Chapter Text
“I’ve been hit! Man down!”
“Aw, get up! It’s only noodles you wuss!”
The Plainview mall food-court had become a food war zone for the boys of Löded Diper, the baddest of the bad, the hardest of the hardcore.
“Which one of you snot rockets got gum in my hair?”
Or so they’d tell you.
The food court was in a state of disarray, they’d obviously never seen a battle quite as epic as this. People left en masse, kids were crying, some people even cowered behind the thin metal food court chairs, hoping for some slight shelter against the carnage.
Oh, it’s on.
Rodrick, the leader and drummer, stood on top of the wobbly tables and absolutely pelted everyone and everything in his path with chicken alfredo, having the time of his life.
Chris, bassist and wise shaman, lay stunned on the garishly painted food court tile, unable to recover after slipping on Rodrick’s chicken Alfredo ambush.
Ben, lead singer and guitarist, ran across the room after Rodrick armed with Sbarros pizza and bread sticks, throwing pizza like a frisbee and using a food tray as a shield to deflect the noodles starting to come his way. He weaved around food court guests and hopped over any chair that stood in his way.
“Watch out Rod, when I’m done with you you’ll smell like garlic for weeks!” Ben threatened, thrusting a bread stick up in the air like a sword, finally coming face to face with Rodrick.
“I’m not afraid of you, gum-hair.” Rodrick said as he smacked Ben’s bread stick out of his hand.
“HEY! That was my last stick man!”
“Why don’t you eat it off the floor then?” He laughed.
The two let their guards down to bicker back and forth, both frantically trying to find something to make fun of the other for; “What about the time YOU peed your pants in third grade, and you were too embarrassed to tell anyone or call home so you were the pee kid the whole day!”-- “That can’t be any worse than when YOU jumped off the high dive and your shorts came off and you flashed the lifeguard!”-- “Well, what about that time you called Coach Malone MOM!” They angrily gestured with their hands as they fought, obviously very heated and trying to make a point.
Unfortunately for them, Chris took this as his opportunity to strike.
While they argued, Chris sat up from his place on the floor like Dracula emerging from his coffin. Cautiously, he reached down to the chicken tenders and fries sitting in his pockets. He checked to make sure his friends weren’t paying attention, intending to make a deadly sneak attack. With two chicken tenders, one in each hand, he hurled them as hard as humanly possible, aiming straight for his friends’ heads.
The boys were completely oblivious as the tenders flew through the air. The first one smacked Rodrick square in the forehead, scaring him so bad he fell backwards off of the table he was on. The attack made Ben jump a bit before he rushed to help pick Rodrick up off of the floor, but as soon as his back was turned his fate was sealed. The tender hit him in the back of the head, bounced off, and skidded across the floor.
Ben turned around and looked at the fallen tender for a moment. He looked at Chris who was still lying on the floor with a smug smile, surrounded by cold fries that had fallen out of his many cargo-pants pockets. He shifted to look at Rodrick who looked sad and defeated sitting on the floor with chicken alfredo sludge all down the front of his shirt. He looked down at himself to see his entire outfit was covered in pizza sauce, garlic, and pepperonis. He remembered the gum that was still stuck in his hair.
The sight of the three of them was too much. Little giggles started to spill out of Ben. The sight of Rodrick’s disappointed frown pushed him over the edge into snort laughing territory. Ben was absolutely losing it, how could the three of them look so lame right now?
Ben’s glee was infectious, the boys could never keep a straight face when he got like this. Chris laughed so hard he accidentally inhaled a fry he was eating, filling the food court with distressed choking. This made Ben even more hysterical. He flopped on the floor cry laughing, unable to stand anymore in his condition. Seeing Ben throw himself on the floor made Rodrick crack up too, shedding his sad look for a new joyous one. Chris finally spit out the offending fry and his choking returned to a laughing fit.
“What do you think you’re doing?” A voice barked. A huge mall security officer had come over to see what all the chaos was about.
The boys jumped to their feet, standing at attention, afraid of what might happen to them. They spoke all at once in a flurry of voices; “Nothing sir!”--- “We were just having fun man, come on!”--- “Rodrick started it, I didn’t even wanna DO a food fight, I promise, please don’t kick us out!”
“Look at this huge mess! You guys know that the poor janitors have to clean this up? I should have YOU do it instead.” This man clearly was not to be messed with.
Rodrick stepped forward to fulfill his duty of being leader.
“Hey uh-” He looked closely at the janitor’s shirt to read his name tag “Dave! Sweet sweet Dave, I promise it’ll never happen again, you know, kids make mistakes. But we, uhhh, we have somewhere else to be right now...” He said, trying to quickly walk away and distance himself from the situation.
Dave was not having it. At all. He stopped Rodrick in his tracks.
