Rainbow Rocks Page 4

  “Whoa there!” said Granny Smith, coming back into the kitchen. “That’s not folding. That’s drumming!”

  Rainbow Dash’s eyes lit up. She took Rarity aside and whispered to her, “Most people don’t know how hard it is to find someone who can use both hands the way a drummer does.”

  “Do you think Pinkie Pie has the concentration to be a drummer?” Rarity wasn’t so sure their flighty friend could focus on anything that didn’t involve streamers and balloons.

  Pinkie Pie had returned the batter bowls to Granny Smith but found a bunch of metal pans and spoons and begun clashing and banging and tapping them in a catchy array of snappy rhythms.

  “She just might!” said Rainbow Dash. “And that’s what’s missing from our band… a drummer!”

  Later on, when Granny Smith took the cookies that Pinkie Pie had stirred out of the oven, the girls came back to the cafeteria, lured by their delicious smell.

  “Well now,” said Granny Smith. “These look near perfect!”

  Pinkie Pie beamed with pride as Granny picked up a cookie and took a bite. Ouch! She nearly lost a tooth they were so hard.

  “And I mixed them in half the time!” said Pinkie Pie proudly.

  Granny Smith rubbed her jaw.

  “Don’t worry,” said Applejack. “Pinkie Pie might not have what it takes to be a baker… but we’ve got some other plans for her particular skills!”

  Drumroll, Please!

  Pinkie Pie was in charge of the team decorations for the Spring Fling (of course!), and she’d organized all the girls in the locker room to decorate banners. She unfurled a huge roll of bulletin board paper and began painting the words Go Team! in huge, curly letters.

  Rainbow Dash was sitting on one of the benches blowing up balloons, but what she was really doing was trying to convince Pinkie Pie that she had what it took to be a drummer. “A drummer can’t be just anybody,” she explained to her.

  That was why bands were always having trouble with their drummers. They often were people with too much energy—just like Pinkie Pie!

  “Oh, of course not,” responded Pinkie Pie, but she wasn’t really listening. She had outlined the words on the banner in black paint and used all kinds of bright colors to fill them in, but they just weren’t, well, sparkly enough.

  “Now, it’s important that our banner shine from the field,” said Rarity, “all the way to the top of the stands.”

  “Yes!” agreed Pinkie Pie. “It’s got to shine, shine, shine!”

  “So feel free to use as much glitter as you want,” suggested Rarity.

  Pinkie Pie’s eyes lit up! No words ever made her happier than those! You could never have enough glitter. She ran out of the locker room without saying another word.

  “Do you think you can convince her to be our drummer?” asked Fluttershy. She had her tambourine with her and practiced with it in every spare moment. Each time its disks jingled, some of her animal friends would poke their heads out of her backpack to enjoy the music.

  “Rainbow Dash sure is tryin’!” said Applejack. “But Pinkie Pie don’t seem to be gettin’ the message.”

  Rarity leaned back against the lockers. “Don’t worry about it too much. I think she will. She’s a natural.”

  Pinkie Pie zipped back into the locker room with an absolutely giant jar of glitter in her hands. It was as big as a conga drum!

  Pinkie twirled and whirled around the banner, beating the bottom of the jar to swirl the glitter across the banner. The other girls snapped their fingers and clapped their hands to the beat she was creating.

  “A drummer has to have the right… instincts… you know,” said Rainbow Dash with a wink to the other girls.

  “Absolutely!” said Rarity.

  “You betcha!” said Applejack.

  “Of course,” said Fluttershy.

  “Totally!” agreed Pinkie. But she wasn’t really listening. She was too busy applying more glue and more glitter to the banner until a sparkly cloud filled the whole locker room.

  When it came time to bring the banner out to the baseball field, it was so stiff they couldn’t even roll it up. The girls had to carry it over their heads like a board to the tunnel where the players would emerge from their locker rooms, bursting through the banner as they did so.

  Rarity was a little worried about that. She rapped her hand against the glitter-filled banner. “Pinkie, dear, exactly how much glitter did you use?”

  “As much as I could!” exclaimed Pinkie happily.

