The brats are born.

I wasn't sure if the list was finished, but I thought I should frame it anyway. The Brats were formed the day after my friend Jackie and I drafted the list. The only equipment we had were a used amp, a Stratocaster on loan from my brother, a beat-up bass found in somebody's basement and a bottom-of-the-line drum kit I paid for by working at the movie theater. After four months of practice sessions, we were ready for our first gig: our school's senior picnic. A frame seemed like a way to celebrate. Too bad framing stuff's not punk.

Jackie's our lead vocalist. I get jealous of her because she's physically more mature--tall and curvy. She has moved swiftly through the ranks of cup sizes, while I'm stuck at double A. We've been friends since fourth grade, but once we hit high school, we started getting on each other's nerves. Music is one of the few things we still see eye to eye on... for the most part.

Our bassist Gretchen Rice is my coworker... and a bassist in theory only, since she never even owned a bass before. She's a big girl with calm, droopy eyes and a mouth that snarls. I like her because she makes sarcastic comments about the theater manager and hooks me up with free popcorn.

Our lead guitarist Weyant Meyers rounds out the lineup. He plays sloppy power chords and bobs his head to our songs. Mostly, he just sits around during practice planning out his next tattoo (he has a dark blue lizard climbing up a pectoral muscle and an ornate black crucifix on his left arm). He picked up the guitar half out of boredom and half because he wanted to pick up Jackie. They went out a few times but never really made it to boyfriend-girlfriend status.

And then there's me, lost among the stacked clutter of snares, cymbals and a kick drum. I wear my slick black hair in an elastic band threaded with red dice charms. I hide my acne behind layers of makeup--admittedly, not punk. I'm supposed to wear my pimples proudly in the face of conformist clean pores.

My name is Helen, but I spell it "Hell'N." I know it's cheesy, but I'm big on apostrophes. In fact, punctuation is the very thing I fought with Jackie about two nights before the picnic. "Let's go with 'Spoil-apostrophe--D,' and spell 'Brats' with two t's and a capital Z--it'll be cool," I told her.

"That's just stupid," Jackie said in a cold, self-righteous tone. "People won't even know how to pronounce it."

"You're stupid," I whined, resorting to a fourth-grade defense mechanism.

"OK, I'm stupid. Whatever. But we're going with 'Spoiled Brats' without the lame apostrophe and spelling."

"You always have to get your way, don't you?" My words filtered through clenched teeth. The pressure of playing in public had mounted over the last few weeks, and her criticism was getting to me. According to her, I played too fast, too loud--she couldn't hear herself sing.

"Yeah, I always get my way," she sniffed. "Like when you tore up those flyers I spent days putting together."

"You couldn't see my face!" I screamed. Those were the worst flyers I ever saw. She photocopied some random photo of us all eating Chinese food out of cartons during practice and then typed out "Be a Brat" in a boring font.

"Oh, please. Who wants to see your ugly face anyway?" said Jackie, flashing a slight just-kidding smirk that failed to soften her harsh words.

"Real nice, Jerkie," I spat, clutching my drumsticks tightly.

"We're a band. So who cares about people's faces? We're supposed to be, like, one whole...whole." She stammered, shook her head and sighed as if to say, "Stop being a baby."

"Yeah, well if we're 'one whole whole,' then why are you going around telling Dave Dunbar in social studies class that you're the leader of the group?" I was prepared to grill her good.

"I totally didn't say that," she said, defensively. "I was like, 'Some ideas are mine,' but I didn't say I was the leader. What are you, a spy or something?"

I laughed in disbelief: "You're a liar."

"Hey, at least I'm actually talking to people about us. Maybe if you weren't such a freak and would spread the word, we could build a buzz about the Brats--one t and no capital Z!"

"Bite me, Jacks."

"You guys," Gretchen pleaded, her patience sputtering. She hated watching us fight, but never took sides and could only muster up a whimper for a truce.

"Can't we just play?" asked Weyant, staring at his tattoos.

