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School talent shows had never been their thing. Of course, it was Jade’s idea to enter: most of the activities the four of them got dragged into that laid right outside their comfort zone were.
They had been sitting around a tree when she proposed it: Rose sat elegantly in the shade under the large tree, legs crossed neatly under her. John swung back and forth on a bench, legs swinging and kicking in the dirt as he fidgeted, watching Jade hurtle around with the approximate energy of a hurricane.
“C’mon, guys, it’ll be so amazing!” She had bounced up and down on the spot, looking in danger of shaking herself to pieces if she didn’t calm down. Or, alternatively, falling asleep as her cataplexy kicked in due to the excitement overload and dropping her to the ground like a limp doll. John gently sat his sister up and in a moment she was awake again, continuing as if nothing had happened.
“I can do tricks with Bec, if they’ll let me bring him in! John, you can do some of your magic tricks!”
“I dunno, Jade... I mean, I’m not that good-”
“Then practice!” Clearly, she wasn’t going to be deterred by facts. “Rose can play her violin!” This prompted a small smile from the girl in question, and a slight shrug.
“Perhaps I can perform a simple recital.”
“Yeah! It’ll be great! And Dave, you can rap!”
There was a short pause as they looked up at the fourth member of their merry band. Dave sat high up in the branches of the tree, hands behind his head, the light from the sun glinting off his almost signature aviator sunglasses.
“I dunno ‘bout that, Harley. I mean, not everyone has your sweet taste in fine lyricisms.”
“Nonsense!”
She leapt up, grabbing onto a low-hanging branch and scaling the tree rapidly. Even though her grandfather’s death had driven her away from her island home (now a holiday home bequeathed to her and subsequently declared to be shared between the four of them) to live in the US with her only friends, you clearly couldn’t take the jungle out of the jungle girl. She climbed like a monkey.
Once she’d reached the top, she found herself a very comfortable perch on top of Dave’s chest, her legs hanging over one side of his skinny frame as she giggled.
“If the rest of us are doing it, you have to do it, coolkid!”
“Even though nobody else has actually agreed to this?”
She made a noise of confirmation, nodding energetically. Everything about Jade Harley was energetic, really.
“...Fine. I’ll think of somethin’.”
She laughed, and the deal was sealed. How nice it was, to live in blissful naivety.
Because, to be honest, nobody else liked Dave Strider’s raps.
To be honest, nobody else liked Dave Strider.
There were a handful of simple good Samaritans, like Nepeta Leijon, who didn’t appear to dislike anybody: and he was on quite good terms with some of the other kids, like Terezi and Karkat: but they never really hung out. It was just the four of them.
They were all the outcasts, honestly. Getting up on that stage would be like a social execution, everything sans rotten tomatoes.
But none of them could say no to Jade.
***
Turns out they HAD let her bring her large white dog into the school, as long as he didn’t pee on anything. Which he didn’t, so all good.
Bec was well trained, and knew a lot of frankly incredible tricks. He jumped, he danced, and when he caught a ball bearing fired out of an air rifle the crowd had no choice but to clap.
John’s magic tricks actually went surprisingly well. The outfit was overkill, a blue glittery tuxedo with matching top hat, and it did elicit some laughs, not all of them incredibly kind. Still, he could do stunning things with a deck of cards, reading minds and showering the audience with coins. The fact that he let them keep the change went down well.
Rose’s violin piece was haunting in itself, and the chilling calmness with which she played, swaying ever so slightly with each draw of the bow was hypnotic. She ended with a slight nod of the head and retreated offstage, not even waiting for what mildly impressive applause there was to die down.
And finally, Dave Strider took the stage.
The announcer boomed over the loudspeakers, eliciting the typical eye rolls and stifled groans as he proclaimed that Dave Strider would be performing one of his raps, which everyone knew were just ego-boosting self-indulgent slam poetry.
Nobody else liked Dave Strider’s raps.
This wasn’t one of Dave Strider’s raps.
“The announcer is wrong.”
This took everybody off guard. A few strands of his blond mop slid over the lens of his glasses as he slowly looked out over the crowd, leaning over into the microphone. His usual lazy Texas drawl was all but clipped now.
“I didn’t write this rap. It ain’t mine, and you shouldn’t consider it a performance for your entertainment.”
He stood up straight, and that changed something. Dave never stood up straight: he slouched, he lazed, he slung himself over things like he had every right to be anywhere but where he was. He was standing tall now, literally tall: nobody had realised quite how lanky he was. His baggy clothes hid his skinny frame well, he’d always been one for appearances, but now it didn’t seem to matter. Class had begun.
“This is a history lesson.”
He looked up to the rafters, nodding slightly as a light, slow beat began to drift over the auditorium. He slid the microphone out of its stand like a gunslinger drawing a pistol, and then he began to rap.
