s door and listened to me.”
Greg re-entered the conversation. “She wants you, man. She definitely wants you.”
Jon pulled a loose quarter out of his pocket and threw it at Greg and laughed in spite of himself. “I’m warning you, man. Just leave it alone!”
Just as they reached their lockers and started dialing their combinations, there was an announcement that came over the intercom.
“Jon Mills!” it squawked. “Jon Mills! Please report to the auditorium! Jon Mills! Please report to the auditorium!”
“What the hell did you do?” Greg asked. “Normally, one gets called down to the office not the auditorium. Did you sluff play practice or something?”
“Very funny.” Jon stopped doing his combination lock and gave the dial one big spin to reset it. “I don’t know, but I guess I’m going to find out.” Jon walked back down H hall the same way he had just come down it. Stan and Greg looked at each other, smirked, and followed Jon at a safe distance.
Jon walked back through the commons and down the long hallway which was officially called B hall but which the students commonly called performance hall since all the music, drama, and debate classes were down one side of it. On the other side was a brick wall and lockers but on the other side of the wall was the auditorium. Since Jon knew his way around the area well, he decided to sneak in through the stage entrance. That way he would be able to hear any talking that was happening before anyone knew he was there.
Stan and Greg used the general student entrance, which put them at the back of the auditorium. The only lights on in the place were the stage lights and the lights for the first few rows of audience seats. They were easily able to hide in the darkness.
Jon hovered just off stage for a few extra moments to see if he could figure out what was going on. Finally, with no way of hearing the muttering, Jon took a few steps back so that he could enter the stage at his normal pace, of course slightly slowed by his limp.
“Mr. Mills! So nice of you to join us!” came a voice from the inky blackness.
It didn’t take long for Jon to realize that the voice was Mrs. Perry. “Hi!” he waved cheerily out to the seats, even though he was blinded by the lights and couldn’t see anything.
“So? What are you waiting for, Jon?” Mrs. Perry asked.
“Excuse me? I don’t understand…?”
“Your tryout! We posted the times yesterday during lunch. You didn’t notify us, so we assumed you were okay with your tryout time of 7:55.”
Jon’s face went from totally confused to a dumbfounded look. “Now? Tryout?”
“Jon!” Mrs. Perry’s voice held a warning. “Please don’t push your luck today. I am in charge of the tryouts and nothing that you can say to Mr. Cannon will hold any sway over him. This is a purely extracurricular activity and you do not have to perform. Like the signs say, No shoes, No shirt, No dice.” Mrs. Perry smiled at herself with her hip humor.
Jon almost lost it when he heard Mrs. Perry quoting Fast Times at Ridgemont High. A great film to be sure, but not necessarily a hip quote for a teacher to say. “Yes, ma’am.”
It was only at that moment that Jon realized that he didn’t have the music he wanted to play with him, only Aleisha’s contribution. He took his heavy book bag offstage and then took the sheet music to the piano, which was slightly off stage left.
The piano bench made an extremely loud squeal as it scraped against the stage floor. Jon could hear the few people in the audience wince. He also noticed the click of the stage right backstage door opening up and closing.
Jon hated the thought of playing the piece so much, he almost wanted to just walk off stage right then, but with Mrs. Perry in the audience, he refused to go with his instincts. Jon closed his eyes before he put the sheet music on the music stand. He heard footsteps approaching on stage right. He took a deep breath. It was either the person with the eight o'clock tryout time or, with any luck at all, it was Aleisha to root him on. Of course if it were the latter, he wouldn’t be able to dart off stage. Hell, he thought, if it is Aleisha, I probably can’t even look at her or I’ll freeze up.
As he opened his eyes, Jon kept his gaze securely locked on the task at hand. He put the music in front of him. Gathering all of his hate of this piece of music, he looked at it and realized he had never actually seen it or played it before. Good thing, I sight read well, he told himself.
Jon exhaled his hatred of the piece as he felt one drop of sweat descending through his scalp.
Mrs. Perry leaned over to her fellow judge, Mr. Jensen (known affectionately by the students as Doc), the music teacher. “Watch this,” she snickered. “He’s going to muff this beautifully.”
Jon started. His fingers played the eight second introduction lightly, as it was supposed to be played. As he took a quick scanning of the first 2 pages, he breathed a sigh of relief. A few sliding moments here and there with the left hand, but relatively simple stuff, as he had imagined all along. Cake, he thought. I can do this with my eyes closed.
