by Mike Jung
“There’s more where that came from, creepo.”
What did she do to him? And would she be willing to teach me how to do it?
“KENNY. SEAN.” Mr. D was finally walking back toward us. After it was all over, of course. “TAKE A SEAT.”
I whipped my head around and ducked back into my seat just in time to avoid Kenny as he stomped toward the back of the bus. He kept that one clenched fist right in my face until he was past our row, but he couldn’t punch me with Mr. D in motion. I looked at Eric and let my tongue hang out of my mouth like an overheated poodle.
Sean finally went back to his seat, wherever that was, but not without hearing some trash talk. A scramble of voices came from behind us.
“—your problem, dude—”
“—can’t take a girl, you—”
“—knows karate or something—”
“—out of here, you’re embarrassing—”
“—come on, I didn’t say—ow …”
It wasn’t a loud “ow”—I just barely heard it—but it was that high-pitched kind of “ow” that sounds like the person’s really hurt and wasn’t expecting it at all. The kind of “ow” I’ve said a few times at school until I trained myself not to. It hurt just to hear it.
“HEY!” Mr. D said in an “I am not messing around” shout, and the back of the bus went deathly silent. “KNOCK IT OFF!”
Ooh, that wasn’t good. Mr. D isn’t one of those prison warden teachers who gets super harsh whenever he possibly can, but when he gets shouting-level mad, look out. He’s actually made people sit out performances before, and having to do that during this trip would be even more humiliating than usual.
“Whatever,” Sean said in a low voice, but his voice shook a little, and then he actually walked toward the front of the bus and sat three rows ahead of us, next to Jeff Fisher, who was wearing headphones and didn’t even turn to look when Sean sat down. Mr. D finally went back to his seat too.
That didn’t mean anything was over, though. Probably the opposite. I looked down at my copy of Two Naomis, mad at myself for falling asleep while reading it, mad at myself for bringing it on the trip at all, and then, suddenly, super mad that I felt mad at myself, because why shouldn’t I just get to read whatever books I want? People are horrible, especially Kenny and Sean.
“That went well,” Eric said.
“Oh sure.” I snorted. “Couldn’t have gone better.”
“I think Sean just set a record for being punched by people from the widest range of social groups at one time.”
“Not feeling real sympathetic over here.”
“Me neither. I mean, look at him.”
Eric thrust his chin in Sean’s direction. He was looking back at us. Only the top two-thirds of his head were visible—I couldn’t see his mouth or chin—but his eyes were giving me a galaxy-class look of death.
“So this is what I’m worried about now,” I said.
“Being murdered by Sean?”
“Not literally, but he still knows about our plan, right?”
“Right, but we still have leverage on him.”
“Well, yeah, but …”
Eric didn’t need to say it, because I was already thinking it. We did have leverage on Sean, because he’d definitely be super embarrassed about the Rocket Cats thing. Would that be enough to stop him anymore? And if it wasn’t, when would Sean decide to sabotage Expedition DefenderCon? Would he do it during the bus ride, where we’d be trapped like goldfish in a bowl?
“He’ll tell right before we leave,” I said, not sure which I was feeling more, panic or gloom. “That’d be the most sadistic way to do it.”
“Maaaaybe.” Eric had that frowny expression on his face, the one that meant he was analyzing the situation instead of panicking.
“Not sure how. Also, stop using your ‘don’t panic’ voice, it’s annoying.”
“I will if you stop panicking.”
“I’m not panicking, I’m gently flipping out.”
“Stop doing that, then. We still have Sean right where we want him.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah. Watch.”
Eric looked at Sean, raised his right hand with his index finger pointing up and his thumb sticking straight out to the side, and stuck it on his forehead. Sean’s eyes opened so wide you could see the whites all the way around the pupils. His hand didn’t grab the back of his seat so much as instantly materialize there with the knuckles all white and everything. He rose maybe six inches out of his seat but then froze, darted his eyes toward the front of the bus, and slowly dropped back into his seat.