“Terror cleared the skyline and anger clouded judgement
So they spent a thousand nighttimes in the desert fighting something that they couldn't find
That made it something that they couldn't fight
Left us lamenting all the wrongs that they couldn't right
This is for the second time, we've been here before
From Vietnam to Saddam, we always needing a war
Neo-conservatives rose up like Viet Cong
Their fingers on the trigger, we won't be here for long”
He swayed like his sister, nodding a little too, but it was all so different. Rose moved like she was shaping the music with each slight bend of her body: Dave let the music wash over him like a tsunami, firing every little muscle and nerve like a puppet.
But his eyes never left the audience’s.
“They killed MLK and they named a day after him
They killed JFK and named an airport after him
Some guy shot a monster called Reagan so he could bone
A girl named Jodie Foster, if only he'd known”
John sat in his chair like he’d been struck by lightning. He was Dave’s best friend, but he’d always considered most of his raps lame. Sure, the guy could do them, but normally it was laced with irony, the words strung together haphazardly, more as a joke than something serious. Than...
this.
Just because the words weren’t his didn’t mean they weren’t still chilling.
“We tested nukes in the atmosphere, the sea and the dirt
And they tested all these missiles just to see if they worked
Now France got 'em, Russia got 'em, India and Pakistan
Korea want 'em, States want 'em pointed at the Taliban
Iran and Afghanistan, sands of the Arab lands
Orders from portable commands in armoured caravans
Internet, 3G cellular phones
Serial killers built mini-cells in their homes
And we had Manson, Bundy, Gacy, Son of Sam
Macarena, Superman, Chicken Dance, Running Man
Generation X and Generation Y
And the generation next will degenerate and die”
A manicured and black-nailed hand hovered over Rose’s mouth. Nobody was closer to Dave than her, and she had never seen him like this. Neverhad Dave Strider invested himself in something this much. Never had he thrown his words like this, always tossing them out for your consideration: take it or leave it.
Now he was loading a verbal musket and firing his rhymes in a burst of angry gunpowder. The coolkid was gone. In his place was the REAL Dave, the one behind the shades and the irony, and he had emotions and wouldn’t let them go unheard for one second longer.
“Cause we got holes in the Ozone that we put there ourselves
Now the poles are a no-go, earth's cooking itself
And we can't look at ourselves so we got saline, Botox
Eighteen, fake tits, nineteen, detox
Don't stop, get it, get it, can't afford it? Get it credit
Buy it, spend it, try it, getting fat? Then you better shed it
Ab Swing, Blublocker, 2Pac or Biggie
East coast, West coast, Fat Joe or 50
Thatcher the shifty Iron Lady, Tony Blair
A princess died, some say cause she got Dodi there
Whitlam, Keating, Hawke and a promise
Of no children in poverty, wish that could have been honest”
Jade’s mouth was open wider than the doors on a 24 hour supermarket. Her eyes were almost as wide behind her huge round glasses. She had always known there had to be more to Dave Strider than the chilled, detached, laid-back coolkid she’d always known. It was those little moments, the mothholes in the veil that had sparked the fire of her feelings for him in the first place.
She was no budding psychologist like Rose, but when the tiny chinks of his true personality peeked through the cracks in the curtains you couldn’t help but be drawn in, desperate for more. Now the curtains had been thrown back, the unbridled, scorching emotion was streaming through, and maybe it made her love him all the more but goddamn it, now she was scared.
“We had Abbot and Costello, right wing overlords
Promises and children, they threw 'em both overboard
Overwrought refugees thrown to a group home
Or jailed for the crime of looking for a new home”
They were all scared: of course they were. If the people closest to him had no idea he was capable of this, how could the rest of them? They who had stayed away, who had hurled their insults from a distance. They didn’t dare lay a hand on him physically: not after the last guy who did that ended up with a lot of broken bones.
No, their taunts had been catapulted from afar and they had been collected, drained of their hate and their rage and now it was all flooding back, drowning them, forcing itself into their eyes and ears and saying SEE, SEE, THIS IS WHAT YOU’VE DONE.
“Elvis died, Hendrix died, Lennon died, genocide
In Africa, Serbia, Cambodia, pesticides
Bio-toxins, chemical warfare
All's fair in love and war, more work for the pallbearer
More terror, more unjust search and seizures
A tidal wave came and claimed the coast of Indonesia
Quakes in Iran, Japan and California
Greenhouse gas turned the world into a sauna
The trauma of mortars, martyrs, slaughters
Of partners, mourners, fathers and daughters
They chased us, caught us, numbered us to sort us
Raped us, scorned us, to break us they bought us”
He swayed no more: his movements were sharp and angular, almost slicing through the air around him as he twisted and bounced, never removing his hidden gaze from his enraptured audience. Dave Strider had ascended and he held the entire student and staff population in the palm of his hand. And he was squeezing.
