Off the Charts Read online

  And waited.

  And waited some more.

  Finally he gave up. Picking up a note card, Mr. Lucas jotted a few words on it.

  “Boomerang not boomerang-y,” he muttered as he wrote.

  Hearing something, he looked up, ready to catch the flying object. But it wasn’t the boomerang. It was his youngest son, Frankie. Frankie was not only the youngest Lucas brother, he was also JONAS’s unofficial mascot.

  “Hey, Frankie,” Mr. Lucas greeted him. He gestured at the table. “Just checking out new merchandise for the next tour. Manager types like myself call it ‘merch.’ I’m on a ‘merch search.’ ”

  He chuckled at his own joke. Frankie just stared at him, unamused.

  Mr. Lucas cleared his throat. “Yeah. Anyway . . .” Holding up a bag of something dry and leathery, he squinted at the label. “‘JONAS Jerky’?” he read aloud. “‘All the rock-and-roll goodness of JONAS in salted and cured beef.’” He glanced at Frankie again. “What do you think?”

  Frankie didn’t hesitate. “I think you need this new T-shirt,” he said, holding up a shirt. A huge picture covered almost all of it. A picture of Frankie. As if it weren’t clear enough, the name FRANKIE was spelled out above the picture in huge letters.

  Mr. Lucas examined it. “Let’s see,” he said. “Nice picture of you. Doesn’t have the name of the band . . . or any members of the band . . . or say anything about the band . . .” He shrugged. “I’m going to have to say no.”

  Frankie scowled. “This isn’t over!” he snapped. He grabbed back the T-shirt and took off. Mr. Lucas sighed as he watched him go.

  CLONK! Just then something bonked him on the head and fell to the floor.

  It was the boomerang. Mr. Lucas glanced at it, rubbed his head, and reached for his note card again.

  “Too boomerang-y,” he muttered as he wrote.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Meanwhile, back at Horace Mantis, it was lunchtime. Nick, Joe, and Stella were sitting together. The brothers were having the cafeteria’s daily special—sloppy joes, with an emphasis on the sloppy.

  “How can you guys eat sloppy joes?” Stella asked as she watched Nick lift the sandwich up to his mouth, the contents oozing precariously. “I custom-made those outfits. Do you realize how much the shirts cost?”

  Joe shrugged, unconcerned. Then he took a bite of his sloppy joe. As his teeth bit down on the front half, the back half slid out of the bun and landed in his lap. Oops.

  Stella grimaced.

  “What?” Joe protested. “I completely missed the shirt!”

  Before Stella could argue that the pants weren’t any cheaper, Kevin walked up and sat down with them. He didn’t seem to notice the mess. Or the annoyed look on Stella’s face. Actually, he looked kind of distracted. And sort of excited. That worried Joe and Nick. A distracted, excited Kevin was rarely good news. At least for anyone besides Kevin.

  “Hey, guys,” Kevin said, sounding as distracted and excited as he looked. “I told Macy she could sing backup on our new song.”

  Stella had just taken a sip of her drink. At Kevin’s words, she spit it back out again. All over Joe’s blazer.

  “What?!” she shrieked. Noticing Joe staring down at his blazer, she shrugged. “I’ll get that out with seltzer.” Then she turned her full attention back to Kevin. “How could you do that?”

  Stella’s reaction surprised Kevin. Okay, so Stella could get a little worked up about things sometimes. Like that mess of tomato sauce and ground something-or-other in Joe’s lap, for instance. Even Kevin could see that that couldn’t be good for a guy’s superstylish pants. But what was there to get so upset over about what he’d just said? Macy was one of Stella’s best friends. She should be happy for her!

  “Why not?” he asked. “We’re going to make her dream come true. And I think it will be cool to have a fan sing on our record.”

  Nick and Joe nodded. “Totally,” one of them said.

  “Way cool,” the other added.

  But Stella couldn’t have told you which Lucas brother had said what. She was far too focused on Kevin—and the huge mistake he was about to make. The absolute chaos and utter destruction he was about to unleash on JONAS. Possibly the world. And she wasn’t being overly dramatic.

  “Listen,” she said urgently. “Macy’s my best friend. But the girl is a terrible singer. Terrible with a capital Whoa.”

