Lemonade Mouth

  LEMONADE MOUTH

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Thank’s note

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  About The Author

  Also by Mark Peter Hughes

  Copyright

  I’d like to thank my editor, Stephanie Lane, for her keen eye and sound advice, and my agent, Andy McNicol. Thanks also to all the folks at Random House who helped put this book together, especially Shameiza Ally; Anjulee Alvares; Lesley Krauss; Barbara Perris and her eagle-eyed cohorts; Tamar Schwartz; Trish Parcell Watts; and the fantastic Random House sales team. Special thanks to the following for their assistance and support: the Commando Writers (Michael A. Di Battista, Scott Fitts, Geoffrey H. Goodwin, Dalia Rabinovich and John Smith—go commando!), Suzanne Winnell Hughes, Peter Hughes, Susan Green, Hamilton Hackney, Ayesha Khanna, Raymonda Khoury, Shauna Leggat, Lauren McGovern, Kevin McGurn, Claudia Sorsby, Guru Swamy and Margarita Winnell. This book was made possible, in part, by a Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators Work-in-Progress Grant.

  Last and most, I’d like to thank my wife, Karen. Muchos besos, sandía de amor.

  For Evan, Lucía and Zoe—

  mi tiburón, mi mariposa y mi frijol

  LEMONADE MOUTH

  PROLOGUE

  Dear Reader,

  As anyone can tell you, the facts surrounding the rise and fall of the late great Lemonade Mouth are steeped in legend and shrouded in mystery.

  But I was there. I know the real scoop, the honest dish.

  As a member of that historic Opequonsett High School freshman class and a close friend to the central players of the phenomenon, I have insights that future biographers will no doubt lack. Not that getting the full story out of each of those involved was easy. Stella, for example, had so much to say during my interviews that I ended up having to treat her to lunch three separate times—which cost a bundle. Olivia, on the other hand, left me only a small stack of photocopied letters with such faint handwriting that I had to hold them up to the light just to read them. Getting Charlie’s part of the story should have been easy, since he was supposed to type it up for Mr. Levesque over the summer in order to avoid a failing grade in English Comp, but he ended up taking so long hunting and pecking at the keyboard that for a while it seemed like I’d see old age and death before I’d ever see his report.

  But fear not, Dear Reader. My patience and efforts were well rewarded. And I’m pleased to be the only reporter with exclusive permission to tell the whole story, even the prickly, embarrassing parts.

  At least the stuff they admitted to.

  So it’s fair to say that the document you hold in your hands is the definitive anthology of Lemonade Mouth, presenting a unique opportunity to peer inside the heads of each of the Fab Five. In keeping with the best practices of journalism, I have endeavored to report the facts in as truthful and unbiased a manner as possible.

  Except when I didn’t have all the facts.

  In that case I just had to guess.

  Naomi Fishmeier

  Scene Queen & Official Biographer

  of Lemonade Mouth

  CHAPTER 1

  Misbehavior is a key attribute of true genius.

  —Phineas Fletcher

  WEN:

  The Yungas Would Have to Wait

  It all started when Sydney climbed out of the truck. Somehow, even though I didn’t know it yet, what happened that autumn morning is what set everything else in motion. The second the passenger door banged shut, I turned to my dad.

  “So tell me, is she living with us now or what?”

  My dad kept us idling at the curb while she promenaded all the way to the bus stop, finally turning to blow him a kiss. “No, not at all,” he said, snapping out of his trance. “She’s just going through some roommate problems. It’s not permanent.”

  Until August or so, my little brother George and I had hardly ever run into Sydney, my dad’s girlfriend, even though they’d been seeing each other since the spring. Unfortunately, over the last month we’d started seeing a lot more of her.

  Which, for me, was a real problem.

  As we pulled away from the curb I snuck one last look in her direction. I tried to will myself not to, but I couldn’t help it. Today, an early October morning as warm and humid as summer, she was wearing a revealing halter top and a pair of tight cutoff jeans that accentuated her butt perfectly. My God.

