All the Friends You Need (3/5)

[proteinscollide]

MICHAEL

Halfway through the term, Michael decided that William was crazy, but he was okay.

"Ugh, that's disgusting," William said, clutching his throat. He grabbed the closest bottle of water on the table and took a large swig. "How can you even eat that, let alone enjoy it?"

"That's what you get for trying to steal my lunch," Michael said, laughing. He hadn't planned it, but it turned out Vegemite was also useful for deterring William's food thievery.

"You're my adopted Australian," William said mournfully. "How could you turn on me like that? Plus, you never really delivered on the 'getting me closer to the Aussie swim team' thing."

"I told you that was an absolute impossibility from the start," Michael said. "Also, Christine is right here."

"I am right here," Christine agreed, from her place on William's lap. "And I already know all about it. I've told him she can go on his exception list, like Johnny Depp is on mine." She paused, then added, "But I think we're safe in saying that he will never ever get to meet Stephanie Rice...right, Chizzy?"

"Seriously, Australia is a really big country!"

The school was finally starting to seem much less like an alien planet. Once William had taken him under his wing, people started coming up to him in the hallways, in class, just to say hi. And by joining the musical he didn't just get an after school activity, he got an in-built group of friends.

"It's such a waste, really," Gabe said. He was sitting with his legs up at the side of the stage, one eye on the band setting up below him, one eye on Ashlee and Vicky T chatting near him.

"What's a waste?" Travis asked as he passed by, carrying a large piece of balsa wood.

"That Pete cast Ashlee as the buttoned up missionary when she has those fantastic dancer legs," Gabe said mournfully.

"Are you saying Greta can't pull off Adelaide's part?" Jon said. He'd been sitting cross-legged on the floor of the orchestra pit, tuning his bass, but now he was glaring up at Gabe.

"But Greta isn't A- " Gabe stopped short suddenly. "I mean, no way, she would totally make an awesome Adelaide - ah - I mean she is great..."

Everyone stared at the sight of a speechless Gabe. He was saved from having explain himself further, or dig himself deeper, when William rushed past like the White Rabbit, late and looking harassed.

"Make yourself useful and help me run lines," he said, grabbing Gabe by the arm and pulling him up sharply.

"I don't know what he's worried about," Travis said, as Gabe willingly let himself be dragged away by William. "I saw them do their read-through for Mr. Simpson and the Board last week. William had Sky's part down, he was barely looking at the script."

"Really?" Michael said, before he could help himself. "He was trying to memorise large chunks of dialogue before gym today, muttering under his breath the whole time about how many lines he had to learn, how many songs he had to get down, and the dancing. He sounded really stressed about it."

With rehearsals twice a week, and his friends practising their lines all over the school, some of the lines were getting stuck in his head, whether he wanted them there or not. Now that he thought about it, William hadn't sounded like he was learning Sky's lines. He opened his mouth to say so, then thought better of it.

"Maybe it's just nerves," Brendon suggested.

"Yeah," Travis said. "I wonder what Gabe meant though about - "

"Are we here to rehearse, or to gossip?" Patrick asked, coming up behind him.

"I'm guessing that's my cue to leave," Travis said. "Hi ho hi ho." He whistled as he crossed the stage, even as Pete yelled at him from across the auditorium, "Dude, that's bad luck!"

"Hey, are you coming to the bake sale tomorrow?" Brendon said, as he watched Michael tune his guitar.

"Bake sale?"

"Spencer says we can't afford half the stuff Pete wants to do, and he'd rather not give the Board any more reason to pull the plug on us. So we're gonna do some fundraising to pay for Pete's more crazy ideas," Brendon explained.

"How crazy are his ideas?" Michael said. "And how many lamingtons do we have to sell before we can afford to let him run wild?"

"Lamingtons?" Brendon asked, confused.

"Never mind," Michael said. "Yeah, I'll come, but I don't know how much help I'll be."

His aunt told him that night she wasn't going to conjure up a plate of lamingtons at such late notice, but she relented and made him a big batch of Anzac biscuits early the next morning to take to school. There was a small crowd around one of the tables outside the front of the school already by the time he arrived though.

