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Antonia Abruzzi stood alone by the window, staring down in silhouette at the protesters’ flags and signs. Her long dark hair perched on her head, wound in intricate braids. She looked fifteen and fifty at once. She wore gloves, even if her hands didn’t fill them right. She had removed her left glove, and the long thin tentacles she had instead of a hand fanned over the window like brush bristles mashed flat.
He approached. The chant rhythm outside had changed; he couldn’t guess the words, now. Below, Sean led the kids in a chant of their own:
Jokertown, Jokertown, Jokertown Mob!
Stick that bullshit in your gob!
“Hey,” Robin said. “I know it’s a mess down there, but Ms. Oberhoffer and Ms. Pond and Mr. Gunderson and I really need to know where everyone is.”
“You know where I am,” Antonia said.
“I do now, yeah.”
She didn’t turn.
“Would you like to talk?”
“No.”
“Antonia, I know walking through that crowd was hard. They’re small-minded, angry people. But we won’t let anyone hurt you.” It was hard to keep the anger from his voice. “Until Ms. Pond has us all checked in, we really need to know everyone’s in the same place, and safe. Could you please come join the others?”
Jokertown, Jokertown, Jokertown Mob!
There aren’t many words that rhyme with “ob”!
Antonia turned away from the street. Her face was another country. He thought she might be about to speak.
A slow wave passed through the protesters outside and below; placards and crude signs parted to reveal a black delivery van. Rusty shouted from the lobby: “Hey, Robin! I just got through! They say their fella’s arriving now.” His volume would have been perfect on a construction site, but was out of place in a four-star hotel.
Robin spread his hands, apologetic. “Those are the bags. I really have to go. Could you please come downstairs with me, and join the others?”
“Fine.” The edge in her voice meant he’d screwed up. He told himself he was okay with that, for now.
Robin had worked with teenagers long enough to wait for her to descend the stairs first. When she was back with the herd, he vaulted the railing, fell to the lobby, and slithered through the crowd to Rusty’s side. “Let’s go.”
Thank God the delivery guy was a nat, or looked like one. Robin didn’t think the protest would get violent—more violent, anyway, since words had a violence all their own—but it helped that they wouldn’t think the delivery guy was bulletproof. Scared and angry people turned to violence when they thought they lacked other options—and to violence more vicious the less hope they thought they had. Fifty years of American public education had barely scratched the comic book myths: people still thought bullets bounced off aces and jokers. There was always a chance those myths would make it easier for some asshole to pull a trigger.
He wished Bubbles had thought up a better way to defuse the situation than reminding the protesters she was invulnerable, but, hey, spilt milk.
Robin signed three times on the delivery guy’s iPad—once they found a stylus, since neither his nor Rusty’s skin conducted normally, though for different reasons—and wheeled a cart piled with a suitcase Jenga tower down a ramp to the street. Someone tossed a tomato that splattered on the hot sidewalk and sizzled.
“What the—”
“Keep walking, Rusty.”
The cart’s left wheel wiggled. A hotel doorman rushed to open the side doors, and they pushed through air-conditioned steam into the lobby. Another tomato flew, and landed by Robin’s feet. People shouted nonsense Robin tried not to hear. The tower of bags teetered overhead.
Together, Robin and Rusty shoved the cart through the door. Jacobson applauded. Bubbles, still arguing with the front desk, glanced over her shoulder and grinned. Marissa, who’d left her new friend with the cross to nap in a chair, tried to high-five Yerodin, but passed through. Wheeling the cart over toward the packed instruments, Robin felt, briefly, like he had everything under control.
Then he heard a high-pitched giggle, glimpsed a grinning, bleeding spectral face, and felt the luggage cart lurch to one side.
Robin and Rusty both grabbed the cart, but one particularly heavy suitcase on top of the stack had already tipped loose and arced through the air, tumbling toward the Jokertown Mob’s piled instruments.
Time did its slow-motion crisis thing.
Robin cursed. He and Rusty lunged for the suitcase at once. Robin’s arms stretched out, caught the case, pulled it clear of the instruments—leaving Rusty in midair, diving to intercept a case that did not exist. Which would have been fine, if his arc wasn’t set to bring several hundred pounds of iron down on top of the band’s brass.
Robin dropped the suitcase and reached for Rusty, thinking, Too late, too late—
He heard a whoop and saw a familiar flash of gold, and Rusty landed hard on the floor, three feet to the left of the instruments. His iron elbows dug deep gouges in the wood.
The milling musicians of the Gunter lobby had hushed in horror as they watched the suitcase fall. They held their breath as Wally dove through the air. The applause after the averted disaster, Jacobson hopping on his wheels, Yerodin cheering, even Ms. Oberhoffer whistling approval, deafened.
