The Adventures of Pete and the Pals


At the far side of the room, a few other kids were sitting on a stack of those metal folding chairs. A guy with a guitar was leafing through some sheet music on a stand, while a teenager about Evelyn’s age was setting up a keyboard. After some hesistation, we joined the other kids on the chairs.

“All right,” said the guitar guy, looking up from the music pages. “Uh…Tristan, are you set up over there?”

Tristan (the teenager at the keyboard) nodded.

“Okay.” The guitar guy pulled a paper out from the sheet music pile. “Welcome to the Children’s Caroling Club.”

While he was giving his talk about how great the program was, etc., Johnny elbowwd Pete. “That’s the guy from the hotel---you know, the one Amy whacked on the head!”

Pete nodded. “Uh-huh. Don’t remind him. He might get mad.”

“My name is Brian Rawley, and that’s my nephew, Tristan.” Mr. Rawley glanced at the paper. “Okay…roll call.”

When he was done with that, we knew the names of the other kids. The eleven-year-old girl with reddish-blond hair who was holding a book called The Prydain Chronicles was named Eileen Lee. The twins about Rory’s age were named Jordan and Jaden Cartwright, and their seven-year-old sister was named Hailee. Then there was us, of course, and a couple of girls about Tim’s age named Zoe Berner and Brianna Harper. The last kid was a sullen-looking ten-year-old boy who openly proclaimed that his mother was forcing him to come. His name was Lucas Garrett. We privately sympathized with him.

“Now, we have til Christmas Eve to get these songs down,” Mr. Rawley said. “Rehearsals are Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays from now til then.”

Lucas groaned, and we felt like joining him.

“The first thing we need to do is decide who’s singing the solos,” said Mr. Rawley. “Everyone line up, and you’ll take turns singing this song.”

Tristan passed out copies of ‘Deck the Halls’. There was a scramble as most of the kids fought for a spot in the back of the line.

“I can’t sing!” Rory whispered. “I didn’t know we had to do solos!”

The girls ended up going first. By the time the third one went, we were all sick of ‘Deck the Halls’.

“It’s like saying a word over and over,” Tim whispered to Johnny. “After a while, it doesn’t even sound like a word anymore.”

We made it through our turns, but not without embarrassment. Mr. Rawley even told Rory to stop singing when he was halfway through. The rest of us suspected Rory was purposely being awful, and wished we’d thought of that.

“Okay…I’ll announce who got solos on Tuesday, so be sure to be here,” said Mr. Rawley. “Now we’re going to do a few warm-up exercises.”

What happened the rest of the time doesn’t need to be gone into in detail. Let’s just say we never wanted to hear the words ‘me’, ‘dough’, and ‘ray’ for a while.

On Tuesday, we arrived at the music store at the scheduled time and went into the rehearsal room. After doing the roll call, Mr. Rawley pulled out a stack of papers.

“Okay…I’ll call you up if you got a solo, and after that I’ll hand out the other songs we’ll be singing as a group. Hailee---you’ll be singing Silent Night. Sally, you’ll sing Silver Bells. Jonathan, you’ll be singing Nothin’ for Christmas.”

There was a pause, during which every other kid in the room was probably thinking, Thank goodness it isn’t me! We expected Johnny to think up a good excuse why he couldn’t, or at least protest, but evidently his mind was momentarily wiped by the horror. Mr. Rawley continued handing out assignments. “Zoe, you’ll sing O Christmas Tree, and Tim, you get Parade of the Wooden Soldiers.”

Tim actually look relieved. At least it wasn’t an embarrassing one.
 

The rest of us got a stapled-together handout. The front looked like this:

THE CHILDREN’S CAROLING CLUB

SILENT NIGHT
THE FIRST NOEL
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR
HARK THE HERALD ANGELS SING
JINGLE BELLS
FROSTY THE SNOWMAN
SILVER BELLS
WHITE CHRISTMAS
DECK THE HALLS
RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER
PARADE OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS
O CHRISTMAS TREE
SLEIGH RIDE
NUTTIN’ FOR CHRISTMAS
WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS

“Good ones,” said Rory. “Nothing we don’t know.”

Johnny finally broke his shocked silence. “I can’t sing that song!”

He said this loud enough to catch Mr. Rawley’s attention.

“Why not?” Mr. Rawley asked.

Johnny hesistated a moment. “Because the first verse says, ‘I broke my bat on Johnny’s head.’ Now, why would I be breaking a bat on my own head?”

“Replace it with any two-syllable name,” said Mr. Rawley.

Johnny thought a minute. “How about VidKid?”

“A real name,” said Mr. Rawley.

“That is a real name!” Johnny protested. “I know somebody named that.”

“That’s not actually his legal name,” Henry said.

“Just use Jimmy,” Mr. Rawley said.

Johnny slumped back onto the stack of folded chairs. “Great. I hope nobody we know comes to this. I’ll never live it down.”

