Totally Unrelated Read online

  TOTALLY

  UNRELATED

  Tom Ryan

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Copyright © 2013 Tom Ryan

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

  or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and

  retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in

  writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Ryan, Tom, 1977

  Totally unrelated [electronic resource] / Tom Ryan.

  (Orca limelights)

  Electronic monograph.

  Issued also in print format.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-0459-3 (PDF).--ISBN 978-1-4598-0460-9 (EPUB)

  I. Title. II. Series: Orca limelights (Online)

  PS8635.Y359T67 2013 jC813’.6 C2013-901914-6

  First published in the United States, 2013

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013935383

  Summary: When Neil starts to compose and play his own music, it conflicts

  with the traditional Celtic music he performs with his family’s band.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for

  its publishing programs provided by the following agencies:

  the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the

  Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia

  through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Design by Teresa Bubela

  Cover photography by Getty Images

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO Box 5626, STN. B PO Box 468

  Victoria, BC Canada Custer, WA USA

  V8R 6S4 98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  16 15 14 13 • 4 3 2 1

  For Liam, Calum and James, the best brothers

  I ever could have asked for.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Acknowledgments

  One

  It’d be a lot easier to kill Bert, my best buddy since kindergarten, if I could find the guy. I know he’s somewhere in this massive abandoned warehouse—there’s no way out, for either of us. I’m locked and loaded and adrenaline is coursing through my veins, but if he tracks me down first, none of that matters.

  I move slowly down the dimly lit hallway, my back against the wall. When I get to the corner where the corridor makes a right turn, I stop and take a second to gather my nerves, then quickly flip around and make my move, hoping to catch him by surprise. Unfortunately, Bert has the same idea, and before I realize what’s happening, he’s jumped out in front of me from behind a pile of packing crates.

  I yell as I start shooting, but he’s too quick for me, and the bazooka he’s packing unloads, tossing me backward in slow motion. I slam into a pile of rubble as Game Over Sucker scrolls across the screen to the sound of some kind of futuristic sad trombone. I whip my joystick at the couch on the other side of the room and try to ignore Bert’s hoots and hollers. Not always the easiest task, considering he’s the loudest person I know.

  “Yes!” he yells. “Yes! Yes! Eat my dust, loser!”

  I get up to leave.

  “Aw, c’mon,” he says. “One more game.”

  “Sorry, man,” I say, grabbing my hoodie from the couch. “Gotta bounce. Big family dinner tonight.”

  Bert’s an only child, and, as annoying as he can be, his basement is pretty much my refuge from the world, especially during the summer. He even has his own bathroom. It usually stinks, but still. My house is packed to the rafters—one senior citizen; two middle-agers; three, sometimes four, teenagers; and two preteen girls in a four-bedroom house with one and a half bathrooms. You do the math.

  “You guys have a big family dinner every night,” he says.

  “Yeah, but Kathy gets home from college today, so my parents want everyone there.”

  “Oh, really?” he says. “How’s old Kathy doing, anyway?” I know this isn’t an innocent question. Bert has been in love with my older sister since the moment girls stopped being gross.

  “I haven’t seen her yet,” I tell him. “She’s supposed to land this afternoon sometime.”

  “Make sure she knows I’m around in case she’s feeling lonely.”

  “Whatever, man,” I say. “Catch you later.”

  I’m already halfway up the stairs when he yells after me, “Oh hey, Neil, wait!”

  “What?” I call back over my shoulder.

  “Seriously, come here for a minute. I want to show you something!”

  Reluctantly, I walk back down and stand in the doorway. “What is it? I’m going to be late.”

  He rummages in a pile of crap on the coffee table and pulls out a page torn from the newspaper. “I almost forgot,” he says. He leaps over the back of the couch and shoves the paper at me. “Check this out.”

  He’s circled an item in the community-announcements section with red pen. Deep Cove Talent Show, the caption reads.

  “Talent show?” I ask. “What, are you going to start juggling or something?”

  “No, man,” he says. “Keep reading.”

  “‘To help commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Deep Cove Days, there will be a live talent show on the waterfront,’” I read aloud. “‘Three judges will choose the winner from local acts. Deadline for registration is July fifth. Grand prize five hundred dollars.’”

  “What do you think, man?” he asks. “Seriously.”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “What are you planning on doing?”

  “You mean, what are we planning on doing?”

  “Yeah right,” I say, handing him back the paper. “You want to do a magic routine? Saw me up in a wooden box?”

  “No, man,” he says, frustrated. “We’ll start a band, like we’ve always talked about.”

  “I don’t think we’ve ever talked about starting a band, Bert.”

  “Sure we have! Remember when we had to watch that stupid documentary about Bieber at Joanie’s birthday party and you were all like, ‘We could do a better job than that guy’?”

  “I’m pretty sure I was joking,” I say.

  “Okay, whatever, but you can really play, Neil! All you need to do is learn a couple of songs that people actually want to listen to, for a change. Come on. I know you’re dying to finally play some real music. Use your powers for good, Neil. Think about it.”