The boys shared a fearful look. What were they supposed to do?
Chris stepped forward, taking a chance. “I am so sorry sir.” He said, in his quietest and most respectful voice.
“Do you really think that’s gonna cut it? Look at the state of this place.”
He was right, it was trashed. Everyone who hadn’t left yet sat in silence and glared at the boys, secretly hoping they’d get banned for getting food on their overpriced shoes.
It was Ben’s turn to try and save the day. He took a deep breath. “I’m so sorry Dave, I did want to food fight, I lied, it wasn’t just Rodrick, and sorry for the huge mess, even though it was one of the best things I’ve ever done, please don’t kick us out or ban us from the mall, I only hang out at three places and the mall is one of them and this is the only place I can get my favorite hair gel-”
“Okokok kid, you’re fine, I don’t need to know your whole life story.” Dave said, cutting off Ben’s rambling with a wave of his hand.
Ben looked confused. “You don’t?”
Dave looked each boy in the eyes, staring into their souls. They squirmed in agony.
Then suddenly, he let out a huge burst of good humored laughter. The boys stood wide-eyed.
“Ok, I’m gonna be real with you, I’m just giving you shit. Leave the food court, and I’ll let you off with a warning, since you apologized, and since I know you all are a bit too dull to get into real trouble.”
“Really??” Rodrick said, not believing that they managed to weasel their way out of this one.
“Yeah, really. But I better not catch you destroying any other part of my mall, ok? Do not make me regret having mercy on you.”
The boys whooped with triumph and fist pumped the air.
“Thank you Dave, I promise you won’t regret this.” Chris said, and he meant it.
“Smell you later Dave, thanks for saving our butts out there today.” Rodrick stated, rather eloquently. “But you guys, I think it’s time we head out. I’LL RACE YOU TO THE BATHROOM!”
With that Rodrick and Chris bounded off for the bathrooms. Ben shot Dave a quick rock on sign to show his gratitude and ran off after them.
---
“I just think it’s funny you think you’re a good sport.” Chris said dryly.
“Thank you! I am funny, huh. And such a good sport, even though I crushed you guys in that race.” Rodrick fixed his hair in the mirror.
“Hey, I came in second. At least I didn’t blow it like Ben did.” Chris defended.
“Will you two ever shut up about the race? It’s OVER. Plus, I’m gonna win the next one anyway.”
“Oh, what makes you say that?” Rodrick turned his back to the mirror to stare Ben in the face, always one for a challenge.
Ben started to sweat, this was way, WAY, too much attention for him.
“Nothin!” He tried to work up some confidence for a comeback, but nothing was coming to him. Better to just make fun of Rodrick. “I mean, why? Are you tryin to scare me into losing or something? I bet you’re just scared I’ll win next time.” He said, as he faked having a backbone.
Rodrick made a big show of how “offended” he was. “Am not dude! Ugh. I can’t believe you would say that about me, your bestest friend in the whole world!” He dropped the melodramatic act and laughed.
“I have grease and Alfredo sauce all over the back of my pants, do you guys think it’s a good idea to take ‘em off?” Chris said.
Ben’s jaw dropped, the audacity of this kid. “You’re gonna strip and hang out around the mall bathroom?”
“Chris that is the funniest idea you’ve had all day. You do what your heart tells you to do, buddy.” said Rodrick.
“Well, my heart is telling me to take my pants off.” He started shuffling out of his pants, exposing his black and white checkered boxer shorts underneath. He threw them in the sink in front of him and drowned them in hot water. “Oh yeah, it’s all coming together.”
“You’re crazy dude. I’m gonna try to get this gum outta my hair.” Ben said, claiming the sink on the right of Chris, trying to forget what he saw. He looked in the mirror to assess the damage. A huge piece of pink bubblegum stuck out of the top of his frosted tips. He tugged at it but it only made it worse.
“Do you think you’ll have to cut the gum out? What if we buzz cut your hair! I think that’ll give the band a more punk rock look, right?” Rodrick was way too quick to ruin his look and murder his sweet frosted tips.
“No, I’m good. Why don’t you get a buzz cut? It could look coool.” He continued to struggle with his hair.
“Maybe I will. As the leader of the band you do what you gotta do.” Said Rodrick, as serious as the grave. “How’re the pants going over there big guy?”
“A bit soggy, and smell like Italian, but good!” Chris held up his dripping cargo pants. He shook them wildly to flick water all over the boys.
“What was that for??” Rodrick and Ben asked at the same time. Jinx.
“I’m trying to dry them out.”
“Go dry them out with the hand dryers, genius.” Rodrick said.
