Yes, I died. I died for a month. But I came back. I KNOW I ABANDONED POOR LEO AND ALL THE REST OF YOU FOR SO LONG AND YOU ALL HATE ME BUT I'M HERE NOW! WE CAN MAKE THIS WORK! *sappy violin music begins playing in the background* This chapter is kinda divided into two parts. The first part I wrote on a whim. The second was planned.
PJoHoOFan WAS THE ONLY REVIEWER! GOOD FOR YOU! (Your pen name is hard to type, because I have a hard time remembering which letters are supposed to be capitalized XD)
Chapter 7 - Leo the Cosmetic Magician / Slapstick Aficionado
Leo wasn't going to get kicked out of band. Band was supposed to be an easy class! All you had to do was show up and play, right? As if Leo wasn't already humiliated enough at this place, now he was borderline on fired from his elective.
Once Leo got to school, he realized his mistake - the first of many he would make that day. He was still wearing his tool belt.
Leo wanted to beat himself over the head with a monkey wrench. Like a fool, he must've strapped on his tool belt out of habit when he woke up. He briefly wondered why no one else had pointed it out to him at camp before he left, but he supposed they were so used to seeing him with it that he would've looked more wrong without.
So now what? He was just supposed to go walking around school looking like Bob the Builder? Just give him overalls and a yellow plastic hat, and maybe a few talking trucks, and he'd be all set! Can we fix it? Yes we can!
He'd stopped Jason in the hallway before class and urgently whispered, "Hey, man, what am I supposed to do with this thing?" He motioned at his tool belt with a panicked look on his face.
Jason frowned, putting on that I'm a problem-solving hero face. "Just put it in your locker."
"Are you crazy? My magical awesome tool belt of power? There's no way I'd be comfortable with leaving it in there! You do know how easy it is to break into those things, right?" Jason gave him a look, like, And how would you know, exactly? which Leo ignored. "Come on, Superman, you gotta come through for me on this one."
"Do you think my coat would be big enough to cover it up?" Jason asked. Leo considered how big Jason's coat would be. He was a pretty tall guy, but Jason had considerably more muscle on him. Still, the tool belt hung down kinda low, and it was relatively bulky.
"Nah, I don't think so. Not unless I wrapped it around my waist like a kilt or something."
"Well, I don't know what to tell you!" Jason said helplessly. "We're going to be late to class unless you can think of something soon."
"Um… um…" Leo felt kind of bad about what he was going to do to his friend, but he couldn't afford to be late to homeroom, and whether he would admit it or not, he had no other solution. He took off his tool belt, shoved it into Jason's arms, and took off down the hallway.
"Hey! Leo! What-" Jason said loudly, and, Leo thought, a little indignantly, but Leo didn't look back, taking the whole route to Mrs. Stodge's room at a brisk jog… which, for some people, might look all professional and cool, but Leo thought he looked more like he was trying to imitate an empousa's walk.
He sat down at his desk just as the bell was ringing. He kind of hoped Jason hadn't just dropped the tool belt on the ground and hurried to class, but he was pretty sure he could count on his friend to help him out of a rough spot. Leo owed him one.
"That was a rather close call, was it not, Mr. Valdez?" Mrs. Stodge asked, raising an eyebrow at him.
"Nah," Leo said nonchalantly. "I'm the fastest guy this side of the Mississippi River." When a couple people gave him dubious glances, he added, "The fastest Valdez this side of the Mississippi River." After a couple seconds' awkward silence, he sighed and said, "The only Valdez this side of the Mississippi River. Well, as far as I know. Unless my Aunt Rosa decided Texas was dumb and wanted to come out east. But, still. I'm pretty sure I can run faster than my Aunt Rosa."
"Would you kindly be quiet so we can hear the announcements?" Mrs. Stodge snapped.
"Sure thing," Leo said weakly.
The announcements were same old, same old, take a performing arts elective, say the pledge to the flag, student council, football, volleyball, don't bully, wear deodorant, yours in demigodishness and all that, peace out.
Maybe Leo had improvised a bit on the last part because he didn't really remember what they said, but it was the same idea, in general. Sort of.
After homeroom was over, Leo wasted no time in finding Jason, who was wearing Leo's tool belt.
"Thanks, man," Leo said. "I'll keep the belt in my locker, I guess. It'll be safe enough, I just kind of panicked earlier."
A few girls around them giggled, and Leo wasn't quite sure why. Were his good looks and charm driving them loopy?
"All right, just a minute," Jason said, reaching into his locker and taking out his books for his next class.
"I really owe you one."
Jason gave him a mischievous - and very out-of-character - smile, saying, "Yeah, I had a lot of fun in homeroom telling everyone about how I was keeping my friend Leo Valdez's tool belt safe. It got even better when I told them that you kept your makeup in here."
"But I don't-"
Jason reached into a pouch and pulled out a tube of lipstick and and a tube of mascara. "Apparently, you do."
Leo's mouth dropped open in indignation. Since when could that thing summon cosmetics? "Everything I said about owing you? It's off, Grace," Leo said, grabbing his tool belt back from his extremely diabolical friend.
