Beat the Band (Swim the Fly #2)(15)

Dad and I look over from the couch, our beer-bottle condom-sheathed wangs standing tall between our legs. The mixture of confusion, disgust, and complete horror on Angela’s face is supreme. All of a sudden, this whole thing is worth it. I wish I had a camera.

“Do you mind, hon?” Dad says. “This is man talk. We’re a little busy here.”

“I hate this family!” Angela shouts as she turns on her heel and bolts from the room.

Dad and I look at each other for a second.

“Oops,” he says.

And we both burst out laughing.





I’M HUNCHED OVER my drums, staring at the posters on the wall. The Who. The White Stripes. The Beatles. Radiohead. Arctic Monkeys. All of them mocking me. My T-shirt is soaked through with sweat, my shoulders are in knots, and I have a blazing headache.

Five and a half hours. I’ve worked my ass off down in this basement for five and a half hours trying to cobble together a demo — pounding on my drum kit, figuring out how to work the software instruments in GarageBand, trying to lay down some passable tracks on my computer — and still I have dick to show for it.

Part of me wants to say screw it, but another part won’t let it go.

I sit up. Set myself. Reach over to my laptop and press the trackpad with the tip of my drumstick to start a new recording. Count myself in, then beat out the intro to “Dani California.”

“Coop, buddy!” Dad calls out over the drums as he clomps down the stairs.

I click off the recording. Damn it. That was sounding good, too.

“I love the dedication, bud,” he says, as he makes his way toward my drums, “but there are three other people living in this house.”

“This is for school, Dad. It’s due tomorrow.”

He recoils at the sight of me. “Jesus Christ, Coop. Are you okay? You’re sweating like a nun in a cucumber patch.”

“I’m fine,” I say. “I just . . . need to do this.”

He glances around at the mess on the floor: the crumpled Cheetos bag, the five empty Coke cans, the scattered pages of sheet music, the broken drumsticks. “This is some kind of homework, you say?”

“Yeah. Sort of.”

Dad smirks and looks at me sideways. “Right. And a dog’s breath smells like fresh baked bread. Come on. What’s the poop and scuttle?” He flops down on the old gray sofa.

It’s bizarre. I feel this welling up of emotion, like I might break down and cry. I force myself to hold it together. “It’s the Battle of the Bands. I have to get in.”

Dad raises his eyebrows as he pulls a packet of nicotine gum from his shirt pocket. “As a one-man band?”

“With Matt and Sean.”

Dad scans the basement, like he’s trying to find them.

I breathe deep and exhale. “The demo’s due tomorrow. But the actual competition isn’t for three months. They didn’t think we could put together a CD in time to enter.”

“Yeah, well, it looks like they were right.” He pushes a piece of gum from the packet and pops it in his mouth.

“If we could just get in, I’m sure we could get good enough by December. I wanted to give it a shot.” I shift on the drum stool, my butt sore from all the sitting.

Dad studies me for a long time, chawing his gum. “Nope. Sorry. You can’t bullshit a bullshitter.”

“What?”

“Look, no offense, Coop,” Dad says, “but you’re not the nose-to-the-grindstone type. The last time you put this much effort into something was when you were lobbying us to adopt the sorriest looking dog at the kennel so you could pretend to be a homeless kid and beg for change outside the PriceMark. So, what’s the angle here?”

I feel my face flush. “There is no angle.”

Dad peers at me, chewing loudly but saying nothing.

I try to stare him down but it doesn’t take long before my resolve evaporates. “It’s a girl,” I say, putting my drumsticks aside and rubbing my aching hands.

He smiles. “Okay. So you’re trying to impress the ladies.”

“No. Well, yes, that. But . . . it’s more complicated.” I don’t know why my chest feels so constricted. Like I’m wearing a straightjacket or something. “There’s this other girl. Who I’ve been saddled up with for a school project. Everyone at school hates her. So now I’m . . . reaping all the benefits of that.”

“What do you mean ‘everyone hates her’?”

“She’s got a reputation. You know. There are all these rumors about her . . . and deli meats.”

Dad tries not to laugh. He nods and says, “Hairy Mary.”

“Excuse me?”

“It was Hairy Mary at my school. Mary, Mary, she’s so hairy, yeasty, beasty, everywherey.” He shrugs. “Anyway, go on.”

“Yeah, well, being partners with this girl, now everyone’s saying I’m with her. Which means my chances of hooking up with any of the girls in the school are less than zilch.”

Dad lifts his chin. “So, you think being in the Battle of the Bands could help the situation?”

“I know it would. If we win, absolutely.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I can see that. Rock star trumps pretty much anything. It’s too bad really. If you’d told me a few days ago I could have had your grandmother FedEx me my old band tapes. You could have floated one of those as your own until you guys got your act together.”