But I can tell immediately that there’s something different about them as they take the stage. Where’s that singer boy I remember them having?

“Hi,” the bassist says softly. “We’re Android Necktie. Well, most of it.”

Most people probably miss it, but I catch the glare he gets from the keyboard girl. Bassist has just violated a sacred rule onstage: Never show your dirty laundry.

They start, and the song is pretty catchy: cool bass-and-keyboard unison riff. But when the keyboardist starts to sing, her voice is shrill and grating.

“Didn’t they have a boy singer?” I ask Maya.

She nods. “Caleb. He quit over the summer, kinda out of the blue. It was quite the scandal. The band name was the bass player’s idea, though, so they’re trying to press on. I saw fliers up for new singer auditions.”

“What happened to Caleb? Does he have a new band?”

“Nah. He’s been basically exiled at this point.”

Well, we’d make a pair. I feel a stir at this, but then remind myself that what I need is an actual, functioning band. And about the last thing I need is to take my already shredded reputation and pair it with another that’s equally tattered. But still . . .

“Wasn’t he good?” I ask.

“He was hot,” Maya replies.

“Hot and good?”

“Hot and hot. And yes, good, too. I saw him down in the Green Room before I came up here.”

“What’s he up to?”

“How would I know? I could never talk to Caleb . . .” Maya blushes at the thought. “But I did Twitter-stalk him and I remember him saying something about how everything had changed, and that he needed to start fresh. That was right around when he left the band. Actually then I think he disappeared offline, too.”

“Hmmm . . .” As Necktie drones on, I search Twitter. Caleb Daniels. Easy enough to find. Interesting. He has only seven friends, and four tweets, starting in August. Classic signs of a fallout and reboot.

The first three tweets are from the same night.

Caleb Daniels @livingwithghosts 14 Aug


Out with the old, in with the bold . . . or maybe just out. / What we had was great but I’m different now.

Caleb Daniels @livingwithghosts 14 Aug


Now I wear you on my sleeve / waking from a silly dream / Where I find you, alive and well / And your smile erases all the hell. . . .

Caleb Daniels @livingwithghosts 14 Aug


. . . I’ve been through without you

The fourth is from last night.

Caleb Daniels @livingwithghosts 16h


Tomorrow the charade begins anew. Can somebody please tell me the point?

Whoa. This is all some major drama. It feels like there’s more going on with him than just a band breakup. What’s between these dark and lyrical lines, Caleb?

Stop it. Caleb is damaged goods! Of course, but . . . so am I. And I know things need to happen, fast, but if he’s talented . . .

And besides . . . I look down at my notebook. My pen is tapping, not writing. Because it’s not happening here. In fact, I’ve totally forgotten Android Necktie is playing. I focus in on them again—

It would be so good, to get back at you good, Trevor warbles weakly—

This is not the band. I just know it. And the only band left to play today is Fluffy Poodle and the #’s of Doom! and I’ve seen them, with or without the foam hashtags they wear around their necks and the pink poodle tails, and while they are certainly something, they’re not what I’m looking for.

I close my notebook. “You said he’s down in the Green Room?” I ask, gathering my things.

“He was,” says Maya. “Why?”

“Gonna go try to find him.”

“You are?” Maya sounds awed. “I can’t come, can I?”

“You have your band,” I say. “Besides, it probably won’t lead to anything.”

“If it does, I will be so completely jealous.”

I half smile. “I will do my best.”

I make my way across the top row of the amphitheater. For a second, I catch the eyes of my former friends. But they keep doing their thing, and I’m off to do mine.

3

Formerly Orchid @catherinefornevr 6m


This gumshoe is off to chase a lead.

The Green Room is kinda excellent. It’s a long rectangle with yes, green walls, except for one, which is a soundproof window looking out on the main auditorium stage. There’s an actual espresso bar in the corner, surrounded by little tables and chairs, and, in the other corner, a long table covered in art supplies beside a copy machine for making old-school flyers and zines. Everywhere in between there are musical instruments on stands, in cases, stacked, hanging from the walls. The room smells like coffee beans and rubber cement.