“Third world kidneys for captains of industry
Uprising in the street, corruption in the ministry
A blowjob brought about the fall of a dynasty
And MP3s saw the fall of an industry
Doubled population, halved accommodation
Carved up resources and we starved the poorer nations
Beirut, Chechnya, all hell broke loose
Berlin, nineteen-eighty-nine man, the wall fell
Cold war ended but that didn't stop more shells
Waco lit up the sky like burning oil wells
A world laid waste with addiction
Tell Orwell truth's always stranger than fiction
Big Brother's on closed circuit TV and on cable
Reality's now scripted, celebrities for sale
Jeopardy and jail, seized, deposed
Remedies and penalties for failed CEOs
We had the Enron collapse and white-collar crime
Investors they were taxed, a dollar for a dime
The blue chip companies and blue-sky mines
We no longer choose sides we choose sidelines”
Every word, every syllable was like a wicked knife, flung at them as they turned on a painted wheel. Literally, they found themselves ducking to avoid the sharp sound, but Dave was unrelenting. So they thought his raps were dumb, full of nothing but self-centered and badly structured boasts? That the entire concept belonged at nothing but that, a concept? A half formed idea left to rot within his bursting, blooming mind?
It was time to show them what he was really capable of. What his words could do to them.
“Rich bleeding the kind, blind leading the blind
And history repeats, no competing with time
Gasses eating the minds of the vets that they bring home
The plague of Agent Orange, Gulf War syndrome
Soldiers sent home, posttraumatic stress leave
STDs cause the sleeve ain't sexy
AIDS shook the eighties, grim reaper with a bowling ball
Metallica "Kill 'Em All", let God scold 'em all”
The music was building to a crescendo and so was the passion of its purveyor. He punched, he swung, he slammed his whole body around the invisible walls the beat would throw up. They couldn’t look him in the eye (both figuratively and literally, all they saw was the glint of the spotlight and their own gormless faces mirrored back at them behind his shades) but they couldn’t look away either. It was entrancing, hypnotising, mesmerising
terrifying
“The Guildford Four, Chicago Seven
Mumia, Mandela, Ocean's Eleven
Half past twelve on Friday the Thirteenth
Dawn of the Dead, A Nightmare on Elm Street
Weapons free environment, war zone, phone home
Melanoma grow as we soak in the ozone
Home-grown, Hydro, Cocaine, Nitro
Werewolf in London, American Psycho
Check, cyclones, bushfires, Bush firing scuds
Baby boomers, Woodstock, what happened to the love?
What happened to the cubs? They fed 'em to the wolves
Set a trial for paedophiles, they let 'em in the schools
Set 'em on the students, turned 'em on the kids
And everyone responsible should burn for what they did”
He swung an arm ending in a pointing finger out towards the stunned audience as he almost spat, and they shrank back as if trying to defend themselves against his accusations, but they couldn’t. They couldn’t, of COURSE they couldn’t and he
still
didn’t
stop
“And if they try to deny it then an eye for an eye
The government and church on which we try to rely
Both rob us till it hurts chasing lie after lie
Like astronauts chasing a pie in the sky
They landed on the moon but can't seem to return there
Makes some question if they ever really were there
And if they were there now and they looked back
Could we look them in the eye, could we look back?
Cause when we look back at what we have done
Can you believe what we have become?”
As the music petered off, so did Dave’s rage, leaving him standing on the stage. Perhaps standing wasn’t the right word: it was as if using his legs was a chore, almost buckling under the weight of his unchained emotion. He gazed out over the crowd, and then his hand moved and took their breath with it.
“And as we walk into the sun
Can you believe what we have become?”
He reached a hand up to his eyes, palming his aviator sunglasses away from his eyes. Their irises, crimson red and almost jagged around the edges, slipped loosely over the audience in their darkened seats, and up came his microphone hand one last time.
“As we walk into the sun”
The MC had returned to the stage at some point, nobody had noticed. Her mouth hung open dumbly as she stared at him: a stare he didn’t return. Without even looking, a wrist flicked, sending the microphone whirling to her, the brush of it against her shirt audible over the speakers.
She fumbled to catch it, struggling to glance down at it as she got her grip, looking up and he was already walking away.
He didn’t look at anyone else as he carried himself tall, slowly passing through the aisles. A teacher stood in front of the large auditorium double doors, and Dave did not have to miss a beat: the burly man stepped right aside out of almost fear to let him pass.
There was a silence so heavy it would dull any blade before Rose, then Jade, then John all stood, following him in utter hush. The observant might have seen each girls’ hand curl around one shoulder of the taller boy.
They were all long gone by the time Dave Strider was announced to be the winner.