Chapter Nine

With only two things left to film, we again gathered out in the main area and asked Benson to work the lights for us again. I hopped up on the stage between Cady and Laura and felt my smile immediately grow just to be standing on stage. I've always harbored and adoration for the stage.
"All right. So who's doing what?" Casey asked, calmly walking up the stairs at the side.
Laura put her hands on her hips and reminded, “I already said I'm doing bass."
"Oh, right, I guess we need Pete to help us," Aaron remembered. "I'll be right back," he called over his shoulder, ducking out the back door to retrieve Pete.
"I want to do electric guitar," Randi announced, bounding over to Adrian's side of the stage where two electric guitars rested in stands. She held her hand out to touch one, but suddenly jerked back, as though afraid her fingerprints would ruin something. "I'll let you handle it," she assured Adrian. "I'm afraid I'll break it."
"All right. That leaves you two then. One will sing lead and guitar, the other will do drums," Casey explained, pointing to Cady and me.
Laura spoke up before either of us could, "If my opinion matters any, I think Makenna should be the drummer and Cady should sing lead. That's just what they look like. Makenna's the rocker drummer and Cady's the pretty lead singer."
"Oh, ouch!" I gasped, clasping my hand to my heart. "What are you trying to say?"
"No, I didn't mean it like that," Laura laughed, shaking her head and wrapping her arms around me. "You know what I meant."
"Well I agree," Cady grinned. She sent me a big wink, then stepped up to the microphone and began singing a random song. The microphone was so live that her words echoed through the empty building and Benson had to run crank the sound down.
I, on the other hand, crept to the back of the stage and made myself comfortable on the stool behind the drum set. Aaron had left several different types of sticks in a little bag hanging from one of the drums, so I took the liberty of grabbing a pair and coming up with my own haphazard beat on the set. In my humble opinion, I thought it sounded amazing, though I had no idea what I was doing. I managed to keep a steady beat with the big booming bass, but other than that I was just randomly throwing in whatever other drums or cymbals were there. I was no drummer by any means.
Cady took it upon herself to make up her own lyrics, and then Randi added her own lyrics into her microphone to match Cady's as best she could, and Casey, smiling at the challenge, strummed a few chords on his acoustic.
"Well, it looks like you don't need me back there after all!" Aaron teased, strolling onto the stage just in time to hear me do a terribly loud and obnoxious finish. "You're just rocking away--"
"Oh, shut up," I laughed, shaking my head. "Get back here and help me. I don't know what I'm doing."
He laughed and first grabbed the ringing cymbal to null the sound with his hand, and then held his other hand out for the sticks. I frowned and handed them over like a scolded child and abandoned the stool so he could take my place.
Sally walked through the door just as we were realizing that Adrian couldn't film and perform at the same time, which was fortunate, and we listened to her prattle about the exciting game before telling her exactly what it was we wanted.
"So . . . how exactly are we going to do this?" Randi asked as Adrian picked up the guitar and gently handed it to her. "I mean . . . I guess . . . "
"Here, Cady. Put it on," Casey instructed, handing over his acoustic. She slipped the strap over her head and faced the front of the building.
I jumped in, ordering, "Cady, put your hands behind your back, and Casey, bring your arms around in front of her so you can play." It took a little bit of fumbling around, but soon they twisted so that Casey could play his guitar, though he couldn't exactly see what he was doing.
"You can play without looking? That's amazing!" Laura gasped. I hadn't considered that the boys wouldn't be able to see what they were doing, but they didn't really have to play the song anyways; they just had to make it look like they were playing the song.
Adrian and Pete managed to copy Casey well enough, but when it came time for Aaron and me to get situated, we realized a whole new dilemma. He needed to be sitting to play, but I had to be sitting in front of him, and he needed to be able to reach all the drums and cymbals, which ruled out bringing a chair in to provide us each with our own seat.
"How are we going to do this?" I wondered, realizing a flaw in my incredible idea.
Aaron let his mouth hang open as he tried to think, "We . . . "
"You're just going to have to sit in his lap," Cady ordered, quickly grabbing the director’s role where I faltered. She walked over to the drum set and pointed, "Go ahead, Aaron. Sit. Now sit in his lap, Kenna."