"Hey Michael, over here," Butcher said cheerfully, waving him over. "Oh, you brought cookies as well."

"They're Anzac biscuits," Michael said.

"They don't look like biscuits," said the guy next to Butcher. "But they do look tasty." He picked one up but just before it reached his lips he stopped and said, "Um, they don't have that Vegemite stuff in them, do they?"

Michael laughed.

"No, really, William warned me about the unexpected evils of Aussie foods!"

"Well, then they're deliciously evil," Michael said. "By the way, you obviously know who I am, but I don't know who you are."

"'m Sisky," the guy said, around a mouthful of biscuit. "Oh these are good. Here, try some." He broke his in half and held it out for Butcher. Butcher smiled and leaned forward to eat it right out of Sisky's hand. Sisky blushed. Michael blinked, and looked away for a second. He thought he saw Mike on the far side of the lawn.

"I'll be back in a sec," he told Butcher and Sisky, weaving around people and stalls in his hurry. "Hey, Mike!"

Mike had his earphones on and was steadfastly ignoring everyone and everything as he trudged toward the entrance of the school. Michael tapped him on the shoulder to get him to stop.

"Hey," Mike said, pulling off his earphones. He looked up at Michael and smiled. "What's up?"

"I've got something for you," Michael said. He tugged on the sleeve of Mike's jersey. "C'mon, this way."

"Something for me," Mike repeated. "What, like that Band of Horses CD you were talking about yesterday?" He took a few steps, following Michael.

"Something edible," Michael told him. He waved at the banner hung up between the trees above their heads. "I brought something for this cake stall thing, you should try one."

Mike looked at the sign, at the stalls. "For the drama - right. Yeah, actually, I gotta run," Mike said, frowning. "I'll catch you later."

"No, wait," Michael said, but Mike had already turned away and was walking furiously fast across the grass, head down.

"Where'd you go?" Butcher said, when Michael came back. "We sold three of your cookies already. Okay, we sold two, and Sisky and I shared another one."

"It was nothing," Michael said. "I just thought - anyway."

There was an awkward pause, then Sisky asked, "So how do you and Butcher know each other?"

"Band," Butcher said. "Michael's pretty awesome on the geetar."

"Yeah, Butcher and Mike and I jam in class," Michael said. "We're getting pretty good, I think."

"Yeah, we should start our own band," Butcher joked. "Sisky plays bass, you'd be in our band, right, Sisky?"

But Sisky was still processing the sentence before. "Do you mean Mike as in Mike Carden?"

"Why does everyone ask me that, in that tone of voice?" Michael said. "Yeah, Mike, you know, about 5'10, brown hair to his shoulders, cool guy - "

"If by cool you mean surly, and looks mean enough to br - "

"Hey, knock it off," Butcher said sharply. "Mike's...Mike. He's a little tough to get to know, that's all."

"Sorry," Sisky said immediately, voice subdued. "It's just - yeah, I'm sure he's - um, I just remembered, I had to ask Jon something." He gave them both a tight grin, a small wave, and edged away.

Michael thought about Sisky's outburst all weekend. Everyone was weird about Mike, he realised; not just Sisky, and William, but the other people in his classes, even in the hall.

Michael had thought it was bad enough when he was the new kid, the way everyone looked through him like he wasn't there, he didn't exist.

"With the older kids out of the home, we could really hear God calling us to the mission field," his mum had explained. "And you know your gran and gramps can't take all three of you on. Ray and Louise are a godsend, and school in Chicago sounds like it will be fun." She must have seen the disbelief in his eyes because she added, gently, "Just this year, I promise, and then we'll talk about whether or not you can leave school for good. But I know you understand how important this is, Mikey, or I wouldn't ask this of you."

He did understand how important it was for his parents, so he said yes. But he wondered a lot during that first term, another day completely alone in a strange school in a new country, if there'd been any good in this plan for him at all. If he was ever going to make any friends at this school.