And Leo thought the tool belt would be the worst part of the day. How very, very wrong he was.
He walked into band class, positive that he had this whole instrument thing down, but his plans crashed and burned when he found out that the band director wasn't there.
"He was rushed to the emergency room this morning," one of the saxophone players explained to him, although he was a little hard to understand because he was sucking on his reed the entire time. (Leo still wasn't sure why they did that. Did it need to be salivated upon before it was suitable for playing?) "The jazz band had their practice this morning, and they kept getting the same measure wrong every time. When people mess up, the director likes to stand on a chair and yell, because I guess he thinks it helps them understand things better. And one of the legs on the chair broke, and he fell, and I think I heard he broke his collarbone."
"So, what are we going to do?" Leo asked. He'd been so ready to show off his new-found musical talents.
"What do you mean? We've got a sub." At the same time that Saxophone Boy said that, Leo heard a different voice saying, "Class? Come to order immediately!"
If he'd been drinking anything at the moment, he'd have done a spit take. "No. No. No." He turned back to Saxophone Boy. "Please tell it's not her."
"Why?" he replied. "What's wrong with Mrs. Stodge?"
Leo was doomed.
When the class finally fell into something resembling order, Mrs. Stodge made everyone play a few scales, and Leo was perfectly fine with hiding in the background for that part. When she told everyone to take out one of their songs, though, he couldn't keep quiet. Because, well, he was Leo Valdez, hyperactive idiot.
"Do you even know how to direct?" he exclaimed.
"Did someone speak?" she asked. "Because I saw no hand." Leo personally thought it was dumb how teachers did that.
But apparently one of the other kids who had heard his question were wondering the same thing, because someone raised their hand and asked the exact same question.
"I have never had any formal training," she replied, inspecting the director's baton like she was wondering how she was going to smack Leo with it. "But when I was in high school, I did play the flute in the band."
Every flute player in the front row surreptitiously moved their chairs backwards six inches.
"What should I play on this song?" Leo asked, poking the guy next to him.
"Here," he said irritably, shoving something that just looked like two pieces of wood that were put together at one end. "It's a slapstick."
"Do I slap someone with it? Can I choose who I slap? Don't clowns use these things?" Leo picked up one of the pieces of wood, then letting it drop onto the other.
The guy snatched the slapstick back, lifted his arm, and thrust it down. The slapstick made a loud slapping noise. "That's how you play. Too difficult for you?"
"Not at all," Leo reassured him. "I am a musical prodigy. Yesterday I was just learning the ropes." The other guy didn't look convinced, but he shrugged, grabbed his drumsticks, and walked over to the snare drum.
"Start at measure thirteen!" Mrs. Stodge announced. Leo thought she was holding the baton in a rather threatening stance.
They started playing, and when it reached the part with the slapstick, Leo did the slap, but instead of hitting the other piece of wood, the slappy part hit his hand, which like a fool he'd been stupid enough to not think about.
"Yeoooow!" he yelped, causing everyone else to stop playing. As the song died down, Mrs. Stodge looked at him with an eyebrow raised.
"I hurt myself with the slapstick," Leo said. "Won't happen again, sorry."
"How do you hurt yourself with the slapstick?!" someone asked. "And who gave him the slapstick anyway?" the bass drum player asked.
The guy playing the snare drum flushed, looking furious.
"Hey! You wouldn't be like that if it was you who got slapped!" Leo protested. "Come here!" The bass drum guy shook his head, like, What, how stupid do you think I am, man? "Okay, then, I'll come to you!" Leo went over to the bass drum, grabbed the guy's arm, shoved his hand under the slapstick, and slapped. "See! These slappy pieces of wood hurt!"
The other guy staggered away, red-faced, clutching his hand, and hissing swear words through gritted teeth.
"How about you play the gong?" the snare drum player suggested, throwing Leo a stick that had what appeared to be a large cotton ball attached on the end. "You can't mess up the gong. You just hit the middle of that gigantic circle with the fluffy side of that thing." He pointed at the gong, a large disk that was tied to a frame that held it up. "And it's only in the song once, at the very end."
"Fine, guys. But I'm a slapstick aficionado, just saying." Leo hefted the cotton-ball stick, and the band began to play again.
Finally, the end of the song drew near, and Leo prepared himself to hit the gong. How on earth would he miss the gong? He wouldn't. It was gigantic. When the trumpets played the last note, Leo hit the gong dead-on, but it didn't make the noise it was supposed to.
Instead, it made a crashing noise, because somehow Leo hit the stupid thing so hard that it was untied from the frame. The huge - and no doubt heavy - disk was on the ground. And that wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was when Leo took a close look at the damage and saw that the disk was cracked almost in two.
He muttered something unprintable, feeling sick.
So much for musical prodigy.
I had to watch the "beginning band" concert at my school this week, and there was this really short blond kid playing the slapstick, and he was doing it all wrong. There was no slapping noise being made whatsoever. XD
