(In)Security.
Disclaimer: All characters come from the worship-worthy movie School of Rock, and all songs are copyrighted by their respective songwriters. I'd mention them all, except I have no clue as to which songs I'll be using throughout the course of this fic. So basically, no songs are the product of my rapidly waning imagination.
A/N: Rated a HARD PG-13, for – to put it mildly – smooching, and gratuitous usage of the f-word by Freddy. (C'mon, you can't expect a seventeen-year-old Freddy Jones to limit himself to 'shut up').
Lounge Act.
He wasn't quite sure how it happened. Maybe it was the day back in tenth grade when she'd walked into his room and turned up her nose and he'd thought she was a snob. Maybe it was the last time Billy had used the two of them as mannequins and her top had been too low-cut and he'd thought, "Shit." Maybe it was the day he'd sent one of his cymbals flying and it had hit her in the forehead and it had left a cut and he hadn't been sure whether to apologise or laugh his ass off.
Maybe it was the day he'd heard a couple of seniors talking about her in the locker room and he'd forced himself to laugh because – Katie?
Maybe it had happened right now, when she sat down on his bed and pulled out a squashed banana and just said, "Where's the dustbin?" And it had been a long time, he knew, since she'd first been inside his room – God, a good ten years, perhaps – but he hadn't yet met a girl who'd actually been calm enough to treat the mess as normal.
Maybe that was all. That was it.
"Freddy, can we at least pretend we're studying?"
He rifled through his desk drawer. "You really wanna bother?"
"If your mom comes up here and sees us without our Biology books on our laps, she might not let you have any friends over for the next six months."
"Sucks, you know? Seventeen and still able to be grounded."
She smiled, and he liked that. "You'll probably be getting grounded when you're thirty-five."
"Ya think," he said, swinging his chair around and straddling it. "I'm gonna be so out of this shithole next year, my mom's probably never going to see me again."
When he usually said things like that, Summer or Tomika would shake their heads and say, "Don't say that," in hushed voices, as if his words were some kind of curse. Katie shrugged and said, "Knowing her, she'll hunt you down until you're right back here with her."
He supposed it was actually kinda wrong that his friends would talk about his mother like that, but it was the truth, and they all knew it. And he talked about Zack's parents the same way, and he figured it was only fair they'd do it to him in return. But it did – twinge, sometimes. "She'll try."
There was silence for a while, and then he said, "Where are you applying?" because it was a question he really didn't want to hear the answer to.
She shrugged. She did that a lot. "I don't know … East coast universities, I suppose. It'll make my parents happier."
"Where do you want to go?"
She smirked at him. "What is this, a college-counseling session? I've had quite enough of those, thanks."
"No, really, where do you want to go?"
"Oh, I don't know." She rummaged around on his bed, digging under a pile of t-shirts and coming up with a battered-looking textbook. "Biology, Freddy?"
Maybe it happened when she handed him his Biology book and his hand brushed hers and she looked at him and smiled, just slightly. But he could never be sure when it did happen, because he'd known her for so long.
"What're we doing?" he said, in the most bored voice he could manage.
She flipped some pages in her own, much neater book. "Chapter 11 – Mental Health."
He chortled. "This should be fun."
He decided the only thing he'd learnt in the next hour was that he was not anorexic, and that Katie scrunched up her nose on the word "however." Every time. "All right, enough," he said eventually. "Snack time."
She checked her watch. "Actually we ought to be getting to practice. Don't you think?"
"I'm hungry," he said. "So, no, I don't think."
She sighed, packed her books away. There was a depression in the piles of clothes on the bed where she'd sat. "We're playing Rock 'n' Rollover tonight. I think we should all make it to practice."
Even the band was becoming a duty now. His mother thought that he should go for a music scholarship, that he should at least work hard in the band if he refused to pull up his grades. He remembered the days when going to afternoon band practice had been an adventure, a fight against his mother and everything she'd ever tried to impose on him. And now … now she was always calling Dewey, wanting to know how he was doing, always coming home from work to make sure he went to practice and mostly waiting outside to pick him up, as if he wasn't seventeen and fully capable of driving himself. Or, you know, walking.
"I don't care," he said, and surprised himself with the ferocity of it.
She turned to him, quiet, serious as always. "No, I guess you don't. But it matters to the rest of us. We've spent a long time at this, and I don't want it to go to waste because you don't care, Freddy."
And it scared him how nice she sounded, like she meant it, like she wasn't angry, like she felt bad for him but this was how it was.
If his mother had been different, he'd've thought Katie sounded like her.
"I care about the band," he said. "I just don't care about … this." He gestured around his room, at the mess, at the uniforms littered on the floor and the everyday clothes on the bed. At the empty cans of Coke and Mountain Dew, from Zack's last sleepover. He wasn't sure what he meant, so he couldn't be sure if she'd understood.
