Loveless Summer - "Sweet Little Sixteen"

Krissy Campbell's house bordered on being palatial. She lived in the Vestal Hills, having moved their in middle school, but her persistent nagging convinced her parents to allow her to keep attending Binghamton schools so she could stay with her friends, presumably at some level of expense to her parents. But with her father being an eye surgeon specializing in some sort of rare surgery, and her mother owning a large, inherited share in a publishing firm, "expense" was always a relative term to them. Kyle had seen her around school before, but never knew her name, and never cared. While he'd never had an interaction with her, he'd been within her proximity during not one, but two of her legendary temper tantrums, exposing her bad side to her friends whenever they disagreed with her. Legend had it, or so Ben had told the group the day before, that Krissy Campbell had once threatened to sue the Binghamton City School District for allegedly "stressing her out with too many classes," not that her parents backed her in that assertion. From what any of them could tell, Krissy Campbell was a spoiled little rich girl, deserving of one of those television specials about sweet sixteen parties, where the teenager screams vulgarities at the caterers and cries her eyes out, hexing her parents with black magic curses, when her brand-new Ferrari isn't the right shade of pink. All anyone wanted to do was finish the gig with their dignity intact, drive out of Vestal as quickly as they could, and never talk about this party again. Everyone, that was, except Ben.

"Alright, I'm a single, randy rock-star without any shame. Let's get inside!"

"Single, Ben? What happened with Miss Bianchi?"

"Oh, Maria? She's in Boston for the next two months. It isn't cheating if she's in a different time zone. Don't you guys watch movies?"

"Uh, yeah, it really is, Ben," Cynthia nagged. "And Boston is in the same time zone as us."

"No it isn't!"

"Uh, yeah Ben, it is. And besides, aren't these girls a little, you know... young for you?"

"Ben doesn't recognize age," Kyle pointed out, "as we all learned not so long ago."

"Hey, chill-ax people, I'm just messing around!"

"Benjamin, please don't `mess around' today," George lectured, recognizing the devilish look in Ben's eyes as a sign of potential trouble. "Let's just do the gig, sell some compact discs, and get out of here, okay?"

"Oh, whatever. Party-poopers."

" Is that what she's wearing?" Krissy asked, pointing at Cynthia and speaking about her as if she weren't standing ten feet away. "I hope these people brought a few wardrobe changes!?" Already, everyone knew how the day was going to go for them.

"Happy birthday, Krissy!" Cynthia offered, hoping the spoiled brat standing in front of her would back off a bit, and not realizing how futile such an effort would be.

"Seriously, mom? Can she wear something else?"

"What's wrong with her outfit, hon?"

" She looks like she just stepped out of the nineteen-nineties! That's what!"

"Honey, they're a band," her father tried pointing out. "It's their image, you know?"

"Ugh!" Krissy threw her hands in the air, rolling her eyes and her head as if they were somehow linked with ball-bearings, and vented out a series of grunts and growls as she stormed off toward a group of her friends, all of whom were blasting text messages into their brightly-colored phones with the intensity of a sweat shop.

"Isn't she a hoot?" Cynthia asked, looking down at her clothes and wondering if perhaps the grumbling teenager, now on the other side of the large in-ground swimming pool between them, had some exceptional taste in style that far surpassed her own.

"You look great, Cynthia. Don't mind her. We just need to get through this gig in one piece, and then we're free and clear to never talk to this girl ever again, okay?"

"If you say so, Kyle. Let's just get this over with. How long until we go on?"

"Another hour or so. Let's start setting up on the stage... and let's take our time with it."

The Campbells had rented a pretty incredible stage for their daughter's party, complete with an overhead lighting rig, a public address system, and a two-man staff, consisting of one lighting guy, Dave Kunkel, and one sound engineer, Liam Miles, who owned a lighting and sound company, or so their large white Dodge van advertised. It was like a miniature version of the sort of stage you'd see at a major outdoor music festival, and when the band started setting up their equipment, they couldn't help but make comments to each other regarding the fact that for their first open-air gig, they couldn't have asked for a better venue, regardless of the catty, snotty teenager roaming through the growing crowd, searching for anything, however minor, to complain and nag about.