“Yes, Sir!” Saluted Chris. He crossed over to the dryers and slapped the on button, blasting the pants with heat. He was going to use the dryers anyway, he just wanted to mess with those dopes first. While he was drying he noticed the Löded Diper sticker they had stuck to the wall by the dryers one of the other times they had visited, it was their trademark.
Without thinking, Rodrick tore off his black t-shirt and overhand tossed it into the sink in front of him and turned on the faucet. He was blindingly white without a shirt, but what do you expect from a kid who never goes outside? He flexed his nonexistent muscles. “Check out these guns!” He gave a few poses to show off.
“Just wash your shirt.” Ben said, suddenly feeling out of breath.
“Yeah hurry up man, it’s 2x brighter in here with your shirt off, I can’t even see.” Chris joked.
“HEY! I backed you up on your no pants thing, you should have my back on this! And I’m hot and you know it, man. It would be a gift to the whole mall if I kept this shirt off.” Rodrick wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.
Chris howled with laughter. Ben dunked his head under the running faucet to escape his violent embarrassment.
“But I’ll steal all the girls from you guys if I do that, so I’ll put my shirt back on. For the bro code.” Rodrick said, trying to backpedal and still keep face. He wrung out his shirt and squeezed it back on.
Ben gasped from the water and brought his head back up to the mirror dripping wet. His hair was a limp mess. That mixed with the gum made it unfixable. “I give up dude. I guess I just look like this now.” He said with a sigh.
"You do look like you dunked your head in a toilet, but that could be cool for you.” Rodrick mustered up his best compliment.
Chris walked over with perfectly dried pants on. “You look fine! It kinda reminds me of two summers ago when you gave yourself those dyed emo bangs.”
Ben dry-heaved. “Nooo don’t say that! That cut was awful man. That summer was so boring, I had to find somethin to do.” That was during his very intense Pete Wentz phase.
“That summer was like every other summer we have though.” Chris said, stating facts.
“Yeah. But that was when you were grounded for two weeks and Rod was on vacation, so I chopped my hair off ‘cause I had nothin else to do.” And because he wanted to look like teen heartthrob/emo star Pete Wentz.
Rodrick frowned a bit at the conversation.
The impromptu haircut was the only interesting thing to happen that whole summer. The summer before that was absolutely dull, and two summers before that was abysmally forgettable. With Rodrick in hibernation, Ben’s around the clock babysitting, and Chris’s job at the record store, they never had free time to hang out or jam even once. What good was having a rockin’ band that never played?
A loud PING echoed off the bathroom walls and startled the boys. Chris fished his crumb covered phone out of his pocket. He wiped it off on his shirt and checked the text. “Hey not to be a drag but I gotta head out. Got called into work.”
“Aw do you have to? We could still ride the mall train or try on free eyeliner at the makeup stand downstairs.” Ben said with puppy dog eyes. The mall train is way too small for them and covered in sticky little kid hand prints, and the eyeliner is shitty, but they like to have fun.
“Nope gotta go. R can you drive me home?”
“You can’t skip out on work this one time?” Rodrick asked.
“If I miss work we can’t get old punk CDs anymore, and YOU can’t take naps in the break room whenever you want.” He said.
Rodrick sighed. “Ok fine, I’ll take you home. Can we stop by the Topic to check out the shows before we go?”
“Yeah, we can.” Chris said fondly. The other two wasted no time, they pushed him out of the bathroom in a hurry, almost hitting some guy and his son on the way out. The Topic was just three or four stores down.
---
While they walked, Rodrick became lost in thought. He had something to get off his chest. It was about this summer. It was something important to him, but it also was something he struggled to talk about to the guys. What if they thought it was stupid? It felt like a heavy weight on his chest crushing him. He gathered the courage and nudged his friends, “What are we gonna do this summer?” he said with heavy importance.
“Probably nothing.” Ben joked.
“NO. That’s not allowed this summer. Give me fun stuff, cool stuff.”
“Maybe we could throw rocks at cars by the overpass?” Chris said.
Rodrick scoffed. “That’s dangerous and probably illegal! We’ll do that at night. Any other ideas?”
“We should hang out with the stoner kids on the train tracks. This one guy there has a crazy tech deck collection I wanna see.” Said Ben, tech deck extraordinaire. He was too uncoordinated to skate, but he could tech deck like a pro.
“No no no, you guys are thinking too small. This summer has to be wild! This summer we get rich and famous.” Rodrick said with urgency.
“Why this summer?” Chris asked, feeling the weight of Rodrick’s plan.