“Wow,” I said as Eric dropped his hand. “I’ve never seen you do that before.”
“That’s just because I’ve never done it before,” Eric said.
“Well, doy, that’s because it’s pure evil.” I sighed. “We have become what we behold.”
“I don’t even know what that means, but my point is Sean’s on Mr. D probation now. Would you want to come all this way and then have to sit and watch the competition with the teachers?”
“No way.” I shuddered. “That would be the worst.”
“At this point it’d be even worse for Sean.”
“No doubt. It’s just … I don’t know. I don’t want to be evil just because he’s evil.”
“Matt. We actually blackmailed him by calling ourselves giant losers.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean it’s cool for us to blackmail him with the Rocket Cats thing. We like the Rocket Cats.”
“Uh, Matt, I hate to tell you, but that was your idea.”
“Dude, no, that was your idea.”
“Oh, right.” Eric sighed. “Ugh, I hate it when you’re right.”
“Wow, so you hate life all the time, huh?”
“No, just once every couple of years.”
I fanned the neck of my shirt to cool down—the sunlight pouring into the bus and the epic horribleness of how I woke up were both making me sweat like a pig. The bus rolled on, and there were a lot of wrapper-crumpling and chomping noises as everyone broke out energy bars, fruit, and other stuff to eat.
“You know what?” I said.
“I do know what,” Eric said. “I know a bunch of different whats, actually.”
“Just because Sean isn’t coming over here to murder us right now doesn’t mean he won’t tell the teachers about our plan,” I said. “It’s not like he’d get in trouble for that.”
“Sure he could. At this point Mr. D might even assume Sean’s just lying.”
“He wouldn’t be, though.”
“I don’t think it even matters.” Eric sat up and turned his whole upper body to face me—as much as he could while sitting down, anyway. “Look at it this way: We’re not troublemakers, right?”
“I guess.”
“Especially you! I mean, seriously, everyone knows what a ‘follow the rules’ kind of person you are.”
“Gee, thanks. Nice to know everyone thinks I’m a total suck-up.”
“That’s not my point. My point is, the teachers know. One time I even heard Mr. D and Mrs. Zeller talking about how you’re the only kid in band they can trust to never lie to them.”
“Really?”
Eric laughed, but in a good, Eric-like way. “See, I knew you’d like that. Yeah, really. Which means they always trust you, and—”
“—and right now they don’t trust Sean.”
“Right.”
“Hopefully.”
“Definitely!”
“Maybe.”
Eric snorted. “Yeah. Maybe.”
“But maybe not,” I said. “I mean, look at him.”
Sean was staring back at us again. How did he not have a giant cramp in his neck?
“I guess we have to wait and see what he does,” I said.
“Yup.”
I hate waiting. I hate it so, so much.
The sun, which was going down behind us, filled the Marching Band Horror Bus with gold-colored
light, visible dust motes, and deep shadows. It felt like we’d been driving forever, and when we passed a huge sign that said “Next 3 Exits: World of Amazement” the bus erupted in cheering and whooping.
“Three exits,” I said. “That’s bananas. Do you remember there being three exits?”
“No, but I wasn’t counting.”
The first sign said “Next Exit: World of Amazement. Economy Parking, Car Rentals & Hotel Shuttle Transfers.” A half mile later came the second sign, “Budget Parking & Off-Site Hotels.”
“Are we at the airport?” Jack Browning said from somewhere at the front of the bus. He sounded confused, but Jack sounds confused a lot. A barrage of mocking hoots came from the back of the bus, but Mr. D said “HEY” once, stopping it cold.
The third sign said “Next Exit: World of Amazement. Hotel of Amazement, On-Site Parking, Tour and Group Arrivals.”
“That’s us,” Mr. D said, and the bus burst into cheers again.
