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Excerpt: Hundred-Hit Wonders



Braden wasn’t listening to the panties-turn the conversation had taken. His mind was still working. It was an amazing thing, Braden’s mind. Almost as amazing as his face. He was the valedictorian, after all, the smartest guy in Grade 12. He took a sip of beer and pondered. He contemplated and masticated as the other two carried on a far-away conversation in silence.

It had to be something completely insane. Something that had never been done before, not in movies, on TV, or anywhere else. It had to be something uniquely them, something that summed up their three years at SWC, and even their previous stint at Simon Fraser Junior High. It had to be something that meant buckets to the staff and students alike. It had to make the news. But it had to be legal: nobody’s parents should be paying for a lawyer, they had the boys’ gap-year trip to pay for.

“What do you think? Braden?” Matt asked. The other two were looking at him. They had learned long ago that when he shut them out, it was because his brain was coming up with something astounding. So they were patiently looking at him, waiting to see if he thought anything about the conversation of theirs he had just been ignoring.

Braden cleared the fog and looked at his pals’ faces, to his right. Josh, in the middle, his unkempt hair all over the place, and his laughing green eyes still sparkling despite the now almost total darkness. Matt, who despite the fact that with his incredible looks could have any girl he wanted, had broken the heart of every single girl in SWC by never having a girlfriend, ever. Josh and Braden had been best friends basically since kindergarten, and Matt had become their third musketeer midway through Grade six. The three of them had grown up in the neighbourhood that now lay twinkling below, going through all the rites of passage together; there was no way they could leave twelve long, hard years of school without leaving an indelible mark behind.

Braden looked earnest. It wasn’t a look anyone was used to seeing on his face. His flame-blue eyes with their black fringes of lash were flicking between the two of them. His superman jaw was rigid, as if the glinting teeth hidden behind his unusually tight lips were clenched. The other two stopped breathing. Did Braden have an idea?

Braden spoke dramatically, like he was giving his valedictorian speech, and he started counting points on his fingers for emphasis. “It has to something completely unique, never been done before.” The other two nodded. “It has to be legal, but just on the edge of legal.” The other two smirked and nodded. “It has to be so memorable that they’ll still be talking about us in twenty, thirty years.” Matt, that very naughty look back in his eye, gave a low whistle, and the other two nodded again. “And,” Braden continued, his right forefinger poised over his left pinkie for emphasis, he leaned forward and finished in a very low voice, just above a whisper, “it has to be so amazing, so incredible, that it gets on the news.”

The other two yelped, howled, and punched each others’ knuckles while Braden leaned back, his arms crossed in satisfaction across his chest. They still didn’t have an idea, but they had hype, and that was the important thing.