Mojo by Tim Tharp Page B

take that, but Audrey seemed proud, and Nash was obviously thrilled. He was going to fail in the battle of the bad bands, but at least he pulled out a win at lousy karaoke.

CHAPTER 18
    It was ten till ten by the time the contest wrapped up—time for us loser non-Gangland members to scurry out of there. Nash thanked us for giving him his victory, and even Rowan congratulated us. Brett gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. I don’t know if it was the kiss or the shampoo smell from her hair, but I felt a little light-headed when she pulled away.
    As we made our way to the door, Tres came up and shook all of our hands, though when he spoke, he looked only at me. “I’m glad you’re doing so much to help with Ashton,” he said. “You seem pretty determined.” That earlier weird expression on his face had been replaced by his trademark shyness. Which was a relief. I was afraid I offended him by bringing up his sister’s situation in my rap.
    “I am determined,” I told him, but I didn’t say why. A rich kid probably couldn’t understand how important reaching for a little extra mojo was to a guy like me.
    At the door, Nash shook my hand. “Glad you made it out tonight,” he said. “You were awesome up there onstage, but I knew you would be. Too bad you have to leave, but those are the rules. We’ll have to do it again, though.”
    “Sure,” I said. “I’d love to.”
    On our way to Audrey’s car, we passed quite a few people heading the other direction. That made sense—probably the best part of the night at Gangland was just getting ready to crank up. But something else didn’t make sense. Two of the people we passed were Huy and Tommy from the Vietnamese pool hall. They grinned and waved. I stopped and watched them, and sure enough they got in the door.
    “That’s weird,” I said. “How do those guys rate getting to go in while we got kicked out?”
    Audrey and Randy agreed that it was weird, but they didn’t think it was any of our business. We’d done our time in Gangland, and they were ready to head home. I wasn’t about to let it go that quickly, though.
    “Come on,” I said. “I have an idea.”
    We snuck around to the far side of the building, the side away from the street. There were several windows set high in the wall, all sealed and coated with black paint, just like the windows on the other side.
    “What do you think you can do back here?” Randy asked.
    “Give me a second.”
    As I studied the windows, it occurred to me I might be able to scratch a little peephole into the black paint and maybe cop a view of what kind of shenanigans went on inside after ten o’clock. The problem? The windows were too high to reach—without help, that is.
    I had Audrey and Randy make stirrups with their hands so they could boost me up a couple of feet. Unfortunately, this didn’t work so well—me being the heaviest one in the group—and I ended up crashing down on my butt in the gravel. There was nothing to do but change course—Randy and I lifted Audrey up while she scratched at the black paint with her car key.
    “Can you see anything yet?” I whispered.
    “Not yet. This paint’s pretty thick.”
    “Well, hurry up,” Randy said. “You’re not exactly a feather, you know.”
    “Hey, I think I can see a little light starting to come through,” she said, but as she leaned forward to get a better look, Randy’s grip loosened, and we almost dropped her.
    “Look out,” she said. “Are you trying to break my neck or something?”
    Just then, a voice boomed behind us. “What are you kids doing back here?”
    That was it. Randy lost his grip altogether, and as Audrey started to topple over I lost my balance trying to hold on to her, and we all three crashed onto the gravel.
    Sitting there, the gravel dust puffing up around us, we looked up to see a very wide, almost-square man in a dark suit glaring down. His gray hair was thinning on top, and he had a big, bushy swooping cowboy