Cover shows a skull with its tongue hanging out from its open mouth and hair streaming behind in the wind.

  FACE THE MUSIC

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  ivaluecanadianstories.ca

  FACE THE MUSIC

  Lesley Choyce

  Copyright © Lesley Choyce 2022

  Published in Canada and the United States in 2022 by Orca Book Publishers.

  orcabook.com

  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

  Title: Face the music / Lesley Choyce.

  Names: Choyce, Lesley, 1951- author.

  Series: Orca soundings.

  Description: Series statement: Orca soundings

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210164573 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210164603 | ISBN 9781459832886 (softcover) | ISBN 9781459832893 (PDF) | ISBN 9781459832909 (EPUB) Classification: LCC PS8555.H668 F33 2022 | DDC jc813/.54—dc23

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2021934059

  Summary: In this high-interest accessible novel for teen readers, Tyler and his friend Mason are desperate to escape the small town they’ve grown up in.

  Orca Book Publishers is committed to reducing the consumption of nonrenewable resources in the production of our books. We make every effort to use materials that support a sustainable future.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada, 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 Ella Collier

  Edited by Tanya Trafford

  Cover photography by Getty Images/Mehmet Sesen (front) and

  Shutterstock.com/Krasovski Dmitri (back)

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  25 24 23 22 • 1 2 3 4

  For Kelty MacGregor

  Chapter One

  Mason and I had been talking about leaving for a long time. But that’s all it was. Just talk. And it was mostly him doing the talking. Finally, though, he convinced me to do it. Get up early, real early, while it was still dark. Steal a car from a driveway down the street. He said he knew of a guy who always left his key in his beat-up Honda Civic. It would be easy. We’d be out of here and gone.

  So one day we just did it. It actually was as easy as that. We didn’t even pack anything. I did whatever Mason told me to do. I met him at the street corner at 4:00 a.m. We walked up to the driveway and got into the car. He showed me the key that was under the floor mat, stuck it in the ignition and started it right up. Then we backed out of the driveway and headed down the road. Just like that. It felt like a dream.

  But it all went downhill from there.

  Mason was so confident about stealing that old beater that I didn’t even question him. But he forgot one important thing—making sure it had enough gas in the tank to get us to the city.

  Did I mention that the sun wasn’t up yet? It was still dark when the car conked out on the highway. “Maybe we should forget about it,” I told Mason. “Let’s hitchhike back home and hope we can get a ride before anyone even knows we’re gone. Let’s leave the damn car. Nobody will even know it was us that stole it.”

  “Don’t be stupid. We’ve been talking about this for a long time. You want to crawl back home with our tails between our legs?”

  “I just have a bad feeling about this,” I said.

  “Don’t be a shit. If you want to go home, go. We got this far and I’m sticking with the plan. I’m done with all those assholes back there. And I’m not going back home to take more crap from my father.”

  It was true. We both hated that town. And although my father wasn’t as mean as Mason’s, he’d been on my case ever since I could remember.

  But here we were, stuck in a stolen car on the side of the road in the dark. We had absolutely no plan for what to do next.

  Chapter Two

  It wasn’t the first time I’d followed Mason into trouble. But it was the worst. And stupidest. I had always trusted him, and I didn’t know why. Maybe because he was like an older brother to me, and sometimes he could play that role well. He’d been out of school for a year now, even though he hadn’t graduated. I still had a year to go. When the last day before summer vacation came around, I really was happy to walk out the door. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back. I hated school, so why bother?

  I knew my parents would fight me the whole way about not graduating. I didn’t exactly have a happy home life. Sure, it was a bit better than Mason’s, but not by much. My mother and father fought a lot. They were so different from each other and seemed to disagree about everything. My mom had never moved more than a mile away from where she’d grown up. My father had been born here too, but he was the son of an immigrant—my crazy grandfather didn’t speak a word of English. My dad grew up with kids making fun of his accent, even though he did his best to cover up anything about his family or past. His advice to me was always “Keep your head down. Don’t cause trouble or bring attention to yourself. And don’t screw up your life.”

  He shouted a lot when he said stuff like that to me, but he never hit me. Not like Mason’s old fart of a father. But I definitely didn’t want to have to face either of my parents about quitting school. And I sure wasn’t going to tell them I was leaving this town for good. With Mason.

  Mason had convinced me it would be easy enough to steal that car and make a run for it. Down the highway to the city and then maybe beyond. As we sat there in the dark car, I had to admit that, scary as this whole thing was, I didn’t want to go back.

  “Let’s just leave the car then. Let’s walk,” I said.

  He didn’t like that suggestion. In fact, he usually didn’t much like anything I said. “I’m the ideas man, Tyler,” he said. “We need our own set of wheels and that’s that.”