  I make a face at him. I won’t lie; I’ve always wanted to play music I actually like, but banging out tunes with Bert for a talent show isn’t really what I had in mind. “What are you going to play?” I ask.

  “Drums, meathead!” He points to a huge pile of clothes in the corner of the basement, and I’m reminded that, yes, there is a drum set under there.

  “Bert,” I say, “you’ve played those twice in your life. If that.”

  “Well, there’s no time like the present,” he says. “Besides, I’ve been practicing. Wanna hear?”

  “I’m good,” I tell him.

  “Look,” he says, “the show is in a month. You know we can get one good song down by then. I’ll drum and do the lead vocals too.”

  “Yeah right,” I say. “I’ve heard you sing. Forget about it.”

  “Okay, fine, so we find ourselves a singer, give ourselves a name and there you go, we’re rock stars.”

&
nbsp; I look at the announcement again. The show is on a Thursday, which is my only guaranteed day off from work. Against my better judgment, I begin to soften.

  “Let me think about it,” I say. “I really have to go.”

  “What’s the big rush? It’s only three o’clock—you won’t be eating for a few hours.”

  “Dad wants us to squeeze in a practice before dinner,” I tell him, knowing exactly how Bert will react.

  Sure enough, he grins and breaks into a spastic dance, kind of a cross between an Irish jig and a Russian wedding dance.

  “Fiddle dee deedle dee deedle dee doo,” he yells gleefully, spinning in a circle and kicking wildly, his bent arms flapping in and out.

  “Yep, that’s what we do at practice, Bert,” I say, doing my best to ignore him. It’s no use. He’s graduated to flying kicks.

  I turn to head back up the stairs, pretending not to hear him as he yells after me, “Don’t forget to come visit when you’re done playing the bagpipes!” The last thing I hear as the screen door to his porch slams behind me is what sounds like a goose singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” during mating season. Good old Bert.

  Two

  I bomb up the driveway on my bike. I can already hear the squeak and whistle of the sound system being tweaked in the garage.

  I lean my bike against the side of the building and come around front. The garage door is open, and I can see right away that, as usual, I’m the last to arrive. Everyone else is already in there, moving around, all business, running like a well oiled machine. I stand at the corner of the door, watching them for a moment before they notice me. Dad is going over some sheet music with my mom and my older brother, Shamus, who’s seventeen and ready to enter his senior year of high school. Molly and Maura, the twins, are in the corner of the room, practicing some dance steps for Kathy. She stands back and scrutinizes them, suggesting small changes. The twins look pretty scrawny and goofy in black leggings, their masses of red curls pulled back into scrunchies, but their faces are serious as they listen to what Kathy tells them. On the opposite side of the room, my younger brother, Johnny, lies practically upside down in a beat-up old armchair, cleaning the mouthpiece on his chanter.

  The Family McClintock, they call us. That might sound kind of obvious, since (a) we’re a family and (b) our last name is McClintock, but we’re not just any old family McClintock. We’re the family McClintock. Our name doesn’t just show up on our phone bill; it gets printed in the papers and on the websites that promote our shows. It gets spelled out in big block letters on announcement boards outside the schools and community centers where we play most of our gigs, and it pops boldly off the covers of our self-produced CDs, which fill cardboard boxes in our garage.

  We play traditional Celtic music—have for about ten years, since I was five. At first we just played small local shows around our hometown, Deep Cove, Nova Scotia, but a few years ago things took off and we found ourselves getting requests to do performances up and down the coast of Cape Breton Island. Now we’re booked solid for most of the summer season, sometimes even driving off the island to do concerts and festivals in other parts of the Maritimes. We always get a good reception; tourists love good old-fashioned fiddling and stepdancing.

  Not that that’s all we do. Kathy has a voice like an angel and uses it to belt out the sweetest Gaelic tunes you ever heard. Shamus can really kick it on the bodhran, a traditional Celtic drum. Johnny pulls beautiful sounds out of the bagpipes, and no, I’m not being sarcastic. Trust me—it’s even harder than it sounds. The twins are famous not only for their stepdancing but also for their Highland fling, which they execute like a pair of Olympic-level synchronized swimmers in kilts.

  And, of course, there are my parents. My mom’s confident, rollicking piano playing and my dad’s energetic fiddling are the backbone of the whole operation. If you go back far enough, this is really how things got started. Dad likes to tell the story of how he and Mom met. He was playing at a square dance, and his piano player got the stomach flu and had to bail. My dad yelled into the crowd to see if anyone could carry a tune, and our mom, who’d learned piano sitting on her grandfather’s knee, just happened to be there. She stepped up to the plate, and apparently they liked more than each other’s playing. Eventually they got married and started popping out musical babies, and the rest is history.

  Yep, the Family McClintock is an impressive bunch, that’s for sure, and perhaps the most amazing thing about my parents and siblings is that every single one of them is multitalented. They all play at least three instruments. Give Molly a penny whistle and toss a mandolin to Shamus, and they’ll both figure out what to do with them. Drag a harp in front of Kathy, and she’ll strum like there’s no tomorrow. I’m pretty sure that if someone were to throw a didgeridoo onstage at one of our shows, it’d be incorporated into the mix by the end of the set—“Waltzing MacTilda” or something like that.