The cheering stopped when we got off the freeway and drove straight into the worst traffic jam in the history of the world, or at least the worst one of my life. There were cars with license plates from a bunch of different states, taxis, buses like ours, much bigger buses with two levels, airport shuttles, and even more cars, all of them (including us) moving so slowly that pedestrians on the sidewalks were actually passing us.
The sidewalks were just as crowded as the roads, so it was like seeing a really slow-moving river of people flowing by an even more slowly moving river of cars right next to it. Everyone in the crowd seemed to have a World of Amazement hat, shirt, backpack, or shopping bag, and some people had all four, plus other stuff too. There were families of all shapes and sizes, roving packs of high school and college students, and huge mobs of kids like us being herded along by adults. Some of those adults looked like they were having fun, and some looked like they were stressed-out beyond belief. It was exciting and overwhelming at the same time.
Then we started seeing the DefenderCon people.
“Look!” I grabbed Eric’s shoulder and pointed at the car that was slowly passing our side of the bus. It was a convertible with the top down, and there were two girls and two guys in it. They were obviously high schoolers—the guy in the back seat closest to us had a lot of acne, and the girl next to him was wearing a hat that said “Yu Ming High”—but what really caught our attention was the shirt on the other girl, who was in the front seat on the passenger side. At first it looked solid black, but then she turned to say something to the guy behind her and revealed the back of the shirt. We saw the swoopy logo that looked like a needle-nosed bird with its wings swept back, and underneath it, five words. Five awesome, magical words.
We Are the Sandpiper Network
I think Eric and I both tried to say either “whoa” or “dude” or something, but what we actually said sounded more like “WUUURRGGGHHHHHUUUUHHH,” which makes no sense at all, but whoa, dude!
“Calm down, guys, she’s way too old for you,” Emily Barshaw said from the seat in front of us, which was actually a helpful reminder that our plan was still supposed to be secret.
“Actual, real-life Sandpiper Network people!” I whispered.
“Who aren’t us!” Eric whispered back.
“I totally want one of those T-shirts!” I was practically drooling. ”Where did they get the T-shirts??”
“DefenderCon, obviously.” Eric elbowed me (not hard) as he pointed toward the sidewalk. “You have to see this!”
A group of people in costume were walking away from World of Amazement, which looked hard to do just because they had to fight their way through the entire flow of foot traffic toward World of Amazement.
“Do you think they actually went into World of Amazement in costume?”
“It sure looks like it. Check it out, that Cloudsplitter costume is incredible,” Eric said with deep envy in his whispery voice. “The helmet is perfect!”
“I like the guy dressed as Ogremeister too—the cross really looks like it’s levitating between the antlers.”
“And that club is huge.”
There was also a tall girl dressed as Whirlybird, and a guy in a really good Shellshock costume. The grooves in his turtle shell lit up with exactly the right neon-blue glow. All four of them had super-happy smiles on their faces, and it seemed like they were high-fiving everyone in the crowd as they slowly cut through it in single file. A second later we lost sight of them, but by then we were too excited to care. Maybe we could talk to some of the DefenderCon people when we got inside World of Amazement!
Our excitement level dropped during the forty minutes it took to get from the freeway to the actual parking lot, and when we reached a big sign that said “Tour and Group Arrivals” some people cheered again, but some said “finally,” “took us long enough,” and other stuff like that. We were in a line of buses, all of them full of kids, and all the kids in all the buses were eyeballing each other, scoping out the competition. Not in any kind of hard-core way—a hundred band geeks staring each other down isn’t exactly terrifying—but still, everyone was curious.
World of Amazement has three hotels, if you can believe it, and I felt giant pangs of envy when a handful of buses turned at the big sign that said “Grand Palace of Amazement,” which was the fanciest of the three.
“My dad says the Grand Palace charges a person’s immortal soul per night,” I said.
“I believe it,” Eric said. “I hear there are hot tubs and 120-inch TVs in every room.”
“Yeah, so it’s probably two immortal souls per night.”