  Dad was obviously going through some kind of midlife crisis.

  At twenty-six, Sydney was sixteen years younger than he was. I sometimes caught myself fantasizing about her shiny black hair or her cartoon breasts. I felt terrible about it, horrible. After all, this was my dad’s girlfriend.

  I hated myself.

  Still, my eyes couldn’t help following her across the window until, mercifully, she slipped out of sight.

  “You could’ve fooled me. She spends more time at our place than I do.” I immediately regretted saying it. My dad wasn’t about to let a comment like that go, and I had other worries at that moment. Not only had we wasted time dropping off Sydney, but before that we’d taken too long getting George to school, and before that we’d left our house late because Sydney took forever in the bathroom. So now I’d already missed homeroom and would probably arrive late for my social studies presentation. I was first on today’s list.

  “That’s not true and you know it,” Dad said, racing us through a yellow light.

  I didn’t answer. When he glanced over at me, I couldn’t help thinking about how everybody was always saying how much we looked alike. And it was true that we had similar faces, both of us blond with glasses. My hair fell almost to my eyes, though, while his was cropped short and starting to go gray over the ears. Our glasses were very different too. I wore black rectangular frames while he’d recently bought round wire-rims like John Lennon. Sydney’s idea.

  “Come on,” he said. “Out with it.”

  I fiddled with the latch on my trumpet case. That afternoon I had freshman tryouts for Marching Band. “Well, for starters,” I said, “she’s a mooch. Practically every day I come home and she’s loafing on our sofa watching our TV. Either that or she’s helping herself to our food while she’s parked at our kitchen table doing her little drawings.” Sydney was studying part-time to be a graphic artist.

  “She pulls her weight,” he said, as if that had anything to do with it. “She cooks sometimes, and picks up around the house. Unlike somebody else I could name.”

  Right. She was like having our own nanny, the Sex Nanny Sent By Satan.

  We shot past the line of orange cones in front of the school’s new, state-of-the-art gymnasium, a construction project that was supposed to be finished over the summer but was still not quite complete because of money problems. Finally, my dad’s truck screeched to a halt at the front entrance. That’s when he turned to me and gave his I’m-opening-up-to-you-so-cut-me-some-slack look.

  “Look, I know you’re not sold on Sydney yet, but I happen to think she’s terrific. She’s smart and caring and a lot of fun. All I’m asking is that you hold your judgment, okay? Think about it? For your old man?”

  I grabbed my backpack, my trumpet and the big manila envelope that held my presentation. I shoved the door open and hopped out of the truck.

  “Okay?”

  “Gotta go, Dad. I’m late.”

  I slammed the door and dashed up the steps. Once inside the school building, I knew from the empty hallway that the firs
t-period bell had already rung.

  I sprinted down the long central corridor. Up ahead I happened to pass Jonathan Meuse as he jogged toward one of the chemistry labs. A popular junior with a lot of friends, Jonathan was tall, redheaded and about as clean-cut as they came. He looked like a soap commercial with biceps. Most significantly, he was the student leader of the Marching Band trumpet section and would be at the tryouts that after noon. I often ran into him in the hallways but he never acknowledged my existence because I was only a freshman. Like now. I’m positive he saw me wave but he ignored me.

  I kept running.

  Unfortunately, seeing Jonathan brought my mind back to this afternoon’s tryouts again, which sent another jolt through my stomach. There was a lot on the line today. The way I saw it, getting into the high school Marching Band would be vital for my social life. I know, I know. You’re probably thinking I’m nuts, that Marching Band kids are usually the opposite of popular. But I’d been studying it, and it was clear to me that Marching Band nerddom wasn’t a firm rule. Just look at Jonathan—he’d figured out how to use it as a springboard to cool. And so would I.