I sighed and slumped my shoulders and huffed a piece of hair off my forehead. Every time I thought I knew what was going to happen next in the weekend, something strange happened. Of course, there wouldn't be any awkwardness because we were friends now --nothing more, nothing less. Aaron sat and pulled me down onto his lap, and I leaned back against him, laughing as he pulled me back and complained about my bony but. I sat about a foot taller than usual since I was in his lap, but, being a little under a foot shorter than him anyway, it evened out.
"Now can you play all these drums and cymbals?"
"Yeah . . . I think so." He reached his arms around me and attempted to his the drums. He had to look over my shoulder a little bit to see where exactly the drums were, and it took him a couple tries to find the cymbals. "Yes."
"All right, then. Problem solved."
"But I can't hit the bass drum and top hat pedal with her sitting on my legs," he pointed out. I reached my foot forward as he said that and tapped on the bass drum pedal a couple times. "Can you keep that steady, though?"
I nodded, "Yeah, I think so. I don't play the drums, but I play other instruments, so I can do that. I don't think I can do the top hat one, though."
"Well it doesn't really matter. It just has to look like it's matching the music. Can you match the music well enough, you think?" Casey asked, standing in front of the drum set.
Aaron shrugged, "Well enough, I think. I won't be able to do it perfectly just off the bat, but I'll be able to match it pretty well."
"Awesome. That'll do."
"Okay, then let's run through it twice," Adrian suggested, glancing over at Sally who had made herself comfortable sitting in the front row to watch us all. "Let's run through it without the lights or filming or anything first and see how it goes."
Casey agreed, "Yeah, and then if we feel comfortable, we'll go ahead and do it with the lights and we'll be done!"
"Good deal. You ready, Sally?"
Sally gave us a thumbs up and hollered, "I'm good to go. Start when you're ready."
Cady signaled to Benson to start the music and those of us on stage quickly got into position, girls with their arms behind their backs, boys with their arms wrapped around to play their instruments.
I could feel Aaron's warm breath on the back of my neck as he laughed, "So this is a new way to play the drums."
"For me too," I returned.
Sally started the music and we took off, each duo immediately concerning themselves with matching the music as well as they could. I quickly discovered that the only way to keep my hands behind my back as Aaron bounced on the stool, putting his whole body into the music as I had seen him do the night before, was to slip my fingers through his belt loops. He laughed into the back of my neck and tapped his foot on the ground, either subconsciously or to give me a beat to follow, and so I easily kept the bass rhythm. His arms flailed around me and he quite easily picked up a drum part that, though not identical to the one issuing from the boombox sitting in a seat on the front row, was pretty darn close.
The only time I broke my concentration on trying to appear as though I were the one playing the drums came at the end of the song when, for the second time, Aaron twirled the drumsticks. I threw my head back and laughed, not quite sure what amused me so much, and only laughed harder when, not noticing the new position of my head, he bobbed his head forward so our heads collided roughly enough to make us both groan but not hard enough to do any lasting damage. Otherwise, though, I focused on the music and bobbed my head in time to the music as Aaron was doing behind me, and even closed my eyes or mouthed along to the song at times.
When we had finished recording the performance, Sally called out, "Everyone stand and bow!" So the guys stepped out from behind the girls and all eight of us took low, sweeping bows before erupting in applause for ourselves.
Laura and Pete dove into a discussion about their instrument, but the rest of us hopped down off the edge of the stage as Sally asked, "Is that a wrap?"
"Not quite," I replied. "We want one last shot with the fountain."
"Well you'd better hurry. People are going to start getting back soon. Time is almost up," she warned. "Do you want me to come film so Adrian can be in the shot?"
"Sure."
We trooped out the front doors or the youth center and crossed the parking lot and small back street, a noisy, chattery bunch, until we reached the fountain situated on the side of Main Street, one of several statues or figurines that, paired with the historical-styled buildings and a couple historical markers --an old jail, an old rebuilt log cabin, an old mural from the early 1900s-- made up the downtown of Historic Grapevine. Several low lights illuminated the statue rising up in the middle of the fountain, a pioneer man, wife, and daughter carved into white concrete.
"Okay. Get up on the edge and dance around," Adrian directed. I hopped up first into the middle of the shot and quickly found myself surrounded by Randi and Aaron. Adrian cued the CD player up, then just us as everyone just let loose, waving arms and legs around in the stupidest, goofiest dance moves we could think of.
We had almost reached the very end of the song when the unthinkable (or, rather, what we should have expected had we put any thought whatsoever into what we were doing) happened.