He should have. He allowed himself to glance stage right and see who had entered with a smile ready for Aleisha. Instead, it was Kate Thompson! For a split second, he took his eyes off the page and just stared.
Since he was sight-reading, he quickly looked back down at the page and realized it was time to go to page three. He turned the page and did another quick scan. Again, nothing too hard. He continued and looked back up at Kate. She was motioning frantically for him to go over to her. Jon opened his eyes wide and gave a slight nodding of the head to indicate the piano and that he was in the middle of something. Kate continued to motion him to stage right. Mills shook his head and continued playing, dropping his head to try to just stare at the pages in front of him.
Amazingly, he was hitting every note. Jon could feel his fingers moving faster than they probably should have, but he didn’t really care about that one way or the other. He just wanted to hit the notes and ignore Kate for a few more moments. He turned the page.
Unfortunately, she made that impossible. She gave an ear-splitting whistle, which caused Jon to jump. From what seemed like another universe, he heard Mrs. Perry’s stern voice telling the troublemaker to come out from the side of the stage or she would give them detention. Jon made a note of that grinning inside with the knowledge that Mrs. Perry couldn’t put a 25 year old or so female secret agent, let alone one with the temperament of Kate Thompson, in detention. He turned the page.
Jon looked up at Kate again. Her eyebrows were raised high into her forehead and her lips were pulled into a scowl. Kate’s arms were now folded and her left foot was slowly tapping the ground making her look like the mother of every child ever born. Kate unfolded her arms and made a large arm rotation and pointed at the ground as if to say get over here, now. Jon shook his head, turned a page and stopped cold.
That was it. He was done. Mrs. Perry was standing, done bellowing at the troublemaker, while Doc was just staring at the stage, mouth agape. Stan and Greg also just stared at the stage, along with Aleisha, who was close to the judges, and the other 20 or so students dispersed sparsely in the seats. The sudden silence was so immediate and surprising to Jon that he almost felt like looking for a sniper or a monster of some kind. He gathered the music off the piano and stood up, scraping the bench across the floor once more.
Kate was still motioning wildly to see her while Jon just stood by the piano, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He knew the piece was bad, but had he done that poorly, he wondered.
Doc broke the silence. “That was certainly an interesting interpretation of that piece, Mr. Mills.”
Jon looked out toward the seats and could see nothing but the glare of the spotlight. “Thank you,” he said to the white light.
“I’ve heard that piece many times over the years. Many more than I care to think about, actually, but never quite like that.” Doc continued, choosing his words very carefully.
“Thank you,” Jon repeated. “I think,” he muttered under his breath.
“May I ask one question of you, Mr. Mills?”
Jon was afraid to hear the question. “Sure,” he eventually answered.
“I’m all about the musician making it his own, but do you pay any attention, at all, to the suggested beats per minute at the opening of the piece?”
Jon didn’t understand what Doc was getting at. “I’m sorry?”
Doc took a deep breath. “Jon, may I call you Jon?”
Mills could tell he was gesturing for approval. “Sure.”
“Do you realize that you just perfectly played a three minute and eighteen second song in a minute flat? The suggested beats per minute of the song notwithstanding, I mean.”
Now it was Jon’s turn to be surprised. “I actually didn’t.”
It took a few seconds for Doc to find the simple words of his next phrase. “Well, you did.”
When nothing further came out from the audience, Jon nodded a slight acknowledgement. “Thank you,” he nodded and walked offstage to join Kate. Stan, Greg, and Aleisha jumped out of their seats.
“I did it in a minute flat?” Jon whispered to Kate as she grabbed him by the shirt and led him quickly to the door.
“Yes you did, Wonder Boy, and tonight we’re all going to line up and give you a nice, big, fat, honking parade, but for right now, you need to come with me!”
“I just asked for a slight clarification. Jesus! By the way, can we make a quick stop at Day Murray…” They hit the stage right door at full speed even with Kate limping ever so slightly.
As Jon and Kate continued down B hall, Stan and Greg exited the top of the auditorium. “Jon!” Stan called.
Stan and Greg watched as Jon walked out of the school building following a tall red haired woman. Aleisha exited the auditorium seconds later, but by then, Jon was long gone. She looked up at Stan who just shook his head and walked off towards his first class. Aleisha looked at Greg for an explanation, who just shrugged and followed Stan.
“Jon, you are so strange sometimes,” Aleisha muttered as she stared down B hall and blew one loose hair away from her eyes.