  Just at that moment, the baseball team charged out of the tunnel for the opening of the Spring Fling games. But instead of tearing through the banner, it stopped them like a brick wall, or rather, a wall made out of metal glitter. Boom! Boom! Boom! One after another, they hit it and bounced back into the tunnel.

  “Oh well,” shrugged Pinkie Pie. “Maybe I shouldn’t have used quite so much glitter!”

  Snared!

  All across the cafeteria, kids were talking about the Spring Fling. Word had gotten out that the Equestria Girls were going to perform.

  “Rainbow Dash is an amazing guitarist. I heard her at the Music Center,” said one boy waiting in the lunch line.

  “Applejack rocks the bass!” said his friend. “Even in a banana suit!”

  “Wait until you hear Rarity on keyboards. She’s been playing for years,” gossiped a group of girls at a table near the windows.

  “And Fluttershy is their secret weapon,” whispered one of her friends. “I’ve heard she can hypnotize people with her music.”

  “There’s only one teensy-weensy problem.” Trixie smirked, sitting down with them. “They don’t have a drummer from what I hear. Every band needs a drummer. Whoever heard of a band without a drummer? Now, if you’re a solo performer like the Great and Powerful Trixie, all you need is yourself… but having only part of a band? That’s just no good, no good at all. It’s too bad, really.”

  Across the cafeteria, Pinkie Pie was finished with her lunch and was excitedly tapping the table with her fork and spoon. Tap tap tappa tap. Tappa tappa tap tap.

  Rainbow Dash opened up a bag of potato chips and offered them to all the girls before taking one herself. “The thing about the drummer we get is that she’s got to be someone with a lot of energy. A lot of energy. A whole lot.”

  “Absolutely!” agreed Pinkie Pie.

  All the girls looked at her expectantly.

  Pinkie Pie began clinking her fork against a glass. Plink plink plink. She tapped the table, tap tap tappa tap, plinked the glass, plink plink plink, tappa tappa tap tap. She wasn’t paying any attention to the other girls at all. At all.

  “I mean,” continued Rainbow Dash more emphatically, “a LOT of energy. Enthusiasm. A drummer has to be able to carry the whole band on his, I mean her, shoulders.”

  The vibration from Pinkie’s fidgeting was shaking the entire table. Sandwiches were wiggling, water was splashing, and trays were sliding back and forth.

  Tap tap tappa tap, plink plink plink went Pinkie’s fork and spoon.

  “Pinkie!” shouted Applejack, trying to get her to listen.

  Pinkie Pie froze. “What?” she asked innocently.

  Applejack just shook her head and laughed. Pinkie Pie went right back to her fork-and-spoon percussion session.

  Rarity placed a calming hand on Pinkie Pie’s arm. “We have got to find an outlet for all that energy, dear,” she said sweetly.

  All the girls nodded in agreement.

  “Like what?” asked Pinkie.

  “I think you need a drum set,” suggested Rarity.

  “But I don’t know how to drum,” said Pinkie Pie.

  “Yes, you do!” said all the girls together. “You never stop!”

  The girls put away their trays and threw away their trash and hurried out of the cafeteria to take Pinkie Pie to the music room.

  “You’re just going to try it,” said Rainbow Dash.

  “You’ll see, darling. You’ll be great at it,” encouraged
Rarity.

  With a hyper mixture of excitement and nervousness, Pinkie Pie took a seat behind the drum set in the music room. She picked up the drumsticks and tapped the cymbals. They reverberated through the room, and she giggled.

  “Do it just like in the cafeteria,” encouraged Fluttershy.

  Pinkie Pie started pumping the drum pedal, tickling the snare, and tapping out a tight rhythm on the bass drum. Quickly, she grooved into a tight trot, racing her sticks over the drums and creating ricocheting rhythms. Wow! She was wild! All she’d needed was the right instrument! Clash! went the cymbals. Boom! went the drum. The beat was galloping now, wilder and wilder. Pinkie Pie was a force of nature! Her hands were dancing, her feet were pumping, and her hair was flying. Her tail flipped as she swayed to the groove. Ears appeared. She was ponying up!