Apparently an idea came into the mind of Casey and, without pausing to consider consequences, he gave his friend Aaron a sudden shove into the fountain. Now Aaron, being the kind, thoughtful person that he is, decided to drag me in with him, so the two of us went crashing into the fountain that, though it couldn't have been but two feet deep, was about two degrees above freezing point.
Randi teased as I spit the water out of my mouth, "Well, you said you needed a shower . . . AGH!" I grabbed her legs and pulled her in on top of me at the same time that Aaron yanked Casey down. Casey continued the chain, though, by grabbing Laura, who grabbed Pete. That left only Adrian and Cady standing on the wall, splashed but not drenched. Pete and Casey quickly dragged Adrian in, ignoring his demands that they "don't even think about it."
Cady glanced down at us all sitting in the fountain and, with a quick and a muttered, "What the heck," jumped down to splash among us. There followed several minutes of splashing and screaming and laughing, each of us drenched but ignoring our shivers as the cool air snapped at our skin.
Sally finally stepped forward and encouraged, "Okay, guys, let's go before you kids get arrested for messing with public property."
"That was crazy," I giggled, the first to stop splashing around. I stood up first, as well, only to gasp and clamp my arms tightly around my body as the weather suddenly took a Siberian turn.
My cohorts in crime let forth similar cries, but I didn't wait around for them before taking off at a sprint for the youth center, deciding it must be warmer in there without the wind. Everyone else wasn't far behind, though, and we all burst through the front doors together to receive strange, curious stares from the rest of the returning youth group.
"What happened to y'all?" Nessa asked, skipping over to cast suspicious eyes up and down our drenched and goose-bump-ridden bodies.
"I..." I started to explain, but Randi suddenly crashed into my back, sending my tripping forward. I grabbed Cady's arm to keep from falling, but began laughing so hard at myself that I left it up to Laura to offer an explanation.
Unfortunately, inside the building wasn't much warmer after all, and, with nothing useable in the lost and found, we came to the saddening realization that none of us had any warm, dry clothes to change into. Apparently the merchandise table full of band shirts slipped our minds.
In our cold, wet state, we sprinted over to the couches to cuddle down on the cushions while Adrian ran the tape over to be edited in the media room and Laura scurried off in search of blankets. I had just made myself comfortable between Aaron and Cady when the former suddenly gasped, "Crap! My phone and wallet!" He dug into his front and back pockets and tossed both things onto the table with a frown.
I snatched his phone up and, flipping it open, began pushing buttons, but I couldn't find anything wrong with it. The outside was wet, so I wiped it off on the couch, but I suppose the "flip" part and the fact that it was inside his jeans had protected it, and you wouldn't have guessed it had just taken a dip in a fountain.
I pushed a few more buttons before accidentally setting off his ring, and tossed it to him, assuring him, "I don't think there's anything wrong with it. It doesn't look like the water got to it."
"My wallet's soaked, but I guess that'll dry," he sighed, opening his wallet to make sure he hadn't had any important paper scraps in there or anything.
I leaned closer to look over his shoulder and, as he flipped through, demanded, "Hey, let me see your license picture!"
"What? Ugh, no, it's terrible."
"Let me see," I repeated, and he handed his wallet over alongside an eye roll, not putting up much of a fight. As he checked his phone for himself and Randi went to retrieve our phones from Laura's purse where we'd stuck them before filming, I dug through his wallet. His license picture was actually, unfairly enough, a really good picture, though I teased him about it. I continued nosing around, though, and inspected his credit card, library card, student ID, debit card, Blockbuster Rewards card, and so on, not to mention the seven twenties in the money fold.
"Holy crap. Why are you carrying so much money around?" I gasped, pulling the money out and sitting up taller to tuck it into my pocket.
He quickly grabbed his wallet and the money back, poked me in the side, and explained, "I don't usually. But I'm staying at Casey's, remember? And I didn't know what I would need money for this weekend."
Billy, Matt, and Brian wandered over about that time, snickering and whispering about their video, but those of us on the couches sent each other knowing grins, nodding the understanding that ours was obviously so much better. We listened as they bragged on their Napoleon Dynamite spoof for several minutes, but refused to say anything about ours. Soon Curt yelled for all the boys to move the chairs out of the way and bring the couches over anyway, so us girls made our way to the bathroom to fix our appearances as best we could. I frowned at my waterlogged clothing and limp hair and adjusted Adrian's hat on my head, then, at Cady's call, hurried out to join the rest of the youth group rushing to the couches to watch the fruits of our labors.