Struts & Frets Read Online Free Page A

mean, most people our age don’t even know what they want to do with themselves and they don’t really care. But
I
care. I really want to be a musician.”
    Jen5 didn’t say anything, but her brush started hitting the canvas hard enough for me to hear it.
    â€œWhat?” I said.
    She stopped painting and looked at me. “Do you think they really care about what we want, Sammy? Do you
really
?”
    â€œHey Sammy, I figured out how to play ‘Peter Gunn’!” said Alexander.
    Rick, TJ, and I had been friends a long time before the band got started. The other guy in our group was Alexander. He was brainiac smart and really good at soccer, but he didn’t hang out with either the nerds or the jocks. Maybe it was because he was one of the few black kids in our school.Maybe it was because he was also a skater and had worn oversized clothes for so many years that he didn’t even know what his normal size was, and he had the biggest and most perfectly shaped fro that I’d ever seen. None of that fit in too well in central Ohio. But it was more than that. He was like a walking, talking They Might Be Giants song. He was always cheerful, always goofy, and just so
weird
that most of the time nobody understood what he was talking about. He was kind of like the weirdness mascot for our freaky little crew.
    â€œWhat’s ‘Peter Gunn’?” asked Rick. We were all sitting around our lunch table. Rick looked even more out of it than usual. He had dark circles under his eyes, he looked like he hadn’t showered, and he was slumped so far over the table that it made you feel like he needed it to keep from falling off the bench.
    â€œYou know,” I said. “‘Peter Gunn’ was that Spy Hunter theme from the old-school Nintendo.”
    â€œOh.” Rick nodded. “I didn’t realize it had another name.”
    â€œI think it was the theme song for a TV show in the fifties,” said TJ.
    â€œHuh,” said Rick. “Was the Mario Brothers theme from something else too?”
    â€œI don’t think so,” said TJ.
    â€œSurprising,” said Rick. “It was a catchy tune.”
    â€œWhat do you mean you figured out how to play it?” I asked Alexander.
    â€œWith my hands!” said Alexander.
    All three of us groaned.
    Alexander had really sweaty palms. Now, this was gross enough all by itself, but Alexander, in typical Alexander fashion, made it even worse when he figured out that by squeezing his sweaty palms together, he could get them to make a farting noise. Most meathead jocks would have laughed and maybe done it in Ms. Jansen’s English class once or twice, then left it at that. But not Alexander. He didn’t really even think it was funny. He thought it was
interesting
. So he kept experimenting with it until he realized that by applying different kinds of pressure, he could produce different tones. Since then, he had been attempting to play a song with hand farts.
    â€œWanna hear?” he asked now, his hands poised and his face eager.
    â€œNot really,” I said. But I knew it wouldn’t do any good.
    â€œHere goes!” he said, and began. His face screwed up in concentration as he worked his hands together, and sure enough, slowly we started to hear wet, squeaky notes:
phfipphop phfip-phop phfip-phop phfffip-phfip!
    â€œWow,” said TJ. But he couldn’t help grinning a little bit.
    Alexander was getting warmed up now and the song was building momentum. It really did sound like “Peter Gunn.” All three of us were nodding our heads in time, and Rick and I couldn’t resist coming in with the second part over top:
    â€œ
Baaaaa bah! Baaaaaaaaaa beeebah! Buh-buh-buh bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bah boo-buh-du!
” We busted up laughing as Alexander continued to happily squeak away with his hand farts.
    Then a velvety female voice cut through and said, “Hey, Sammy.”
    Silence.