My Hairiest Adventure by R. L. Stine Page B

couple
of pink guitar picks from her open case.
    “I think we sound great,” Manny said, still down on the floor, fiddling with
the cord to his amp. “Three guitars is a great sound. Especially when we put on
the fuzztone and crank them all the way up.”
    Kristina, Manny, and I all play guitar. Lily is the singer. And Jared plays a
keyboard. His keyboard has a drum synthesizer with ten different rhythms on it.
So we also have drums. Kind of.
    As soon as Manny got his amp working, we tried to play a Rolling Stones song.
Jared couldn’t find the right drum rhythm on his synthesizer. So we played without it.
    As soon as we finished, I shouted, “Let’s start again!”
    The others all groaned. “Larry, we sounded great!” Lily insisted. “We don’t
need to play it again.”
    “The rhythm was way off,” I said.
    “ You’re way off!” Manny exclaimed, making a face at me.
    “Larry is a perfectionist,” Kristina said. “Did you forget that, Manny?”
    “How could I forget?” Manny groaned. “He never lets us finish one song!”
    I could feel myself blushing again. “I just want to get it right,” I told
them.
    Okay. Okay. Maybe I am a perfectionist. Is that a bad thing?
    “The Battle of the Bands is in two weeks,” I said. “We don’t want to get
onstage and embarrass ourselves, do we?”
    I just hate being embarrassed. I hate it more than anything in the
world. More than steamed broccoli!
    We started playing again. Jared hit the saxophone button on his keyboard, and
it sounded as if we had a saxophone. Manny took the first solo, and I took the
second.
    I messed up one chord. I wanted to start again.
    But I knew they’d murder me if I stopped. So I kept on playing.
    Lily’s voice cracked on a high note. But she has such a sweet, tiny voice, it
didn’t sound too bad.
    We played without taking a break for nearly two hours. It sounded pretty
good. Whenever Jared found the right drum rhythm, it sounded really good.
    After we put our instruments back in their cases, Lily suggested we go
outside and mess around in the snow. The afternoon sun was still high in a
shimmery blue sky. The thick blanket of snow sparkled in the golden sunlight.
    We chased each other around the snow-covered evergreen shrubs in Lily’s front
yard. Manny crushed a big, wet snowball over Jared’s Raiders cap. That started a
snowball fight that lasted until we were all gasping for breath and laughing too
hard to toss any more snow.
    “Let’s build a snowman,” Lily suggested.
    “Let’s make it look like Larry,” Kristina added. Her blue-framed glasses were
completely steamed up.
    “Whoever heard of a snowman with perfect blond hair?” Lily replied.
    “Give me a break,” I muttered.
    They started to roll big balls of snow for the snowman’s body. Jared shoved
Manny over one of the big snowballs and tried to roll him up in the ball. But Manny was too heavy. The whole thing crumbled to powder under him.
    While they worked on the snowman, I wandered down to the street. Something
caught my eye at the curb next door.
    A pile of junk standing next to a metal trash Dumpster.
    I glanced up at the neighbors’ house. I could see that it was being
remodeled. The pile of junk at the curb was waiting to be carted away.
    I leaned over the side of the Dumpster and began shuffling through the stuff.
I love old junk. I can’t help myself. I just love pawing through piles of old
stuff.
    Leaning into the Dumpster, I shoved aside a stack of wall tiles and a
balled-up shower curtain. Beneath a small, round, shag rug, I found a white
enamel medicine chest.
    “Wow! This is cool!” I murmured to myself.
    I pulled it up with both hands, moved away from the Dumpster, and opened the
chest. To my surprise, I found bottles and plastic tubes inside.
    I started to examine them, moving them around with my hand, when an orange
bottle caught my eye. “Hey, guys!” I shouted up to my friends. “Look what I
found!”

 
 
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