“We have to sell tickets,” Pete said. “It says right here on the back of the music sheets.”

“Nobody better sell any to the Spikers,” Johnny said.

“What’ll you do about it if I do?” Rory said.

Johnny whispered something in his ear, and Rory paled.

“What?” Teddy wanted to know.

Rory glared. “Never mind.”
 
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Fortunately for Johnny, the practice time ran out before Mr. Rawley got around to asking him to sing.

“So, I guess we should start selling tickets,” Tim said as we headed home.

“Who should we try first?” Rory asked. “Besides our families, I mean.”

Pete had a plan. “We’ll split into three groups—me and Tim, Johnny and Rory, and Henry and Teddy—and each take a few floors of the building.”

“Think we’ll sell all thirty of them?” Teddy asked.

“Sure,” Pete said. “Nine for our families leaves only twenty-one to sell. That shouldn’t be too hard. Each group can take seven.”

“Remember—no Spikers,” Johnny said. “And I can’t waste too much time on ticket selling. With all the homework I’ve had lately, I’ve barely had any time to work on my story for that Young Writer’s Contest. The deadline is December 31.”

“It won’t take too long to sell those tickets,” Pete said. “Let’s meet in my room after an hour to see how we’ve done.”

An hour later, we gathered in his room.

“So, how did it go?” Pete asked.

Johnny frowned. “Two words—epic fail.”

“That was your fault,” Rory said. “You treated the people like they were long-lost cousins or something.”

“I was just acting like the telemarketers,” Johnny defended himself. “You know, the ones that call Dad and act like they knew each other since high school.”

“Well, statistically speaking, women tend to buy stuff from younger kids,” Henry said, “so I let Teddy do the talking. We sold four.”

“We sold two to some friends of Dad’s,” Pete said. “I guess that’s enough for today. I’ll give Mom a few tomorrow—maybe she can sell some at work.”

“Mr. Rawley said we had to sell them,” Henry said.

“He wants them sold, period,” Pete said. “He won’t care who does the actually selling.”

Johnny looked miserable. “I just know Dad’s going to film the show, and I’ll be immortalized for posterity singing that stupid song.”

“Huh?” said Teddy.

“Stuck on DVD forever,” Johnny explained. “I wonder why I got picked.”

Rory gave him a smug smile. “I know why. You weren’t smart like me. I sang bad on purpose.”

This normally would have turned into a fight, but Pete changed the subject. “So—what’s on your Christmas lists?”

“Amy gets me the same thing every year—an educational game and an organic sweater,” Tim said.

“They make organic clothes?” Teddy asked. “I thought that was just food.”

“Well, that’s what it says on the tag,” Tim said.

“I definitely know what I want,” said Johnny. “The Return of the King: Extended Edition.”

“Nothing else?” Pete asked.

“When you got six kids in your family, the gifts kind of have to be spread around,” Johnny explained. “We each ask for one or two things.”

“Well, Ed and Anna Rose only want gift cards and things like that,” Pete said. “So I usually get a lot of stuff. Not to mention my relatives send stuff, too. Usually games for the Wii or Xbox.”

“You got some wicked cool relatives,” Johnny said. “We’ve only got Aunt Linda and Uncle Frank, and they only send a card. Sometimes. And there’s Great-Aunt Patricia and Grandma in Canada. They send clothes and money that gets put in our save-for-college bank accounts. I guess I’ll be happy about that what I go to college, but that’s years in the far future.”

“Uncle Ryan sent a box last year,” Tim said. “Amy confiscated it and removed all stuff she disapproved of, like candy, video games, and a shirt from something called Avatar: The Last Airbender. She said keeping the shirt would be pandering to modern consumerism.”

“What was left?” Rory asked.

“The packing peanuts and a card. She recycled them both.”

Once again, the rest of us were suddenly thankful for our own families.
 
Am I mixed up? I may be mixed up. I had the impression that this was a nostalgic story, _remembering_ a childhood in, say, maybe the late 1990's. But now I see the expression "epic fail" in dialogue. Has that expression been around longer than I thought?
 
Well...my sister and I started the story eight years ago. So the time frame is a little mixed up. I guess since Lord of the Rings movies and stuff like that is around it's happening around now. But some of the events are based on stuff that happened in our family in the late 1990's and early 2000's, so...yeah. It is confusing. :D
 
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GGray said:
“Uncle Ryan sent a box last year,” Tim said. “Amy confiscated it and removed all stuff she disapproved of, like candy, video games, and a shirt from something called Avatar: The Last Airbender. She said keeping the shirt would be pandering to modern consumerism.”

“What was left?” Rory asked.

“The packing peanuts and a card. She recycled them both.”

Once again, the rest of us were suddenly thankful for our own families.
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Poor Tim.:p
 
“Hey, Pete!” It was Anna Rose. “There’s a letter in the mail for you.”

