CHAPTER 27
Bo spent Sunday afternoon sleeping.
He had a strange dream that his parents took him on a vacation up to San Francisco. They dropped him off at a motel, but the doors of the motel rooms didn't have handles on them, and he couldn't get into a room.
"Yo, B-Dog! Get up! On your feet, now!"
Bo woke with a jolt and went to the window. Jimmy and Jenny were sitting on their bikes, laughing. Bo thought back to a similar scene, and it felt like so long ago.
"Time is it?" Bo asked.
"3:30, you doufus!" Jimmy said.
"Uh, okay, give me a minute."
They rode down to the Boardwalk. There were hundreds of skaters and bikers and longboarders and bodybuilders and street performers, all doing their thing. One guy was balancing stoves on his chin for tips.
They stopped for a slice of pizza near the basketball courts.
"Okay, B, we're gonna tell you what happened," Jimmy said.
"Not that we're expecting you to change your mind about the band being jinxed, or whatever," Jenny said.
"Which I might be agreeing with you on," said Jimmy.
"I texted Allison Sturgeon this morning," Jenny said. "I asked her why she decided not to come to the dance. She said because the dance got cancelled."
"What?!" said Bo.
"She said she got a call last night around six o'clock from a fire department person, saying the Huckabee Dance had been called off because there was an emergency gas leak in the gym."
"I ran into Zuckerman at 7-Eleven," Jimmy said. "He got the same phone call."
"But we got there at 5:30," Bo said, trying to make sense of it. "I mean, could there actually have been a leak, like outside the building, that they were fixing, and we didn't notice?"
"No," Jimmy said. "There was no leak."
"So Melissa and I started texting more people," Jenny said. "And everyone got the same phone call. Except for Rachel. She came to the dance from her cousin's house."
"And Lefroni and Myers came from a Dodgers game," Jimmy said. "They weren't home when someone would have called. I'm guessing those other few kids that showed up, they weren't either."
Bo just stood there, leaning against the metal pizza counter. He'd been holding his slice for a while, but he hadn't taken his first bite.
"Scott and Stick--as Jenny likes to call them--are clever dudes," Jimmy said. "You have to give 'em their props. They wait until the last couple hours before the dance, when everyone's home getting ready."
"You sure it was them," Bo said, but he knew.
"A couple of the girls I texted--Makena and Becky Hamm--they said they heard laughing in the background when the fire department person phoned them," Jenny said.
"So all that those pond scums needed," Bo said slowly, "was the Huckabee Directory, with everyone's home phone number right in your face. And there's a stack of them on the counter inside the office."
"And a bunch of football player friends," Jimmy said. "Have a little party, each dude phones 10 or 15 people, and you've just shut down a dance."
Bo looked out past the bright beach toward the ocean. He still hadn't touched his pizza. Finally, he nodded and smiled.
"So the big, tough, clever Z Street Band tries for a little payback," he said. "And we turn around and get smoked."
"At least we know that people didn't not show up because of us," Jimmy said.
"That's right," Jenny said. "There will be other opportunities."
"Not with me there won't," Bo said. "I'm retired. And even if I ever thought about un-retiring--which isn't gonna happen--I sold the P.A. system."
"You what?!" said Jimmy.
"I put it on Craigslist last night after the dance. Guy came by this morning and hauled it away."