She smiled at him, and it might have been sad, he couldn't be sure. "You'll get out of this, Freddy. Honestly."
"How do you know that?" he said, and he'd never meant to say that, because it made it seem as if he hadn't been as certain about leaving as he liked to sound.
"Well, mostly because I can't imagine you here five years from now."
He thought about that, about his twenty-two-year-old self in this same room, littered with the same mess, the same memories. The same restrictions. "No. No, I can't see myself here either."
"Then you'll get out." She slung her bag over her shoulder, and he looked up at her. He thought she had pretty hair. "Come on, then. We've got a performance tonight, after all."
And he went with her. Not that he'd ever really considered not going.
He remembered the first time he thought it was wrong. It was during band practice – isn't everything? – and he'd been sitting spinning his drumsticks, waiting for everyone to get into positions and get started, and she'd walked across in front of him and bent down to fiddle with the amps on the floor, and he'd found himself checking out her ass. And he'd wondered, over the next few months, if all drummers spent copious amounts of time staring at their bassist's backside.
He kicked a pebble out of his path; it bounced down the sidewalk and fell into the drain at the side. "I don't understand why Dewey couldn't give us a ride home," he said.
"Oh, he was willing," said Katie. "But I wasn't going to sit in his van with him in that state."
"Drunk off his ass?"
"Pretty much, yeah."
He shrugged his shoulders. If it meant spending time alone with her, it was fine with him, except it didn't; they had Marta and Tomika and Leonard all trailing along beside them. And it was freezing.
Marta spoke up. "There was this guy, after the show, he slipped me his number. I haven't got a clue who he is, though."
"Was he cute?" asked Tomika.
"Kinda. Looked about our age, but he definitely wasn't Horace Green."
"C'mon, Marta, you know only we're Horace Green," said Freddy. "Your guy's probably Carlton High or something. Respectable public school material."
"He's not my guy. Just a guy."
"Blah blah," he answered. "So are you going to call him?"
"I don't even know his name!"
"That's never stopped me," he said with a leer, and was rewarded with three girls rolling their eyes in unison.
"How many numbers did you get this time, Freddy?" said Leonard, stepping into the conversation.
"Eh … " He wriggled his shoulders. "None, actually. I think I should give up drumming – no one can see me there."
"None?" said Marta, laughing. "You're losing it, Freddy Jones."
"I'm not losing it, I'm just too hidden."
"Never used to be hidden before," smirked Tomika. "Ah, this is my stop. See you guys in school, then."
"Bye!" waved Marta and Leonard enthusiastically. Katie smiled, Freddy sulked.
"So … Freddy, how long's it been since your last date, anyway?" said Marta, smiling.
"So, Marta, how long's it been since you gave up on Marco?"
She shut up immediately. Blushed.
They walked in silence for the next few minutes, until Marta said bye and turned away into her apartment building. Leonard was next – his was a few streets off their road, but he told them to go straight on. "It's not like I'm Marta or anything – no one's going to be accosting me," he said, and Freddy felt bad about his crack about Marco.
So it was Freddy and Katie then, crunching along in the snow, snowcaps pulled down around their ears. Her nose was red, he could see it in the dim streetlight. He supposed his was, too.
"Don't you think it went well?" he asked, because she seemed too quiet.
"The show?" she said, turning to look at him.
"Yeah."
"It was great. Better than I expected. Maybe not our best, though."
"You don't seem that happy, then. If it was better than you expected."
She shrugged. "I don't know. I was thinking … I was thinking it might be one of our last, you know?"
He hadn't ever let himself think that. If they were all going to leave for college after this, he had never let himself think that it would be – the end. Of the band. Of them all.
"It's not like we'll stop playing, after high school," he said, and he tried to make it sound as if she was being stupid.
"Of course not," she said, rolling her eyes. "Just … I don't know. Whatever."
"No." He came round in front of her, stopped her from going any further. "I'm serious. I'm not going to give up drumming to go to college, Katie. Zack's not going to throw away his guitar. You aren't going to leave your bass behind. This isn't the end."
She smiled at him, the way she'd smiled at him in his room earlier that day. "I know that, Freddy."
"And we'll all come back," he said, except he wasn't so sure. "We'll still play together, if that's what you mean."
She shook her head. "We'll try, of course. But … things change, Freddy. People change. You've said it yourself – you'll be so out of this shithole next year. Why would you want to come back?"
He didn't know what he was saying. "I'd come back for you."
And she looked at him, and there was just the light from the streetlamp and snowflakes on her cap, on the tip of her nose, and she was really very close, and he swallowed and amended, "For all of you. For the band."
She smiled, again. "I'd come back for all of you as well."
He thought they'd made some kind of pact there, in the middle of a deserted street in the best neighbourhood of Long Island, with the snow floating down around them. But he wasn't sure, because she poked him in the ribs then and said she'd only come see him if he picked up his drumming, and they baited each other all the way to her house.