Rock ‘n’ Roll

High school to Noah Riley was torture, pure torture. He would rather have 50 root canals and 10 pulled teeth, than to his mandatory 8 hours a day of Morrison High School, with the jocks, stuck-up girls, and everyone else who wasn’t part of those two categories. At school, Noah had an image he had to keep. This image was that when people saw him they were scared. Not because of the way he looked, he was perfectly attractable, but because he looks angry all the time, and every time he looks at someone, they think they’ll melt, The Wicked Witch in “The Wizard of Oz” kind of melt, all green and slimy. He dresses kind of scary too, in the opinion of Morrison High. He wears a black leather jacket 24/7, jeans, and a black or white tee underneath with black Pumas or black boots. He stamps down the hall in his Fonzie attire, but Morrison does not recognize Fonzie’s iconic style to Noah or anyone else’s, they laugh and mock. That is how Noah got his nickname, his nickname because of his style and demeanor, his nickname of Mr. Misunderstood.

At Morrison High, Noah does not apply himself and do as well as his family of geniuses, his mom the lawyer/psychologist and his dad the brilliant surgeon, would have hoped. It’s no that he can’t it’s that he can’t picture himself in college even though he’s easily the smartest guy in school except no one knows it and that’s how he likes it.

The news of the day at Morrison High, on an ordinary autumn day, is the party the Seniors are throwing in the school parking lot on Friday night. Now I know what you are thinking, don’t people from Colorado usually party in canyons and New Yorkers party in basements and why would Noah, Mr. Misunderstood, go to this party? Well, to set one common misbelief straight, Coloradoans party the same places New Yorkers do, even basements, and on occasion their parties are better. Noah’s only going to this party, because his band, Innocent Reality, is playing and he might get the chance to drink some alcohol, on the off chance some jock brings a keg. This is also a pre-Senior prank, the Seniors supposedly have something way better planned a week before they graduate. And as the Seniors see it there will only be 2 predicaments stifling their plan: 1) the Mexican cleaning crew and 2) the gate to the parking lot is locked.

This is not a major problem since the Seniors plan to have one jock, preferably the biggest, jump over the fence and with a bobby pin, pick the lock. The jocks think the school will be empty and for all Noah knows they think “magic cleaning fairies” visit the school each night, mop the floors and leave all but the locker rooms smelling like Lemon Pledge each morning. The jocks’ worlds consist of three things: 1) sports, 2) girls, 3) other jocks, in that order.

The word of the prank spread like a torch of wildfire being passed from Senior to Senior, occasionally being heard by an underclassman. No doubt, they will be there too. Hey, Noah might even meet someone decent but the possibility of that happening in the Morrison High School parking lot is doubtful. Noah arrived at the school at 6 P.M. with his band to set up but the “geniuses” never thought of how their entertainment would get in. After all this party, has a low budget, getting a DJ would cost too much and just hooking up a stereo and blasting CDs is very elementary school.

Noah and his band are stranded in front of the parking lot with their equipment in Dave, the guitar player’s van, freezing in the 40 ° cold that only Colorado has to offer. They should have known to dress warmer, they have only lived in Morrison for 17 years.

“Dude, maybe we can jump the fence while we carry our stuff,” said Steve the drummer, spitting on the ground after his suggestion, his spit freezing after it touched the smooth cool surface of the gray cement.

“That’ll work out great, Steve, but there’s one problem, how do we manage to climb a fence while carrying a speaker,” said Noah, his short temper beginning to erupt after a minor setback.

“Yeah, I didn’t think of that,” replied Steve, who didn’t think much anyway and whose sole purpose in life was to “be a rocker and worship Jimmi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin ‘till the day he died”, not much of a life, if you asked Noah or any other person.

“Hey”, said Dave, “why don’t we play on the roof of the school, we could hoist up our equipment, the roof could be our stage, it’d be cool”, as he said this Noah swore he saw the light bulb above Dave’s head get brighter and brighter with each thought. Noah, who turned down other’s ideas routinely actually, he hated to admit it, liked, no, loved, Dave’s idea and the more he thought about it the better it sounded.