I love being in here, with all the creative energy of the place. Sometimes it bums me out a little, though, because for as much as I love music, I’m not a musician. There were piano lessons briefly when I was a kid, but when I didn’t seem to “excel at classical instruction,” preferring instead just to bang out chords and sing, Carlson Squared deemed them not vital to my education. They thought my after-school time was better suited to science clubs and math labs.

I’ve always had the voice of a crow, at best, but there were years when I could have gotten somewhere with piano, or tried drums or guitar or something, when my parents could have noticed the Summer waiting to bloom in their Catherine, but those years have passed. People always say you have all the time in the world to do whatever you want, and that may be true for some things, but not if you really want to get to the highest level. And what other level is there?

Don’t get me wrong. I love managing. I love perfecting the potential of something, of teasing out greatness. But sometimes, when I’m in the Green Room watching everyone noodling happily on their instruments, I do think it would have been cool to be a band kid instead of a “suit.” That’s what the musicians sometimes call us (not all of them, just the jerks). It’s a natural rivalry, though, mainly because it’s the role of those of us on the production side to be critical of what the musicians are doing. And yet the very personalities who are adept at creating music are also deeply sensitive, and they get defensive easily. A lot of times, with artists, it’s not what you tell them, it’s how you tell them. And this understanding is maybe what I’m best at.

It’s quiet down here now; everybody’s at the show. Wherever the mysterious Caleb is, I must have missed him.

I’m turning to leave when I hear something muffled, distant. I move toward the far end of the room, and look through the door into Mr. Anderson’s office. He’s the PopArts coordinator, but we call him Coach. He’s not here either.

The sound reverberates again: guitar.

Now I notice a bright orange extension cord leading from the wall out the back doors. I follow it, leaving the Green Room and entering a hallway of practice spaces. Each officially recognized band at Mount Hope gets one.

The extension cord slithers past these, connects to a second one, then takes a left at the next intersection. The guitar is getting louder, but it’s not coming from any of the practice spaces. There’s maybe singing, too.

The cord drops down the back stairwell and out an exit door, holding it a sliver open. I stop at the door. It occurs to me that whoever is out here is seeking precisely the kind of privacy that I’m about to interrupt. I peer out anyway.

Outside is a concrete landing. There is a ramp on one side that leads down to the back parking lot. The other side is bordered by a high cement wall. The smell of Dumpsters is ripe on the warm afternoon air. The guitar amp is right in front of me, aimed toward the wall. Overdriven chords burst from it, but the volume is set pretty low, just loud enough to feel and sing along to, but not loud enough to carry around to the front of the school. A rainbow-colored cord arcs up, seemingly into the sky.

I edge around the door . . .

And find a boy standing on the top of the cement wall. He’s kinda skinny, wearing a navy-blue T-shirt and jeans. He has a cherry-red Les Paul slung over his shoulder, and he’s strumming and singing. His eyes are closed, half hidden by a mop of brown hair, the tendons in his neck straining. I push out a little further, to get a better look.

Caleb Daniels, standing on a wall, playing a rock show all his own.

He sings. It’s a ballad:

You never knew what you left behind


Never cared to come back


No matter how much light shined on you


You took it with you into the black

I find my breath getting short. My heart accelerating. Not just because Caleb’s got a great voice, or because his melody is catchy, no, triumphant, or even because Maya was right about the hotness. But because . . . all together, it’s doing that thing, he’s doing that thing that a song can do. Do you know it? When a song inhabits you, possesses you, and moves you like a marionette to its will?

His voice is high and easy, confident but also with a slight sandpaper edge to it. He’s in a trance as he launches into the next part:

But I still wear you on my sleeve

Oh wow, this melody is huge. This melody is going to cause death-by-swooning.

Always waking from a silly dream


Where I find you, alive and well


And your smile erases all the hell