  “This. Is. GREAT!” she shouted over the roar of her drum solo.

  Rarity winked at Rainbow Dash. “Whatever made you think that Pinkie Pie would be good on the drums?”

  Rainbow Dash giggled. “I don’t know. Guess I just have a sense of these things!”

  Player Piano

  The school bell rang at the end of the day, and the kids poured out of the building, headed to sports practice and band practice and to get their outfits ready for the Spring Fling. The Equestria Girls were having one last rehearsal before their debut. That is, if Rarity showed up. Where could she possibly be? Had she forgotten? Could she really think that working on her dress was more important than practicing together?

  Of course not.

  Halfway across campus, Rarity was trying to get an enormous grand piano down the hall. She pushed. She shoved. She pulled. She groaned and moaned. But it just wouldn’t move. Still, there was no way she was going to give up. No way!

  “Rarity,” she scolded herself. “Your friends are depending on you. You simply must get this piano to band practice. And that means making the impossible possible!”

  She backed away from the piano and then charged at it at full speed, shoving it with all her might. It budged an inch. Maybe not even that much.

  “Ugh!” moaned Rarity, collapsing on the floor. “I should have known Trixie was up to no good when she oh-so-generously offered to lend me her piano.”

  But Rarity hadn’t been able to resist. Playing a grand piano with the band would look so magnificent. And it would sound so much better than that old upright in the music room she’d been using. But why was it so hard to move?

  “What kind of person doesn’t put a piano on wheels?” she asked herself. (But maybe she should have wondered what kind of person would take the wheels off a piano before suggesting one of the Equestria Girls use it.)

  Rarity leaned her back against the piano, braced her legs, and pushed. Nothing. She got down on her hands and knees and grabbed hold of one of the piano’s legs and pulled. Nothing. She sat on the floor and wrapped her arms around the pedals and tried to scoot it forward. It just wouldn’t move.

  Sweat was pouring down her face. Her skirt was ripped. Her hair was completely lank and flat. She stood up and, in a state of sheer frustration, banged her hand down on the keys. Her nail chipped.

  Oh! That was the final straw. Not only couldn’t she get the piano to practice, but she was going to have to play with ugly nails. She felt defeated. Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks.

  “Just look at me!” she wailed. “I’m a… mess!”

  What was she going to do? Her phone was dead, so she couldn’t call her friends, everyone had already left the school, and she was just so flustered. “And worst of all, I’m not the kind of girl that thinks it’s fashionable to be fashionably late!”

  That’s when the Diamond Dog boys appeared. They certainly weren’t on any teams or involved in any clubs. They usually spent the afternoons lurking around looking for trouble. Well, today they can spend it moving a piano, thought Rarity. Because what Rarity needs is just a little more muscle.

  Her eyes sparkled as she straightened her clothes, wiped the sweat off her brow, and quickly ran a brush through her hair. She took a deep breath and exhaled, letting go of all her fury and frustration so that she would look as lovely as possible.

  She leaned elegantly against the piano, posing. “Oh, boys!” she trilled. “Do you think you could lend me a hand?”

  The boys looked around the empty hallway, and their eyes lit on Rarity. They grinned. It wasn’t every day a girl as pretty as Rarity paid attention to them! They lumbered over to her, ready to help her with whatever she needed. But they didn’t count on having to move a grand piano!

  Rarity sent them off for rope and then arranged herself comfortably on the top of the piano. After all, it would be a lot easier to direct them from there, and she wouldn’t get in their way.

  Even three such strong boys with ropes had a hard time maneuvering that enormous grand piano. But Rarity made sure to offer them lots of encouragement.

  “I simply cannot thank you enough,” she gushed as they grunted and groaned. “Do you boys work out?”

  The boys blinked up at her and smiled. Rarity batted her long eyelashes at them, waving her hand down the hallway to make sure they kept on with their work. “I must say,” she continued. “I’m terribly impressed! So manly! And while I am a bit repulsed by your musky smell,” she held her nose daintily, “I can appreciate that you are diamonds in the rough.”

  They beamed at Rarity, full of pride and happy to be able to lend her a helping hand. Diamonds in the rough, that’s exactly what they were. Rarity had said so!

