Beat the Band (10 page)

Silence. Sean’s eyes flick over and find Matt’s.

And there it is. The holy grail of white flags. The what-do-you-think? look. It’s all over now but the “Okay, we’ll try, as long as . . .” concessions. Just so that they don’t feel like they’ve totally given it up without dinner and a movie.

“Ahhhhh.” I feel myself grin. “You’re gonna do it. You
guys
.” I grab their shoulders tight and give them a little shake. “I love you, dawgs. You’re the best friends ever. You won’t be sorry. I promise. This is going to be epic.”

I DON’T BEAT THE BELL
to Health class but luckily I
do
beat Mrs. Turris. Everyone is busy doing what you do when the teacher’s late — talking, listening to iPods, texting, reading magazines, chucking balls of paper at each other.

I flop down at my desk and hear a squish followed by some chuckles from Andy Bennett’s corner of the room.

“Coop’s got his period!” Andy calls out.

I look down and see the flattened ketchup packets that were placed under the legs of my chair. See the squiggles of red on the floor and the bottom of my pants.

I am in too good a mood to give Andy any kind of reaction. I just wipe the ketchup off with my sneaker and pretend it never happened. Andy’s amateur hour. If he was really thinking, he would have put the packets on my seat. Gotten some tan paint from art class to camouflage them. Now
that
would have been a prank.

Prudence is at her desk, across the aisle from me, working the keyboard on her phone, looking like the perfect goddess she is. Her perky yabbos are doing a pretty good impression of a couple of Hostess Sno Balls below her form-fitting fuzzy pink sweater. My breath catches and my heart pounds out a thrash metal beat. I shake my head to break the spell, otherwise I might actually leap across the aisle and bury my face right into her marshmallowy goodness.

“Hey there, you,” I say to her. “Kudos on getting into the Battle of the Bands, by the way. Looks like you and me have yet another thing in common.”

Nothing. Which makes me smile. I like a challenge.

“So, who do you think our biggest competition is?” I ask.

“I don’t care,” Prudence says, her attention squarely on her phone.

“I bet Cheeba Pet is real good. At least, they look the part.” I laugh.

Prudence sighs, her purple-polished fingernails clicking away on her phone’s keyboard. Punching the letters harder than before.

“Of course, if you girls want to win, you’re gonna have to get through us first. Which means you’re gonna have to beat the Bologna. Is that something you think you can handle?”

She’s ignoring me with a vengeance. I love it.

“Here’s a thought,” I say. “We should organize an after party. Don’t you think? With a theme. Like, I don’t know, Garden of Eden or something. You, Gina, Bronte, and Kelly could come over to my house today and we could start planning it. We could all try on some fig leaves. Tempt each other with apples. It’ll be dope. What do you say?”

Prudence slams her cell shut and turns on me. “God! How does it feel to be such an asshole all of the time?”

I smile, because now she’s engaged. “This is crazy. When are we going to stop fooling ourselves and just admit that we both want to dance the rug rumba?”

“Right.”
Prudence snorts. “I’d rather have sex with a monkey.”

“Whoa. Hello. She’s gorgeous
and
a freak. I’m down with that. I mean, we couldn’t ever tell anyone, ’cause most people wouldn’t understand. But yeah, all right. You know anyone who’s got a monkey?”

Prudence shakes her head. “I hate you.” She flips her phone open again.

“You know what they say about the line between love and hate.”

The door to the classroom flies open and Mrs. Turris enters, hefting a stack of books and papers and looking frazzled. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she says, bustling over to her desk and dumping all her stuff.

Suddenly she stops and stares at us like she’s just caught us whizzing all over the room. “Why aren’t you with your partners already? Do I have to hold your hands every single day? Let’s go. Up.”

“Thank God.” Prudence leaps to her feet, grabs her books, and moves across the room to Sam Shattenkirk’s desk.

“Today’s the last day I’m giving you class time for these projects,” Mrs. Turris says. “So make good use of it.”

The rest of the kids in the class grumble and take their sweet time getting together with their respective partners. The room fills with the cacophony of thirty people all talking to each other at once.

I look over at Helen, who’s got her textbook open and her pen going a million miles an hour.
Again.
She doesn’t even glance in my direction. She’s probably still mad because I stood her up at the library. But it’s cool. I’ll get her to cover for me. She’s got as much to lose as I do.

I drag myself over, pull a desk up close to Helen before Mrs. Turris does it for me. “So. What should I be doing?”

“That’s a good question.” Helen doesn’t look up from her work. Yup, she’s pissed.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

“So, tell me what you want me to do.”

“Same answer as before.” She’s gripping her pen so tightly her knuckles are turning white. She’s not so much writing as carving letters into her notebook.

“You want me to do
nothing
?”

“It’s what you’re good at.”

I feel my neck and cheeks flame. “Hey, look, I was going to come to the library, okay? I just lost track of time.”

“I waited for you for nearly an hour.”

“Well, I was really busy on Sunday. In case you didn’t hear, my group just got accepted into the Battle of the Bands.”

“Congratulations,” she says flatly. “You must be really happy.”

“I am, as a matter of fact. It’s a pretty major accomplishment. I was rehearsing all weekend. And the library just . . . slipped my mind.” I glance over at the teacher. “But if Mrs. T asks, we were both there the whole time, ’kay? Remember what she said about us both getting detention?”

“Great. Good. Fine,” Helen says.

“Anyway, I’m here now,” I say. “So let’s put a dent in this bad boy.”