  Thing was, after two long years of living in middle school Nobodyland, I’d spent the beginning of ninth grade secretly observing the most popular kids—not just Jonathan, but also Seth Levine, Scott Pickett and guys like that—to see if I could learn anything that might improve my own social status. I figured if I emulated the coolest, after a while everybody would assume I was cool too. Like, right then I was wearing the same kind of Polo shirt and khaki pants I’d once seen on Seth Levine. When I’d waved to Jonathan, I did it in the same way I’d seen Scott Pickett wave to his friends—one motion, like a windshield wiper that suddenly stops midway. Yeah, I know this probably sounds stupid, but that was my strategy. If it looks like a duck and quacks likes a duck, it’s a duck, right? It was all about attitude. Anyway, one other thing I’d noticed in my research was that pretty much all the popular guys were in at least one club or another. Usually it was sports, but not always.

  Of course, sports were out of the question for me since I was about as coordinated as a jellyfish.

  Which left me with Marching Band.

  It might not be the football team, but it was all I had.

  Finally I reached my classroom. By the time I burst through the door I was out of breath. Mr. Prichard, a stocky rooster of a guy, glanced significantly at the clock. “Well, well, well, Wendel. We were beginning to wonder if you were going to make it.”

  “Sorry I’m late,” I panted, stepping past him and to my seat.

  “We’re just pleased that you deigned to grace us with your presence at all this morning.”

  I set my bag down.

  “You do recall that today you’re presenting, correct?”

  “Uh, yes. I’m ready to do it now, if you are.” I tried to grin confidently but was so frazzled that I think all I managed to communicate was panic.

  “That would be nice.”

  Drew Baker and Jesse Rathbone, a couple of jokers I knew from middle school, leered at me.

  I grabbed the envelope and headed to the front of the room. On the way I took a deep breath and told myself to calm down. I was prepared for this. I knew everything about Bolivia. I’d memorized a speech about the Altiplano and the Yungas, I’d printed two five-color maps showing rainfall patterns and population density, and I’d even made handouts demonstrating the catastrophic effect the drought caused by El Niño in 1997 and 1998 had on the potato harvest. This would be a cinch.

  But as I pulled the stack of papers from the envelope, my heart nearly stopped.

  The top sheet was not one of my handouts. It was a charcoal sketch of a solemn-faced woman lying on a sofa. A completely naked, solemn-faced woman.

  “Wendel?” asked Mr. Prichard. “Is there something wrong?”

  I flipped to the next sheet. The same naked woman leaning forward with a pencil in her hand. In the one after that she sat on the floor. I was holding an entire stack of nude drawings of some lady.

  Olivia Whitehead, a large, silent girl with shapeless hair that hung in a flat sheet around her head and often looked like it could use a good wash, gaped at me from the front row, her mouth hanging slightly open. I could hear her breathing.

  I felt myself starting to sweat. How had this happened? Then I remembered Sydney asking my dad for an envelope to carry her most recent sketches to class. It was a drawing seminar called The Human Form. My dad had given her an identical envelope from the same stack as mine. Sitting next to me in the truck, she could easily have grabbed my envelope by mistake and left me hers.

  That’s when I looked more closely at the woman’s face. It wasn’t perfect, but she had the high, wide cheekbones, the tumble of unruly hair and far-apart eyes like a bird’s. A wave of horror washed over me. It was Sydney. She must have sat in front of a mirror and used herself as a model.

  I couldn’t help staring down at Sydney’s body, her big round breasts and secret hair. I flipped back and forth through the pictures. I suddenly realized that (a) there was no way I would be able to do my presentation, and (b) I was standing in front of my entire social studies class holding a stack of naked self-portraits of my father’s girlfriend.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. When I looked up again at the class I realized that everybody was staring at me like I was some kind of freak. Paul Cramer’s eyes were wide. Elaine Wettenberg’s lip curled in obvious disgust. I didn’t understand at first. Surely they couldn’t see the pictures.

  But then somebody giggled.

  And suddenly I knew.

  I looked down and my worst suspicions were confirmed. There it was. A big, obvious triangle at the crotch of my jeans. A sideways teepee.