  Which was bullshit. Because here we were, at the very beginning of the big escape that was supposed to go off without a hitch. But the car was dead. And like an idiot, Mason kept grinding away at the ignition. “Look, man,” I said, “we’re out of gas. The car isn’t going to start.” He kept cranking away anyway until the battery went dead. Then he slammed a fist into the steering wheel like it was the car’s fault.

  “What now?” I asked.

  Mason turned to me, a sneer on his face. “This wouldn’t have happened if I had been on my own. I’d have been gone long ago. But it took so frigging long to convince you. So I waited it out. And now look where we are.”

  I knew how Mason’s mind worked. He liked to blame me for whatever screwed-up thing happened to us. And there were a lot of screwed-up things in our history. I knew this wasn’t my fault, except for the part where I’d just followed him blindly, believing he knew what he was doing. I could have said a lot of things right then. But I kept my damn mouth shut.

  Chapter Three

  Just when I thought we were totally screwed, it got worse. Mason got out of the car and started kicking at the door. He’d always had a bad temper and a nasty habit of bashing at things that made him mad. And he got mad a lot.

  He screamed out loud. Once. Twice. Three times. I kept telling him to get back in the car so we could think this through.

  “No, you idiot! You get out of the car!” Mason shouted.

  And I should have gotten out of the car right then and started walking back home. If I was lucky, I could get back before anyone even knew I was gone. But Mason was acting like a maniac. I didn’t trust him. He was sure to start taking his anger out on me. So I reached over and locked the driver’s door. Then my door.

  This infuriated him. “Get out of the damn car, Tyler,” he snarled. But I sat tight.

  And then Mason did that thing, that reversal he did in every damn jam we’d ever gotten ourselves into.

  He laughed.

  He put his mug up to the car window and made a goofy face. “Shit,” he said, the anger seeping out of him. “We’re finally on our way, dude.”

  “Barely,” I said. “Just barely.”

  “So the car’s dead. So what?” He had done his classic about-face. The whole bloody fiasco was now a joke. “Come on. Let’s walk. Let’s torch the car. Just watch it burn.”

  “No. Don’t be stupid.”

  And he would do it too. He’d pull that lighter out of his pocket and set the car on fire. So I did the only thing I could. I opened my door and got out. I walked around to his side of the car. Sure enough, right then he took out his lighter and flicked it on. The flame lit up his face, making him look like…what? A ghost? A devil?

  “Put that away,” I insisted. “All it will do is attract attention. Bring cops.”

  He flicked the li
ghter closed. “Guess you’re right. Let’s get out of here.” And then Mason just shrugged.

  So we started walking. It was cold, and we weren’t dressed for the weather. What was the plan now? Neither of us said a word. Right then I wanted to be anywhere but here. With anyone but him.

  I didn’t know what was going through his mind, only that he was looking for someone to blame, and out here there was only me. I was the only one to pin it on. “You really fucked this up, Tyler. You really did it this time.”

  “How did I fuck it up? You were the one who didn’t check the gas.”

  “I waited for you, buddy. I’ve been waiting for months. I waited until you were ready to leave. I would have left a long time ago. But I hung in there for you.”

  This wasn’t exactly true. We’d talked about leaving, but it was Mason who’d always talked us out of it. I think deep down he was scared to do it on his own and needed me as a sidekick. Or at least needed someone to blame if anything went wrong. And now it had.

  I stopped in my tracks. Now I was the one who was angry. Boiling angry. I was finally tired of taking crap from him. Mason walked a few feet ahead and then stopped and turned around. “What’s wrong with you?” he said in that nasty-ass voice he used when he wanted to intimidate people. And that sent me over the line.

  I threw myself at the bastard and tackled him. He was caught totally off guard as I dragged him to the ground.

  When I had him pinned, he looked up at me and growled like a wild animal. But I had him down and was about to smash him good, something I’d never done before. Not like this anyway. The look on his face was pure hatred.

  That’s when I heard a car approaching. It was slowing down behind us, and we were caught in its headlights. I didn’t care. I had the creep pinned, and in a second, I would have smashed him good. Behind me I heard the car come to a stop. Someone got out. Before I could even turn to see what was going on, someone grabbed me from behind and pulled me off Mason. At first I could only get a glimpse of him—a big hulking guy with long straggly hair, powerful arms and a crazed look in his eyes. He threw me to the ground.

  Chapter Four

  The guy tried to help Mason up, but Mason lashed out at him. The barrel-chested hulk roared something I couldn’t quite make out, grabbed Mason by the shoulders and threw him down on the ground beside me. Then he just stood there in the headlights, his jaw clenched, his hands curled into fists. “Who the hell are you two little shits anyway? And what are you doing, trying to kill each other here by the side of the frigging road?”