And then one day the guy next to him in Calc - Mike, he remembered, because it was the same as his, and because Mr. Andersen yelled it at least once a class - had looked down at the tabulature Michael had painstakingly copied onto the back of his maths book, tapped it with a finger and said, "Hey man, you're into them too?"

They'd never talked, in the three weeks they’d been sitting next to each other: Mike and Michael, ostracised by the rest of the class. Mike spent most of it looking out the window, usually.

Michael had said shyly, "Yeah, I love ‘em. My older brother, he played Loveless on his stereo every day after school, and he taught me how to play all the songs. "

"No way, that’s awesome,” Mike had said, a delighted look of surprise on his face. "I bet none of the other losers here even know who they are, let alone the songs."

“So what else d’you listen to?” Michael had asked, and from there it’d been so easy to keep talking to Mike, really easy to keep hanging out with him. They were only a few lockers apart; they had Band and Calculus together; Mike lived two streets away; and there was always another band Mike didn't know, or Michael wanted to share.

It had seemed to Michael that it was them against the world - but now Michael could see that maybe, it was really the world against Mike, and he didn’t have a clue why.

“Hey, wanna come over and study this afternoon?” Mike asked in Band on Monday, as they were packing away their guitars.

“I can’t, there's rehearsal,” Michael said absentmindedly. He looked up just in time to catch the expression on Mike’s face going from angry to blank.

“Fine,” he muttered. “Whatever."

"I'm sorry, Patrick's going nuts and he's making us rehearse three times a week," Michael said. "I could come over later?”

But Mike was already walking away, and it didn't seem like he'd heard Michael at all. He meant to find Mike at lunch, but William and Tom waylaid him after gym to head over to the cafeteria together. It wasn't until he was sitting at the lunch table with the others that it struck Michael.

"Butcher, why does Mike eat lunch on his own in the band room, or out on the bleachers? Why doesn't he eat in here?"

Butcher shrugged and said, “Well, some people, they're a bit - scared of him. You know what other people say.”

“I don’t,” Michael said honestly. People knew he was friends with Mike. They usually didn’t even mention his name within hearing.

“It’s all stupid, really. Something that happened in freshman year, a stupid prank that went wrong. People thought - anyway, he doesn’t make it easy for people to forget what he did.”

“But what did he do?” Michael asked, curious.

Butcher frowned and mumbled, “It’s dumb, I don't want to repeat shit like that - don’t worry about it.” He hunched over and bit into his sandwich. Michael got the message and changed his tack.

“Anyway, I was thinking - if I asked, d’you think he’d come and sit with us for lunch?”

Butcher snorted. “God, no. Don’t even… And don’t let William hear you say stuff like that, he’d go nuts.”

Michael rolled his eyes. So obviously something big went down between Mike and William, but no one was going to talk about it.

Butcher sighed and said, “Look, if it’s bothering you so much, we can head out tomorrow and join him. But sometimes I think he likes it better on his own.”

Michael thought about the way Mike had asked him over to study, carefully casual, like it wasn’t a big deal; except his face had told the truth, that it kinda was. And Michael thought that Butcher might’ve known Mike for longer, but maybe he didn’t know him better.

He headed over to Mike’s after dinner, after he promised Aunt Lou he'd finished his homework. He stood on the front porch, hands in his pockets, and felt foolish. But he took out his phone and called Mike anyway.

“Hey, I’m outside,” Michael said, when Mike finally answered the third time he called. “Can I come in?”

Mike opened the door a few moments later, leaning against the jamb so his body filled the doorway. “Why?” he asked bluntly.

Michael said, “I thought I’d - you were gonna lend me the Metric CD.”

“You could’ve asked me to bring it to school on Monday,” Mike said, frowning, but he moved aside to let Michael in. "Come up, it'll be in my room."

Even without being told Michael could tell which room was Mike’s. He heard Phoenix on the stereo down the corridor, and once inside the room, there was a pile of t-shirts on the floor in a corner, CDs all over his room and a guitar on the bed.

“I was restringing it,” Mike explained, as Michael looked over his Fender Strat. He kneeled on the floor and started shuffling through his piles of CDs.

