Face the Music
Face the Music
“Get in,” Sean said, giving a dirty look to the two staring cops. They just kept staring. He didn’t like that. “Better go find some donuts, boys!” he yelled over to them. He was a real charmer.
Mason tried to get in the front again, but Sean stopped him. “In the back, scumbag,” he said. So we both plunked down in the back seat. Sean planted himself behind the wheel and turned around to look at us. “I have no words to express how I’m feeling right now.” But I could tell from the look of him that he was steaming mad. “And now you’ve blown my cover as well.”
I had already noticed that Sean liked to pose most anything he said to us in the form of an insult or a threat. He had obviously honed this skill during his time on the road as front man for Vacuum Head. He made a move to start the car, but then turned around again and screamed at us at the top of his lungs. “How stupid can you be?”
It was what my high-school English teacher used to call a rhetorical question, meaning that it didn’t require an answer. But leave it to Mason to offer what he thought was a reasonable explanation. “The money was just there for the taking,” he said with a shrug.
Sean raised his fist in that now-familiar manner and screamed in Mason’s face, “You don’t steal from musicians, asshole!” Droplets of spit sprayed over us.
This outburst drew the attention of the two coffee cops, who now ambled over our way. The larger one tapped on Sean’s window, and he slowly rolled it down.
“Problem here?” the cop asked.
Sean sucked back some snot and ran his hand through his long dirty hair. “Just trying to impart a bit of hard-won wisdom on the lads,” he said in a voice borrowed from a British sitcom.
The cop ducked his head lower and half leaned into the window to look at us. “Oh, Jesus. Those two.” He looked back at Sean. “Good luck,” he said.
“Thank you, officer,” Sean said, still using his mock accent. The cops sauntered off, shaking their heads.
Sean ran both hands once around the steering wheel and leaned back, half turning toward us. “You already have a rep now as the two dumbest thieves in the history of the city. And here I am, seen sitting in a car with you. I don’t know why I’m doing this.”
I suppose I should have kept my mouth shut, but there was a big question in my head. I blurted it out. “Why are you doing this?”
He stared at the windshield, caressed the steering wheel some more and then turned the key. The car groaned and sputtered before the ignition caught and the engine started with a rumble. “Because I was once a young asshole like you two.”
Tyler and Mason are sure that it’s time to run away from home and start new lives in the big city, but these two teens face some difficulties right away as they leave to realize their dreams in the early morning light.
Mason doesn’t have a great home life and often gets a hard time from his dad. Tyler’s home life is only slightly better, but, with Mason’s constant pressure that convinces Tyler to do things he doesn’t really want to do, the two boys steal a car and start driving to the city. It isn’t long, however, before the car spits to a stop. The boys are not even close to the city, and they’re stranded on the side of the road out of gas. Tyler suggests they start walking home and try again another time, but Mason won’t hear about it. The two boys get into a fight, and, just as Mason is about to really finish it, a car pulls up and stops ahead of them.
At first they don’t recognize the man, but it doesn’t take long for them to realize that the man is rough and tumble Sean Dakota, a supposed-to-be dead musician from the famous Vacuum Head band. Since Sean’s been hiding from the world, he doesn’t want the boys to tell anyone that he’s actually alive. He agrees to drive Tyler and Mason into the city and drop them off in exchange for their silence. Over time, Sean still doesn’t know what to do with the teens and thinks about his early life and how difficult it was. Trying to give the boys a break, Sean allows them to stay at his place for a few days, but, even with Sean’s help, the boys still find trouble.
Tyler and Mason, deciding to explore the city, walk from Sean’s place and end up going through a park. A busker is playing violin in the park, and there are many people standing around watching and listening. Mason notices all of the money in the busker’s case and decides to make a grab for it, even though Tyler tries to talk him out of it. Mason runs by the case, in front of everyone, and swipes as much money as he can. Tyler doesn’t know what to do, so he follows Mason at a dead run. They don’t get far before they’re picked up by the police and brought to the station. The only person they know to call is Sean, and he bails them out, but he is certainly not happy about it. Tyler’s distrust of Mason is growing, and he thinks deeply about ditching his best friend so that he doesn’t have to keep getting in trouble because of Mason’s antics.
Sean gets a phone call saying that his father’s sick, and he decides to leave right away. He tells the boys they can stay at his place while he’s away, but they better be cleared out when he gets back in one week. Just after Sean leaves, Mason spots a wad of cash in one of Sean’s drawers. Tyler refuses to participate, so Mason takes the money and leaves. Tyler, feeling responsible to stay and tell Sean what happened, spends the week there by himself, cleans up the place, and waits for Sean to come back. Sean doesn’t care about the money, but he tells Tyler he has to go.
Tyler walks around the city, and, as night falls, he huddles into a rat infested space and falls asleep wondering if this is how his life will be. The next morning, Tyler is walking around and hears the violin busker playing nearby. He walks over, feeling sorry for the fact about the stolen money, but he is drawn to the music. He spots Sean there amongst the group of onlookers. They chat briefly, both opening up about the poor choices in their lives and their negative relationships with their fathers. Sean convinces Tyler to go back home and make a new life for himself, one without the negative influences of Mason.
The next day, Sean drives Tyler home. Tyler admits everything to his parents and “faces the music”. After that conversation, Tyler tells Sean that his mom invited Sean for dinner. Tyler’s parents get to know Sean who gets along well with Tyler’s dad. After some time, Sean even decides to move out of the city and into their town to start a new life with a new band and come out of hiding for good. After some time, Sean gets a band together and goes on the road touring. Although Tyler is mostly alone, he starts playing the bass at school and making new friends. Without Mason around, Tyler begins to notice that people are treating him differently, but then he realizes that it’s not his schoolmates that are different; it’s him.
Lesley Choyce’s novel offers the reader a quick jaunt into the lives of two teenage boys who are looking for themselves by creating change. The relationship between Tyler and Mason is interesting as Mason is such a negative influence on Tyler, and yet Tyler goes along with his plans. Later, however, Tyler realizes that, even though they were ‘best friends’, he’s better off without Mason in his life. This is an interesting perspective on toxic relationships that is not common in teen reads. Though there are some areas of the text, such as the character of Sean Dakota, that seem contrived, the overall goal of the text rings through. Face the Music would be an interesting text for struggling teen readers interested in knowing how choices in life can make a difference and that toxic relationships need to end.
Penta Ledger is a teacher-librarian at Gravenhurst High School in Gravenhurst, Ontario.