After getting their instruments set up and tuned, the musicians found themselves with about fifteen minutes left to kill, which they had decided, without really speaking of it, to spend just behind the stage, in the hopes of avoiding the birthday girl's war cry. But before they could really spark up a conversation, the sound engineer, Liam, decided to have a chat with the band. Liam was older than the members of Superhype, in his late-twenties. He was meticulously clean and dressed impressively, without looking like a jerk as Phil Davies had. He was surprisingly slender, but with thick veins and flat arm muscles, which told the band, particularly Kyle and Ben, that he was a guitarist.

"Hey guys," Liam announced, waving at the band as he approached. "I met most of you already, but I wanted to chat about a few things." He extended a hand toward Mark, whom he hadn't met yet, receiving a hesitant shake from the drummer, who was reasonably apprehensive about sound engineers after their recent studio debacle. "I'm Liam, Liam Miles. Pleasure to meet you. So, I just wanted to come over and meet you guys. I'm unfamiliar with your music, so is there anything stylistically you want me to do as your engineer?"

"Stylistically?" Cynthia asked, puzzled by his exuberance toward the band's sound.

"Yeah, like, anything special you want out of your EQ? Any processing requests or whatever?"

"We've never had anyone ask us that before," Kyle explained. "Not even when we recorded our album."

"Oh! Yeah, I get that a lot. Hey, listen, we have a few minutes, so if you guys have a copy of your album, I could listen to a bit of it and give myself a bit of a head's up."

"Sure," Cynthia said, digging into her large satchel purse to extract a burned copy of their master. "If you think it'll help."

"Oh, it will. Thanks guys!" With this, Liam jogged off to the large white van that he and his partner, Dave Kunkel, had arrived in, signaling his friend to join him in listening to the CD. Moments after strapping pairs of headphones on, they both started smiling at each other and bopping their heads.

"Well, looks like they can appreciate it, at least."

"Yeah Mark, but you never know, they might turn out to be another Phil."

"Let's hope not, Ben. Let's hope not!"

"Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, especially our birthday girl, Krissy Campbell!" Dave Kunkel declared into a microphone, grabbing the attention of everyone in the audience. "Please put your hands together for one of the hottest new emerging local bands... SUPERHYPE!"

The audience went ballistic, though everyone in the band wondered if their excitement was really related to Superhype, or if they were just trying to keep Krissy Campbell from having a birthday heart attack. The band opened with their own rendition of "happy birthday," much to Krissy's apparent chagrin, before charging into their standard opener, Blind Mind. Only a few seconds into the song, Kyle was blown away by the sound he was hearing through his personal in-ear monitors, and the quality kept improving as the song advanced forward, to the point where Kyle was so stunned that he accidentally slipped up a few times during his first guitar solo of the set, not that anyone outside of the band could really tell. By the time the band reached the song Loveless Summer, Liam Miles had fine-tuned their sound to absolute perfection, producing the sort of quality that the band wished they'd gotten out of the studio, all using live equipment. The guitars were crisp and full-bodied. The bass hummed, roared, and flooded in all of the right ways, and at all of the right moments. The drums were massive and thunderous, projecting in ways none of them thought possible. Cynthia's voice was silky and clean, with a subtle hint of reverb and a dash of harmony so inconspicuous that only the most ardent, astute audiophile would ever notice it. And when the band headed into the song Remorse, Liam found a way to maximize the group's growl, energy, and dirtiness, while still finding a way to keep everything sounding clean, crisp, and tight. Liam Miles was, without question or contest, the greatest sound engineer any of them had ever worked with.

After finishing their standard set, the audience roared for an encore, and when the group saw Krissy Campbell throwing a temper tantrum and storming off into the Campbell home, they decided to appease the audience, while also taking the jam out of the spoiled teen's doughnut, killing two birds with one stone. The band went into a cover version of Led Zeppelin's Over the Hills and Far Away, with Cynthia breaking out the brand-new Gibson Hummingbird acoustic-electric guitar that her parents had given her as a graduation present, after which they performed their newest stage-ready song, Solar Eclipse, which Ben and Mark had written together, and then they went back into their two most popular songs, Remorse and Loveless Summer, finally calling an end to the show, despite the audience's calling out for more, probably in the hopes of avoiding Krissy's legendary attitude.