Michael watched him, barefoot and comfortable, and wondered where this side of Mike went at school, why people couldn't see it. He drifted around the room, past the shelf of music magazines, a handful of well-worn books, a baseball in front of them. There was a photo, framed, standing at the end of a shelf of books. Michael leaned in to take a closer look: two boys, side by side, grinning manically at the camera. They were maybe twelve or thirteen, their arms around each other’s shoulders, one solid and broad, the other slim.

"This is you and William," Michael said out loud, surprised. He turned around. Mike stood there stiffly holding out the CD.

When Michael took the disc, Mike leant over and placed the photo frame face down. "It was a long time ago."

“You used to be friends?” Michael pressed.

Mike laughed bitterly, and said, “The best of friends, even. He wouldn’t be seen dead with me now.”

Michael sat down on the chair by the desk, and waited. He'd learnt from his sisters that sometimes the best way to get people to talk was to keep quiet. Mike hopped on his bed, cross-legged, and attacked the job of restringing his guitar, pliers tightening loops around the pegs. Michael turned the CD over in his hands and checked out the CD booklet idly.

“We’d been best friends since elementary,” Mike’s voice was quiet, his head still bent over the guitar. “During winter break freshman year, we had a week-long prank war, him, me and Tom. William and Tom were grounded after he and Tom tp'd my house. William didn’t care though ‘cos he’d worked out how to sneak out his bedroom window and stay over at Christine’s.”

He plucked the top string and it twanged, a wobbly E. Michael caught himself holding his breath at the sound and exhaled, too loud.

“Then I thought - I didn’t think, I guess - I’d get him back by cutting a notch in the branch of the tree outside his window.” Mike looked up, eyes dark. He kept his eyes on Michael as he said, “Christine climbed up to see William one night, instead of the other way around. The weight of them both on the branch - she hit the ground harder than William. Broke her collarbone and fractured her right leg.”

Mike drew a deep breath. Michael said, hesitantly, “You couldn’t have known - ”

“It was a stupid prank,” Mike said, twisting a peg savagely until the string stood taut against the fret board. “I’m sorry about what I did, and I apologized a hundred times. William still made sure everyone knew about what I’d done. Now everyone looks at me like I’ll break their legs too if they breathe wrong or something.”

Michael didn't know what to do in that moment. In the end, he reached out a hand and flicked Mike in the knee, hard. Mike flinched, and looked at Michael angrily.

"Hey, I don't see that guy," Michael said, "You don't scare me. You're just my friend, Mike Carden."

Mike stared at him for a long while, his eyes a little wild. "Thanks," he said finally, stumbling over his words, “I - that’s - yeah.”

“So show me that lick you were trying to do in class yesterday,” Michael said, changing the topic. Michael sat back and smiled easily as he watched Mike take a deep breath, the tension sliding off his shoulders as he picked up his guitar. Listening to Mike play, he realised that for the first time in months he didn’t feel like he was in a strange world, halfway across the world from home; right here, he couldn’t think of a better place to be.

**

“Jon WHAT?” Patrick said in an icy voice.

Michael raised his head from the guitar to see Spencer looking tense as he repeated, “Jon switched from drama to journalism class. And between band and the school paper he didn’t have time for the musical as well.”

Patrick swore under his breath, walking back and forth on stage. He stared blankly at one of the half-painted sets on stage, his brow wrinkled, then let out an inarticulate scream and pulled back his leg to kick the set.

“Oh no you DON’T,” Travis said, diving out from behind an adjacent set piece, the exterior of the Hot Box nightclub. “Sisky and I did not spend the whole of last week putting this together for you to knock a hole in it. Back off, and go terrorize something more solid.”

From the side of the stage, Sisky pushed an oversized wooden cube and left it nudging Patrick’s foot. Patrick kicked that instead, as he continued to rage, “We’re three weeks out from curtains up and he fucking quits, just like that?” He swiveled around sharply and stalked over to where Spencer was still standing and jabbed a finger in Spencer’s chest.

“You tell Walker that he fucking sucks for leaving me in the lurch like that just because he wants in Ross’ pants,” Patrick hissed. “It’s not even like that’s a hard thing to do.”