Hoisting the stuff up there proved to be more difficult than it sounded. First, Noah had to jump over the fence, nearly catching his leather jacket on the chain links and ripping his jeans, and pick the lock with a safety pin. After that, he opened the fence slowly, and Dave and his van through. They parked on the side of the school, now they had to find an opened door, Noah doubted the “magic cleaning fairies”, would lock themselves in. To his luck, there was a sleeping Mexican janitor next to the side door, sleeping with a bottle of Tequila next to him, which held open the side door. Noah slipped in and slowly mounted the stairs silently and blended in with the dark. He climbed the stairs as high as they went, no really knowing where he was going because he never actually needed the roof until the light bulb for that stroke of genius went off in Dave’s head. He found a door at the top of the staircases and only used his lighter to guide him, so he knew it was a door. He opened it and to his shock was standing on the roof of the school, the fresh cold air filling his lungs, with a liquid sweeter and colder than a LiquidIce mint, and awakening him. For an instant, Noah was tempted to spread out his arms and yell, “I’m King of the World,” Leonardo DeCaprio style but thought the better of it. Without a crane, it took a while for the band to hoist up their stuff, but they finally did.

They finished hoisting at about 7 P.M. and left the parking lot the way they found it, deserted except for the Mexican doorstopper and the gate locked. Noah’s band, Innocent Reality, could have left the gate open and saved the jocks the trouble of opening it, but they preferred the element of surprise. Eight, came and past, with the gates of high school hell being open and its residents pouring in with food, kegs, and GlowSticks to illuminate the darkness of a Colorado night. At 8:30 P.M., Innocent Reality arrived, ready to debut themselves and their immense talent to an otherwise dead place, and rock their worlds like snow globes. Noah and his band were of course psyched and pumped with energy, but on the inside, Noah was not the same guy he was when he was with his band. He was scared, nervous, and anxious all at once. He has been nervous at shows before, but not like this. Maybe it’s because he wanted to see how the whole Morrison High student population would react, not that Noah cared what they thought of him or his music.

Innocent Reality got on stage, but not before the cleaning crew finished their shift at 9 P.M. and to their surprise found the parking lot filled with screaming teenagers, food, and alcohol. Some began shouting in Spanish, Noah distinctly heard “¡Dios Mio!” quite a few times and “¡Vamos!” and glanced over to see a Mexican man and woman attempting to shoo away the teenagers like bullfighters who wave red capes at bulls. Noah could not help but chuckle at this scene. After the teenagers were sighted, the cleaning crew left with visions of teenagers dancing in their heads. Noah mounted the stage, or should I say roof, and looked down to see a crowd below him, cheering and screaming for him, for his band. It was incredible, that feeling of want that came over Noah, it only dissipated the woozy feeling he felt when he looked down, not his nerves, which seemed inches from the stage ready to jump.

Noah had to focus on something, usually when he and his band played at clubs, he would focus on the glowing Budweiser sign over the bar, but there was no such sign. He looked down to the crowd and saw his new Budweiser sign, his focal point. It was this girl dressed in pink and black, (Noah had no idea how he was able to see what she was wearing) with a smile lighting up her pale face and her eyes sparkling with excitement. Should he smile back? Girls he usually liked, when he attempted to get there attention, would see him smiling and instantly turn to their friend or cell phone and spread the news that Mr. Misunderstood was smiling at them. That to Noah was the worse felling in the world, rejection, with a capital R, the type that will leave you forever bitter and mad at the world with no remedy to ease the sting. Looking at this unknown angel was his anecdote; just her smile alone dissolved the rejection in his heart.

Noah saw her wave; he gave a slight wave back and was awoken from this dream with the hard shake of Dave’s guitar and Steve’s drumming. His vocals and guitars were stringing through each song with more life than ever before. Noah’s newfound feeling could best be described as electricity. The crowd loved Innocent Reality, their last song leaving them begging for more and dancing in place.

After their show, Noah ran down the stairs, his heart more excited than his feet to see the girl who smiled at him and changed his perception of the world forever. He looked for her; she was nowhere to be seen. Disappointment crept inside him very slowly. He sat down on a curb, his head in his hands, his heart afraid to look up again. He would never see this girl again, she probably didn’t even wave or smile at him, it was all a dream, and his nightmare was coming back. He had to get out of the parking lot, he couldn’t be here another minute, his pride was injured, his heart crushed. He walked out to the van and sat on the hood, seeing his fellow band mates drinking and partying from a distance knowing he couldn’t do that right now. He just looked ahead at the energy and excitement that flooded the parking lot. He heard a rock being thrown on the side of the van. He looked and saw the same girl from the concert, throwing rocks at the van, working out her frustration.

“Why are you throwing rocks at the van? Do you want to make a dent in it?” asked Noah.

“That was part of it, but I saw this really great guy tonight and tried to get his attention, but he didn’t know I existed, he didn’t even turn around when I was tapping him on the shoulder,” she replied dismally.

“What he look like?” presses Noah knowing exactly whom she was talking about all along.

“He was wearing a leather jacket and had stunning eyes. He was on the roof singing his heart out,” she tuned around and looked more closely at him, her eyes taking in all of him and narrowing, “come to think of it was you.”