After their performance, the band went about tearing down their equipment as quickly as they could manage, loading everything into their rental van with a pace unrivaled by any of their previous shows. As they closed the rear doors of the van, Liam Miles presented himself, jokingly knocking on the side of the vehicle with a smile on his face.

"Hey guys!"

"Hey Liam!" George said through his grin. "You did an outstanding job tonight, sir!"

"Me? No way! You guys killed today!" Liam handed Cynthia her CD, and then he broke out a cigarette from a small metal case, struggling to find a lighter in his cargo pockets before Ben whipped one out for him. "I'm gonna say this, and you guys can think whatever, but... well, I've been doing sound now for ten years, since I was eighteen years old, about the same age as you guys, I'm guessing. And seriously, I mean it when I say this... you guys absolutely floored me!"

"Thanks!" Kyle cheered, taking Liam's positivity as a serious endorsement of the band's talent.

"I'm sure this will sound a bit... I dunno... jerky... but I think you guys have the potential to go places, and when you do, I want to be riding on your coattails." Liam laughed a bit, prompting everyone else to join in. "Dave's gonna kill me, but yeah, I want to join your band."

"Join the band? What do you mean?" George asked.

"I mean, I want to be your sound engineer. Properly. I'll go to all of your shows and run the sound, and if the venue won't let me, I don't get paid."

"How much are you hoping to make, Liam?"

"Well George, normally we charge flat rates, but I don't even know if Dave's interested in this. I'll do it for a percentage of the net. But we can talk that over and come up with something everyone's happy with."

"Well, let me talk with these guys about it, Liam. And then I can give you a call, and we can set up a meeting or something. Does that work?"

"It sure does, George! Thanks! And it was great meeting all of you!"

With this, Liam handed George his business card, congratulated the band again on their excellent performance, and jogged back to his own van. While everyone would have most likely been suspicious of his intentions under different conditions, the amazing audio quality he'd produced from the PA system had convinced everyone to have a chat about him, prompting the band to form a meeting in Kyle's living room after they all returned to his house to unload their equipment. Liam Miles' audio engineering prowess was unmatched by any sound guy they'd encountered before, and he had a passion about their music that they'd all spent several sleepless nights wishing Phil Davies had shown in the recording studio. It didn't take long for the members of Superhype to form their decision. Within thirty minutes of chatting about it, George Bellamy was outside, calling Liam and setting up a meeting.

A few days later, Liam Miles appeared at a band rehearsal, taking a copious amount of notes on every finite detail of the band's sound, and molding the various components of his engineering rig in the back of his mind to best suit the band's style. After they ran their full set, Liam sat down with each member of the band individually, chatting with each musician for nearly a full hour, and almost two full hours in Mark's case, to see what they really wanted their instruments to sound like. That evening, he joined the band at the Skylark Diner to go into further details regarding the group's full sound on each song, learning every chicane of each note like a formula one driver preparing for the Le Mans. His passion for Superhype's music never came into question by anyone in the group. Liam was pouring his heart and soul into the band's music, almost as though he were a fifth musician. None of them had ever seen an audio engineer as driven, as quality-conscious, or as personable as Liam Miles was. The next day, Liam had convinced Dave Kunkel, his company's co-owner, to join him in the Superhype revolution. So, not only had Superhype made a small fortune from their birthday gig, but they'd also landed a professional sound engineer and a professional lighting engineer to add to their family.

"Hey Tara! You won't believe it, we had the best week!"

"I have bad news, Kyle."

"Oh? What's wrong, babe?"

"I'm... not coming out to Binghamton for a while."

"What? How long?"

"I won't be there until a week before freshman year at BU starts."

This was terrible news. Kyle had been looking forward to their summer together all year. "What? Why?"

"It's a long story, Kyle."

"I have time, Tara. Talk to me. What's wrong?"

"Listen, you won't.... you won't like this, okay?"

"I won't like what?" Kyle asked, his pensiveness growing with every breath.