Because... Because time’s running out, Rodrick thought. Because after this summer we graduate, and we might never see each other again. We’ll go our own ways, and years of being friends will mean dick. Because it’ll be an excuse to be together all summer instead of being lame all alone. Because this summer might keep us together, and I don’t know what’d I’d do without you guys. I don’t know what I'd do without messing around in the mall with you, or without driving super fast over huge speed bumps with you, or without finding cool music together at the record store, or without band practices in the garage with you guys. Why not this summer? We’re going to be famous anyway, because we’re the best band in town! So let's just do it and have some fun this summer, before it’s too late. The thoughts in Rodrick’s brain split off in eighteen different directions, and it sent his mind spinning. He couldn’t actually say any of that mushy stuff. But he had to say something, so he rattled off the first thing that came to mind.
“Just because I want to. And so that girls think we’re cool.” He lied.
“Is it because this is our last summer before graduation together?” Ben said, nailing exactly what Rodrick was really thinking.
“Oh hey, yeah, I didn’t even think of that! That too.”
Chris said with the inflection of a 90's hacker, “We’re here.”
They stood at the gates of edgy kid salvation, THE place to go when you go to the mall. The smell of teenage desperation and overpriced band shirts wafted through the open doors. The glass windows stretched for miles up to where they connected to the bold black sign, a sign declaring this place to be Hot Topic.
The boys crossed the threshold and made a beeline to the back of the store on a very important mission. They fought and pushed through the throngs of people. There was a summer sale, and they were smack dab in the middle of it. They got dirty looks and confused glances for their busted looks and awful smell. In the fray, Rodrick tripped over a huge stand of nail polish, and sent a dozen bottles tumbling down. They clanked to the floor and rolled around all over the place. They pushed on. At the halfway point they saw a crazy punk chick with dyed red mohawk working the cashier, arguing with someone’s mom. Ben mentally sent her some good luck as they pushed forward. After a scuffle, they finally came out of the crowd unscathed at the back end of the Topic. They stood panting as they caught their breath.
“It’s not summer for another week! We could’ve died in there.” Ben thought out loud.
Rodrick rubbed his hands together excitedly. “Shows, summer shows, come to papa!” He stood in front of the huge bulletin board covered haphazardly in papers. It was here you could find what bands were playing where in town, various meetups for metalheads or emo kids, a couple guitar teacher’s fliers scattered here and there, and vulgar graffiti done in sharpie by twelve year olds. But the boys were only interested in whether or not their favorite bands were playing in the next three months.
Rodrick dragged a finger down the list of bands, his nose almost touching the paper as he focused.
“Anything good?” Chris said.
Rodrick hunched in disappointment. “Nothing other than some country singers for sixty year olds.” Another paper caught his eye. “Wait, what’s that one up there? That’s new!” A wide lavender paper that looked important was stapled to the board above the band list, a little too high up to be seen properly. “I can’t see it, pick me up!”
“Nope.” Chris said.
"You’re bigger than me dude, no.” Ben huffed.
“Well. No choice then.” Rodrick bent, picked up Ben, and hoisted him onto his shoulders (much to Ben’s dismay).
“NO, put me down!” He blushed from head to toe, hating this idea. “This sucks.”
“Shut up, you’re the shortest out of the three of us! Read what the paper says!” Rodrick insisted.
“I’m only three inches shorter than you!”
“JUST READ THE PAPER.”
He grumbled and relented. “Fine. But hold still, you’re moving too much.” Ben squinted to see the words better. He read aloud, “Plainview’s 35th Annual Battle of The Bands! Rock the night away, win prize money, and get the chance to be signed to a major record label. Auditions May 31st!”
“Woah.” Chris knew that this poster dictated the future of their entire summer.
“WHAT!” Rodrick exclaimed. “This May 31st right? In two weeks? You’re not messing with me?”
“Man, why would I mess with you, it says it right here.” He tapped the paper. “Can you put me down now?”
“Snatch the poster first!” Rodrick shook with ecstatic energy. Ben fumbled to take the poster off the wall with the extra movement below, but finally tore it off and held it gleefully above his head.
“Got it!”
Rodrick set Ben down gently on the ground and tore the poster from his hands. He stared at it hard, trying to absorb every word. He took a steady breath to calm himself.
“Look guys!” They all gathered around the poster. “Now this is what I’m talking about! This is what we’re doing this summer!” Rodrick beamed. “We gotta get a set together! What song do you guys wanna do? Should we bring merch? CD’s? Eyeliner, yes or no? What do we wear? There’s just so much-”
“We have two weeks to figure that out R.” Chris soothed Rodrick’s franticness by grabbing his shoulders and giving him a little shake to bring him back to real life.
“Do you guys know what this means for us? This is our time! We might actually get our big break!” Rodrick could hardly believe their luck.
That poster in the crowded Hot Topic could change the course of their lives forever. And the boys felt it. This felt like what they were supposed to be doing, the path they were supposed to be on. Was this their destiny? Had the years of listening to punk bands, playing on second hand instruments, and being a trio of best friends lead them to this?
---
“Hey dude, can you drive me home now?”