Years had passed since Robin had last seen the golden lasso that snared Rusty’s shoulders, but he recognized it at once, as he recognized the voice raised in a triumphant “Yee-haw!” and recognized the jangle of spurs. Because Jerry Jeff Longwood—or, God love him, Kozmic Kowboy—did nothing by half measures. Not even the hearty backslap that almost knocked Robin double.
“Howdy Robin! Buddy! Sorry ’bout the lasso, there, partner, but you looked like you were in a sore spot.”
Jerry Jeff knelt to help Wally free of the lasso, which had snagged on his shoulder gears. The Kozmic Kowboy wore his full regalia: chaps and vest and hat and boots and crossed belts, his big iron on his hip. (Robin hoped it wasn’t loaded.) His mustaches drooped beautifully, and if there were streaks of gray in that dark hair these days, the cowboy hat covered them. Riches and fame and family life seemed to have added nothing to Jerry Jeff but a few smile lines around the corners of the eyes.
“Thanks,” Rusty said, which Robin should have said first. But, in Robin’s defense, he hadn’t yet remembered how words worked.
“How” was a good start. “Jerry Jeff, what are you doing here?”
“You didn’t think you could come to Texas without your old friend Jerry Jeff dropping in, did you? This here competition’s been all over the news, and folk knew your school was coming, and I thought, maybe he’ll be in town. And good thing for you I did! Come on, put ’er there.” Before Robin could pull away, he found his hand enveloped in a calloused handshake that, in a pinch, could double as a hydraulic press. Jerry Jeff wasn’t a big man, but they made men tough in whatever comic book cowboy land he came from.
“Robin,” Rusty said, “you know this fella?”
“Yes.” Robin did his best to smile. “We were on American Hero together.” American Hero, the reality TV series spotlighting “tomorrow’s heroes today!,” was the opportunity of a lifetime for its contestants. Some applied for money, some for fame, some because they wanted to make a difference, and some because they didn’t see much difference between the three. When the second season casting call went out, Robin Ruttiger had been two years into his new life as an ace, using his gifts to rescue cats from the treetops of Akron, Ohio, and Jerry Jeff Longwood was already the darlingest, dandiest star-spangled rider, roper, and cowboy crooner on the rodeo circuit.
And years later, here they were.
After saving the instruments, Jerry Jeff accepted Ms. Oberhoffer’s half whistled, half signed thanks—he might not have been able to sign fast enough to follow <I’m your biggest fan> and the frantic list of his concerts she’d watched on YouTube, but he must have gotten the general notion, since he tipped his hat to her and bowed and said, “That’s right kind of you.” She blushed, and fanned herself.
Jerry Jeff tipped his hat to Ms. Pond, too—they seemed to have met somewhere, which he had to admit made sense, given Bubbles’ fame—and asked if he could borrow Robin to catch up for an hour or two. Robin tried to look utterly occupied, can’t leave the kids, first night in a new city, but Sharon was too busy swooning to object, and Bubbles wouldn’t hear of parting old friends reunited. “The kids have their rooms, and I think after this morning we’ve all earned a rest. Take a few hours off. Wally and I can handle the orientation.”
“Ah,” Robin said. “Great.” He wished he sounded more convinced. “I’ll be back in time for the mixer.”
<We’ll keep an eye on things while you’re gone,> Sharon whistled.
Bubbles and the Band Trip (#ulink_df43a18c-fb54-543e-ba98-61ce1bb8f4f9)
Part 2 (#ulink_df43a18c-fb54-543e-ba98-61ce1bb8f4f9)
A MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN STOPPED Michelle as she reached the elevator. The woman’s hair was a dull gray and she wore a faded green cotton shirtwaist dress and espadrilles.
“Miss Pond,” the woman said. She had a twangy Texas accent. Miz Pawnd. “I’m Priscilla Beecher, the band’s liaison for the competition. I’ll be taking care of y’all. My job is to let y’all know where the children are supposed to be and when. After you get y’all’s rooms, we’ll need to head to the Tobin Center for orientation.”
It was a relief to have someone around who knew the ropes. And Miss Beecher seemed nice and didn’t once look askance at the Mob. “We were just going to drop our things off in the rooms,” Michelle said. “We’ll be right down.”
“I’ll wait here,” Miss Beecher said.
The rooms weren’t what Michelle had expected. There was an odd square-shaped protrusion from the west side of the wall in Michelle’s room and she could hear the elevator going up and down. She checked the other rooms and they were somewhat better and much less noisy, but even a “bad” room at the Gunter was pretty nice.
If it’s haunted, it’s not doing a very good job of feeling haunted, she thought as she reentered her room. The pillows were fluffy, the bed comfortable when she flopped down on it to check how it felt. There weren’t any creepy cobwebs, peeling wallpaper, or unexplained chills. Nope, her room at the Gunter didn’t seemed to be haunted at all. Unless being haunted by nice marble floors in the bathroom was a scary thing.