  Kathy is the first to see me, and she rushes over to give me a hug.

  “It’s so good to see you,” she says.

  “You too,” I tell her. Kathy and I get along really well. “What gives, anyway?” I ask her. “I thought your exams ended weeks ago. How come it took you so long to get home?”

  “Long story,” she whispers. “I’ll fill you in later.”

  “Late again, Neil,” says Dad. “Not a good start to the season.” He’s a stickler for showing up on time, so I often end up disappointing him. I’m glad that he doesn’t make a big deal out of it today. Everybody is happy that Kathy is finally home.

  My dad claps his hands. “Okay, everyone, grab your gear. Get into place.”

  I’m sure by this point you’re asking what exactly it is that I do. Well, for one thing, I don’t dance, that’s for sure. Believe me, I’ve tried. I can’t play a fiddle or a piano to save my life, trying to keep time on a drum confuses my brain, and as for singing…well, let’s just say that I’m happy to let the rest of them handle the vocals. The boring truth is that I play the guitar. My parents shoved it at me because they needed me to do something, and for years I’ve stood behind them all onstage, strumming away like some kind of an idiot.

  Not to blow my own horn, but I’m actually pretty good. It’s just that I don’t really get to perform much. I mean, I play the whole time, but it’s basically filler. I do a bit of finger picking, but mostly I just bang out the chords and keep the rhythm like a trained monkey backing up an orchestra. At one point or another, I’ve tried to learn pretty much every other instrument that might fit in with the rest of the noise onstage—mandolin, pipes, piano, even accordion—but none of them stuck. I just don’t have the feel for things the way the rest of my family does, so I’m destined to stand behind them all, strumming my guitar and wishing I was somewhere else.

  My lack of musical versatility isn’t the only thing that sets me apart from my family. A few years ago a reporter for the tourism section of the New York Times did a story about Cape Breton Island, and we actually got a mention. “The Family McClintock is the real deal,” the Times declared. “A family band in the truest sense of the word. Six children and their parents and all but one of them sporting pale skin dotted with freckles and the brightest red hair west of Scotland. When this rowdy crew gets going onstage, it’s a sight to see. Absolutely not to be missed, especially for their dance routines.”

  “All but one of them” refers to me, indirectly. Neil, the middle child. Kathy’s drop-dead beautiful, and in a few years the twins will look just like her. Shamus is tall and good-looking and has girls falling all over him. It’s only a matter of time before Johnny has the same problem. He’s younger than I am, but he’s already a couple of inches taller. It’s no wonder they stick me at the back of the stage. I’m the runty, pudgy, black-haired black sheep of the family, with a distinct lack of moves.

  We haven’t rehearsed in months, since Christmas vacation, so it’s pretty impressive that things sound as tight as they do as quickly as they do. We start off with our classic
intro piece, a fast, upbeat tune called “Off to the Dance” that gives everyone a chance to do their thing. The song builds in layers until everyone is part of the action. Shamus gets things going by thrumming out a steady rolling beat on his drum; then I come in with a simple repetitive chord sequence, A–D–G–A, that fills in the sound a bit and sets the stage. My mother is next, dropping into the action with a nice piano run that turns into a bright and cheerful melody line. Johnny and Dad start at the same time, Dad on fiddle and Johnny on penny whistle. They go back and forth for a few bars, “Dueling Banjos” style, and then the girls dance out to the front, Kathy down the middle of the group and the twins on either side. They start dancing gracefully in perfect unison, and the music backs them up nicely as they side-kick and front-step and twirl back and forth across the concrete floor of the garage.

  The music comes to a gentle lull, and the three girls curtsy neatly. The audience is meant to get the impression that the song has come to a close, but after a pregnant pause we kick into overdrive. I strum harder and start to do a bit of fast picking, Mom’s piano really gets going, and Dad walks out in front with the fiddle and faces the girls, who begin an intricate stepdance routine. At first they dance together, then one at a time, so that it appears as if the music is moving across the floor through their feet, snapping from one to the next. Dad is something to see when he really gets into the music. He’s crouching and playing as fast as they dance, and their feet and his bow are moving so quickly you can barely see them. Gradually the rest of us drop out of the song until it’s just the fiddle and the feet, playing off one another. Finally, a crescendo of music and footsteps comes to a sudden end, and all of us take a dramatic stage bow, holding our instruments out to our sides and keeping still for a few seconds for the applause.

  Obviously, there is no applause during practice, but we know to expect it. Our audiences love this stuff. If I’m being totally honest, I have to say I’ve never really liked the music we play, but, as my parents have pointed out to us over and over again, this gig is going to pay our way through university. Don’t get me wrong. We aren’t getting rich from doing this, but if we’re lucky and the gigs keep coming, we might just end up with a debt-free start to life. Rock and roll.