  “She told me she was pretty good,” Kevin said, beginning to look worried. “She’s thought about going pro.”

  Nick glanced at Stella. “If she’s that bad, why haven’t you told her?” It was bound to have come up in the past, and Stella usually had no problem being honest.

  “It would crush her,” Stella pointed out, biting her lower lip anxiously. “She’s way sensitive and delicate.”

  As if on cue, Macy herself appeared. She was walking through the cafeteria with another athlete. For once, she didn’t notice that all three members of her favorite band were there—and watching her intently.

  “Oh, yeah, jerk-face?” she taunted the other athlete. “When I see you on the ice, I’m gonna body-slam you into tomorrow and use your lopsided head as a hockey puck!”

  She passed out of view, still trash-talking for all she was worth. Nick nodded appreciatively.

  “Good lungs,” he said. “And if she can carry a tune, Kevin can help her sound awesome.”

  Kevin had to agree with that. He was awesome at helping people sound awesome. “How bad can she be?” he asked.

  Stella stared at him grimly. They weren’t getting it. “One time during a softball game, she was singing ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame,’ and they called animal control because they thought there was an injured manatee on the field.” She paused to let that sink in. “A manatee!” she repeated for emphasis. They lived in oceans. And were silent . . . usually—unless, apparently, they weren’t.

  The three brothers exchanged concerned looks. Joe and Nick were wondering if Kevin had made a terrible mistake. Kevin was wondering how the manatee Stella mentioned had been injured, and if it was all right now.

  One thing was for sure—they had a potential crisis to fix.

  CHAPTER SIX

  After school that day, Kevin waited for Macy in the school’s atrium. Since he had gotten the band into this mess, Joe and Nick had decided that he would be the one to find out just how messy the mess would be. Just then, Kevin spotted Macy hurrying toward him. She was carrying something in a sort of cloth sling. When she got closer, he saw that it was a bowling ball. This was not good. . . .

  “Sorry I’m late,” Macy greeted him breathlessly. “I had bowling prac—”

  “Aargh!” Kevin yowled as the bowling ball slipped out of its carrier—and landed right on his foot.

  “I’m so sorry!” Macy cried. “Did I hurt your foot?”

  “I’m not sure.” Kevin flexed his toes. Or what he suspected might be his toes. “I can’t tell where the pain from before ends and where the new pain begins.”

  “I’m just so nervous,” Macy explained, looking sheepish.

  She remembered what Stella told her to do when she was having a JONAS attack. Deep breaths, Stella always said. So Macy breathed in. Out. In again. Out . . . There, that was better. A little.

  “I can’t believe an actual member of JONAS is going to help me with my singing,” she said when she was calmer. “Thank you so much!”

  “It’s all good,” Kevin said. “Why don’t we get started by singing some simple scales?”

  “Sure, great.” Macy took another deep breath. This time she let it out in the first note of a scale. . . .

  Kevin wasn’t sure what happened. One second he was standing there waiting for Macy to start singing. The next everything had gone black.

  “Kevin,” Macy’s anxious voice floated into the blackness. “Kevin?”

  Slowly, Kevin returned to consciousness. He opened his eyes and saw Macy’s worried face staring down at him.

  “Kevin,” the face sa
id, “are you okay?”

  Kevin realized he was lying on the ground in the atrium. He pushed himself up. “Wh-what happened?” he stammered. “The last thing I heard was an injured manatee.”

  “I don’t know,” Macy said. “I started singing, and you fainted.”

  Kevin slowly climbed to his feet. Whew, that had been really weird. He didn’t usually go around fainting like that. Maybe there’d been something strange in his food. You never really knew with sloppy joes. Or maybe his toes were more sensitive than he knew.

  In any case, there was no time to worry about it now. Not if he wanted to have Macy ready to go in time for that recording session.

  “Why don’t we try again?” he said.

  Macy nodded. Then she took another deep breath and started to sing.

  At least that was what Kevin guessed she was trying to do. Her mouth was open, and sound was coming out. Horrible, horrible sound. Painful, inhuman, mind-numbing, injured-manatee– like sound . . .

