And I’m like, “Yeah?”
“But really,” Nash said, his arm now around my shoulders, guiding me away from the room he just came out of. “What are you doing back here? You guys should be out there schmoozing. Ten o’clock isn’t too far away—you have to cram in the fun.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s why I wanted to come back here. I just wanted to get your ideas on my investigations so far.”
“That’s cool,” Nash said. “But nothing needs investigating back here.”
The girls laughed.
“Seriously, though,” Nash said, “before you head out, I was wondering if you’d do me a little favor.”
“Um, okay,” I said. “What is it?”
“Well, until the band comes back, we’re going to have a little karaoke action, and I thought you three might want to represent the O-Town Elites.”
“O-Town Elites?”
“Yeah, that’s my gang.”
That meant Rowan’s gang must be the North Side Monarchs. Could it be that Hector’s cousin actually thought the Monarchs were a real gang? Could Hector have told him they were? Before I could muster any answers, Audrey stepped up.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “You want us to do this because you think we’ll be terrible and you can win some bet?”
“Not exactly,” Nash replied. “I was hoping you’d be terrible on purpose so I can win a bet.”
“But everyone will think we’re idiots,” I said.
“No they won’t.” Brett gave my arm a squeeze. “They’ll think you’re notorious.”
“And I would love it,” added Aisling.
“I’m in,” Randy piped up from behind Holt.
I looked at Audrey, and she’s like, “It might be kind of funny. Like that time we did the comedy version of ‘Bullet Head’ by Insidious at the journalism fund-raiser.”
“ ‘Bullet Head’!” Nash sounded thrilled. “That’s perfect. I know we have that one on the machine.”
Brett aimed her brilliant blues at me. “Besides, you have to contribute something for getting into Gangland free tonight.”
I didn’t really like the sound of it. After all, I figured an investigator should remain more low-key than that. You’d never see Walker, Texas Ranger, or the Andromeda Man doing karaoke. But I had to make up for getting caught in the forbidden corridor. Besides, what are you going to do when you have a black-haired, blue-eyed rich girl standing so close you can smell the mint on her breath?
CHAPTER 17
I agreed to go through with the bad karaoke under one condition—that they didn’t announce us by our real names. Nash said that was all right by him, and after some discussion, we ended up with me as Nitro, Randy as TNT, and Audrey as Lil’ Dynamite. But there was no time to rehearse. The Hollisterites herded us out of the corridor, and we squeezed our way to the front of the stage, where Rowan was already rambling off a long, overblown introduction to the first act, a tall, lanky brunette by the name of Paige Harrison.
That was her first mistake, I thought. No cool alias.
As the opening notes of one of those horrible generic girlpop songs started up, she slunk across the stage to the microphone, popping her eyes wide and licking her lips in what appeared to be a caricature of your typical teen diva. Now, I’m no American Idol judge, but even I could tell she was way off-key, and I’m not sure that part was intended. She was pretty funny, though. She had to strain her eyes to read the lyrics, and with her awkward bumping and grinding, she had all the grace of an ostrich with its tail feathers on fire.
I knew she was supposed to be bad, but as I listened to the boos and jeers and laughter of the crowd, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. There were so many gorgeous girls around, and she was so obviously not gorgeous I found myself hoping she’d drop the act and end up being great after all. No such luck, though. She was horrible from start to finish.
“That’s going to be hard to beat,” I told Audrey.
“Yeah,” she said. “We’d better start off with our big guns. Let Randy go first.”
Nash introduced us as if we actually were three badasses from the wrong side of town, even going so far as listing our supposed crimes: barbecuing a baby, killing a hobo with a pitchfork, and stealing all the stuffed animals out of the game machine in the lobby of Pizzalicious.
The karaoke machine cranked up the beat as soon as we took the stage, and Nash handed off the microphone to Randy. The crowd cheered and booed at the same time. Randy wasn’t involved in our journalism fund-raiser performance, so he had a hard time with the lyrics, but he made up for it with his god-awful dancing. Moving to the very edge of the stage, he grimaced, twisted, threw up his version of gang signals, and grabbed his crotch. At times, he looked like he was being riddled by machine-gun fire. It was pretty hilarious, except I knew he thought he was phenomenal.
When his part was done, he pranced back and handed the microphone off to Lil’ Dynamite. Rocking her shoulders in perfect time to the beat, she launched into the lyrics of “Bullet Head” with a vengeance. No pretending to be bad for her—she ruled. But about halfway through, she veered away from Insidious’s rhymes and started freestyling her own. I’d seen her do this before—the girl could seriously throw down:
Boys in the hallway putting up a cockfight.
Losers and winners, they both the same at midnight.
Girlie-girls with satin gloves twirling in their ball gowns.