  I don’t remember swearing, but apparently I did. All I remember doing is dropping the stack of drawings to cover myself and then shooting out of the room. The Altiplano and the Yungas would have to wait for another day.

  I staggered down the corridor. Even several doors away, the laughter from my classroom still echoed off the walls. My life was over. Even then I knew that this wasn’t the kind of incident that got forgotten. Everyone had seen me standing there speechless at the front of the class, oblivious about Happy Roger saluting like a little soldier at full attention. Word would spread quickly. I was going to have to hear about this my whole freshman year, and then for the rest of high school. Decades from now, the story would still come up at reunions, with people buckling over with laughter at the memory.

  Even then I understood that if I’d ever really had any chance of coolness, I could now kiss it goodbye.

  STELLA:

  Hail to You, My Evil Soul-Sista!

  Once upon a time there were five little darlings named Charlie, Olivia, Wen, Mo and Stella, who sprang from the earth in a flash of light. For a while they stood around, ignoring each other and wondering who had put them together and why. All of a sudden a Kindly Old Fairy Godlady appeared before them and waved her wand saying, quote, “Thou shalt sprout Mouths of Lemonade!” And so they did, and, fortunately, they soon discovered that it was neither as sticky nor as uncomfortable as it had at first sounded. “Thank you, Kindly Old Fairy Godlady,” they said, thanking her.

  What can I tell you about Sista Stella that you haven’t by now heard from those who already think they know everything?

  Plenty.

  I wear boxers. I like fruitcake. I’ve been a vegetarian since eighth grade. The summer after that, my mother got a new job heading a start-up development project at a lab in Rhode Island (something to do with saving the planet by making cheap biodegradable plastic out of plants), so a week before high school began, my family (my mom, my sister, Clea, and me, plus Leonard and the step-monkeys) had to pack our bags and load a U-Haul. If we hadn’t left Tempe, Arizona, would there still have been Lemonade Mouth? Who’s to say?

  If you want the story of my part in everything—and you want it to make sense—then I can’t jump right into Lemonade Mouth. I’ll
need to begin a little earlier, explain a few things about my screwed-up life. There are a lot of misconceptions out there.

  Let’s start with my hair. As a lot of people know, since I was a little girl I’d always kept it all the way down to my waist. So why, two weeks into my freshman year, did I, in a fit of frustrated rage, hack it all off, leaving little more than short tufts?

  Allow me to carry you back in time to that fateful Monday in late September when Stella, our incorrigible heroine, locked herself in the bathroom and went to work with a pair of scissors.

  What on earth could have possessed her? What was going on in her head? At the time there were a number of theories.

  My own mother, for instance, days later (after she’d gotten over her initial shock at seeing her formerly long-haired offspring in this new and strange state), would give a patronizing roll of her eyes and explain to anybody who asked that “Stella’s still working through anger issues about moving.” Which of course I was. It wasn’t my idea to transplant my already sorry excuse for a life across the country to some nothing little town I’d never heard of. And did anybody act like I even mattered in the decision? Neither my mother nor Leonard had even asked for my thoughts before announcing that the move to Rhode Island was a done deal. Nobody ever asked my opinion. And after that, everything seemed to happen in a flash. Before I could even say quahog, I found myself in New England at a cliquey new school that I hated, where I didn’t know anyone and nobody talked to me.

  “Thank you, O Mother Dear,” gushes our smiling young protagonist, “for uprooting me from everything I’d ever known and loved!”

  Of course I was angry. Who wouldn’t have been?

  Yes, the move may have been part of the reason why I ended up rifling through the kitchen drawers for a pair of scissors on that clear September evening. But it may surprise some of your readers to hear that it was not ultimately what pushed me over the edge.

  My sister, Clea, who had recently started her freshman year at nearby Brown University but still often spent evenings stretched out on the family sofa in a self-absorbed fog, had a different theory. She thought it was all about a missed appointment.