  It looked like he was ready to go at us again, so we both lay there frozen on the ground. Mason looked at me. His anger toward me was gone. Did we now have a new common danger, a new enemy? Whoever this guy was, he clearly looked like a wild man—the angry, violent, crazy type. Some escaped murderer out driving in the dark, looking for his next victims? A lunatic ready to kill for the thrill of it?

  Instead he said, “Now what am I going to do with you?”

  “Just fuck off, asshole,” Mason shot back. “Leave us alone.”

  The guy still looked threatening, and the glare of the headlights made him look even more like a madman.

  “I should do just that,” he said as he turned and started to walk back to his car. The engine was still running. It had that low rumble that a real muscle machine makes.

  “Wait,” I said. “Give us a ride.” I was feeling desperate now. Shaken. “Please.”

  He stopped, paused, then turned and walked back to us. “Did you just say please?”

  I nodded. For once Mason kept his mouth shut.

  The next thing we knew, the guy was sitting down on the ground beside us and breathing hard.

  Mason looked like he was ready to run, but I gave him a hand signal to stay put. I tried to study this big brute with long hair who might still, at any minute, decide to beat the crap out of both of us, if not outright murder us. He was looking right at me when it suddenly struck me that he seemed familiar. I couldn’t quite place where, but I’d seen him before. And then it clicked. “Aren’t you—?” I began.

  “Oh, here we go,” he said. “Don’t start that shit.”

  “Dakota, right? Sean Dakota.”

  “Dead wrong,” he said. “Never heard of him.”

  Now Mason was standing up. And a smile spread over his face. He was looking right at him. “Holy shit. You are him. Freaking Sean Dakota. Man, I’ve seen all your videos. I can’t believe it’s you. Wait until I tell people about this.”

  I didn’t know who he thought he was going to tell.

  That stopped the guy dead in his tracks. “Now I’m gonna have to kill ya,” he said, reaching into his pocket for something.

  Was he joking? Or was he serious? There was no way to tell. As his hand slid out of his pocket, I was expecting to see a knife. Instead he curled his hand into a fist.

  “We won’t tell a soul,” I said, suddenly remembering that Sean Dakota had been reported missing from his California home and that no one had seen him in close to a year. Most people assumed he was dead. But here he was, by the side of the highway in our neck of the woods. Suspicious and ready to protect his whereabouts, even if he had to kill us. I noticed the multiple tattoos on both of his very muscular arms and the strange one on his neck.

  “I’m gonna get back in my car and drive down the road,” he said through gritted teeth. “And I don’t want you mentioning you’ve seen me to anyone.” He had his fist up in the air now—clearly a threat.

  I swallowed hard, but Mason just glared back at him.

  “Both of you keep your mouths shut and don’t tell anyone I’m anywhere around here. I like being lost. I love that no one can find me and I intend to keep it that way. You got it?”

  “Okay,” I said. “Sure.”

  But Mason couldn’t keep his mouth shut. “Man, I don’t know how you’re going to do that. You’re pretty hard to miss. Almost anyone could recognize you.”

  Sean stood there for a long couple of seconds. “In town I make a point of looking different, okay? Got some straight-ass clothes. Short-hair wig. Glasses.” He was holding his hand out now to help Mason up. “Before I split, though, tell me something. What the hell are you two up to out here so goddamned early?”

  “We were running away,” Mason said. “What’s that to you?”

  Something about Sean suddenly changed. “Running away from what?”

  “Same old shit,” Mason said. “Crappy life in a crappy town.”

  “Running away? Really?”

  “Really,” Mason said.

  Sean now looked strangely puzzled about something. He’d lost the tough-guy thing he’d had going on before. “Get up,” he told me.

  I stood up and brushed myself off.

  “Everybody should run away at least once,” Sean said.

  It was not at all what I had expected him to say, but I thought I should try to keep the weird conversation going. “Why is that?” I asked.

  “Because it’s a cruel, nasty, unfair, uncaring world out there. And the best you can do in this shit life is get the hell away from all the rats and the bloodsuckers.”

  “That why you’re here instead of California?” I asked.

  “Something like that,” he said. He studied us some more and then let out kind of a snort. “You little shits don’t know the half of it, do you?”

  Chapter Five

  No, we probably didn’t know much about how bad things could get. All we knew was that we were fed up with our lives back home.

  Now Sean walked toward me and came so close I could smell the stink of his sweat and his putrid breath landing on me. He shoved his face up close to mine, but I couldn’t look him in the eye. He had that crazed look in him again like I’d only seen on actors in movies—the bad guys, the killers. “Look at this, stumphead,” he said.

  I stared at his thick neck. He had a totally weird tattoo of an old-style vacuum cleaner. What the hell?

  “You recognize that?” he asked.

  I had no idea what he was talking about.

  But then Mason was standing beside me. He was looking the guy in the eye. “No shit?” he said after studying the monster’s neck.