Pete grabbed it and tore it open. “Thanks. Wow, it’s from Tyler! His family is coming here to visit their grandparents, and he wants to know if we can meet up someplace.”

“Will he be here in time for the concert?” Rory asked. “Because, if he is, we can sell six more tickets to his family.”

“We can’t do that,” Henry objected. “That would be rude—inviting them to a concert and then making them pay to get in.”

“Mom and Dad will treat them, I’m sure,” Pete said.

Pete turned out to be right, so we were down to nine tickets.

“Maybe we can raffle them off or something,” Rory suggested.

“I have a better idea,” Johnny said. “I’ll meet you here in two hours. Give me those tickets.”

He snatched them from Pete, grabbed Teddy, and hurried away.

“I wonder what he’s up to,” Henry said. “Hopefully nothing illegal.”

“Well, we’ll find out in two hours,” Pete said. “Until then, you can help me pick out what new games I should get for the Wii. My grandparents want to know.”

The time passed quickly (unlike it does in school). Exactly two hours later on the dot, Johnny and Teddy burst into Pete’s room. The rest of us stared at them, speechless.

“Did you get attacked by Jaws, or caught in a human-sized paper shredder?” Rory finally asked.

Johnny and Teddy sure looked like they’d been through some kind of imminent danger. Their jackets were ripped up, and their sneakers were full of holes.

Johnny grinned. “We sold five more tickets!”

“Before or after you were chewed up?” Pete asked.
“Oh, nothing happened to us,” Teddy explained. “Johnny said we should put on some beat-up clothes in order to look pitiful. That way, people would definitely buy tickets from us.”

There was another long silence, which was broken by Henry. “Great. I have a couple of scam artists for brother. Don’t you know that’s fraud?”

Teddy looked confused. “But, we never said we needed the money or anything.”

Henry glared at Johnny. “That’s a despicable trick, worthy of a Spiker.”

The rest of us had to agree with him.

Teddy looked worried. “Think we’ll get arrested?”

“Not if you go and give all those people their money back,” Henry said.

Johnny, as usual, didn’t think anything was wrong with his idea. “Like Teddy said, we didn’t lie or anything. So what if we happened to wear clothes that were a little worn out?”

Henry rolled his eyes. “You’d think you’d know by now that you should ask the rest of us before rushing off on some crazy scheme.”

“Oh, yeah?” Johnny said. “How about that time you killed the neighbor’s flowers in the interest of science?”

“That was an accident,” Henry said. “Besides, I was only four.”
 
A new update! Finally! :D

I love this bit:

“Oh, yeah?” Johnny said. “How about that time you killed the neighbor’s flowers in the interest of science?”

“That was an accident,” Henry said. “Besides, I was only four.”
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Pete, using his power as club leader, interrupted with his decision—the money had to be refunded. After some grumbling, Johnny and Teddy set off to find the victims of their scam, with Henry along to make sure everything was done with regard for the law.

One of the victims refused to take her money back and insisted on keeping the ticket. Henry tried to convince her that she was setting a bad example and teaching Teddy contempt for the law, but she just laughed and said something about a “cute kid.” Henry said she was referring to Teddy, but Johnny disagreed and claimed she added that she “just thought little know-it-alls were so adorable.” Weird.

By Thursday, we only had three tickets left to sell (Pete’s mom had sold some at work). When we met at the bus stop, Johnny was nowhere in sight. Sally finally found him in Tim’s closet, scribbling away in a notebook. He claimed he’d been busy working on his contest story and lost track of the time, but some of us suspected otherwise.

When we got to the music store, Mr. Rawley and Tristan had us all get into the formation we were going to stand in during the performance. They spent ten minutes arguing about which Cartwright twin was taller, while the rest of us were entertained by Lucas Garrett’s Smeagol imitation. (Johnny gave him a 8 out of 10.) Mr. Rawley finally told him to cut it out and told Tristan that they’d finish their discussion later.

Before we sang any songs, Mr. Rawley had us sing these so-called “warm-up exercises.” Man, if any of the Spikers had been there recording us, they would had blackmail material on us for life. Two of the worst ones were “ma-ma-ma-ma-ma,” which sounded like either babies crying for mama or like sick goats, and “la-la-la-la-la-I-love-to-sing,” which, besides being dumb, was an epic lie.
 
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1.5 years since I updated this...:eek: I should see if I have the story file on my new laptop. Maybe there's more under there that I haven't posted yet.
 
It made me smile to see that this thread was back in the "new posts" area. I have so many great memories of laughing my lungs out over your updates. ;) I hope there is more story for you to post!
 
MissReepicheep said:
It made me smile to see that this thread was back in the "new posts" area. I have so many great memories of laughing my lungs out over your updates. ;) I hope there is more story for you to post!
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Thanks! :o

When college is over for the semester I'll dig up the document on my laptop and see if there's any more to post.
 
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