  The boys struggled to get the piano around the corner and came to the front entranceway of Canterlot High. Kids were milling around talking to one another, and the boys struggled to weave in and out of the crowd. Rarity stood up on the piano directing traffic.

  “Excuse me! Pardon me!” she exclaimed as politely as she could. “Pardon me! Excuse me! Excuse us!”

  But no one seemed to be listening. Ever resourceful, Rarity put her fingers in her mouth and whistled as loud as she could. And it was loud! Instantly the kids cleared in either direction.

  “Thank you!” said Rarity.

  The boys pulled the piano through the lobby and headed down the hallway that led to the music practice rooms. Rarity held her hand to her forehead like a sailor at sea looking for shore at last.

  “Almost there, boys,” she said encouragingly as they heaved and hoed.

  Unfortunately, every door in the long hallway was shut, and Rarity couldn’t remember exactly which practice room the girls were meeting in. She tried to listen, but she didn’t hear a guitar or a drum or even a giggle.

  “Now which classroom was it?” she wondered. “I guess we’ll just have to look in them all!”

  The boys pulled Rarity and the piano in and out of one practice room after another, crisscrossing the hallway.

  “Not that one,” said Rarity, disappointed. “Nope. Sorry. So sorry. But we’re getting closer. I’m sure of it!”

  Meanwhile the Equestria Girls were getting worried. Pinkie Pie had set up her drum kit and couldn’t stop fiddling with it. She’d bang the cymbals, startle Fluttershy, apologize, and then instantly bang them again. Rainbow Dash was pacing back and forth. Applejack kept tuning her bass. “Ugh! Where’s Rarity?” said Rainbow Dash for the hundredth time.

  “That gal prob’ly just wants to make some sorta grand entrance,” said Applejack, shaking her head.

  Just at that moment, the door burst open, and the exhausted, sweaty Diamond Dog boys pulled the grand piano into the practice room. Rarity was draped across it, refreshed, relaxed, and ready to play music.

  “Ta-da!” she announced.

  “Told you.” Applejack laughed.

  Keyboard Magic

  Rarity’s grand piano filled the entire music room. Pinkie Pie’s drum kit was now pushed against the wall. Fluttershy was squished into the corner. Even worse, there was barely any room for the girls to stand, much less dance around while they sang.

  Rainbo
w Dash squeezed around the piano, examining it. “Rarity, couldn’t you have chosen a more… portable instrument?”

  “Heavens no!” said Rarity, carefully climbing off the top of the piano. She smoothed her skirt. “The grand piano is the most refined and elegant of instruments. With it, I will be able to express my full musicality.”

  The girls just looked at her, dumbfounded.

  “Well, that’s what Trixie said,” explained Rarity.

  “No wonder!” said Rainbow Dash.

  “Now don’t that beat all,” agreed Applejack. “That gal only understands one thing and it’s the—”

  “Great and Powerful Trixie,” said all the other girls together.

  Rarity looked embarrassed, and she began running her hands over the piano keys, practicing some scales. “It does make a lovely sound.…”

  Rainbow Dash glanced at her watch, sighing. “Well, that’s nice, but our time here is up. We have to move to our other rehearsal space.” She picked up her guitar and her amp. She let out a big sigh as she looked again at the grand piano.

  “Guess you’re gonna express your full musicality across campus.”

  “What?” Rarity looked alarmed. All the frustration of the afternoon came back. She couldn’t go through moving the piano one more time. It was just too much. “No!” she wailed.

  Pinkie Pie’s eyes had been darting around the room. All at once they sparkled! She began jumping up and down and clanging the cymbals. She waved her drumsticks in the air! She had a solution! Oh boy, did she ever!

  “Or you could play this!” she announced, reaching for a strange-looking guitar that was sticking out of the music room closet. She held it over her head.

  It had the white and black keys of a traditional keyboard, but a tuning arm and a strap just like a guitar. All the girls gazed at it, stunned, especially Rarity.

  “It’s part guitar and part keyboard. It’s a… a… guitarkey!” announced Pinkie Pie, jumping up and down with excitement again.