The rooms were clumped together as asked. Asti and Peter were sharing one room. Adesina, Marissa, and Antonia were in another. Adesina and Michelle had argued before they left about whether or not she would be staying in Michelle’s room or in the room with the other girls.
“Mom!” Adesina had said. Her antennae twitched furiously. “I’ll look stupid if I stay with you! I’m grown-up now! You can’t do this to me!”
Michelle flopped onto her favorite chair, a mid-century modern piece upholstered in a gray-and-yellow atomic print. “You’re still my little girl,” she said. She wasn’t loving the newly adolescent Adesina much just then. “Why do you need to stay in their room anyway?”
Adesina’s antennae went wild. It was disconcerting. “Because it makes me look like you don’t trust me. Okay, Ghost is staying in Ms. Oberhoffer’s room, but she’s just a kid. I’m an adult. I don’t need to be babysat.”
It was some impressive teenage logic. As in not so much.
“Fine,” Michelle said, not wanting to have the whole teenage scene right now. “But you better be on your best behavior. And you’re not an adult yet. You’re not an adult until you can keep your room picked up, do your own laundry, and support me in my old age.”
One of the things Michelle was learning about having a teenager was to pick your battles. And this one had been too much of a pain in the ass to fight.
“You guys have ten minutes to get settled, then we’re meeting downstairs,” Michelle said. She thought she was starting to get the yes-I-am-in-control-of-you-kids voice down. “Don’t be late.”
But her words were met by closing doors. Wally gave her a look of sympathy, then he went into the room he was sharing with Robin. Sharon gave a whistle, signed, <See you in ten,> and shoved her own door open. Ghost floated inside and Sharon let the door swing shut.
Michelle turned. Her door had closed automatically and locked. And her keycard was inside the room.
Great, she thought. Just great.
“I want to thank all the bands participating in the Gunter-Sheraton Charlie Parker High School Jazz Band and Ensemble Competition. Whew! That was a mouthful!” The director of the competition, Dr. Amelia Smith, beamed at them.
Laughter rippled through the small theater. It was a bare-wall, flat-floor theater. Between the bands, the chaperones, the parents, the music teachers, and the judges, they filled up about half of the space. Priscilla had explained that they were in the Carlos Alvarez Theater just for orientation and master classes. The actual performances would take place in the main auditorium.
“Most of you have put videos up on YouTube, so I’m guessing y’all are familiar with each other’s bands. But I’m going to introduce everyone just the same.” She looked down at her notes then said, “From Texas—and third-year attendees—the Plano Originals. Please stand up so we can see you!”
A group of five teenagers stood. They all wore matching outfits except Kimmie. Michelle saw her pop up and sit down quickly. The rest of the band could have been in a Ralph Lauren catalog. They were clean-cut and fairly reeked of money and privilege. There was enthusiastic applause from the entire audience, including the Mob. The Originals waved like conquering heroes, then sat down.
“Folsom Funkalicious Four, from Folsom, Louisiana.” A quartet seated in front of the Mob stood. A gangly girl who had a cloud of umber curls flourished her drumsticks, then did an insanely fast riff on the back of the seat in front of her, then turned around to look at the Mob. Michelle flashed her a smile and the girl got a look on her face like she was about to faint. She whipped back around and sank down in her seat.
“All right, settle down,” said Dr. Smith. “The Modesto Melody Makers from California are here in the front.” Michelle was tickled to see that the Melody Makers were all girls except for a single dark-haired boy.
“Oh. My. God! It’s Mindy-Lou Gutiérrez!” Michelle heard Sean say. “What’s she doing here? I heard she was going to drop out of school and start playing professionally.”
“Nah,” Asti replied. “I heard her family wasn’t going to let her. They’re super-strict.”
“Well, doesn’t really matter. She’s going to have record companies lining up no matter what.”
Mindy-Lou was pretty, very pretty. Michelle assessed her with the eye of a professional model. With her brown hair and brown eyes and six-foot frame she would be a lethal combination on her looks alone. According to Adesina and Yerodin, Mindy-Lou was also all kewl and hep to the jive. Though Adesina was quick to explain that they totes lifted hep from Cab Calloway. And jive was, well, a jazz thing. Michelle looked at them blankly.
“Lubbock High School Jazz Band. Detroit Detonators.”
When the Detonators were introduced, a pretty girl wearing a black Detonators tee with a dramatic silver cross around her neck blew a few bars of “Satin Doll” on her trumpet. Appreciative laughter ran around the room.
Each band stood as their name was called and the audience gave them all warm applause. “The Seattle Wailers—I see what y’all did there—and finally, the Xavier Desmond High School Jazz Band.”