Helen glares up at me from her notebook. She puts her pen down and rubs her hand. “Listen. I’ve decided I’m going to do our projects on my own.”

“What? But Mrs. Turris said we —”

“Don’t worry. We’ll pretend like we did them together. In front of the class. In front of Mrs. Turris. You can sign your name to everything we have to hand in. It’ll look like we’re partners. I’m just sick and tired of waiting around, pretending like you’re actually going to contribute anything. It’s too frustrating. So, you’ll get a good grade, and you won’t have to do a thing for it. And I won’t have to deal with your bullshit.”

“Are you sure? I think I should do
something
.” I say this, but of course I don’t really mean it. Quite frankly, this is a dream come true. Helen doing all the work. Not having to spend any time with her. Getting an easy A. If she’s serious about this, I might want to get someone to buy me a lottery ticket, because my fortunes have most definitely taken a turn for the better.

“You
think
you should do something. But let’s be honest. You aren’t
going
to do anything. Focus on your band if that’s so important to you. Why are you arguing?”

“I’m not. I’m just . . . For reals?”

She nods.

“Okay. But I did have an idea for our presentation.”

Helen scowls. “Oh. Is that so?”

“Don’t sound so surprised. It’s not like I haven’t been thinking about the project.” All right, so that’s a total crock. I’ve barely given the actual project a second thought. But I did come up with this one thing while Dad was putting on his condom show.

“Okay. What is this brilliant idea?” Helen leans back and crosses her arms.

“You know what? People might like you a whole lot more if you weren’t so sarcastic all the time.”

“Yeah, well, I’m trying to think how people might like you more, but that’d require an entire personality transplant.”

“Mee-ouch.” I laugh. “Good one. Anyway, what I was thinking was that we should get a whole whack of birth control stuff. You know. To have out on a table. Like a giant display or something. Then we can pass them around — condoms, diaphragms, pills, lubes — while we’re giving our presentation. To keep everyone busy while we’re up at the front of the room acting like we know what we’re talking about.”

Helen studies me. Then shrugs. “Why not? That can be your job. Get whatever you can and bring it in when we do our lesson.”

“Hey now. I thought we agreed it was better if I didn’t actually have to
do
anything.”

“It’s
your
idea.”

“Right. I’m the ideas man. It’s my strong suit.”

“Well, I’m not about to go out and buy a whole bunch of contraceptives.”

“Who said anything about
buying
them? Just collect up whatever you have around the house.”

Helen looks like I just snapped her bra. Oh, crap. I just stepped in it. “What makes you think I have any of that stuff around my house?”

“I don’t know.” I shrug. “I just figured. Because . . . you know.”

“No, Coop. I
don’t
know. Why don’t you explain it to me? Is it because you think I’m a slut, like everyone else does?” Helen’s voice is a low, hissing whisper. “That I sleep around with anything and everything in the world? Is that it? Go ahead. Say it.” Her ears are bright red. Her eyes are narrow, angry slits. “You think I give a shit what you think about me? What
anyone
thinks about me?”

“Eh hemmm.” Mrs. Turris clears her throat. “Helen? Cooper? May I see you a moment?”

“Send them to the pound!” someone calls out, which makes the rest of the class crack up.

I feel all the blood rush to my face as I realize I’m not exactly out of the Hot Dog woods just yet.

ME AND HELEN WALK UP
the aisle toward the front of the room. Andy Bennett starts whistling the wedding march, which gets a big laugh from the class. It kills me that my sorry sitch has made this knuckle dragger a bona fide class clown.

“We need to chat,” Mrs. Turris says to us when we arrive at her desk.

“Cool,” I say. “What about?”

“You two seem to feel like you can afford to waste your class time today. You must have gotten a lot done at the library yesterday.”

“Oh, yeah. For sure,” I say. “Couldn’t have gone better. Right?”

I glance at Helen, who stands stiffly. Her cheeks cherrying. I bet she’s never had to lie to a teacher before. Personally, I think it’s healthy for her to expand her horizons a bit.

“Excellent.” Mrs. Turris interlaces her fingers on her desk. “May I see what you accomplished?”

“Mmm,” I say, the possible excuses ping-ponging around my skull. “Unfortunately, you can’t.”

“And why is that?”

“Well, because we had a brainstorming session, Mrs. Turris. We spitballed all these ideas around and then just scribbled them in a notebook so we could keep the juices flowing.”

“All right. May I see the notebook, then?” Mrs. Turris looks straight at Helen when she asks this, like she knows where the weak link is.

“I . . . um . . .” Helen looks like she might pass out. “It’s . . . um . . . I . . .” Poor girl. Can’t even lie to save her own skin.

“It’s not here,” I leap in, rescuing her. “It’s at home. I’m typing the ideas up on my computer. You know. Putting it into proper outline form. There’s a lot of stuff there, Mrs. Turris. Pages and pages. It’s going to take some time.”

Mrs. Turris tents her fingers. “Okay. Let me make this easy for you. You weren’t at the library yesterday.”

“What?” I make an appropriately incensed expression. “Where do you think we had our brainstorming session?”

“Cooper.” Mrs. Turris stares at me. “You didn’t
have
a brainstorming session because you didn’t meet yesterday.” She turns and peers at Helen. “Isn’t that right, dear?”

Helen can’t hold Mrs. Turris’s gaze. She looks down at her feet. Goddamn her and her truthful ways.

Mrs. Turris turns back to me. “I happened to be at the library a little after two. I only live a couple of blocks away. I had some books I needed to return. So I popped in to drop them off and check up on you. And guess what? No Cooper and no Helen.”