#scenebreak
I lived. Obviously. The bullet didn’t do any serious damage to my leg and Dad pushed me every day to get me in shape in time for the homecoming dance. I actually enrolled in Dumass High after all. Go Mules.
Officer Friendly went to jail, which also should not come as a great surprise.
Twist? Not really sure. Nothing in his car indicated what his plans might’ve been. Three weeks passed without a sign of him. Texas is a big fucking state and Dumass was a couple days’ walk from the border. If we were lucky he’d bled out somewhere in the middle of the desert.
I didn’t sue anyone.
The Dumass Rampaging Mules lost the homecoming game. Farmer-C did his best to amp up the second stringers who were suddenly the first string, but to no avail. Surprisingly, the entire town didn’t hate me for it, and the new first string was stoked at their promotion.
Being the captain’s buddy helped me, I suppose. Rescuing Tango and getting shot by Twist made me a bit of a local celebrity. My friends still called me Foxtrot, but to the rest of the town I became That Dance Guy, as in, “Oh, you’re That Dance Guy, the one who helped save Tango.”
From Ethan Fox, World Ten-Dance Champion. . . to That Dance Guy. Meh. I could live with it. After everything that’d happened, titles didn’t seem so important.
The crew was set to debut the new routine at the homecoming dance the night the Mules got their asses kicked. It was a blend of Tango’s choreo and mine with a section that was all Juicy.
The homecoming dance itself was more festive than I’d expected after a loss. Farmer-C did a great job of making the guys feel they’d held their own on their first game out. It was good to see him in his element, gave me a new level of respect for the goofball. He was good with his team. Seriously.
A salsa played, and he looked up at me with his big puppy dog eyes.
Tango and I were on the floor dancing at the time. She saw his look and laughed. “Oh, go ahead and dance with your Boyfriend.” I heard the capital letter and laughed with her. I guess Corey would end up nicknamed Boyfriend after all, but with a much more ironic meaning.
So I held my hand out to him and he dashed over, reaching my side with a long, impressive slide. “Left foot in, right foot out,” he whispered, grinning the whole time. He’d had a few more lessons and was picking it up pretty well. After the lock-in, I’d taught him to listen to the music the way he did when he was throwing bales of hay and he’d improved his rhythm tremendously.
“Sorry about the game,” I told him.
He shrugged. “It’s not about winning.” He spun me. “Those new guys are awesome. . . and they’re not going around beating the shit out of my friends.” He leaned in close. “Okay, can you pretend I’m leading something really cool? I think Theresa Sanchez is checking me out.”
I glanced at a pretty girl who was definitely watching.
“She’s. . . valedictorian,” he added with a lascivious chortle.
I snorted. He’d said “valedictorian” the way most guys would say, “She has really huge tits.”
“Gotcha. Get ready to take my weight. Death drop.”
He grinned. “Awesome.”
I spun myself off to one side as if he’d led me there. Okay, try to picture it, I guess. It’s called a roll-in. We stood side by side holding hands with arms fully stretched. I spun into him, wrapping myself up like a yo-yo. When I was tucked in close, he steadied me with his free hand.
“Lunge to your left,” I whispered.
He lunged, and I leaned against him in a very swing pose.
“Here we go,” I warned. I stepped across him, turned and let myself drop to the floor back first.
Everyone gasped when it looked as if I were about to crack my head, but Boyfriend caught my weight just in time, and my head stopped about a half-inch from the floor. Ordinarily, I can get myself back up, but he overbalanced me a bit and I had been shot in the leg, so I was kinda stuck there. “Bring me up, bro.”
I’m going to guess I weigh less than a bale of hay. He yanked so hard, I shot up and caught air before landing lightly at his side, ignoring the flash of pain. . . just a couple of feet from Theresa.
The crowd went wild.
Still holding Boyfriend by one hand, I turned to Theresa. “Have you met my friend, Corey?” I offered her my free hand.
She smiled shyly and took it.
I passed her to Boyfriend, who gave me a big grin and punched me in the shoulder. I avoided rubbing my arm until after he’d turned away.
Guys: always remember that girls will overlook almost anything for a dude who can dance.
The music slowed and Tango found me. “That was pretty good for a guy who was laid out three times this month.”
“Well, you’ve been really helping with the ‘physical therapy’.” I gave her my tacky eyebrow waggle.
She chuckled and punched me in the exact same spot as Boyfriend.
I managed to avoid wincing.
We did the boat. You know, typical slow dance hugging and swaying to the music. I always say if you’re able to think enough to do fancy shit to a slow dance, you’re obviously holding the wrong person. She felt perfect in my arms. Her body was warm against mine.
Deep breath. The good kind.
Boyfriend and Theresa boated nearby. He gave me a thumbs up.
I winked back.