  He felt himself start to wobble. His vision started to go cloudy and stars swam before his eyes. Luckily, this time he managed to grab hold of a handy tree in time to steady himself. He could do it. He could survive this. . . .

  Macy’s face squinched up as she went for a high note. Her voice warbled as she hit it and held it. Kevin felt himself shaking harder. The tree he was holding onto was shaking, too. Leaves scattered around him. Flowers wilted. Finally, a stunned seagull thudded to the ground and lay there gasping.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaah!” Macy sang. Then she stopped and looked hopefully over at Kevin. “Well?” she asked.

  Kevin shook his head. How was he going to break this to her? Stella had been right. Macy couldn’t sing. She shouldn’t sing. It wasn’t healthy for him. Or anyone else.

  He watched as the stunned seagull staggered to its feet, flapped its wings, and flew away. Then Kevin cleared his throat.

  “I have to be honest with you,” he told Macy. “Your singing is . . . You sounded like . . .”

  Macy gazed up at him, waiting. She looked so sweet now that the horrible noises had stopped. So trusting and vulnerable . . . with her big, kind eyes . . .

  Kevin sighed. He just couldn’t do it. It would be like kicking a kitten.

  “You sounded beautiful,” he said, his voice almost as high-pitched as Macy’s high note. Inwardly he groaned. He was such a bad liar.

  Macy didn’t seem to notice. “Really?” she cried happily.

  Kevin’s voice got even higher. “Really. Really good.”

  “You’re not just saying that?” Macy asked, a huge smile spreading over her face.

  “No.” By this time, Kevin’s voice was reaching dog-irritating heights. “You sounded great!”

  “Wow!” Macy clasped her hands blissfully. “If an honest, attractive, professional JONAS like you tells me I’m great, then . . . I must be great! I’m giving up all my sports and devoting all my time to singing!”

  Kevin smiled weakly. What had he done?

  “Look out, world!” Macy cried, spreading her arms. “Here comes Macy Misa, singer extraordinaire!” Then she took a deep breath and belted out a note. “Aaaaaaaaah!”

  Kevin heard the atrium’s glass windows crack. “Great!” he screeched in his highest-pitched voice yet. “Really great!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  When Kevin returned home and went up to the loft, he found Nick, Joe, and Stella waiting for him. Stella was still wearing her awful sweater. That didn’t seem quite fair to Kevin. After having his ears assaulted by Macy’s singing, did he really have to have his eyes assaulted, too? And in his own room?

  “So?” Stella asked, looking very curious. “How’d the music lesson go?”

  Kevin did his best to avert his eyes from what he now thought of as The Sweater. “Great,” he squeaked out in his high-pitched “liar” voice. Then he cleared his throat. “Good,” he added, his voice still pretty high. He tried one more time. “It was awful!” This time his voice came out nice and normal. “I wanted to be honest with Macy, but I just couldn’t.”

  “I don’t know what your problem is,” Joe told him. He never had a problem telling people what they needed to hear. “You just have to phrase it right.”

  Kevin frowned. “She might be the worst singer ever singing in the history of awful singers singing. How can that be ‘phrased right’?” He put his curly-haired head in his hands.

  Joe shrugged. “What you just said sounded pretty good.”

  Nick was looking thoughtful—as usual. “If Macy wants to sing professionally, she’s going to have to get used to criticism,” he pointed out in his most logical, Nick-like way. “Even if it means being brutally honest.”

  “You’re right.” Kevin nodded. “Macy has to be told the horrible, soul-shattering truth.” He glanced over at Stella. “Man, I’d hate to be in your shoes.” The bad news, in his opinion, would be easier to take coming from a friend.

  “Oh, no!” Stella retorted. “This isn’t my problem. This is your problem.”

  Nick shook his head. There was more at stake here than feelings. “We can’t risk having her sing in front of Malcolm Meckle,” Nick pointed out. “This is the first time he’s going to hear our new songs.”

  “We want to impress him, not melt his brain,” Joe added.

  Kevin sighed. “I just can’t tell someone the truth if it’s going to hurt their feelings.” He nodded toward Stella. “It’d be like me telling you that’s a really ugly sweater.” Realizing what he’d just done, he gulped. “Which it’s not,” he added quickly. “But if it were ugly, I wouldn’t say it. But it’s not. But if—”

  “Stop talking!” Nick ordered him.