The next sign said “Wizard Castle of Amazement,” which was definitely the best name out of all three hotels. More buses turned at that sign than at the sign for the Grand Palace, but still not that many. A minute or two later we got to the less-thrillingly-named Hotel of Amazement, where the remaining three-quarters of the buses turned in. The place looked weirdly retro from the outside, with a lot of pastel colors and a glittery sun-shaped thing on the roof that looked kind of like a disco ball. There was a much bigger “Hotel of Amazement” sign in front of the building, a blue rectangle shape with big, blocky letters that were all tilted a little differently from the others. It looked like something from a board game.
Whatever, though. When it was our turn to finally get off the bus, it was awesome, especially knowing that we didn’t have to get back on for three days, even if it meant we’d have to be on guard for sneak attacks from assorted bullies. Everyone did a whole lot of stretching and wiggling around as the teachers talked to the hotel staff about unloading the uniforms and bigger equipment, then called off our names to grab our suitcases. In the old days I would have brought my piccolo on the bus with me, but bass drums qualify as bigger equipment, so I didn’t have to carry an instrument at all.
“You have reached your destination—the hotel for people without a ton of money,” Eric said in a robotic voice.
“Roger that,” I said in my own robotic voice. “Entering poor people’s hotel in three, two—ow, hey! Skye, why—”
“Did your parents pay for this trip?” Skye said, completely ignoring the fact she’d just smacked me on the shoulder. She had a super-deadpan, “the Oh sisters are not here for your nonsense” look on her face.
“Er … yes?”
“What about you, Eric?”
“Well, yeah,” Eric said. “Of course.”
“Then you’re not poor, so cut it out.”
“You’re so violent, Skye,” I said. “I mean, it’s kind of awesome, but—”
Skye ignored me and kept on walking. For a minute we just stood there watching her.
“Again with the bossiness,” Eric said. “I hate it when she’s like that.”
“What, bossy? Or right?”
“Yes.”
I cracked up. “Me too.”
“Why can’t she be more like her sister?”
“So now you have a crush on Summer Oh, eh?”
Eric snorted. “What are you
talking about? You’re the one who has a crush on Summer.”
“Had a crush. The operative word is had, and that was last year. Plus, she also treats me like I’m her little brother, and I can’t keep having a crush on someone who does that.”
“Sure you can! Look at Skye!”
“Remind me why we’re friends?”
“Now you just need to develop a crush on Graysin and you’ll have, like, the Oh Sibling Triple Crown.”
“Graysin’s out of my league. And I like girls.”
“Sure, but at least he doesn’t treat you like you’re his brother.”
“MOOOOOOOOOOOVE,” someone behind us yelled, and we hurried to catch up with Skye and everyone else who was in front of us.
The hotel looked old-school on the outside, but it didn’t look old, as in old and broken-down. Up close, everything about it looked extremely shiny and new. The river of band geek lemmings washed up against the doors, and Eric and I went through the spinning doors even though the regular doors would probably have been faster, because why pass up the spinning doors if you don’t have to? Then we were inside, where approximately 35 million kids were milling around like cattle headed to their doom.
Eventually we got herded into big, sloppy groups that were more or less near the line where all the teachers were getting us checked in. I caught a glimpse of Sean—he wasn’t giving us the look of death anymore, which was a nice change. He did look like he was thinking really hard, though—his forehead was all wrinkled up, and he was tapping his mouth with the fingers of one hand.
“You know what, Sean’s freaking me out,” Eric said. “It doesn’t even matter what he’s doing.”
“I’m sure he’s planning our demise,” I said.
“Dude, who actually uses the word ‘demise’? Anyone?”
“I do.”
“Well, yeah, you just did.”
“It’s a good word, you know.”
“If you say so. Don’t go to sleep on Kenny, though, he might be planning our demise too.”
I sighed. “What is it about trumpet players?”
“Dude, be fair,” Eric said. “Julie Forte plays trumpet, and she’s awesome.”