The Mob stood up. There was a smattering of applause, and then someone in the back of the house yelled, “Go back to New York, you freaks.” Michelle saw that the Plano Originals applauded at the catcall, but she did note that Kimmie hunched farther down in her seat, jammed her hands under her armpits, and looked as if she’d rather be anywhere else.
“That’s enough of that,” Dr. Smith said, tartly. She frowned, yanked the bottom of her jacket down, and then glowered at the audience. “The Xavier Desmond High School Jazz Band got here the same as the rest of you did. Blind auditions.
“And while we’re at it, there are some people who are protesting the Xavier Desmond High School’s participation. You are to ignore and not to accost them in any way. We are an inclusive organization with our sole measure of merit being music.”
The Funkalicious Four started clapping, led by their drummer. The Modesto Melody Makers followed suit, and after them, the Lubbock High School Jazz Band. The chaperones for those bands were applauding as well. But there was only a mixed reaction from the rest of the bands. Some sat stone-faced. Others clapped but without enthusiasm. The Plano Originals glared at the Mob.
Adesina said loudly as the applause was waning, “We’re just the Mob. It takes less time to say.”
“Moving on,” Dr. Smith continued. “You all know our judges: Buddy Robins.” A lanky man with a shaved head and light brown skin stood. He wore a blue Henley top and black pants. His eyes were kind and he gave a wave to the kids. Adesina and the other bass players gave excited yelps. The bands applauded him warmly.
“Pipe down,” Dr. Smith said. “Regina Carter, Mary Halvorson, and Wynton Marsalis.” The bands erupted with excited applause. There was whooping and excited clapping. Michelle knew from Adesina that the judges were heroes to the kids and even Michelle had heard of Wynton Marsalis. “There are a few announcements, then we’ll meet up at the mixer at seven and everyone can get acquainted.
“As you all know, we have a special visitor at the mixer this evening—film star Haley Mok, Jade Blossom from season one of American Hero.” The Folsom drummer gave an excited squeak.
“Sheesh, LoriAnne, fangirl much?” asked the boy sitting next to her.
“C’mon, Howard,” LoriAnne replied. She hiccuped and then gave another excited squeak. “This is, uhm, kewl. Is that how you say it?”
“Yes, but you’re not a gamer so you just sound weird,” he replied.
LoriAnne slunk down in her seat.
Dr. Smith continued, “She’s here to promote her new movie, Lord Jim, and one of you was lucky enough to win an evening with her.” She pursed her lips. “Cesar Chao, the judges chose your essay. You’re the winner! Stand up so everyone can give you a hand!”
A short, raven-haired boy stood. His shoulders were hunched and there was a chagrined expression on his face. The rest of his band catcalled and clapped. But the chagrined expression didn’t stay. He looked around at his bandmates and glared. Their applause died and he sat down.
“I can’t believe Jade Blossom is here,” Michelle hissed. “She’s awful.”
“Shhhhh, Mom, please.” Adesina gave Michelle her very best you’re-embarrassing-the-hell-out-of-me look.
“That’s all the announcements I have, ladies and gentlemen,” Dr. Smith said. “You’re free to go. And I’ll see you at the mixer at seven o’clock.”
The Secret Life of Rubberband (#ulink_6a6d8b27-756e-5144-b731-b53fc89ff294)
Part 2 (#ulink_6a6d8b27-756e-5144-b731-b53fc89ff294)
ROBIN FOUND HIMSELF AT a sprawling Tex-Mex place on the San Antonio River Walk, eating corn chips and drinking a margarita Jerry Jeff had ordered for him without asking if he wanted one. Robin told himself he would not have rather faced down the mob again. He would not have rather been stuck in Dr. Hastings’s lab again, being experimented upon. He told himself that as he scooped another tortilla chip in salsa, keeping one hand underneath as he brought the chip to his mouth, to save his khakis from red sauce.
Jerry Jeff ate with a mannered disregard for manners, one elbow on the table, hat cocked back, jacket rhinestones glinting. “After the second album did so well, we figgered Grandpappy’s ranch started to feel a bit small, so we found a nice big place, you know, rolling grass range, this house like you would not believe. And Jim Anne took to it real well, and the kids, they just can’t get enough of the place.” His face got a dreamy look, and—were those tears in the corners of his eyes? “But now you’ve got me going on and on about my business, and you haven’t said word one ’bout yours! My money was always on you, you know, in the pool—there were big things coming your way, Mister Rubberband. Come on, you haven’t even touched your drink!”
Robin clinked margaritas with him, and raised the glass to his lips, but tasted only the salt. Jerry Jeff was on his second already. “I’m working,” he said, “so I can’t drink too much. You know how it is.”
“Aw, like them kids have never seen a body enjoy himself before?”
