CHAPTER 5
At first recess the next morning, Bo found Jenny playing kick-back off the side wall of the gym with Nick Adler.
"Jimmy say anything to you?" Bo asked.
"No, nothing. I thought you'd know what was going on," Jenny said.
"I guess I was too hard on him at your house," said Bo. "Now he's not showing his face."
"Or couldn't it be he's just out sick today?"
Bo could pick up the anxiousness in her voice.
"Nah, Jimmy's an iron man, unfortunately. When's the last time you remember him being sick?"
"Ridley, move out of the way!" said Nick Adler.
"Why, so you can shank another kick?" Bo said.
But he was worried about Jimmy now. The talent show was a huge thing, but it wasn't worth losing your best friend over.
At lunch, Bo borrowed Mr. Camino's phone and tried Jimmy at home. Jimmy lived with his mom and little brother in an apartment right on Highland Boulevard. His dad was back east somewhere and wasn't involved his life. Mrs. McCoy had insisted Jimmy take the drum set home to practice on, but Jimmy and Bo knew it wouldn't work out with his mom in the little apartment.
The phone rang a bunch of times, and finally an answering machine picked up. He thought about leaving a message and then decided he better not, in case it might get Jimmy in trouble.
Bo was extra-hungry after school but cruised right past Fancy Freeze and the taco truck, even though it killed him, and made a bee-line for home.
He needed to think, he needed to find Jimmy, and he needed to tell him: "Yeah, forget the stupid talent show! It was a terrible idea all along!"
Then they could head to the beach or skate park or something, as though none of this happened.
Bo dropped his bike on the front lawn and hurried into the house. He opened the fridge, took a long swig of orange juice straight from the carton, and started down the hall to his room. There was an odd, muffled, tapping noise that was getting louder as he got closer.
"Moxie?" he thought. His dog liked to lay in his room while he was at school, and she often rolled around and scratched on the carpet. But this sounded different.
Just like that, the noise stopped. Bo cautiously pushed open the door. He was relieved to see Moxie there, stretched out in her usual position under the Kobe Bryant poster. He walked into his room.
"YAAAHHHHHH!"
Bo's heart jumped. He tore half-way back down the hall before he realized he recognized the voice and then the stupid laughter that followed. Jimmy was coming out from behind the bedroom door, doubled over, enjoying himself so much.
"How was school?" Jimmy said.
"What the heck!" said Bo.
"What I did," Jimmy said, "I went down to Big Tone Music this morning. Thought someone there might be able to help me with the song."
"Nah, listen--the song's not important any more," Bo said.
"Got five dudes working there, not one of 'em knew it. You believe it? But there's this old guy, a customer, messing around on the drum sets. He hears me asking about 'Wipeout'. Guy knows it, and he gives me a lesson."
"Really?" said Bo.
"Told me I should practice it on a rubber pad. So I came over. I've been working it out on your mouse pad."
"You have your own mouse pad."
"True," Jimmy said. "But my mom stopping home on her lunch break might be a problem on a day I'm cutting school. Good thing about your house, your parents are never home during the day."
"So just like that, you broke into my house?!" said Bo.
"Dude, I didn't break in! I used our old clubhouse entrance."
Bo and Jimmy had a clubhouse in the corner of the basement that they called "The Box". They had walled it off with plastic milk crates, old plywood sheets and other materials they found. They tied a thick rope around a pipe that was running along the ceiling, so you had to climb the rope and then drop over the wall to get in.
They'd kind of lost interest in The Box since about 6th grade, but it was still there. Bo's parents never went down to the basement unless there was a problem with the furnace or the plumbing, and if they noticed The Box at all, they never said anything.
"You mean that screen?" Bo said.
"Yeah, it came right off, just like it always did."
When they were building The Box, Bo and Jimmy decided they needed a secret entrance, so they unscrewed a low screen from outside the house and replaced the screws with thinner ones that didn't grab. Everything looked the same, but you could pull the screen off real easy and then lay down and go headfirst into the basement.
"So what you're saying," Bo said, "is you broke into my house. Hand me the phone, I'm calling 911."
"B-dog, listen to this now," Jimmy said.
Jimmy picked up his sticks and started in on the pad.
Bo couldn't quite believe it--there it was, "Wipeout"! It was a little slow, okay, but Jimmy was playing it clean, beat for beat. It just might work.
Bo started to take his guitar off the wall but then remembered something.
"You better phone Jenny," he said.