"Fine with me," I hissed. Weyant strummed the opening bars to our one original song "Toilet Paper the Trees." I came in hard on a downbeat, picking up the tempo so that Jackie was completely thrown off and couldn't find her cue. Frustrated, she shot me a cold look and sang a song she made up on the spot: Helen's a loser/And ugly as lies/Dressed like a poser/She scares away guys...

I beat louder to drown out her awful wails, imagining the kick drum was her stomach and the snare her head. We continued like that for a couple minutes--me banging away with absolutely no regard for time signature, her belting out off-key insults. Finally, Weyant and Gretchen chimed in.

"Yo--quit it, you guys," Weyant said half-heartedly, drowned out by the fury of our hate song. I continued to pound.

"Whatever," Jackie yelled at me over the noise. "This sucks."

"What's that?" I yelled back. "Did you say you suck?"

"No, I said this is such a joke!"

I punished the snare and pretended not to hear her.

"You stink, Helen!" Jackie shouted out so her voice could tear through the thuds. "Nobody likes you!"

I stopped flailing, the sudden silence ringing out in menacing feedback.

"Get out...all of you.. .now." I boiled behind the kit, my fists turning white.

"Fine, Marjorie," said Jackie, spraying my not-punk middle name with venom. Weyant, slightly confused, his grubby fingers pawing his scalp, got up to leave with her. Gretchen stayed put, looking to me for guidance. The air buzzed with leftover tension as we took in the gasoline fumes and a musty stench from some old clothes intended for Goodwill that were piled up in the corner.

"You stay, Gretch. We'll practice."

"But I don't have anything to practice with. I left my bass at my friend Steve's from jazz band," Gretchen said between snaps of bubble gum as she twirled the ends of her limp orange hair.

I sighed heavily, putting my head against the snare and feeling the cold steel rim against my skin. I realized that my friendship with Jackie has endured plenty of similar scenes--screaming, crying, vicious insults, hair pulling, that time in eighth grade when I made out with her crush, the summer she didn't invite me to her uncle's beach house, and other dramas both minor and major.

But, we also know funny little secrets about each other. I still have the movie stub from the time we saw that horrible Tim Allen movie Joe Somebody that Jackie admitted she actually kinda liked. She still makes fun of it sometimes in front of other people, but I know she really liked it. I also know she has Snoopy socks tucked away in the back of her dresser drawer that she loves to wear when she's sick. She knows I have this weird habit of turning over my pillows like a million times before I go to bed and that I still play with a stuffed unicorn named Jeffrey. It's stuff like that, I guess, that kept us together. Or maybe we just didn't want anybody else to know these not-punk things about us.

Still, the things she said that night felt like a punch in the stomach. How could I easily let go of the "nobody likes you" comment, and that whole stuff about the band being a joke was so not cool. Not only did it say that my drumming sucked but that the whole idea behind our band and the list tacked on the board was phony. Apparently, all the stuff we said we believed in beyond chords was unimportant. Plus, Jackie bailed, plain and simple. Miss Perfect, too cool for apostrophes, took off two nights before our big gig without any regard for me, the band or punk rock in general. Crying about it wasn't the punk thing to do, but I couldn't help it.

On the eve of the picnic, I sat in my room tapping a pen against the brass railing of my bed, looking at the phone every so often. I knew Jackie wouldn't call, but I felt she was supposed to.

The phone rang, and my heart skipped a little. It was Gretchen.

"Hey," she sighed.

"What's up?"

"Did she call?" she asked, probably knowing the answer.

"What do you think?"

"Well, maybe you should call."

I told Gretchen to get her butt to the picnic tomorrow, no matter what. The only thing I knew for sure was that we were going to show up for our gig with or without Jackie. But there was no way in Hell'N I was going to call her.

The next day, I tried to keep my cool at the senior picnic. The football field was littered with torn mustard packets and the tumbleweed of paper towels. Kids ambled around in cargo shorts and stained tees, eating hot dogs, the weather sticky for early fill. On a makeshift stage in the end zone, Holly Holbrook led the dance squad in a high-powered rendition of "Oops...I Did It Again," her caked makeup struggling to stay on under the sun, her dandelion yellow hair wilting from sweat.