Brendon made a noise, and darted a worried glance Spencer’s way. Spencer held his hands in fists at his side, knuckles white, and said tersely, “You’re out of line, Patrick. Jon can choose to do whatever he likes.”

“Whoever he likes,” Patrick taunted.

Spencer spluttered, and said, “That’s rich, coming from Pete’s best friend.”

Michael grimaced. As Patrick turned red and spluttered with rage, Michael waved Sisky over from the side of the stage where he’d been trying to stay out of the way.

"So Butcher was saying you play bass,” he said to Sisky.

“I’m learning, really, I'm not good at all,” Sisky said quietly, darting a nervous look behind him where Patrick and Spencer were going at it furiously. “Also, I'm really sorry about the other day - "

“Don't worry about it," Michael said, "We're cool. But can you come down here for a sec, I want to show you something.”

Sisky hopped into the orchestra pit. Michael handed him the red bass, grabbed a sheaf of music from his bag, and said, “Here, try this.”

It was a simple bass line, two bars repeated for about three pages. Sisky scanned it quickly and said, “Um, like this?” He plucked out the notes, picking up the rhythm easily.

“Right, yeah, like that. Alright, gimme a moment,” Michael said, turning to Brendon on his right, who was hunched over and cross-legged on the piano stool, elbows on his knees and head propped up by his clasped hands, nervously watching Spencer and Patrick on the stage above him as they continued their shouting match on stage about Pete and Ryan’s virtues or lack thereof.

“Brendon, can you play from bar 39? With the changes we talked about yesterday,” Michael asked, pointing to the music on the stand, covered in Brendon’s loopy handwriting.

Brendon tore his eyes away from the stage and said distantly, “What? Um.” But his fingers were already poised in perfect position over the keys.

Michael picked up his guitar and counted them in quietly.

Patrick had given him the score last week. Michael had taken it to band to practise his part, and though Mike had sworn up and down that musicals were absolutely not his thing, he’d taken a shine to part of the overture.

"Man, this is in a weird key though," Mike had said, squinting at the words under the score, mouthing along. Michael smiled to see him do it, but he didn't say anything about it, didn't want Mike to stop.

"Yeah, and it's in a pretty low register," Michael said instead. "You or I could sing along easy. But Patrick was adamant about it - guess he's trying to show off Greta's great range."

So they’d spent the entire lesson tweaking with Patrick’s arrangement, just little changes here and there, but they were changes all the same - and Michael knew that Patrick would pick them out immediately.

“It’s still a dick move,” Patrick growled, then a puzzled look came over his face as he finally registered the music. “Hey, what are you guys playing? That’s not - is that - ”

Patrick stopped yelling at Spencer immediately, dropped into the pit, and hovered over the trio as they played on. He closed his eyes and tipped his head to one side. Michael nodded at Sisky and Brendon to keep going, and Brendon even threw in a few flourishes of his own.

“That sounds good,” Patrick said with some surprise when they finally stopped. “Did you write that?”

“I was just playing with it a little,” Michael said, holding his breath. He had just wanted Patrick to stop yelling, but suddenly it hit him that Patrick might be as precious about his music as he was about his musicians.

But Patrick just shrugged and said, “No, that’s fine, that’s awesome actually. It sounds good. Show me what you did there, bar 50, that sounded - and huh, you’re gonna play bass now?” Patrick asked Sisky.

Behind Patrick’s back, Michael and Brendon both mouthed YES frantically at Sisky until he agreed.

Half an hour later, during a run-through of I’ll Know, Travis kneeled over the edge of the stage and sighed. “Stealing one of my stagehands, now that’s a dick move.”

Patrick ignored him, but Sisky’s fingers stilled as he looked up guiltily.

“I’m just kidding,” Travis said. “We’re almost done with sets. Nate can take over for you, if I can get him out of Gabe’s clutches. Besides, I don’t want Patrick destroying any more of my hard work with his tantrums.”

Patrick flipped him the bird without turning around. Travis laughed, winked at Michael and said, “What was that quote again - blessed are the peacemakers?”

Part 4: Butcher