"There's this guy, Stephon. His family is taking ten of his friends on a cruise through the Mediterranean this summer, and he invited me to join them."

"What?"

"It's not like that! I promise, Kyle! He's inviting six girls and four guys. We're just friends!"

"Friends? A friend whose taking you on a cruise?"

"Well it's not really a cruise, it's his boat."

"His parents are taking you on their boat? And you're just friends?"

"Not his parents' boat... his boat."

"And you'll be away with this guy all summer?"

"Not just him, a bunch of us are going. But... yeah, we leave June twenty-fifth, and we get back July thirtieth, and then I come out to New York to see you!"

"I don't know..."

"Kyle!" Tara's voice shifted drastically '" almost violently '" from guilty to hostile. "Don't be so controlling!"

"Controlling? Tara, seriously, you just told me you're going away with some guy, on his boat, through one of the most romantic areas on the planet Earth, and when I get upset about it, you say I'm being controlling? Seriously?"

"Well, whatever Kyle. I'm going. I don't need your permission."

"What about our plans, Tara? What about our summer together? We were talking about this for months now!"

"Yeah, well, plans change, Kyle." Her tone had become crass and heartless, driving her boyfriend into curiosity of whether their relationship was meant to continue or not. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me. If you loved me, you'd understand that. I've always wanted to see the Mediterranean, Kyle. Always. Why would you want to deny me this chance?"

"Whatever, Tara. I thought you were as excited about this summer as I was, is all."

"Well, I was Kyle. But I'm going. I... I need to go."

"Fine." Kyle pushed the end button on his phone with more anger than he'd ever put into anything he'd ever done in his life, or so it seemed at that moment. How could she do this? Who was this Stephon guy? Why did this have to happen now, or ever? Kyle couldn't help but choke up, his eyes watering as his mind raced with images of Tara clinging daintily to some Euro-trash Fabio look-alike on a yacht, scantily-clad in a bathing suit and setting sail for some Grecian porno shoot. In that moment, he felt as though the entire world was caving in on him, even with all of the success of the band, and his recent high school graduation with good grades, and everything else that didn't matter, or simply didn't occur to him at that moment. Nothing seemed to matter. Tara was about go running around Europe with some jerk that she'd never once mentioned when she talked about her friends, and perhaps her reputation had more merit than Kyle ever really thought.

"Why do these guys always have names like that?" Ben asked, struggling to find anything worthy of cheering his best friend up as they sat in Java Joe's, a coffee shop in downtown Binghamton.

"What do you mean?"

"You know, Stephon, Giles, Francois, Pier, Mister Bean."

"What? Mister Bean?"

"Whatever his name is."

"Rowan?"

"Yeah, that. They all have these slick European names."

"Mister Bean isn't slick."

"Yeah, but his name is slick." Ben realized he wasn't really helping things along, so he decided to try and change gears. "Dude, you know what you need?"

"A gun and a plane ticket to Italy?"

"Well, that, and a road trip."

"Road trip? I'm not in the mood for a..."

"This weekend... Syracuse Carrier Dome... the one, the only, Sir Elvis Costello!"

"I dunno, Ben..."

"Dude, this girl I smoke pot with got me four tickets, one for each of us! And George is going, he bought his own ticket too!"

"Yeah, I don't know if I'm really in the mood for..."

"You don't have a say in this, Kyle. You're going." Kyle didn't respond, zoning out in his coffee for a moment. Ben would need to come up with something to break his funk.

"Where are you going?" Kyle asked, as Ben rose from the counter, sighing and taking his baseball cap off.

"Photographs of fancy tricks..." Ben sang loudly, drawing the ire of the artsy crowd in the cafe, all of whom were lifting their eyes away from whatever they were reading to see this teenager misbehave.

"Dude, cut it out..."

"To get your kicks at sixty six..."

"Ben, seriously, you're embarrassing us."

"He thinks of all of the lips that he licks..."

"Dude!"

"AND ALL THE GIRLS THAT HE'S GONNA FIX!"

"BEN! Fine! I'll go! But stop singing!"

"Ah-ha! You don't have to go to Chelsea, Kyle, but you aren't staying here!"