Gretchen and I waited in the shadows of the bleachers, listening for our principal Mr. Albert to call us to the stage. Gretchen avoided eye contact with me and made sure not to talk too much. We didn't want to think about what it would be like to go front and center without a singer or lead guitarist. Gretchen chewed her gum, and I sat muttering to myself on the dirty ground among muddy, crushed styrofoam cups and some programs from the previous week's track meet. Not sure if we won.

Mr. Albert led the slouchy, disinterested crowd in a round of applause for Holly. Then came his garbled announcement over the PA system. We only caught snippets of our intro: "Real treat... rock...play... something really special.. .Spoiled...," and we were on.

Gretchen looked at me, waiting for a nod or raised eyebrow, if not words. She got nothing. I sat with my eyes narrowed, hair tied into two tortured braids, drumsticks extending from the back pocket of my Dickies, my legs tangled-up beneath me.

Then I saw Jackie's long, curvy shadow appear in my line of vision.

"Hey," she muttered.

I didn't say anything back. I just got up and headed to the stage with her and Gretchen. Weyant was already there with his guitar slung around his shoulder, smiling to a suddenly more attentive crowd. A few kids dropped their greasy plates of food where they stood to fight for position up front. I fumed inside, which was good, because I wasn't thinking about messing up. I just wanted to brutally punish the drums again.

I clicked off the beat, and the band launched into the song we all knew the best: "I'm a Little Teapot" (the punk version). Jacks voice went off in a simmering growl--I'm a little teapot short and stout--and then built up into an incredible climax of screams: HERE IS MY HANDLE! HERE IS MY SPOOUUUT!

Weyant hit the distortion pedal and the song flew off like a nuclear missile.

I was having a fit. My vengeful two/four was fast and mean. One-TWO, one-TWO, hate-YOU, hate-YOU. I poured it on. But Jackie wasn't phased. She was in a fit of her own, convulsing on the stage floor, then leaping up again as if shot from a cannon, all the while screaming about being a teapot.

We were an unpolished, unhinged entity with creaky wheels that were ready to fly off at the splintering axles, yet somehow hanging on. I guess it was that tension between hanging on and flying off that won over the crowd, but I didn't know because I didn't look up until after the song was over.

When the last chords rang out and I smacked the crash cymbal on the final downbeat, I was exhausted. I breathed heavily and wiped the sweat from my forehead. I looked up to see teachers with their ears covered and classmates roaring in approval. I smiled for a second, and then looked over at Jackie. Just like that, my anger boiled up again and I chucked my drumsticks at her--one bounced off her head and fell into the crowd. I then stormed off the stage to another round of applause. I guess they thought it was part of the act.

Jackie stopped me backstage as the crowd chanted out, "Bring on the Brats! Bring on the Brats!"

"Finish the set, Helen," she said. "Then you can throw stuff at me."

"What do you need me for?" I asked with my back to her. "You're the one who swooped in and saved the day."

"Come on--you know showing up late is totally punk."

"That's not even on the list," I said.

"Forget the list."

"Well, I'm not going to forget what you said to me." I turned around.

"I didn't say you, like, have to forget," Jackie said as she dropped her shoulders and looked me in the eyes. "I said some stupid things." I looked for true signs of remorse in her sharp blue irises. It was kind of tough to see with the light filtering through the aluminum bleachers. "Just finish the set," she urged.

"Well, I'm not going to let you take all the credit for the way we just rocked."

We came back onstage to the boisterous approval of the crowd, the stage still seemingly vibrating from the chords of the last song. I sat down on the frayed leather swivel stool behind the drum kit and thought about the things I should probably add to the list in the basement if given the chance. To tell you the truth, I wasn't even sure if the list meant anything anymore, but I knew we still had a few songs to play and that I was the only one who could really keep a steady beat out of all of us.

"Thanks, guys," Jackie said into the mic, fighting the harsh feedback. "This next one is a Spoil'd Brats original. And that's Spoil'd with an apostrophe, Brats like the way it's supposed to be spelled."

And with that, we were off with the next song in our lineup....