Beat the Band (Swim the Fly #2)(21)

“Arnold Murphy’s Bologna Dare!”

I guess I had to get called out someday. I mean, Christ, I’ve gotten away with so much stuff in my life already. It’s just the odds, plain and simple.

“Featuring Cooper Redmond, Matthew Gratton, and Sean Hance.”

Wait, did he just say . . . ? I bolt upright. Holy crap. He did. He said our names.

We’re in.

We’re in!

They bought it! Ha! I knew it would work.

A wave of pure relief washes over me.

Dean Scragliano beans me with his beaten-up copy of Lord of Flies. “Nice band name, Corn Dog. Bologna Dare?” He laughs. “Way to keep it in the meat family. You guys should play some Meat Puppets. Or Meat Loaf.”

“Yeah, and you should go play your meat whistle,” I say, suddenly feeling invincible. “I hear you’ve been practicing a lot on your wrestling buds.”

Dean leaps to his feet just as the bell rings.

I’m out the door and lost in the crowd before he can come after me.

My phone vibrates. I grab it from my pants pocket and check the screen. A wtf? text from Sean and an r u hI? from Matt.

I text them both back: mEt n hOl.

I’m going to have to do a bit of explaining. And a lot of convincing.

This should be interesting.





LAST YEAR, ME, MATT, AND SEAN found an old storage room — the Hole — in the basement of the school that nobody seems to know about. Or at least, that no one uses much anymore. It’s always unlocked and filled with old school furniture and moldy boxes of crap that look like they haven’t been opened since the Civil War. It’s the perfect hangout where we can play our PSPs and not be hassled by the Man. It’s also the ideal location for spur-of-the-moment meetings like this one.

That’s where I’m standing, watching a daddy longlegs climb a rusty file cabinet, when Sean storms through the door, his head and chest jutting forward like a cartoon wrestler going in for the kill. “You assbag!” he shouts.

He’s all red-faced and googly-eyed. It’s too funny. I know he’s uber-pissed, but I can’t help cracking up. It’s my nerves as much as anything else. Still, it doesn’t help the situation.

I clap my hand over my mouth but my body still shakes.

“You think this is funny? You think this is something to laugh about?”

“No,” I say, laughing.

“You’re a prick, you know that? A selfish, egotistical, narcissistic prick!”

I dodge the spittle that flies from his frothing mouth. “Jesus, did you get a thesaurus for your birthday, Sean?”

A moment later, Matt pushes open the storage room door, shaking his head and looking weary.

“Tell him, Matt,” Sean says, swatting Matt’s arm. “People congratulating us. Offering fist pounds. And us having to pretend like we were totally stoked. It was so freakin’ humiliating.”

“Look, I would have told you guys I was handing in a demo,” I say, “but I wanted to keep you dawgs insulated in case anything went down. It was like a million-to-one shot. I didn’t think it was actually going to be an ish.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a major ish now, buttleak!” Sean kicks one of the old stacked-up boxes, and his foot sinks deep into the cardboard. “How are we supposed to bail out now with everyone being all kudos and cheers?” He tries — and fails — to pull his foot free. “The whole school heard that announcement. We’re gonna look like a bunch of tool bags.” Sean’s as angry as I’ve ever seen him, but I have to say, with him shaking his leg, struggling to extricate his foot from that box, it’s hard to take him seriously.

“There’s a simple answer to that. We don’t bail.”

Matt sits on an old wooden dugout bench. “How’d you do it? What’d you hand in?”

I shrug. Try to look caszh. “I jacked some songs off MySpace. Some nobody band. It’s totally airtight.”

“That’s called plagiarism, idiot,” Sean says, jerking his foot back hard from the box. “Could you be any stupider?” When his foot finally comes free, it does so without his sneaker. The sock that dangles there is gray and holey.

I bust up. “Dude.”

“Dude yourself. You heard Mr. Grossman. They already called out one band that handed in a fake demo. When they find out you jacked those songs, we’ll be expelled.” He shoves his hand into the box and digs around for his shoe. “If you want to get yourself thrown out of school, be my guest. But do me a favor, huh? Leave me out of it.”

“The band I cribbed is called Understain,” I say. “You ever hear of them?” I don’t bother waiting for an answer. “Neither has anyone else on the planet, except maybe their parents. Who, I’m assuming, live in Canada. Which is where they’re from. So untwist your tighty-whities, Sean.”

He wrenches his sneaker from the box. “You untwist them, Coop! How about that? Untwist them straight to hell.” He hurls his shoe at me but misses by a good two feet.

“Jeez, do some yoga, dawg,” I say.

“Don’t tell me what to do! I’ve put up with all your idiot schemes in the past because at least you had the decency to tell us about them. But going behind our backs like this? That’s totally screwed.”