Call the Shots (Swim the Fly #3)(104)

Suddenly Cathy’s nose starts to twitch. “Actually. You know what? This place smells like sweaty ass. I bet it was owned by some old skanky bedbug-ridden couple who never washed and sat around naked all the time.” She wipes her fingers on her khakis. “You enjoy your new home, Sean. I think I’ll stick with my nice, clean, uncontaminated, climate-controlled bedroom in the house. Buh-bye.”

And with that, Cathy trots out of the camper.

Matt waves his hand in front of his nose. “Coop, dude, that was grisly. Way to bring out the big guns.”

“Don’t thank me,” Coop says, getting up from the couch and opening a window. “Thank Sally Gregg. God only knows what they put into those bars and shakes, but Helen has banned me from consuming them for a twenty-four-hour period before I see her.”

I look over at Matt and Coop, busting their guts, and feel a swell of emotion rising up in me. A guy couldn’t ask for two more amazing friends.

I clear my throat. “I can’t believe this thing’s really mine. Just think how cool it will look once I put my stuff up on the walls, maybe repaint the outside. I bet we could even set up my Xbox in here.”

“Speaking of summer,” Coop says, leaping over and snagging the passenger seat beside me.

“Who was speaking of summer?” Matt asks. He walks over and perches on the console between me and Coop, his knees straddling the stick shift.

“I was. Just now.” Coop leans back and places his feet up on the dash. “We gotta get planning, dawgs. Summer vacation’s only a few weeks away. Don’t you doinklettes think it might be prudent to start talking potential goals?”

Me and Matt exchange a look.

“Maybe our goal should be to not have a goal this summer,” I offer.

“Yeah,” Matt adds. “Leave things to chance for once.”

Coop rolls his eyes. “Booooring. No.” He sits up. “I say we take a page from Nessa’s Necronomicon. We’re all going to die someday, right? And there’s no knowing when. So what’s the one thing everyone should experience at least once in their lives?”

I eye Coop warily, expecting his filthy dirty worst. After all, the goals do seem to be getting raunchier and raunchier with each passing year. What does he want us to do now — combine all our recent schemes into some sort of homemade, cell-phone-shot porno, staged in my swinging new rock-and-roll Magic Bus?

But I should have given him more credit. Because Coop’s got that gleam in his eye. The one he used to get back when our goals were simpler. Like collecting a thousand golf balls off the golf course or eating our weight in Funyuns over the course of the summer.

“I think you know what I’m talking about.” Coop smiles wide and spreads his arms even wider, encompassing more than just the RV — encompassing the whole world. “Road trip!”