  “I’ve got to tell Macy the truth,” Kevin said, yanking himself back on track.

  “We’ll go with you for support,” Joe offered.

  Nick nodded. “You’re going to need it.”

  Downstairs, unaware of his eldest son’s dilemma, Mr. Lucas was reading some band-related paperwork. He lowered it to find Frankie standing there staring at him.

  “Whoa!” Mr. Lucas jumped, startled. “You’re a sneaky little one, aren’t you?”

  Frankie held up his latest T-shirt design. This time there was a slightly smaller picture of him on it, along with a really, really small picture of his brothers. And this time the word JONAS was just as big as the word FRANKIE.

  “Happy?” Frankie asked his father.

  Mr. Lucas squinted at the shirt. “Is that supposed to be your brothers?” he asked. “You can barely see them.”

  “That’s why it comes with this.” Frankie held up a magnifying glass. Added value was always a big draw.

  Mr. Lucas shook his head. “Try again.”

  Frankie scowled. Then he tucked the shirt and magnifying glass under his arm and stomped out of the room.

  Mr. Lucas picked up his paperwork again, smiling at his youngest son’s antics. “Keeps him busy, anyway,” he murmured as he went back to work.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The next day at school, the first thing Kevin did was go in search of Macy. It was time to break the news. Joe and Nick were with him for backup. They soon spotted Macy at her locker. She was holding a bunch of books . . . and a field-hockey stick.

  Standing a safe distance away, Kevin’s brothers tried to psych him up for the task ahead. “Okay, champ,” Joe said in his peppiest pep-talk voice. “There’s Macy. Go tell her the truth. You can do it.”

  Nick rubbed Kevin’s shoulders like a trainer getting ready to send his star boxer into the ring. “The truth will set us free,” he said—“from her terrible singing.”

  Kevin nodded. He started to bob and weave, feeling loose. He even threw a few air punches.

  “Gonna tell her the truth,” he muttered fiercely. “Gonna set us free.”

  Joe grabbed a sponge and sponged off Kevin’s forehead. “Eye of the tiger,” he said. “Eye of the tiger!”

  Then Nick held up a sports bottle. Kevin opened his mouth, and Nick squirted
water into it. Joe held up a bucket for Kevin to spit into. They were nothing if not prepared.

  Kevin was now totally psyched up. “Let’s do this!” he grunted.

  Before Kevin could change his mind, the three approached Macy. She was busy with the books she was holding and didn’t see them coming.

  “Hey, Macy,” Kevin greeted her.

  She spun around as if stung by a bee. All three brothers had to duck to avoid being struck by her field-hockey stick.

  Kevin took a deep breath. Danger or not, there was no backing down now. No chickening out. “I kind of need to talk to you about your singing a little bit,” he said.

  Hmm. That had come out a little flatter—and less authoritative—than he had anticipated.

  “My singing?” Macy asked, looking suddenly nervous.

  Just then, one of her books slipped out of her grasp and hit the floor. As she bent over to retrieve it, Kevin, Joe, and Nick had to lean way back as the hockey stick whizzed by, barely missing them.

  “Um,” Kevin said, “the thing is . . .”

  This had seemed so easy five minutes ago. Now he could tell he was losing it.

  “Well,” Kevin started again, “your singing. It’s kind of . . . This thing is . . . You know what . . . Here’s the thing . . .”

  Macy looked at the other guys for translation.

  “He loves the beginnings of sentences,” Joe told her helpfully.

  Suddenly Nick got a brainstorm. “What Kevin’s trying to say is, are you still singing backup for us after school?”

  Kevin and Joe turned and stared at their brother. What could have made Nick suddenly go insane? Macy hadn’t even sung a note yet, so you couldn’t blame it on that.

  “Totally!” Macy told Nick happily.

  “Cool.” Nick smiled back at her. “See you there.”

  As Macy skipped off, looking excited, Joe continued to stare at his younger brother. “Nick,” he said, “what happened to setting us free?”

  “Yeah,” Kevin put in. “I was just about to tell her the truth.”