Juicy and Cosita danced together, too, and I loved that no one hassled them. Seeing the two of them made me think of my dad, who was a chaperone. Where’d he get to?
He was dancing with Dr. Mike on the fringes of the floor. Most likely because they were chaperoning and not because they were both dudes. The happiness in Dad’s face amazed me. Here he was, once again in his alma mater, finally celebrating at the homecoming dance he should’ve had over twenty years ago. I’d never seen him look at someone that way. He was utterly in love with Dr. Mike.
The way Mike stared into Dad’s eyes, the feeling was mutual. Wow.
No, seriously. . . wow.
K-pop and Taco hovered by the food. K-pop watched Cosita with Juicy, and I hoped the surprise I’d planned for him would do some good.
Right on cue, the DJ announced the crew’s performance.
We took our places at the end of the gym near the stage, and the crowd gave us room. The giant screen that’d cost me all my coaching money unrolled behind us from the ceiling. K-pop was understandably puzzled, especially when he saw that everyone else expected it.
As he took his place, I squeezed his shoulder and grinned. “This is for your own good, K-pop.”
He raised an eyebrow. “What is?”
I patted the shoulder. “We’re using your video for a backdrop.”
His face turned whiter than usual and his eyes opened into total anime exclamation points.
“Dude, I’m telling you ahead of time so you don’t freak out in the middle of the routine.”
Some of the crew had wanted it to be a complete surprise, but Tango and I knew it’d be unfair to spring it on him that way.
“Your shit’s sick wicked,” I said. “The world deserves a chance to see it, hai?”
He didn’t speak.
I grabbed both arms. “You gonna be okay?”
He looked around at the expectant faces of the crew and took a deep breath. “Hai.”
“Hai.” I gave his arms one last squeeze and moved into position.
Yep, I was dancing, too. The new pain meds were stellar.
I signaled the lighting crew.
The overhead fluorescents died and the spots flared up.
“Hit it!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.
We hit it.
The routine started with a jazzy section left over from the old way they danced, and the crowd settled in for the same old, same old. We did that for twenty seconds. . . then the music cut out for four beats while the entire crew screamed, “Five, six, seven, eight!”
The video fl
ashed into life with a twenty foot animated K-pop dancing behind us. The music screamed into the killer swango I’d given Tango for her birthday, in a K-pop-rendered mashup with a dubstep remix from one of the Step Ups.
The crew launched into a brand new hip hop sequence from my buddy in Houston.
The crowd practically came on the spot.
Tango and I performed a duet that earned spontaneous cheers.
K-pop, Farmer-C and I debuted the sparring material we’d lifted from my Beast video.
Juicy danced a solo for a few phrases where she finally let loose for the first time ever in her home town and the crowd went in-sane, but not nearly as wild as the moment Taco broke out his hip hop shtick. They went cra-azy for that.
By the way, the video of our performance went viral as: retro hip hop dude goes cra-azy. From that moment on, Taco’s nickname was Retro.
It was, to quote one of my friends: “awesome.” It wasn’t the best choreo I’d ever danced, and I was still nursing bruised ribs and a gunshot leg, so I was off my game, but I’d never, ever experienced the euphoria I felt with those folks on that gym floor in tiny, little Dumass, Texas.
The routine ended.
The lights cut out.
The crowd exploded.
Well, not literally. I mean, with everything else that’d happened, who’d be surprised, right? They swarmed us, and it was hard to tell what impressed them more, the upgraded dance crew who’d never performed better or the amazing video backdrop. Everyone asked what movie we lifted the animation from and when they found out it was a K-pop original, they could not believe it.
Well, first we had to explain who K-pop was. Since he was so quiet, no one really knew him as anything other than That-Pop-And-Lock-Guy-On-The-Dance-Crew. Once we pointed him out, his new fans mobbed him.
However, the one girl in a Naruto t-shirt hesitated.
Okay, two shy people will never meet without the heavy hand of a true friend.
I snagged K-pop’s arm. “Bro, I need to talk to you about—” I hauled him right into the girl. Bam!
“Oh wow,” I said, “I am so sorry.” I pointed at her t-shirt “Naruto?” I spoke in my horrible rendition of a fake, deep anime accent. “K-pop, she wears a Naruto t-shirt.” I maneuvered him closer. “I have seen you wear Naruto underwear. You should show them to her some time, hai.”
And off I dashed, back to Tango, who had seen me at work. “Do I need to start calling you Yenta, the matchmaker?”
I held her in my arms. Yeah, never going to stop mentioning how good that felt. “I just want my friends to be as happy as I am.”
“So you have friends, now?” she asked, referring to our first dance session a lifetime ago, less than six weeks earlier.
“The best.”
She kissed me. That was nice, too.
We danced some more.
We kissed some more.
A good time was had by all.